Pugachev uprising. Peasant war led by E.I. Pugacheva 1773 1775

Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev

“Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev is a hero and an impostor, a sufferer and a rebel, a sinner and a saint ... But first of all, he is the leader of the people, a personality, of course, exceptional - otherwise he could not have drawn thousands of armies with him and led them into battle for two years. Raising an uprising, Pugachev knew that the people would follow him ”(G.M. Nesterov, local historian).

A similar idea is expressed in his painting by the artist T. Nazarenko. Her painting "Pugachev", in which she did not strive for a truly historical reconstruction of events, depicts a scene reminiscent of old folk oleography. On it are puppet figures of soldiers in bright uniforms and a conditional cage with a rebellious leader in the pose of a crucified Christ. And in front on a wooden horse, Generalissimo Suvorov: it was he who brought the “chief troublemaker” to Moscow. The second part of the picture, stylized as the era of the reign of Catherine II and the Pugachev rebellion, is written in a completely different manner - the famous portrait from the Historical Museum, in which Pugachev is written 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. Companions refused Pugachev, dooming him to death. That's how it always happens."

T. Nazarenko "Pugachev". Diptych

Numerous legends, legends, epics, legends go about Pugachev and his associates. 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 with all the differences of opinion, the Pugachev uprising is a significant milestone in Russian history. And no matter how tragic the story, it must be known and respected.

How it all began?

The reason for the start of the Peasants' War, which engulfed vast territories and attracted several hundred thousand people into the ranks of the rebels, was the miraculous announcement of the saved "Tsar Peter Fedorovich". You can read about it on our website:. But let us 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 enthroned his wife, Catherine II, and soon lost his life. Personality and activities Peter III for a long time were regarded by historians unanimously negatively, but then they began to treat him more balanced, evaluating a number of state merits of the emperor. During the reign of Catherine II, many people pretended to be Pyotr Fedorovich impostors(about forty cases recorded), the most famous of which was Emelyan Pugachev.

L. Pfantzelt "Portrait of Emperor Peter III"

Who is he?

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

He took part in the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763, with his regiment he 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 Yesaul Elisey Yakovlev to search for and return to Russia the fled Old Believers.

Participated in the Russian-Turkish war, where he fell ill and was dismissed, but was 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 skete of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Saratov region with the rector Filaret, from whom he heard about the unrest in the Yaik army. Some time later, in a conversation with one of the participants in the uprising of 1772, Denis Pyanov, for the first time, he called himself the surviving Peter III: “I’m not a merchant, but Tsar Pyotr Fedorovich, I was there in Tsaritsyn, that God and good people saved me, but instead of me they spotted a guard soldier, and in St. Petersburg one officer saved me”. Upon his return to the Mechetnaya Sloboda, on the denunciation of the peasant Filippov Pugachev, who was with him on a trip, they arrested and sent him for investigation, first to Simbirsk, then in January 1773 to Kazan.

Portrait of Pugachev, painted from nature with oil paints (the inscription on the portrait: "A real image of the rebel and deceiver Emelka Pugachev")

Having escaped again and again calling himself "Emperor Pyotr Fedorovich", he began to meet with the instigators of previous uprisings and discussed with them the possibility of a new performance. Then he found a competent person to draw up "royal decrees". In Mechetnaya Sloboda, he was identified, but again managed to escape and get to Talovy Umet, where the 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 escape" and discussed the possibility of a rebellion.

At this time, the commandant of the government garrison in the Yaik 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 for the uprising was ready. Not many Cossacks believed that Pugachev was Peter III, but everyone followed him. Hiding his illiteracy, he did not sign his manifestos; however, his “autograph” was preserved on a separate sheet, imitating the text of a written document, about which he told 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 a fertile ground for the event to happen.

Yaik Cossacks were the main driving force uprisings. Throughout the 18th century, they gradually lost their privileges and liberties, but the memory still remained of the times of complete independence from Moscow and Cossack democracy. In the 1730s, there was an almost complete split of the troops into the foreman and military sides. The situation was aggravated by the monopoly on salt introduced by the tsar's decree in 1754. The army's economy was entirely built on the sale of fish and caviar, and salt was a strategic product. The ban on the free extraction of salt and the appearance of salt tax farmers among the top of the army 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 with a complaint against the atamans and local authorities. Sometimes they reached 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 of Russia. General Traubenberg went with a detachment of soldiers to investigate disobedience to the order. The result was the Yaik Cossack uprising of 1772, during which General Traubenberg and the military ataman of Tambov were killed. Troops were sent to put down the uprising. The rebels were defeated near 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 Yaik town, and all power over the army passed into the hands of the commandant of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel I. D. Simonov. The massacre of the captured instigators was extremely cruel and made a depressing impression on the army: the Cossacks had never been branded before, their tongues had not been cut out. A large number of participants in the speech took refuge in distant steppe farms, excitement reigned everywhere, the state of the Cossacks was like a compressed spring.

V. Perov "Court of Pugachev"

Tension was also present in the environment Gentile peoples of the Urals and the Volga region. The development of the Urals and the colonization of the lands of the Volga region, which belonged to local nomadic peoples, intolerant religious policy led to numerous unrest among the Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Erzyans, Chuvashs, Udmurts, 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 plants, allowing new breeders to buy serf villages and granting the informal right to keep fugitive serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories , tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and expulsion of all fugitives. It was very convenient to take advantage of the lack of rights and hopeless situation of the fugitives: if someone began to express dissatisfaction with their position, they were immediately handed over to the authorities for punishment. Former peasants resisted forced labor in factories.

Peasants, assigned to state and private factories, dreamed of returning to their usual village work. To top it all, 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 carry so many people with him. Fantastic rumors about imminent liberty or about the transition of all peasants to the treasury, about the ready decree of the tsar, who was killed by his wife and boyars for this, that the tsar was not killed, but he hides until better times fell on the fertile ground of general human dissatisfaction with his current position . There was simply no other opportunity to defend their interests with all groups of future participants in the performance.

Insurrection

First step

The internal readiness of the Yaik Cossacks for the uprising was high, but for the speech there was not enough unifying idea, a core that would rally the sheltered and hidden participants in the unrest of 1772. The rumor that Emperor Pyotr Fedorovich, who had miraculously escaped, 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, addressed with a manifesto in which he granted all those who joined him “a river from the peaks to the mouth, and earth, and herbs, and monetary salaries, and lead , and gunpowder, and grain provisions. At the head of his constantly replenished detachment, Pugachev approached Orenburg and laid siege to it. Here the question arises: why did Pugachev restrain his forces with this siege?

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

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

Map of the fighting of the Peasants' War

Second phase

In the second stage, the Bashkirs, who by that time had already made up the majority in the Pugachev army, massively participate in the uprising. At the same time, government forces became very active. This forced Pugachev to move towards Kazan, and then in mid-July 1774 to move to the right bank of the Volga. Even before the start of the battle, Pugachev announced that he would go from Kazan to Moscow. Word of this spread throughout the neighborhood. Despite the major defeat of the Pugachev army, the uprising swept the entire western bank of the Volga. Having crossed the Volga at Kokshaisk, Pugachev replenished his army with thousands of peasants. And Salavat Yulaev at that time with his detachments continued the fighting near Ufa, the detachments of the Bashkirs in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. Pugachev entered Kurmysh, then entered Alatyr without hindrance, and then headed towards Saransk. On the central square of Saransk, a decree on freedom for the peasants was read out, the residents were given supplies of salt and bread, the city treasury “driving through the city fortress and along the streets ... they threw 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 swept 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 the peasants) in Saransk and Penza is called the culmination of the Peasants' 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 Pugachev's army anything in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments acted no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev's campaign along 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 the army of Pugachev or its individual detachments approached, the peasants knitted or killed their landowners and their clerks, hanged local officials, burned estates, smashed shops and shops. In total, in the summer of 1774, about 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed.

Thus ends the second phase 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 threatening 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 in the Danubian principalities. Panin instructed Suvorov to command 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 stepped up surveillance and sent informants to crowded places to grab all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who was pursuing the rebels from Kazan, turned towards Arzamas in order to block the road to the old capital. General Mansurov set out from Yaitsky town to Syzran, General Golitsyn - to Saransk. Everywhere Pugachev leaves rebellious villages behind him: “Not only peasants, but priests, monks, even archimandrites revolt sensitive and insensitive people”. But Pugachev turned south from Penza. Perhaps he wanted to attract the Volga and Don Cossacks to his ranks - the Yaik Cossacks were already tired of the war. But it was precisely in these days that a conspiracy of Cossack colonels began with the aim of surrendering 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 with 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 of whose members, together with the leader, Academician Georg Lovitz, were hanged along with local officials who did not have time to escape. They were joined by a detachment of 3,000 Kalmyks, followed by the villages of the Volga Cossack army Antipovskaya and Karavainskaya. August 21, 1774 Pugachev tried to attack Tsaritsyn, but the assault failed.

The Michelson corps pursued Pugachev, and he hastily lifted the siege from Tsaritsyn, moving towards the Black Yar. Panic broke out in Astrakhan. August 24 Pugachev was overtaken by Michelson. Realizing that the battle could not be avoided, the Pugachevites lined up battle formations. On August 25, the last major battle of the troops under the command of Pugachev with the tsarist troops took place. The battle began with a major setback - all 24 guns of the rebel army were repulsed by a cavalry charge. In a fierce battle, more than 2,000 rebels died, among them Ataman Ovchinnikov. Over 6,000 people were taken prisoner. Pugachev with 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 Yaitsky town, Simbirsk, Orenburg.

Pugachev under escort. 18th century engraving

Pugachev fled with a detachment of Cossacks to Uzen, not knowing that since mid-August some colonels had been discussing the possibility of earning forgiveness by surrendering the impostor. Under the pretext of facilitating the escape from the chase, 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 Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Curds went to the Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they notified the accomplices, and on September 15 they delivered Pugachev to the Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of which was personally conducted by Suvorov, who also volunteered to escort Pugachev to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was underway. For the transportation of Pugachev, a cramped cage was made, mounted on a two-wheeled cart, in which, shackled hand and foot, he could not even turn around. In Simbirsk, for five days, he was interrogated by P. S. Potemkin, head of the secret investigative commissions, and Count P. I. Panin, commander of the government's punitive troops.

Continuation of the Peasants' War

With the capture of Pugachev, the war did not end - 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 landlords left their homes and hid from the rebels. To bring down the wave of rebellions, punitive detachments began mass executions. In every village, in every town that received Pugachev, on the gallows, from which they barely had time to remove those hanged by Pugachev, they began to hang the leaders of the riots and the city heads and chieftains of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites. To increase intimidation, the gallows were mounted on rafts and launched along the main rivers of the uprising. In May, Khlopushi was executed in Orenburg: his head was placed on a pole in the center of the city. During the investigation, the entire medieval set of tested means was used. In terms of cruelty and the number of victims, Pugachev and the government did not yield to each other.

"Gallows on the Volga" (illustration by N. N. Karazin for "The Captain's Daughter" by A. S. Pushkin)

The 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 building of the Mint at the Iberian Gates of Kitay-gorod. 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 course of the investigation. She even advised how best to conduct an inquiry and what questions to ask.

Judgment and execution

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

On January 10, 1775, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, with a huge gathering of people, an execution was carried out. Pugachev kept 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, sentenced to quartering E.I. Pugachev and A.P. Perfilyev, the executioner first cut off their heads. 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.

"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 the previous peasant wars. The role of the instigator of the war is played by the Cossacks, in many respects both social requirements and the motives of the rebels are similar. But there are also significant differences: 1) the coverage of a vast territory, which had no precedent in previous history; 2) different organization of the movement from the rest, the creation of central organs of command and control of 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 on the renaming of all places associated with these events. village Zimoveyskaya on the Don, where Pugachev was born, was renamed in Potemkinskaya, the house where Pugachev was born was ordered to burn. Yaik River was renamed to 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 ruling Senate

“... for the complete oblivion of this unfortunate incident that followed on Yaik, the river Yaik, along which both this army and the city had its name until now, due to the fact that this river flows from
Ural Mountains, to rename the Urals, and therefore the army to be called Ural, and henceforth not to be called Yaitsky, and the Yaitsky city will henceforth be called Uralsk; about what for information and execution
sim and published.

