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Query: Who lead the Pugachev's Rebellion?
Pugachev's Rebellion (Peasants' War 1773-75, Cossack Rebellion) of 1773-75 was the principal revolt in a series of popular rebellions that took place in the Russian Empire after Catherine II seized power in 1762. It began as an organized insurrection of Yaik Cossacks headed by Yemelyan Pugachev, a disaffected ex-lieutenant of the Imperial Russian Army, against a background of profound peasant unrest and war with the Ottoman Empire. After initial success, Pugachev assumed leadership of an alternative government in the name of the assassinated Tsar Peter III and proclaimed an end to serfdom. This organized leadership presented a challenge to the imperial administration of Catherine II.
Pugachev attempted to reproduce the St. Petersburg bureaucracy. He established his own College of War with quite extensive powers and functions. It is important to emphasize that he did not promise complete freedom from taxation and recruitment for the peasants; he granted only temporary relief. His perception of the state was one where soldiers took the role of Cossacks, meaning they were free, permanent, military servicemen. Pugachev placed all other military personnel into this category as well, even the nobles and officers who joined his ranks. All peasants were seen as servants of the state, they were to become state peasants and serve as Cossacks in the militia. Pugachev envisioned the nobles returning to their previous status as the czar’s servicemen on salary instead of estate and serf owners. He emphasized the peasants’ freedom from the nobility. Pugachev still expected the peasants to continue their labor, but he granted them the freedom to work and own the land. They would also enjoy religious freedoms and Pugachev promised to restore the bond between the ruler and the people, eradicating the role of the noble as the intermediary.[6]
As the Russian monarchy contributed to the degradation of the serfs, peasant anger ran high. Peter the Great ceded entire villages to favored nobles, while Catherine the Great confirmed the authority of the nobles over the serfs in return for the nobles' political cooperation. The unrest intensified as the 18th century wore on, with more than fifty peasant revolts occurring between 1762 and 1769. These culminated in Pugachev's Rebellion, when, between 1773 and 1775, Yemelyan Pugachev rallied the peasants and Cossacks and promised the serfs land of their own and freedom from their lords.
During the 1768-1774 war with the Ottoman Empire, Russia experienced a major social upheaval, the Pugachev Uprising. In 1773, a Don Cossack, Emel'yan Pugachev, declared himself as the re-emergent tsar Peter III. Other Cossacks, various Turkic tribes that felt the impingement of the Russian centralizing state, and industrial workers in the Ural Mountains, as well as peasants hoping to escape serfdom, all joined in the rebellion. Russia's preoccupation with the war enabled Pugachev to take control of a part of the Volga area, but the regular army crushed the rebellion in 1774.
By late 1774 the tide was turning, and the Russian army's victory at Tsaritsyn left 9,000-10,000 rebels dead. Russian General Panin's savage reprisals, after the capture of Penza, completed their discomfiture. By early September, the rebellion was crushed. Yemelyan Pugachev was betrayed by his own Cossacks when he tried to flee in mid-September 1774. He was beheaded and dismembered on 21 January 1775, in Moscow.
In 1773 Nagaybak Fort was caught in the way of Yemelyan Pugachev's rebellion. Loyal cossacks and troops, headed by captain Rushinsky, fled to Menzelinsk; most of the remaining soldiers joined the rebellion and participated in the siege of Ufa. Pugachev installed a "newly baptized Persian" by the name of Tornov, as the ataman of Nagaybak. In January 1774 a small government company pushed the rebels out of Nagaybak Fort, but Tornov returned in strength and regained control over the fort. Two weeks later a whole corps of government troops crushed the rebellion. The fort became a base for punitive expeditions against the remains of Pugachev's army.
The Pugachev rebellion had a long-lasting effect on Russia for years to come. While Catherine II tried to reform the provincial administration, the horrors of the revolt caused her to drop other reforms, particularly attempts to emancipate the peasant serfs of Russia. The Russian writer Alexander Radishchev, in his "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow", attacked the Russian government, in particular the institution of serfdom. In the book, he refers to Pugachev and the rebellion as a warning.
Pugachev launched the rebellion in mid-September 1773. He had a substantial force composed of Cossacks, Russian peasants, factory serfs, and non-Russians with which he overwhelmed several outposts along the Iaik and early in October went into the capital of the region, Orenburg. While besieging this fortress, the rebels destroyed one government relief expedition and spread the revolt northward into the Urals, westward to the Volga, and eastward into Siberia. Pugachev’s groups were defeated in late March and early April 1774 by a second relief corps under General Bibikov, but Pugachev escaped to the southern Urals, Baskiria, where he recruited new supporters. Then, the rebels attacked the city of Kazan, burning most of it on July 23, 1774. Though beaten three times at Kazan by tsarist troops, Pugachev escaped by the Volga, and gathered new forces as he went down the west bank of the river capturing main towns. On September 5, 1774, Pugachev failed to take Tsaritsyn and was defeated in the steppe below that town. His closest followers betrayed him to the authorities. After a prolonged interrogation, Pugachev was publicly executed in Moscow on 21 January[O.S. 10 January]1775.[14]
Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev () (c. 1742 – ) was a Russian Cossack who led a great popular insurrection during the reign of Catherine the Great, claiming to be her late husband, Emperor Peter III. Alexander Pushkin wrote a notable history of the rebellion, "The History of Pugachev", and he recounted some of the events in his novel "The Captain's Daughter" (1836).
