The era of Catherine II and the causes of the Pugachev rebellion. Pugachev uprising. Reasons for Pugachev's uprising

After the Time of Troubles, the Cossacks rebelled against the state twice: during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich under the leadership of Razin and under Peter the Great under the leadership of Bulavin. After Peter, impostors also appeared in the first half of the 18th century, but the rebellion did not flare up. During the reign of Catherine II, the Cossacks gathered their last strength, and a terrible rebellion broke out, in many ways similar to Razin’s.

During the reign of Catherine, the Yaik Cossacks were worried several times, which was caused by the unfair actions of officials towards them. The Cossacks refused to go in pursuit of the Kalmyks, who had left Russian possessions as a result of official oppression. Severe punishments for this disobedience embittered the Cossacks even more: in January 1771, they rebelled, defeated and killed General Traubenberg, and established a new, their own government.

General Freiman, sent from Moscow against the Cossacks, defeated them, and the previous Cossack rule was destroyed. The instigators of the riot were beaten with a whip, 140 people were exiled to Siberia, others were given up as soldiers. Order was apparently restored, but the Cossacks hinted at some important enterprise against the state, which was still known among them under the name of Moscow. “Whether it will happen again,” they said, “will we still shake Moscow!” Secret meetings took place in steppe umets (inns) and remote farmsteads. The Cossacks were waiting for someone, and meanwhile there were rumors in Russia and abroad that the former Emperor Peter III was alive.

Soon a man of about thirty, of average height, strong build, with fiery and penetrating eyes, appeared on Yaik. This was the Don Cossack Emelyan Pugachev, who visited Vetka, the famous schismatic den. Having learned about the Cossack unrest on Yaik, he went there and began to persuade the dissatisfied to go beyond the Kuban and surrender under the protection of the Sultan. At the same time, on the advice of two schismatic merchants, he declared himself Emperor Peter III. This was reported, Pugachev was captured, shackled and sent to Kazan in January 1773. Here he found friends-intercessors, also schismatics. They treated Pugachev easily, hid the case of impostor, allowed him to go to his friends, accompanied by a guard, with whom he managed to come to an agreement, after which he fled.

All summer, Pugachev took refuge in remote farmsteads, and in September he again declared himself Peter III and managed to assemble a detachment of 300 people, with whom he came to the Yaitsky town. The history of the Razin uprising began to repeat itself: the Cossack detachment, sent against the impostor, went over to his side. Cossacks who wanted to remain loyal to the government were hanged. Not daring to enter into a fight with the Yaik garrison, Pugachev went to the Iletsk town, promising to reward the local Cossacks with a cross and a beard, rivers and meadows, money and supplies, lead and gunpowder and eternal will. The Cossacks also joined Pugachev’s detachment.

The impostor's funds quickly increased: in early October, with 3,000 troops and several guns, Pugachev set off for Orenburg. Bashkirs, Kalmyks, Mordovians, Chuvash, Cheremis, as in the time of troubles and Razin, ceased to obey the Russian authorities; the master's peasants clearly showed their commitment to the impostor.
Meanwhile, the state was in a difficult situation: troops were busy in Turkey and Poland, measures against the plague and recruitment drives worried the mob. On October 5, Pugachev besieged Orenburg, wanting to starve it out. Soon the number of Pugachev’s troops reached 25,000 thousand. The core of it were the Yaik Cossacks and soldiers captured in the fortresses, and the rest were Tatars, Bashkirs, Kalmyks, runaway peasants, convicts and all sorts of rabble, as in the times of Bolotnikov and Razin. Pugachev trained his army almost daily, executions took place daily, daily A church service was performed in the camp. Pugachev's gangs of robbers went in all directions, drinking in the villages, robbing the treasury and property of the nobility. Pugachev was not powerful among the Cossacks: in front of others they showed him outward respect, without strangers they treated him like a comrade.

The government sent an army against the rebels under the command of General Kar, but, approaching Pugachev’s troops, Kar became afraid, began to retreat, voluntarily left the army and, under the pretext of illness, rode off to Moscow. The Empress wrote: “God knows how it will all end. I am beginning to resemble the adventures of my century like Peter the Great; but whatever God gives, I will not lose heart, following the example of my grandfather.” To correct the matter ruined by Kar, the empress appointed Alexander Ilyich Bibikov.

Arriving in Moscow, Bibikov found things in a bad state: the residents were in fear; many nobles came to Moscow from provinces already being ruined by Pugachev or under threat. The peasants spread news throughout the squares about freedom, about the extermination of the masters. The mob, drinking and staggering through the streets, was clearly waiting for Pugachev, just as in the time of Shuisky they were waiting for the Tushino thief.

On December 25, Bibikov arrived in Kazan; he found neither the governor nor the main officials here; Most of the nobles and merchants also fled to safe provinces. Bibikov's arrival revived the city; residents who had left began to return. Bibikov gathered the nobility and presented to them how the benefits of the class required drastic measures and donations. The nobility decided to arm the army at its own expense. To encourage others, Bibikov seemed cheerful and contented, but meanwhile he wrote to his wife: “The evil is great, terrible! Wow, that's bad! The army was small and unreliable, the commanders left the place and fled when they saw a Bashkir or a factory man with a club. Winter increased the difficulties; the villages were empty, the cities were under siege, others were occupied by Pugachev’s troops, the factories were burned out, the mob was worried and committed crimes everywhere. The government's troops moved slowly, and the faster the rebellion spread, engulfing the Kazan, Astrakhan, and Nizhny Novgorod provinces, penetrating into Perm. But from February 1774, things began to take a favorable turn: government troops took Samara and moved to Orenburg to the rescue, Pugachev was already preparing to escape, and the Cossacks thought of betraying him into the hands of the government and thereby earning forgiveness. Bibikov wrote: “Pugachev is nothing more than a scarecrow, which the Cossack thieves play with: Pugachev is not important, it is the general indignation that is important.”

Prince Golitsyn inflicted a strong defeat on Pugachev, who had already begun to get out from near Orenburg. Struck by Golitsyn for the second time, having lost all the guns and many people, Pugachev, with only four factory men, managed to escape to the Ural factories. Mikhelson took Ufa and restored calm in most of the rioting villages. Mansurov's approach saved the Iletsk town, which heroically withstood the terrible siege. But when the matter seemed to be coming to an end, Bibikov died from a terrible strain of strength.

Pugachev again appeared on the stage, surrounded by Yaik Cossacks, the Bashkirs again rebelled. It became impossible to pursue the impostor due to the muddy road. Pugachev managed to cross the Ural Mountains and took several fortresses. He crossed the Kama and went straight to Kazan, before which he appeared on July 11. The next day the city was taken and burned, but the fortress was saved by the arrival of Michelson, who defeated the impostor seven miles from Kazan. Pugachev retreated, but on July 18 he suddenly crossed the Volga with 500 troops: the entire western side of the Volga was indignant and went over to the impostor, the governors fled from the cities, the nobles from the estates; the mob caught both of them and brought them to Pugachev, who took Tsivilsk and cut off communication between Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan.

The Empress appointed Count Pyotr Ivanovich Panin as commander-in-chief; she thought that the impostor would go straight to Moscow. On July 27, Pugachev entered Saransk and hanged 300 nobles; then he occupied Penza, installed a gentleman as governor here and headed towards Saratov. He took the latter thanks to treason, after which he set off down the Volga. On August 21, he approached Tsaritsyn, but was repulsed twice and, hearing about the approach of the government troops, hurried further down, but 150 versts from Tsaritsyn he was overtaken by Mikhelson and suffered a decisive defeat. Meanwhile, Suvorov arrived in Tsaritsyn and took command of Mikhelson’s detachment and set off into the steppe, where Pugachev wandered. The impostor was surrounded from everywhere by government troops; his accomplices decided to hand him over, tied him up and brought him to Yaitsky town, from where he was sent to Moscow, where he was executed.

The uprising of Emelyan Pugachev was a popular uprising during the reign of Catherine II. The largest in the history of Russia. Known under the names Peasant War, Pugachevshina, Pugachevsky rebellion. It took place in 1773 - 1775. Occurred in the steppes of the Volga region, the Urals, the Kama region, and Bashkiria. It was accompanied by great casualties among the population of those places, atrocities by the mob, and devastation. Suppressed by government troops with great difficulty.

