In what year did the peasant war take place? Peasant wars in Russia

Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev

“Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev is a hero and an impostor, a sufferer and a rebel, a sinner and a saint... But above all, he is a leader of the people, an undoubtedly exceptional person - otherwise he would not have been able to captivate armies of thousands and lead them into battle for two years. When raising an uprising, Pugachev knew that the people would follow him” (G.M. Nesterov, local historian).

The artist T. Nazarenko expresses a similar thought in his painting. Her painting “Pugachev,” in which she did not strive for a truly historical reconstruction of events, depicts a scene reminiscent of ancient folk oleography. On it are doll figures of soldiers in bright uniforms and a conventional cage with a rebellious leader in the pose of the crucified Christ. And ahead on a wooden horse is Generalissimo Suvorov: it was he who delivered the “main troublemaker” to Moscow. The second part of the picture was painted in a completely different manner, stylized under the era of the reign of Catherine II and the Pugachev rebellion - the famous portrait from the Historical Museum, in which Pugachev is painted over the image of the empress.

“My historical paintings, of course, are connected with today,” says Tatyana Nazarenko. - “Pugachev” is a story of betrayal. It is at every step. Pugachev's associates abandoned him, dooming him to execution. This always happens."

T. Nazarenko "Pugachev". Diptych

There are numerous legends, traditions, epics, tales about Pugachev and his associates. The people pass them on from generation to generation.

The personality of E.I. Pugachev and the nature of the Peasant War have always been assessed ambiguously and in many ways contradictory. But despite all the differences of opinion, the Pugachev uprising is a significant milestone in Russian history. And no matter how tragic the story is, it must be known and respected.

How it all began?

The reason for the start of the Peasant War, which covered vast territories and attracted several hundred thousand people to the ranks of the rebels, was the miraculous announcement of the escaped “Tsar Peter Fedorovich.” You can read about it on our website: . But let's briefly recall: Peter III (Pyotr Fedorovich, born Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, 1728-1762) - Russian emperor in 1761-1762, was overthrown as a result of a palace coup that brought his wife, Catherine II, to the throne, and soon lost his life. Personality and activity Peter III for a long time historians unanimously regarded him negatively, but then they began to treat him more carefully, assessing a number of the emperor’s public services. During the reign of Catherine II, many pretended to be Pyotr Fedorovich impostors(about forty cases recorded), the most famous of whom was Emelyan Pugachev.

L. Pfanzelt "Portrait of Emperor Peter III"

Who is he?

Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev- Don Cossack. Born in 1742 in the Cossack village of Zimoveyskaya, Don Region (currently the village of Pugachevskaya, Volgograd Region, Stepan Razin was previously born here).

He took part in the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763, and with his regiment was in the division of Count Chernyshev. With the death of Peter III, the troops were returned to Russia. From 1763 to 1767, Pugachev served in his village, where his son Trofim was born, and then his daughter Agrafena. He was sent to Poland with the team of Captain Elisey Yakovlev to search for and return to Russia the escaped Old Believers.

He took part in the Russian-Turkish War, where he fell ill and was sent into retirement, but became involved in the escape of his son-in-law from service and was forced to flee to the Terek. After numerous ups and downs, adventures and escapes, in November 1772 he settled in the Old Believer monastery of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary in Saratov region from Abbot Philaret, from whom I heard about the unrest that had occurred in the Yaitsk army. Some time later, in a conversation with one of the participants in the 1772 uprising, Denis Pyanov, for the first time called himself the survivor of Peter III: “I am not a merchant, but the sovereign Peter Fedorovich, I was also in Tsaritsyn, but God and good people saved me, but instead of me they spotted a guard soldier, and in St. Petersburg one officer saved me.”. Upon returning to Mechetnaya Sloboda, following a denunciation from the peasant Filippov Pugachev, who was with him on the trip, he was arrested and sent for investigation, first to Simbirsk, then in January 1773 to Kazan.

Portrait of Pugachev, painted from life with oil paints (inscription on the portrait: “True image of the rebel and deceiver Emelka Pugachev”)

Having escaped again and again calling himself “Emperor Peter Fedorovich,” he began meeting with the instigators of previous uprisings and discussed with them the possibility of a new uprising. Then he found a literate person to draw up “royal decrees.” In Mechetnaya Sloboda he was identified, but again managed to escape and get to Talovy Umet, where Yaik Cossacks D. Karavaev, M. Shigaev, I. Zarubin-Chika and T. Myasnikov were waiting for him. He again told them the story of his “miraculous salvation” and discussed the possibility of an uprising.

At this time, the commandant of the government garrison in the Yaitsky town, Lieutenant Colonel I. D. Simonov, having learned about the appearance in the army of a man posing as “Peter III,” sent two teams to capture the impostor, but they managed to warn Pugachev. By this time the ground was ready for the uprising. Not many Cossacks believed that Pugachev was Peter III, but everyone followed him. Concealing his illiteracy, he did not sign his manifestos; however, his “autograph” has been preserved on a separate sheet, imitating the text of a written document, about which he told his literate associates that it was written “in Latin.”

What caused the uprising?

As usual in such cases, there are many reasons, and all of them, when combined, create favorable conditions for the event to occur.

Yaik Cossacks were the main driving force of the uprising. Throughout the 18th century, they gradually lost privileges and liberties, but the times of complete independence from Moscow and Cossack democracy still remained in their memory. In the 1730s, there was an almost complete split of the army into senior and military sides. The situation was aggravated by the monopoly on salt introduced by the royal decree of 1754. The army's economy was entirely built on sales of fish and caviar, and salt was a strategic product. The ban on free salt mining and the emergence of salt tax farmers among the top troops led to a sharp stratification among the Cossacks. In 1763, the first major outburst of indignation occurred; the Cossacks wrote petitions to Orenburg and St. Petersburg, sent delegates from the army to complain about the atamans and local authorities. Sometimes they achieved their goal, and especially unacceptable atamans changed, but on the whole the situation remained the same. In 1771, the Yaik Cossacks refused to go in pursuit of the Kalmyks who had migrated outside Russia. General Traubenberg and a detachment of soldiers went to investigate the disobedience of the order. The result was the Yaik Cossack uprising of 1772, during which General Traubenberg and the military ataman Tambov were killed. Troops were sent to suppress the uprising. The rebels were defeated at the Embulatovka River in June 1772; As a result of the defeat, the Cossack circles were finally liquidated, a garrison of government troops was stationed in the Yaitsky town, and all power over the army passed into the hands of the commandant of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel I. D. Simonov. The reprisal against the caught instigators was extremely cruel and made a depressing impression on the army: never before had Cossacks been branded or had their tongues cut out. A large number of participants in the performance took refuge in distant steppe farms, excitement reigned everywhere, the state of the Cossacks was like a compressed spring.

V. Perov "Pugachev's Court"

Tension was also present in the environment heterodox peoples of the Urals and Volga region. The development of the Urals and the colonization of the lands of the Volga region, which belonged to local nomadic peoples, and intolerant religious policies led to numerous unrest among the Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Erzyans, Chuvash, Udmurts, and Kalmyks.

The situation at the fast-growing factories of the Urals was also explosive. Starting with Peter, the government solved the problem of labor in metallurgy mainly by assigning state peasants to state-owned and private mining factories, allowing new factory owners to buy serf villages and granting the unofficial right to keep runaway serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories , tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and deportation of all fugitives. It was very convenient to take advantage of the lack of rights and hopeless situation of fugitives: if anyone began to express dissatisfaction with their situation, they were immediately handed over to the authorities for punishment. Former peasants resisted forced labor in factories.

Peasants, assigned to state-owned and private factories, dreamed of returning to their usual village work. To top it all off, Catherine II issued a Decree of August 22, 1767, prohibiting peasants from complaining about landowners. That is, there was complete impunity for some and complete dependence for others. And it becomes easier to understand how the circumstances helped Pugachev to attract so many people with him. Fantastic rumors about imminent freedom or about the transfer of all the peasants to the treasury, about a ready decree of the tsar, whose wife and boyars were killed for this, that the tsar was not killed, but he was hiding until better times fell on the fertile soil of general human dissatisfaction with his current situation . There was simply no other opportunity left for all groups of future participants in the performance to defend their interests.

Insurrection

First stage

The internal readiness of the Yaik Cossacks for the uprising was high, but for the performance there was not enough a unifying idea, a core that would unite the sheltered and hidden participants in the unrest of 1772. The rumor that the miraculously saved Emperor Peter Fedorovich appeared in the army instantly spread throughout Yaik.

The uprising began on Yaik. The starting point of Pugachev’s movement was the Tolkachev farm located south of the Yaitsky town. It was from this farm that Pugachev, who by that time was already Peter III, Tsar Peter Fedorovich, issued a manifesto in which he granted everyone who joined him “a river from the peaks to the mouth, and land, and herbs, and cash salaries, and lead , and gunpowder, and grain provisions." At the head of his constantly growing detachment, Pugachev approached Orenburg and besieged it. Here the question arises: why did Pugachev restrain his forces with this siege?

Orenburg was for the Yaik Cossacks administrative center region and at the same time a symbol of a power hostile to them, because All the royal decrees came from there. It was necessary to take it. And so Pugachev creates a headquarters, a kind of capital of the rebellious Cossacks, in the village of Berda near Orenburg it turns into the capital of the rebellious Cossacks.

Later, another center of the movement was formed in the village of Chesnokovka near Ufa. Several other less significant centers also emerged. But the first stage of the war ended with two defeats for Pugachev - at the Tatishchev Fortress and the Sakmarsky town, as well as the defeat of his closest associate - Zarubin-Chika at Chesnokovka and the end of the siege of Orenburg and Ufa. Pugachev and his surviving associates leave for Bashkiria.

Battle map of the Peasants' War

Second phase

In the second stage, the Bashkirs, who by that time already constituted the majority in the Pugachev army, took part in the uprising en masse. At the same time, government forces became more active. This forced Pugachev to move towards Kazan, and then in mid-July 1774 move to the right bank of the Volga. Even before the start of the battle, Pugachev announced that he would head from Kazan to Moscow. The rumor about this spread throughout the area. Despite the major defeat of Pugachev's army, the uprising spread throughout west bank Volga. Having crossed the Volga at Kokshaysk, Pugachev replenished his army with thousands of peasants. And Salavat Yulaev at this time with his troops continued fighting near Ufa, the Bashkir detachments in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. Pugachev entered Kurmysh, then freely entered Alatyr, and then headed towards Saransk. On the central square of Saransk, a decree on freedom for peasants was read out, supplies of salt and bread, and the city treasury were distributed to residents “driving around the city fortress and along the streets... they abandoned the mob that had come from different districts”. The same solemn meeting awaited Pugachev in Penza. The decrees caused numerous peasant revolts in the Volga region, the movement covered most of the Volga districts, approached the borders of the Moscow province, and really threatened Moscow.

The publication of decrees (manifestos on the liberation of peasants) in Saransk and Penza is called the culmination of the Peasant War. The decrees made a strong impression on the peasants, nobles and Catherine II herself. The enthusiasm led to the fact that a population of more than a million people was involved in the uprising. They could not give anything to Pugachev’s army in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments operated no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev’s campaign across the Volga region into a triumphal procession, with bells ringing, the blessing of the village priest and bread and salt in every new village, village, town. When Pugachev’s army or its individual detachments approached, the peasants tied up or killed their landowners and their clerks, hanged local officials, burned estates, and smashed shops. In total, in the summer of 1774, about 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed.

Thus ends the second stage of the war.

Third stage

In the second half of July 1774, when the Pugachev uprising was approaching the borders of the Moscow province and threatened Moscow itself, Empress Catherine II was alarmed by the events. In August 1774, Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov was recalled from the 1st Army, which was located in the Danube principalities. Panin entrusted Suvorov with command of the troops that were supposed to defeat the main Pugachev army in the Volga region.

Seven regiments were brought to Moscow under the personal command of P.I. Panin. Moscow Governor General Prince M.N. Volkonsky placed artillery near his house. The police strengthened surveillance and sent informants to crowded places to capture all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who was pursuing the rebels from Kazan, turned to Arzamas to block the road to the old capital. General Mansurov set out from the Yaitsky town to Syzran, General Golitsyn - to Saransk. Everywhere Pugachev leaves behind him rebellious villages: “Not only peasants, but priests, monks, even archimandrites outrage sensitive and insensitive people”. But from Penza Pugachev turned south. Perhaps he wanted to attract the Volga and Don Cossacks into his ranks - the Yaik Cossacks were already tired of the war. But it was precisely during these days that a conspiracy of Cossack colonels began to surrender Pugachev to the government in exchange for receiving a pardon.

Meanwhile, Pugachev took Petrovsk, Saratov, where priests in all churches served prayers for the health of Emperor Peter III, and government troops followed on his heels.

After Saratov, Kamyshin also met Pugachev ringing bells and bread and salt. Near Kamyshin in the German colonies, Pugachev’s troops encountered the Astrakhan astronomical expedition of the Academy of Sciences, many members of which, along with the leader, Academician Georg Lowitz, were hanged along with local officials who did not have time to escape. They were joined by a 3,000-strong detachment of Kalmyks, then the villages of Volzhsky followed Cossack army Antipovskaya and Karavainskaya. On August 21, 1774, Pugachev tried to attack Tsaritsyn, but the assault failed.

Mikhelson's corps pursued Pugachev, and he hastily lifted the siege of Tsaritsyn, moving towards Black Yar. Panic began in Astrakhan. On August 24, Pugachev was overtaken by Mikhelson. Realizing that a battle could not be avoided, the Pugachevites formed battle formations. On August 25, the last major battle between the troops under the command of Pugachev and the tsarist troops took place. The battle began with a major setback - all 24 cannons of the rebel army were repulsed by a cavalry attack. More than 2,000 rebels died in a fierce battle, among them Ataman Ovchinnikov. More than 6,000 people were captured. Pugachev and the Cossacks, breaking up into small detachments, fled across the Volga. During August-September, most of the participants in the uprising were caught and sent for investigation to the Yaitsky town, Simbirsk, and Orenburg.

Pugachev under escort. 18th century engraving

Pugachev with a detachment of Cossacks fled to Uzeni, not knowing that since mid-August some colonels had been discussing the possibility of earning forgiveness by surrendering the impostor. Under the pretext of making it easier to escape the pursuit, they divided the detachment so as to separate the Cossacks loyal to Pugachev along with Ataman Perfilyev. On September 8, near the Bolshoi Uzen River, they pounced and tied up Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Tvorogov went to Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they notified their accomplices, and on September 15 they brought Pugachev to the Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of which was conducted personally by Suvorov, who also volunteered to escort Pugachev to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was taking place. To transport Pugachev, a tight cage was made, mounted on a two-wheeled cart, in which, chained hand and foot, he could not even turn around. In Simbirsk, he was interrogated for five days by P. S. Potemkin, the head of the secret investigative commissions, and Count P. I. Panin, the commander of the government's punitive forces.

Continuation of the Peasant War

The war did not end with the capture of Pugachev - it unfolded too widely. The centers of the uprising were both scattered and organized, for example, in Bashkiria under the command of Salavat Yulaev and his father. The uprising continued in the Trans-Urals, in the Voronezh province, in the Tambov district. Many landowners left their homes and hid from the rebels. To stem the wave of riots, punitive detachments began mass executions. In every village, in every town that received Pugachev, the leaders of the riots and city leaders and atamans of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites began to be hanged on the gallows, from which they had barely managed to remove those hanged by Pugachev. To enhance the intimidation, the gallows were installed on rafts and floated along the main rivers of the uprising. In May, Khlopushi was executed in Orenburg: his head was placed on a pole in the city center. During the investigation, the entire medieval set of proven means was used. In terms of cruelty and number of victims, Pugachev and the government were not inferior to each other.

“Gallows on the Volga” (illustration by N. N. Karazin for “The Captain’s Daughter” by A. S. Pushkin)

Investigation into the Pugachev case

All the main participants in the uprising were transported to Moscow for a general investigation. They were placed in the Mint building at the Iversky Gate of China Town. The interrogations were led by Prince M.N. Volkonsky and Chief Secretary S.I. Sheshkovsky.

Pugachev gave detailed testimony about himself and about his plans and intentions, about the course of the uprising. Catherine II showed great interest in the progress of the investigation. She even advised how best to conduct an inquiry and what questions to ask.

Sentence and execution

On December 31, Pugachev, under heavy escort, was transported from the casemates of the Mint to the chambers of the Kremlin Palace. He was then taken into the meeting room and forced to kneel. After a formal questioning, he was taken out of the courtroom, the court made a decision: “Emelka Pugachev will be quartered, his head will be stuck on a stake, body parts will be carried to four parts of the city and placed on wheels, and then burned in those places.” The remaining defendants were divided according to the degree of their guilt into several groups for each appropriate type of execution or punishment.

On January 10, 1775, an execution was carried out on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow in front of a huge crowd of people. Pugachev remained calm. At the place of execution, he crossed himself at the Kremlin cathedrals, bowed to four sides with the words “Forgive me, Orthodox people.” At the request of Catherine II, the executioner first cut off the heads of E. I. Pugachev and A. P. Perfilyev, who were sentenced to quartering. On the same day, M. G. Shigaev, T. I. Podurov and V. I. Tornov were hanged. I. N. Zarubin-Chika was sent to Ufa, where he was executed by beheading in early February 1775.

"The execution of Pugachev on Bolotnaya Square." Drawing of an eyewitness to the execution of A. T. Bolotov

Features of the Peasant War

This war was in many ways similar to previous peasant wars. The Cossacks act as the instigators of the war; both the social demands and the motives of the rebels are largely similar. But there are also significant differences: 1) coverage of a vast territory, which had no precedent in previous history; 2) a different organization of the movement from the rest, the creation of central command and control bodies for the army, the publication of manifestos, a fairly clear structure of the army.

Consequences of the Peasants' War

In order to eradicate the memory of Pugachev, Catherine II issued decrees to rename all places associated with these events. Stanitsa Zimoveyskaya on the Don, where Pugachev was born, there was renamed V Potemkin, the house where Pugachev was born was ordered to be burned. Yaik River was renamed Ural, Yaik army - to the Ural Cossack army, Yaitsky town - to Uralsk, Verkhne-Yaitskaya pier - to Verkhneuralsk. The name of Pugachev was anathematized in churches along with Stenka Razin.

Decree of the Government Senate

“...for the complete oblivion of this unfortunate incident that followed on Yaik, the Yaik River, along which both this army and the city had their name until now, due to the fact that this river flows from
the Ural Mountains, rename the Ural, and therefore the army will be called Ural, and henceforth not be called Yaitsky, and the Yaitsky city will also be called Uralsk from now on; about what for information and performance
This is how it is published.”

The policy towards the Cossack troops has been adjusted, and the process of their transformation into army units is accelerating. By decree of February 22, 1784, the nobility of the local nobility was secured. Tatar and Bashkir princes and Murzas are equal in rights and liberties to the Russian nobility, including the right to own serfs, but only of the Muslim religion.

Pugachev's uprising caused enormous damage to the metallurgy of the Urals. 64 of the 129 factories that existed in the Urals fully joined the uprising. In May 1779, a manifesto was issued about general rules the use of assigned peasants in state-owned and private enterprises, which limited factory owners in the use of peasants assigned to factories, reduced the working day and increased wages.

There were no significant changes in the situation of the peasantry.

USSR postage stamp dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the Peasant War of 1773-1775, E. I. Pugachev

When the first major outburst of indignation occurred, and until the uprising of 1772, the Cossacks wrote petitions to Orenburg and St. Petersburg, sending so-called “winter villages” - delegates from the army with a complaint against the atamans and local authorities. Sometimes they achieved their goal, and especially unacceptable atamans changed, but on the whole the situation remained the same. In 1771, the Yaik Cossacks refused to go in pursuit of the Kalmyks who had migrated outside Russia. General Traubenberg and a detachment of soldiers went to investigate direct disobedience to the order. The result of the punishments he carried out was the Yaitsky Cossack uprising of 1772, during which General Traubenberg and the military ataman Tambov were killed. Troops under the command of General F. Yu. Freiman were sent to suppress the uprising. The rebels were defeated at the Embulatovka River in June 1772; As a result of the defeat, the Cossack circles were finally liquidated, a garrison of government troops was stationed in the Yaitsky town, and all power over the army passed into the hands of the commandant of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel I. D. Simonov. The reprisal carried out against the caught instigators was extremely cruel and made a depressing impression on the army: never before had Cossacks been branded or had their tongues cut out. A large number of participants in the performance took refuge in distant steppe farms, excitement reigned everywhere, the state of the Cossacks was like a compressed spring.

No less tension was present among the heterodox peoples of the Urals and Volga region. The development of the Urals and the active colonization of the lands of the Volga region, which began in the 18th century, the construction and development of military border lines, the expansion of the Orenburg, Yaitsky and Siberian Cossack troops with the allocation of lands that previously belonged to local nomadic peoples, intolerant religious policies led to numerous unrest among the Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Mordvins, Chuvash, Udmurts, Kalmyks (most of the latter, having broken through the Yaitsky border line, migrated to Western China in 1771).

The situation at the fast-growing factories of the Urals was also explosive. Starting with Peter, the government solved the problem of labor in metallurgy mainly by assigning state peasants to state-owned and private mining factories, allowing new factory owners to buy serf villages and granting the unofficial right to keep runaway serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories , tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and deportation of all fugitives. At the same time, it was very convenient to take advantage of the lack of rights and hopeless situation of the fugitives, and if anyone began to express dissatisfaction with their situation, they were immediately handed over to the authorities for punishment. Former peasants resisted forced labor in factories.

Peasants assigned to state-owned and private factories dreamed of returning to their usual village labor, while the situation of peasants on serf estates was little better. The economic situation in the country, almost continuously waging one war after another, was difficult; in addition, the gallant age required the nobles to follow the latest fashions and trends. Therefore, landowners increase the area under crops, and corvée increases. The peasants themselves become a hot commodity, they are pawned, exchanged, and entire villages simply lose out. To top it off, Catherine II issued a Decree of August 22, 1767, prohibiting peasants from complaining about landowners. In conditions of complete impunity and personal dependence, the slave position of the peasants is aggravated by the whims, caprices or real crimes occurring on the estates, and most of them were left without investigation or consequences.

In this situation, the most fantastic rumors easily found their way about imminent freedom or about the transfer of all the peasants to the treasury, about the ready decree of the tsar, whose wife and boyars were killed for this, that the tsar was not killed, but he is hiding until better times - all of them fell on the fertile soil of general human dissatisfaction with their current situation. There was simply no legal opportunity left for all groups of future participants in the performance to defend their interests.

The beginning of the uprising

Emelyan Pugachev. Portrait attached to the publication of “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion” by A. S. Pushkin, 1834

Despite the fact that the internal readiness of the Yaik Cossacks for the uprising was high, the speech lacked a unifying idea, a core that would unite the sheltered and hidden participants in the unrest of 1772. The rumor that the miraculously saved Emperor Peter Fedorovich (Emperor Peter III, who died during the coup after a six-month reign) appeared in the army, instantly spread throughout Yaik.

Few of the Cossack leaders believed in the resurrected tsar, but everyone looked closely to see if this man was able to lead, to gather under his banner an army capable of equaling the government. The man who called himself Peter III was Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev - a Don Cossack, a native of the Zimoveyskaya village (which had already given Russian history Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin), a participant in the Seven Years' War and the war with Turkey of 1768-1774.

Finding himself in the Trans-Volga steppes in the fall of 1772, he stopped in the Mechetnaya Sloboda and here from the abbot of the Old Believer skete Filaret learned about the unrest among the Yaik Cossacks. Where the idea of ​​calling himself a tsar came from in his head and what his initial plans were is not known for certain, but in November 1772 he arrived in the Yaitsky town and at meetings with the Cossacks called himself Peter III. Upon returning to Irgiz, Pugachev was arrested and sent to Kazan, from where he fled at the end of May 1773. In August, he reappeared in the army, at the inn of Stepan Obolyaev, where he was visited by his future closest associates - Shigaev, Zarubin, Karavaev, Myasnikov.

In September, hiding from search parties, Pugachev, accompanied by a group of Cossacks, arrived at the Budarinsky outpost, where on September 17 his first decree to the Yaitsk army was announced. The author of the decree was one of the few literate Cossacks, 19-year-old Ivan Pochitalin, sent by his father to serve the “tsar”. From here a detachment of 80 Cossacks headed up the Yaik. Along the way, new supporters joined, so that by the time they arrived at the Yaitsky town on September 18, the detachment already numbered 300 people. On September 18, 1773, an attempt to cross the Chagan and enter the city ended in failure, but at the same time a large group of Cossacks, among those sent by Commandant Simonov to defend the town, went over to the side of the impostor. A repeated rebel attack on September 19 was also repulsed with artillery. The rebel detachment did not have its own cannons, so it was decided to move further up the Yaik, and on September 20 the Cossacks set up camp near the Iletsky town.

Here a circle was convened, at which the troops elected Andrei Ovchinnikov as the marching ataman, all the Cossacks swore allegiance to the great sovereign Emperor Peter Fedorovich, after which Pugachev sent Ovchinnikov to the Iletsky town with decrees to the Cossacks: “ And whatever you wish, all benefits and salaries will not be denied to you; and your glory will never expire; and both you and your descendants will be the first under me, the great sovereign, to obey". Despite the opposition of the Iletsk ataman Portnov, Ovchinnikov convinced the local Cossacks to join the uprising, and they greeted Pugachev with ringing bells and bread and salt.

All Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Pugachev. The first execution took place: according to complaints from the residents - “he did great harm to them and ruined them” - Portnov was hanged. From the Iletsk Cossacks it was composed separate regiment Led by Ivan Tvorogov, the army received all the artillery of the town. The Yaik Cossack Fyodor Chumakov was appointed head of the artillery.

Map initial stage uprisings

After a two-day meeting on further actions, it was decided to send the main forces to Orenburg, the capital of a huge region under the control of the hated Reinsdorp. On the way to Orenburg there were small fortresses of the Nizhne-Yaitsky distance of the Orenburg military line. The garrison of the fortresses was, as a rule, mixed - Cossacks and soldiers, their life and service were perfectly described by Pushkin in The Captain's Daughter.

And already on October 5, Pugachev’s army approached the city, setting up a temporary camp five miles away. The Cossacks were sent to the ramparts and managed to convey Pugachev’s decree to the garrison troops with a call to lay down their arms and join the “sovereign.” In response, cannons from the city rampart began firing at the rebels. On October 6, Reinsdorp ordered a sortie; a detachment of 1,500 people under the command of Major Naumov returned to the fortress after a two-hour battle. At the military council assembled on October 7, it was decided to defend behind the walls of the fortress under the cover of fortress artillery. One of the reasons for this decision was the fear of soldiers and Cossacks going over to Pugachev’s side. The sortie carried out showed that the soldiers fought reluctantly, Major Naumov reported that he had discovered “there is timidity and fear in his subordinates”.

Together with Karanai Muratov, Kaskyn Samarov captured Sterlitamak and Tabynsk, from November 28, the Pugachevites under the command of Ataman Ivan Gubanov and Kaskyn Samarov besieged Ufa, from December 14, the siege was commanded by Ataman Chika-Zarubin. On December 23, Zarubin, at the head of a 10,000-strong detachment with 15 cannons, began an assault on the city, but was repulsed by cannon fire and energetic counterattacks of the garrison.

Ataman Ivan Gryaznov, who participated in the capture of Sterlitamak and Tabynsk, gathered a detachment of factory peasants and captured factories on the Belaya River (Voskresensky, Arkhangelsky, Bogoyavlensky factories). In early November, he proposed organizing the casting of cannons and cannonballs at nearby factories. Pugachev promoted him to colonel and sent him to organize detachments in the Iset province. There he took the Satkinsky, Zlatoust, Kyshtymsky and Kaslinsky factories, the Kundravinskaya, Uvelskaya and Varlamov settlements, the Chebarkul fortress, defeated the punitive teams sent against him, and by January he approached Chelyabinsk with a detachment of four thousand.