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

The Pugachev uprising caused great 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 on the general rules for the use of assigned peasants in state-owned and particular enterprises, which limited breeders in the use of peasants assigned to factories, reduced the working day and increased wages.

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

Postage stamp of the USSR 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 write petitions to Orenburg and St. Petersburg, send the so-called "winter villages" - delegates from the army with a complaint against the atamans and local authorities. Sometimes they reached 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 of Russia. General Traubenberg went with a detachment of soldiers to investigate direct disobedience to the order. The result of the punishments carried out by him was the Yaik Cossack uprising of 1772, during which General Traubenberg and the military ataman of Tambov were killed. Troops under the command of General F. Yu. Freiman were sent to suppress the uprising. The rebels were defeated near 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 Yaik town, and all power over the army passed into the hands of the commandant of the garrison, Lieutenant Colonel I. D. Simonov. The perpetrated massacre of the captured instigators was extremely cruel and made a depressing impression on the army: the Cossacks had never been stigmatized before, their tongues had not been cut out. A large number of participants in the speech 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 the Volga region. The development of the Urals that began in the 18th century and the active colonization of the lands of the Volga region, the construction and development of military border lines, the expansion of the Orenburg, Yaik and Siberian Cossack troops with the allocation of land that previously belonged to local nomadic peoples, intolerant religious policy led to numerous unrest among the Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, Mordovians, Chuvashs, Udmurts, Kalmyks (most of the latter, having broken through the Yaik border line, migrated to Western China in 1771).

The situation in the rapidly 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 breeders to buy serf villages and granting an unofficial right to keep fugitive serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories , tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and expulsion of all fugitives. At the same time, it was very convenient to take advantage of the lawlessness and hopeless situation of the fugitives, and if someone began to express dissatisfaction with their position, they were immediately handed over to the authorities for punishment. Former peasants resisted forced labor in factories.

Peasants assigned to state and private factories dreamed of returning to their usual village labor, while the situation of peasants in serf estates was little better. The economic situation in the country, which was almost constantly waging one war after another, was difficult, in addition, the gallant age required the nobles to follow the latest fashions and trends. Therefore, the landlords increase the area of ​​crops, the corvee increases. The peasants themselves become a marketable commodity, they are mortgaged, exchanged, they simply lose by entire villages. On top of this, the Decree of Catherine II of August 22, 1767 on the prohibition of peasants to complain about the landowners followed. In conditions of complete impunity and personal dependence, the slavish position of the peasants is aggravated by the whims, whims, or real crimes happening on the estates, and most of them were left without investigation and consequences.

In this situation, the most fantastic rumors about imminent liberty or about the transfer of all peasants to the treasury easily found their way, about the ready decree of the tsar, who was killed by his wife and boyars for this, that the tsar was not killed, but he hides until better times - all of them fell on the fertile ground of general human dissatisfaction with their present position. There was simply no legal opportunity to defend their interests with all groups of future participants in the performance.

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 rally the hiding and hiding participants in the unrest of 1772. The rumor that Emperor Peter Fedorovich, who had miraculously escaped, appeared in the army (Emperor Peter III, who died during the coup after a six-month reign), instantly spread throughout Yaik.

Few of the Cossack leaders believed in the resurrected tsar, but everyone looked to see if this man was capable of leading, gathering 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 (before that, Stepan Razin and Kondraty Bulavin had already given Russian history), a participant in the Seven Years' War and the war with Turkey 1768-1774.

Finding himself in the Trans-Volga steppes in the autumn of 1772, he stopped in Mechetnaya Sloboda and here, from the abbot of the Old Believer skete Filaret, he learned about unrest among the Yaik Cossacks. It is not known for certain where the idea to call himself a tsar was born in his head and what his initial plans were, but in November 1772 he arrived in the Yaitsky town and called himself Peter III at meetings with the Cossacks. Upon returning to the 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 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 Yaik 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 "king". From here, a detachment of 80 Cossacks headed up the Yaik. New supporters joined along the way, so that by the time September 18 arrived at the Yaitsky town, 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, from among those sent by the commandant Simonov to defend the town, went over to the side of the impostor. A second attack by the rebels on September 19 was also repelled 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 camped near the Iletsk town.

A circle was convened here, on which Andrey Ovchinnikov was elected as a marching ataman, all the Cossacks swore allegiance to the great sovereign Emperor Peter Fedorovich, after which Pugachev sent Ovchinnikov to the Iletsk town with decrees to the Cossacks: “ And whatever you wish, all benefits and salaries will not be denied to you; and your glory will not expire until forever; and both you and your descendants are the first in my presence, the great sovereign, learn» . Despite the opposition of the Iletsk ataman Portnov, Ovchinnikov convinced the local Cossacks to join the uprising, and they greeted Pugachev with bells and bread and salt.

All Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Pugachev. The first execution took place: according to the complaints of the inhabitants - "he did great offenses to them and ruined them" - Portnov was hanged. A separate regiment was made up of the Iletsk Cossacks, headed by Ivan Tvorogov, the army got 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 vast region under the control of the hated Reinsdorp. On the way to Orenburg, there were small fortresses of the Nizhne-Yaitskaya distance of the Orenburg military line. The garrison of the fortresses was, as a rule, mixed - Cossacks and soldiers, their life and service are 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 from it. Cossacks were sent to the ramparts, who managed to convey Pugachev's decree to the troops of the garrison with a call to lay down their arms and join the "sovereign". In response, cannons from the city rampart began shelling 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. On October 7, a military council 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 the transition of soldiers and Cossacks to the side of Pugachev. The raid showed that the soldiers fought reluctantly, Major Naumov reported that he had discovered “in his subordinates timidity and fear”.

Together with Karanay Muratov, Kaskin 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 from the garrison.

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

In December 1773, Pugachev sent Ataman Mikhail Tolkachev with his decrees to the rulers of the Kazakh Younger Zhuz Nurali Khan and Sultan Dusala with an appeal to join his army, but the Khan decided to wait for developments, only horsemen of the Sarym Datula family joined Pugachev. On the way back, Tolkachev gathered Cossacks in his detachment in the fortresses and outposts on the lower Yaik and went with them to the Yaitsky town, collecting cannons, ammunition and provisions in the accompanying fortresses and outposts. On December 30, Tolkachev approached the Yaik 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 - Kuren. Most of the Cossacks greeted their comrades and joined Tolkachev's detachment, the Cossacks of the senior side, the soldiers of the garrison, led by Lieutenant Colonel Simonov and Captain Krylov, locked themselves in the "retrenchment" - the fortress of the Mikhailo-Arkhangelsk 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 the Pugachev 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, secretary, M. D. Gorshkov.

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

In January 1774, ataman Ovchinnikov led a campaign to the lower reaches of Yaik, to Guryev town, stormed his Kremlin, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks, bringing them to Yaitsky town. At the same time, Pugachev himself arrived in the Yaitsky town. He took over the leadership of the protracted siege of the city fortress of the Mikhailo-Arkhangelsk Cathedral, but after an unsuccessful 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, on which N. A. Kargin was chosen as the military chieftain, and A. P. Perfilyev and I. A. Fofanov as foremen. At the same time, the Cossacks, wanting to finally intermarry the tsar with the army, married him to the young Cossack woman Ustinya Kuznetsova. In the second half of February and early March 1774, Pugachev again personally led attempts to capture the besieged fortress. On February 19, the bell tower of St. Michael's Cathedral was blown up and destroyed by a mine dig, but each time the garrison managed to repulse the attacks of the besiegers.

Detachments of the Pugachevites under the command of Ivan Beloborodov, who grew up to 3 thousand people on the campaign, approached Yekaterinburg, capturing a number of surrounding fortresses and factories along the way, and on January 20 captured the Demidov Shaitansky plant as the main base of their operations.

The situation in the besieged Orenburg by this time was already critical, famine began in the city. Upon learning of the departure of Pugachev and Ovchinnikov with part of the troops to the Yaitsky town, Governor Reinsdorp decided to make a sortie on January 13 to Berdskaya Sloboda to lift the siege. But the unexpected attack did not work, sentinel Cossacks managed to raise the alarm. The chieftains 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 defense line. The Orenburg corps were forced to fight in unfavorable conditions and suffered a severe defeat. With heavy losses, throwing cannons, weapons, ammunition and ammunition, the semi-encircled Orenburg troops hastily retreated to Orenburg under the cover of the city walls, losing only 281 people killed, 13 cannons with all their shells, a lot of weapons, ammunition and ammunition.

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

In early January, the Chelyabinsk Cossacks rebelled and tried to seize power in the city in the hope of getting help from the detachments 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, the 2,000-strong corps of General I. A. Dekolong, who approached from Siberia, entered Chelyaba. Throughout January, battles unfolded on the outskirts of the city, and on February 8, Dekolong took it for the best to leave the city to the Pugachevites.

On February 16, Khlopushi's detachment stormed the Iletsk Protection, killing all the officers, taking possession of weapons, ammunition and provisions, and taking with them convicts, Cossacks and soldiers fit for military service.

Military defeats and expansion of the Peasants' War area

When news reached 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 remnants of the Kara Corps. 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, Kungur, besieged by the Pugachev 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 retreated to Alekseevsk with several dozens of Pugachev’s men who remained with him, but the brigade led by Mansurov defeated his detachments in the battles near Alekseevsk and at the Buzuluk fortress, after which in Sorochinskaya it joined 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 assembled. Soon a government detachment of 6500 people and 25 guns approached the fortress. The battle took place on March 22 and was extremely fierce. Prince Golitsyn wrote in his report to A. Bibikov: “The matter was so important that I did not expect such impudence and orders in such unenlightened people in the military craft, as these defeated rebels are”. When the situation became hopeless, Pugachev decided to return to Berdy. His retreat was left to cover the Cossack regiment of Ataman Ovchinnikov. With his regiment, he staunchly defended 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 captured, all artillery and convoy. Among the dead was ataman Ilya Arapov.

Map of the second stage of the Peasants' War

At the same time, the St. Petersburg Carabinieri Regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson, stationed before that in Poland and aimed at suppressing the uprising, arrived in Kazan on March 2, 1774 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 Chiki-Zarubin, and two days later captured Zarubin himself and his entourage. Having won victories on 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 partisan tactics.

Leaving the Mansurov brigade in the Tatishchev 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 Yaik town, but having met government troops near the Perevolotsk fortress, he was forced to turn to the Sakmar town, where he decided to give battle to Golitsyn. In the battle on April 1, the rebels were again defeated, over 2800 people were captured, including Maxim Shigaev, Andrey 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.

In early April, the brigade of P. D. Mansurov, reinforced by the Izyumsky hussar regiment and the Cossack detachment of the Yaik foreman M. M. Borodin, headed from the Tatishchev fortress to the Yaitsky town. The fortresses of Nizhneozernaya and Rassypnaya, the Iletsk town were taken from the Pugachevites, on April 12 the Cossack rebels were defeated at the Irtets outpost. In an effort to stop the advance of the punishers to their native Yaik town, the Cossacks, led by A. A. Ovchinnikov, A. P. Perfilyev and K. I. Dekhtyarev, decided to meet Mansurov. The meeting took place on April 15, 50 versts east of the Yaitsky town, near the Bykovka River. Having got involved in the battle, the Cossacks could not resist the regular troops, a retreat began, which gradually turned into a stampede. Pursued by the hussars, the Cossacks retreated to the Rubizhny outpost, losing hundreds of people killed, among whom was Dekhtyarev. Gathering people, Ataman Ovchinnikov led a detachment through the deaf steppes to the Southern Urals, to join the troops of Pugachev, who had gone beyond the Belaya River.

On the evening of April 15, when in the Yaik town they learned about the defeat at Bykovka, a group of Cossacks, wanting to curry favor with the punishers, tied up and handed over to Simonov atamans Kargin and Tolkachev. Mansurov entered the Yaitsky town on April 16, finally liberating the city fortress, besieged by the Pugachevites from December 30, 1773. The Cossacks who fled to the steppe were unable to break through to the main area of ​​the uprising, in May-July 1774, the teams of the Mansurov brigade and the Cossacks of the foreman's side began searching and defeating the rebel detachments of F. I. Derbetev, S. L Rechkina, I. A. Fofanova.