Reasons for Pugachev's uprising

• The difficult situation of the people, serfs, workers of the Ural factories
• Abuse of power by government officials
• The remoteness of the territory of the uprising from the capitals, which gave rise to the permissiveness of local authorities
• Deeply rooted mistrust between the state and the population in Russian society
• People's faith in the “good tsar-intercessor”

The beginning of the Pugachev region

The uprising began with the revolt of the Yaik Cossacks. Yaitsike Cossacks were settlers to the western banks of the Ural River (until 1775 Yaik) from the interior regions of Muscovy. Their history began in the 15th century. The main occupations were fishing, salt mining, and hunting. The villages were governed by elected elders. Under Peter the Great and the rulers who followed him, Cossack liberties were reduced. In 1754, a state monopoly on salt was introduced, that is, a ban on its free extraction and trade. Time after time, the Cossacks sent petitions to St. Petersburg with complaints about the local authorities and the general state of affairs, but this led to nothing

“Since 1762, the Yaik Cossacks began to complain about oppression: the withholding of a certain salary, unauthorized taxes and violation of ancient rights and customs of fishing. The officials sent to them to consider their complaints were unable or unwilling to satisfy them. The Cossacks were repeatedly indignant, and Major Generals Potapov and Cherepov (the first in 1766, and the second in 1767) were forced to resort to force of arms and the horror of executions. Meanwhile, the Cossacks learned that the government intended to form hussar squadrons from the Cossacks and that it had already been ordered to shave their beards. Major General Traubenberg, sent to the Yaitsky town for this purpose, incurred popular indignation. The Cossacks were worried. Finally, in 1771, the rebellion showed up in all its strength. On January 13, 1771, they gathered in the square, took icons from the church and demanded the dismissal of members of the chancellery and the release of delayed salaries. Major General Traubenberg went to meet them with troops and cannons, ordering them to disperse; but his commands had no effect. Traubenberg ordered to shoot; the Cossacks rushed to the guns. A battle took place; The rebels were victorious. Traubenberg fled and was killed at the gates of his house... Major General Freiman was sent from Moscow to pacify them with one company of grenadiers and artillery... Hot battles took place on June 3 and 4. Freiman opened his way with grapeshot... The instigators of the riot were punished with a whip; about one hundred and forty people were exiled to Siberia; others were given up as soldiers; the rest are forgiven and taken a second oath. These measures restored order; but calm was precarious. "It's only the beginning! - said the forgiven rebels, - is this how we will shake Moscow? Secret meetings took place in steppe villages and remote farmsteads. Everything foreshadowed a new rebellion. The leader was missing. The leader has been found” (A. S. Pushkin “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion”)

“In these troubled times, an unknown tramp wandered around the Cossack yards, hiring himself out as a worker first to one owner, then to another and taking up all sorts of crafts... He was distinguished by the audacity of his speeches, reviled his superiors and persuaded the Cossacks to flee to the region of the Turkish Sultan; he assured that the Don Cossacks would not be slow to follow them, that he had two hundred thousand rubles and seventy thousand worth of goods prepared at the border, and that some pasha, immediately upon the arrival of the Cossacks, should give them up to five million; for now he promised everyone twelve rubles a month in salary... This tramp was Emelyan Pugachev, a Don Cossack and schismatic, who came with a false written appearance from behind the Polish border, with the intention of settling on the Irgiz River among the schismatics there" (A. S. Pushkin " History of the Pugachev rebellion")

Uprising led by Pugachev. Briefly

“Pugachev appeared at the farmsteads of the retired Cossack Danila Sheludyakov, with whom he had previously lived as a worker. At that time, meetings of the attackers were held there. At first it was about escaping to Turkey... But the conspirators were too attached to their shores. Instead of escaping, they decided to start a new rebellion. Imposture seemed to them a reliable spring. For this, all that was needed was an alien, daring and decisive, still unknown to the people. Their choice fell on Pugachev” (A. S. Pushkin “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion”)

“He was about forty, average height, thin and broad-shouldered. His black beard showed streaks of gray; the lively big eyes kept darting around. His face had a rather pleasant, but roguish expression. The hair was cut into a circle" ("The Captain's Daughter")

• 1742 - Emelyan Pugachev was born
• 1772, January 13 - Cossack riot in Yaitsky town (now Uralsk)
• 1772, June 3, 4 - suppression of the rebellion by the detachment of Major General Freiman
• 1772, December - Pugachev appeared in Yaitsky town
• 1773, January - Pugachev was arrested and sent into custody to Kazan
• 1773, January 18 - the military board received notification of the identity and capture of Pugachev
• 1773, June 19 - Pugachev escaped from prison
• 1773, September - rumors spread throughout the Cossack farms that he had appeared, whose death was a lie
• 1773, September 18 - Pugachev with a detachment of up to 300 people appeared near the Yaitsky town, Cossacks began to flock to him
• 1773, September - Pugachev’s capture of the Iletsk town
• 1773, September 24 - capture of the village of Rassypnaya
• 1773, September 26 - capture of the village of Nizhne-Ozernaya
• 1773, September 27 - capture of the Tatishchev Fortress
• 1773, September 29 - capture of the village of Chernorechenskaya
• 1773, October 1 - capture of the Sakmara town
• 1773, October - The Bashkirs, excited by their elders (whom Pugachev managed to reward with camels and goods captured from the Bukharans), began to attack Russian villages and join the army of rebels in heaps. On October 12, foreman Kaskyn Samarov took the Voskresensky copper smelter and formed a detachment of Bashkirs and factory peasants of 600 people with 4 guns. In November, as part of a large detachment of Bashkirs, Salavat Yulaev went over to Pugachev’s side. In December, he formed a large detachment in the northeastern part of Bashkiria and successfully fought with the tsarist troops in the area of ​​​​the Krasnoufimskaya fortress and Kungur. Serving Kalmyks fled from outposts. The Mordovians, Chuvash, and Cheremis stopped obeying the Russian authorities. The lord's peasants clearly showed their allegiance to the impostor.
• 1773, October 5-18 - Pugachev unsuccessfully tried to capture Orenburg
• 1773, October 14 - Catherine II appointed Major General V.A. Kara commander of a military expedition to suppress the rebellion
• 1773, October 15 - government manifesto about the appearance of an impostor and an exhortation not to give in to his calls
• 1773, October 17 - Pugachev’s henchman captured Demidov’s Avzyano-Petrovsky factories, collected guns, provisions, money there, formed a detachment of artisans and factory peasants
• 1773, November 7-10 - battle near the village of Yuzeeva, 98 versts from Orenburg, detachments of Pugachev atamans Ovchinnikov and Zarubin-Chika and the vanguard of the Kara corps, Kara’s retreat to Kazan
• 1773, November 13 - a detachment of Colonel Chernyshev was captured near Orenburg, numbering up to 1,100 Cossacks, 600-700 soldiers, 500 Kalmyks, 15 guns and a huge convoy
• 1773, November 14 - Brigadier Korf's corps of 2,500 people broke into Orenburg
• 1773, November 28-December 23 - unsuccessful siege of Ufa
• 1773, November 27 - Chief General Bibikov was appointed new commander of the troops opposing Pugachev
• 1773, December 25 - Ataman Arapov’s detachment occupied Samara
• 1773, December 25 - Bibikov arrived in Kazan
• 1773, December 29 - Samara liberated

In total, according to rough estimates by historians, there were from 25 to 40 thousand people in the ranks of Pugachev’s army by the end of 1773, more than half of this number were Bashkir units

• 1774, January - Ataman Ovchinnikov stormed the town of Guryev in the lower reaches of the Yaik, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks
• 1774, January - A detachment of three thousand Pugachevites under the command of I. Beloborodov approached Yekaterinburg, along the way capturing a number of surrounding fortresses and factories, and on January 20, they captured the Demidov Shaitansky plant as their main base of operations.
• 1774, end of January - Pugachev married a Cossack woman Ustinya Kuznetsova
• 1774, January 25 - second, unsuccessful assault on Ufa
• 1774, February 8 - the rebels captured Chelyabinsk (Chelyaba)
• 1774, March - the advance of government troops forced Pugachev to lift the siege of Orenburg
• 1774, March 2 - the St. Petersburg Carabineer Regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson, previously stationed in Poland, arrived in Kazan
• 1774, March 22 - battle between government troops and Pugachev’s army at the Tatishchev Fortress. Defeat of the rebels
• 1774, March 24 - Mikhelson, in a battle near Ufa, near the village of Chesnokovka, he defeated the troops under the command of Chika-Zarubin, and two days later captured Zarubin himself and his entourage
• 1774, April 1 - Pugachev’s defeat in the battle near the town of Sakmara. Pugachev fled with several hundred Cossacks to the Prechistenskaya fortress, and from there he went to the mining region of the Southern Urals, where the rebels had reliable support
• 1774, April 9 - Bibikov died, Lieutenant General Shcherbatov was appointed commander in his place, which Golitsyn was terribly offended by
• 1774, April 12 - defeat of the rebels in the battle at the Irtetsk outpost
• 1774, April 16 - the siege of the Yaitsky town was lifted. lasting from December 30
• 1774, May 1 - the town of Guryev was recaptured from the rebels

The general squabble between Golitsyn and Shcherbatov allowed Pugachev to escape defeat and begin the offensive again

• 1774, May 6 - Pugachev’s detachment of five thousand captured the Magnetic Fortress
• 1774, May 20 - the rebels captured the strong Trinity Fortress
• 1774, May 21 - defeat of Pugachev at the Trinity Fortress from the corps of General Dekolong
• 1774, 6, 8, 17, 31 May - battles of the Bashkirs under the command of Salavat Yulaev with Michelson’s detachment
• 1774, June 3 - The detachments of Pugachev and S. Yulaev united
• 1774, early June - the march of Pugachev’s army, in which 2/3 were Bashkirs, to Kazan
• 1774, June 10 - Krasnoufimskaya fortress was captured
• 1774, June 11 - victory in the battle near Kungur against the garrison that made a sortie
• 1774, June 21 - capitulation of the defenders of the Kama town of Osa
• 1774, late June-early July - Pugachev captured the Votkinsk and Izhevsk ironworks, Elabuga, Sarapul, Menzelinsk, Agryz, Zainsk, Mamadysh and other cities and fortresses and approached Kazan
• 1774, July 10 - near the walls of Kazan, Pugachev defeated a detachment under the command of Colonel Tolstoy that came out to meet them
• 1774, July 12 - as a result of the assault, the suburbs and main areas of the city were taken, the garrison locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin. A strong fire started in the city. At the same time, Pugachev received news of the approach of Mikhelson’s troops, coming from Ufa, so the Pugachev detachments left the burning city. As a result of a short battle, Mikhelson made his way to the garrison of Kazan, Pugachev retreated across the Kazanka River.
• 1774, July 15 - Mikhelson's victory near Kazan
• 1774, July 15 - Pugachev announced his intention to march on Moscow. Despite the defeat of his army, the uprising swept the entire western bank of the Volga
• 1774, July 28 - Pugachev captured Saransk and in the central square announced the “royal manifesto” about freedom for the peasants. The enthusiasm that gripped the peasants of the Volga region led to the fact that a population of more than a million people was involved in the uprising.