In December 1773, Pugachev sent ataman Mikhail Tolkachev with his decrees to the rulers of the Kazakh Junior Zhuz, Nurali Khan and Sultan Dusali, with a call to join his army, but the khan decided to wait for developments; only the riders of the Sarym Datula clan joined Pugachev. On the way back, Tolkachev gathered Cossacks into his detachment in the fortresses and outposts on the lower Yaik and headed with them to the Yaitsky town, collecting guns, ammunition and provisions in the associated fortresses and outposts. On December 30, Tolkachev approached the Yaitsky town, seven miles from which he defeated and captured the Cossack team of foreman N.A. Mostovshchikov sent against him; in the evening of the same day he occupied the ancient district of the city - Kureni. Most of the Cossacks greeted their comrades and joined Tolkachev’s detachment, the Cossacks of the senior side, the garrison soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Simonov and Captain Krylov locked themselves in the “retransference” - the fortress of the St. Michael the Archangel Cathedral, the cathedral itself was its main citadel. Gunpowder was stored in the basement of the bell tower, and cannons and arrows were installed on the upper tiers. It was not possible to take the fortress on the move.

In total, according to rough estimates by historians, by the end of 1773 there were from 25 to 40 thousand people in the ranks of Pugachev’s army, more than half of this number were Bashkir detachments. To control the troops, Pugachev created the Military Collegium, which served as an administrative and military center and conducted extensive correspondence with remote areas of the uprising. A. I. Vitoshnov, M. G. Shigaev, D. G. Skobychkin and I. A. Tvorogov were appointed judges of the Military Collegium, I. Ya. Pochitalin, the “Duma” clerk, and M. D. Gorshkov, the secretary.

The house of the "Tsar's father-in-law" Cossack Kuznetsov - now the Pugachev Museum in Uralsk

In January 1774, Ataman Ovchinnikov led a campaign to the lower reaches of the Yaik, to the Guryev town, stormed its Kremlin, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks, bringing them to the Yait town. At the same time, Pugachev himself arrived in Yaitsky town. He took over the leadership of the protracted siege of the city fortress of the Archangel Cathedral, but after a failed assault on January 20, he returned to the main army near Orenburg. At the end of January, Pugachev returned to the Yaitsky town, where a military circle was held, at which N.A. Kargin was chosen as military chieftain, A.P. Perfilyev and I.A. Fofanov were chosen as chief officers. At the same time, the Cossacks, wanting to finally unite the tsar with the army, married him to a young Cossack woman, Ustinya Kuznetsova. In the second half of February and early March 1774, Pugachev again personally led attempts to take possession of the besieged fortress. On February 19, a mine explosion blew up and destroyed the bell tower of St. Michael's Cathedral, but the garrison each time managed to repel the attacks of the besiegers.

Detachments of Pugachevites under the command of Ivan Beloborodov, which grew up to 3 thousand people during the campaign, 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.

The situation in besieged Orenburg by this time was already critical; famine had begun in the city. Having learned about the departure of Pugachev and Ovchinnikov with part of the troops to the Yaitsky town, Governor Reinsdorp decided to make a foray to Berdskaya Sloboda on January 13 to lift the siege. But the unexpected attack did not happen; the Cossack patrols managed to raise the alarm. The atamans M. Shigaev, D. Lysov, T. Podurov and Khlopusha who remained in the camp led their detachments to the ravine that surrounded the Berdskaya settlement and served as a natural line of defense. The Orenburg corps were forced to fight in unfavorable conditions and suffered a severe defeat. With heavy losses, abandoning cannons, weapons, ammunition and ammunition, the half-encircled Orenburg troops hastily retreated to Orenburg under the cover of the city walls, losing only 281 people killed, 13 cannons with all the shells for them, a lot of weapons, ammunition and ammunition.

On January 25, 1774, the Pugachevites launched the second and final assault on Ufa, Zarubin attacked the city from the southwest, from the left bank of the Belaya River, and Ataman Gubanov - from the east. At first, the detachments were successful and even broke into the outskirts of the city, but there their offensive impulse was stopped by grapeshot fire from the defenders. Having pulled all available forces to the breakthrough sites, the garrison drove first Zarubin and then Gubanov out of the city.

In early January, the Chelyabinsk Cossacks rebelled and tried to seize power in the city in the hope of help from the troops of Ataman Gryaznov, but were defeated by the city garrison. On January 10, Gryaznov unsuccessfully attempted to take Chelyaba by storm, and on January 13, General I. A. Dekolong’s two-thousand-strong corps, which arrived from Siberia, entered Chelyaba. Throughout January, fighting unfolded on the outskirts of the city, and on February 8, Delong decided it was best to leave the city to the Pugachevites.

On February 16, Khlopushi’s detachment took the Iletsk Defense by storm, killing all the officers, taking possession of weapons, ammunition and provisions, and taking with them those fit for duty. military service convicts, Cossacks and soldiers.

Military defeats and expansion of the Peasant War area

When news reached St. Petersburg about the defeat of the expedition of V. A. Kara and the unauthorized departure of Kara himself to Moscow, Catherine II, by decree of November 27, appointed A. I. Bibikov as the new commander. The new punitive corps included 10 cavalry and infantry regiments, as well as 4 light field teams, hastily sent from the western and northwestern borders of the empire to Kazan and Samara, and besides them - all garrisons and military units located in the uprising zone, and remnants of Kara's corps. Bibikov arrived in Kazan on December 25, 1773, and the movement of regiments and brigades immediately began under the command of P. M. Golitsyn and P. D. Mansurov to Samara, Orenburg, Ufa, Menzelinsk, and Kungur, besieged by Pugachev’s troops. Already on December 29, the 24th light field command, led by Major K.I. Mufel, reinforced by two squadrons of Bakhmut hussars and other units, recaptured Samara. Arapov, with several dozen Pugachevites who remained with him, retreated to Alekseevsk, but the brigade led by Mansurov defeated his troops in battles near Alekseevsk and at the Buzuluk fortress, after which in Sorochinskaya they united on March 10 with the corps of General Golitsyn, who approached there, advancing from Kazan, defeating the rebels near Menzelinsk and Kungur.

Having received information about the advance of the Mansurov and Golitsyn brigades, Pugachev decided to withdraw the main forces from Orenburg, effectively lifting the siege, and concentrate the main forces in the Tatishchev Fortress. Instead of the burnt walls, an ice rampart was built, and all available artillery was collected. Soon a government detachment consisting of 6,500 people and 25 cannons approached the fortress. The battle took place on March 22 and was extremely fierce. Prince Golitsyn in his report to A. Bibikov wrote: “The matter was so important that I did not expect such insolence and control in such unenlightened people in the military profession as these defeated rebels are.”. When the situation became hopeless, Pugachev decided to return to Berdy. His retreat was covered by the Cossack regiment of Ataman Ovchinnikov. With his regiment, he staunchly defended himself until the cannon charges ran out, and then, with three hundred Cossacks, he managed to break through the troops surrounding the fortress and retreated to the Nizhneozernaya fortress. This was the first major defeat of the rebels. Pugachev lost about 2 thousand people killed, 4 thousand wounded and prisoners, all the artillery and convoys. Among the dead was Ataman Ilya Arapov.

Map of the second stage of the Peasant War

At the same time, the St. Petersburg Carabineer Regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson, previously stationed in Poland and aimed at suppressing the uprising, arrived on March 2, 1774 in Kazan and, reinforced by cavalry units, was immediately sent to suppress the uprising in the Kama region. On March 24, 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. Having won victories in the territory of the Ufa and Iset provinces over the detachments of Salavat Yulaev and other Bashkir colonels, he failed to suppress the uprising of the Bashkirs as a whole, since the Bashkirs switched to guerrilla tactics.

Leaving Mansurov's brigade in the Tatishchevoy fortress, Golitsyn continued his march to Orenburg, where he entered on March 29, while Pugachev, having gathered his troops, tried to break through to the Yaitsky town, but having met government troops near the Perevolotsk fortress, he was forced to turn to the Sakmarsky town, where he decided to give battle to Golitsyn. In the battle on April 1, the rebels were again defeated, over 2,800 people were captured, including Maxim Shigaev, Andrei Vitoshnov, Timofey Podurov, Ivan Pochitalin and others. Pugachev himself, breaking away from the enemy pursuit, fled with several hundred Cossacks to the Prechistenskaya fortress, and from there he went beyond the bend of the Belaya River, to the mining region of the Southern Urals, where the rebels had reliable support.

At the beginning of April, the brigade of P. D. Mansurov, reinforced by the Izyum Hussar Regiment and the Cossack detachment of the Yaitsky foreman M. M. Borodin, headed from the Tatishchevoy fortress to the Yaitsky town. The Nizhneozernaya and Rassypnaya fortresses and the Iletsky town were taken from the Pugachevites; on April 12, the Cossack rebels were defeated at the Irtetsk outpost. In an effort to stop the advance of the punitive forces towards their native Yaitsky town, the Cossacks, led by A. A. Ovchinnikov, A. P. Perfilyev and K. I. Dekhtyarev, decided to move towards Mansurov. The meeting took place on April 15, 50 versts east of the Yaitsky town, near the Bykovka River. Having gotten involved in the battle, the Cossacks were unable to resist the regular troops; a retreat began, which gradually turned into a stampede. Pursued by the hussars, the Cossacks retreated to the Rubezhny outpost, losing hundreds of people killed, among whom was Dekhtyarev. Having gathered people, Ataman Ovchinnikov led a detachment through the remote steppes to the Southern Urals, to connect with Pugachev’s troops, who had gone beyond the Belaya River.

On the evening of April 15, when in the Yaitsky town they learned about the defeat at Bykovka, a group of Cossacks, wanting to curry favor with the punitive forces, tied up and handed over the atamans Kargin and Tolkachev to Simonov. Mansurov entered the Yaitsky town on April 16, finally liberating the city fortress, besieged by the Pugachevites since December 30, 1773. The Cossacks who fled to the steppe were unable to make their way to the main area of ​​the uprising; in May-July 1774, the teams of Mansurov’s brigade and the Cossacks of the senior side began a search and defeat in the Priyaitsk steppe, near the Uzenei and Irgiz rivers, the rebel detachments of F. I. Derbetev, S. L Rechkina, I. A. Fofanova.

At the beginning of April 1774, the corps of Second Major Gagrin, which approached from Yekaterinburg, defeated Tumanov’s detachment located in Chelyab. And on May 1, the team of Lieutenant Colonel D. Kandaurov, who arrived from Astrakhan, recaptured the town of Guryev from the rebels.

On April 9, 1774, the commander of military operations against Pugachev, A.I. Bibikov, died. After him, Catherine II entrusted the command of the troops to Lieutenant General F. F. Shcherbatov, as the senior in rank. Offended that he was not appointed to the post of commander of the troops, having sent small teams to nearby fortresses and villages to carry out investigations and punishments, General Golitsyn with the main forces of his corps stayed in Orenburg for three months. Intrigues between the generals gave Pugachev a much-needed respite; he managed to gather scattered small detachments in the Southern Urals. The pursuit was also suspended by the spring thaw and floods on the rivers, which made the roads impassable.

Ural mine. Painting by Demidov serf artist V. P. Khudoyarov

On the morning of May 5, Pugachev’s detachment of five thousand approached the Magnetic Fortress. By this time, Pugachev’s detachment consisted mainly of weakly armed factory peasants and a small number of personal egg guards under the command of Myasnikov; the detachment did not have a single cannon. The start of the assault on Magnitnaya was unsuccessful, about 500 people died in the battle, Pugachev himself was wounded in his right hand. Having withdrawn the troops from the fortress and discussed the situation, the rebels, under the cover of the darkness of the night, made a new attempt and were able to break into the fortress and capture it. 10 cannons, rifles, and ammunition were taken as trophies. On May 7, detachments of atamans A. Ovchinnikov, A. Perfilyev, I. Beloborodov and S. Maksimov arrived at Magnitnaya from different directions.

Heading up the Yaik, the rebels captured the fortresses of Karagai, Peter and Paul and Stepnaya and on May 20 approached the largest Trinity. By this time, the detachment numbered 10 thousand people. During the assault that began, the garrison tried to repel the attack with artillery fire, but overcoming desperate resistance, the rebels broke into Troitskaya. Pugachev received artillery with shells and reserves of gunpowder, supplies of provisions and fodder. On the morning of May 21, Delong's corps attacked the rebels resting after the battle. Taken by surprise, the Pugachevites suffered a heavy defeat, losing 4,000 people killed and the same number wounded and captured. Only one and a half thousand mounted Cossacks and Bashkirs were able to retreat along the road to Chelyabinsk.

Salavat Yulaev, who had recovered from his wound, managed to organize resistance to Mikhelson’s detachment in Bashkiria at that time, east of Ufa, covering Pugachev’s army from his stubborn pursuit. In the battles that took place on May 6, 8, 17, and 31, Salavat, although he was not successful in them, did not allow his troops to inflict significant losses. On June 3, he united with Pugachev, by which time the Bashkirs made up two-thirds of the total number of the rebel army. On June 3 and 5 on the Ai River they gave new battles to Mikhelson. Neither side received the desired success. Retreating north, Pugachev regrouped his forces while Mikhelson retreated to Ufa to drive away the Bashkir detachments operating near the city and replenish supplies of ammunition and provisions.

Taking advantage of the respite, Pugachev headed towards Kazan. On June 10, the Krasnoufimskaya fortress was taken, and on June 11, a victory was won in the battle near Kungur against the garrison that had made a sortie. Without attempting to storm Kungur, Pugachev turned west. On June 14, the vanguard of his army under the command of Ivan Beloborodov and Salavat Yulaev approached the Kama town of Ose and blocked the city fortress. Four days later, Pugachev’s main forces arrived here and began siege battles with the garrison settled in the fortress. On June 21, the defenders of the fortress, having exhausted the possibilities of further resistance, capitulated. During this period, the adventurer merchant Astafy Dolgopolov (“Ivan Ivanov”) came to Pugachev, posing as an envoy of Tsarevich Pavel and thus deciding to improve his financial situation. Pugachev unraveled his adventure, and Dolgopolov, by agreement with him, acted for some time as a “witness to the authenticity of Peter III.”

Having captured Osa, Pugachev transported the army across the Kama, took the Votkinsk and Izhevsk ironworks, Yelabuga, Sarapul, Menzelinsk, Agryz, Zainsk, Mamadysh and other cities and fortresses along the way, and in early July approached Kazan.

View of the Kazan Kremlin

A detachment under the command of Colonel Tolstoy came out to meet Pugachev, and on July 10, 12 versts from the city, the Pugachevites won a complete victory. The next day, a detachment of rebels camped near the city. “In the evening, in view of all the Kazan residents, he (Pugachev) himself went to look out for the city, and returned to the camp, postponing the attack until the next morning.”. On July 12, as a result of the assault, the suburbs and main areas of the city were taken, the garrison remaining in the city locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin and prepared for a siege. A strong fire began in the city, in addition, Pugachev received news of the approach of Mikhelson’s troops, who were following on his heels 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. Both sides were preparing for the decisive battle, which took place on July 15. Pugachev's army numbered 25 thousand people, but most of them were weakly armed peasants who had just joined the uprising, Tatar and Bashkir cavalry armed with bows, and a small number of remaining Cossacks. The competent actions of Mikhelson, who struck first of all at the Yaik core of the Pugachevites, led to the complete defeat of the rebels, at least 2 thousand people died, about 5 thousand were taken prisoner, among whom was Colonel Ivan Beloborodov.

Announced publicly

We congratulate you with this named decree with our royal and fatherly
the mercy of all who were formerly in the peasantry and
subject to the landowners, to be loyal slaves
our own crown; and rewarded with an 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,
hayfields and fishing grounds, and salt lakes
without purchase and without rent; and free everyone from what was previously done
from the villains of the nobles and the bribery-takers of the city-judges to the peasants and everything
taxes and burdens imposed on the people. And we wish you the salvation of souls
and calm in the light of life for which we have tasted and endured
from the registered villains-nobles, wandering and considerable disaster.

And what is our name now by the power of the Most High Right Hand in Russia?
flourishes, for this reason we command with this personal decree:
which formerly were nobles in their estates and vodchinas, - of which
opponents of our power and troublemakers of the empire and despoilers
peasants, to catch, execute and hang, and to do the same,
what they did to you, peasants, without Christianity in them.
After the destruction of which opponents and villainous nobles, anyone can
to feel the silence and calm life that will continue until the century.

Given July 31st day 1774.

By the grace of God, we, Peter the Third,

Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia and so on,

And on and on and on.

Even before the start of the battle on July 15, Pugachev announced in the camp that he would head from Kazan to Moscow. Rumors of this instantly spread throughout all the nearby villages, estates and towns. Despite the major defeat of Pugachev's army, the flames of the uprising engulfed the entire western bank of the Volga. Having crossed the Volga at Kokshaysk, below the village of Sundyr, Pugachev replenished his army with thousands of peasants. By this time, Salavat Yulaev and his troops continued fighting near Ufa; the Bashkir troops in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. On July 20, Pugachev entered Kurmysh, on the 23rd he freely entered Alatyr, after which he headed towards Saransk. On July 28, in the central square of Saransk, a decree on freedom for peasants was read out, supplies of salt and bread, and the city treasury were distributed to residents “driving around the city fortress and along the streets... they abandoned the mob that had come from different districts”. On July 31, the same solemn meeting awaited Pugachev in Penza. The decrees caused numerous peasant revolts in the Volga region; in total, scattered detachments operating within their estates numbered tens of thousands of fighters. The movement covered most of the Volga districts, approached the borders of the Moscow province, and really threatened Moscow.

The publication of decrees (in fact, manifestos on the liberation of peasants) in Saransk and Penza is called the culmination of the Peasant War. The decrees made a strong impression on the peasants, on the Old Believers hiding from persecution, on the opposite side- nobles and Catherine II herself. 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. They could not give anything to Pugachev’s army in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments operated no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev’s campaign across the Volga region into a triumphal procession, with bells ringing, the blessing of the village priest and bread and salt in every new village, village, town. When Pugachev’s army or its individual detachments approached, the peasants tied up or killed their landowners and their clerks, hanged local officials, burned estates, and smashed shops. In total, in the summer of 1774, at least 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed.

In the second half of July 1774, when the flames of the Pugachev uprising approached the borders of the Moscow province and threatened Moscow itself, the alarmed empress was forced to agree to the proposal of Chancellor N.I. Panin to appoint his brother, the disgraced general-in-chief Pyotr Ivanovich Panin, commander of a military expedition against rebels. General F. F. Shcherbatov was expelled from this post on July 22, and by decree of July 29, Catherine II gave Panin emergency powers “in suppressing rebellion and restoring internal order in the provinces of Orenburg, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod”. It is noteworthy that under the command of P.I. Panin, who received the Order of St. for the capture of Bendery in 1770. George I class, Don cornet Emelyan Pugachev also distinguished himself in that battle.

To speed up the conclusion of peace, the terms of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace Treaty were softened, and the troops released on the Turkish borders - a total of 20 cavalry and infantry regiments - were recalled from the armies to act against Pugachev. As Ekaterina noted, against Pugachev “So many troops were equipped that such an army was almost terrible for its neighbors”. It is noteworthy that in August 1774, Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, at that time already one of the most successful Russian generals, was recalled from the 1st Army, which was located in the Danube principalities. Panin entrusted Suvorov with command of the troops that were supposed to defeat the main Pugachev army in the Volga region.

Suppression of the uprising

After Pugachev’s triumphant entry into Saransk and Penza, everyone expected his march to Moscow. Seven regiments under the personal command of P.I. Panin were gathered in Moscow, where memories of the Plague Riot of 1771 were still fresh. Moscow Governor-General Prince M.N. Volkonsky ordered artillery to be placed near his house. The police strengthened surveillance and sent informants to crowded places in order to capture all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who was promoted to colonel in July and was pursuing the rebels from Kazan, turned towards Arzamas to block the road to the old capital. General Mansurov set out from the Yaitsky town to Syzran, General Golitsyn - to Saransk. The punitive teams of Mufel and Mellin reported that Pugachev was leaving rebellious villages behind him everywhere and they did not have time to pacify them all. “Not only peasants, but priests, monks, even archimandrites outrage sensitive and insensitive people”. Excerpts from the report of the captain of the Novokhopyorsky battalion Butrimovich are indicative:

“...I went to the village of Andreevskaya, where the peasants were keeping the landowner Dubensky under arrest in order to extradite him to Pugachev. I wanted to free him, but the village rebelled and the team was dispersed. From there I went to the villages of Mr. Vysheslavtsev and Prince Maksyutin, but I also found them under arrest among the peasants, and I freed them and took them to Verkhny Lomov; from the village of Prince I saw Maksyutin as a mountain. Kerensk was burning and, returning to Verkhny Lomov, he learned that all the inhabitants there, except the clerks, had rebelled when they learned about the burning of Kerensk. Starters: one-palace Yak. Gubanov, Matv. Bochkov, and the Streltsy settlement of the tenth Bezborod. I wanted to grab them and bring them to Voronezh, but the residents not only did not allow me to do so, but also almost put me under their guard, but I left them and 2 miles from the city I heard the cry of the rioters. I don’t know how it all ended, but I heard that Kerensk, with the help of captured Turks, fought off the villain. During my travels, I noticed everywhere among the people a spirit of rebellion and a tendency towards the Pretender. Especially in Tanbovsky district, the departments of Prince. Vyazemsky, in economic peasants, who, for Pugachev’s arrival, repaired bridges everywhere and repaired roads. Moreover, the village headman of Lipnego and his guards, considering me an accomplice of the villain, came to me and fell to their knees.”

Map final stage uprisings

But from Penza Pugachev turned south. Most historians point to the reason for this as Pugachev’s plans to attract the Volga and, especially, Don Cossacks into his ranks. It is possible that another reason was the desire of the Yaik Cossacks, tired of fighting and having already lost their main atamans, to hide again in the remote steppes of the lower Volga and Yaik, where they had already taken refuge once after the uprising of 1772. An indirect confirmation of such fatigue is that it was during these days that the conspiracy of Cossack colonels began to surrender Pugachev to the government in exchange for receiving a pardon.

On August 4, the impostor's army took Petrovsk, and on August 6, it surrounded Saratov. The governor with part of the people along the Volga managed to get to Tsaritsyn and after the battle on August 7, Saratov was taken. Saratov priests in all churches served prayers for the health of Emperor Peter III. Here Pugachev sent a decree to the Kalmyk ruler Tsenden-Darzhe with a call to join his army. But by this time, punitive detachments under the overall command of Mikhelson were already literally on the heels of the Pugachevites, and on August 11 the city came under the control of government troops.

After Saratov, we went down the Volga to Kamyshin, which, like many cities before it, greeted Pugachev with the ringing of bells and bread and salt. Near Kamyshin in the German colonies, Pugachev’s troops encountered the Astrakhan astronomical expedition of the Academy of Sciences, many members of which, along with the leader, Academician Georg Lowitz, were hanged along with local officials who failed to escape. Lowitz's son, Tobias, later also an academician, managed to survive. Having joined a 3,000-strong detachment of Kalmyks, the rebels entered the villages of the Volga army Antipovskaya and Karavainskaya, where they received widespread support and from where messengers were sent to the Don with decrees on the Don people joining the uprising. A detachment of government troops that arrived from Tsaritsyn was defeated on the Proleika River near the village of Balyklevskaya. Further along the road was Dubovka, the capital of the Volga Cossack army. Since the Volga Cossacks, led by the ataman, remained loyal to the government, the garrisons of the Volga cities strengthened the defense of Tsaritsyn, where a thousand-strong detachment of Don Cossacks arrived under the command of the marching ataman Perfilov.

“A true portrayal of the rebel and deceiver Emelka Pugachev.” Engraving. Second half of the 1770s

On August 21, Pugachev tried to attack Tsaritsyn, but the assault failed. Having received news of Mikhelson's arriving corps, Pugachev hastened to lift the siege of Tsaritsyn, and the rebels moved to Black Yar. Panic began in Astrakhan. On August 24, at the Solenikovo fishing gang, Pugachev was overtaken by Mikhelson. Realizing that a battle could not be avoided, the Pugachevites formed battle formations. On August 25, the last major battle between the troops under the command of Pugachev and the tsarist troops took place. The battle began with a major setback - all 24 cannons of the rebel army were repulsed by a cavalry attack. More than 2,000 rebels died in a fierce battle, among them Ataman Ovchinnikov. More than 6,000 people were captured. Pugachev and the Cossacks, breaking up into small detachments, fled across the Volga. Search detachments of generals Mansurov and Golitsyn, Yaik foreman Borodin and Don Colonel Tavinsky were sent in pursuit of them. Not having time for the battle, Lieutenant General Suvorov also wanted to participate in the capture. During August-September, most of the participants in the uprising were caught and sent for investigation to the Yaitsky town, Simbirsk, and Orenburg.

Pugachev with a detachment of Cossacks fled to Uzeni, not knowing that since mid-August Chumakov, Tvorogov, Fedulev and some other colonels had been discussing the possibility of earning forgiveness by surrendering the impostor. Under the pretext of making it easier to escape the pursuit, they divided the detachment so as to separate the Cossacks loyal to Pugachev along with Ataman Perfilyev. On September 8, near the Bolshoi Uzen River, they pounced and tied up Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Tvorogov went to Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they notified their accomplices, and on September 15 they brought Pugachev to the Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of them was conducted personally by Suvorov, who also volunteered to escort the impostor to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was taking place. To transport Pugachev, a tight cage was made, installed on a two-wheeled cart, in which, chained hand and foot, he could not even turn around. In Simbirsk, he was interrogated for five days by P. S. Potemkin, head of the secret investigative commissions, and Count P. I. Panin, commander of the government's punitive forces.

Perfilyev and his detachment were captured on September 12 after a battle with punitive forces near the Derkul River.

Pugachev under escort. Engraving from the 1770s

At this time, in addition to scattered centers of uprising, military operations in Bashkiria were of an organized nature. Salavat Yulaev, together with his father Yulay Aznalin, led the insurgent movement on the Siberian Road, Karanay Muratov, Kachkyn Samarov, Selyausin Kinzin - on Nogai, Bazargul Yunaev, Yulaman Kushaev and Mukhamet Safarov - in the Bashkir Trans-Urals. They pinned down a significant contingent of government troops. At the beginning of August, a new assault on Ufa was even launched, but as a result of poor organization of interaction between various detachments, it was unsuccessful. Kazakh detachments harassed with raids along the entire border line. Governor Reinsdorp reported: “The Bashkirs and Kyrgyzs are not pacified, the latter constantly cross the Yaik, and grab people from near Orenburg. The troops here are either pursuing Pugachev or blocking his path, and I can’t go against the Kyrgyz people, I admonish the Khan and the Saltans. They replied that they could not hold back the Kyrgyz people, of whom the entire horde was rebelling.”. With the capture of Pugachev and the dispatch of liberated government troops to Bashkiria, the transition of Bashkir elders to the side of the government began, many of them joined the punitive detachments. After the capture of Kanzafar Usaev and Salavat Yulaev, the uprising in Bashkiria began to decline. Salavat Yulaev gave his last battle on November 20 under the Katav-Ivanovsky plant besieged by him and after the defeat he was captured on November 25. But individual rebel groups in Bashkiria continued to resist until the summer of 1775.

Until the summer of 1775, unrest continued in the Voronezh province, in the Tambov district and along the Khopru and Vorone rivers. Although the operating detachments were small and there was no coordination of joint actions, according to eyewitness Major Sverchkov, “many landowners, leaving their homes and savings, move to remote places, and those who remain in their houses save their lives from threatened death by spending the night in the forests”. The frightened landowners declared that “If the Voronezh provincial chancellery does not speed up the extermination of those villainous gangs, then the same bloodshed will inevitably follow as happened in the last rebellion.”

To stem the wave of riots, punitive detachments began mass executions. In every village, in every town that received Pugachev, on the gallows and “verbs”, from which they barely had time to remove the officers, landowners, and judges hanged by the impostor, they began to hang the leaders of the riots and the city heads and atamans of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites. To enhance the terrifying effect, the gallows were installed on rafts and floated along the main rivers of the uprising. In May, Khlopushi was executed in Orenburg: his head was placed on a pole in the city center. During the investigation, the entire medieval set of proven means was used. In terms of cruelty and number of victims, Pugachev and the government were not inferior to each other.