In early April 1774, the corps of Second Major Gagrin, who approached from Yekaterinburg, defeated Tumanov's detachment located in Chelyaba. And on May 1, the team of Lieutenant Colonel D. Kandaurov, who approached from Astrakhan, recaptured the Guryev town from the rebels.

On April 9, 1774, AI Bibikov, commander of military operations against Pugachev, died. After him, Catherine II entrusted the command of the troops to lieutenant general F. F. Shcherbatov, as a senior in rank. Offended by the fact that it was not him who was appointed to the post of commander of the troops, sending small teams to the nearest fortresses and villages to conduct investigations and punishments, General Golitsyn with the main forces of his corps stayed in Orenburg for three months. The 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 the Demidov serf artist V. P. Khudoyarov

On the morning of May 5, Pugachev's 5,000-strong detachment approached the Magnetic Fortress. By this time, Pugachev's detachment consisted mainly of poorly armed factory peasants and a small number of personal Yaik guards under the command of Myasnikov, the detachment did not have a single gun. The beginning of the assault on Magnitnaya was unsuccessful, about 500 people died in the battle, Pugachev himself was wounded in his right hand. After withdrawing the troops from the fortress and discussing the situation, the rebels, under the cover of night darkness, undertook try again and were able to break into the fortress and capture it. As trophies got 10 guns, guns, ammunition. On May 7, detachments of chieftains A. Ovchinnikov, A. Perfilyev, I. Beloborodov and S. Maksimov pulled up to Magnitnaya from different sides.

Heading up the Yaik, the rebels captured the fortresses of Karagay, Petropavlovsk and Stepnoy, and on May 20 they approached the largest Troitskaya. By this time, the detachment consisted of 10 thousand people. During the assault, the garrison tried to repulse the attack with artillery fire, but overcoming desperate resistance, the rebels broke into Troitskaya. Pugachev got artillery with shells and stocks of gunpowder, stocks of food and fodder. On the morning of May 21, the insurgents who were resting after the battle were attacked by the Dekolong corps. 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 at that time in Bashkiria, east of Ufa, resistance to the Michelson detachment, covering Pugachev's army from his stubborn pursuit. In the battles that took place on May 6, 8, 17, 31, Salavat, although he did not succeed in them, did not allow significant losses to be inflicted on his troops. On June 3, he joined up 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 Michelson. Neither side achieved the desired success. Retreating north, Pugachev regrouped his forces while Mikhelson withdrew to Ufa to drive off the Bashkir detachments operating near the city and resupply ammunition and provisions.

Taking advantage of the respite, Pugachev headed to Kazan. On June 10, the Krasnoufimskaya fortress was taken, 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 troops under the command of Ivan Beloborodov and Salavat Yulaev approached the Kama town of Ose and blocked the city fortress. Four days later, the main forces of Pugachev came here and started 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”) appeared to Pugachev, posing as the envoy of Tsarevich Paul 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 mastered the Wasp, Pugachev ferried 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 the first days of 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 miles 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 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 the main districts of the city were taken, the garrison remaining in the city locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin and prepared for the siege. A strong fire began in the city, in addition, Pugachev received news of the approach of Michelson's troops, who were following him on the heels of 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 15 July. Pugachev's army numbered 25 thousand people, but most of them were lightly armed peasants who had just joined the uprising, Tatar and Bashkir cavalry armed with bows, and a small number of remaining Cossacks. Competent actions of Mikhelson, who first of all hit 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 to the public

We welcome this nominal decree with our royal and paternal
the mercy of all who were formerly in the peasantry and
in the citizenship of the landowners, to be loyal slaves
our own crown; and reward with an ancient cross
and prayer, heads and beards, liberty and freedom
and forever Cossacks, without requiring recruitment kits, capitation
and other monetary taxes, possession of lands, forests,
hayfields and fishing grounds, and salt pans
without purchase and without quitrent; and we free everyone from the previously committed
from the villains of the nobles and Gradtsk bribe-takers-judges to the peasant and everything
the people of imposed taxes and burdens. And we wish you the salvation of souls
and calm in the light of life, for which we have tasted and endured
from the prescribed villains-nobles, wanderings and considerable disasters.

And how is our name now by the power of the Almighty right hand in Russia
flourishes, for this sake we command this by our nominal decree:
who used to be nobles in their estates and vodchinas - these
opponents of our power and rebellions of the empire and despoilers
peasants, to catch, execute and hang, and to do likewise
how they, not having Christianity in themselves, repaired with you, the peasants.
After the extermination of which opponents and villainous nobles, anyone can
to feel the silence and calm life, which will continue until the century.

Given on July 31st, 1774.

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

emperor and autocrat of the All-Russian and other,

And passing, and passing.

Even before the start of the battle on July 15, Pugachev announced in the camp that he would go from Kazan to Moscow. The rumor of this instantly spread to all the nearest villages, estates and towns. Despite the major defeat of the Pugachev army, the flames of the uprising engulfed the entire western bank of the Volga. Having crossed the Volga at Kokshaisk, below the village of Sundyr, Pugachev replenished his army with thousands of peasants. By this time, Salavat Yulaev and his detachments continued fighting near Ufa, the Bashkir detachments in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. On July 20, Pugachev entered Kurmysh, on the 23rd he entered Alatyr without hindrance, after which he headed for Saransk. On July 28, a decree on freedom for the peasants was read out on the central square of Saransk, the residents were given supplies of salt and bread, the city treasury “driving through the city fortress and along the streets ... they threw the mob that had come from different districts”. On July 31, the same solemn meeting awaited Pugachev in Penza. The decrees caused numerous peasant uprisings 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, really threatened Moscow.

The publication of decrees (in fact, manifestos on the liberation of the 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 seized 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 Pugachev's army anything in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments acted no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev's campaign along 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 the army of Pugachev or its individual detachments approached, the peasants knitted or killed their landlords and their clerks, hanged local officials, burned estates, smashed shops and shops. In total, at least 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed in the summer of 1774.

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. rebels. General F.F. Shcherbatov was expelled from this post on July 22, and by decree of July 29, Catherine II endowed Panin with emergency powers "in suppressing the 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 in 1770 received the Order of St. George I class, distinguished himself in that battle and the Don cornet Emelyan Pugachev.

To speed up the conclusion of peace, the terms of the Kuchuk-Kaynarji peace treaty were softened, and the troops released on the Turkish borders - only 20 cavalry and infantry regiments - were withdrawn from the armies for action against Pugachev. As Ekaterina noted, against Pugachev “there are so many troops dressed up that such an army was almost terrible to the neighbors”. It is noteworthy that in August 1774 Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilievich Suvorov, at that time already one of the most successful Russian generals, was withdrawn from the 1st Army, which was in the Danubian principalities. Panin instructed Suvorov to command 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 was expecting his march to Moscow. In Moscow, where the memories of the Plague Riot of 1771 were still fresh, seven regiments were pulled together under the personal command of P.I. Panin. The Moscow governor-general, Prince M.N. Volkonsky, ordered that artillery be placed near his house. The police stepped up surveillance and sent informants to crowded places in order to grab all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who received the rank of colonel in July and pursued the rebels from Kazan, turned to Arzamas in order to block the road to the old capital. General Mansurov set out from Yaitsky town to Syzran, General Golitsyn - to Saransk. The punitive teams of Mufel and Mellin reported that everywhere Pugachev left rebellious villages behind him and they did not have time to pacify them all. “Not only peasants, but priests, monks, even archimandrites revolt 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 kept the landowner Dubensky under arrest to extradite him to Pugachev. I wanted to free him, but the village rebelled and dispersed the team. From that moment I went to the villages of Mr. Vysheslavtsev and Prince Maksyutin, but I also found them under arrest by the peasants, and I freed them, and took them to Verkhniy Lomov; from the village Maksyutin I saw as mountains. Kerensk was on fire, and returning to Verkhniy Lomov, he found out that all the inhabitants, except for the clerks, had rebelled when they learned about the construction of Kerensk. Instigators: one-palace Yak. Gubanov, Matv. Bochkov, and the Streltsy settlement of the tenth Bezborod. I wanted to seize them and present them to Voronezh, but the inhabitants not only did not allow me to do so, but they almost put me under their own guard, but I left them and heard the cry of the rioters 2 miles from the city. I don’t know how it all ended, but I heard that Kerensk, with the help of captured Turks, fought off the villain. On my journey everywhere I noticed among the people the spirit of rebellion and a tendency to the Pretender. Especially in the Tanbovsky district, the departments of Prince. Vyazemsky, in economic peasants, who, for the arrival of Pugachev, fixed bridges everywhere and repaired roads. In addition to that village of Lipny, the headman with the tenths, honoring me as an accomplice of the villain, came to me and fell on their knees.

Map of the final stage of the uprising

But Pugachev turned south from Penza. Most historians indicate that Pugachev's plans to attract the Volga and, especially, the Don Cossacks into their ranks are the reason for this. It is possible that another reason was the desire of the Yaik Cossacks, tired of fighting and having already lost their main chieftains, 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 the fact that it was during these days that a 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 surrounded Saratov. The governor with a 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 an appeal to join his army. But by this time, the punitive detachments under the general 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, they went down the Volga to Kamyshin, which, like many cities before it, met Pugachev with bells and bread and salt. Near Kamyshin in the German colonies, Pugachev's troops collided with the Astrakhan astronomical expedition of the Academy of Sciences, many of whose members, together with the leader, Academician Georg Lovitz, were hanged along with local officials who had not managed to escape. Lovitz's son, Tobias, later also an academician, managed to survive. Having attached a 3,000-strong detachment of Kalmyks to themselves, the rebels entered the villages of the Volga army Antipovskaya and Karavainskaya, where they received wide support and from where messengers were sent to the Don with decrees on joining the Donets to the uprising. A detachment of government troops approaching 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 Host. 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 thousandth detachment of Don Cossacks under the command of the field ataman Perfilov arrived.

"The true image 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 the arriving Michelson corps, Pugachev hastened to lift the siege from Tsaritsyn, the rebels moved to the Black Yar. Panic broke out in Astrakhan. On August 24, at the Solenikova fishing gang, Pugachev was overtaken by Mikhelson. Realizing that the battle could not be avoided, the Pugachevites lined up battle formations. On August 25, the last major battle of the troops under the command of Pugachev with the tsarist troops took place. The battle began with a major setback - all 24 guns of the rebel army were repulsed by a cavalry charge. In a fierce battle, more than 2,000 rebels died, among them ataman Ovchinnikov. Over 6,000 people were taken prisoner. Pugachev with the Cossacks, breaking up into small detachments, fled across the Volga. In pursuit of them, search detachments of Generals Mansurov and Golitsyn, the Yait foreman Borodin and the Don Colonel Tavinsky were sent. Not having time for the battle, Lieutenant General Suvorov also wished to participate in the capture. During August-September, most of the participants in the uprising were caught and sent for investigation to Yaitsky town, Simbirsk, Orenburg.

Pugachev fled to Uzen with a detachment of Cossacks, not knowing that since mid-August Chumakov, Curds, Fedulev and some other colonels had been discussing the possibility of earning forgiveness by surrendering the impostor. Under the pretext of facilitating the escape from the chase, they divided the detachment so as to separate the Cossacks loyal to Pugachev along with the ataman Perfilyev. On September 8, near the Bolshoi Uzen River, they pounced and tied Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Curds went to the Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they notified the accomplices, and on September 15 they delivered Pugachev to the Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of them was personally conducted by Suvorov, he also volunteered to escort the impostor to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was going on. For the transportation of Pugachev, a cramped cage was made, mounted on a two-wheeled cart, in which, shackled hand and foot, he could not even turn around. In Simbirsk, for five days, he was interrogated by P. S. Potemkin, head of the secret investigative commissions, and Count P. I. Panin, commander of the government's punitive troops.

Perfiliev and his detachment were captured on September 12 after a battle with punishers near the Derkul River.