“We grant by this named decree, with our royal and paternal mercy, all who were formerly in the peasantry and under the citizenship of the landowners, to be loyal slaves to our own crown; and we reward with the ancient cross and prayer, heads and beards, liberty and freedom and forever Cossacks, without requiring recruitment, capitation and other monetary taxes, ownership of lands, forests, haylands and fishing grounds, and salt lakes without purchase and without quitrent; and we free everyone from the taxes and burdens previously imposed on the peasants and the entire people by the villains of the nobles and city bribe-taking judges. Given July 31st day 1774. By the grace of God, we, Peter the Third, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia and others"

• 1774, July 29 - Catherine the Second vested General-in-Chief Pyotr Ivanovich Panin with extraordinary powers “to suppress rebellion and restore internal order in the provinces of Orenburg, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod”
• 1774, July 31 - Pugachev in Penza
• 1774, August 7 - Saratov was captured
• 1774, August 21 - unsuccessful assault on Tsaritsyn by Pugachev
• 1774, August 25 - the decisive battle of Pugachev’s army with Michelson. A crushing defeat for the rebels. Pugachev's flight
• 1774, September 8 - Pugachev was captured by the elders of the Yaitsky Cossacks
• 1775, January 10 - Pugachev was executed in Moscow

The outbreaks of the uprising were extinguished only in the summer of 1775

Reasons for the defeat of the peasant uprising of Pugachev

• The spontaneous nature of the uprising
• Belief in a “good” king
• Lack of a clear action plan
• Vague ideas about the future structure of the state
• The superiority of government troops over the rebels in weapons and organization
• Contradictions among the rebels between the Cossack elite and the Golytba, between the Cossacks and the peasants

Results of the Pugachev rebellion

• Renaming: Yaik River - to the Urals, Yaitsky Army - to the Ural Cossack Army, Yaitsky Town - to Uralsk, Verkhne-Yaitskaya Pier - to Verkhneuralsk
• Disaggregation of provinces: 50 instead of 20
• The process of transforming Cossack troops into army units
• Cossack officers are increasingly being given the nobility with the right to own their own serfs
• Tatar and Bashkir princes and Murzas are equated to the Russian nobility
• The manifesto of May 19, 1779 somewhat limited factory owners in the use of peasants assigned to factories, limited the working day and increased wages

Catherine the Great and the uprising of Emelyan Pugachev

On June 28, 1762, with the help of another noble-guards conspiracy, Peter III was overthrown by his wife Catherine, who later rightfully received the title Great. German-born Princess Sophia-Frederike of Anhalt-Zerb was proclaimed the autocratic Russian empress, who said that only crazy people are indecisive. Catherine II won almost without shedding blood. A week after the coup, Peter III died of a stroke or was killed in a skirmish with his guards. Catherine II headed an empire in which lived eighty thousand nobles, fifteen million peasants and four million Cossacks, clergy, soldiers' children, single-lords, and townspeople. The Empress wrote to her European addressee: “The people are naturally restless, ungrateful and full of informers and people who, under the pretext of service, care about their own benefit. It is not surprising that there were many tyrant sovereigns in Russia.” Catherine dreamed of continuing the work of Peter the Great, of making Russia a European country, without thoughtlessly transferring Western experience to Russian soil. By the end of the 18th century, the state apparatus clearly operated in Russia, for the first time the rights and responsibilities of all classes were legislated, the military power of the country was improved, and the broad cultural development of the state was ensured. There was only no successor worthy of Peter and Catherine the Great.

Catherine understood perfectly well that “laws are written on the skin of their subjects.” She always knew everything that was happening in Russia and the world, and the enemy learned about her blows when they hit him. She began her campaign of reason and enlightenment against barbarism and fanaticism. The Empress founded the Orphanage in the St. Petersburg Smolny Monastery, opened the Free Economic Society, wrote the famous “Order,” convened the Statutory Commission, secularized church lands, carried out a general survey, established smallpox vaccination in Russia, defeated Turkey in two wars, defeated the plague, and participated in the division of Poland. , defeated the Pugachev region, constantly communicated with the great French thinkers Voltaire and Diderot, published a manifesto on freedom of enterprise, carried out provincial reform in the country, supported the United States of America with the Declaration of Armed Neutrality, carried out school reform, annexed Crimea to Russia, signed the Treaty of St. George on the protectorate of Russia over Georgia, opened a monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, gave letters of grant to the nobility and cities, defeated Sweden in the war and accomplished many more things for the benefit of the Russian Empire and its people. Over the decades, her European ideas began to influence the development of the empire and society.

The empress's proposals to abolish serfdom were met with sharp objections in the country. Catherine absolutely did not want to have slaves among her subjects. Opposition to the abolition of slavery in the empire was such that even the desperate Catherine had to retreat. With regret, she said that the abolition of serfdom in Russia could only happen in a hundred years, declaring: “Slavery was made for cattle by cattle.” Catherine wanted to break through to the human heart, but failed.

In December 1766, representatives of all Russian classes - nobles, burghers, state peasants, foreigners, Cossacks, and nobles - came to Moscow to draw up a new set of laws. Serf peasants did not receive voting rights. Five hundred and seventy deputies, most of whom represented the nobility and philistinism, did not support the empress’s idea of ​​eradicating abuses in a slave society by abolishing slavery itself, despite the fact that most of the one and a half thousand local orders contained complaints about completely presumptuous local authorities.

Catherine II dreamed of abolishing serfdom, but could not go against the noble class. However, there were more and more people who thought like her. Catherine limited the spread of serfdom. When hundreds of cities were established from villages, Catherine bought out local serfs and transferred them to the petty bourgeois class. She prepared a project that all children of serfs born after 1785 were declared free people. She was warned that this project could cost her her crown. Treatises on serfdom were discussed throughout the country. Almost two hundred essays on the peasant problem were sent from all over Russia and Europe to the competition announced by the Free Economic Society established by the Empress. Catherine broke through with reforms into traditional Russian society, but very often the power of tradition was higher than her personal will. Catherine the Great began to prepare the “Charter of Complaint to the Peasantry.”

Massive abuses of serfdom by landowners began under the “Quiet” era. Peter the Great had to protect peasants from landowners with laws: “On guardianship over cruel landowners,” “On the prohibition of forcing peasants to marry against their wishes,” “On the prohibition of keeping peasants under investigation for their master’s debts.” After Peter, these laws, of course, were abolished. The law on the right of peasants who became rich on quitrents to buy into the merchant class was repealed.

The efficiency of serf farming in non-black soil lands was low and landowners began to release peasants on quitrent. Peasants began to engage in latrine trades and began to be hired in manufactories and factories. By the middle of the 18th century, more than half of the peasants of the Kostroma, Vologda, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Olonetsk, Kaluga, St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Tver, Moscow, Vladimir, Smolensk, and Pskov provinces were on quitrent. In the black earth zone, eight out of ten peasants served a five-day corvee, especially in the Ryazan, Kursk, and Tambov provinces. The landowners constantly increased the amount of quitrents and the size of the corvee. In the summer, the peasants worked sixteen hours a day, in the winter, twelve hours a day. Many factories and factories worked in two shifts, day and night. On the peasant allotment, from two to three dessiatines per person, the serfs could work only after satisfying the ever-increasing needs of the landowners. Despite the fact that in each village there were elders elected at a lay meeting who could complain to the landowner about managers and clerks, their abuses were colossal. The landowners powerfully and cruelly interfered in all areas of peasant life, controlling and directing everything according to their wishes. The serf, deprived of civil rights, was a complete slave of his master. Greyhound puppies were sold for two thousand rubles, peasant girls for twenty. A serf child cost less than a ruble. The newspapers were full of advertisements: “coachman and parrot for sale,” “best lapdogs and a good shoemaker,” “tablecloths for banquets and a learned girl.” Guilty and innocent peasants were put in stocks and shackles, forced to work in them, flogged and flogged, cut, burned, women were forced to breastfeed puppies, and they were put on eight-kilogram iron collars. The sophisticated abuse of many, many landowners against serfs was commonplace in the middle of the 18th century. The landowners actively opposed the education of peasant children, wanting them to know and think less.

The peasants endured for a long time, but not indefinitely. About three hundred thousand serfs - five people out of a hundred - were on the run, exploring Siberia, looking for the legendary country of Belovodye, in which there were no nobles. It was impossible to get rid of the landowner in a legal way. In addition to fleeing, the number of suicides among peasants increased significantly. The indignation of the peasants grew as the oppression of the landowners increased. Most of all, the serfs believed in the good king-liberator. Catherine II failed to appease the landowners: “If we do not agree to reduce cruelty and change the intolerable situation of the serfs, then they themselves will take it against our will.”

The first to worry were the factory peasants in the Urals. They refused to go to work and armed themselves, including all the women. Military teams were sent to pacify them. The authorities understood that the common cause of unrest among factory peasants was the bullying of clerks and factory owners, and they gave written instructions to team leaders to prevent ruin and bloodshed when suppressing unrest. The owners gave bribes to the officers so that they would be cruel. Many did not take them and followed the instructions, but many took them and shot at the peasants. The serfs knew about the instructions and demanded to see them. “Here is a decree for you!” - the drunken officers shouted and shot. In the year that Pugachev's uprising began in Russia, forty peasant unrest were suppressed. The authorities in St. Petersburg gave factory owners money to improve the living conditions of factory workers, and the owners and clerks successfully appropriated it. The workers began to talk about the clerks; “They have to be cut, otherwise everything will be lost.” The wounded and dead began to appear on both sides. In some kind of mad blindness to profit at the expense of other lives, the factory owners themselves prepared their own massacre. Executions of factory workers became widespread. Only the landowner peasants rebelled; the state peasants did not rebel.