The first of the three phases of Pugachev's Rebellion began in September 1773. Cossacks who supported the elite constituted the majority of the first prisoners taken by the rebels. After a five-month siege of Orenburg, a military college became Pugachev's headquarters. Pugachev began envisioning a Cossack tsardom, similar to Razin's vision of a united Cossack republic. The peasantry across Russia stirred with rumors and listened to manifestos issued by Pugachev. However, Pugachev's Rebellion soon came to be seen as an inevitable failure. The Don Cossacks refused to help the rebellion in the last phase of the revolt because they knew military troops followed Pugachev closely after lifting the siege of Orenburg and following Pugachev's flight from defeated Kazan. In September 1774, Pugachev's own Cossack lieutenants turned him over to the government troops.
The idea of impersonating the late Emperor Peter III occurred to Pugachev early on, even before he reached the Yaik Cossacks. It is of no surprise, given another recent peasant impersonator, Fedot Bogmolov, and Russia's history of impersonators.
Pugachev, posing as a wealthy merchant, reportedly tested the feelings of the Cossacks at the Yaitsk by suggesting that he lead a mass exodus into Turkey. When the majority seemed to agree with his plan, he deemed it the right time to begin his rebellion.
Though he was arrested shortly after once again, and this time held for five months at Kazan, he escaped once more and returned to the Yaitsk to start his revolt.
By promising to return several privileges to the Cossacks and to restore the Old Belief, he was able to gain the support he needed to promote his identity as Peter III.
The story of Pugachev's strong resemblance to the tsar Peter III, who in 1762 was overthrown and murdered by his wife's supporters, the future empress Catherine II, comes from a later legend. Pugachev told the story that he and his principal adherents had escaped from the clutches of Catherine.
The fate of Kharlova was mentioned by contemporary sensational press and attracted much attention during the Pugachev's Rebellion. It was famously described by Alexander Pushkin in Pugachev's history.
A merchant from Rzhev who had supplied Peter III with forage, he contracted some debts and went to Pugachev's headquarters during the climax of the rebellion, in June 1774. Dolgopolov presented himself as an envoy from the Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich to his alleged "father" (as Pugachev pretended to be Peter III), under the alias of Ivan Ivanov, ostensibly from Moscow. He claimed to have "recognized" Pugachev before his supporters as the true Peter III and also recalled a 1500 roubles-debt for oats that the deposed Emperor had left behind him. However Pugachev quickly understood his aims and Dolgopolov never received from him more than 50 roubles for travel expenses.
Pugachev’s vague rhetoric inspired not only Cossacks and peasants to fight, but also indigenous tribes on the eastern frontier. These indigenous groups made up a comparatively small portion of those in revolt, but their role cannot be underestimated. Each group had a distinct culture and history, which meant that their reasons for following Pugachev were different.
In 1773 Pugachev's army attacked Samara and occupied it. His greatest victory came with the taking of Kazan, by which time his captured territory stretched from the Volga to the Ural mountains. Though fairly well-organized for a revolt at the time, Pugachev's main advantage early on was the lack of seriousness about Pugachev's rebellion. Catherine the Great regarded the troublesome Cossack as a joke and put a small bounty of about 500 rubles on his head. But by 1774, the threat was more seriously addressed; by November the bounty was over 28,000 rubles. The Russian general Michelson lost many men due to a lack of transportation and discipline among his troops, while Pugachev scored several important victories.
Factory workers supported Pugachev because their situation had worsened; many state-owned factories had been turned over to private owners, which intensified exploitation. These private owners stood as a barrier between the workers and the government; they inhibited appeals to the state for improvement of conditions. Also, with the loss of Russia’s competitive advantage on the world market, the production of the Ural mines and iron-smelting factories declined. This decline hit the workers the hardest because they had no other place to go or no other skill to market. There was enough material to support rebellion against the system. By and large the factories supported Pugachev, some voluntarily continuing to produce artillery and ammunition for the rebels.[13]
Pugachev’s success in holding out against suppression for over a year proved to be a powerful incentive for future reforms. It made apparent to the government several problems with their treatment of the provinces. They were left weakly controlled and consequently, susceptible to outbreaks of peasant violence. The most crucial lesson Catherine II drew from the Pugachev rebellion, was the need for a firmer military grasp on all parts of the Empire, not just the external frontiers. For instance, when the governor of the Kazan guberniya called for assistance against the approaching Pugachev, there was no force available to relieve him. The revolt did occur at a sensitive point in time for the Russian government because many of their soldiers and generals were already engaged in a difficult war on the southern borders with Ottoman Turkey. However, the professional army available outside the gates of Kazan to counter the Cossack-based army of Pugachev only consisted of 800 men.[26]
During the 1768–1774 war with the Ottoman Empire, Russia experienced a major social upheaval, the Pugachev Uprising. In 1773 a Don Cossack, Emel'yan Pugachev, declared himself as the re-emergent tsar Peter III. Other Cossacks, various Turkic tribes that felt the impingement of the Russian centralizing state, and industrial workers in the Ural Mountains, as well as peasants hoping to escape serfdom, all joined in the rebellion. Russia's preoccupation with the war enabled Pugachev to take control of a part of the Volga area, but the regular army crushed the rebellion in 1774.