Pugachev under escort. Engraving from the 1770s

At this time, in addition to scattered centers of the uprising, hostilities in Bashkiria had an organized character. Salavat Yulaev, together with his father Yulai Aznalin, led the rebel movement on the Siberian road, Karanai Muratov, Kachkyn Samarov, Selyausin Kinzin - on Nogaiskaya, Bazargul Yunaev, Yulaman Kushaev and Mukhamet Safarov - in the Bashkir Trans-Urals. They fettered a significant contingent of government troops. In early August, even a new assault on Ufa was undertaken, but as a result of poor organization of interaction between various detachments, it was unsuccessful. Kazakh detachments were alarmed by raids along the entire length of the border line. Governor Reinsdorp reported: “The Bashkirs and Kirghiz do not pacify, the latter are constantly crossing the Yaik, and people are being grabbed from near Orenburg. The local troops are either pursuing Pugachev or blocking his path, and I can’t go against the Kyrgyz, I exhort the Khan and the Saltans. They answered that they could not keep the Kirghiz, whom the whole horde was rebelling.. With the capture of Pugachev, the direction of the liberated government troops to Bashkiria, the transition of the Bashkir foremen 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 wane. Salavat Yulaev gave his last battle on November 20 under the Katav-Ivanovsky plant besieged by him and, after the defeat, was captured on November 25. But individual rebel detachments in Bashkiria continued to resist until the summer of 1775.

Until the summer of 1775, unrest continued in the Voronezh Governorate, in the Tambov District, and along the Khopra and Vorona rivers. Although the detachments operating were small and there was no coordination of joint actions, according to the eyewitness Major Sverchkov, “many landowners, leaving their homes and savings, drive off to remote places, and those who remain in their houses save their lives from threatening death, spend the night in the forests”. Frightened landlords said that “If the Voronezh provincial office does not speed up the extermination of those villainous gangs that turned out to be, then the same bloodshed will inevitably follow as it happened in the last rebellion.”

To bring down the wave of rebellions, 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 chieftains of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites. To enhance the frightening effect, the gallows were mounted on rafts and launched along the main rivers of the uprising. In May, Khlopushi was executed in Orenburg: his head was placed on a pole in the center of the city. During the investigation, the entire medieval set of tested means was used. In terms of cruelty and the number of victims, Pugachev and the government did not yield to each other.

In November, all the main participants in the uprising were transferred to Moscow for a general investigation. They were placed in the building of the Mint at the Iberian Gates of Kitay-Gorod. 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 participation in the Don Cossack army in the Seven Years and Turkish Wars, about his wanderings in Russia and Poland, about his plans and intentions, about the course of the uprising. The 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 course of the investigation. In the materials of the Moscow investigation, several notes of Catherine II to M.N. Volkonsky were preserved with wishes about the plan in which the inquiry 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 ruling to close the investigation, since Pugachev and other persons under investigation could not add anything new to their testimony during interrogations and could neither alleviate nor aggravate their guilt. In a report to Catherine, they were forced to admit that they “... they tried, during this investigation, to find the beginning of the evil undertaken by this monster and his accomplices, or ... to that evil enterprise by mentors. But for all that, nothing else was revealed, somehow, that in all his villainy, the first beginning took its place in the Yaik army..

The 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 Room of the Kremlin Palace. They heard the manifesto of Catherine II on the appointment of the court, and then the indictment was announced in the case of Pugachev and his associates. Prince A. A. Vyazemsky offered to deliver Pugachev to the next court session. 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 led into the courtroom and forced to kneel. After a formal questioning, he was taken out of the hall, the court made a decision: "Quarter Emelka Pugachev, stick his head on a stake, smash the body parts in four parts of the city and put them on wheels, and then burn them in those places." The rest of the defendants were divided according to the degree of their guilt into several groups for each of them to receive the appropriate type of execution or punishment. On Saturday, January 10, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, with a huge gathering of people, an execution was carried out. Pugachev behaved with dignity, having ascended to the place of execution, crossed himself at the Kremlin cathedrals, bowed on four sides with the words "Forgive me, Orthodox people." Sentenced to quartering E. I. Pugachev and A. P. Perfilyev, the executioner first cut off his head, 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.

Leaf shop. Painting by the Demidov serf artist P.F. Khudoyarov

The Pugachev uprising caused great 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. total amount losses from the destruction and downtime of plants is estimated at 5,536,193 rubles. And although the factories were quickly restored, the uprising forced them to make concessions in relation to the factory workers. The chief investigator in the Urals, Captain S.I. Mavrin, reported that the ascribed peasants, whom he considered the leading force of the uprising, supplied the impostor with weapons and joined his detachments, because the breeders oppressed their ascribed, forcing the peasants to travel long distances to the factories, did not allow them engage in arable farming and sell them products at inflated prices. Mavrin believed that decisive measures must be taken to prevent such unrest in the future. Catherine wrote to G.A. Potemkin that Mavrin “what he says about the factory peasants, everything is very thorough, and I think that there is nothing else to do with them, how to buy factories and, when there are state-owned ones, then make the peasants lighter”. On May 19, 1779, a manifesto was issued on the general rules for the use of assigned peasants in state-owned and particular enterprises, which somewhat limited breeders in the use of peasants assigned to factories, limited the working day and increased wages.

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

Studies and collections of archival documents

• Pushkin A. S. "History of Pugachev" (censored title - "History of the Pugachev rebellion")
• Grotto Ya.K. Materials for the history of the Pugachev rebellion (Papers by Kara and Bibikov). Saint Petersburg, 1862
• Dubrovin N. F. Pugachev and his accomplices. An episode from the reign of Empress Catherine II. 1773-1774 According to unpublished sources. T. 1-3. SPb., type. N. I. Skorokhodova, 1884
• Pugachevshchina. 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 archive of Pugachev. 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. The Peasant War of 1773-1775. in Russia. M., Military Publishing, 1954

Art

Pugachev 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 dilogy: "Slaves of Freedom" and "Will Washed with 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 rebellion () - a historical film based on the works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin " Captain's daughter"and" History of Pugachev "
• Salavat Yulaev () - feature film. Director Yakov Protazanov

Links

• Bolshakov L. N. Orenburg Pushkin Encyclopedia
• Vaganov M. Major Mirzabek Vaganov's report on his mission to Nurali Khan. March-June 1774 / Communication. V. Snezhnevsky // Russian antiquity, 1890. - T. 66. - No. 4. - S. 108-119. - Under the heading: On the history of the Pugachev rebellion. March - 1774 - June in the steppe of the Kirghiz-Kaisaks.
• Military travel journal of the commander of the punitive corps, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhelson I. I., about the 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. - S. 194-223.
• Gvozdikova I. Salavat Yulaev: historical portrait ("Belskie open spaces", 2004)
• Diary of a member of the noble militia of the Kazan province “About Pugachev. His villainous deeds// Peasant war 1773-1775. in Russia. Documents from the collection of the State Historical Museum. - M.: Nauka, 1973. - S. 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) / Soobshch. V. I. Lamansky // Russian archive, 1866. - Issue. 3. - Stb. 388-398.
• Peasant war led by Pugachev on the History of Orenburg region website
• Peasant war led by Pugachev (TSB)
• Kulaginskiy P. N. Pugachevtsy and Pugachev in Tresvyatsky-Yelabug in 1773-1775 / Message P. M. Makarov // Russian antiquity, 1882. - T. 33. - No. 2. - S. 291-312.
• Lopatin. Letter from Arzamas dated September 19, 1774 / Communication. A. I. Yazykov // Russian antiquity, 1874. - T. 10. - No. 7. - S. 617-618. - Under the title: Pugachevshchina.
• Mertvago D. B. Notes of Dmitry Borisovich Mertvago. 1790-1824. - M.: type. Gracheva and K, 1867. - XIV, 340 stb. - App. to the "Russian Archive" for 1867 (Issue 8-9).
• Determination of the Kazan nobility on the assembly of the cavalry corps of troops from their people against Pugachev// Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, 1864. - Book. 3/4. Dep. 5. - S. 105-107.
• Oreus I.I. Ivan Ivanovich Mikhelson, winner of Pugachev. 1740-1807 // Russian antiquity, 1876. - T. 15. - No. 1. - S. 192-209.
• Pugachev sheets in Moscow. 1774 Materials// Russian antiquity, 1875. - T. 13. - No. 6. - S. 272-276. , No. 7. - S. 440-442.
• Pugachevshchina. New materials for the history of the Pugachev region// Russian antiquity, 1875. - T. 12. - No. 2. - S. 390-394; No. 3. - S. 540-544.

• Collection of documents on the history of the Pugachev uprising on the site Vostlit.info
• Cards: Map of the lands of the Yaik army, the Orenburg Territory and the Southern Urals, Map of the Saratov province (maps of the beginning of the 20th century)

In September 1773, on the far 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-serfdom system of Russia in the 18th century. Therefore, in the history of our country, 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 the feudal serfdom. Russia XVIII century, an expression of the acute class struggle of the multinational peasantry of Russia against their oppressors and exploiters - the nobles and landlords, against the noble-landlord state.

The uprising of the peasantry was spontaneous, unorganized. The downtrodden, ignorant, completely illiterate peasantry could not create its own organization and work out its own program. The demands of the rebellious peasants and all the exploited people did not go beyond the desire to have a "good tsar" 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 on the name of Emperor Peter III.

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

The spark of rebellion that broke out on the banks of the Yaik in September 1773 flared up a month later with a bright flame and covered a huge area during the 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 lasted more than a year - from September 1773 to the beginning of 1775. The tsarist government, headed by Catherine II, mobilized large military forces to suppress the uprising. The uprising was brutally crushed. The leader of the uprising, E. Pugachev, who was extradited in September 1774 by traitors to the tsarist authorities, was executed in Moscow on January 10, 1775.

Background of the uprising

Despite the struggle that the Bashkirs waged for decades, the resettlement to Bashkiria increased, the seizure of land continued, the number of estates belonging to the landlords grew; at the same time, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bland that remained in the use of the Bashkirs decreased.

The wealth of the Urals attracted new entrepreneurs who seized vast tracts of land and built factories on them. Almost all major dignitaries, ministers, senators participated with their capital in the construction of metallurgical plants in the Urals, and hence the attitude of the government to the complaints and protests of the Bashkirs.

Bashkirs unite in groups of several people, attack newly built factories and landowners' estates, trying to take revenge on their oppressors. More and more, a situation was created in which the various peoples who inhabited 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 indicates 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 is increasing. In 1784, the breeders seek instructions from the government, according to which the owners of the factories are given the right to attach and use in the factories from 100 to 150 households of state peasants. The peasants attached to the factories were not paid for their work at the factory. Since the population of the region was very rare, peasants from villages located at a great distance were attached to the plant. This type of corvee became even more difficult, since the peasants were cut off from the villages for almost a whole year and did not have the opportunity to work on their farm.

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

There is no way to convey all those techniques and methods that the breeders used in their desire to ruin the peasants, to deprive them of their economic base. They sent special detachments that broke into the villages in the midst of field work, during spring sowing, harvesting, etc., grabbed the peasants, flogged them, tore them away from work and delivered them to the factory under escort. Remained unplowed strips, unharvested crops. The peasants complained to the local authorities, reached the capital itself, but at best they were not accepted, and sometimes even, without examining the case, they were called rebels and imprisoned.

The clerks at the factories were strenuously watching to ensure that there were no "parasites", i.e. not only men, but also women and children. As a result of this exploitation, overcrowding, malnutrition and exhaustion, contagious diseases developed and mortality increased.

The 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, most of the fugitive people were concentrated here. Among them were serfs, various criminals, Old Believers, etc. While there was no decree to fight the fugitives and return them to their place of residence, they lived relatively freely, but after the decree they began to be pursued by detachments of soldiers. Wherever the fugitive appeared, everywhere he was asked “view”, and since there was no “view”, the fugitive was immediately taken away and sent to his homeland to carry out reprisals against him there.

Knowing the lack of rights of the fugitives, the breeders hired them without restriction, and soon the factories turned into a place of concentration of the fugitives. The Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories, tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and expulsion of all the fugitives, and the troops of the Orenburg governor did not have the right to raid the factories.