In November, all the main participants in the uprising were transported to Moscow for a general investigation. They were placed in the building of the Mint at the Iversky Gate of China Town. The interrogations were led by Prince M.N. Volkonsky and Chief Secretary S.I. Sheshkovsky. During interrogation, E. I. Pugachev gave detailed testimony about his relatives, about his youth, about his participation in the Don Cossack Army in the Seven Years and Turkish Wars, about his wanderings around Russia and Poland, about his plans and intentions, about the course of the uprising. Investigators tried to find out whether the initiators of the uprising were agents of foreign states, or schismatics, or anyone from the nobility. Catherine II showed great interest in the progress of the investigation. In the materials of the Moscow investigation, several notes from Catherine II to M.N. Volkonsky were preserved with wishes about the plan in which the investigation should be conducted, which issues require the most complete and detailed investigation, which witnesses should be additionally interviewed. On December 5, M.N. Volkonsky and P.S. Potemkin signed a determination to terminate the investigation, since Pugachev and other defendants could not add anything new to their testimony during interrogations and could not in any way alleviate or aggravate their guilt. In their report to Catherine they were forced to admit that they “...with this investigation being carried out, we tried to find the beginning of the evil undertaken by this monster and his accomplices or... to that evil enterprise by the mentors. But despite all this, nothing else was revealed, such as that in all his villainy, the first beginning took its beginning in the Yaitsky army..

Execution of Pugachev on Bolotnaya Square. (Drawing by an eyewitness to the execution of A. T. Bolotov)

On December 30, the judges in the case of E.I. Pugachev gathered in the Throne Hall of the Kremlin Palace. They heard Catherine II's manifesto on the appointment of a trial, and then the indictment in the case of Pugachev and his associates was announced. Prince A. A. Vyazemsky offered to bring Pugachev to the next court hearing. Early in the morning of December 31, he was transported under heavy escort from the casemates of the Mint to the chambers of the Kremlin Palace. At the beginning of the meeting, the judges approved the questions that Pugachev had to answer, after which he was brought into the meeting room and forced to kneel. After a formal questioning, he was taken out of the courtroom, the court made a decision: “Emelka Pugachev will be quartered, his head will be stuck on a stake, body parts will be carried to four parts of the city and placed on wheels, and then burned in those places.” The remaining defendants were divided according to the degree of their guilt into several groups for each appropriate type of execution or punishment. On Saturday, January 10, an execution was carried out on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow in front of a huge crowd of people. Pugachev behaved with dignity, ascended to the place of execution, crossed himself at the Kremlin cathedrals, bowed to four sides with the words “Forgive me, Orthodox people.” The executioner first cut off the heads of E. I. Pugachev and A. P. Perfilyev, who were sentenced to quartering; such was the wish of the empress. On the same day, M. G. Shigaev, T. I. Podurov and V. I. Tornov were hanged. I. N. Zarubin-Chika was sent for execution to Ufa, where he was quartered in early February 1775.

Sheet metal shop. Painting by Demidov serf artist P. F. Khudoyarov

Pugachev's uprising caused enormous damage to the metallurgy of the Urals. 64 of the 129 factories that existed in the Urals fully joined the uprising; the number of peasants assigned to them was 40 thousand people. The total amount of losses from the destruction and downtime of factories is estimated at 5,536,193 rubles. And although the factories were quickly restored, the uprising forced concessions to be made towards factory workers. The chief investigator in the Urals, Captain S.I. Mavrin, reported that the assigned peasants, whom he considered the leading force of the uprising, supplied the impostor with weapons and joined his troops, because the factory owners oppressed their assigned peasants, forcing the peasants to travel long distances to the factories and did not allow them engaged in arable farming and sold them food at inflated prices. Mavrin believed that drastic measures must be taken to prevent similar unrest in the future. Catherine wrote to G.A. Potemkin that Mavrin “what he says about the factory peasants is all very thorough, and I think that there is nothing else to do with them but to buy factories and, when they are state-owned, then provide the peasants with benefits.”. On May 19, 1779, a manifesto was published on the general rules for the use of assigned peasants in state-owned and private enterprises, which somewhat limited factory owners in the use of peasants assigned to factories, limited the working day and increased wages.

There were no significant changes in the situation of the peasantry.

Research and collections of archival documents

• Pushkin A. S. “The History of Pugachev” (censored title - “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion”)
• Grot Y. K. Materials for the history of the Pugachev rebellion (Papers of Kara and Bibikov). St. Petersburg, 1862
• Dubrovin N.F. Pugachev and his accomplices. An episode from the reign of Empress Catherine II. 1773-1774 Based on unpublished sources. T. 1-3. St. Petersburg, type. N. I. Skorokhodova, 1884
• Pugachevism. Collection of documents.

Volume 1. From the Pugachev archive. Documents, decrees, correspondence. M.-L., Gosizdat, 1926. Volume 2. From investigative materials and official correspondence. M.-L., Gosizdat, 1929 Volume 3. From the Pugachev archive. M.-L., Sotsekgiz, 1931

• Peasant War 1773-1775 in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. M., 1973
• Peasant War 1773-1775 on the territory of Bashkiria. Collection of documents. Ufa, 1975
• Peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev in Chuvashia. Collection of documents. Cheboksary, 1972
• Peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev in Udmurtia. Collection of documents and materials. Izhevsk, 1974
• Gorban N.V. Peasantry Western Siberia in the peasant war of 1773-75. // Questions of history. 1952. No. 11.
• Muratov Kh. I. Peasant War 1773-1775. in Russia. M., Voenizdat, 1954

Art

Pugachev's uprising in fiction

• A. S. Pushkin “The Captain's Daughter”
• S. A. Yesenin “Pugachev” (poem)
• S. P. Zlobin “Salavat Yulaev”
• E. Fedorov “Stone Belt” (novel). Book 2 “Heirs”
• V. Ya. Shishkov “Emelyan Pugachev (novel)”
• V. I. Buganov “Pugachev” (biography in the series “Life of Remarkable People”)
• V. I. Mashkovtsev “Golden Flower - Overcome” (historical novel). - Chelyabinsk, South Ural Book Publishing House, , .

Cinema

• Pugachev () - feature film. Director Pavel Petrov-Bytov
• Emelyan Pugachev () - historical duology: “Slaves of Freedom” and “Will Washed in Blood” directed by Alexei Saltykov
• The Captain's Daughter () - a feature film based on the story of the same name by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
• Russian Revolt () - a historical film based on the works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin " Captain's daughter" and "The History of Pugachev"
• Salavat Yulaev () - feature film. Director Yakov Protazanov

Links

• Bolshakov L. N. Orenburg Pushkin Encyclopedia
• Vaganov M. Report of Major Mirzabek Vaganov on his mission to Nurali Khan. March-June 1774 / Report. V. Snezhnevsky // Russian antiquity, 1890. - T. 66. - No. 4. - P. 108-119. - Under the title: On the history of the Pugachev rebellion. In the steppe among the Kirghiz-Kaisaks March - 1774 - June.
• Military campaign journal of the commander of the punitive corps, Lieutenant Colonel I. Mikhelson, about military operations against the rebels in March - August 1774.// Peasant War 1773-1775. in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. - M.: Nauka, 1973. - P. 194-223.
• Gvozdikova I. Salavat Yulaev: historical portrait (“Belskie Prostori”, 2004)
• Diary of a member of the noble militia of the Kazan province “About Pugachev. His villainous actions"// Peasant War 1773-1775. in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. - M.: Nauka, 1973. - P. 58-65.
• Dobrotvorsky I. A. Pugachev on the Kama // Historical Bulletin, 1884. - T. 18. - No. 9. - P. 719-753.
• Catherine II. Letters from Empress Catherine II to A.I. Bibikov during the Pugachev rebellion (1774) / Communication. V. I. Lamansky // Russian Archive, 1866. - Issue. 3. - Stb. 388-398.
• Peasant war led by Pugachev on the website History of the Orenburg region
• Peasant War led by Pugachev (TSB)
• Kulaginsky P. N. Pugachevites and Pugachev in Tresvyatsky-Elabuga in 1773-1775. / Message P. M. Makarov // Russian antiquity, 1882. - T. 33. - No. 2. - P. 291-312.
• Lopatina. Letter from Arzamas dated September 19, 1774 / Communication. A. I. Yazykov // Russian antiquity, 1874. - T. 10. - No. 7. - P. 617-618. - Under the title: Pugachevism.
• Mertvago D. B. Notes of Dmitry Borisovich Mertvago. 1790-1824. - M.: type. Gracheva and K, 1867. - XIV, 340 stb. - Adj. to the “Russian Archive” for 1867 (Issue 8-9).
• Definition of the Kazan nobility on the assembly of a cavalry corps of troops from their people against Pugachev// Readings at the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, 1864. - Book. 3/4. Dept. 5. - pp. 105-107.
• Oreus I.I. Ivan Ivanovich Mikhelson, winner of Pugachev. 1740-1807 // Russian antiquity, 1876. - T. 15. - No. 1. - P. 192-209.
• Pugachev sheets in Moscow. 1774 Materials// Russian antiquity, 1875. - T. 13. - No. 6. - P. 272-276. , No. 7. - P. 440-442.
• Pugachevshchina. New materials for the history of the Pugachev region// Russian antiquity, 1875. - T. 12. - No. 2. - P. 390-394; No. 3. - pp. 540-544.

• Collection of documents on the history of the Pugachev uprising on the website Vostlit.info
• Cards: Map of the lands of the Yaitsky army, the Orenburg region and the Southern Urals, Map of the Saratov province (maps of the early 20th century)

In September 1773, on the distant southeastern outskirts of Russia, on the banks of the river. Yaik, an uprising broke out among the Yaik Cossacks under the leadership of E. Pugachev. In the process of its development, it acquired the character of a genuine peasant war against the feudal-serf system of Russia in the 18th century. Therefore, in the history of our homeland, this spontaneous uprising of the peasantry is called the peasant war under the leadership of E. Pugachev.

The Peasant War of 1773–1775 was a natural consequence of the socio-economic conditions of feudal-serf Russia of the 18th century, an expression of the acute class struggle of the multinational peasantry of Russia against their oppressors and exploiters - the nobles and landowners, against the noble-landlord state.

The peasant uprising was spontaneous and unorganized. The downtrodden, dark, completely illiterate peasantry could not create their own organization and develop their own program. The demands of the rebellious peasants and all exploited people did not go further than the desire to have a “good king” who would free the peasantry from the oppression of the noble landowners, who would grant land and freedom. Such a king in the eyes of the rebel peasants was the leader of the uprising, the Don Cossack Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, who took the name of Emperor Peter III.

Being the leader of the uprising, E. Pugachev did not have, however, a clear program of action. His aspirations were also associated only with the accession of a “good tsar” to the Russian throne.

The spark of uprising that broke out in September 1773 on the banks of the Yaik a month later blazed with a bright flame and engulfed a huge area within a year: from the Caspian Sea in the south to the modern cities of Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kungur, Molotov in the north, from the Tobol, Ural and Kazakh steppes in the east. to the right bank of the Volga in the west.

The uprising continued more than a year- from September 1773 to the beginning of 1775. The tsarist government, led by Catherine II, mobilized large military forces to suppress the uprising. The uprising was brutally suppressed. The leader of the uprising, E. Pugachev, was betrayed by traitors to the tsarist authorities in September 1774, and was executed in Moscow on January 10, 1775.

Prerequisites for the uprising

Despite the struggle that the Bashkirs waged for decades, resettlement to Bashkiria increased, the seizure of land continued, and the number of estates owned by landowners grew; At the same time, the area of ​​land that remained in the use of the Bashkirs decreased.

The riches of the Urals attracted new entrepreneurs who seized huge tracts of land and built factories on them. Almost all major dignitaries, ministers, and senators participated with their capital in the construction of metallurgical plants in the Urals, and this resulted in the government’s attitude towards the complaints and protests of the Bashkirs.

The Bashkirs unite in groups of several people, attack newly built factories and landowners' estates, trying to take revenge on their oppressors. A situation was increasingly created in which the various peoples inhabiting the region had to protest against colonization, reaching the point of open struggle.

The uprisings of the Bashkirs, the departure of the Kalmyks from Russia to China, the wariness, the hostile attitude of the Kazakh people towards Russia - all this suggests that the tsarist policy was clear to these peoples, that it was hostile to them.

Due to the fact that the population was still sparse, the demand for labor increased. The factory owners sought government instructions in 1784, according to which factory owners were given the right to assign and use from 100 to 150 households of state peasants in factories. Peasants assigned to factories were not paid for their work at the factories. Since the population of the region was very sparse, peasants from villages located at a great distance were assigned to the plant. This type of corvee became even more difficult, since the peasants were cut off from their villages for almost a whole year and did not have the opportunity to work on their farms.

The breeders tried with all their might and means to completely liquidate the farming of the peasants, tear them away from the land and take them completely into their own hands.

There is no way to convey all the techniques and methods that the factory owners used in their desire to ruin the peasants and deprive them of their economic base. They sent special detachments that burst into villages in the midst of field work, during spring sowing, harvesting, etc., grabbed peasants, flogged them, tore them from work and took them to the factory under escort. Stripes remained unplowed and crops remained unharvested. The peasants complained to the local authorities, went all the way to the capital, but at best they were not accepted, and sometimes even, without examining the matter, they were called rebels and put in prison.

Clerks at the factories closely monitored to ensure that there were no “parasites”, i.e. so that not only men, but also women and children work. As a result of this exploitation, overcrowding, poor nutrition and exhaustion of strength, infectious diseases developed and mortality increased.

Peasants repeatedly rebelled against being assigned to factories, but these uprisings were purely local in nature, arose spontaneously and were brutally suppressed by military detachments.

Not only peasants worked at the factories; the majority of fugitive people were concentrated here. Among them were serfs, various criminals, Old Believers, etc. Until there was a decree on fighting the fugitives and returning them to their place of residence, they lived relatively freely, but after the decree, detachments of soldiers began to pursue them. Wherever the fugitive appeared, everywhere he was asked for his appearance, and since there was no appearance, the fugitive was immediately taken away and sent to his homeland to deal with him there.

Knowing that the fugitives had no rights, the factory workers hired them without any restrictions, and soon the factories turned into a place where the fugitives were concentrated. The Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories, tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and deportation of all fugitives, and the troops of the Orenburg governor did not have the right to conduct raids at the factories.

Taking advantage of the lack of rights and hopeless situation of the fugitives, the breeders put them in the position of slaves, and the slightest dissatisfaction or protest from the fugitives caused repression: the fugitives were immediately captured, handed over to soldiers, mercilessly flogged and then sent to hard labor.

Working conditions in the mining factories were terrible: the mines had no ventilation, and workers suffocated from the heat and lack of air; the pumps were poorly equipped, and people worked for hours, standing waist-deep in water. Although the factory owners were given some instructions to improve working conditions, no one followed them, since officials were accustomed to bribes, and it was more profitable for the manufacturer to give a bribe than to spend money on technical innovations.

The situation of the serfs was no better. In 1762, Catherine II, the wife of Peter III, who assisted in the murder of her husband, ascended the throne. As a protege of the nobles, Catherine II marked her reign with the final enslavement of the peasants, giving the nobles the right to dispose of the peasants at their discretion. In 1767, she issued a decree prohibiting peasants from complaining about their landowners; those found guilty of violating this decree were subject to exile to hard labor.

With the growth of foreign trade, imported goods appear on the markets: beautiful fine fabrics, high-quality wines, jewelry, various luxury items and trinkets; they could only be purchased with money. But in order to have money, landowners had to sell something. They could only throw agricultural products onto the market, so the landowners increase the area under crops, which puts a new burden on the peasants. Under Catherine, corvée increased to 4 days, and in some areas, in particular in the Orenburg region, it reached 6 days a week. Peasants had only nights and Sundays and other holidays to work on their farms. One of the types of landowner farming was plantation farming, when serfs worked all the time for the master and received bread for food. The peasants were in the position of slaves, they were the property of their masters and were dependent on them.

The decree of Catherine II prohibiting peasants from complaining about landowners gave impetus to the rampant passions of the unbridled Russian master. If Saltychikha, who lived in the center of Russia, personally tortured up to a hundred people, then what did the landowners who lived on the outskirts do? Peasants were sold wholesale and retail, landowners dishonored girls and women, raped minors, and abused pregnant women. On the wedding day, they kidnapped the brides and, having disgraced them, returned them to the grooms. The peasants were lost at cards, exchanged for dogs, and for the slightest offense they were brutally beaten with lashes, knouts, and rods.

The peasants, despite the decree, tried to complain to the Orenburg governors. The Orenburg regional archive contains several dozen “cases” of rape of minors, abuse of pregnant women, peasants flogged, etc., but most of them were left without consequences.

Not only the various peoples inhabiting the region, the mining workers and peasants were dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs, but also deep discontent was brewing among the Cossacks, as their former privileges and benefits were gradually being abolished.

One of the main sources of income for the Cossacks was fishing. The Cossacks used fish not only for their food, but also exported it to the market. Salt was of great importance in fisheries, and the decree of 1754 on the salt monopoly dealt a huge blow to the Cossack economy. Before the decree, the Cossacks used salt for free, extracting it in unlimited quantities from salt lakes. The Cossacks were dissatisfied with the monopoly and considered charging money for salt a direct encroachment on their rights and property. Class stratification grew among the Cossacks. The senior elite, led by the atamans, takes power into their own hands and uses their position for personal enrichment. The atamans take over the salt mines and make the entire Cossacks dependent. For salt, in addition to monetary payment, the atamans charge the tenth fish from each catch for their benefit. But this is not enough. The Yaik Cossacks received a small salary from the treasury for their service; the atamans began to withhold it, supposedly as payment for the right to fish on Yaik. Subsequently, this salary was not enough, and the atamans introduced an additional tax. All this caused discontent, which in 1763 resulted in an uprising of ordinary Cossacks against the senior elite.

The investigative commissions sent to the Yaitsky town, although they removed the atamans, but, being supporters of the kulak ruling part, nominated new atamans from among them, so the situation did not improve.

But in 1766 a decree was issued that caused discontent among the rich. Before the decree, the Yaik Cossacks had the right to hire others to serve in their place. The rich had the means to hire for service, and this decree, which prohibited hiring, was a hostile meeting for them, since they again had to serve in the army. Some of the Cossacks were also dissatisfied with the decree; due to their financial insecurity, they were forced to replace the sons of rich Cossacks in military service for money.

At the same time, orders for service are growing; hundreds of Cossacks are taken away from their homes and sent to various places. As men are separated from home, farms begin to wither and fall into disrepair. Indignant at the ever-increasing hardships, the Yaik Cossacks, secretly from their superiors, sent their walkers to the queen with a petition, but the walkers were received as rebels and were subjected to corporal punishment with whips. This incident made it clear to the Cossacks that there was nothing to hope for help from above, but that they needed to seek the truth themselves.

In 1771, a new uprising broke out among the Yaik Cossacks, and troops were sent to suppress it. The immediate causes of the uprising were the following events. In 1771, the Kalmyks left the Volga region for the borders of China. Wanting to detain them, the Orenburg governor demanded that the Yaik Cossacks go in pursuit. In response, the Cossacks stated that they would not comply with the governor’s demands until the taken away privileges and liberties were restored. The Cossacks demanded the return of the right to choose atamans and other military commanders, demanded payment of delayed salaries, etc. A detachment of soldiers under the leadership of Traunbenberg was sent to the Yaitsky town from Orenburg to clarify the situation.

Being a power-hungry man, Traunbenberg, without delving into the essence of the matter, decided to act with weapons. Batteries struck the Yaitsky town. In response to this, the Cossacks rushed to arms, attacked the sent detachment, defeated it, cutting General Traunbenberg himself into pieces. Ataman Tambovtsev, who tried to prevent the uprising, was hanged.

The defeat of Traunbenberg’s detachment caused alarm among the provincial authorities, and they did not hesitate to send fresh military units under the command of General Freiman to the Yaitsky town to suppress the “rebellion.” In a battle with superior enemy forces, the Cossacks were defeated. The government decided to deal with the Cossacks in such a way that the Cossacks would be remembered for a long time. To deal with the rebels, specialist executioners were called from different cities, who carried out torture and executions. In its cruelty, this reprisal resembles the execution of Urusov. Cossacks were hanged, impaled, and branded on their bodies; many were sent to eternal hard labor. However, these executions excited the Cossacks even more, and they were ready to light the fire of a new struggle.

The situation of the Orenburg Cossacks was no better. They never had the liberties and privileges for which the Yaik Cossacks fought. The Orenburg Cossack army, organized by virtue of the decree, was in a much worse position than the Yaitskoye. Orenburg Cossacks lived in villages scattered throughout the region; As a rule, villages were built near fortresses, in which the Cossacks were in military service. In form, they had elected village authorities, but in essence they were subordinate to the commandants of the fortresses. At first, the commandants extend their power only to men, forcing them to do work on their personal farms, but over time it seems to them that this is not enough, they begin to exploit the entire population of the villages. The position of the Orenburg Cossacks was in many ways similar to the position of serfs. Being full of power and almost uncontrollable, the commandants established a difficult regime in the villages and interfered with the family and everyday affairs of the Cossacks. Moreover, the majority of Orenburg Cossacks did not receive any salary. They were also dissatisfied with their position, but, being scattered throughout the region, they silently endured all oppression and waited for an opportunity to deal with their offenders.

From all this it is clear that the entire population of the region, with the exception of tsarist officials, landowners, factory owners and kulaks, was dissatisfied with the existing order and was ready to take revenge on the oppressors. Rumors began to appear among the people that the local authorities were to blame for the hard life, that they were acting willfully without the knowledge of the queen; Rumors are spreading that the queen is also to blame, who does everything according to the will of the nobles, and that if Tsar Peter Fedorovich were alive, then life would be easier. Behind these rumors, new ones were not slow to appear, that Peter Fedorovich, with the help of the guards, saved himself from death, that he was alive and would soon cry out the cry to fight against officials and nobles.

The Orenburg province was like a powder keg, and it was enough to find a brave person and throw out a rallying cry, and thousands of people would rise to him from all sides. And so brave man was found in the person of the Don Cossack Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev. He was a brave, strong, courageous man, had a clear, inquisitive mind and powers of observation.

Pugachev's personality

E. I. Pugachev

Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev is a Don Cossack by origin, a native of the Zimoveyskaya village, a participant in the Seven Years' War with Prussia and the first war with Turkey (1768–1774). He first came to the Trans-Volga steppes in November 1772, after several years of wandering in search of a better life. Having received a passport to settle on the Irgiz River, E. Pugachev in November 1772 arrived in Mechetnaya Sloboda (now the city of Pugachev, Saratov region) and stopped at the abbot of the Old Believer monastery Filaret. From him Pugachev learns about unrest among the Yaik Cossacks and their intention to leave for new places.

Pugachev comes up with a plan - to take the Cossacks to the Kuban River. To find out the intentions of the Cossacks, on November 22, 1772, he arrives under the guise of a merchant in the Yaitsky town, introduces several people to his plans and for the first time calls himself Emperor Peter III. Upon returning to Irgiz, Pugachev was arrested following a denunciation and on December 19, chained, sent to Simbirsk, and from there to Kazan, where he was imprisoned.

Thanks to his exceptional resourcefulness and courage, Pugachev escaped from a Kazan prison at the end of May 1773 and reappeared in the Trans-Volga steppes in August. This time he finds shelter on Stepan Obolyaev’s Talovy Umet, 60 versts from the Yaitsky town. Here Pugachev again “admits” that he was Emperor Peter III, who miraculously escaped death, and arrived on Yaik to protect ordinary Cossacks from the elders and grant them their original liberties.

In connection with Pugachev’s escape, the authorities sounded the alarm; special detachments were sent to capture him, who grabbed the Cossacks and, through torture, tried to find out where the fugitive was.

The Yaik Cossacks remained on their guard. WITH new strength Rumors spread that Peter III was alive, that his superiors were looking for him, and that Pugachev was the tsar who had escaped death.

These events accelerated the progress of the uprising. Pugachev announced that he was really Tsar Peter III, that his evil wife and nobles decided to kill him in order to rule the people at their own discretion.

Testimonies of contemporaries and eyewitnesses - participants in the uprising describe the appearance of Emelyan Pugachev. He was of average height, broad in the shoulders, thin in the waist, slightly dark in complexion, lean, with dark eyes and hair cut in Cossack style.

This is how Pugachev looks in the portrait painted during his stay in Iletsk town.

The original of this portrait has survived to this day and is kept in the collections of the State Historical Museum in. Moscow. The portrait is painted in oil on canvas; its dimensions are 1 arshin? an inch at 12? Vershkov. Icon painting techniques indicate that the author of the portrait was a self-taught icon painter from the Old Believers. At the top of the portrait, on its left side, there is a date: “September 21, 1773,” and on the reverse side there is the following inscription: “Emelyan Pugachev comes from a Cossack village of our Orthodox faith and belongs to that faith of Ivan son Prokhorov. This face was written on September 1773, 21 days.”

The dates given on the portrait completely coincide with the time of E. Pugachev’s stay in Ilek. Painting a portrait of the leader of the uprising was not an accidental occurrence; it had a certain political meaning, namely: to show a portrait of his “peasant” king, who granted the peasants “eternal freedom.” The restoration of the portrait revealed an interesting detail. It turned out that Pugachev’s portrait was drawn on the portrait of Catherine II. The portrait of Catherine II was larger, as indicated by the cut edges of the canvas, and was pierced, probably deliberately, in ten places. The torn places were repaired, the portrait of Catherine II was primed and E. Pugachev was written on it. It is very possible that the portrait of Catherine II hung in the Ataman’s office of the Iletsk town. Here, in a fit of hatred for the noble queen, he was pierced by the rebels, and then used as material for the image of the peasant king Peter III - Emelyan Pugachev.

Pugachev was distinguished by endurance, courage and knowledge of military affairs. He was extremely familiar with the artillery of that time. The clerk of the Military Collegium, Ivan Pochitalin, subsequently testified during interrogation: “Pugachev himself knew better than anyone the rule on how to keep artillery in order.” Pugachev personally participated in battles with government troops, fighting in the front ranks.

The beginning of the uprising

The events of 1772–1773 paved the way for the organization of the rebel core around E. Pugachev-Peter III. On July 2, 1773, a cruel sentence was carried out on the leaders of the January uprising of 1772 in the Yaitsky town. 16 people were punished with a whip and, after cutting out their nostrils and burning out their convict badges, they were sent to eternal hard labor in the Nerchinsk factories. 38 people were punished with whipping and exiled to Siberia for settlement. A number of Cossacks were sent to become soldiers. Moreover, a large sum of money was demanded from the participants in the uprising to compensate for the ruined property of Ataman Tambovtsev, General Traubenberg and others. The verdict caused a new explosion of indignation among ordinary Cossacks.

Meanwhile, rumors about the appearance of Emperor Peter III on Yaik and his intention to stand for the ordinary Cossacks quickly spread in the villages and penetrated into the Yaitsky town. In August and the first half of September 1773, the first detachment of Yaik Cossacks gathered around Pugachev. On September 17, the first manifesto of Pugachev - Emperor Peter III - was solemnly announced to the Yaik Cossacks, granting them the Yaik River “from the peaks to the mouth, and with earth, and herbs, and cash salaries, and lead, and gunpowder, and grain provisions.” Having unfurled pre-prepared banners, a detachment of rebels, numbering about 200 people, armed with guns, spears, and bows, set out for the Yaitsky town.

The main driving force of the uprising was the Russian peasantry in alliance with the oppressed peoples of Bashkiria and the Volga region. The downtrodden, ignorant, completely illiterate peasantry, without the leadership of the working class, which was just beginning to form, could not create its own organization, could not develop its own program. The rebels' demands were for the accession of a "good king" and the receipt of "eternal will." Such a king in the eyes of the rebels was the “peasant king”, “father tsar”, “Emperor Peter Fedorovich”, former Don Cossack Emelyan Pugachev.

On September 18, 1773, the first rebel detachment, consisting mainly of Yaitsky Cossacks and organized on the steppe farms near the Yaitsky town (now Uralsk), led by E. Pugachev, approached the Yaitsky town. The detachment consisted of about 200 people. The attempt to take possession of the town ended in failure. It contained a large detachment of regular troops with artillery. A repeated attack by the rebels on September 19 was repulsed by cannon fire. The rebel detachment, which replenished its ranks with Cossacks who went over to the side of the rebels, moved up the river. Yaik and on September 20, 1773 he stopped near the Iletsk Cossack town (now the village of Ilek).

Village Ilek

In the 18th century. Ilek was called the Iletsk Cossack town. The inhabitants of the town - Iletsk Cossacks - were part of the Yaitsky (Ural) Cossack army.

On the eve of the peasant war, Iletsk town was a relatively large settlement. Academician P. S. Pallas, who passed through the Iletsk town in the summer of 1769, describes it this way: “The left bank of the Yaik is deliberately high, and on it stands the Iletsk Cossack town, fortified with a quadrangular log wall and batteries... In this Cossack town there are more than three hundred houses, and in the middle of it there is a wooden church. The local Cossacks can supply up to five hundred troops and are classified as Yaik Cossacks, although they do not have any participation in fishing rights and are forced to provide themselves with food by arable farming and cattle breeding.”