Landowners and factory owners “imposed work on the peasants that exceeded human strength” and did not think at all about the consequences. Catherine II angrily declared that “the unfortunate class cannot break its chains without crime.” The landowners rushed the peasant war and they got it. On November 22, 1772, the resurrected Emperor Peter III appeared in the Yaitsky town in the Urals. His real name was Emelyan Pugachev, a Don Cossack from the Razin village of Zimoveyskaya.

Pugachev's appearance was completely Cossack. Pugachev, who rose to the rank of officer in the wars, did not at all resemble a natural murderer. He knew a lot, saw a lot, visited abroad several times, served as an officer with generals. In the Urals, the rebellious border guards were being told off, and Pugachev appeared in the Yaitsky town, probed the ground, got acquainted with the situation, learned about rumors about the rescue of Peter III and his presence in the Urals. On his second visit to the Yaitsky town, Pugachev confidently passed himself off as Peter III. The Ural Cossacks accepted him and hid Pugachev in the steppe farmsteads for a year. There were no serfs in the Urals, but there was strong dissatisfaction with the local authorities and many fugitives from central Russia. In 1771, the Yaik Cossacks killed the arrogant General Traubenberg with his retinue and part of their elders, who were trying to curtail Cossack rights. The punitive detachment pacified the rebels, and the freedoms of the Yaik Cossack army were eliminated. A garrison with a commandant appeared in Yaitsky town.

On September 17, 1773, near the Yaitsky town on the farm, Pugachev appeared as Emperor Peter III Fedorovich and reviewed his army of eighty people. A few days later he had one hundred and fifty, then three hundred Cossacks. In the ensuing massacre, not only noble alcoholics, sadists, child molesters, voluptuaries and libertines perished, but all the nobles with their families who found themselves in the Pugachev region. Many landowners were not perverts, but simply rural owners, good gentlemen, educated agronomists, who did not mock the serfs at their own insane whim, and who cared about the well-being of their peasants. They understood that this prosperity was their rich life. They fed their peasants in times of famine, built houses for serfs after fires, and gave them agricultural implements. Now these good landowners and their children were to die at the whim of Emperor Emelyan.

“The Slave’s Lament” thundered across Russia:

“Oh woe to us, slaves, from the masters and disaster!

And when you anger them, they will take away your inheritance.

What in the world is worse for a person than this misfortune,

What we ourselves earn is not in our power.

Oh, if only we, brothers, had our way,

We would not have taken any land or fields for ourselves,

They would begin to bring out every untruth,

To completely root out the evil gentlemen.”

Emperor Pugachev announced that he had discovered many untruths in Rus' and decided to “punish and put to death the swag judges who judge cases incorrectly and ruin the people.” Pugachev began distributing his manifestos throughout Russia. They became a long-awaited mercy and joy for the people. The people did not care whether the impostor emperor was right or wrong. Pugachev became a people's leader who promised freedom. Pugachev’s manifestos declared freedom to the peasants, called for them to destroy estates and catch landowners. A monetary reward was given for the killed nobles. The manifestos of the Don Cossack Emperor considered the murder of landowners as legal retribution for the abuse of the peasants.

The entire Volga and Urals regions, the entire Kazan region, rebelled. The Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Kalmyks, Mordovians, and Maris, offended by the local authorities, rebelled. Russian peasants were ruined by landowners, Tatars by local officials. Everything rose up in the vast spaces between the Volga and the Urals. The Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Ryazan, Simbirsk, Saratov, Astrakhan, Voronezh, and Tambov provinces rebelled. Half of Russia rebelled.

Pugachev with two thousand Cossacks approached the Yaitsky town, realized that he could not take it, and went to the small fortresses that protected their ancient, best steppe and local lands from foreigners. Fortresses with disabled garrisons fell one after another, surrounded by a ditch, a rampart and a simple palisade. Pugachev beat small regular units of seven hundred or a thousand soldiers. He had enough weapons and cannons - the rebel or captured Ural factories provided everything the Cossack Emperor needed. If Stepan Razin had so many weapons, “The Quietest” might not have lived to see the birth of Peter the Great. All of Russia began to look like a powder magazine. Catherine the Great's army was bogged down in the protracted Russian-Turkish war and there were no free troops in central Russia.

Pugachev’s army grew, Russians and non-Russians, Cossacks, fugitives, criminals, peasants, workers, even noble officers, fought in it. Pugachev promised the Tatars and Bashkirs to evict all Russian settlers from their lands, and they joined the Don emperor en masse. He joined people to himself by force and hunting. Pugachev announced: “When God brings me to St. Petersburg, I will send Catherine to the monastery, let her pray to God for her sins. And I will take away villages and villages from the boyars, and will reward them with money. And those who deprived me of the throne, I will hang them without any mercy. God grant that I can reach St. Petersburg and see my son Pavel.” In all the captured fortresses, Pugachev hanged the commandants and officers who did not go over to him. He already had about a hundred guns, a lot of weapons, gunpowder, cannonballs, cartridges, provisions, and money. Pugachev took the wives of dead officers by force as concubines. In November 1773, the Pugachevites besieged Orenburg, but were unable to take it. The “Imperial” headquarters was located seven kilometers from Orenburg in the village of Berda. For six months, Berda, in which Pugachev created a military college, was the capital of the peasant war. Emperor Emelyan announced the extermination of the gentlemen: “If someone kills a landowner to death and destroys his house, he will be given a salary of one hundred rubles, and whoever destroys ten noble houses will receive a thousand rubles and the rank of general.” The Pugachevites rode into churches on horseback, fired at images, drove nails into icons, and turned canvas images into horse sweatshirts. Local beauties were brought by force from all the surrounding areas to the harem of Pugachev and his colonels. Pugachev drank, walked, executed, organized parades, and trained his army.

The Pugachevites defeated a large detachment of General Kara sent to suppress them. About forty captured officers were hanged in Berd. By winter, Pugachev's army increased to fifteen thousand people. Pugachev sat near Orenburg until the spring of 1774 and lost time. The regular troops of General A. Bibikov moved towards him. On March 25, his army was defeated near the Tatishcheva fortress. Several thousand rebels were killed, three thousand peasants and three hundred Yaik Cossacks were captured. Pugachev and the Cossacks fled to Bashkiria. In half of Russia, the suppression of the uprising began. Pugachev was kicked out from there, and in the battles he lost all his closest associates. The emperor came to his senses in the steppe farms. It seemed his rebellion was crushed. Pugachev raised a new uprising in the Urals, making his headquarters at Mount Magnitnaya, where Bashkirs, peasants, fugitive and mining workers flocked to him in droves. To intimidate the rebels from Yekaterinburg they sent a Bashkir with his nose, ears and fingers cut off. A drunken revelry began at headquarters. Pugachev's assistant poured wine from the barrels, but people drank vodka from dirty puddles and raged through the streets. The Cossack Emperor strengthened himself on both banks of the Kama, recruiting seven thousand troops with twelve cannons.

In occupied Izhevsk, Pugachev announced a campaign against Kazan. He said that “my people are like sand and I know that the mob will gladly accept me.”

On June 12, 1774, Pugachev’s army of twenty thousand attacked Kazan from four sides and broke into the city in two places. Kazan burned in ten places, the garrison with General P. Potemkin defended itself in the Kazan Kremlin. There was massacre, drunkenness, and robberies in the city: “Screams, sobs, groans, and frequent cries of “stab him” were heard everywhere. Before the eyes of their parents, babies were thrown into the fire, women were raped to death, and those hiding in churches were killed. Of the three thousand houses, more than two thousand burned down. The massacre and drunken spree lasted for 24 hours. In the morning, twelve thousand Pugachevites attacked eight hundred desperate cavalry of Lieutenant Colonel I. Michelson. In a three-day battle, Mikhelson defeated Pugachev three times, who again fled with four hundred Cossacks, the rest of the rebels were killed or fled. Pugachev broke through to the right bank of the Volga and went to Cheboksary. In the Volga region, landowners' estates caught fire and crazy robberies began. On July 31, 1774, he announced his new manifesto:

“We grant this personal decree, with our royal and paternal mercy, to all who were previously in the peasantry and under the citizenship of the landowners, to be loyal slaves to our own crown, and we reward with the ancient cross and prayer, heads and beards, liberty and freedom and forever Cossacks, without requiring recruitment sets, per capita and other monetary taxes, ownership of lands, forest and hay lands and fishing grounds and salt lakes without purchase and without quitrent. We free all peasants and all people from taxes and burdens imposed by villainous nobles and city bribe-taking judges.

We command by this personal decree: who were previously nobles on their estates and estates, these opponents of our power and troublemakers of the empire and ruiners of the peasants are to be caught, executed and hanged. Do with them as they, not having Christianity in them, did with you, the peasants. After the extermination of the villainous nobles, everyone can feel the silence and calm life that will come forever.”

Pugachev, in hundreds of copies of his manifesto, stated that in the new peasant kingdom of free slaves, all landowners must be exterminated! Only after this can a calm life begin. A noble massacre began in the Volga region. The rebels said: “Our time is coming and we have nothing to fear.” The captured nobles were hanged, then shot at, then drowned. Families, wives, daughters were killed with blows to the head with clubs, sons were flogged with sabers, children under three years old were drowned in puddles. Many were taken to Pugachev to receive reward money. The peasants shouted in rage to the executed nobles: “your time has passed.” The number of killed nobles, their wives, children, and infants was measured in the thousands. His colonels competed with Pugachev in murder. Noble estates were burned, property was stolen. The fire started by Pugachev burned across Russia. The mob in Moscow was waiting for the Tsar-Liberator. Even in St. Petersburg, Empress Catherine the Great slept for some time without undressing, always ready to escape. The rebels demanded that Pugachev go to Moscow, but the sadist and adventurer himself from the beginning of the uprising did not at all believe in his success, realizing that he would only live until the army returned from the war. Little by little, the regular army began to surround the murderer-emperor again and Pugachev ran to the south, everywhere carrying out public executions of all those he did not like. Prince P. Golitsyn reported to St. Petersburg: “The vile people are so attached to rebels and atrocities that the military parties taming them do not have time to restore silence in one place, they must immediately strive for the same thing in another, breathing even the most brutal barbarities. So where today it seems to be calm, the next day a riot begins again.”