Taking advantage of the lawlessness and hopeless situation of the fugitives, the breeders put them in the position of slaves, and the slightest discontent, the protest of the fugitives caused repression: the fugitives were immediately seized, given into the hands of soldiers, mercilessly flogged and then sent to hard labor.

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

The position of the serfs was no better. In 1762, Catherine II, the wife of Peter III, came to the throne, assisting in the murder of her husband. Being 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 forbidding peasants to complain about their landowners; those guilty of violating this decree were subjected to exile to hard labor.

With the growth of foreign trade, imported goods appear on the markets: beautiful fine fabrics, high-grade wines, jewelry, various luxury items and trinkets; they could only be purchased with money. But in order to have money, the landowners had to sell something. They could only throw agricultural products on the market, so the landlords increase the area under crops, which puts a new burden on the peasants. Under Catherine, corvee increases to 4 days, and in some areas, in particular in the Orenburg Territory, it reached 6 days a week. The 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 subsistence. 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 on the prohibition of peasants to complain about the landlords gave impetus to the rampant passions of the unbridled Russian master. If Saltychikha, who lived in the center of Russia, tortured up to a hundred people with her own hands, 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 brides and, disgracing them, returned them to the grooms. Peasants were lost at cards, exchanged for dogs, for the slightest offense they were severely beaten with whips, whips, rods.

The peasants, despite the decree, tried to complain to the Orenburg governors. In the Orenburg regional archive, several dozens of “cases” of rape of minors, bullying of pregnant women, peasants flogged with rods, etc. have been preserved, but most of them were left without consequences.

The existing state of affairs was dissatisfied not only with the various peoples inhabiting the region, mining workers and peasants, but also among the Cossacks a dull discontent was ripening, as their former privileges and benefits were gradually abolished.

Fishing was one of the main sources of income for the Cossacks. The Cossacks used fish not only for their food, but they also took 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 economy of the Cossacks. 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 the collection of money for salt was considered a direct encroachment on their rights and property. Class stratification grew in the Cossack environment. The senior elite, led by atamans, takes power into their own hands and uses their position for personal enrichment. The chieftains take over the salt mines and make all the Cossacks dependent. For salt, in addition to the cash payment, chieftains charge in their favor the tenth fish from each catch. But this is not enough. The Yaik Cossacks received a small salary from the treasury for their service, the atamans began to withhold it, allegedly as a 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 commissions of inquiry sent to the Yaitsky town, although they removed the chieftains, but, being supporters of the kulak ruling part, nominated new chieftains 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 instead of themselves to serve in military service. The wealthy had the means for hiring, and this decree, which forbade hiring, met them with hostility, since they again had to serve in the army. The decree was also dissatisfied with a part of the Cossack rabble, which, due to its material insecurity, was forced to replace the sons of wealthy Cossacks in military service for money.

At the same time, service orders are growing, hundreds of Cossacks are taken away from home and sent to various places. With the separation of men from home, farms begin to wither and fall into decay. Indignant at all the growing hardships, the Yaik Cossacks, secretly from their superiors, sent their walkers with a petition to the queen, but the walkers were accepted 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 they had to look for 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 give chase. In response, the Cossacks said that they would not fulfill the requirements of the governor until the privileges and liberties that had been taken away were restored. The Cossacks demanded the return of the right to elect chieftains and other military commanders, demanded the payment of delayed salaries, etc. A detachment of soldiers led by Traunbenberg was sent to the Yaitsky town from Orenburg to clarify the situation.

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

The defeat of the Traunbenberg detachment caused alarm among the provincial authorities, and it was not slow to send fresh military units under the command of General Freiman to the Yaitsky town to suppress the "mutiny". 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. For reprisals against the rebels, specialist executioners were called from different cities, who carried out torture and executions. In its cruelty, this massacre resembles the execution of Urusov. Cossacks were hanged, put on stakes, branded on the body; many were sent to eternal penal servitude. However, these executions aroused the Cossacks even more, and they were ready to light the fire of a new struggle.

The position of the Orenburg Cossacks was no better. They never had those 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 Yaik. Orenburg Cossacks lived in villages scattered throughout the region; as a rule, the villages were built near the fortresses, in which the Cossacks were in military service. In form, they had an elected stanitsa leadership, but in essence they were subordinate to the commandants of the fortresses. The commandants at first extend their power only to men, forcing them to do work in their private household, 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 respects similar to the position of the serfs. Being sovereign and almost uncontrolled, the commandants established a difficult regime in the villages, invaded the family, everyday affairs of the Cossacks. The Orenburg Cossacks, moreover, in the majority did not receive any salary. They were also dissatisfied with their position, but, being scattered all over the region, they silently endured all oppression, waiting 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, breeders 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 difficult life, that they were doing self-will without the knowledge of the queen; rumors spread that the queen is also to blame, who does everything according to the will of the nobles, that if Tsar Peter Fedorovich were alive, then life would be easier. Behind these rumors, new ones were not slow to appear, that Pyotr Fedorovich, with the help of the guards, escaped death, that he was alive and would soon call out the cry for a fight against officials and nobles.

The Orenburg province was exactly on a powder keg, and it was enough for a brave man to find himself, to throw a call-out cry, as thousands of people would rise up to him from all sides. And such a brave man was found in the face of the Don Cossack Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev. He was a brave, strong, brave man, had a clear, inquisitive mind and powers of observation.

Pugachev's personality

E. I. Pugachev

Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev - 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 Zavolzhsky steppes in November 1772, after several years of wandering in search of a better life. Having received a passport for a settlement on the Irgiz River, E. Pugachev arrived in Mechetnaya Sloboda (now the city of Pugachev, Saratov Region) in November 1772 and stopped at the abbot of the Old Believer skete Filaret. From him, Pugachev learns about unrest among the Yaik Cossacks and about 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 intention of the Cossacks, on November 22, 1772, he arrives under the guise of a merchant in the Yaitsky town, dedicates several people to his plans and for the first time calls himself Emperor Peter III. Upon returning to the Irgiz, Pugachev was arrested on 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 the Kazan prison at the end of May 1773 and reappeared in August in the Zavolzhsky steppes. This time he finds shelter on Stepan Obolyaev's Talov Umet, 60 versts from the Yaitsky town. Here Pugachev again “confesses” that he was miraculously saved from death by Emperor Peter III and arrived on Yaik to protect ordinary Cossacks from the foremen and grant them primordial liberties.

In connection with the flight of Pugachev, the authorities sounded the alarm, special detachments were sent to catch him, who grabbed the Cossacks and, using torture, tried to find out where the fugitive was.

The Yaik Cossacks were on their guard. With renewed vigor, rumors spread that Peter III was alive, that the authorities were looking for him, and that Pugachev was the tsar who had escaped death.

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

The testimonies of contemporaries and eyewitnesses - participants in the uprising describe the appearance of Yemelyan Pugachev. He was of medium height, broad at the shoulders, thin at the waist, slightly swarthy in face, lean, with dark eyes and Cossack-cut hair.

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

The original of this portrait has survived to our time 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 by 12? vershokov. The icon-painting techniques of writing 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, is the date: “September 21, 1773”, and on the reverse side the following inscription is made: “Emelyan Pugachev comes from a Cossack village of our Orthodox faith belongs to that faith to Ivan the son of Prokhorov. This face was written in 1773 September 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 accident, it had a certain political meaning, namely: to show a portrait of his "muzhik" king, who favored the peasants with "eternal liberty." The restoration of the portrait revealed a curious detail. It turned out that the portrait of Pugachev was painted 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 painted on it. It is quite possible that the portrait of Catherine II hung in the ataman 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 tsar Peter III - Emelyan Pugachev.

Pugachev was distinguished by endurance, courage and knowledge of military affairs. He was perfectly familiar with the artillery of that time. The clerk of the Military Collegium, Ivan Pochitalin, subsequently testified during interrogation: "Pugachev himself knew the rule better than anyone else, 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 organizing an insurgent core around E. Pugachev-Peter III. On July 2, 1773, a cruel sentence was executed 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 hard labor marks, they were sent to eternal hard labor in the Nerchinsk factories. 38 people were punished with a whip and exiled to Siberia for settlement. A number of Cossacks were sent to the soldiers. Moreover, a large amount of money was collected from the participants in the uprising to compensate for the ruined property of Ataman Tambovtsev, General Traubenberg and others. The verdict caused a new outburst of indignation among the 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 farms 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 with the Yaik River "from the peaks to the mouth, and land, and herbs, and monetary salaries, and lead, and gunpowder, and grain provisions." Having deployed banners prepared in advance, a detachment of rebels, numbering about 200 people armed with rifles, spears, and bows, marched towards 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 had just begun to take shape, could not create its own organization, could not work out its own program. The demands of the rebels were the accession of a "good king" and the receipt of "eternal will." In the eyes of the rebels, such a king was the “peasant tsar”, “father tsar”, “emperor Pyotr Fedorovich”, the 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. There were about 200 people in the detachment. An attempt to take over the town ended in failure. In it stood a large detachment of regular troops with artillery. A second attack by the rebels on September 19 was repulsed by cannons. The rebel detachment, which replenished its ranks with Cossacks who had gone over to the side of the rebels, moved up the river. Yaik and on September 20, 1773 stopped near the Iletsk Cossack town (now the village of Ilek).

Ilek village

In the 18th century c. 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, the Iletsk town was a relatively large settlement. Academician P.S. Pallas, who passed through the Iletsk town in the summer of 1769, describes it as follows: “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 stands a wooden church. The local Cossacks can put up to five hundred troops and are ranked among the Yaik Cossacks, although they do not have any participation in fishing rights and are forced to provide food for themselves 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 fighting unit. Even on the way from under the Yaitsky town to the Iletsk town, according to the old Cossack custom, a general circle was convened to select the ataman and the captains.

Andrey Ovchinnikov, a Yaitsky Cossack, was elected an ataman, Dmitry Lysov, also a Yaitsky Cossack, was elected a colonel, and a Yesaul and cornets were also elected. The first text of the oath was immediately drawn up, and all the Cossacks and elected chiefs swore allegiance to "the most illustrious, most powerful, great sovereign, Emperor Peter Fedorovich, to serve and obey in everything, not sparing his life to the last drop of blood."

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

The joining of the Iletsk Cossacks to the uprising or their negative attitude towards it had great importance for a successful 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 had to transfer to the ataman of the town, Lazar Portnov, the other to the Cossacks. Lazar Portnov was supposed to announce the decree to 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, you will not be denied all benefits and salaries; and your glory will not expire until forever; and both you and your descendants are the first to learn under me, the great sovereign. And salaries, provisions, gunpowder and lead will always be enough from me.”

Even before the rebel detachment approached the Iletsk town, Portnov, having received a message from the commandant of the Yaitsk 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 insurgent detachment was moving, was dismantled.

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

On September 21, a dismantled bridge was repaired and a detachment of rebels solemnly entered the town, greeted with bell ringing 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 the wealthy Iletsk Cossack Ivan Tvorogov.

The ataman of the town Lazar Portnov was hanged. The reason for the execution was the complaints of the Iletsk Cossacks that he "made great offenses 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 a competent Iletsk Cossack Maxim Gorshkov as a secretary. All suitable artillery of 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 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 vast Orenburg province, which included in its borders vast territory from the Caspian in the south to the borders of the modern Yekaterinburg and Molotov regions - in the north. The goal of the rebels was the capture of Orenburg.

In 1900 with. Ilek was visited by the famous Russian writer V. G. Korolenko, collecting material on Pugachev and getting acquainted with the places 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 connoisseurs of antiquity. “He was sitting in the courtyard of his house,” writes V. G. Korolenko in his essay, “over the very steep of the high Ural coast. We sat on a bench nearby. Under our feet the river rolled its waves, its sands, shallows, meadows could be seen ...

Ivan Yakovlevich smiled at my question.

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 under V. G. Korolenko from the Iletsk fortress has long been washed away by the muddy fast spring waters of the Urals. On the site of the Iletsk town of the Pugachev era, meadows and green coastal groves of the right bank of the Urals are now spread.