On September 20, the rebels approached the Iletsk Cossack town and stopped a few kilometers from it. The rebel detachment was an organized combat unit. Even on the way from near the Yaitsky town to the Iletsk town, a general circle was convened according to the ancient Cossack custom to select the ataman and esauls.

The Yaik Cossack Andrei Ovchinnikov was elected ataman, the also Yaik Cossack Dmitry Lysov was elected colonel, and the captain and cornet were also elected. The first text of the oath was immediately drawn up, and all the Cossacks and elected leaders swore allegiance to “the most illustrious, most powerful, great sovereign, Emperor Peter Fedorovich, to serve and obey in everything, not sparing their belly to the last drop of blood.”

Approaching the Iletsk town, the rebel detachment already numbered several hundred people and had three cannons taken from the outposts.

The joining of the Iletsk Cossacks to the uprising or their negative attitude towards it had great importance for the successful start of the uprising. Therefore, the rebels acted very carefully. Pugachev sends Andrei Ovchinnikov to the town, accompanied by a small number of Cossacks, with two decrees of the same content: one of them he was to hand over to the ataman of the town Lazar Portnov, the other to the Cossacks. Lazar Portnov was supposed to announce the decree at the Cossack circle; if he does not do this, then the Cossacks had to read it themselves.

The decree, written on behalf of Emperor Peter III, said: “And whatever you wish, all benefits and salaries will not be denied to you; and your glory will never expire; and both you and your descendants will be the first to obey me, the great sovereign. And I will always be given enough wages, provisions, gunpowder and lead.”

Even before the rebel detachment approached the Iletsk town, Portnov, having received a message from the commandant of the Iletsk town, Colonel Simonov, about the beginning of the uprising, gathered the Cossack circle and read out Simonov’s order to take precautions. By his order, the bridge connecting the Iletsk town with the right bank, along which the rebel detachment was moving, was dismantled.

At the same time, rumors about the appearance of Emperor Peter III and the freedoms granted by him reached the Cossacks of the town. The Cossacks were indecisive. Andrei Ovchinnikov put an end to their hesitation. The Cossacks decided to honor the rebel detachment and their leader E. Pugachev - Tsar Peter III - and join the uprising.

On September 21, the dismantled bridge was repaired and a detachment of rebels solemnly entered the town, greeted by the ringing of bells and bread and salt. All Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Pugachev.

Pugachev’s detachment stayed in Iletsk for two days. E. Pugachev himself lived in the house of a wealthy Iletsk Cossack, Ivan Tvorogov.

The chieftain of the town, Lazar Portnov, was hanged. The reason for the execution was the complaints of the Iletsk Cossacks that he “had done great harm to them and ruined them.”

A special regiment was formed from the Iletsk Cossacks. The Iletsk Cossack, later one of the main traitors, Ivan Tvorogov, was appointed colonel of the Iletsk army. E. Pugachev appointed the competent Iletsk Cossack Maxim Gorshkov as secretary. All serviceable artillery in the town was put in order and became part of the rebel artillery. E. Pugachev appointed the Yaik Cossack Fyodor Chumakov as the head of the artillery.

Two days later, the rebels, leaving the Iletsk town, crossed to the right bank of the Urals and moved up the Yaik in the direction of Orenburg, the military and administrative center of the huge Orenburg province, which included within its borders a huge territory from the Caspian Sea in the south to the borders of the modern Yekaterinburg and Molotov regions - in the north. The goal of the rebels was to capture Orenburg.

In 1900 p. Ilek was visited by the famous Russian writer V.G. Korolenko, collecting material on Pugachev and getting acquainted with the places of the peasant uprising. Korolenko wanted to see the remains of the ancient fortress, the bridge on which the Iletsk Cossacks met Pugachev’s detachment. And he turned to one of the experts in antiquity. “He was sitting in the courtyard of his house,” writes V. G. Korolenko in his essay, “above the very steep slope of the high Ural coast. We sat down on a bench nearby. The river rolled its waves under our feet, its sands, shallows, meadows were visible...

To my question, Ivan Yakovlevich smiled.

This,” he said, “is almost the entire old fortress.” Only this corner remained... The rest was swallowed up by Yaik Gorynych... Over there, in the very middle of the river, was the house where I was born...”

What remained of the Iletsk fortress under V.G. Korolenko has now long been washed away by the muddy, fast spring waters of the Urals. In place of the Iletsk town of the Pugachev era, there are now meadows and green coastal groves on the right bank of the Urals.

More than a hundred years ago, the author of a detailed description of the Ural Cossack army, Lieutenant A. Ryabinin, wrote down the legendary legend about Pugachev in Ilek. According to a legend told to A. Ryabinin by one old man, Pugachev was charmed “from a bullet, from a knife, from poison and other dangers, which is why he was never even wounded.” “When he began to enter the Iletsk town,” the old man said, “his gun did not want to go onto the bridge. No matter how much they dragged it, no matter how much they harnessed the horses, they could not move it from the bridge. Then Pugachev got angry, ordered the cannon to be flogged with whips, and then its ears were cut off and thrown into the Yaik River. So what do you think, sir,” the old man said, turning to me, “as soon as the cannon roars in a human voice, just a groan and a roar goes throughout the whole town. “If you don’t believe me,” he added, noticing that I smiled, “ask people, and now sometimes in the water he moans so loudly that it’s far away.”

In the epic style, the same narrator told A. Ryabinin the legend about Lazar Portnov. In the legend, actual events are intertwined with folk fantasy. “When Pugachev began to enter,” the old man said, “they came out of the town to meet him with icons and banners, with bread and salt. He accepted the bread and salt, kissed the icons and called the ataman to him. And at that time Timofey Lazarevich was the ataman, have you heard of tea? Timofey Lazarevich did not go, but they brought him by force. So Pugachev began to tell him to bow to him, spoke again, spoke a third time. Lazarevich did not want to bow and reviled Pugachev with all sorts of nasty words. Pugachev then said:

“I wanted to live with you, Timofey Lazarevich, in love and harmony, I wanted to eat from the same cup with you, drink from the same ladle, I wanted to give you a brocade caftan, apparently that’s not going to happen.” And then he ordered Lazarevich to be hanged on the spot, to the fear of all his opponents.”

Nizhne-Yaitskaya distance

On September 24, a detachment of rebels left the Iletsk town and moved up the Yaik. The first on the detachment’s route was the Rassypnaya fortress. In the era under consideration, on the entire right bank of the Urals from Orenburg to the Iletsk town, there were only four settlements: the fortresses of Chernorechenskaya (the village of Chernorechye, Pavlovsky district), Tatishcheva (the village of Tatishchevo, Perevolotsky district), Nizhneozernaya (the village of Nizhneozernoye, Krasnokholmsky district) and Rassypnaya (village Rassypnoye, Iletsk district).

All these fortresses were part of the so-called Nizhne-Yaitskaya distance of the Orenburg military line (the so-called system of fortifications along the Ural River). The main one was the Tatishchev fortress. The commander of this distance was also in it.

Between these fortresses, as well as along the entire line, on high, elevated places along the banks of the Urals, observation points - pickets, outposts, lighthouses - were built at a certain distance from each other. Cossack teams usually stayed here only in the summer. On each of them there was a high observation tower, and next to it was a lighthouse, that is, a structure made of poles, wrapped in straw at the top or having a vessel with resin. In case of alarm, the guards set the lighthouse on fire. The column of flame was visible from a nearby lighthouse, whose guards were also setting their own lighthouse on fire. Thus, the news of the alarm quickly reached the fortress, far ahead of the mounted Cossack galloping with a message to the fortress.

The names of the tracts along the banks of the Urals - “Mayachnaya Mountain”, “Mayak” - indicate the location of former Cossack observation posts with a “lighthouse”.

The fortifications, which bore the loud name of fortresses, were very simple and uncomplicated. Built on the high right bank of the Urals, they were surrounded by an earthen rampart and a ditch. Along the shaft there was a wooden wall with a gate. The fortress was armed with several cast iron cannons. The state of these fortresses is perfectly conveyed by A.S. Pushkin in his description of the Belogorsk fortress in the story “The Captain's Daughter”.

The population of the fortresses consisted of Cossacks and soldier teams, consisting mainly of elderly soldiers and disabled people. The soldiers carried out garrison service, and the Cossacks were responsible for guard, observation and reconnaissance service on the line. Cossacks carried out military service for life. In addition, they also had underwater duties along the line.

The composition of the Cossack population of the fortresses was made up of a wide variety of elements: fugitive Russian peasants enrolled in the Cossacks, exiles settled at the fortresses, various service people transferred from the Volga fortified lines, retired soldiers, etc. The Cossack population consisted mostly of Russians, but in some fortresses there were many Cossack Tatars, immigrants from Bashkiria and the Volga region, included in the Cossack class.

Like all the peasantry of Russia in the 18th century, the Cossack population of the fortresses of the Orenburg region experienced the same oppression of the feudal-serf regime. Therefore, the promise of “eternal freedom” proclaimed by E. Pugachev was as close and dear to the Cossacks as to the entire peasantry, and they readily joined the ranks of the rebels. The territory of the Orenburg Cossack army, organized in 1748, began with the Rassypnaya fortress.

Village Rassypnoye

The Rassypnaya fortress was founded somewhat later than the Iletsk Cossack town. In the year the uprising began, there were already 70 households in the Rassypnaya fortress. Settlers were attracted here by lakes rich in fish, abundant meadows and convenient places for arable farming.

Judging by the descriptions in the documents, the fortress had a quadrangular shape, was surrounded by a ditch, and fortified by an earthen rampart with a wooden fence built on it. Two gates were made in the rampart and wooden wall, and two wooden bridges were thrown across the ditch opposite the gate. Inside the fortress there was a commandant's house, a military storeroom, a wooden church and the houses of the fortress residents.

The fortress was armed with several ancient cast-iron cannons. Before the approach of the rebel detachment, the commandant of the fortress was Second Major Velovsky. The garrison of the fortress consisted of a company of soldiers and several dozen Cossacks led by their chieftain.

On September 24, E. Pugachev’s detachment left the Iletsk town and, not reaching the Rassypnaya fortress, a few kilometers from it, settled down for the night near the Zazhivnaya river. On the morning of September 25, the rebels appeared in sight of the fortress. They send two Cossacks to the fortress with a decree from E. Pugachev, which stated that for going over to the side of the rebels, the Cossacks would be rewarded with “eternal liberty, rivers, seas, all benefits, salary, provisions, gunpowder, lead, ranks and honor.”

The commandant of the fortress Velovsky rejected the appeal to surrender and go over to the side of the rebels. The rebels began their assault. Velovsky opened cannon fire on the besiegers. The rebels responded with their guns, and then, rushing to the attack, smashed the fortress gates and broke into the fortress. One of his contemporaries indicates in his notes that during the assault the Cossacks went over to the side of the rebels and dismantled two walls of the fortress. Through the resulting gap, the rebels broke into the fortress.

E. Pugachev subsequently recalled in his testimony that Major Velovsky and two officers locked themselves in the commandant’s house and fired back from the windows. The Cossacks wanted to set fire to the house, but he forbade it “... so as not to burn down the entire fortress.” For armed resistance and for the losses caused, Velovsky and two officers were hanged. The fortress's Cossacks and soldiers swore allegiance to Tsar Peter III, the Tsar who marched in defense of the oppressed peasantry.

On the same day, taking cannons, gunpowder and cannonballs from the fortress and leaving a new chieftain in Rassypnaya, a detachment of rebels moved up the Yaik to the next fortress - Nizhneozernaya. Before reaching it, the rebels stopped for the night.

The situation in Orenburg

To understand subsequent events, you need to remember what was happening at that time in Orenburg, the residence of the Orenburg governor Reinsdorp. Let's turn to archival documents. Thirteen thick leather-bound volumes contain Reinsdorp's correspondence from the period of the uprising.

The gray sheets of ancient cursive take us back to the era of the uprising, and one after another we see pictures of the events on Yaik in the fall of 1773...

At the moment when E. Pugachev solemnly entered the Iletsk town and the Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Peter III, the couriers of the commandant of the Rassypnaya Fortress Velovsky rode with a report about the movement of the rebels to the Tatishchev Fortress. On the same day, the commandant of this fortress, commander of the Nizhne-Yaitskaya distance, Colonel Elagin, sent a report to Orenburg Reinsdorp outlining Velovsky’s report on the approach of the rebels to the Iletsk town. Elagin's report was received in Orenburg on September 22.

Contemporaries say that on September 22, at about 10 o’clock in the evening, a courier galloped to Orenburg with a message about the capture of the Iletsk town (probably it was Elagin’s messenger) and came to Reinsdorp in the midst of a gala ball held in honor of the coronation day of Catherine II.

Rumors of the beginning of the uprising spread throughout the city. Until this day, according to P.I. Rychkov, city residents knew almost nothing about the uprising. At the same time, Governor Reinsdorp himself was aware of the brewing events. On September 13, 1773, he received a decree from the State Military Collegium on Pugachev’s escape from the Kazan prison and taking measures to capture him, and on September 15, a report from the commandant of the Yaitsky town, Colonel Simonov, dated September 10, about “a certain impostor wandering in the steppe” to search for whom Simonov sent a small detachment. Finally, on September 21, Reinsdorp receives Simonov’s report dated September 18 with the message that “the well-known impostor is already in the meeting and on this date, when he gathers even more, intends to be in the local city.” These alarming news were known only to a narrow circle of the Orenburg military administration.

On September 21, Reinsdorp sent an order to the Chief Commandant of Orenburg, Major General Wallenstern, to put the garrison on alert. In the following days, Reinsdorp receives additional reports about the movement of the rebels up the Yaik and, in particular, about their capture of the Iletsk town.

While E. Pugachev was in the Iletsk town and preparing for a campaign up the Yaik, Reinsdorp was also forming military forces to defeat the rebels. On September 23, he sent an order to the commandant Major Semenov in Stavropol to send 500 Stavropol Kalmyks to the Yaitsky town with instructions to defeat them in case of meeting with the rebels.

On September 24, Reinsdorp sent Baron Bilov's corps of 410 people from Orenburg to meet Pugachev, including 150 Orenburg Cossacks under the command of centurion Timofey Padurov.

On the same day, Reinsdorp sends an order to Seitov Sloboda to prepare 300 mounted and armed Tatars, ready to immediately, upon order, march to Orenburg; On September 25, an order was sent to Ufa: to gather up to 500 Bashkirs and send them to the Iletsk town to suppress the uprising; On September 26, an order was sent to the commandant of the Yaitsky town, Lieutenant Colonel Simonov, to send a military detachment under the command of Major Naumov up the Yaik, following the detachment of E. Pugachev and towards the detachment of Brigadier Bilov.

Reinsdorp's plan was this: to strangle the uprising by enclosing the rebels with the help of detachments from Orenburg, Yaitsky town and Stavropol.

The method of bribery was not forgotten either. Reinsdorp's decrees promised 500 rubles for capturing Pugachev alive, and 250 rubles for delivering him dead.

With secret letters dated September 24, Reinsdorp reported the beginning of the uprising to the Astrakhan and Kazan governors, and on September 25 he sent a report to Catherine II about the outbreak of the uprising and the dispatch of Bilov’s corps.

On September 25, when the rebels stormed the Rassypnaya fortress and then moved on to the Nizhneozernaya fortress, a detachment led by brigadier Bilov, having replenished its ranks and artillery with soldiers and cannons from the Chernorechensk and Tatishchevoy fortresses, arrived late in the evening at the Chesnokovsky outpost, located between the Tatishchevoy and Nizhneozernaya fortresses. It was probably located on the site of the modern village of Chesnokovka, Krasnokholmsky district. Here, Brigadier Bilov receives a report from the commandant of the Nizhneozernaya fortress, Major Kharlov, written on September 25, about the capture of the Rassypnaya fortress by the rebels, about the appearance of rebel forces near Nizhneozernaya and with a request for help. Frightened by this report, Bilov, fearing encirclement and, apparently, not relying on his team, stood indecisively for several hours at the outpost, and turned back to the Tatishchev fortress. Bilov's retreat made it easier for the rebels to capture the Nizhneozernaya fortress.

Nizhneozernoye village

The Nizhneozernaya fortress was founded in 1754, i.e. just 20 years before the start of the uprising. During the era of the uprising, there were approximately 70 households in the Nizhneozernaya fortress. In addition to excellent natural protection - a high steep cliff on the river side, the fortress, according to surviving descriptions, was surrounded by an earthen rampart, surrounded by a moat and had a log wall.

As in other fortresses along the river. Ural, inside Nizhneozernaya there was a commandant’s house, an earthen powder magazine, a military warehouse, houses of Cossacks, soldiers and a wooden church. The fortress was armed with several ancient cast-iron cannons. The garrison of the fortress consisted of a small detachment of soldiers and Cossacks. The commandant of the fortress was Major Kharlov.

Late in the evening of September 25, the commandant of the fortress learned from prisoners captured by the scouts he had sent about the capture of Rassypnaya and that the rebel detachment was only 7 versts from Nizhneozernaya.

Major Kharlov sent a report with this information to Baron Bilov, who was standing with the troops at the Chesnokovsky outpost, after which Bilov retreated to the Tatishchev fortress.

Rumors about the decrees of the leader of the uprising E. Pugachev, who granted the Cossacks and all working people “eternal liberty,” quickly reached the Nizhneozernaya fortress. The proclamation of “eternal liberty” satisfied the cherished desires of the Cossacks. On the same night (from September 25 to 26), 50 Cossacks went to the rebels. The soldiers who remained in the fortress had no desire to fight: the slogans of the uprising were also close and dear to them.

At dawn on September 26, the rebels launched an attack on the fortress. Kharlov opened fire from the cannons. The rebels responded. The shootout lasted about two hours. Then the rebels rushed to storm, broke the gates and broke into the fortress. In the ensuing battle, Kharlov, officers and several soldiers were killed. According to other reports, Major Kharlov, warrant officers Figner and Kabalerov, clerk Skopin and corporal Bikbai were hanged.

According to A. S. Pushkin’s recording made while passing through the Nizhneozernaya fortress, Bikbai was hanged by E. Pugachev for espionage. A. S. Pushkin’s extracts from the archives indicate: “Pugachev in the Nizhneozernaya fortress hanged the commandant for sinking gunpowder.”

After the fortress passed into the hands of the rebels, its inhabitants swore allegiance to E. Pugachev, and the soldiers were enlisted in the ranks of the rebels.

On the same day, having taken the cannons, gunpowder and shells and leaving their commandant in the fortress, E. Pugachev’s detachment moved further up the river. Ural to the Tatishchevo fortress (now the village of Tatishchevo) and, having walked about 12 miles, spent the night at the Sukharnikov farms.

A. S. Pushkin’s travel notebook contains several entries made by him during a short stop in the village. All of them were used in “The History of Pugachev”. Three entries relate directly to the personality of E. Pugachev. Here is one of them.

“In the morning Pugachev came. The Cossack began to warn him.” “Your Tsar’s Majesty, don’t approach, they’ll kill you from a cannon.” “You’re an old man,” Pugachev answered him, “do guns rain on kings?”

It is interesting that the last entry of A. S. Pushkin almost literally coincides with the testimony of one of E. Pugachev’s associates, the Yaik Cossack Timofey Myasnikov. Timofey Myasnikov showed:

“He, Myasnikov, like others, served him faithfully; Moreover, everyone was encouraged not only by rivers, forests, fishing and other liberties, but also by his courage and agility. For when it happened (to be) at the attacks on the city of Orenburg, or at some battles against military commands, then (Pugachev); He was always in front, not a little afraid of the fire of either their cannons or their rifles. And when some of his well-wishers sometimes persuaded him to take care of his stomach, Pugachev said, smiling: “The cannon will not kill the Tsar! Where can it be seen that the king’s cannon could kill him?”

This curious coincidence speaks of the reality of the legend recorded by A.S. Pushkin, possibly from a participant in the uprising who was still alive. Obviously, E. Pugachev used this half-joking expression more than once. And the incident conveyed to A.S. Pushkin in Nizhneozernaya and included by him in “The History of Pugachev” could actually have taken place during the capture of the Nizhneozernaya fortress on September 26, 1773.

In 1890, 80-year-old Nizhneozerninsky Cossack E. A. Donskov, whose grandfather served as a clerk for E. Pugachev, said that after the uprising “a strict check began. If anyone said: “served Emperor Peter Fedorovich,” they were not persecuted, but if they said: “I was with Pugach,” they were exiled, punished with sticks and, in some cases, beaten to death.”

Village Tatishchevo

The village of Tatishchevo is one of the first Russian settlements-fortresses on the banks of the Yaik. It was founded in the summer of 1736 at the mouth of the Kamysh-Samara river by the first head of the Orenburg expedition I.K. Kirilov and named the Kamysh-Samara fortress.

The choice of place to found the fortress was not accidental. From here began a short portage to the upper reaches of the river. Samara (from the village of Tatishcheva to the village of Perevolotsk, located on the Samara River, is only 25 kilometers), through this place there was a road down the river. Ural.

In 1738, Kirilov’s successor V.N. Tatishchev strengthened the fortress with a rampart and moat and named it after himself.

With the founding of fortresses along the Urals (Chernorechenskaya, Nizhneozernaya and Rassypnaya), the Tatishchev fortress acquired important strategic importance as a junction point from where roads branched up and down the river. the Urals and to the west - along the river. Samara. Possession of it ensured control over these roads. Therefore, throughout the entire 18th century, the Tatishchev fortress was considered the main fortress of the Nizhne-Yaitsky distance. Its subordination included the fortresses of Chernorechenskaya, Nizhne-Ozernaya, Rassypnaya and Perevolotskaya.

Due to the important strategic significance of the Tatishchev Fortress, its fortifications were somewhat better than those of other fortresses: it had an earthen rampart with a moat, a log wall, batteries for cannons, and better artillery than in other fortresses. There were warehouses with ammunition, provisions, and artillery supplies.

Academician P. S. Pallas, who passed through the Tatishchev fortress in 1769, i.e. four years before the start of the uprising, describes the fortifications of the fortress this way: “It was built in an irregular quadrangle, surrounded by a log wall, slingshots and fortified with batteries in the corners.”

The population in the Tatishchev fortress was greater than in other fortresses along the Yaik. According to P.I. Rychkov and P.S. Pallas, in the 60s of the 18th century there were up to 200 households. Pallas emphasizes that “this place in Orenburg can be called the largest, most populous of all the fortresses along the Yaitskaya line.”

During his trip to the sites of the Pugachev uprising, A.S. Pushkin twice in September 1833 passed through the village. Tatishchevo: on the road from Samara to Orenburg and on the road from Orenburg to Uralsk.

In memory of the visit to the village by the great Russian poet, a memorial plaque was installed in Tatishchev.

The Belogorsk fortress from Pushkin’s story “The Captain’s Daughter” is connected with the village of Tatishchev. A. S. Pushkin coincided the location of the fortress described in the story with the location of the Tatishchev Fortress. “The Belogorsk fortress,” we read in the novel, “was located forty miles from Orenburg. The road went along the steep bank of the Yaik... (chapter “Fortress”). Nizhneozernaya was located about twenty-five versts from our fortress (chapter “Pugachevshchina”).” Indeed, according to the “Topography of the Orenburg Province” by P. I. Rychkov, which A. S. Pushkin used when working on “The History of Pugachev”, the Tatishchev fortress is shown 54 versts from Orenburg and 28 versts from Nizhneozernaya.

The village of Tatishchevo occupies a special place in the history of the first period of the peasant war under the leadership of E. Pugachev. Two major events of the first period of the uprising (September 1773 - March 1774) are associated with it: the brilliant success of E. Pugachev and his comrades in the storming of the Tatishchev fortress on September 27, 1773, which ended with the capture of the fortress and the transition of its garrison to the side of the peasant army, and a major the defeat of the peasant army on March 22, 1774, suffered in a battle with government troops under the command of Prince P. Golitsyn, which decided the fate of the uprising within the territory of the modern Orenburg region and moved the uprising to Bashkiria and the regions of the right bank of the Volga.

This is how the events unfolded on September 27, 1773, when the rebels approached the Tatishchev Fortress. Its garrison after the return of Bilov’s detachment amounted to at least a thousand people. The fortress was armed with 13 guns.

At dawn on September 27, the rebel forces appeared in front of the fortress. A. S. Pushkin in “The History of Pugachev” reports that the rebels “drove up to the walls, persuading the garrison not to listen to the boyars and to surrender voluntarily.”

E. Pugachev recalled in his testimony that even before the rebel detachment approached the fortress, he sent a manifesto to the Tatishchev fortress.

The rebels also made an attempt to enter into negotiations with the garrison, sending a group of Cossacks to the fortress for this purpose. A group of Cossacks also left the fortress for negotiations. The rebels convinced them to surrender voluntarily, saying that Tsar Peter Fedorovich himself was traveling with the rebels.

Returning, the Cossacks handed this over to Baron Bilov. The latter ordered to tell the rebels that all this was “lies.” The rebel delegation replied: “When you are so stubborn, then don’t blame us later.” Negotiations were interrupted. The fortress, which had stopped cannon fire during the negotiations, again began to fire at the rebel forces. The rebel artillery responded with their own guns. Colonel Elagin suggested that Brigadier Bilov leave the fortress and fight outside its walls. Bilov refused, fearing that the Cossacks and soldiers would go over to the side of the rebels. The cannon duel lasted eight hours.

In order to prevent the movement of the rebels up the Kamysh-Samara River, brigadier Bilov, before the assault on the fortress, sends a detachment of Orenburg Cossacks under the command of centurion Padurov. Padurov's detachment completely went over to the side of the rebels.

The assault on the fortress begins. On the one hand, the rebels were advancing led by the Yaik Cossack Andrei Vitoshnov, on the other hand, Pugachev himself led the attack. The attack was repulsed, but Pugachev’s sharpness and resourcefulness came to the rescue. Near the wooden wall of the fortress there were stables with haystacks stacked near them. E. Pugachev ordered them to be set on fire. The weather was windy, smoke and flames were driving towards the fortress.

Soon the wooden wall of the fortress caught fire, and from it the fire spread to the houses inside the fortress. Cossacks and soldiers who lived in their own houses in the fortress rushed to put out the fire and save property. Taking advantage of the confusion, the rebels broke into the fortress and captured it. During the storming of the fortress, Brigadier Bilov and Colonel Elagin were killed. The soldiers and Cossacks offered no resistance.

Having entered the fortress, Pugachev ordered to put out the fire. The captured soldiers were taken out of the fortress and sworn in. In the Tatishchev fortress, the rebels captured a significant supply of provisions and money, replenished their ranks and especially artillery, capturing, in the words of P. I. Rychkov, “the best artillery with its supplies and servants.”

The number of E. Pugachev’s detachment after the capture of the Tatishchevo fortress reached over 2000 people.

The transfer of the Tatishchev fortress into the hands of the rebels was of great importance for the further development of the uprising. The path to Orenburg was open. The Chernorechensk fortress, located on the way to Orenburg, could not delay the movement of the rebels. On September 28, the fortress garrison evacuated to Orenburg, abandoning provisions. Only three dozen miles of straight road separated E. Pugachev’s detachment from Orenburg.

Several legends and stories about Pugachev are associated with the village of Tatishchevoy.

A.S. Pushkin, passing through Tatishchevo twice during his trip to Orenburg and Uralsk in September 1833, made the following entry in his travel book: “Pugachev, having come to Tatishchevoy a second time, asked the ataman if there was food in the fortress. The chieftain, at the preliminary request of the old Cossacks, who feared famine, answered that no. Pugachev went to inspect the stores himself and, finding them full, hanged the ataman at the outposts...” In Tatishcheva, indeed, there were food warehouses, and after the suppression of the uprising, the Orenburg Chief Provision Master Commission tried to collect provisions taken from the warehouse by the inhabitants of the fortress “with the permission” of E. Pugacheva.

In the same travel notes of A. S. Pushkin we read another brief entry characterizing the personality of E. Pugachev: “In Tatishcheva, Pugachev hanged an egg Cossack for drunkenness.”

An interesting legend about E. Pugachev’s stay in the Tatishchev Fortress was recorded in 1939 from a resident of the village. Arkhipovka, Sakmarsky district, I.I. Mozhartsev, whose two great-grandfathers, according to him, participated in the uprising of E. Pugachev.