Contemporaries wrote that in the Volga region “almost the entire mob rushed to kill and plunder the nobles.” Pugachev passed Penza and moved to Saratov. Behind him was a huge convoy with looted goods and a forced harem. Pugachev easily took the demoralized city and a day later, in August 1774, he tried to enter Tsaritsyn. In both cities, he did not forget to carry out a massacre, hanging not only nobles, but even workers, barge haulers, and everyone who opposed the robberies. Following on his heels in the vanguard of the government troops was the detachment of I. Mikhelson, whom Pugachev was afraid of and thousands of his cavalry fled ahead of the ataman-tsar. Sixty kilometers from Tsaritsyn, the desperate Mikhelson caught up with Pugachev. Catherine had to hurry up to conclude peace with Turkey and send her best commanders P. Panin and A. Suvorov to the “Husband” at the head of ten regiments. On August 26, I. Mikhelson’s small vanguard destroyed Pugachev’s ten thousandth army with twenty-four guns, captured six thousand people and cut down another two thousand. The Tsar-Ataman himself, as always, abandoned the rebels and, with two hundred Yaik Cossacks, crossed to the left bank of the Volga. Ten days later, Pugachev was captured by his comrades and handed over to the authorities in the Yaitsky town, which he never destroyed. The royal career of a thirty-year-old Don Cossack lasted exactly one year. In chains and in an iron cage, he was taken to Moscow, where, after long interrogations, he was executed on January 10, 1775. By the winter of 1775, the uprising was suppressed. All the peasants who took part in the colossal riot were flogged, every three hundred were hanged, and the bodies of those executed were laid out at road intersections. The sectarian doctrine of suicide began to spread among the peasantry. The uprising was suppressed, but the general hatred of the peasantry towards the nobility could not be destroyed.

During interrogations at the Separate Secret Commission, Emelyan Pugachev gave detailed testimony:

“I killed nobles and officers, for the most part, at the request of the Yaik Cossacks, but I myself was by no means so cruel. He did not spare those who burdened their peasants, or the commanders of their subordinates, and also indiscriminately executed those if any of the peasants denounced. He had no long-range intention to take possession of the entire Russian kingdom, because they did not think he was capable of ruling due to illiteracy. And I went for it if I managed to profit from something or be killed in the war.

During all the time of his villainy, he sent out various decrees, but generally for the dispensation or seduction of the people.

Being driven by successes and circumstances, he extended his villainy further. The remorse of his heart did not leave him, and he had the intention of falling with pure repentance before the merciful Empress and Autocrat, for this he called the Yaik Cossacks to Moscow and said, if the Empress does not accept him in Moscow, then he himself will want to surrender himself into the hands of the Empress.”

Catherine II wrote to General P. Panin in her own hand:

“Captain Galakhov brought this freak to Moscow. I cannot resist telling you that the sensitivity of my heart forces me to ensure that severe punishment does not take place anywhere, and that others are not used anywhere except in extreme cases. I entrust this most urgently to your vigil.”

The body of political investigation under Catherine II was the Secret Expedition under the Senate, which operated from 1762 to 1801. It was located in St. Petersburg, and there was also a branch in Moscow. The secret expedition was led by the Prosecutor General of the Senate, his assistant and expedition manager was the chief secretary. The long-term leader of the Secret Expedition, Stepan Sheshkovsky, protected the reputation of Catherine II in public opinion. The Empress said that Sheshkovsky had a special gift for conducting investigations. The State Councilor and Chief Secretary personally interrogated Pugachev. The Empress was most interested in whether the Cossack himself planned to act as Peter III, or whether he was persuaded to do so.

“Word and deed” and torture in the Secret Expedition were abolished. A secret expedition was looking for the authors of rumors, caricatures, and lampoons about the empress, who called them “liars.” Sheshkovsky, a decorated Privy Councilor, called himself the Empress’s faithful dog. He knew everything about any meetings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, about popular rumors, he seemed or was omnipresent. They were afraid of him. The author of the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” which personally insulted the empress, fainted when he heard that Sheshkovsky would interrogate him. Only legends remain about his investigative methods - true, exaggerated, imaginary, hated. The entire archive of the director of the Secret Expedition disappeared after his death.

On November 7, 1797, the forty-year-old son of Catherine the Great, Pavel Petrovich, a fanatic of the Prussian way of life, who dreamed of power, became Emperor of Russia. He began to undo everything his mother had done during the thirty-four years of her reign, not realizing that this was impossible. Already on the first night of his reign, he signed two hundred decrees awarding his courtiers with ranks, ranks, titles, orders, lands with serfs. Paul exchanged the professional officials of the former kingdom for his own, incapable of anything, narrow-minded and uneducated servants, who lived with him for many years in Gatchina. Pavel uprooted the old and implanted the new very mediocrely, much harsher and stupider and uglier than his father Pyotr Fedorovich, although this was almost impossible. He loudly declared: “It doesn’t matter to me whether this is possible or not. I want everyone to do everything I tell them to do." He did not tolerate any objections at all - a quality unworthy of a monarch. Paul stated that he considered any objection to be rebellion with appropriate punishment. The capricious, impressionable king easily lost his temper over trifles and was busy with trifles instead of governing the empire. Paul closed the few private printing houses and established censorship in the country. The king determined for his subjects what to wear, how to walk, and when to eat. The tyrant and hysteric restored corporal punishment for the nobles and shouted: “A nobleman in Russia is only the one with whom I speak and while I speak to him. I don't care that they don't love me. If only they were afraid." They are not afraid of idiot kings. This is a shame for the subjects. They are tolerated as long as they can.

The king, who cannot be called an emperor, transferred his fits into politics, economics and culture, which stopped the development of the country and did not allow the population to live. The king would have been killed immediately, six months after the start of his reign, just like his father. Pavel was saved by the victories of commander Alexander Suvorov in Italy and Switzerland, which caused a national upsurge in Russia.

Paul ruled Russia with the help of narrow-minded views and feelings, always fickle and uncertain. The tsar eliminated local self-government of the state, immediately turning the entire country in which life had stopped against himself. A boor by nature, he told his children: “Aren’t you convinced that people should be treated like dogs?” He forgot or didn’t know that if dogs don’t bark, they immediately bite. Russia remained deafeningly silent, but this did not last long. Contemporaries wrote that under Paul they lived as during a cholera epidemic - “we lived through the day - and thank God!”

Six months after the start of Paul’s reign, the landowners significantly increased the quitrent, taxes and duties of their peasants, considering them not burdensome. Corvée and payments in kind increased in sheep, geese, chickens, eggs, cows, pigs, butter, milk, hemp, canvas, mushrooms and berries. Many landowners forced peasants to work even on holidays, and their own farms fell into disrepair. In the manufactories of the landowners, the situation of peasant workers also worsened. Contemporaries wrote that for those landowners where there was no peasant war, the Pugachevism was in vain. The peasants began to be whipped to death for no reason. Pregnant peasant women gave birth to still children after beatings. Many landowners mocked peasant serf women, girls, girls, inclining them to debauchery and corruption, subjected them to torture and abuse for refusals, kept them in shackles, and forced them to drink water until they died. Young peasant wives were taken away from their husbands at night “for lewdness and fornication.” Husbands protected their wives and they were given up as soldiers, or simply killed until they lost consciousness. Peasant women wearing only their shirts were driven out into the cold, pregnant women were put in cold water, dead children were given to the master's dogs. The whole peasant Russia was excited, and Tsar Paul rushed around St. Petersburg in hysterics, checking who was having dinner and when. In December 1796, peasant unrest began in thirty provinces, including those not previously affected by the Pugachev region - in Oryol, Kaluga, Tula, Moscow, Pskov, Novgorod, even Olonetsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza and Vologda. The peasants wrote in complaints that no one read: “We are beyond our strength and cannot fulfill your tasks. We have no bread for food, we have no clothes or shoes, we always work with our wives at your master’s work day and night, we die from frost and hunger. We only have food that our little children, going into the world, beg for.” Peasant psychology changed from sad to angry. The new tsar was asked to transfer all peasants from landowners to state peasants. Paul sent troops to quell the unrest. In the Oryol province, a crowd of ten thousand peasants with clubs and pitchforks fought off the Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment, whose commander was hit on the back with a club. The hussars returned with cannons, killed twenty and wounded seventy peasants. Paul issued a manifesto demanding obedience from the serfs to the landowners. The peasants considered it fraudulent: “We will die, but we don’t want to be with the landowner.” Soldiers and officers showed little desire to kill unarmed peasants. Paul sent the highest orders to the governors to pacify the rebels, and personally wrote instructions to the commanders of the military teams. To suppress the unrest, the tsar even appointed the commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Prince N. Repnin, who wrote in his diary: “Despite the admonition, the insurgents did not give up and did not submit. Their conquest by force began. 33 cannon and 600 rifle shots set the village on fire and the insurgents began to ask for mercy. The bodies of monsters, villains and criminals, who died justly, are not worthy of a common burial with loyal subjects and are buried in a special pit.” A stake was driven into the grave of the murdered peasants with the inscription: “Here lie the criminals against the sovereign and the landowner, justly punished with fire and sword.” Paul awarded the brave officers who suppressed the unrest with orders. Peasants, their wives and “middle-aged” children were flogged en masse, the ears of the furious were cut off, and their heads and beards were shaved. Replies to peasant complaints in St. Petersburg were written by those landowners about whom the complaints were made. Naturally, it suddenly became clear that the peasant complaints were unfounded and exaggerated, and should remain without any consequences.