More than a hundred years ago, the author of a detailed description of the Ural Cossack army, Lieutenant A. Ryabinin, wrote down a 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, that's why he was never even wounded." “When he began to enter the Iletsk town,” said the old man, “his cannon did not want to go to the bridge. No matter how much they dragged her, no matter how much they harnessed the horses, they could not move from the bridge. Then Pugachev got angry, ordered the cannon to be whipped with whips, and then cut off her ears and throw them into the Yaik River. So what do you think, sir, - the old man said, turning to me, - as soon as the cannon roars with a human voice, so only a groan and a rumble went through the whole town. You don’t believe me, ”he added, noticing that I smiled,“ ask people, and now sometimes in the water you moan so that it is sensitive far away.

In the epic style, the same narrator told A. Ryabinin the legend about Lazar Portnov. In the legend, real events are intertwined with folk fantasy. “As soon as Pugachev began to enter,” the old man said, “they went out of the town to meet him with icons and banners, with bread and salt. He took the bread and salt, kissed the icons and called the ataman to him. And at that time, Timofey Lazarevich was the ataman, did you hear tea? Timothy 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 denounced Pugachev with all sorts of bad words. Then Pugachev said:

“I wanted to live with you, Timofey Lazarevich, in love and harmony, I wanted to eat with you from the same cup, from the same ladle to drink, I wanted to favor you with a brocade caftan, apparently it won’t happen, that’s the case.” And then he ordered Lazarevich to be hanged in the place of the frontal, for the fear of all his adversaries.

Nizhne-yaitskaya distance

On September 24, a detachment of rebels left the Iletsk town and moved up the Yaik. The first on the way of the detachment was the fortress of Rassypnaya. In the period under consideration, on the entire right bank of the Urals from Orenburg to the Iletsk town, there were only four settlements: the fortresses 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 (as the system of fortifications along the Ural River was called). 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 coast of the Urals, observation posts were built at a certain distance from each other - pickets, outposts, lighthouses. Cossack teams usually were here only in summer time. 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 bowl of resin. In case of an alarm, the guards set fire to the lighthouse. The pillar of flame was visible from the nearby lighthouse, whose guards were also setting fire to their lighthouse. 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 Gora", "Mayak" - indicate the location of the former Cossack observation posts with a "lighthouse".

The fortifications, bearing the loud name of fortresses, were very simple, uncomplicated. Built on the high right bank of the Urals, they were surrounded by an earthen rampart and a moat. A wooden wall with a gate ran along the rampart. The fortress was armed with several cast-iron cannons. The condition of these fortresses is perfectly conveyed by A. S. Pushkin in the description of the Belogorsk fortress in the story "The Captain's Daughter".

The population of the fortresses consisted of Cossacks and soldiers' teams, consisting mainly of elderly soldiers and invalids. The soldiers carried out garrison service, and the Cossacks were responsible for the guard, observation and intelligence service on the line. Cossacks carried military service for life. In addition, underwater duty along the line also lay on their own duties.

The composition of the Cossack population of the fortresses was formed from 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 Cossacks-Tatars, immigrants from Bashkiria and the Volga region, included in the Cossack estate.

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

Rassypnoe village

The fortress of Rassypnaya 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, plentiful mowing and convenient places for arable farming.

Judging by the descriptions in the documents, the fortress had a quadrangular shape, was dug in with a moat, fortified with an earthen rampart with a wooden fence built on it. Two gates were made in the shaft and the 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 pantry, a wooden church and houses of the inhabitants of the fortress.

The fortress was armed with several ancient cast-iron cannons. Before the approach of the insurgent detachment, the second-major Velovsky was the commandant of the fortress. 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 Loose 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 E. Pugachev’s decree, which stated that for going over to the side of the rebels, the Cossacks would be rewarded with “eternal liberty, rivers, seas, all benefits, salaries, provisions, gunpowder, lead, ranks and honor.”

The commandant of the fortress Velovsky rejected the appeal for surrender and going 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, having rushed to the attack, broke the gates of the fortress and broke into the fortress. One of the contemporaries in his notes indicates that the Cossacks during the assault went over to the side of the rebels and dismantled two walls of the fortress. Through the gap formed, the rebels broke into the fortress.

E. Pugachev subsequently recalled in his testimony that Major Velovsky, with two officers, locked himself in the commandant's house and fired back from the windows. The Cossacks wanted to set fire to the house, but he forbade "... then, so as not to burn the whole fortress." For armed resistance and for the inflicted losses, Velovsky and two officers were hanged. The Cossacks of the fortress and the soldiers swore allegiance to Tsar Peter III, the Tsar who went to the defense of the oppressed peasantry.

On the same day, taking cannons, gunpowder and cannonballs from the fortress and leaving a new chieftain in Rassypnaya, the rebel detachment 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, one must 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 old cursive writing take us back to the era of the uprising, and one after another, pictures of the events on Yaik in the autumn of 1773 stand up ...

At that 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 Loose fortress Velovsky galloped with a report on the movement of the rebels to the Tatishchev fortress. On the same day, the commandant of this fortress, the commander of the Nizhne-Yaik distance, Colonel Elagin, sent a report to Orenburg Reinsdorp outlining Velovsky's report on the approach of the rebels near the Iletsk town. Yelagin's report was received in Orenburg on 22 September.

Contemporaries say that on September 22, at about 10 pm, a courier galloped to Orenburg with a message about the capture of the Iletsk town (probably it was Yelagin's messenger) and came to Reinsdorp in the midst of a solemn ball arranged in honor of the day of the coronation of Catherine II.

The rumor about the beginning of the uprising spread throughout the city. Until that day, according to P. I. Rychkov, the city dwellers knew almost nothing about the uprising. At the same time, Governor Reinsdorp himself was aware of the impending 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 the steppe", in search of whom Simonov sent a small detachment. Finally, on September 21, Reinsdorp receives a report from Simonov dated September 18 with the message that "the well-known impostor is already in the meeting and this date, when he is even more gathered, he 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 sends an order to the chief commandant of Orenburg, Major General Wallenshtern, 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 the capture of the Iletsk town by them.

While E. Pugachev was in the Iletsk town and was preparing to march up the Yaik, Reinsdorp also formed 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 an order to defeat them if they met with the rebels.

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

On the same day, Reinsdorp sends an order to Seitov Sloboda on the preparation of 300 horse and armed Tatars, ready to immediately, on 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 stifle the uprising by encircling the rebels with the help of detachments from Orenburg, Yaitsky town and Stavropol.

The method of bribery was not forgotten either. In the decrees of Reinsdorp, 500 rubles were promised for the capture of Pugachev alive, and 250 rubles for the delivery of the dead.

In secret letters dated September 24, Reinsdorp informs the governors of Astrakhan and Kazan of the beginning of the uprising, and on September 25 sends 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 of Brigadier Bilov, having replenished his ranks and artillery with soldiers and cannons from the Chernorechenskaya and Tatishcheva fortresses, arrived late in the evening at Chesnokovsky outpost, located between the fortresses of Tatishcheva and Nizhneozernaya. 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 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 asking for help. Frightened by this report, Bilov, fearing encirclement and, apparently, not relying on his team, standing in indecision for several hours at the outpost, turned back to the Tatishchev fortress. The retreat of Bilov made it easier for the rebels to capture the Nizhneozernaya fortress.

The village of Nizhneozernoe

The Lower Lake Fortress was founded in 1754, that is, just 20 years before the uprising. During the era of the uprising, there were approximately 70 households in the Lower Lake Fortress. In addition to excellent natural protection - a high steep cliff from the side of the river, the fortress, according to the surviving descriptions, was surrounded by an earthen rampart, dug in 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. Major Harlov was the commandant of the fortress.

Late in the evening of September 25, the commandant of the fortress learned from the prisoners captured by the scouts sent to him about the capture of Rassypnaya and that the rebel detachment was only 7 miles 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 favored the Cossacks and all the working people with "eternal liberty", quickly reached the Nizhneozernaya fortress. The proclamation of "eternal liberty" satisfied the cherished desires of the Cossacks. On the same night (from 25 to 26 September) 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. Harlov opened fire with cannons. The rebels responded. The shootout lasted about two hours. Then the rebels rushed to the assault, broke the gate and broke into the fortress. In the ensuing skirmish, Harlov, officers and several soldiers were killed. According to other reports, Major Kharlov, warrant officers Figner and Kabalerov, clerk Skopin and corporal Bikbay were hanged.

According to A. S. Pushkin’s record, made while passing through the Lower Lake Fortress, Bikbay was hanged by E. Pugachev for espionage. In the extracts of A. S. Pushkin from archival files it is indicated: “Pugachev hanged the commandant in the Nizhneozernaya fortress because this one sank gunpowder.”

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

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

In the travel notebook of A. S. Pushkin, there are 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 Royal Majesty, don’t drive up, they’ll kill you unequally from a cannon.” - “You are an old man,” Pugachev answered him, “do guns pour down on kings?”

Interestingly, 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 testified:

“He, Myasnikov, like others, served him faithfully; at the same time, 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 teams, then (Pugachev); he was always ahead of himself, not least fearing the shooting of either their guns or their guns. And when some of his well-wishers sometimes persuaded him to take care of his stomach, Pugachev said, smiling: “A cannon will not kill a tsar! Where is it seen that the king's cannon killed?

This curious coincidence speaks of the reality of the legend written down 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 case, transferred to A. S. Pushkin in Nizhneozernaya and included by him in the “History of Pugachev”, could actually take place during the capture of the Nizhneozernaya fortress on September 26, 1773.

In 1890, the 80-year-old Nizhneozerninsk Cossack E. A. Donskov, whose grandfather served as a clerk for E. Pugachev, said that after the uprising “a strict check went on. If someone said: “Served Emperor Pyotr Fedorovich”, they were not persecuted, but if he says: “I was at Pugach”, they were exiled, punished with sticks and, there were cases, they were beaten to death.

The village of 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 was named the Kamysh-Samarskaya fortress.

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

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

With the foundation 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. Ural and to the west - along the river. Samara. Possession of it provided control over these roads. Therefore, during the entire 18th century, the Tatishchev fortress was considered the main fortress of the Nizhne-Yaitskaya distance. The fortresses Chernorechenskaya, Nizhne-Ozernaya, Rassypnaya and Perevolotskaya were subordinate to her.

In view of the important strategic importance of the Tatishchev fortress, its fortifications were somewhat better than in the other fortresses of the distance: 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, artillery supplies.

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

The population in the Tatishchev fortress was larger than in other fortresses along the Yaik. According to P. I. Rychkov and P. S. Pallas, in the 60s of the XVIII century there were up to 200 households in it. 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 places 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 of the village by the great Russian poet, a memorial plaque was erected in Tatishchevo.

The Belogorsk fortress from Pushkin's story "The Captain's Daughter" is connected with the village of Tatishchev. A. S. Pushkin dated the location of the fortress described in the story to the location of the Tatishcheva 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 about twenty-five versts from our fortress (head "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 associates in the assault on the Tatishchev fortress on September 27, 1773, which ended with the capture of the fortress and the transfer of its garrison to the side of the peasant army, and a major the defeat of the peasant army on March 22, 1774, suffered by it 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 to 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 the Bilov detachment amounted to at least a thousand people. The fortress was armed with 13 guns.

At dawn on September 27, the rebel patrols 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 obey the boyars and surrender voluntarily."

E. Pugachev in his testimony recalled that even before the rebel detachment approached the fortress, he had 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 urged them to surrender voluntarily, saying that Tsar Peter Fedorovich himself was traveling with the rebels.

Returning, the Cossacks handed it over to Baron Bilov. The latter ordered the rebels to be told that all of these were "lies". The delegation of the rebels answered: "When you are so stubborn, then do not blame us later." The negotiations were interrupted. The fortress, which had ceased cannon fire during the negotiations, again began to fire at the rebel detachments. The artillery of the rebels answered with their guns. Colonel Elagin offered Brigadier Bilov to leave the fortress and fight outside its walls. Bilov refused, fearing the transition of the Cossacks and soldiers to the side of the rebels. The gun duel lasted eight hours.