According to the story of I. I. Mozhartsev, E. Pugachev helped build a hut in Tatishcheva for the widow Ignatikha and gave her in marriage. I remembered Ignatikh E. Pugachev to the grave. “And Ignatikha was not the only one who commemorated the deceased with kind words. Radelny was Pugachev before the peasants,” I. I. Mozhartsev concludes his story.

Village Chernorechye

The capture of the Tatishchev fortress opened up two roads for Pugachev and his detachment: down the river. Samara - in the Volga region, in areas densely populated by serfs, and up the river. The Urals - to the city of Orenburg - the administrative center of the huge Orenburg province. Pugachev and his comrades chose the second path. On the road to Orenburg there was the Chernorechenskaya fortress (now the village of Chernorechye, Pavlovsky district), the last fortress in the Urals before Orenburg.

S. Chernorechye was founded approximately in the same years as Tatishchevo. In 1742, in the Chernorechensk fortress there were already 30 huts and 9 dugouts with 153 inhabitants. Later, the Orenburg authorities settled here exiles exiled to the Orenburg region for permanent residence. In 1773, i.e. the year of the uprising, there were 58 households.

The inhabitants of the fortress were serving and retired Cossacks, serving and retired soldiers and exiles. The commandant of the fortress at that time was Major Krause. After Brigadier Bilov, heading towards the rebels, took most of the soldiers from the garrison of the fortress, only 137 people remained in it. During the days of the uprising, between the Chernorechenskaya and Tatishchevo fortresses there was a single settlement - a farmstead owned by P.I. Rychkov. It was located on the site of the present village. Rychkova. Near the farm there was a Cossack guard post. After E. Pugachev captured the Tatishchev fortress, the serf peasants of Rychkov and the Cossacks joined the rebels. Residents of the Chernorechensk fortress and its garrison were also waiting. Pugacheva.

On September 28, Major Krause received Reinsdorp's order to abandon the fortress in case of imminent danger. On the same day, saying he was ill, he left for Orenburg, leaving the fortress under the command of Lieutenant Ivanov. The sound of drums notified the inhabitants of the fortress about the evacuation. But only a few residents left for Orenburg, while most remained and waited for Pugachev’s arrival.

On September 29, E. Pugachev entered the Chernorechensk fortress. The residents of the fortress solemnly greeted Pugachev and swore allegiance to him.

With the occupation of the Chernorechensk fortress, the road to Orenburg was open. Only 18 versts along a straight road separated Orenburg from the Chernorechensk fortress. With a swift, rapid offensive, the rebels could capture Orenburg, whose fortifications were in the same disrepair as those in the Chernorechensk fortress. A contemporary of these events reports that they entered the city on carts through an earthen rampart and ditch without any difficulty, and the city gates did not have locks. The rebels missed this opportunity. After spending the night in the Chernorechensk fortress, they moved not directly to Orenburg, but bypassed it, up the river. The Urals and its tributary Sakmara, Seitov Sloboda and the Sakmara Cossack town. The rebels hoped to replenish their ranks with Tatars and Sakmara Cossacks. The Kargaly Tatars came to the Chernorechensk fortress to invite E. Pugachev to Seitov Sloboda.

During the uprising, untouched steppes stretched between the Chernorechensk fortress and Seitova Sloboda, and dense coastal forests grew near the Urals and Sakmara. Only above the river mouth. Sakmara, opposite the Berdskaya settlement, there were several farms. They belonged to the Orenburg high authorities and nobles: Reinsdorp, Myasoedov, Sukin, Tevkelev and others.

Moving towards the Chernorechensk fortress, the rebels entered farmsteads and took away the property of the nobles. Serf peasants living on farmsteads joined the ranks of the growing rebel army. The rebels also visited the village of Reinsdorp, where there was a large house of 12 rooms, furnished with luxurious furniture. A contemporary reports that E. Pugachev, entering the rooms of Reinsdorp’s house, said to his comrades: “This is how my governors live gloriously, and what do they need such chambers for. I myself, as you see, live in a simple hut.” With these words, Pugachev wanted to emphasize that if the nobles build luxurious mansions with funds extorted from the peasantry, then he, the peasant Tsar Peter III, fights for the interests of the people, does not need luxurious mansions and is content with a simple peasant hut.

On the way to Seitova Sloboda, E. Pugachev’s detachment spent the night at the Tevkelev farm and on October 1 set out for Seitova Sloboda.

Village Kargala

By the time of the peasant uprising led by E. Pugachev, Seitova Sloboda, one of the first settlements on the territory of the Orenburg region, was a fairly large settlement. The population of the settlement consisted of several thousand people. The bulk of the settlement's population were Tatar peasants, and a smaller part were merchants. Peasants were engaged in cattle breeding, agriculture, various crafts and were hired by merchants as workers and clerks. Merchants carried out large trade with Central Asia and Kazakhstan, rented and bought land from the Bashkirs for farmsteads.

The approach of E. Pugachev’s detachment to Seitova Sloboda was not a surprise for its population. Rumors about the beginning of the uprising were confirmed by Reinsdorp's order. On September 26, by order of Reinsdorp, a detachment of 300 people set out from Kargaly to help Brigadier Bilov, but upon learning of the capture of the Tatishcheva fortress by the rebels, they returned from the road. On September 28, a military council was held in Orenburg, which decided to transfer all Tatars from the settlement to Orenburg. But only a very small part of the population, mainly merchants and wealthy peasants, left the settlement for Orenburg. The majority remained in the settlement and sent their representatives to Pugachev in the Chernorechensk fortress with an invitation to come to Seitov Sloboda.

On October 1, the population of Seitova Sloboda solemnly welcomed E. Pugachev, who was here several times and later, coming from his headquarters - Berdskaya Sloboda.

The population of Kargalinskaya Sloboda actively participated in the uprising. Residents of the settlement formed a special regiment of Kargaly Tatars. He fought bravely in the ranks of the rebel army near Orenburg. P.I. Rychkov, in his notes on the siege of Orenburg, writes that in the battle of January 9, 1774 near Orenburg, the Kargaly Tatars “let loose a very brave spirit.” Residents of the settlement provided the rebels with great assistance with food, sending them to the camp in Berdy.

Considering the significant role of the Kargalinskaya Sloboda in the uprising, E. Pugachev and the rebels called it St. Petersburg.

Among the Kargaly Tatars there were literate people. With their help, on the day of E. Pugachev’s arrival in Kargaly, a decree was drawn up in the Tatar language, addressed to the Bashkirs, and sent to Bashkiria. Written with great feeling and enthusiasm, the decree called on the Bashkirs to revolt and granted them all kinds of freedom: “lands, waters, forests, residences, herbs, rivers, fish, grain, laws, arable land, bodies, cash salaries, lead and gunpowder.” “And come like the steppe animals,” the decree said, i.e. live as freely as wild animals in the steppe.

On October 2, the rebel detachment moved up the river. Sakmara to Sakmara Cossack town. From the village Kargaly to the village. Sakmarsky 16 kilometers.

Village Sakmarskoe

In the village of Sakmarskoye, the oldest Russian settlement in the region, at the time of the uprising there were over 150 households.

News of the uprising, of course, quickly reached the town of Sakmara. They were confirmed by Reinsdorp’s order of September 24, which ordered the ataman of the town, Danila Donskov, to send 120 Cossacks up the river. Yaik for guard duty. Ataman Donskov carried out the order. A small number of serving Cossacks remained in the town. A few days later, Reinsdorp ordered the rest of the serving Cossacks with all the artillery and military supplies to arrive in Orenburg, break the bridge across Sakmara, and the entire population of the town to move to the Krasnogorsk fortress. The serving Cossacks with the ataman, with guns and military supplies moved to Orenburg. The rest of the population - retired Cossacks, Cossack families and others - remained at home and did not allow the bridge across the river to be destroyed. Sakmara. Residents of the town were waiting for Pugachev.

On the night of October 1-2, prominent participants in the uprising, Maxim Shigaev and Pyotr Mitryasov, arrived in the Sakmara town with a group of Cossacks and read out the decree of E. Pugachev, Tsar Peter III, at the Cossack circle. The Sakmara Cossacks joined the uprising. On October 2, the population of the town greeted Pugachev with great honor and took the oath. After taking the oath, a detachment led by Pugachev entered the Sakmara town to the sound of bells.

Sakmara Cossacks actively participated in the peasant war. During interrogations, E. Pugachev testified that the Sakmara Cossacks “were inseparable from him.” Among the Sakmara residents, a prominent participant in the uprising was the Cossack Ivan Borodin, a village clerk.

Pugachev did not stop in the town of Sakmara. On the same day, the rebels crossed the bridge over the river. Sakmara and set up camp on its left side. Here they stayed until October 4. There were copper mines near the Sakmar town. They belonged to the miners Tverdyshev and Myasnikov, who owned copper and iron factories in Bashkiria. Copper ore extracted from the mines was sent to Preobrazhensky, Voskresensky, Verkhotorsky and other copper smelters. With the arrival of Pugachev in the village. The Sakmara miners quit their jobs and joined the uprising.

An interesting episode took place near the town of Sakmara. On October 3, a man about 60 years old came to the camp, in a torn dress, with torn out nostrils and convict marks on his cheeks. He approached Pugachev, who was standing next to the Yaik Cossack Maxim Shigaev, one of the leaders of the uprising. “What kind of person? - E. Pugachev asked Shigaev. “This is Khlopusha, the poorest man,” answered Shigaev. Shigaev knew Khlopusha, since he was in Orenburg prison with him, having been arrested for participating in the uprising of the Yaik Cossacks in 1772. E. Pugachev ordered to feed Khlopusha. Khlopusha took four sealed envelopes from his bosom and handed them to E. Pugachev. These were orders from the Orenburg authorities to the Yaik, Orenburg and Iletsk Cossacks to stop the uprising, seize E. Pugachev and bring him to Orenburg.

Khlopusha confessed to Pugachev that he was sent by Governor Reinsdorv to convey orders to the Cossacks, dissuade them from the uprising, burn gunpowder and shells, rivet the cannons and hand Pugachev over to the Orenburg authorities. Having gone over to the side of the rebels, Khlopusha eventually becomes one of Pugachev’s closest assistants. At the Ural mining factories, where he is sent, he raises workers, Bashkirs, organizes the casting of cannons and cannonballs. Pugachev appoints him colonel of a detachment of Ural workers.

From the camp near the Sakmarsky town, E. Pugachev sent a decree to the commandant of the Krasnogorsk fortress, the Cossacks sent from the Sakmarsky town to perform guard duty in the Krasnogorsk and Verkhneozernaya fortresses, and “all ranks to the people.” The decree called for serving the new, peasant king “faithfully and unfailingly to the last drop of blood.” For the service, the people and the Cossacks complained “with a cross and a beard, a river and land, herbs and seas and a monetary salary, and grain provisions, and lead, and gunpowder, and eternal liberty.”

The decree to the Sakmara Cossacks, having become widespread, raised peasants, Cossacks, workers, oppressed nationalities against the nobles and landowners.

On October 4, E. Pugachev left the camp near the Sakmar town and went to Orenburg. Before reaching the city, the rebel army stopped at Kamyshov Lake, near Berdskaya Sloboda, for the night. Residents of Berdskaya Sloboda joined the rebels. The rebel army numbered about 2,500 people in its ranks, of which about 1,500 were Yaik, Iletsk, and Orenburg Cossacks, 300 soldiers, 500 Kargaly Tatars. The rebels had about 20 cannons and 10 kegs of gunpowder.

Orenburg

During the era of the uprising, Orenburg was the administrative center of the vast Orenburg province, on the territory of which such Western European states as Belgium, Holland, and France could freely accommodate.

The Orenburg province included in its territory the modern West Kazakhstan, Aktobe, Kustanai, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk regions, part of the Samara and Yekaterinburg regions, and the territory of Bashkiria.

At the same time, Orenburg was the main fortress on the military border line along the river. Yaik and the center of barter trade with Central Asia and Kazakhstan in the southeast of Russia.

The capture of Orenburg was of great importance for the further course of the uprising: firstly, it was possible to take weapons and various military equipment from the warehouses of the fortress, and secondly, the capture of the capital of the province would raise the authority of the rebels among the population. That is why they tried so persistently and stubbornly to take control of Orenburg.

In terms of size, Orenburg during the Pugachev uprising was many times smaller than the current city of Orenburg. Its entire area was located in the central part of Orenburg, adjacent to the river. Ural, and was 677 fathoms long (about 3300 meters) and 570 fathoms wide (about 1150 meters).

Being the main fortress in the southeast of Russia, Orenburg had more solid fortifications than other fortresses along the river. Yaiku. The city was surrounded by a high earthen rampart in the shape of an oval, fortified with 10 bastions and 2 half-bastions. The height of the shaft reached 4 meters and above, and the width - 13 meters. The total length of the shaft on its outer side was 5 versts. In some places the shaft was lined with slabs of red sandstone. On the outside of the rampart there was a ditch about 4 meters deep and 10 meters wide.

The city had four gates: Sakmarsky (where Sovetskaya Street adjoins the House of Soviets Square), Orsky (at the intersection of Pushkinskaya Street with Studencheskaya), Samara, or Chernorechensky (at the intersection of Pushkinskaya and Burzyantseva streets), and Yaitsky, or Vodyany (at intersection of M. Gorky and Burzyantsev streets).

Academician Falk, who visited Orenburg in 1771, reports that the streets of the city are unpaved and there is “great mud” in the spring, and “heavy dust” in the summer.

With the exception of a few churches, the governor's house, the provincial chancellery building, the guest house and some other buildings, the city's buildings were made of wood.

Among the city buildings, the Gostiny Dvor stood out - the city bazaar, surrounded by a massive brick wall. In its appearance, it resembled more a fortress than a place of trade.

On the eastern side, the Orenburg Cossack settlement of Forshtadt adjoined the city. The houses of the Cossacks began under the very walls of the fortress. On the steep bank of the oxbow of the Urals stood a Cossack church. Apart from Forstadt, the city had no other suburbs. Beyond the city walls stretched endless steppes. Academician Falk points out that in the city of Orenburg in 1770 there were 1,533 philistine houses.

For trading purposes, a large barter yard was built several miles from Orenburg.

This was the appearance of Orenburg during the era of the peasant war of 1773–1775. On September 28, Reinsdorp convened a military council, where it turned out that the city was able to field about 3,000 people, of which about 1,500 were soldiers. The fortress had about a hundred cannons. With the approach of the rebel forces to Orenburg, they began to prepare the fortress for defense: they transferred the Cossacks of Forstadt residents to the fortress, cleared the ditch of clay and sand, straightened the ramparts, surrounded the fortress with slingshots and prepared manure for blocking the city gates. Already on October 2, there were 70 cannons on the ramparts of the fortress. On October 4, the garrison of the fortress was replenished with a detachment of 626 people with 4 cannons, who arrived from the Yaitsky town at the call of Reinsdorp.

The fortress and the population of the city did not have sufficient food supplies. The time to prepare it was lost.

Such was the military state of Orenburg at the time Pugachev approached the city walls.

Around noon on October 5, 1773, the main forces of the rebel army appeared in sight of Orenburg and began to encircle the city from the northeastern side, reaching Forstadt. The alarm was sounded in the city.

Small groups of daring riders rode close to the city, inviting residents to submit to Emperor Peter III and surrender the city without a fight. Yaik Cossack Ivan Solodovnikov galloped up to the ramparts of the fortress and, deftly bending down from the saddle, stuck it in. ground a peg with a pinched piece of paper. This was Pugachev’s decree addressed to the garrison of Orenburg. E. Pugachev called on the soldiers to lay down their arms and go over to the side of the uprising. Cannons thundered from the ramparts. The rebels bypassed the empty, partially destroyed Forstadt and, descending from the high bank into the Ural valley, set up a temporary camp near Lake Cow Stall, 5 versts from Orenburg.

Pugachev in Forstadt near the St. George Church. Reproduction from a painting by Petunin

Smoke and flames rose over the city. It was Forstadt that was burning, set on fire on the orders of Reinsdorp. Only the Cossack church on the banks of the Urals survived the fire. During the assault on Orenburg, the rebels used it as a place for a battery: cannons were installed on the porch and bell tower. The rebels also fired rifles from the bell tower.

With the approach of the rebels to Orenburg, the first, initial stage of the peasant uprising ended and the next stage began - the period of the siege of Orenburg and the development of a local uprising into a people's war.

A detachment of 1,500 people under the command of Major Naumov set out from Orenburg. The Cossacks and soldiers of the detachment acted with great reluctance. According to Major Naumov, he saw “timidity and fear in his subordinates.” After a two-hour fruitless firefight, the detachment entered the city.

On October 7, Reinsdorp convened a council of war. It resolved the question of what tactics to follow in the fight against the rebels: to act against them “defensively” or “offensively.” Most members of the military council spoke in favor of “defensive” tactics. The Orenburg military authorities were afraid of the garrison troops going over to Pugachev's side. They believed that it was better to sit outside the walls of the fortress under the cover of fortress artillery.

Thus began the siege of Orenburg, which lasted for six months, until the end of March 1774. The garrison of the fortress during its forays could not defeat the peasant troops. The rebels' assaults were repelled by the city's artillery, but in open battle success always remained on the side of the peasant army.

On the morning of October 12, troops under the command of Naumov left the city and entered into a fierce battle with the rebels. Pugachev, having learned in advance about the impending sortie, chose a convenient position. “The battle,” a contemporary noted, “was stronger than before, and our artillery alone fired about five hundred shots, but the villains fired much more from their cannons, acted... with greater audacity than before.” The battle lasted about four hours. It started to rain and snow. Fearing encirclement, Naumov's corps returned to the city, suffering losses of 123 people.

On October 18, the rebel army left its initial camp in the Cossack meadows near Lake “Cow Stall” east of Orenburg and moved to Mount Mayak, and then, due to early cold weather, to the Berdskaya Sloboda, located seven miles from the city and numbering about two hundred households .

On October 22, Pugachev with all his forces (about 2,000 people) again approached Orenburg, set up batteries under the ridge and began a continuous cannonade. Shells also flew from the city wall. This powerful artillery fire continued for more than 6 hours. Orenburg resident Ivan Osipov recalled that on this day people “from the cannonballs and extraordinary fear almost found no place in their homes.” However, this very strong “aspiration for the city” did not lead to the capture of Orenburg, and the rebels retreated to Berda.

Reinsdorp's attempt to defeat the rebel army and occupy the Berdskaya settlement ended in complete failure. On January 13, 1774, the Orenburg garrison suffered a complete defeat. The rebels completely defeated the government troops, who retreated in panic under the cover of the fortress artillery. The troops lost 13 guns, 281 people killed and 123 people wounded.

After this battle, the Orenburg garrison did not make a single serious attempt to defeat the rebel army. Reinsdorp limited himself to one passive defense. On the other hand, the fortifications of the city, significant artillery with a sufficient supply of military supplies, as well as the weak weapons of the rebels, their lack of fortress artillery and the necessary military knowledge to wage a siege of the fortress prevented the rebels from capturing Orenburg.

Meanwhile, food supplies in the city were scarce. Pugachev knew this and decided to starve the city out.

Already in January, there was an acute shortage of food in Orenburg; there was also no fodder for the Cossack and artillery horses. Prices for products have risen many times. The city was on the verge of surrender. Only government units that arrived in time prevented the capture of Orenburg by peasant troops.

Such a long “standing” of the Main Insurgent Army near Orenburg was considered by some to be a big mistake, a gross miscalculation of Pugachev. Catherine II herself wrote in December 1773: “...One can consider it fortunate that these rascals became attached to Orenburg for two whole months and then wherever they went.” Probably, Pugachev could not do otherwise; the very logic of the spontaneously developing events of the peasant war, the locality of the aspirations and actions of the rebels, who consisted mainly of residents of the Orenburg province, led to the desire to take Orenburg.

Expansion of the area of ​​uprising and military successes of the peasant army

While the siege of Orenburg was going on, the uprising was spreading with extraordinary speed. In October 1773, fortresses along the river. Samara-Perevolotskaya, Novosergievskaya, Totskaya, Sorochinskaya - passed into the hands of the rebels. The serf peasantry, national minorities of the Orenburg region and, first of all, the Bashkirs, join the uprising.

An example of the inclusion of the serf peasantry of the province in the Pugachev uprising is the speech of the residents of the villages of Lyakhovo, Karamzin (Mikhailovka), Zhdanov, Putilov, located north of Buzuluk. On the night of October 17, a mounted rebel detachment, consisting of Yaik Cossacks, Kalmyks and Chuvash newly baptized from neighboring villages, numbering 30 people, rode into the village of Lyakhovo. They declared that they had been sent from the armies by Tsar Peter Fedorovich to destroy the landowners' houses and give the peasants freedom. Having entered the landowner's yard, they “plundered all the belongings and stole the cattle,” and the peasants, according to the testimony of the local priest Pyotr Stepanov, “did not put up any resistance to preventing that robbery.” The rebel cornet told the peasants: “Look, guys, don’t work for the landowner and don’t pay him any taxes.”

The peasant attorneys Leonty Travkin, Efrem Kolesnikov (Karpov) and Grigory Feklistov, chosen at the gathering, went to the camp to Pugachev and brought a special decree given to them by him, which they promulgated at the church in the village of Lyakhovo. The Karamzin priest Moiseev read this decree three times, in which the peasants were called upon to “serve me, the great sovereign, to the last drop of their blood,” for which they would be rewarded with “a cross and a beard, a river and land, herbs and seas, and a monetary salary, and grain provisions , and lead, and gunpowder, and all sorts of liberties.” Leonty Travkin said that Pugachev ordered: “If someone kills a landowner to death and ruins his house, he will be given a salary - a hundred money, and whoever ruins ten noble houses will receive a thousand rubles and the rank of general.” The peasants received a combat mission from Pugachev to create local armed detachments and not allow government troops moving from Kazan into their region.

In November 1773, the Cossacks and other population of the fortresses along the Samara line joined the uprising. The Buzuluk fortress became the center. Its residents, having listened to Pugachev’s decree, brought from Berda on November 30 by a detachment of retired soldier Ivan Zhilkin, happily went over to the side of “Sovereign Peter Fedorovich.” On the same day, another rebel team of 50 Cossacks arrived in Buzuluk under the command of Ilya Fedorovich Arapov, a serf peasant from near Buzuluk who became a prominent figure in the peasant war. On the basis of Pugachev's manifestos and decrees, he everywhere freed peasants from serfdom, dealt with landowners and their servants, and plundered noble estates. Having taken the carts from the local residents, “the rebels loaded them with 62 quarters of crackers, 164 bags of flour, 12 quarters of cereals, five pounds of gunpowder and 2010 rubles of copper money.” Sergeant Ivan Zverev, a participant in the events, testified to this during the investigation.

I. Arapov's detachment quickly grew due to the influx of local peasants and Cossacks. On December 22, 1773, Arapov moved to Samara, and on December 25 he victoriously entered it, peacefully greeted by “a great multitude of residents” who came out with a cross, images, and the ringing of bells. Residents of the Buguruslan settlement also joined the uprising, forming a detachment led by Gavrila Davydov, a former deputy of the Legislative Commission.

The noble government took measures to suppress the peasant uprising. On October 14, 1773, Major General Kar was appointed head of the troops to suppress the uprising. On October 30, he arrived at the Kichuy Feldshanets, a former fortification on the New Zakamsk line, on the Orenburg-Kazan highway. Even before Kara’s arrival, the Kazan governor von Brandt sent a detachment of the Simbirsk commandant, Colonel Chernyshev, along the Samara line. From Siberia, military teams were sent from Tobolsk and from the Siberian line of fortifications. The coordinated actions of these detachments could decide the fate of the uprising. However, the rebels defeated these government troops

Having learned about the approach of Kara, the rebel detachments, under the leadership of Pugachev and Khlopushi, came out to meet him and near the village of Yuzeeva (Belozersky district) inflicted a huge defeat on him. Kar retreated with significant losses.

On the morning of November 13, under Mount Mayak near Orenburg, a detachment of Colonel Chernyshev was captured, numbering up to 1,100 Cossacks, 600–700 soldiers, 500 Kalmyks, 15 guns and a huge convoy. Only Colonel Korf’s detachment, coming from the Verkhne-Ozernaya fortress (the modern village of Verkhne-Ozernoye) consisting of 2,500 people and 25 guns, managed to slip into Orenburg.

To prevent advances by government troops from Siberia, Pugachev sent Khlopushu up the Yaika River in November and followed him himself. On November 23 and 26, peasant troops unsuccessfully attacked the Verkhne-Ozernaya fortress. On November 29, they stormed the Ilyinsky fortress and captured the detachment of Major Zaev, who was going to the aid of besieged Orenburg. Major General Stanislavsky, moving after Zaev, retreated in fear to the Orsk fortress, where he remained with his detachment until the defeat of the uprising forces. On February 16, 1774, Khlopushi’s detachment captured Iletskaya Zashchita (the modern city of Sol-Iletsk).

The defeat of government troops had a huge impact on the expansion of the uprising.

Already in October, Bashkir rebel detachments appeared near Ufa, and in mid-November the siege of Ufa began. The rebel center was located 20 kilometers from Ufa, in the village of Chesnokovka. The leaders of the rebel forces in Bashkiria were the Bashkir national hero 20-year-old Salavat Yulaev, the Yaik Cossack Chika-Zarubin, specially sent by Pugachev from Berd, and the retired soldier Beloborodov.

On November 18, its commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Wulf, fled from the Buzuluk fortress. A detachment of peasants and Cossacks moved down Samara under the command of the rebel chieftain Arapov, a simple serf. On December 25, 1773, he was solemnly greeted by the residents of Samara. In December, residents of the Buguruslan settlement also joined the uprising, sending two deputies to Berdy to Pugachev. One of them - Gavrila Davydov - was accepted by Pugachev and appointed ataman of the Buguruslan settlement. Teams were organized everywhere, atamans and esauls were elected.

By the end of December, the entire western part of the modern Orenburg region and the adjacent part of the Samara region up to the Volga passed into the hands of the rebels. The cities went over to their side: Osa, Sarapul, Zainek. The leader of the rebel detachments in the Middle Urals was the retired artilleryman Ivan Beloborodov. Separate rebel detachments appeared near Yekaterinburg.

At the end of December 1773, Yaitsky Cossack rebels captured the Yaitsky Cossack town (Uralsk). The commandant of the town, Colonel Simonov, who had built a fortification inside the town, found himself under siege.

In January 1774, rebels led by the 20-year-old Bashkir national hero Salavat Yulaev occupied the city of Krasnoufimsk and besieged Kungur, and the Chelyabinsk Cossacks, led by Ataman Gryaznov, captured the Chelyabinsk fortress. The population of the Ural mining plants goes over to the side of the uprising.

Thus, at the end of 1773 and at the beginning of 1774, a huge region was burning in the fire of an uprising. The landowners fled to central Russia in fear. Kazan is empty. Entire convoys were drawn to Moscow with property and families of landowners. A member of the secret investigative commission, Lieutenant Captain Mavrin, sent to Kazan, wrote to Catherine II that despair and fear were so great that if Pugachev had sent about 30 of his supporters, he could easily have captured the city.

Berdy village

At the beginning of November the cold weather set in. On November 5, the peasant army moves into Berdskaya Sloboda. The rebels settled in huts, dugouts dug in courtyards, in the vicinity of the settlement.

Berdskaya Sloboda becomes the center of the uprising, the main headquarters of the rebel army.

The significance of the settlement as the center of the uprising was well understood by the participants in the uprising. In their letters and official papers they call it “the city of Berdy.” Contemporaries say: “They call the Berdsk settlement Moscow, Kargalu - St. Petersburg, and the Chernorechensk fortress - a province.”

Peasants came from all sides to the Berdskaya Sloboda: some to see their peasant king, who was simply called “father,” and to receive a decree on “eternal freedom,” others to join the ranks of the peasant army. Chika-Zarubin, one of the main figures of the uprising, later testified during interrogation: “Rarely a slave was taken into his crowd, for the most part they themselves came in crowds every day.”

This is how a multinational peasant army was formed.

The size of the peasant army in mid-November 1773 reached 10,000 people, about half of which were Bashkirs. Later, in February-March 1774, the size of the peasant army grew to 20,000 people.

The entire army was divided into regiments, partly according to nationality, partly according to territorial and social characteristics. So, there was a regiment of Yaik Cossacks, a regiment of Iletsk Cossacks, a regiment of Orenburg Cossacks, a regiment of Kargalin Tatars, a regiment of factory peasants, etc.

Cavalry regiments were organized from the Cossacks and Bashkirs who had horses, and factory workers and peasants made up the infantry.