By the summer of 1797, the peasant unrest was suppressed, but Paul was forced to issue a decree that corvee should not exceed three days a week. In April 1797, he issued a manifesto: “So that no one, under any circumstances, dares to force peasants to work on Sundays.” The landowners considered the manifesto not an order, but advice. Its non-compliance later caused new peasant unrest even in the St. Petersburg province. Nobody told the peasants about the manifesto; they learned about it from drunken couriers or couriers who carried copies of it to the governors.

During his four-year reign, Paul distributed six hundred thousand state peasants to the nobles. Serfdom was the basis of his worldview for him. For the people, everything remained as before.

The Time of Troubles, riots and the Razinshchina under Tsar Alexei the Quiet, the Pugachevshchina accumulated the thirst for revenge of the men against the masters. Initial requests to reduce noble robberies gave way to demands for the abandonment of landowners and even their extermination. The Tsar seemed to the peasants to be a benevolent sovereign, only for some reason he was constantly deceived either by the boyars, or by the clerks, or by the courtiers. Everyone knew that Paul allowed the peasants to file complaints to the highest name, and only a few heard that those who filed such complaints were flogged and could be sent to hard labor. The Tsar simply does not know anything about the misfortunes of the people, he needs to be told about it. Few understood that the tsar in this form was very similar to Ivanushka the Fool from the Russian fairy tale, who sometimes does not order execution, orders a word to be spoken, but who does not listen.

Paul constantly bullied his army. Instead of training in military affairs, soldiers and officers, dressed in uncomfortable and cold Prussian uniforms and powdered crazy wigs, were engaged in drills and preparations for endless parade parades. One of the officers wrote: “Two Gatchina dressers took possession of my head in order to fool it. They cut my hair at the front and rubbed the front of my head with finely ground chalk. They wrapped me in a bag of matting and the dresser, taking kvass into his mouth, began to spray me, while another dresser generously poured flour on my head. I sat motionless until everything dried up. A fifteen-centimeter iron rod was tied into the back of my hair to form a braid. Using a wire bent in an arc, they attached huge felt bevels to me. Four hours later the work was completed. I couldn’t understand why they turned me from a human into an ugly scarecrow.”

Paul did not take military merit into account. He yelled at Field Marshal Repnin: “See this battalion. There are four hundred people here. One word from me, and they will all become field marshals.” The officers were exiled for no reason and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Going to the endless parade, the officers took money with them and said goodbye to their families. One day, Pavel sent the Semenovsky regiment straight from the parade to Siberia, stopping only near Yaroslavl. Paul loved to shout and rejoice in his omnipotence. For all four years, his ora’s foreign policy, which depended on the tsar’s whims, disgraced Russia, causing laughter in Europe. Forty million subjects did not want to depend on the mood of the tyrant king. Contemporaries wrote: “Petersburg, our beautiful capital, which had no gates, no sentries, no customs, free as air, turned into a huge prison, which can only be entered through gates. Fear settled in the palace. The beautiful and wide streets were deserted. Dignitaries are allowed to serve in the palace only by presenting police passes at seven different places. The Peter and Paul Fortress is overcrowded. Over the past month and a half, more than a hundred guards officers have been thrown into prison.”

People began to call Paul a crazy monster, a caricature of Peter the Great, a hysteric and mentally ill, a despot and a tyrant. By the spring of 1801, almost everyone knew about the dignitary-noble-guards conspiracy.

The political investigation service, concentrated in the First and Fifth Departments of the Senate after the closure of the Secret Expedition, was inactive. No one wanted to stand up for Paul. Pavel suspected a conspiracy, but did not know any details. On the night of March 12, 1801, Pavel was beaten and strangled in his own bedroom of the new Mikhailovsky Castle, built specifically to protect the Tsar from assassination attempts.

The new emperor was Paul's son Alexander, for whom duplicity, pretense and hypocrisy became second nature. Later in Europe it was called the "Northern Sphinx", but it was a Sphinx in which fear, weakness, uncertainty and injustice were mixed. He easily came from the desire for freedom to reaction, from the services of the liberal Speransky to the sadist Arakcheev. It seemed that Alexander I did not have a specific worldview at all, but only the habit of easily adapting to people and circumstances.

From dreams of peasant freedom, only the decree of 1803 on free cultivators was born. On the basis of a voluntary agreement with the landowners, peasants could be freed from serfdom along with their land. By decree, about fifty thousand men received freedom. Quit taxes and corvée were constantly increasing. Paul I's law on three days of corvee was not enforced and was not controlled. Due to peasant plots, the lord's arable land increased. The peasant had fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in his own farming. Cruel treatment of peasants by landowners continued to be commonplace. Alexander I prohibited filing complaints against landowners. The emperor looked with closed eyes at the outrages of the landowners, many of whom became more and more impudent. The peasants went on the run, refused to obey, committed suicide, and killed sadistic landowners. The unrest was suppressed by military force. The peasants asked to be allowed to choose their own elders and councilors. Sometimes they were taken into account, especially if before this some headman had his head broken with a club. The peasants were especially furious at the abuses of managers and clerks. They were often dealt with using axes, scythes, chains, and clubs. The proceedings were accompanied by dead and wounded. The authorities tried to classify the causes of peasant discontent: dreams of freedom, due to lack of education, the influence of unreliable outsiders with subsequent delusions, malicious indoctrination. No one was going to recognize the main peasant demands as fair. Governors generally tried not to report peasant unrest to St. Petersburg. Peasant walkers were constantly sent to the king to tell the priest the whole peasant truth. Peasants could easily be transferred from villages to factories hundreds of kilometers away. The men united and resisted: “They don’t agree to go into his domain unless they chop them all up and give him only their corpses.” At the factories they did not pay wages, did not provide clothes or shoes, were poorly fed, and were cruelly and innocently punished. Peasant workers were flogged with whips and whips, and exiled to settlements in Siberia, to mines and mines.

From the beginning of the 19th century, ministries were established in Russia. The largest and most multifunctional was the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from which the Ministry of Police was separated in 1818. The Ministry of Internal Affairs became the department of the national economy, a police and economic body with diverse functions, in charge of class affairs, land management, general management of peasants, agriculture, urban construction, communications, medicine, censorship, police, statistics, and religious affairs. Each document in the ministry was subject to thirty-four clerical operations.

During the Patriotic War of 1812, rumors about the abolition of serfdom spread among the peasants; alarmed peasants did not obey the administration appointed by the French troops. There were cases of murders of landowners, arson of estates, and robberies. At the end of 1812 there were unrest in the Penza province. The serf peasant militias, who never received their will, were shot, flogged, exiled to settlements and sent to hard labor. After the end of the Russian-French War, many peasant warriors did not want to return to the landowners, they told the people how farmers lived in Europe, which “strongly inflamed hatred of the landowners and managers.”

After the Patriotic War, Emperor Alexander I displeased many of his subjects who saw Europe. They didn't believe him. Dissatisfaction with the tsar quickly grew into dissatisfaction with the autocracy, which was unable to transform Russia. Alexander I began to rely on his favorite A. Arakcheev, who aroused universal hatred and received the nicknames in society “a monster, a damned snake, the most harmful person in Russia.” Arakcheev signed a decree from the tsar on a special organization of Russian troops - military settlements in which military service was combined with farming. The life of a large number of people was disfigured, and the uprisings that began in the settlements were brutally suppressed. In Russia, the creation of secret noble societies began, the purpose of which was to establish a fair political system with the help of a limited monarchy or republic. The future Decembrists knew that Russia won the Patriotic War not thanks to, but in spite of Alexander I. They well remembered the day of December 2, 1805, when their comrades died in the Battle of Austerlitz due to the Russian Emperor’s disregard for human life.

In the bloody foam of rearguard battles, the forty thousand-strong Russian army rolled back under the blows of one hundred thousand Napoleon’s soldiers. French officers said with admiration that they were fighting furious ghosts. Having completed an amazing four-hundred-meter march, Kutuzov led the thinned army to the Austrian Olmutz, where the Austrian Emperor Franz and the Russian Tsar Alexander I were located. Reinforcements arrived from Russia, led by the guard, and the number of Russian troops almost doubled. Together with the Austrians, the two emperors had slightly more troops than Napoleon, and two military amateurs with negative professionalism decided to give battle to the French. The Tsar's young adjutant general, Prince Dolgorukov, was sent to Napoleon and, apparently having not slept well after yesterday's drinking session, brazenly declared that France must give up all its ten-year conquests and return to its old borders. Napoleon restrained himself and politely answered the fool in a gold uniform that he did not agree to these conditions. Dolgorukov reported to Franz and Alexander that Napoleon was afraid of battle. Napoleon was delighted and said to his marshals: “This helipad spoke to me like a Russian boyar exiled to Siberia.”

Kutuzov understood that with such leadership the Russian army would face complete defeat. They didn’t listen to him - Alexander’s entourage called him backward and old-fashioned. The Tsar himself declared that he would now not let Napoleon out of his hands. Quartermaster General of the Austrian Army Weyrother, who for some reason was considered a military theorist, wrote the disposition of a general battle. The French were expected to stand still and wait to be killed.