In order to prevent the movement of the rebels up the river Kamysh-Samara, brigadier Bilov sends a detachment of Orenburg Cossacks under the command of centurion Padurov before the start of the assault on the fortress. The detachment of Padurov 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 Vitoshov, on the other hand, Pugachev himself led the attack. The attack was repulsed, but Pugachev's sharpness and resourcefulness came to the rescue. There were stables near the wooden wall of the fortress with stacks of hay stacked around them. E. Pugachev ordered them to be set on fire. The weather was windy, smoke and flames drove to the fortress.

Soon the wooden wall of the fortress caught fire, and from it the fire spread to the houses inside the fortress. Cossacks, soldiers who lived in the fortress with their houses, 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, the foreman Bilov and Colonel Elagin were killed. 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, according to P.I. Rychkov, "the best artillery with its supplies and attendants."

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

The transfer of the Tatishcheva fortress into the hands of the rebels was of great importance for the further development of the uprising. The way to Orenburg was opened. The Chernorechenskaya fortress, located on the way to Orenburg, could not delay the movement of the rebels. As early as September 28, the garrison of the fortress was evacuated to Orenburg, leaving provisions. Only three dozen miles of a straight road separated the detachment of E. Pugachev from Orenburg.

Several legends and stories about Pugachev are connected with the village of Tatishcheva.

A. S. Pushkin, passing twice through Tatishchevo during his trip to Orenburg and Uralsk in September 1833, made the following entry in his travel book: “In Tatishcheva, Pugachev, having come a second time, asked the ataman if there was provisions in the fortress. The ataman, at the preliminary request of the old Cossacks, who feared famine, answered that they did not. Pugachev went to inspect the stores himself and, finding them full, hung the ataman at the outposts ... ”In Tatishcheva, there were indeed food warehouses, and after the suppression of the uprising, the Orenburg Oberproviantmeister commission tried to collect provisions taken from the warehouse by the inhabitants of the fortress“ on the permission of ”E. Pugachev.

In the same travel notes of A. S. Pushkin, we also read another brief note characterizing the personality of E. Pugachev: “In Tatishcheva, Pugachev hanged a Yaik Cossack for drunkenness.”

A curious legend about the stay of E. Pugachev 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 the widow Ignatikha in Tatishcheva and married her. I remembered Ignatikha E. Pugachev to the grave. “And not only Ignatikha remembered the deceased with a kind word. Radelny was Pugachev before the peasants, ”I. I. Mozhartsev concludes his story.

Chernorechye village

The capture of the Tatishcheva fortress opened 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. Ural - to the city of Orenburg - the administrative center of the vast Orenburg province. Pugachev and his associates chose the second path. On the way to Orenburg there was a fortress Chernorechenskaya (now the village of Chernorechye, Pavlovsky district), the last fortress along the Urals before Orenburg.

S. Chernorechye was founded approximately in the same years as Tatishchevo. In 1742, there were already 30 huts and 9 dugouts with 153 inhabitants in the Chernorechenskaya fortress. Later, the Orenburg authorities settled here exiles who were exiled to the Orenburg region for permanent residence. In 1773, that is, in the year of the uprising, it had 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 the foreman 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 Tatishcheva fortresses there was a single settlement - a farm belonging to P.I. Rychkov. It was located on the site of the present. Rychkov. Near the farm there was a Cossack outpost. After the capture of Tatishchev fortress by E. Pugachev, the serfs of Rychkov and the Cossacks joined the rebels. The inhabitants of the Chernorechenskaya fortress and its garrison were also waiting. Pugachev.

On September 28, Major Krause received an order from Reinsdorp to leave the fortress in case of imminent danger. On the same day, having said he was ill, he left for Orenburg, leaving the fortress under the command of Lieutenant Ivanov. The drumbeat informed the inhabitants of the fortress about the evacuation. But only a few residents left for Orenburg, while the majority remained and waited for the arrival of Pugachev.

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

With the occupation of the Chernorechenskaya fortress, the road to Orenburg was opened. Only 18 miles along a straight road separated Orenburg from the Chernorechenskaya fortress. With a swift, quick offensive, the rebels could capture Orenburg, the fortifications of which were in the same neglected state as in the Chernorechenskaya fortress. A contemporary of these events reports that they entered the city on carts through an earthen rampart and a ditch without any difficulty, and the city gates did not have constipation. The rebels missed this opportunity. After spending the night in the Chernorechenskaya fortress, they did not move directly to Orenburg, but bypassing it, up the river. Ural and its tributary Sakmara, Seitova Sloboda and Sakmara Cossack town. The rebels hoped to replenish their ranks with Tatars and Sakmara Cossacks. Kargaly Tatars came to the Chernorechensk fortress to invite E. Pugachev to Seitov settlement.

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

Moving to the Chernorechenskaya fortress, the rebels entered the farms and took away the property of the nobles. The serfs who lived on farms joined the ranks of the growing insurgent army. The rebels also visited the farm 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 the Reinsdorp house, said to his associates: “This is how my governors live gloriously, and what kind of chambers do they need. 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 Tevkelev's farm and on October 1 set out for Seitova Sloboda.

Kargala village

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 rather large settlement. The population of the settlement consisted of several thousand people. The main part of the population of the settlement were Tatars, peasants, a smaller part - merchants. The peasants were engaged in cattle breeding, agriculture, various crafts and were hired by merchants as workers, clerks. Merchants conducted large-scale trade with Central Asia and Kazakhstan, rented and bought land from the Bashkirs for farms.

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 the order of Reinsdorp. On September 26, on the orders of Reinsdorp, a detachment of 300 people set out from Kargaly to help Brigadier Bilov, but after learning about the capture of the Tatishcheva fortress by the rebels, he 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 left the settlement for Orenburg, mainly merchants and wealthy peasants. The majority remained in the settlement and sent their representatives to Pugachev in the Chernorechensk fortress with an invitation to come to Seitov settlement.

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

The population of the Kargaly settlement actively participated in the uprising. The inhabitants of the settlement formed a special regiment of Kargaly Tatars. He bravely fought 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 on January 9, 1774 near Orenburg, the Kargaly Tatars "very bravely let loose." The inhabitants of the settlement provided the rebels with great assistance with food, sending him to the camp in Berdy.

Given the significant role of the Kargaly settlement in the uprising, E. Pugachev and the rebels called it Petersburg.

There were literate people among the Kargaly Tatars. With their help, on the day of E. Pugachev's arrival in Kargala, 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 rebellion and granted them all freedom: "lands, waters, forests, residences, grasses, rivers, fish, bread, laws, arable land, bodies, monetary salaries, lead and gunpowder." “And arrive like 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 the Sakmara Cossack town. From s. Kargaly to the village Sakmara 16 kilometers.

Sakmarskoye village

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 Sakmara town. They were confirmed by the order of Reinsdorp 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 service 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 over the Sakmara, and the entire population of the town to move to the Krasnogorsk fortress. Serving Cossacks with an ataman, with cannons and military supplies moved to Orenburg. All the rest of the population - retired Cossacks, Cossack families and others - remained at home and did not allow the bridge over the river to be destroyed. Sakmara. The inhabitants 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 the decree of E. Pugachev, Tsar Peter III, in the Cossack circle. Sakmara Cossacks joined the uprising. On October 2, the population of the town met Pugachev with great honor and took the oath. After taking the oath, a detachment led by Pugachev drove into the Sakmarsky town to the sound of a bell.

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

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

An interesting episode took place near the Sakmara town. On October 3, a man of about 60 years old appeared in the camp, in a torn dress, with his nostrils torn out and hard labor brands 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,” replied Shigaev. Shigaev knew Khlopusha, since he was in the 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 out four sealed envelopes from his bosom and handed them to E. Pugachev. These were the orders of 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 had been sent by Governor Reinsdorv to convey orders to the Cossacks, to dissuade them from the uprising, to burn gunpowder and shells, to rivet the cannons, and to 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, to the Cossacks sent from the Sakmarsky town to carry out guard duty in the Krasnogorsk and Verkhneozernaya fortresses, and "every rank to people." The decree called for serving the new, peasant tsar "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, grasses and seas and a monetary salary, and grain provisions, and lead, and gunpowder, and eternal liberty."

The decree to the Sakmara Cossacks, having received wide distribution, raised the peasants, Cossacks, workers, oppressed nationalities against the nobles and landowners.

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

Orenburg

Orenburg in the era of the uprising 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 region, part of the Samara and Yekaterinburg regions, the territory of Bashkiria.

At the same time, Orenburg was the main fortress on the border military 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 seize Orenburg.

In terms of size, Orenburg in the era of the Pugachev uprising was many times smaller than the present city of Orenburg. Its entire area was located in the central part of the city 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 south-east of Russia, Orenburg had more solid fortifications than other fortresses along the river. Yaik. The city was surrounded by a high earthen rampart in the form of an oval, fortified with 10 bastions and 2 semi-bastions. The height of the shaft reached 4 meters and above, and the width - 13 meters. The total length of the rampart from its outer side was 5 versts. In some places the shaft was lined with red sandstone slabs. On the outer side 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 Water (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 in the spring there is “great dirt” on them, and in the summer “heavy dust”.

With the exception of a few churches, the governor's house, the building of the provincial office, the Gostiny Dvor and some other buildings of the city were wooden.

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

On the eastern side, the town of Orenburg Cossacks, Forshtadt, adjoined the city. The houses of the Cossacks began under the very walls of the fortress. On the steep bank of the old Ural river stood a Cossack church. In addition to Vorstadt, the city had no other suburbs. Outside the city walls stretched endless steppes. Academician Falk points out that in the city of Orenburg in 1770 there were 1533 philistine houses.

For trading purposes, a vast barter yard was built a few versts from Orenburg.

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

The fortress and the population of the city did not have sufficient food supplies. The time for its preparation was lost.

Such was the military state of Orenburg at the time of Pugachev's approach to the walls of the city.

Around noon on October 5, 1773, the main forces of the rebel army appeared in sight of Orenburg and began to go around the city from the northeast side, going to Forstadt. The alarm went off in the city.

Small groups of remote riders approached the city close, offering the inhabitants to submit to Tsar Peter III and surrender the city without a fight. Yaitsky Cossack Ivan Solodovnikov galloped up to the ramparts of the fortress and, deftly bending down from his saddle, stuck him in. ground the peg with a pinched piece of paper. It was Pugachev's decree addressed to the garrison of Orenburg. E. Pugachev urged 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 deserted, partially destroyed Forstadt and, descending from the high bank into the Ural valley, set up a temporary camp near the Korovye Stable Lake, 5 versts from Orenburg.

Pugachev in Vorstadt at St. George's Church. Reproduction from a painting by Petunin

Smoke and flames rose from the city. It was the Vorstadt burning, set on fire by order of Reinsdorp. Only the Cossack church on the banks of the Urals survived the fire. During the assaults on Orenburg, the rebels used it as a place for a battery: guns were installed on the porch and the bell tower. From the bell tower the rebels also fired from guns.

The approach of the rebels near Orenburg ended the first, initial stage of the peasant uprising 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 men under the command of Major Naumov set out from Orenburg. 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 inconclusive skirmish, the detachment entered back into the city.

On October 7, Reinsdorp convened a council of war. It decided the question of what tactics to follow in the fight against the rebels: to act against them "defensively" or "offensively". Most of the members of the military council were in favor of "defensive" tactics. The Orenburg military authorities were afraid of the transition of the garrison troops to the side of Pugachev. They believed that it was better to sit out behind the walls of the fortress under the cover of fortress artillery.

Thus began the siege of Orenburg, which lasted for half a year, until the end of March 1774. The garrison of the fortress during their sorties could not defeat the peasant troops. The assaults of the rebels were repelled by the artillery of the city, but in open battle success always remained on the side of the peasant army.

On October 12, in the morning, 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 upcoming 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 their cannons much more, acted ... with greater boldness than before.” The battle lasted about four hours. It started to rain with snow. Fearing encirclement, Naumov's corps returned to the city, having suffered losses of 123 people.

On October 18, the insurgent army left its original camp in the Cossack meadows near the lake "Cow Stall" east of Orenburg and moved to Mount Mayak, and then, due to the early cold, to Berdskaya Sloboda, located seven miles from the city and numbering about two hundred yards .