Each regiment stood in its own dugouts and had its own regimental banner. The regiments were divided into companies, hundreds and dozens. Regiment commanders were selected from the military circle or appointed by Pugachev. As a rule, all commanders were chosen in a circle.

The leadership of Pugachev's army reached two hundred people, of which 52 were Cossacks, 38 were serfs, 35 were factory workers. Among the leaders there were 30 Bashkirs and 20 Tatars.

In addition to infantry and cavalry, there was artillery, numbering about 80 guns, many of which were manufactured at Ural factories. The shells were also manufactured there.

The regional museum of local lore houses a rebel cannon, which is a copper barrel attached to an iron-bound wooden machine - a gun carriage. Carriage wheels made from solid pieces of wood. On the barrel of the cannon there is an image of a banner and the outline of the letter “P” - the initial letter of the name Peter. The cannon was probably cast in honor of the leader of the uprising at the Ural factories. It was sent to the museum from the St. Petersburg Artillery Museum in 1899, and was delivered there from the Izhevsk Arms Plant

The army's armament as a whole was weak.

The best armed were the Yaik and Orenburg Cossacks, who had their own weapons, as well as the soldiers who went over with weapons to the side of the rebels. The rest were armed “some with a spear, some with a pistol, some with an officer’s sword; there were relatively few guns: the Bashkirs were armed with arrows, and most of the infantry had bayonets stuck on sticks, some were armed with clubs, and the rest had no weapons at all and walked near Orenburg with one whip,” says one of the historians of the uprising.

The troops carried out guard duty, patrols were sent out. One of these patrols stood on Mount Mayak, from where the whole of Orenburg was clearly visible.

The troops underwent combat training. A. S. Pushkin writes: “exercises (especially artillery) took place almost every day.”

To command the army and manage the occupied territory, E. Pugachev created a special apparatus - the Military Collegium.

Pugachev appointed Yaik Cossacks Andrei Vitoshnov, Maxim Shigaev, Danil Skobochkin and Iletsk Cossack Ivan Tvorogov as members of the Military Collegium. The secretary of the board was the Iletsk Cossack Maxim Gorshkov, and the Duma clerk (chief secretary) was the Iletsk Cossack Ivan Pochitalin.

The Military Collegium dealt with a variety of military, administrative, economic, and judicial issues. She sent orders to the atamans, gave decrees on behalf of Peter III) took care of food, military supplies, sorted out complaints from the population, developed plans for military operations, etc.

The leader of the uprising, E. Pugachev, lived in the Berdskaya settlement in a peasant hut that belonged to the Berdino Cossack Sitnikov, which was known among the Berdino Cossacks as the “golden chamber” back in the 20s of the 19th century. A prominent participant in the uprising, Timofey Myasnikov, said during interrogation: “This house was one of the best and was called the sovereign’s palace, on whose porch there was always an indispensable guard of the best 25 Yaik Cossacks, called the guard. Instead of wallpaper, his chamber was upholstered with noise,” that is, with golden paper. Old-timers of the village of Berdy still remember the location of the “golden chamber.”

E. Pugachev's closest associates in the first period of the uprising were the Yaik Cossacks Andrei Ovchinnikov, Chika-Zarubin, Maxim Shigaev, Perfilyev, Davilin, the centurion of the Orenburg Cossacks Timofey Padurov, the exile Afanasy Sokolov-Khlopusha, the retired soldier Beloborodoye, the serf Ilya Arapov, the soldier Zhilkin, Bashkirs Salavat Yulaev, Kinzya Arslanov, Kargaly Tatars Musa Aliyev, Sadyk Seitov and others.

Pushkin in the village Berdy

In the fall of 1833, A. S. Pushkin made a trip to the distant Orenburg region to collect materials on the uprising of Emelyan Pugachev and to get acquainted with the places of events of 1773–1775. On September 18 (old style), 1833, A.S. Pushkin arrived in Orenburg. On September 19, accompanied by V.I. Dahl, he went to Berdy. In Berdy, A.S. Pushkin and V.I. Dal found a contemporary of the uprising, the old woman Buntova, who was from the Nizhneozernaya fortress. Buntova sang several songs about Pugachev to A.S. Pushkin and said that she remembered the uprising. Traces of this conversation are several notes in the notebook of the great poet with the notes: “In Berd from an old woman,” “Old woman in Berd.” Buntova and other Berdino old-timers showed the place where the “sovereign palace” stood, that is, the hut where Pugachev lived. From the high cliff of the old bank of Sakmara they showed the visible peaks of the Grebeny mountains and told, as V.I. Dal reports in his memoirs about a trip to Berdy, the legend of a huge treasure allegedly buried by Pugachev in Grebeny.

The trip to Berdy made a deep impression on Pushkin. Returning from a trip to his Boldino estate near Moscow, A.S. Pushkin, remembering his trip to Orenburg and... Uralsk, in a letter dated October 2, 1833 to his wife, he wrote: “In the village of Berde, where Pugachev stayed for six months, I had une bonne fortune (great luck): I found a 75-year-old Cossack woman who remembers this time, like you and I we remember 1830.”

Records made in the village. The reeds were used by A.S. Pushkin in “The History of Pugachev” and the story “The Captain's Daughter”. “Rebel settlement” is the village of Berdy during the uprising. The descriptions of the “sovereign palace” and the road along which the hero of the story, Ensign Grinev, rode to the “rebellious settlement” are based on the stories of Berdino old-timers, in particular Buntova, and the personal impressions of A. S. Pushkin.

The men lead Grinev “to a hut that stood at the corner of the intersection.” Indeed, the hut of the Cossack Sitnikov, where Pugachev lived, as already mentioned, stood on the corner of modern Leninskaya and Pugachev streets, on the very edge of the main bank of Sakmara. The Cossack woman Akulina Timofeevna Blinova also points to the same location of the sovereign’s palace in her memoirs, recorded in 1899. A. T. Blinova, being Buntova’s neighbor, was present during the conversation between A. S. Pushkin and V. I. Dal with Buntova. She recalled: “The gentlemen were asked to show the house” where Pugachev lived. Buntova took them to show them. This house stood on a large street, on the corner, on the red side. It had six windows. From the yard there is a wonderful view of Sakmara, the lake and the forest. Sakmara came very close to the courtyards.”

It is very likely that A.S. Pushkin was shown not only the place where the Cossack Sitnikov’s hut stood, but that during A.S. Pushkin’s visit to the village. In Berdy this hut still stood and A.S. Pushkin saw the “sovereign palace” itself. This is indicated, in addition to the memoirs of A. T. Blinova, and the message of the publisher of “Notes of the Fatherland” P. I. Svinin, who was in Orenburg in 1824. In one of the notes to his article “Picture of Orenburg and its environs,” P. I. Svinin reports that in the village. The Berdys still show the hut that was the palace of E. Pugachev. This hut, Buntova’s stories and documentary materials...

Suppression of the uprising

The government realized the danger the Pugachev uprising posed. On November 28, the State Council was convened, and Chief General Bibikov, equipped with extensive powers, was appointed commander of the troops to fight Pugachev, instead of Kara.

Strong military units were sent to the Orenburg region: the corps of Major General Golitsyn, the detachment of General Mansurov, the detachment of General Larionov and the Siberian detachment of General Dekalong.

Until this time, the government tried to hide the events near Orenburg and Bashkiria from the people. Only on December 23, 1773, the manifesto about Pugachev was published. The news of the peasant uprising spread throughout Russia.

On December 29, 1773, after stubborn resistance from the detachment of Ataman Ilya Arapov, Samara was occupied. Arapov retreated to the Buzuluk fortress.

On February 28, Prince Golitsin’s detachment moved from Buguruslan to the Samara line to connect with Major General Mansurov.

The whole winter passed under the siege of Orenburg, and only in March, having learned about the approach of Golitsyn’s corps, did Pugachev move away from Orenburg to meet the advancing troops.

On March 6, Golitsin’s advance detachment entered the village of Pronkino (in the territory of the modern Sorochinsky district) and settled down for the night. Warned by the peasants, Pugachev with the atamans Rechkin and Arapov at night, during strong storm and blizzards, made a forced march and attacked the detachment. The rebels broke into the village, captured the guns, but were then forced to retreat. Golitsyn, withstanding Pugachev's attack. Under pressure from government troops, peasant detachments retreated up the Samara, taking with them the population and supplies.

Pugachev returned to Berdy, transferring command of the retreating detachments to Ataman Ovchinnikov.

The decisive battle between government troops and the peasant army took place on March 22, 1774 near the Tatishchevo fortress (the modern village of Tatishchevo). Pugachev concentrated the main forces of the peasant army here, about 9,000 people. Instead of burnt wooden walls, a shaft of snow and ice was built, and cannons were installed. The battle lasted over 6 hours. The peasant troops held out with such steadfastness that Prince Golitsin wrote in his report to A. Bibikov:

“The matter was so important that I did not expect such insolence and control in such unenlightened people in the military profession as these defeated rebels are.”

The peasant army lost about 2,500 people killed (1,315 people were found killed in one fortress) and about 3,300 people captured. Prominent commanders of the peasant army Ilya Arapov, soldier Zhilkin, Cossack Rechkin and others died near Tatishcheva. All the rebel artillery and convoy fell into enemy hands. This was the first major defeat of the rebels.

The defeat of the rebels near Tatishcheva opened the road to Orenburg for government troops. On March 23, Pugachev with a detachment of two thousand headed across the steppe to the Perevolotsk fortress to break through the Samara line to the Yaitsky town. Having stumbled upon a strong detachment of government troops, he was forced to turn back.

On March 24, the peasant army was defeated near Ufa. Its leader Chika-Zarubin fled to Tabynsk, but was treacherously captured and extradited.

Pugachev, pursued by the tsarist troops, with the remnants of his troops hastily retreated to Berda, and from there to Seitova Sloboda and the Sakmarsky town. Here on April 1, 1774, in a fierce battle, the rebels were again defeated. The leader of the uprising, E. Pugachev, left with a small detachment through Tashla to Bashkiria.

In the battle near the town of Sakmar, prominent leaders of the uprising were captured: Ivan Pochitalin, Andrei Vitoshnov, Maxim Gorshkov, Timofey Podurov, M. Shigaev and others.

On April 16, government troops entered the Yaitsky Cossack town. A detachment of Yaik and Iletsk Cossacks in the amount of 300 people under the command of atamans Ovchinnikov and Perfilyev broke through the Samara line and went to Bashkiria to join with Pugachev.

The attempt of the Orenburg and Stavropol Kalmyks to break into Bashkiria ended less happily - only a small part of them could go there. The rest went to the Trans-Samara steppes. On May 23 they were defeated by government forces. The Kalmyk leader Derbetov died from his wounds.

The events of early April 1774 basically ended the Orenburg period of the peasant war under the leadership of E. Pugachev.

On May 20, 1774, the Pugachevites occupied the Trinity Fortress, and on May 21, Dekalong’s detachment approached it, hastening to catch up with Pugachev’s detachment. Pugachev had an army of more than 11,000 people, but it was untrained, poorly armed, and therefore was defeated in the battle of the Trinity Fortress. Pugachev retreated towards Chelyabinsk. Here, near the Varlamova fortress, he was met by a detachment of Colonel Michelson and suffered a new defeat. From here Pugachev's troops retreated to the Ural Mountains.

In May 1774, the commander of the regiment of “working people” of the Ural factories, Afanasy Khlopusha, was executed in Orenburg. According to a contemporary, “they cut off his head, and right there, close to the scaffold, his head was stuck on a spire on a gallows in the middle, which was taken down this year in May.”

Having replenished the army, Pugachev moved to Kazan and attacked it on July 11. The city was taken, with the exception of the fortress. During the storming of Kazan by peasant troops, the Buguruslan rebel ataman Gavrila Davydov, who was taken there after his capture, was stabbed to death in prison by a guard officer. But on June 12, troops under the command of Colonel Michelson approached Kazan. In a battle that lasted more than two days, Pugachev was again defeated and lost about 7,000 people.

Although Pugachev’s army was beaten, the uprising was not suppressed. When Pugachev, after the defeat in Kazan, crossed to the right bank of the Volga and sent out his manifestos to the peasants, calling on them to fight against the nobles and officials, the peasants began to rebel without waiting for his arrival. This provided him with movement forward. The army replenished and grew.

The workers and peasants of Central Russia were waiting for Pugachev's arrival, but he did not go to Moscow, but headed south, along the right bank of the Volga. This procession was victorious, Pugachev moved almost without encountering resistance, and occupied settlements and cities one after another. Everywhere he was greeted with bread and salt, with banners and icons.

On August 1, Pugachev’s troops approached Penza and took it almost without resistance. On August 4, Petrovok was captured, followed by Saratov in the coming days. Entering the city, Pugachev released prisoners from prison everywhere, opened bread and salt stores and distributed goods to the people.

On August 17, Dubovka was taken, and on August 21, the Pugachevites approached Tsaritsyn and launched an assault. Tsaritsyn turned out to be the first city after Orenburg that Pugachev could not take. Having learned that Mikhelson’s detachment was approaching Tsaritsyn, he lifted the siege of the city and went south, thinking of getting to the Don and raising its entire population in rebellion.

A detachment of Colonel Mikhelson operated near Ufa. He defeated Chika's detachment and headed to the factories. Pugachev occupied the Magnitnaya fortress and moved to Kizilskaya. But having learned about the approach of the Siberian detachment under the command of Dekalong, Pugachev went to the mountains along the Verkhne-Uyskaya line, burning all the fortresses on his way.

On the night of August 24-25, near Cherny Yar, the rebels were overtaken by Michelsov’s detachment. The great final battle took place. In this battle, Pugachev's army was completely defeated, losing more than 10,000 people killed and captured. Pugachev himself and several of his associates managed to get to the left bank of the Volga. They intended to raise the peoples roaming the Caspian steppes against the government, and arrived in a village located near the Bolshiye Uzeni river.

The government sent out manifestos everywhere, promising 10,000 rewards and forgiveness to anyone who would hand over Pugachev. The Cossacks from the kulak elite, seeing that the uprising had turned into a campaign of the poor against the exploiters and oppressors, became more and more disillusioned with it. After Pugachev's defeat, they conspired to save their corrupt skin. Those close to Pugachev - Chumakov, Tvorogov, Fedulov, Burnov, Zheleznov and others - attacked Pugachev en masse, like cowardly dogs, tied him up and handed him over to the authorities. Pugachev was delivered to the commandant of the Yaitsky town Simonov, and from there to Simbirsk.

On November 4, 1774, in an iron cage, like a wild animal, Pugachev, accompanied by his wife Sophia and son Trofim, was taken to Moscow, where the investigation began. The investigative commission tried to present the case in such a way that the uprising was prepared on the initiative of hostile states, but the course of the case inexorably showed that it was caused by unbearable oppression and exploitation to which the peoples of the region were subjected.

“Maintenance on the death penalty for the traitor, rebel and impostor Pugachev and his accomplices.

With the addition of an announcement to forgiven criminals.

For this reason, the Assembly, finding the matter in such circumstances, conforming to the unparalleled mercy of Her Imperial Majesty, knowing Her compassionate and philanthropic heart, and finally, reasoning that law and duty require justice, and not vengeance, which is incompatible nowhere in Christian law, unanimously sentenced and determined , for all the atrocities committed, the rebel and impostor Emelka Pugachev, by virtue of the prescribed Divine and civil laws, shall be inflicted with the death penalty, namely: quartered, his head impaled on a stake, body parts carried to four parts of the city and placed on wheels, and then on those burn in the same places. His main accomplices, contributing to his atrocities: 1. Yaitsky Cossack Afanasy Perfilyev, as the main favorite and accomplice in all the evil intentions, enterprises and deeds of the monster and impostor Pugachev, most of all, by his anger and betrayal, worthy of the cruelest execution, and whose deeds are to the horror of everyone hearts can lead that this villain, being in St. Petersburg at the very time when the monster and impostor showed up in front of Orenburg, voluntarily presented himself to the authorities with such a proposal, allegedly motivated by loyalty to the common good and peace, he wanted to persuade the main accomplices of the villainous, Yaik Cossacks to conquer the legitimate government, and bring the villain together with them to confess. It was precisely on this certificate and oath that he was sent to Orenburg; but the scorched conscience of this villain, under the cover of good intentions, was hungry for malice: having arrived in the host of villains, he introduced himself to the main rebel and impostor, who was then in Berd, and not only refrained from fulfilling the service that he promised and conjured to perform, but, somehow to assure the impostor of loyalty, openly declared his whole intention to him, and uniting his treacherous conscience with the vile soul of the monster himself, remained from that time until the very end unshakable in zeal for the enemy of the fatherland, was the main accomplice in his brutal deeds, carried out all the most painful executions on those unfortunate people, whom a disastrous lot condemned to fall into the bloodthirsty hands of villains, and finally, when the villainous gathering was destroyed at last at Black Yar, and the most favorites of the monster Pugachev rushed to the Yaitskaya steppe, and, seeking salvation, split into different gangs, the Cossack Pustobaev admonished his comrades their own to appear in the Yaitsky city to confess, to which others agreed; but this hated traitor said that he would rather be buried alive in the earth than to surrender into the hands of Her Imperial Majesty to certain authorities; however, he was caught by the sent team; what he himself, the traitor Perfilyev, was accused of before the court; - quartered in Moscow.

The Yaitsky Cossack Ivan Chika, who is also Zarubin, who called himself Count Chernyshev, the ever-favorite of the villain Pugachev, and who, at the very beginning of the villain’s rebellion, confirmed the impostor more than anyone else, set a seductive example for many others and with extreme zeal protected him from capture when she was sent for the impostor There was a detective team from the city, and then, when the villain and impostor Pugachev was discovered, he was one of his main collaborators, commanded a separated crowd, and besieged the city of Ufa. For violating the oath of allegiance to Her Imperial Majesty given before Almighty God, for clinging to a rebel and impostor, for carrying out his vile deeds, for all the ruins, kidnappings and murders - cut off his head and impale it for a national spectacle, and burn his corpse with scaffolded together. And this execution should be carried out in Ufa, as in the main place where all his godless deeds were carried out.

Yaitsky Cossack Maxim Shigaev, Orenburg Cossack Sotnik Podurov and Orenburg non-service Cossack Vasily Tornov, of which the first was Shigaev, for the fact that, based on rumors about the impostor, he voluntarily went to see him, or inn to Stepan Abalyaev, located not far from the Yaitsky city, he conferred in favor of discovering the villain and impostor Pugachev, spread the word about him in the city, and because his message attracted the confidence of ordinary people, he created affection in many there for the rebel and impostor; and then, when the villain, having clearly stolen the name of the late Sovereign Peter the Third, approached the city of Yaitsk, he was one of his first accomplices. During the taxation of Orenburg, at any time when he himself main villain from there he went to the Yaitsky city, leaving him as the leader of his rebel crowd. And in this hated leadership, he carried out many evils to Shigaev: he hanged the cavalry regiment of the Reitar sent to Orenburg from Major General and Cavalier Prince Golitsyn of the Life Guards with the news of his approach, solely for the said Reiter’s preservation of true loyalty to Her Imperial Majesty, his legitimate Empress . The second Podurov, as a real traitor, who not only gave himself up to the villain and impostor, but also wrote many letters corrupting the people, exhorted the Yaik Cossacks faithful to Her Imperial Majesty to surrender to the villain and rebel, calling him and assuring others that he was the true Sovereign , and finally wrote threatening letters to the Orenburg Governor Lieutenant General and Cavalier Reinsdorp, to the Orenburg Ataman Mogutov and to the faithful Foreman of the Yaitsk army Martemyai Borodin, by which letters this traitor was convinced and confessed. The third Tornov, as a real villain and destroyer of human souls, who destroyed the Nagaybatsky fortress and some residences, and, moreover, for the second time adhered to the impostor, hang all three of them in Moscow.

Yaitshi Cossacks, Vasily Plotnikov, Denis Karavaev, Grigory Zakladnov, Meshcheryatsk Sotnik Kaznafer Usaev, and the Rzhev merchant Dolgopolov for the fact that these villainous accomplices, Plotnikov and Karavaev, at the very beginning of the villainous intent, came to the arable soldier Abalyaev, where the impostor was then located, and having agreed with him about the indignation of the Yaitsky Cossacks, they made the first disclosures to the people, and Karavaev said that he allegedly saw the Tsar’s signs on the villain... Thus leading ordinary people into temptation, he Karavaev and Plotikov, upon hearing about the impostor, were taken under guard , it was not announced. Zakladnov was like the first of the initial whistleblowers about the villain, and the very first to whom the villain dared to call himself Sovereign. Kaznafer Usaev was twice in the villainous crowd, he went to different places to outrage the Bashkirs and was with the villains Beloborodov and Chika, who carried out various tyrannies. He was captured for the first time by loyal troops led by Colonel Michelson during the defeat of a villainous gang near the city of Ufa, and was released with a ticket to his former residence; but not feeling the mercy shown to him, he again turned to the impostor and brought the merchant Dolgopolov to him. The Rzhev merchant Dolgopolov, with various falsely composed inventions, led simple and frivolous people into greater blindness, so that Kaznafer Usaev, having established himself more on his assurances, clung a second time to the villain. All five of them should be flogged, marked with signs, their nostrils torn out, sent to hard labor, and Dolgopolov of them, in addition, kept in chains.

Yaitsky Cossack Ivan Pochitalin, Iletsky Maxim Gorshkov and Yaitsky Ilya Ulyanov for the fact that Pochitalin and Gorshkov were producers of written affairs under the impostor, compiled and signed his bad sheets, calling them Sovereign manifestos and decrees, through which they multiplied depravity in ordinary people, they were guilty their non-participation and detriment. Ulyanov, who was always with them in villainous gangs, and who, like them, carried out murders, all three were whipped and, having torn out their nostrils, sent to hard labor.

Yaitsky Cossacks: Timofey Myasnikov, Mikhail Kozhevnikov, Pyotr Kochurov, Pyotr Tolkachev, Ivan Kharchev, Timofey Skachkov, Pyotr Gorshenin, Ponkrat Yagunov, arable soldier Stepan Abalyaev and exiled peasant Afanasy Chuikov, who supposedly were with the impostor, and contributed to him in false disclosures and compilation villainous gangs, flog them with a whip, tear out their nostrils, and send them to settlement.

Retired Guards Fourier Mikhail Golev, Saratov merchant Fyodor Kobyakov and schismatic Pachomius, the former for clinging to the villain and the resulting temptations from their disclosures, and the latter to be whipped for false testimony, Golev and Pachomius in Moscow, and Kobyakov in Saratov, and the Saratov merchant Protopopov for failure to maintain due fidelity in the right case, flog.

Iletsk cavak Ivan Tvarogov, and Yaitskikh, Fyodor Chumakov, Vasily Konovalov, Ivan Burnov, Ivan Fedulov, Pyotr Pustobaev, Kozma Kochurov, Yakov Pochitalin and Semyon Sheludyakov, by virtue of Her Imperial Majesty's gracious manifesto; release from all punishment; the first five people because, having heeded the voice of remorse, and feeling the severity of their iniquities, they not only came to confess, but I tied up the culprit of their destruction, Pugachev, and betrayed themselves and the villain and impostor himself to the legitimate authority and justice; Pusotobaev, for the fact that he persuaded the separated gang from Pugachev himself to come with obedience, and evenly Kochurov, who even before that time had turned himself in; and the last two for the signs of loyalty they showed when they were captured by the villainous crowd and were sent from the villains to the Yaitsky city, but when they arrived there, although they were afraid of falling behind the crowd, they always announced the villainous circumstances and the approach of loyal troops to the fortress ; and then, when the villainous crowd was destroyed near the Yaitsky city, they themselves came to the military leader. And about this Highest Mercy of Her Imperial Majesty and pardon, make a special announcement to them, through a member detached from the assembly, this Genvar on the 11th day, at a national spectacle in front of the Faceted Chamber, where to remove the shackles from them.

The death penalty determined for the villains in Moscow will be carried out in the swamp, this January 10th. Why bring the villain Chika, who was scheduled for execution in the city of Ufa, and after the local execution of the same hour, send him to his appointed place for execution. And for both the publication of this maxim and the predicate of mercy for those forgiven, and about the appropriate preparations and orders, send decrees from the Senate, where appropriate. Concluded on January 9, 1775."

(Complete collection of laws Russian Empire. Year 1775.
January 10th. Law No. 14233, pp. 1-7)

The kulaks who betrayed Pugachev were pardoned. The sentence was approved by Catherine II. Convicts will not receive mercy.

On January 10, 1775, in Moscow, the tsar's executioners executed the people's leader and his associates. Pugacheva and Perfilyev were supposed to be quartered alive, but the executioner “made a mistake” and cut off their heads first, and then quartered them.

Ivan Zarubin-Chika was executed in Ufa. Salavat Yulaev and his father Yulay Aznalin were brutally whipped in many villages in Bashkiria and sent to hard labor in Rogervik on the Baltic Sea. Mass repressions in the Urals and Volga region continued until the summer of 1775. Ordinary participants in the uprising were sent to hard labor, designated as soldiers, and beaten with whips, batogs, and whips.

Brutal reprisals occurred against ordinary participants in the uprising. A mass of prisoners were thrown into prison. In Orenburg at the beginning of April 1774, up to 4,000 people were detained. The prison, Gostiny Dvor - everything was overcrowded. The prisoners were even kept in “drinking houses.” Members of the secret investigative commission, captains Mavrin and Lunin, were sent to Orenburg for the investigation. Particularly brutal massacres were carried out on the right bank of the Volga. The entire leadership of the uprising - atamans, colonels, centurions - were executed by death, ordinary participants in the uprising were flogged and “cut off several at one ear” and out of 300 people, by lot, “one was executed by death.”

In order to intimidate the population, executions were carried out publicly in public places, rafts with hanged people were lowered down the Volga. In all those places where active protests took place, “gallows”, “verbs” and “wheels” were built. They were also built within the modern Orenburg region in most settlements of that time.

The Orenburg governor Reinsdorf, Colonel Michelson and other commanders for suppressing the popular uprising received new ranks, villages with serfs and lands, as well as large sums of money.

Results of the uprising

The peasant war under the leadership of Emelyan Pugachev ended in the defeat of the rebels. However, this does not detract from the enormous progressive significance of the uprising. The Peasant War of 1773–1775 dealt a serious blow to the feudal-serf system, it undermined its foundations.

In order to prevent a repetition of the “Pugachevism,” tsarism began to hastily take measures to strengthen the positions of the nobility both in the center and on the outskirts.

In the Orenburg region, the distribution of state-owned lands in the form of “all-merciful grants” to officers, officials, and Cossack elders who participated in the suppression of the peasant war increased. In 1798, general land surveying began in the province. It assigned to the landowners all their lands, including those seized without permission. The government encouraged the colonization of the region by the nobility and landowners, therefore in the last quarter of the 18th century. The resettlement of landowners and their peasants increased, especially to the Buguruslan and Buzuluk districts. During the last quarter of the 18th century. 150 new noble estates were formed in the Orenburg province.

Catherine II, wanting to erase from her memory the hated names associated with the Pugachev movement, changed the names of various places; so the village of Zimoveyskaya on the Don, where Pugachev was born, was renamed Potemkinskaya; Catherine II ordered the house where Pugachev was born to be burned. A funny thing happened. Since Pugachev’s house had previously been sold and moved to another estate, they ordered it to be put in its original place and then, by virtue of the decree, it was burned. The Yaik River was named the Ural. The Yaitsky army is the Ural Cossack army, the Yaitsky town is the Uralsky one, the Verkhne-Yaitskaya pier is the Verkhneuralsky one, etc. The personal decree of the Senate on this matter reads:

“... for the complete oblivion of this unfortunate incident that followed on Yaik, the Yaik River, from which both this army and the city had their name until now, due to the fact that this river flows from the Ural Mountains, be renamed the Ural, and therefore and the army will be called Ural, and henceforth not called Yaitsky, and the Yaitsky city will also be called Uralsk from now on; about which it is published for information and execution.”

(Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire.

It was strictly forbidden to even mention the name of Pugachev, and his uprising in documents began to be called “a well-known popular confusion.”

In an effort to subordinate the Cossacks to its interests, to transform them from the instigator of popular movements into a punitive force, tsarism, relying on the ataman-senior elite, makes some concessions to the Cossack administration, but at the same time gradually reforms it along army lines. The Cossack elite are given the right to own serfs and are given officer ranks and nobility.

The tsarist government contributed to the spread of serfdom among the non-Russian peoples of the region. By decree of February 22, 1784, the nobility of the local nobility was secured.