In 1736 and again in 1765 the right bank of the Terek, still nominally Cossack property, was offered to Chechens who wanted to adopt Russian patronage and re-settle there (noting that historically, the lands immediately north of the Terek river were indeed Chechen before the Mongol invasion and even to a degree after it, and the Chechen highlands were dependent on their agricultural production). By the latter half of the 18th century relations between the Cossacks and the Mountain people began to sour. In 1765 the outpost of Mozdok was founded, which became an immediate target for Kabardins who attacked the Terek line and Kizlyar. In 1771 Yemelyan Pugachev arrived in Terek, and, to show loyalty, Ataman Tatarintsev arrested him. Pugachev fled and the Pugachev Rebellion in 1772-1774 gained no support on the Terek.
The popular mythology of Peter III linked Pugachev with the Emancipation Manifesto of 1762 and the serf’s expectations of further liberalizations had he continued as ruler. Pugachev offered freedom from the poll tax and the recruit-levy, which made him appear to follow in the same vein as the emperor he was impersonating.
The Mordovians, Mari, Udmurts, and Chuvash (from the Volga and Kama basin) for example, joined the revolt because they were upset by Russian attempts to convert them to Orthodoxy. These groups lived within Russia’s borders, but held onto their language and culture. During the Pugachev Rebellion, these natives responded by assassinating Orthodox clergy members. Because the natives professed allegiance to Pugachev, the rebel leader had no choice but to implicitly condone their actions as part of his rebellion.[15]
Under the guise of Peter III, Pugachev built up his own bureaucracy and army, which copied that of Catherine. Some of his top commanders took on the pseudonyms of dukes and courtiers. Zarubin Chaika, Pugachev's top commander, for example, took the guise of Zakhar Chernyshev. The army Pugachev established, at least at the very top levels of command, also mimicked Catherine's. The organizational structure Pugachev set up for his top command was extraordinary, considering Pugachev defected as an ensign from Catherine's army. He built up his own War College and a fairly sophisticated intelligence network of messengers and spies. Even though Pugachev was illiterate, he recruited the help of local priests, mullahs, and starshins to write and disseminate his "royal decrees" or ukases in Russian and Tatar languages. These ukazy were copied, sent to villages and read to the masses by the priests and mullahs. In these documents, he begged the masses to serve him faithfully. He promised to grant to those who followed his service land, salt, grain, and lowered taxes, and threatened punishment and death to those who didn't. For example, an excerpt from a ukase written in late 1773:
The factors that caused the 1771 exodus continued to trouble the remaining Kalmyks. In the wake of the exodus, the Torghuts joined the Cossack rebellion of Yemelyan Pugachev in hopes that he would restore the independence of the Kalmyks. After Pugachev's Rebellion was defeated, Catherine the Great transferred the office of the Vice-Khan from the Torghut tribe to the Dörbet, whose princes supposedly remained loyal to the government during the rebellion. Thus the Torghut were removed from their role as the hereditary leaders of the Kalmyk people. The Khoshut could not challenge this political arrangement due to their smaller population size.
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Alexander, John T. Autocratic politics in a national crisis: the Imperial Russian government and Pugachev's revolt, 1773-1775 (Indiana University Press, 1969). Alexander, John T. "Recent Soviet Historiography on the Pugachev Revolt: A Review Article." Canadian-American Slavic Studies 4#3 (1970): 602-617. Alexander, John T. "Western Views of the Pugachev Rebellion". Slavonic and East European Review (1970) 48#113: 520–536. Avrich, Paul. Russian Rebels, 1600-1800 (1972). Bodger, Alan. "The Kazakhs and the Pugachev uprising in Russia, 1773-1775" (No. 11. Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 1988). De Madariaga, Isabel. Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (1981) pp 239-55. Kagan, Donald, Ozment, Steven, Turner, Frank. The Western Heritage, Eighth Edition. Prentice Hall Publishing, New York, New York. 2002. Longworth, Ph. "The last great cossack-peasant rising". Journal of European Studies. 3#1 (1973) Longworth, Ph. "The Pretender Phenomenon in Eighteenth Century Russia". Past and Present. 66 (1975): 61—84 Raeff, Marc. "Pugachev's rebellion." in Robert Forster, ed., Preconditions of revolution in early modern Europe (1972) pp 197+ Yaresh, Leo. "The" Peasant Wars" in Soviet Historiography." American Slavic and East European Review 16.3 (1957): 241-259.