On the morning of December 2, west of the village of Austerlitz, the Emperor of France began the Battle of the Three Sovereigns. The right flank was commanded by Davout, the center by Soult, the left flank by Lannes, behind him stood Murat's cavalry. Napoleon understood that the Russians and Austrians would try to cut him off from the Danube and Vienna, surround him, drive him into the mountains and destroy him. Ninety thousand allies descended from the Pratsen Heights and attacked seventy thousand French. The allies huddled on the French right flank and Davout fought and began a feigned retreat into the Goldbach Valley. Napoleon immediately moved his left flank and cavalry to the center. Russian troops left the heights and rushed beyond Davout. Napoleon gave the order, and Soult with the main forces attacked the weakened Allied center. The French burst into the Pratsen Heights, broke through the front and cut the allies in half. Lanna's left flank and Davout, who had stopped retreating, were pinched by Russian troops in the Goldbach Valley. Murat bypassed them from the south. The Russian troops were crushed and driven back to frozen ponds. Napoleon immediately noticed this. The French cannonballs smashed the ice and the fiercely fighting Russian regiments began to retreat right into the ice hole. The desperately frantic attack of the Russian cavalry guards, who tried to save their dying brothers in arms, was blocked in advance and the mounted cuirassiers of the Napoleonic guard almost completely cut down the color of the Russian guard. Russian battalions were exterminated by grapeshot, went under the ice, and were captured. It turned out that Napoleon was not fighting the battle in accordance with Weyrother's disposition. Who would have thought? Control of the battle was lost, the allied forces were mixed up, there was simply no communication between them. The Russian army perished in the chaos of a fierce battle. The French were surprised by the complete military ignorance of the Allied leadership. They did not know that the battle was led not by Kutuzov, but by Alexander I.

The Battle of Austerlitz lasted throughout the winter daylight hours. 15,000 Russians and Austrians were killed or went under the ice. Twenty thousand allies, all their artillery and colossal convoys of ammunition and food were taken prisoner. The French lost 8,000 soldiers. The first to flee the battlefield were, of course, Emperors Alexander and Franz. They were immediately abandoned by all those close to them, and later, naturally, they were forgiven. Alexander, as usual, cried, but did not forget to blame Kutuzov for the defeat, who saved the troops from complete defeat. The Emperor forbade reporting to Russia about the Austerlitz disgrace and all Russian newspapers remained deafeningly silent. The relatives of the fallen soldiers did not remain silent.

A Russian officer wrote about the entry of the victorious army into St. Petersburg in 1814:

“The emperor appeared on a glorious horse with a drawn sword. We admired him. At that very moment a man ran across the street almost in front of his horse. The emperor gave spurs to his horse and rushed at the runner with his sword drawn. The police took the man to task. We didn’t believe our own eyes and turned away, ashamed of our beloved king.”

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MANIFESTO OF THE "AMPER"

“The autocratic emperor, our great sovereign, Peter Fedorovich of All Russia and so on... In my named decree it is depicted to the Yaitsk army: as you, my friends, served the former kings to the last drop of your blood... so you will serve for your fatherland to me, the great sovereign Emperor Peter Fedorovich... Wake up by me, the great sovereign granted: Cossacks and Kalmyks and Tatars. And those that were... wine to me... in all wines I forgive and reward you: with bark from the top to the mouth, and with earth, and with herbs, and with money, and with lead, and with gunpowder, and with grain rulers.”

IMPOSTERS

In September 1773, the Yaik Cossacks could hear this manifesto of “the miraculously saved Tsar Peter III.” The shadow of “Peter III” appeared in Russia more than once in the previous 11 years. Some daredevils called themselves Tsar Peter Fedorovich, announced that they wanted, following the freedom of the nobility, to give freedom to the serfs and favor the Cossacks, working people and other common people, but the nobles set out to kill them, and they had to hide for the time being. These impostors quickly ended up in the Secret Expedition, opened under Catherine II to replace the dissolved office of secret investigative affairs, and their lives ended on the chopping block. But soon a living “Peter III” appeared somewhere on the outskirts, and the people seized on rumors about the new “miraculous salvation of the emperor.” Of all the impostors, only one, the Don Cossack Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, managed to ignite the flames of the peasant war and lead the merciless war of commoners against the masters for the “peasant kingdom.”

At his headquarters and on the battlefield near Orenburg, Pugachev played the “royal role” perfectly. He issued decrees not only on his own behalf, but also on behalf of his “son and heir” Paul. Often in public, Emelyan Ivanovich took out a portrait of the Grand Duke and, looking at it, said with tears: “Oh, I feel sorry for Pavel Petrovich, lest the damned villains destroy him!” And another time the impostor declared: “I myself no longer want to reign, but I will restore the Tsarevich to the reign.”

“Tsar Peter III” tried to bring order to the rebellious people. The rebels were divided into “regiments” led by elected or appointed “officers” by Pugachev. He made his bet 5 versts from Orenburg in Berd. Under the emperor, a “guard” was formed from his guards. The “great state seal” was placed on Pugachev’s decrees. Under the “tsar” there was a Military Collegium, which concentrated military, administrative and judicial power.

Pugachev also showed birthmarks to his associates - everyone was then convinced that kings had “special royal marks” on their bodies. A red caftan, an expensive hat, a saber and a decisive appearance completed the image of the “sovereign”. Although Emelyan Ivanovich’s appearance was unremarkable: he was a Cossack in his thirties, of average height, dark complexion, his hair was cut in a circle, his face was framed by a small black beard. But he was the kind of “king” that the peasant fantasy wanted to see: dashing, insanely brave, sedate, formidable and quick to judge the “traitors.” He executed and complained...

He executed landowners and officers. He favored ordinary people. For example, the craftsman Afanasy Sokolov, nicknamed “Khlopusha,” appeared in his camp; seeing the “tsar,” he fell at his feet and obeyed: he, Khlopusha, was in the Orenburg prison, but was released by Governor Reinsdorf, promising to kill Pugachev for money. “Emperor Peter III” forgives Khlopushu, and even appoints him as a colonel. Soon Khlopusha became famous as a decisive and successful leader. Pugachev promoted another people's leader Chika-Zarubin to count and called him nothing less than “Ivan Nikiforovich Chernyshev.”

Among those granted soon were working people and assigned mining plant peasants who arrived to Pugachev, as well as the rebel Bashkirs led by the noble young hero-poet Salavat Yulaev. The “king” returned their lands to the Bashkirs. The Bashkirs began to set fire to Russian factories built in their region, while the villages of Russian settlers were destroyed, the inhabitants were slaughtered almost entirely.

YAIC COSSACKS

The uprising began on Yaik, which was not accidental. The unrest began in January 1772, when the Yaitsky Cossacks with icons and banners came to their “capital” Yaitsky town to ask the tsarist general to remove the ataman and part of the foreman who oppressed them and restore the former privileges of the Yaitsky Cossacks.

The government at that time pretty much pushed back the Yaik Cossacks. Their role as border guards declined; Cossacks began to be torn away from home, sent on long campaigns; the election of atamans and commanders was abolished back in the 1740s; At the mouth of the Yaik, fishermen erected, with the royal permission, barriers that made it difficult for fish to move up the river, which hit hard one of the main Cossack industries - fishing.

In the Yaitsky town, a procession of Cossacks was shot. The soldier corps, which arrived a little later, suppressed the Cossack indignation, the instigators were executed, the “disobedient Cossacks” fled and hid. But there was no peace on Yaik; the Cossack region still resembled a powder magazine. The spark that blew him up was Pugachev.

THE BEGINNING OF THE PUGACHEVSHCHINA

On September 17, 1773, he read out his first manifesto in front of 80 Cossacks. The next day he already had 200 supporters, and on the third - 400. On October 5, 1773, Emelyan Pugachev with 2.5 thousand associates began the siege of Orenburg.

While “Peter III” was on its way to Orenburg, news about it spread throughout the country. In the peasant huts they whispered how everywhere the “emperor” was greeted with “bread and salt”, the bells were solemnly ringing in his honor, the Cossacks and soldiers of the garrisons of small border fortresses opened the gates without a fight and went over to his side, the “bloodsucking nobles” “the king” without he executes those who delay, and bestows their things on the rebels. First, some brave men, and then whole crowds of serfs from the Volga ran to Pugachev in his camp near Orenburg.

PUGACHEV NEAR ORENBURG

Orenburg was a well-fortified provincial city, it was defended by 3 thousand soldiers. Pugachev stood near Orenburg for 6 months, but was never able to take it. However, the army of the rebels grew, at some moments of the uprising its number reached 30 thousand people.

Major General Kar rushed to the rescue of besieged Orenburg with troops loyal to Catherine II. But his detachment of one and a half thousand was defeated. The same thing happened with the military team of Colonel Chernyshev. The remnants of government troops retreated to Kazan and caused panic among the local nobles there. The nobles had already heard about Pugachev’s brutal reprisals and began to scatter, abandoning their houses and property.

The situation was serious. Catherine, in order to support the spirit of the Volga nobles, declared herself a “Kazan landowner.” Troops began to converge on Orenburg. They needed a commander in chief - a talented and energetic person. Catherine II could compromise her beliefs for the sake of benefit. It was at this decisive moment at the court ball that the empress turned to A.I. Bibikov, whom she did not like for her closeness to her son Pavel and “constitutional dreams,” and with a gentle smile asked him to become commander-in-chief of the army. Bibikov replied that he had devoted himself to serving the fatherland and, of course, accepted the appointment. Catherine's hopes were justified. On March 22, 1774, in a 6-hour battle near the Tatishchev Fortress, Bibikov defeated Pugachev’s best forces. 2 thousand Pugachevites were killed, 4 thousand were wounded or surrendered, 36 guns were captured from the rebels. Pugachev was forced to lift the siege of Orenburg. It seemed that the revolt had been suppressed...