The Tatar and Bashkir princes and Murzas were allowed to enjoy the “liberties and advantages” of the Russian nobility, including the right to own serfs, although only of the Muslim faith. The largest of the Muslim landowners, who owned thousands of serfs, were the Tevkelevs, descendants and heirs of the famous translator and diplomat, later General A.I. Tevkelev.

However, fearing new popular uprisings, tsarism did not dare to completely enslave the non-Russian population of the region. The Bashkirs and Mishars were left in the position of military service population. In 1798, cantonal administration was introduced in Bashkiria. In the formed 24 regions-cantons, administration was carried out on a military basis.

The Peasant War showed the weakness of administrative control in the outskirts. Therefore, the government began to hastily transform it. In 1775, a provincial reform followed, according to which the provinces were disaggregated and there were 50 of them instead of 20. All power in provincial and district institutions was in the hands of the local nobility.

To improve monitoring of order in the region, a new reform was carried out in 1782. Instead of the province, two governorships were established: Simbirsk and Ufa, which, in turn, were divided into regions, the latter into counties, and counties into volosts. The Ufa governorate consisted of two regions - Orenburg and Ufa. The Orenburg region included the following counties: Orenburg, Buzuluk, Verkhneuralsky, Sergievsky and Troitsky. A number of fortresses were turned into the cities of Buguruslan, Orsk, Troitsk, Chelyabinsk, with the corresponding staff of officials and military commands. Samara and Stavropol, which were previously part of the Orenburg province, went to the Simbirsk governorship, the Ural Cossack army with Uralsk and Guryev - to the Astrakhan province.

In the fall of 1773, Pugachev's uprising broke out. To this day, the events of those years have not revealed all their secrets. What was it: a Cossack revolt, a peasant uprising or Civil War?

Peter III

History is written by the winners. The history of the Pugachev uprising is still considered a controversial moment in Russian history. By official version Pugachev and Peter III - different people, they had neither physiognomic similarity nor similarity of character, their upbringing was also different. However, some historians are still trying to prove the version that Pugachev and Emperor Peter are the same person. The story of Emelka, a fugitive Cossack, was written by order of Catherine. This version, albeit fantastic, is confirmed by the fact that during the “investigation” of Pushkin, none of those whom he asked about Pugachev knew about him. People were absolutely convinced that the head of the army was the emperor himself, no more and no less. According to sources, the decision to call himself Peter III did not come to Pugachev by chance. In principle, he loved to mystify. Even in the army, for example, boasting about his saber, he claimed that Peter I had given it to him. It is not known for certain whose idea was to assign the name, but the fact that it was strategically advantageous is obvious. The people would not have followed the runaway Cossack, but they would have followed the Tsar. In addition, there were rumors among the people at that time that Peter wanted to give the peasants freedom, but “Katka ruined him.” The promise of freedom to the peasants, in the end, became the trump card of Pugachev’s propaganda.

Peasant war?

Was the war of 1773-1775 a peasant war? The question, again, is open. The main force of Pugachev’s troops were, of course, not the peasants, but the Yaik Cossacks. Once free, they suffered increasing oppression from the state and lost privileges. In 1754, by decree of Elizabeth, a monopoly on salt was introduced. This step dealt a severe blow to the economy of the Cossack army, which made money by selling salted fish. Even before the Pugachev uprising, the Cossacks staged uprisings, which over and over again became more massive and coordinated.

Pugachev's initiative fell on fertile ground. The peasants did take an active part in the campaigns of Pugachev’s army, but they defended their interests and solved their problems: they slaughtered landowners, burned estates, but, as a rule, they did not go further than their plots. The attachment of the peasantry to their land is a very strong thing. After Pugachev read out a manifesto on freedom in Saransk, many peasants joined him, they turned Pugachev’s campaign across the Volga region into a triumphal procession, with bells ringing, the blessing of the village priest and bread and salt in every new village, village, town. But weakly armed, tied to their land, they could not ensure long-term triumph for the Pugachev uprising. In addition, it should be noted that Pugachev did not control his troops alone. He had a whole staff of specialists who were definitely not of peasant origin, and some were not even Russian, but this side of the issue is a separate conversation.

Money issue

The Pugachev uprising became the most massive uprising in the entire history of Russia (not counting the 1917 revolution). Carrying out such a rebellion could not take place in a vacuum. Raising thousands and thousands of people into a long-term armed rebellion is not holding a rally; this requires resources, and considerable resources. The question is: where did the fugitive Pugachev and the Yaik Cossacks get these resources?

It has now been proven that Pugachev’s uprising had foreign funding. First of all, the Ottoman Empire, with which Russia was at war at that time. Secondly, help to France; During that historical period, she acted as the main opponent of the growing Russian Empire. From the correspondence of the French residencies in Vienna and Constantinople, the figure of an experienced officer of the Navarre Regiment emerges, who had to be transported from Turkey to Russia as soon as possible with instructions for the “so-called Pugachev’s army.” Paris allocated 50 thousand francs for the next operation. Supporting Pugachev was beneficial to all forces for whom Russia and its growth posed a danger. There was a war with Turkey - forces were transferred from the fronts to fight Pugachev. As a result, Russia had to end the war on unfavorable terms. This is the “peasant war”...

To Moscow

After the triumph of Pugachev’s troops in Penza and Saransk, everyone was waiting for his “Moscow campaign”. They were waiting for him in Moscow. They waited and were afraid. Seven regiments were brought to the old capital, Governor-General Volkonsky ordered cannons to be placed near his house, “cleansing operations” were carried out among the residents of Moscow, and all sympathizers of the rebellious Cossack were seized.

Finally, in August 1774, Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, at that time already one of the most successful Russian generals, was recalled from the 1st Army, which was located in the Danube principalities. Panin entrusted Suvorov with command of the troops that were supposed to defeat the main Pugachev army in the Volga region. Moscow “gave its breath”, Pugachev decided not to go there. The reasons are still not clear. It is believed that the main reason for this was Pugachev’s plans to attract the Volga and, especially, Don Cossacks into his ranks. The Yaik Cossacks, who had lost many of their atamans in battle, were tired and began to grumble. Pugachev’s “surrender” was brewing.

Salavat Yulaev

The memory of the Pugachev uprising is stored not only in the archives, but also in toponyms and in the memory of the people. To this day, Salavat Yulaev is considered the hero of Bashkiria. One of the strongest hockey teams in Russia bears the name of this extraordinary man. His story is amazing. Salavat became Pugachev’s “right hand” when he was not 20 years old, took part in all major battles of the uprising, Pugachev awarded his young assistant the rank of brigadier general. Salavat ended up in Pugachev’s army with his father. Together with his father, he was captured, sent to Moscow, and then into eternal exile in the Baltic city of Rogervik. Salavat lived here until his death in 1800. He was not only an extraordinary warrior, but also a good poet who left a solid literary legacy.

Suvorov

The danger that Pugachev’s uprising posed is evidenced by the fact that not just anyone, but Suvorov himself was brought in to pacify it. Catherine understood that delaying the suppression of the uprising could result in serious geopolitical problems. Suvorov's participation in suppressing the riot played into Pushkin's hands: when he was collecting material for his book about Pugachev, he said that he was looking for information about Suvorov. Alexander Vasilyevich personally escorted Pugachev. This suggests, at the very least, that Emelyan Ivanovich was not just an important person, but extremely important. To regard the Pugachev uprising as just another rebellion is extremely unreasonable; it was a civil war, on the consequences of which the future of Russia depended.

A mystery shrouded in darkness

After suppressing the rebellion and executing the main participants in the uprising, Catherine ordered the destruction of all facts about the peasant war. The village in which Pugachev was born was moved and renamed, Yaik was renamed Ural. All documents that in one way or another could shed light on the course of those events were classified. There is a version that it was not Pugachev who was executed, but another person. Emelyan was “eliminated” while still in Butyrka prison. The authorities were afraid of provocations. Whether this is true or not can no longer be proven. Half a century after those events, Pushkin could not “find the ends”; we can only wait for new research.

A garrison of government troops was stationed, all power over the army passed into the hands of the commandant of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel I. D. Simonov. The reprisal carried out against the caught instigators was extremely cruel and made a depressing impression on the army; never before had Cossacks been branded or had their tongues cut out. A large number of participants in the performance took refuge in distant steppe farms, excitement reigned everywhere, the state of the Cossacks was like a compressed spring.

No less tension was present among the heterodox peoples of the Urals and Volga region. The development of the Urals and the active colonization of the lands of the Volga region, which began in the 18th century, the construction and development of military border lines, the expansion of the Orenburg, Yaitsky and Siberian Cossack troops with the allocation of lands that previously belonged to local nomadic peoples, intolerant religious policies led to numerous unrest among the Bashkirs, Tatars, Mordvins, Chuvash, Udmurts, Kazakhs, Kalmyks (most of the latter, having broken through the Yaitsky border line, migrated to Western China in 1771).

The situation at the fast-growing factories of the Urals was also explosive. Beginning with Peter the Great, the government solved the problem of labor in metallurgy mainly by assigning state peasants to state-owned and private mining factories, allowing new factory owners to buy serf villages and granting the unofficial right to keep runaway serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories, I tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and deportation of all fugitives. At the same time, it was very convenient to take advantage of the lack of rights and hopeless situation of the fugitives, and if anyone began to express dissatisfaction with their situation, they were immediately handed over to the authorities for punishment. Former peasants resisted forced labor in factories.

Peasants assigned to state-owned and private factories dreamed of returning to their usual village labor, while the situation of peasants on serf estates was little better. The economic situation in the country, almost continuously waging one war after another, was difficult. Landowners increase the area under crops, and corvée increases. To top it off, there was a Decree of Catherine II of August 22, 1767, prohibiting peasants from complaining about landowners to the Empress personally (the decree did not prohibit complaining about landowners in the usual way).

In this situation, the most fantastic rumors easily found their way about imminent freedom or about the transfer of all the peasants to the treasury, about the ready decree of the tsar, whose wife and boyars were killed for this, that the tsar was not killed, but he was hiding until better times - they all fell on the fertile soil of general human dissatisfaction with their current situation.

The beginning of the uprising

Emelyan Pugachev. Portrait attached to the publication of “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion” by A. S. Pushkin, 1834

Despite the fact that the internal readiness of the Yaik Cossacks for the uprising was high, the speech lacked a unifying idea, a core that would unite the sheltered and hidden participants in the unrest of 1772. The rumor that the miraculously saved Emperor Peter Fedorovich appeared in the army instantly spread throughout Yaik. Pyotr Fedorovich was the husband of Catherine II; after the coup, he abdicated the throne and then died mysteriously.

Few of the Cossack leaders believed in the resurrected tsar, but everyone looked closely to see if this man was able to lead, to gather under his banner an army capable of equaling the government. The man who called himself Peter III was Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev - a Don Cossack, a native of the Zimoveyskaya village (which had already given Russian history Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin), a participant in the Seven Years' War and the war with Turkey of 1768-1774.

Finding himself in the Trans-Volga steppes in the fall of 1772, he stopped in the Mechetnaya Sloboda and here from the abbot of the Old Believer skete Filaret learned about the unrest among the Yaik Cossacks. Where the idea of ​​calling himself a tsar came from in his head and what his initial plans were is not known for certain, but in November 1772 he arrived in the Yaitsky town and at meetings with the Cossacks called himself Peter III. Upon returning to Irgiz, Pugachev was arrested and sent to Kazan, from where he fled at the end of May 1773. In August, he reappeared in the army, at the inn of Stepan Obolyaev, where he was visited by his future closest associates - Shigaev, Zarubin, Karavaev, Myasnikov.

In September, hiding from search parties, Pugachev, accompanied by a group of Cossacks, arrived at the Budarinsky outpost, where on September 17 his first decree to the Yaitsk army was announced. The author of the decree was one of the few literate Cossacks, 19-year-old Ivan Pochitalin, sent by his father to serve the “tsar”. From here a detachment of 80 Cossacks headed up the Yaik. Along the way, new supporters joined, so that by the time they arrived at the Yaitsky town on September 18, the detachment already numbered 300 people. On September 18, 1773, an attempt to cross the Chagan and enter the city ended in failure, but at the same time a large group of Cossacks, among those sent by Commandant Simonov to defend the town, went over to the side of the impostor. A repeated rebel attack on September 19 was also repulsed with artillery. The rebel detachment did not have its own cannons, so it was decided to move further up the Yaik, and on September 20 the Cossacks set up camp near the Iletsky town.

Here a circle was convened, at which the troops elected Andrei Ovchinnikov as the marching ataman, all the Cossacks swore allegiance to the great sovereign Emperor Peter Fedorovich, after which Pugachev sent Ovchinnikov to the Iletsky town with decrees to the Cossacks: “ And whatever you wish, all benefits and salaries will not be denied to you; and your glory will never expire; and both you and your descendants will be the first under me, the great sovereign, to obey". Despite the opposition of the Iletsk ataman Portnov, Ovchinnikov convinced the local Cossacks to join the uprising and they greeted Pugachev with the ringing of bells and bread and salt.

All Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Pugachev. The first execution took place: according to complaints from the residents - “he did great harm to them and ruined them” - Portnov was hanged. A separate regiment was formed from the Iletsk Cossacks, led by Ivan Tvorogov, and the army received all the artillery of the town. The Yaik Cossack Fyodor Chumakov was appointed head of the artillery.

Map of the initial stage of the uprising

After a two-day meeting on further actions, it was decided to send the main forces to Orenburg, the capital of a huge region under the control of the hated Reinsdorp. On the way to Orenburg there were small fortresses of the Nizhne-Yaitsky distance of the Orenburg military line. The garrison of the fortresses was, as a rule, mixed - Cossacks and soldiers, their life and service were perfectly described by Pushkin in The Captain's Daughter.

The Rassypnaya fortress was taken by a lightning assault on September 24, and the local Cossacks, at the height of the battle, went over to the rebel side. On September 26, the Nizhneozernaya fortress was taken. On September 27, the rebels appeared in front of the Tatishchev Fortress and began to convince the local garrison to surrender and join the army of the “sovereign” Pyotr Fedorovich. The fortress garrison consisted of at least a thousand soldiers, and the commandant, Colonel Elagin, hoped to fight back with the help of artillery. The firefight continued throughout the day on September 27. A detachment of Orenburg Cossacks sent on a sortie under the command of centurion Podurov went over in full force to the side of the rebels. Having managed to set fire to the wooden walls of the fortress, which started a fire in the town, and taking advantage of the panic that began in the town, the Cossacks broke into the fortress, after which most of the garrison laid down their arms. The commandant and officers resisted to the last, dying in battle; those captured, including their family members, were shot after the battle. The daughter of the commandant Elagin, Tatyana, the widow of the commandant of the Nizhneozernaya fortress Kharlov, who was killed a day earlier, was taken by Pugachev as a concubine. They left her brother Nikolai with her, in front of whose eyes their mother was killed after the battle. The Cossacks shot Tatyana and her young brother a month later.

With the artillery of the Tatishchev fortress and the replenishment of people, Pugachev’s 2,000-strong detachment began to pose a real threat to Orenburg. On September 29, Pugachev solemnly entered the Chernorechensk fortress, the garrison and inhabitants of which swore allegiance to him.

The road to Orenburg was open, but Pugachev decided to head to Seitov Sloboda and the Sakmarsky town, since the Cossacks and Tatars who arrived from there assured him of universal devotion. On October 1, the population of Seitova Sloboda solemnly greeted the Cossack army, placing a Tatar regiment in its ranks. In addition, a decree was issued in the Tatar language, addressed to the Tatars and Bashkirs, in which Pugachev granted them “lands, waters, forests, residences, herbs, rivers, fish, bread, laws, arable land, bodies, cash salaries, lead and gunpowder " And already on October 2, the rebel detachment entered the Sakmara Cossack town to the sound of bells. In addition to the Sakmara Cossack regiment, Pugachev was joined by workers from the neighboring copper mines of the miners Tverdyshev and Myasnikov. In the Sakmarsky town, Khlopusha appeared among the rebels, initially sent by Governor Reinsdorp with secret letters to the rebels with a promise of pardon if Pugachev was extradited.

On October 4, the rebel army headed to the Berdskaya settlement near Orenburg, whose residents also swore allegiance to the “resurrected” king. By this time, the impostor’s army numbered about 2,500 people, of which about 1,500 Yaik, Iletsk and Orenburg Cossacks, 300 soldiers, 500 Kargaly Tatars. The artillery of the rebels numbered several dozen guns.

Siege of Orenburg and first military successes

The capture of Orenburg became the main task of the rebels due to its importance as the capital of a huge region. If successful, the authority of the army and the leader of the uprising himself would have increased significantly, because the capture of each new town contributed to the unhindered capture of the next ones. In addition, it was important to capture the Orenburg weapons depots.

Panorama of Orenburg. 18th century engraving

But Orenburg, in military terms, was a much more powerful fortification than even the Tatishchev fortress. An earthen rampart was erected around the city, fortified with 10 bastions and 2 half-bastions. The height of the shaft reached 4 meters and above, and the width - 13 meters. On the outside of the rampart there was a ditch about 4 meters deep and 10 meters wide. The garrison of Orenburg was about 3,000 people, of which about 1,500 were soldiers, about a hundred guns. On October 4, a detachment of 626 Yaitsky Cossacks, who remained loyal to the government, with 4 cannons, led by Yaitsky military foreman M. Borodin, managed to freely approach Orenburg from the Yaitsky town.

And already on October 5, Pugachev’s army approached the city, setting up a temporary camp five miles away. The Cossacks were sent to the ramparts and managed to convey Pugachev’s decree to the garrison troops with a call to lay down their arms and join the “sovereign.” In response, cannons from the city rampart began firing at the rebels. On October 6, Reinsdorp ordered a sortie; a detachment of 1,500 people under the command of Major Naumov returned to the fortress after a two-hour battle. At the military council assembled on October 7, it was decided to defend behind the walls of the fortress under the cover of fortress artillery. One of the reasons for this decision was the fear of soldiers and Cossacks going over to Pugachev’s side. The sortie carried out showed that the soldiers fought reluctantly; Major Naumov reported on what was discovered “there is timidity and fear in his subordinates”.

The siege of Orenburg that began shackled the main forces of the rebels for six months, without bringing military success to either side. On October 12, a second sortie was made by Naumov’s detachment, but successful artillery actions under the command of Chumakov helped repulse the attack. Pugachev’s army, due to the onset of frosts, moved the camp to Berdskaya Sloboda, on October 22 an assault was launched, rebel batteries began shelling the city, but no strong return artillery fire allowed me to get close to the shaft.

At the same time, during October, fortresses along the Samara River passed into the hands of the rebels - Perevolotskaya, Novosergievskaya, Totskaya, Sorochinskaya, and at the beginning of November - the Buzuluk fortress. On October 17, Pugachev sends Khlopusha to the Demidov Avzyano-Petrovsky factories. Khlopusha collected guns, provisions, money there, formed a detachment of artisans and factory peasants, as well as clerks shackled, and in early November, at the head of the detachment, returned to Berdskaya Sloboda. Having received the rank of colonel from Pugachev, at the head of his regiment Khlopusha went to the Verkhneozernaya line of fortifications, where he took the Ilyinsky fortress and unsuccessfully tried to take Verkhneozernaya.

On October 14, Catherine II appointed Major General V.A. Kara as commander of a military expedition to suppress the rebellion. At the end of October, Kar arrived in Kazan from St. Petersburg and, at the head of a corps of two thousand soldiers and one and a half thousand militia, headed towards Orenburg. On November 7, near the village of Yuzeeva, 98 versts from Orenburg, detachments of Pugachev atamans A. A. Ovchinnikov and I. N. Zarubina-Chiki attacked the vanguard of the Kara corps and, after a three-day battle, forced it to retreat back to Kazan. On 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. Realizing that instead of an unprestigious, but victory over the rebels, he could receive complete defeat from untrained peasants and Bashkir-Cossack irregular cavalry, Kar, under the pretext of illness, left the corps and went to Moscow, leaving command to General Freiman.

Such major successes inspired the Pugachevites, made them believe in their strength, the victory had a great impression on the peasantry and Cossacks, increasing their influx into the ranks of the rebels. True, at the same time, on November 14, Brigadier Korf’s corps of 2,500 people managed to break into Orenburg.

Massive joining of the Bashkirs in the uprising began. Bashkir foreman Kinzya Arslanov, who entered Pugachev’s Secret Duma, sent messages to the elders and ordinary Bashkirs, in which he assured that Pugachev was providing all possible support to their needs. On October 12, foreman Kaskyn Samarov took the Voskresensky copper smelter and, at the head of a detachment of Bashkirs and factory peasants of 600 people with 4 guns, arrived in Berdy. In November included large detachment The Bashkirs and Mishars went over to Pugachev’s side, Salavat Yulaev. In December, Salavat Yulaev formed a large rebel detachment in the northeastern part of Bashkiria and successfully fought with the tsarist troops in the area of ​​​​the Krasnoufimskaya fortress and Kungur.

Together with Karanai Muratov, Kaskyn Samarov captured Sterlitamak and Tabynsk; from November 28, the Pugachevites under the command of Ataman Ivan Gubanov and Kaskyn Samarov laid siege to Ufa; from December 14, the siege was commanded by Ataman Chika-Zarubin. On December 23, Zarubin, at the head of a 10,000-strong detachment with 15 cannons, began an assault on the city, but was repulsed by cannon fire and energetic counterattacks of the garrison.

Ataman Ivan Gryaznov, who participated in the capture of Sterlitamak and Tabynsk, gathered a detachment of factory peasants and captured factories on the Belaya River (Voskresensky, Arkhangelsky, Bogoyavlensky factories). In early November, he proposed organizing the casting of cannons and cannonballs at nearby factories. Pugachev promoted him to colonel and sent him to organize detachments in the Iset province. There he took the Satkinsky, Zlatoust, Kyshtymsky and Kaslinsky factories, the Kundravinskaya, Uvelskaya and Varlamov settlements, the Chebarkul fortress, defeated the punitive teams sent against him, and by January he approached Chelyabinsk with a detachment of four thousand.

In December 1773, Pugachev sent ataman Mikhail Tolkachev with his decrees to the rulers of the Kazakh Junior Zhuz, Nurali Khan and Sultan Dusali, with a call to join his army, but the khan decided to wait for developments; only the riders of the Syrym Datov clan joined Pugachev. On the way back, Tolkachev gathered Cossacks into his detachment in the fortresses and outposts on the lower Yaik and headed with them to the Yaitsky town, collecting guns, ammunition and provisions in the associated fortresses and outposts. On December 30, Tolkachev approached the Yaitsky town, seven miles from which he defeated and captured the Cossack team of foreman N.A. Mostovshchikov sent against him; in the evening of the same day he occupied the ancient district of the city - Kureni. Most of the Cossacks greeted their comrades and joined Tolkachev’s detachment, the Cossacks of the senior side, the garrison soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Simonov and Captain Krylov locked themselves in the “retransference” - the fortress of the St. Michael the Archangel Cathedral, the cathedral itself was its main citadel. Gunpowder was stored in the basement of the bell tower, and cannons and arrows were installed on the upper tiers. It was not possible to take the fortress on the move

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 detachments. To control the troops, Pugachev created the Military Collegium, which served as an administrative and military center and conducted extensive correspondence with remote areas of the uprising. A. I. Vitoshnov, M. G. Shigaev, D. G. Skobychkin and I. A. Tvorogov were appointed judges of the Military Collegium, I. Ya. Pochitalin, the “Duma” clerk, and M. D. Gorshkov, the secretary.

The house of the "Tsar's father-in-law" Cossack Kuznetsov - now the Pugachev Museum in Uralsk

In January 1774, Ataman Ovchinnikov led a campaign to the lower reaches of the Yaik, to the Guryev town, stormed its Kremlin, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks, bringing them to the Yait town. At the same time, Pugachev himself arrived in Yaitsky town. He took over the leadership of the protracted siege of the city fortress of the Archangel Cathedral, but after a failed assault on January 20, he returned to the main army near Orenburg. At the end of January, Pugachev returned to the Yaitsky town, where a military circle was held, at which N.A. Kargin was chosen as military chieftain, A.P. Perfilyev and I.A. Fofanov were chosen as chief officers. At the same time, the Cossacks, wanting to finally unite the tsar with the army, married him to a young Cossack woman, Ustinya Kuznetsova. In the second half of February and early March 1774, Pugachev again personally led attempts to take possession of the besieged fortress. On February 19, a mine explosion blew up and destroyed the bell tower of St. Michael's Cathedral, but the garrison each time managed to repel the attacks of the besiegers.

Detachments of Pugachevites under the command of Ivan Beloborodov, which grew to 3 thousand people during the campaign, 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.

The situation in besieged Orenburg by this time was already critical; famine had begun in the city. Having learned about the departure of Pugachev and Ovchinnikov with part of the troops to the Yaitsky town, Governor Reinsdorp decided to make a sortie to the Berdskaya settlement on January 13 to lift the siege. But the unexpected attack did not happen; the Cossack patrols managed to raise the alarm. The atamans M. Shigaev, D. Lysov, T. Podurov and Khlopusha who remained in the camp led their detachments to the ravine that surrounded the Berdskaya settlement and served as a natural line of defense. The Orenburg corps were forced to fight in unfavorable conditions and suffered a severe defeat. With heavy losses, abandoning cannons, weapons, ammunition and ammunition, the half-encircled Orenburg troops hastily retreated to Orenburg under the cover of the city walls, losing only 281 people killed, 13 cannons with all the shells for them, a lot of weapons, ammunition and ammunition.

On January 25, 1774, the Pugachevites launched the second and final assault on Ufa, Zarubin attacked the city from the southwest, from the left bank of the Belaya River, and Ataman Gubanov - from the east. At first, the detachments were successful and even broke into the outskirts of the city, but there their offensive impulse was stopped by grapeshot fire from the defenders. Having pulled all available forces to the breakthrough sites, the garrison drove first Zarubin and then Gubanov out of the city.

In early January, the Chelyabinsk Cossacks rebelled and tried to seize power in the city in the hope of help from the troops of Ataman Gryaznov, but were defeated by the city garrison. On January 10, Gryaznov unsuccessfully tried to take Chelyaba by storm, and on January 13, General I. A. Dekolong’s 2,000-strong corps, which arrived from Siberia, entered Chelyaba. Throughout January, battles unfolded on the outskirts of the city, and on February 8, Delong decided it was best to leave the city to the Pugachevites.

On February 16, Khlopushi’s detachment stormed the Iletsk Defense, killing all the officers, seizing weapons, ammunition and provisions and taking with them convicts, Cossacks and soldiers fit for military service

Military defeats and expansion of the Peasant War area

When news reached St. Petersburg about the defeat of the expedition of V. A. Kara and the unauthorized departure of Kara himself to Moscow, Catherine II, by decree of November 27, appointed A. I. Bibikov as the new commander. The new punitive corps included 10 cavalry and infantry regiments, as well as 4 light field teams, hastily sent from the western and northwestern borders of the empire to Kazan and Samara, and besides them, all the garrisons and military units located in the uprising zone and the remnants of the corps Kara. Bibikov arrived in Kazan on December 25, 1773 and immediately began the movement of regiments and brigades under the command of P. M. Golitsyn and P. D. Mansurov to Samara, Orenburg, Ufa, Menzelinsk, and Kungur, besieged by Pugachev’s troops. Already on December 29, led by Major K.I. Mufel, the 24th light field team, reinforced by two squadrons of Bakhmut hussars and other units, recaptured Samara. Arapov, with several dozen Pugachevites who remained with him, retreated to Alekseevsk, but the brigade led by Mansurov defeated his troops in battles near Alekseevsk and at the Buzuluk fortress, after which in Sorochinskaya they united on March 10 with the corps of General Golitsyn, who approached there, advancing from Kazan, defeating the rebels near Menzelinsk and Kungur.

Having received information about the advance of the Mansurov and Golitsyn brigades, Pugachev decided to withdraw the main forces from Orenburg, effectively lifting the siege, and concentrate the main forces in the Tatishchev Fortress. Instead of the burnt walls, an ice rampart was built, and all available artillery was collected. Soon a government detachment consisting of 6,500 people and 25 cannons approached the fortress. The battle took place on March 22 and was extremely fierce. Prince Golitsin in his report to A. Bibikov wrote: “The matter was so important that I did not expect such insolence and control in such unenlightened people in the military profession as these defeated rebels are.”. When the situation became hopeless, Pugachev decided to return to Berdy. His retreat was covered by the Cossack regiment of Ataman Ovchinnikov. With his regiment, he staunchly defended himself until the cannon charges ran out, and then, with three hundred Cossacks, he managed to break through the troops surrounding the fortress and retreated to the Nizhneozernaya fortress. This was the first major defeat of the rebels. Pugachev lost about 2 thousand people killed, 4 thousand wounded and prisoners, all the artillery and convoys. Among the dead was Ataman Ilya Arapov.

Map of the second stage of the Peasant War

At the same time, the St. Petersburg Carabinery Regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson, previously stationed in Poland and aimed at suppressing the uprising, arrived on March 2, 1774 in Kazan and, reinforced by cavalry units, was immediately sent to suppress the uprising in the Kama region. On March 24, 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. Having won victories in the territory of the Ufa and Iset provinces over the detachments of Salavat Yulaev and other Bashkir colonels, he failed to suppress the uprising of the Bashkirs as a whole, since the Bashkirs switched to guerrilla tactics.

Leaving Mansurov's brigade in the Tatishchevoy fortress, Golitsyn continued his march to Orenburg, where he entered on March 29, while Pugachev, having gathered his troops, tried to break through to the Yaitsky town, but having met government troops near the Perevolotsk fortress, he was forced to turn to the Sakmarsky town, where he decided to give battle to Golitsyn. In the battle on April 1, the rebels were again defeated, over 2,800 people were captured, including Maxim Shigaev, Andrei Vitoshnov, Timofey Podurov, Ivan Pochitalin and others. Pugachev himself, breaking away from the enemy pursuit, fled with several hundred Cossacks to the Prechistenskaya fortress, and from there he went beyond the bend of the Belaya River, to the mining region of the Southern Urals, where the rebels had reliable support.

At the beginning of April, the brigade of P. D. Mansurov, reinforced by the Izyum Hussar Regiment and the Cossack detachment of the Yaitsky foreman M. M. Borodin from the Tatishchev Fortress headed to the Yaitsky town. The Nizhneozernaya and Rassypnaya fortresses and the Iletsky town were taken from the Pugachevites; on April 12, the Cossack rebels were defeated at the Irtetsk outpost. In an effort to stop the advance of the punitive forces towards their native Yaitsky town, the Cossacks, led by A. A. Ovchinnikov, A. P. Perfilyev and K. I. Dekhtyarev, decided to move towards Mansurov. The meeting took place on April 15, 50 versts east of the Yaitsky town, near the Bykovka River. Having gotten involved in the battle, the Cossacks were unable to resist the regular troops; a retreat began, which gradually turned into a stampede. Pursued by the hussars, the Cossacks retreated to the Rubezhny outpost, losing hundreds of people killed, among whom was Dekhtyarev. Having gathered people, Ataman Ovchinnikov led a detachment through the remote steppes to the Southern Urals, to connect with Pugachev’s troops, who had gone beyond the Belaya River.

On the evening of April 15, when in the Yaitsky town they learned about the defeat at Bykovka, a group of Cossacks, wanting to curry favor with the punitive forces, tied up and handed over the atamans Kargin and Tolkachev to Simonov. Mansurov entered the Yaitsky town on April 16, finally liberating the city fortress, besieged by the Pugachevites since December 30, 1773. The Cossacks who fled to the steppe were unable to make their way to the main area of ​​the uprising; in May-July 1774, the teams of Mansurov’s brigade and the Cossacks of the senior side began a search and defeat in the Priyaitsk steppe, near the Uzenei and Irgiz rivers, the rebel detachments of F. I. Derbetev, S. L Rechkina, I. A. Fofanova.

At the beginning of April 1774, the corps of Second Major Gagrin, which approached from Yekaterinburg, defeated Tumanov’s detachment located in Chelyab. And on May 1, the team of Lieutenant Colonel D. Kandaurov, who arrived from Astrakhan, recaptured the town of Guryev from the rebels.

On April 9, 1774, the commander of military operations against Pugachev, A.I. Bibikov, died. After him, Catherine II entrusted the command of the troops to Lieutenant General F. F. Shcherbatov, as the senior in rank. Offended that he was not appointed to the post of commander of the troops, having sent small teams to nearby fortresses and villages to carry out investigations and punishments, General Golitsyn with the main forces of his corps stayed in Orenburg for three months. Intrigues between the generals gave Pugachev a much-needed respite; he managed to gather scattered small detachments in the Southern Urals. The pursuit was also suspended by the spring thaw and floods on the rivers, which made the roads impassable.

Ural mine. Painting by Demidov serf artist V. P. Khudoyarov

On the morning of May 5, Pugachev’s detachment of five thousand approached the Magnetic Fortress. By this time, Pugachev’s detachment consisted mainly of weakly armed factory peasants and a small number of personal egg guards under the command of Myasnikov; the detachment did not have a single cannon. The start of the assault on Magnitnaya was unsuccessful, about 500 people died in the battle, Pugachev himself was wounded in his right hand. Having withdrawn the troops from the fortress and discussed the situation, the rebels, under the cover of the darkness of the night, made a new attempt and were able to break into the fortress and capture it. 10 cannons, rifles, and ammunition were taken as trophies. On May 7, detachments of atamans A. Ovchinnikov, A. Perfilyev, I. Beloborodov and S. Maksimov arrived at Magnitnaya from different directions.

Heading up the Yaik, the rebels captured the fortresses of Karagai, Peter and Paul and Stepnaya and on May 20 approached the largest Trinity. By this time, the detachment numbered 10 thousand people. During the assault that began, the garrison tried to repel the attack with artillery fire, but overcoming desperate resistance, the rebels broke into Troitskaya. Pugachev received artillery with shells and reserves of gunpowder, supplies of provisions and fodder. On the morning of May 21, Delong's corps attacked the rebels resting after the battle. Taken by surprise, the Pugachevites suffered a heavy defeat, losing 4,000 people killed and the same number wounded and captured. Only one and a half thousand mounted Cossacks and Bashkirs were able to retreat along the road to Chelyabinsk.

Salavat Yulaev, who had recovered from his wound, managed to organize resistance to Mikhelson’s detachment in Bashkiria at that time, east of Ufa, covering Pugachev’s army from his stubborn pursuit. In the battles that took place on May 6, 8, 17, and 31, Salavat, although he was not successful in them, did not allow his troops to inflict significant losses. On June 3, he united with Pugachev, by which time the Bashkirs made up two-thirds of the total number of the rebel army. On June 3 and 5 on the Ai River they gave new battles to Mikhelson. Neither side received the desired success. Retreating north, Pugachev regrouped his forces while Mikhelson retreated to Ufa to drive away the Bashkir detachments operating near the city and replenish supplies of ammunition and provisions.

Taking advantage of the respite, Pugachev headed towards Kazan. On June 10, the Krasnoufimskaya fortress was taken, and on June 11, a victory was won in the battle near Kungur against the garrison that had made a sortie. Without attempting to storm Kungur, Pugachev turned west. On June 14, the vanguard of his army under the command of Ivan Beloborodov and Salavat Yulaev approached the Kama town of Ose and blocked the city fortress. Four days later, Pugachev’s main forces arrived here and began siege battles with the garrison settled in the fortress. On June 21, the defenders of the fortress, having exhausted the possibilities of further resistance, capitulated. During this period, the adventurer merchant Astafy Dolgopolov (“Ivan Ivanov”) came to Pugachev, posing as an envoy of Tsarevich Pavel and thus deciding to improve his financial situation. Pugachev unraveled his adventure, and Dolgopolov, by agreement with him, acted for some time as a “witness to the authenticity of Peter III.”

Having captured Osa, Pugachev transported the army across the Kama, took the Votkinsk and Izhevsk ironworks, Yelabuga, Sarapul, Menzelinsk, Agryz, Zainsk, Mamadysh and other cities and fortresses along the way, and in early July approached Kazan.

View of the Kazan Kremlin

A detachment under the command of Colonel Tolstoy came out to meet Pugachev and on July 10, 12 versts from the city, the Pugachevites won a complete victory. The next day, a detachment of rebels camped near the city. “In the evening, in view of all the Kazan residents, he (Pugachev) himself went to look out for the city, and returned to the camp, postponing the attack until the next morning.”. On July 12, as a result of the assault, the suburbs and main areas of the city were taken, the garrison remaining in the city locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin and prepared for a siege. A strong fire began in the city, in addition, Pugachev received news of the approach of Mikhelson’s troops, who were following on his heels 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. Both sides were preparing for the decisive battle, which took place on July 15. Pugachev's army numbered 25 thousand people, but most of them were weakly armed peasants who had just joined the uprising, Tatar and Bashkir cavalry armed with bows, and a small number of remaining Cossacks. The competent actions of Mikhelson, who struck first of all at the Yaik core of the Pugachevites, led to the complete defeat of the rebels, at least 2 thousand people died, about 5 thousand were taken prisoner, among whom was Colonel Ivan Beloborodov.

Announced publicly

We congratulate you with this named decree with our royal and fatherly
the mercy of all who were formerly in the peasantry and
subject to the landowners, to be loyal slaves
our own crown; and rewarded with an 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,
hayfields and fishing grounds, and salt lakes
without purchase and without rent; and free everyone from what was previously done
from the villains of the nobles and the bribery-takers of the city-judges to the peasants and everything
taxes and burdens imposed on the people. And we wish you the salvation of souls
and calm in the light of life for which we have tasted and endured
from the registered villains-nobles, wandering and considerable disaster.

And what is our name now by the power of the Most High Right Hand in Russia?
flourishes, for this reason we command with this personal decree:
which formerly were nobles in their estates and vodchinas, - of which
opponents of our power and troublemakers of the empire and despoilers
peasants, to catch, execute and hang, and to do the same,
what they did to you, peasants, without Christianity in them.
After the destruction of which opponents and villainous nobles, anyone can
to feel the silence and calm life that will continue until the century.

Given July 31st day 1774.

By the grace of God, we, Peter the Third,

Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia and so on,

And on and on and on.

Even before the start of the battle on July 15, Pugachev announced in the camp that he would head from Kazan to Moscow. Rumors of this instantly spread throughout all the nearby villages, estates and towns. Despite the major defeat of Pugachev's army, the flames of the uprising engulfed the entire western bank of the Volga. Having crossed the Volga at Kokshaysk, below the village of Sundyr, Pugachev replenished his army with thousands of peasants. By this time, Salavat Yulaev and his troops continued fighting near Ufa; the Bashkir troops in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. On July 20, Pugachev entered Kurmysh, on the 23rd he freely entered Alatyr, after which he headed towards Saransk. On July 28, in the central square of Saransk, a decree on freedom for peasants was read out, supplies of salt and bread, and the city treasury were distributed to residents “driving around the city fortress and along the streets... they abandoned the mob that had come from different districts”. On July 31, the same solemn meeting awaited Pugachev in Penza. The decrees caused numerous peasant revolts in the Volga region; in total, scattered detachments operating within their estates numbered tens of thousands of fighters. The movement covered most of the Volga districts, approached the borders of the Moscow province, and really threatened Moscow.

The publication of decrees (in fact, manifestos on the liberation of peasants) in Saransk and Penza is called the culmination of the Peasant War. The decrees made a strong impression on the peasants, on the Old Believers hiding from persecution, on the opposite side - the nobles and on Catherine II herself. 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. They could not give anything to Pugachev’s army in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments operated no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev’s campaign across the Volga region into a triumphal procession, with bells ringing, the blessing of the village priest and bread and salt in every new village, village, town. When Pugachev’s army or its individual detachments approached, the peasants tied up or killed their landowners and their clerks, hanged local officials, burned estates, and smashed shops. In total, in the summer of 1774, at least 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed.

In the second half of July 1774, when the flames of the Pugachev uprising approached the borders of the Moscow province and threatened Moscow itself, the alarmed empress was forced to agree to the proposal of Chancellor N.I. Panin to appoint his brother, the disgraced general-in-chief Pyotr Ivanovich Panin, commander of a military expedition against rebels. General F. F. Shcherbatov was expelled from this post on July 22, and by decree of July 29, Catherine II gave Panin emergency powers “in suppressing rebellion and restoring internal order in the provinces of Orenburg, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod”. It is noteworthy that under the command of P.I. Panin, who received the Order of St. for the capture of Bendery in 1770. George I class, Don cornet Emelyan Pugachev also distinguished himself in that battle.

To speed up the conclusion of peace, the terms of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace Treaty were softened, and the troops released on the Turkish borders - a total of 20 cavalry and infantry regiments - were recalled from the armies to act against Pugachev. As Ekaterina noted, against Pugachev “So many troops were equipped that such an army was almost terrible for its neighbors”. A remarkable fact is that in August 1774, Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, at that time already one of the most successful Russian generals, was recalled from the 1st Army, which was located in the Danube principalities. Panin entrusted Suvorov with command of the troops that were supposed to defeat the main Pugachev army in the Volga region.

Suppression of the uprising

After Pugachev’s triumphant entry into Saransk and Penza, everyone expected his march to Moscow. Seven regiments under the personal command of P.I. Panin were gathered in Moscow, where memories of the Plague Riot of 1771 were still fresh. Moscow Governor-General Prince M.N. Volkonsky ordered artillery to be placed near his house. The police strengthened surveillance and sent informants to crowded places in order to capture all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who was promoted to colonel in July and was pursuing the rebels from Kazan, turned towards Arzamas to block the road to the old capital. General Mansurov set out from the Yaitsky town to Syzran, General Golitsyn to Saransk. The punitive teams of Mufel and Mellin reported that Pugachev was leaving rebellious villages behind him everywhere and they did not have time to pacify them all. “Not only peasants, but priests, monks, even archimandrites outrage sensitive and insensitive people”. Excerpts from the report of the captain of the Novokhopyorsky battalion Butrimovich are indicative:

“...I went to the village of Andreevskaya, where the peasants were keeping the landowner Dubensky under arrest in order to extradite him to Pugachev. I wanted to free him, but the village rebelled and the team was dispersed. From there I went to the villages of Mr. Vysheslavtsev and Prince Maksyutin, but I also found them under arrest among the peasants, and I freed them and took them to Verkhny Lomov; from the village of Prince I saw Maksyutin as a mountain. Kerensk was burning and, returning to Verkhny Lomov, he learned that all the inhabitants there, except the clerks, had rebelled when they learned about the burning of Kerensk. Starters: one-palace Yak. Gubanov, Matv. Bochkov, and the Streltsy settlement of the tenth Bezborod. I wanted to grab them and bring them to Voronezh, but the residents not only did not allow me to do so, but also almost put me under their guard, but I left them and 2 miles from the city I heard the cry of the rioters. I don’t know how it all ended, but I heard that Kerensk, with the help of captured Turks, fought off the villain. During my travels, I noticed everywhere among the people a spirit of rebellion and a tendency towards the Pretender. Especially in Tanbovsky district, the departments of Prince. Vyazemsky, in economic peasants, who, for Pugachev’s arrival, repaired bridges everywhere and repaired roads. Moreover, the village headman of Lipnego and his guards, considering me an accomplice of the villain, came to me and fell to their knees.”

Map of the final stage of the uprising

But from Penza Pugachev turned south. Most historians point to the reason for this as Pugachev’s plans to attract the Volga and, especially, Don Cossacks into his ranks. It is possible that another reason was the desire of the Yaik Cossacks, tired of fighting and having already lost their main atamans, to hide again in the remote steppes of the lower Volga and Yaik, where they had already taken refuge once after the uprising of 1772. An indirect confirmation of such fatigue is that it was during these days that the conspiracy of Cossack colonels began to surrender Pugachev to the government in exchange for receiving a pardon.

On August 4, the impostor's army took Petrovsk, and on August 6, it surrounded Saratov. The governor with part of the people along the Volga managed to get to Tsaritsyn and after the battle on August 7, Saratov was taken. Saratov priests in all churches served prayers for the health of Emperor Peter III. Here Pugachev sent a decree to the Kalmyk ruler Tsenden-Darzhe with a call to join his army. But by this time, punitive detachments under the overall command of Mikhelson were already literally on the heels of the Pugachevites, and on August 11 the city came under the control of government troops.

After Saratov, we went down the Volga to Kamyshin, which, like many cities before it, greeted Pugachev with the ringing of bells and bread and salt. Near Kamyshin in the German colonies, Pugachev’s troops encountered the Astrakhan astronomical expedition of the Academy of Sciences, many members of which, along with the leader, Academician Georg Lowitz, were hanged along with local officials who failed to escape. Lowitz's son, Tobias, later also an academician, managed to survive. Having joined a 3,000-strong detachment of Kalmyks, the rebels entered the villages of the Volga army Antipovskaya and Karavainskaya, where they received widespread support and from where messengers were sent to the Don with decrees on the Don people joining the uprising. A detachment of government troops that arrived from Tsaritsyn was defeated on the Proleika River near the village of Balyklevskaya. Further along the road was Dubovka, the capital of the Volga Cossack army. The Volga Cossacks, led by the ataman, who remained loyal to the government, and the garrisons of the Volga cities strengthened the defense of Tsaritsyn, where a thousand-strong detachment of Don Cossacks arrived under the command of the marching ataman Perfilov.

Pugachev is under arrest. Engraving from the 1770s

On August 21, Pugachev tried to attack Tsaritsyn, but the assault failed. Having received news of Mikhelson's arriving corps, Pugachev hastened to lift the siege of Tsaritsyn, and the rebels moved to Black Yar. Panic began in Astrakhan. On August 24, at the Solenikovo fishing gang, Pugachev was overtaken by Mikhelson. Realizing that a battle could not be avoided, the Pugachevites formed battle formations. On August 25, the last major battle between the troops under the command of Pugachev and the tsarist troops took place. The battle began with a major setback - all 24 cannons of the rebel army were repulsed by a cavalry attack. More than 2,000 rebels died in a fierce battle, among them Ataman Ovchinnikov. More than 6,000 people were captured. Pugachev and the Cossacks, breaking up into small detachments, fled across the Volga. Search detachments of generals Mansurov and Golitsyn, Yaik foreman Borodin and Don Colonel Tavinsky were sent in pursuit of them. Not having time for the battle, Lieutenant General Suvorov also wanted to participate in the capture. During August and September, most of the participants in the uprising were caught and sent for investigation to the Yaitsky town, Simbirsk, and Orenburg.

Pugachev with a detachment of Cossacks fled to Uzeni, not knowing that since mid-August Chumakov, Tvorogov, Fedulev and some other colonels had been discussing the possibility of earning forgiveness by surrendering the impostor. Under the pretext of making it easier to escape the pursuit, they divided the detachment so as to separate the Cossacks loyal to Pugachev along with Ataman Perfilyev. On September 8, near the Bolshoi Uzen River, they pounced and tied up Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Tvorogov went to Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they informed their accomplices, and on September 15 they brought Pugachev to Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of them was conducted personally by Suvorov, who also volunteered to escort the impostor to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was taking place. To transport Pugachev, a tight cage was made, installed on a two-wheeled cart, in which, chained hand and foot, he could not even turn around. In Simbirsk, he was interrogated for five days by P. S. Potemkin, the head of the secret investigative commissions, and Count. P.I. Panin, commander of the government's punitive forces.

Perfilyev and his detachment were captured on September 12 after a battle with punitive forces near the Derkul River.

Pugachev under escort. Engraving from the 1770s

At this time, in addition to scattered centers of uprising, military operations in Bashkiria were of an organized nature. Salavat Yulaev, together with his father Yulay Aznalin, led the insurgent movement on the Siberian Road, Karanay Muratov, Kachkyn Samarov, Selyausin Kinzin on Nogaiskaya, Bazargul Yunaev, Yulaman Kushaev and Mukhamet Safarov - in the Bashkir Trans-Urals. They pinned down a significant contingent of government troops. At the beginning of August, a new assault on Ufa was even launched, but as a result of poor organization of interaction between various detachments, it was unsuccessful. Kazakh detachments harassed with raids along the entire border line. Governor Reinsdorp reported: “The Bashkirs and Kyrgyzs are not pacified, the latter constantly cross the Yaik, and grab people from near Orenburg. The troops here are either pursuing Pugachev or blocking his path, and I can’t go against the Kyrgyz people, I admonish the Khan and the Saltans. They replied that they could not hold back the Kyrgyz, whose entire horde was rebelling.” With the capture of Pugachev and the dispatch of liberated government troops to Bashkiria, the transition of Bashkir elders to the side of the government began, many of them joined the punitive detachments. After the capture of Kanzafar Usaev and Salavat Yulaev, the uprising in Bashkiria began to decline. Salavat Yulaev gave his last battle on November 20 under the Katav-Ivanovsky plant besieged by him and after the defeat he was captured on November 25. But individual rebel groups in Bashkiria continued to resist until the summer of 1775.

Until the summer of 1775, unrest continued in the Voronezh province, in the Tambov district and along the Khopru and Vorone rivers. Although the operating detachments were small and there was no coordination of joint actions, according to eyewitness Major Sverchkov, “many landowners, leaving their homes and savings, move to remote places, and those who remain in their houses save their lives from threatened death by spending the night in the forests”. The frightened landowners declared that “If the Voronezh provincial chancellery does not speed up the extermination of those villainous gangs, then the same bloodshed will inevitably follow as happened in the last rebellion.”

To stem the wave of riots, punitive detachments began mass executions. In every village, in every town that received Pugachev, on the gallows and “verbs”, from which they barely had time to remove the officers, landowners, and judges hanged by the impostor, they began to hang the leaders of the riots and the city heads and atamans of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites. To enhance the terrifying effect, the gallows were installed on rafts and floated along the main rivers of the uprising. In May, Khlopushi was executed in Orenburg: his head was placed on a pole in the city center. During the investigation, the entire medieval set of proven means was used. In terms of cruelty and number of victims, Pugachev and the government were not inferior to each other.

In November, all the main participants in the uprising were transported to Moscow for a general investigation. They were placed in the building of the Mint at the Iversky Gate of China Town. The interrogations were led by Prince M.N. Volkonsky and Chief Secretary S.I. Sheshkovsky. During interrogation, E. I. Pugachev gave detailed testimony about his relatives, about his youth, about his participation in the Don Cossack Army in the Seven Years and Turkish Wars, about his wanderings around Russia and Poland, about his plans and intentions, about the course of the uprising. Investigators tried to find out whether the initiators of the uprising were agents of foreign states, or schismatics, or anyone from the nobility. Catherine II showed great interest in the progress of the investigation. In the materials of the Moscow investigation, several notes from Catherine II to M.N. Volkonsky were preserved with wishes about the plan in which the investigation should be conducted, which issues require the most complete and detailed investigation, which witnesses should be additionally interviewed. On December 5, M.N. Volkonsky and P.S. Potemkin signed a determination to terminate the investigation, since Pugachev and other defendants could not add anything new to their testimony during interrogations and could not in any way alleviate or aggravate their guilt. In their report to Catherine they were forced to admit that they “...with this investigation being carried out, we tried to find the beginning of the evil undertaken by this monster and his accomplices or... to that evil enterprise by the mentors. But despite all this, nothing else was revealed, such as that in all his villainy, the first beginning took its beginning in the Yaitsky army.

File:Execution of Pugachev.jpg

Execution of Pugachev on Bolotnaya Square. (Drawing by an eyewitness to the execution of A. T. Bolotov)

On December 30, the judges in the case of E.I. Pugachev gathered in the Throne Hall of the Kremlin Palace. They heard Catherine II's manifesto on the appointment of a trial, and then the indictment in the case of Pugachev and his associates was announced. Prince A. A. Vyazemsky offered to bring Pugachev to the next court hearing. Early in the morning of December 31, he was transported under heavy escort from the casemates of the Mint to the chambers of the Kremlin Palace. At the beginning of the meeting, the judges approved the questions that Pugachev had to answer, after which he was brought into the meeting room and forced to kneel. After a formal questioning, he was taken out of the courtroom, the court made a decision: “Emelka Pugachev will be quartered, his head will be stuck on a stake, body parts will be carried to four parts of the city and placed on wheels, and then burned in those places.” The remaining defendants were divided according to the degree of their guilt into several groups for each appropriate type of execution or punishment. On Saturday, January 10, an execution was carried out on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow in front of a huge crowd of people. Pugachev behaved with dignity, ascended to the place of execution, crossed himself at the Kremlin cathedrals, bowed to four sides with the words “Forgive me, Orthodox people.” Those sentenced to quartering E. I. Pugachev and A. P. Perfilyev, the executioner cut off their heads first, this was the wish of the empress. On the same day, M. G. Shigaev, T. I. Podurov and V. I. Tornov were hanged. I. N. Zarubin-Chika was sent for execution to Ufa, where he was quartered in early February 1775.

Sheet metal shop. Painting by Demidov serf artist P. F. Khudoyarov

Pugachev's uprising caused enormous damage to the metallurgy of the Urals. 64 of the 129 factories that existed in the Urals fully joined the uprising; the number of peasants assigned to them was 40 thousand people. The total amount of losses from the destruction and downtime of factories is estimated at 5,536,193 rubles. And although the factories were quickly restored, the uprising forced concessions to be made towards factory workers. The chief investigator in the Urals, Captain S.I. Mavrin, reported that the assigned peasants, whom he considered the leading force of the uprising, supplied the impostor with weapons and joined his troops, because the factory owners oppressed their assigned peasants, forcing the peasants to travel long distances to the factories and did not allow them engaged in arable farming and sold them food at inflated prices. Mavrin believed that drastic measures must be taken to prevent similar unrest in the future. Catherine wrote to G.A. Potemkin that Mavrin “what he says about the factory peasants is all very thorough, and I think that there is nothing else to do with them but to buy factories and, when they are state-owned, then provide the peasants with benefits.”. On May 19, a manifesto was published on the general rules for the use of assigned peasants in state-owned and private enterprises, which somewhat limited factory owners in the use of peasants assigned to factories, limited the working day and increased wages.

There were no significant changes in the situation of the peasantry.

Research and collections of archival documents

• A. S. Pushkin “The History of Pugachev” (censored title - “The History of the Pugachev Rebellion”)
• Grot Y. K. Materials for the history of the Pugachev rebellion (Papers of Kara and Bibikov). St. Petersburg, 1862
• Dubrovin N.F. Pugachev and his accomplices. An episode from the reign of Empress Catherine II. 1773-1774 Based on unpublished sources. T. 1-3. St. Petersburg, type. N. I. Skorokhodova, 1884
• Pugachevism. Collection of documents.

Volume 1. From the Pugachev archive. Documents, decrees, correspondence. M.-L., Gosizdat, 1926. Volume 2. From investigative materials and official correspondence. M.-L., Gosizdat, 1929 Volume 3. From the Pugachev archive. M.-L., Sotsekgiz, 1931

• Peasant War 1773-1775 in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. M., 1973
• Peasant War 1773-1775 on the territory of Bashkiria. Collection of documents. Ufa, 1975
• Peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev in Chuvashia. Collection of documents. Cheboksary, 1972
• Peasant war led by Emelyan Pugachev in Udmurtia. Collection of documents and materials. Izhevsk, 1974
• Gorban N.V., The peasantry of Western Siberia in the peasant war of 1773-75. // Questions of history. 1952. No. 11.
• Muratov Kh. I. Peasant War 1773-1775. in Russia. M., Voenizdat, 1954

Art

Pugachev's uprising in fiction

• A. S. Pushkin “The Captain's Daughter”
• S. P. Zlobin. "Salavat Yulaev"
• E. Fedorov “Stone Belt” (novel). Book 2 “Heirs”
• V. Ya. Shishkov “Emelyan Pugachev (novel)”
• V. Buganov “Pugachev” (biography in the series “Life of Remarkable People”)
• Mashkovtsev V. “Golden Flower - Overcome” (historical novel). - Chelyabinsk, South Ural Book Publishing House, ISBN 5-7688-0257-6.

Cinema

• Pugachev () - feature film. Director Pavel Petrov-Bytov
• Emelyan Pugachev () - historical duology: “Slaves of Freedom” and “Will Washed in Blood” directed by Alexei Saltykov
• The Captain's Daughter () - a feature film based on the story of the same name by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
• Russian Revolt () - a historical film based on the works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin “The Captain's Daughter” and “The Story of Pugachev”

Links

• The Peasant War led by Pugachev on the website History of the Orenburg Region
• Peasant War led by Pugachev (TSB)
• Gvozdikova I. Salavat Yulaev: historical portrait (“Belskie Prostori”, 2004)
• Collection of documents on the history of the Pugachev uprising on the website Vostlit.info
• Maps: Map of the lands of the Yaitsk army, Orenburg region and the Southern Urals, Map of the Saratov province (maps of the early 20th century)