But in the spring of 1774, the second part of Pugachev’s drama began. Pugachev moved east: to Bashkiria and the mining Urals. When he approached the Trinity Fortress, the easternmost point of the rebel advance, his army numbered 10 thousand people. The uprising was overwhelmed by the elements of robbery. The Pugachevites burned factories, took away livestock and other property from assigned peasants and working people, destroyed officials, clerks, and captured “gentlemen” without pity, sometimes in the most savage way. Some commoners joined the detachments of Pugachev’s colonels, others formed detachments around the factory owners, who distributed weapons to their people in order to protect them and their lives and property.

PUGACHEV IN THE VOLGA REGION

Pugachev's army grew due to the detachments of the Volga peoples - the Udmurts, Mari, Chuvash. Since November 1773, the manifestos of “Peter III” called on the serfs to deal with the landowners - “disturbers of the empire and destroyers of the peasants”, and to take the nobles’ “houses and all their property as rewards.”

On July 12, 1774, the Emperor took Kazan with a 20,000-strong army. But the government garrison locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin. Tsarist troops led by Mikhelson came to his aid. On July 17, 1774, Mikhelson defeated the Pugachevites. “Tsar Peter Fedorovich” fled to the right bank of the Volga, and there the peasant war unfolded again on a large scale. The Pugachev manifesto of July 31, 1774 granted freedom to the serfs and “freed” the peasants from all duties. Rebel groups arose everywhere, acting at their own peril and risk, often without communication with each other. It is interesting that the rebels usually destroyed the estates not of their owners, but of neighboring landowners. Pugachev with the main forces moved to the Lower Volga. He took on small towns with ease. Detachments of barge haulers, Volga, Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks stuck to him. The powerful fortress of Tsaritsyn stood in the way of the rebels. Under the walls of Tsaritsyn in August 1774, the Pugachevites suffered a major defeat. The thinned rebel detachments began to retreat back to where they came from - to the Southern Urals. Pugachev himself with a group of Yaik Cossacks swam to the left bank of the Volga.

On September 12, 1774, former comrades betrayed their leader. “Tsar Peter Fedorovich” turned into the fugitive rebel Pugach. Emelyan Ivanovich’s angry shouts no longer had any effect: “Who are you knitting? After all, if I don’t do anything to you, then my son, Pavel Petrovich, will not leave a single person among you alive!” The bound “king” was taken on horseback to the Yaitsky town and handed over to an officer there.

Commander-in-Chief Bibikov was no longer alive. He died in the midst of suppressing the riot. The new commander-in-chief Pyotr Panin (the younger brother of Tsarevich Pavel's tutor) had a headquarters in Simbirsk. Mikhelson ordered Pugachev to be sent there. He was escorted by the famous commander of Catherine, recalled from the Turkish war. Pugachev was transported in a wooden cage on a two-wheeled cart.

Meanwhile, Pugachev’s comrades who had not yet laid down their arms spread a rumor that the arrested Pugachev had nothing to do with “Tsar Peter III.” Some peasants sighed with relief: “Thank God! Some Pugach was caught, but Tsar Peter Fedorovich is free!” But in general, the rebel forces were undermined. In 1775, the last pockets of resistance in forested Bashkiria and the Volga region were extinguished, and the echoes of the Pugachev rebellion in Ukraine were suppressed.

A.S. PUSHKIN. "THE HISTORY OF PUGACHEV"

“Suvorov never left his side. In the village of Mostakh (one hundred and forty versts from Samara) there was a fire near the hut where Pugachev spent the night. He was taken out of the cage, tied to a cart along with his son, a playful and brave boy, and all night; Suvorov himself guarded them. In Kosporye, opposite Samara, at night, in rough weather, Suvorov crossed the Volga and came to Simbirsk in early October... Pugachev was brought straight to the courtyard of Count Panin, who met him on the porch... “Who are you?” - he asked the impostor. “Emelyan Ivanov Pugachev,” he answered. “How dare you, juror, call yourself a sovereign?” - Panin continued. “I’m not a raven,” Pugachev objected, playing with words and speaking, as usual, allegorically. “I am a little raven, but the raven still flies.” Panin, noticing that Pugachev’s audacity amazed the people crowded around the palace, hit the impostor in the face until it bled and tore out a tuft of his beard...”

EXECUTIONS AND EXECUTIONS

The victory of government troops was accompanied by atrocities no less than what Pugachev committed against the nobles. The enlightened empress concluded that “in the present case, execution is necessary for the good of the empire.” Prone to constitutional dreams, Pyotr Panin realized the call of the autocrat. Thousands of people were executed without trial. On all the roads of the rebellious region there were corpses lying around, displayed for edification. It was impossible to count the peasants punished with whips, batogs, and whips. Many had their noses or ears cut off.

Emelyan Pugachev laid down his head on the block on January 10, 1775 in front of a large crowd of people on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. Before his death, Emelyan Ivanovich bowed to the cathedrals and said goodbye to the people, repeating in an intermittent voice: “Forgive me, Orthodox people; forgive me what I have done wrong to you.” Several of his associates were hanged along with Pugachev. The famous chieftain Chika was taken to Ufa for execution. Salavat Yulaev ended up in hard labor. The Pugachev era is over...

The Pugachev era did not bring relief to the peasants. The government's policy towards the peasants became harsher, and the scope of serfdom expanded. By decree of May 3, 1783, the peasants of the Left Bank and Sloboda Ukraine were transferred to serfdom. The peasants here were deprived of the right to transfer from one owner to another. In 1785, the Cossack elders received the rights of the Russian nobility. Even earlier, in 1775, the free Zaporozhye Sich was destroyed. The Cossacks were resettled to Kuban, where they formed the Kuban Cossack army. The landowners of the Volga region and other regions did not reduce quitrents, corvee and other peasant duties. All this was exacted with the same severity.

“Mother Catherine” wanted the memory of the Pugachev era to be erased. She even ordered the river where the riot began to be renamed: and Yaik became the Ural. The Yaitsky Cossacks and the Yaitsky town were ordered to be called Ural. The village of Zimoveyskaya, the birthplace of Stenka Razin and Emelyan Pugachev, was christened in a new way - Potemkinskaya. However, Pugach was remembered by the people. The old people seriously said that Emelyan Ivanovich was Razin come to life, and he would return to the Don more than once; Songs were heard throughout Rus' and legends circulated about the formidable “emperor and his children.”

Popular uprising

Potemkin quickly won the full trust of Catherine II and, most importantly, immediately took up the solution of important state affairs. The Tsarina appointed him governor-general of Novorossiya, the Black Sea lands newly annexed to Russia, which Potemkin would tirelessly expand and develop until the end of his days. He also took an active part in suppressing the Pugachev uprising.

This unexpected and extremely unpleasant threat for Catherine II arose in the fall of 1773. Back in August, Cossack Emelyan Pugachev, who escaped from custody to the Yaik (Ural) River, declared himself the miraculously saved Tsar Peter Fedorovich. In September, the “sovereign emperor” promulgated his “decree No. 1” to the Yaik Cossack army, in which he endowed them with “ryak from the peaks to the valley and land and herbs and cash salaries and lead and powder and grain government.”

Not all Cossacks believed the impostor, but nevertheless they enthusiastically joined him. The rebel army, capturing small fortresses along the way and constantly increasing in number, moved towards Orenburg. His siege lasted about six months and was unsuccessful. However, in two or three months, the popular uprising acquired unprecedented proportions, covering the Southern Urals, the eastern part of the Kazan province, Western Siberia, Western Kazakhstan, and Bashkiria. There was unrest in the central provinces of Russia: the peasants, in the event of the appearance of “Peter Fedorovich” detachments in their area, were ready to join the rebels.

General Alexander Bibikov and Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Mikhelson, sent to suppress the uprising, managed to inflict a number of defeats on Pugachev, forcing him to first retreat from Orenburg in the spring of 1774 and then flee to the Urals. There the impostor received new reinforcements and, pursued by Michelson’s corps, moved towards Kazan. Pugachev’s troops failed to take the Kazan Kremlin, and the tireless lieutenant colonel who arrived in time for this city on July 15 again defeated Pugachev’s numerous, but poorly organized and armed detachments.

^ Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, a hero of the war with Turkey, who in 1774 aimed at suppressing the Pugachev uprising, personally delivered the arrested impostor to Moscow.

A Portrait of Emelyan Pugachev.

He retreated to the right bank of the Volga, where he published a manifesto on the liberation of peasants from serfdom, on the free transfer of land to the people, and on the widespread extermination of nobles. This gave a powerful impetus to a new rise in the peasant war: the serfs began to destroy the landowners' estates and deal with their inhabitants. And then the Cossack Pugachev, who did not trust the peasants, made his biggest mistake: instead of moving to the central provinces of Russia, he headed to the Don, hoping to raise the Cossacks there.

Meanwhile, government forces sent to suppress the peasant revolt reached 20 infantry and cavalry regiments, not counting the auxiliary provincial militias. This predetermined the outcome: in September 1774, the Yaik Cossacks chose to hand over the impostor to the authorities. On January 10, 1775, Pugachev and four of his associates were executed on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square, but government troops finally managed to suppress the popular movement only in the summer of 1775.

Spread of serfdom

Pugachev's rebellion greatly frightened Catherine II. To encourage the trembling provincial nobility, she hastened to declare herself “the first landowner.” At the same time, the ruler could not understand the reason for such a cruel and merciless popular revolt. Generously distributing lands inhabited by state and economic peasants to her favorites and other nobles who deserved her favor, the queen sincerely believed that “a good landowner has no better fate for our peasants in the entire universe.”

Catherine II did not change her point of view even after the events of 1773-1775. Moreover, later serfdom began to spread to places where it had not existed before. In the same 1775, the Zaporozhye Sich, which became agitated under the influence of news of Pugachev’s movement, was liquidated, and the lands controlled by the Cossacks were distributed to landowners.