On October 22, Pugachev, with all his forces (about 2,000 people), again approached Orenburg, set up batteries under the ridge and began an uninterrupted cannonade. Shells also flew from the city wall. This strongest artillery skirmish lasted more than 6 hours. Orenburg resident Ivan Osipov recalled that on that day people "due to the nuclei and unusual fear, they almost could not find a place in their homes." However, this very strong “striving for the city” did not lead to the capture of Orenburg, and the rebels retreated to Berda.

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

After this battle, the Orenburg garrison did not make a single serious attempt to defeat the rebel army. Reinsdorp was limited 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 conduct a siege of the fortress prevented the capture of Orenburg by the rebels.

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

Already in January in Orenburg there was an acute shortage of food; there was also no fodder for the Cossack and artillery horses. Food prices have risen many times over. The city was on the verge of surrender. Only government units arrived in time to prevent 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 by Pugachev. Catherine II herself wrote in December 1773: "... It can be considered fortunate that these canals were tied to Orenburg for two whole months and then where they went." Probably, Pugachev could not have done 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.

The expansion of the area of ​​the uprising and the military successes of the peasant army

While the siege of Orenburg was going on, the uprising was spreading with extraordinary rapidity. In October 1773, the fortress along the river. Samara-Perevolotskaya, Novosergievskaya, Totskaya, Sorochinskaya - passed into the hands of the rebels. The serfs, the national minorities of the Orenburg Territory, and primarily the Bashkirs, join the uprising.

An example of the inclusion of the serfs of the province in the Pugachev uprising is the speech of the inhabitants of the villages of Lyakhovo, Karamzin (Mikhailovka), Zhdanov, Putilov, located north of Buzuluk. On the night of October 17, a cavalry insurgent detachment, consisting of Yaik Cossacks, Kalmyks and Chuvash, newly baptized neighboring villages, galloped up to the village of Lyakhovo, numbering 30 people. They declared that they had been sent from the armies by Tsar Pyotr Fedorovich to destroy the landowners' houses and give the peasants freedom. Having entered the landowner's yard, they "looted all the belongings and stole the cattle," and the peasants, according to the testimony of the local priest Pyotr Stepanov, "did not repair any resistance to preventing robbery before that." The cornet of the insurgents said to the peasants: “Look, de peasants, do not work for the landowner at all and do not pay him any taxes.”

The peasant attorneys Leonty Travkin, Efrem Kolesnikov (Karpov) and Grigory Feklistov, elected at the meeting, went to the camp to Pugachev and brought a special decree given by him, which they promulgated at the church in the village of Lyakhovo. The Karamzin priest Moiseev read out this decree three times, in which the peasants were urged to “serve me, the great sovereign, to the drop of their blood,” for which they would be rewarded with “a cross and a beard, a river and land, grasses and seas, and monetary salaries, and bread provisions , and lead, and gunpowder, and all kinds of liberty. 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 who ruins ten noble houses, that is a thousand Rublev and the rank of general.” The peasants received from Pugachev a combat mission to create local armed detachments and prevent government troops moving from Kazan into their region.

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

The detachment of I. Arapov grew rapidly due to the influx of local peasants and Cossacks. On December 22, 1773, Arapov moved to Samara, and on December 25 he triumphantly entered it, peacefully met by a "great multitude of inhabitants" who came out with a cross, icons, and bells. The inhabitants 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 Zakamskaya line, on the Orenburg-Kazan highway. Even before the arrival of Kara, the Kazan governor von Brandt sent a detachment of the Simbirsk commandant, Colonel Chernyshev, along the Samara line. From the side of Siberia, military teams were moved 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 detachments of the rebels, 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 with significant losses retreated.

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

To prevent the advance of government troops from Siberia, Pugachev sent Khlopusha 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 the besieged Orenburg. Major General Stanislavsky, who followed 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 captures the Iletsk Defense (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 appear near Ufa, and from mid-November the siege of Ufa begins. The rebel center was located 20 kilometers from Ufa, in the village of Chesnokovka. The leaders of the rebel forces in Bashkiria were the 20-year-old Bashkir national hero 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 Wolf, fled from the Buzuluk fortress. A detachment of peasants and Cossacks moved down Samara under the command of the rebel ataman Arapov, a simple serf. On December 25, 1773, he was solemnly greeted by the inhabitants of Samara. In December, the inhabitants of the Buguruslan settlement also joined the uprising, sending two deputies to Berdy to Pugachev. One of them - Gavrila Davydov - was received by Pugachev and appointed ataman of the Buguruslan settlement. Teams were organized everywhere, chieftains and captains were chosen.

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 retired artilleryman Ivan Beloborodov became the leader of the rebel detachments in the Middle Urals. Separate detachments of rebels appeared near Yekaterinburg.

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

In January 1774, the 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 factories goes over to the side of the uprising.

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

Berdy village

In early November, the cold came. On November 5, the peasant army moves to Berdskaya Sloboda. The rebels settled in huts, dug out in the courtyards of dugouts, in the vicinity of the settlement.

Berdskaya Sloboda becomes the center of the uprising, the main headquarters of the insurgent 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 Berda". Contemporaries say: "They call the Berdskaya settlement Moscow, Kargala - Petersburg, and the Chernorechenskaya fortress - a province."

Peasants came from all sides to Berdskaya Sloboda: some - to see their peasant tsar, who was simply called "father", and receive a decree on "eternal liberty", others - to enter the ranks of the peasant army. Chika-Zarubin, one of the main figures of the uprising, subsequently testified during interrogation: "A rare slave was taken into his crowd, for the most part they themselves came every day in crowds."

Thus, a multinational peasant army was formed.

The number of the peasant army in the middle of November 1773 reached 10,000 people, of which about half 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 along national lines, partly along territorial and social lines. So, there was a regiment of Yaik Cossacks, a regiment of Iletsk Cossacks, a regiment of Orenburg Cossacks, a regiment of Kargaly Tatars, a regiment of factory peasants, etc.

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

Each regiment stood in its dugouts and had its own regimental banner. The regiments were divided into companies, hundreds and dozens. Regimental commanders were chosen at the military circle or appointed by Pugachev. As a rule, all commanders were selected on 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 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 the Ural factories. That's where the shells were made.

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

The armament of the army as a whole was weak.

The best armed were the Yaik and Orenburg Cossacks, who had their own weapons, as well as soldiers who went over to the side of the rebels with weapons. 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 did not have any weapons at all and went near Orenburg with one whip, ”says one of the historians of the uprising.

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

The troops went through combat training. A. S. Pushkin writes: "the exercises (especially artillery) took place almost every day."

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

Pugachev appointed the Yaik Cossacks Andrei Vitoshnov, Maxim Shigaev, Danil Skobochkin and the 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 Yaik Cossack Ivan Pochitalin.

The military collegium dealt with a variety of military, administrative, economic, and judicial issues. She sent orders to chieftains, issued 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 was placed in the Berdsk settlement in a peasant hut that belonged to the Berda Cossack Sitnikov, which in the 20s of the XIX century was known among the Berda Cossacks under the name of the “golden chamber”. 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 the porch of which there was always an indispensable guard of the best 25 Yaik Cossacks, called guards. His peace was upholstered instead of wallpaper with hype”, that is, with golden paper, the old-timers of the village of Berdy still remember the location of the “golden chamber”.

The closest associates of E. Pugachev 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 exiled 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 Birds

In the autumn of 1833, A. S. Pushkin traveled to the distant Orenburg region to collect materials on the uprising of Yemelyan 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 an old woman Buntova, a contemporary of the uprising, who was from the Lower Lake Fortress. Buntova sang several songs about Pugachev to A. S. Pushkin, and said that she remembered the uprising. The traces of this conversation are several notes in the notebook of the great poet with notes: “In Berd from the old woman”, “The old woman in Berd”. Buntova and other Berda old-timers showed the place where the "sovereign's palace" stood, that is, the hut where Pugachev lived. From the high cliff of the old bank of the Sakmara, they showed the visible peaks of the Grebeny mountains and told, as V. I. Dal reports in his memoirs of a trip to Berdy, a legend about a huge treasure allegedly buried by Pugachev in the Grebeny.

The trip to Berdy made a deep impression on Pushkin. Returning from a trip to his estate near Moscow Boldino, A. S. Pushkin, recalling a trip to Orenburg and. Uralsk, in a letter dated October 2, 1833 to his wife, he wrote: “In the village of Berda, where Pugachev stood 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 remember 1830.

Recordings made in Byrds were used by A. S. Pushkin in the "History of Pugachev" and the story "The Captain's Daughter". "Rebellious Sloboda" is the village of Berdy from the era of the uprising. The descriptions of the "sovereign's palace" and the road along which the hero of the story Ensign Grinev traveled to the "rebellious settlement" are based on the stories of Berda old-timers, in particular Buntova, and personal impressions of A. S. Pushkin.

The peasants lead Grinev "to the hut that stood at the corner of the intersection." Indeed, the hut of the Cossack Sitnikov, where Pugachev lived, as already mentioned, stood at the corner of modern Leninskaya and Pugachev streets, on the very edge of the indigenous bank of Sakmara. The Cossack Akulina Timofeevna Blinova points to the same location of the sovereign's palace in her memoirs, recorded in 1899. A. T. Blinova, being a neighbor of Buntova, was present at the conversation of A. S. Pushkin and V. I. Dahl with Buntova. She recalled: “The Lord was asked to show the house where Pugachev lived. Buntova took them to show. This house stood on a big street, on the corner, on the red side. It had six windows. From the yard there is a wonderful view of Sakmaru, 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 hut of the Cossack Sitnikov stood, but that during A. S. Pushkin’s visit to the village. Byrd, this hut was still standing and A.S. Pushkin saw the very “sovereign’s palace”. This is indicated, in addition to the memoirs of A. T. Blinova, and the message of the publisher of Otechestvennye Zapiski P. I. Svinin, who was in Orenburg in 1824. In one of the notes to his article “The picture of Orenburg and its environs”, P. I. Svinin reports that in the village. Birds show until now the hut, which was the palace of E. Pugachev. This hut, Buntova’s stories and documentary materials…

Suppression of the uprising

The government understood the danger of the Pugachev uprising. On November 28, a state council was convened, and General-in-Chief Bibikov, who was equipped with extensive powers, was appointed commander of the troops to fight Pugachev, instead of Kara.

Strong military units were thrown into the Orenburg Territory: the corps of Major General Golitsyn, the detachment of General Mansurov, the detachment of General Larionov and the Siberian detachment of General Dekalong.

Until that time, the government tried to hide from the people the events near Orenburg and in Bashkiria. 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 the stubborn resistance of the ataman Ilya Arapov's detachment, Samara was occupied. Arapov retreated to the Buzuluk fortress.

On February 28, a detachment of Prince Golitsin moved from Buguruslan to the Samara line to join with Major General Mansurov.

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

On March 6, the forward detachment of Golitsin entered the village of Pronkino (on the territory of the modern Sorochinsky district) and settled down for the night. Warned by the peasants, Pugachev with chieftains Rechkin and Arapov at night, during a strong storm and snowstorm, made a forced march and attacked the detachment. The rebels broke into the village, seized the guns, but then were forced to retreat. Golitsyn, having withstood the attack of Pugachev. Under pressure from government troops, peasant detachments retreated up 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 the government forces and the peasant army took place on March 22, 1774 near the Tatishcheva fortress (the modern village of Tatishchevo). Pugachev concentrated here the main forces of the peasant army, about 9,000 people. Instead of burnt wooden walls, a shaft of snow and ice was built, and guns were installed. The battle lasted over 6 hours. The peasant troops held out with such stamina that Prince Golitsin wrote in his report to A. Bibikov:

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

The peasant army lost about 2500 people killed (in one fortress 1315 people were found dead) and about 3300 people captured. Prominent commanders of the peasant army Ilya Arapov, soldier Zhilkin, Cossack Rechkin and others died near Tatishcheva. All the artillery of the rebels and the convoy fell into the hands of the enemy. This was the first major defeat of the rebels.

The defeat of the rebels near Tatishcheva opened the way for government troops to Orenburg. On March 23, Pugachev, with a detachment of two thousand men, headed across the steppe to the Perevolotsk fortress in order 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 near Ufa was defeated. Its head, Chika-Zarubin, fled to Tabynsk, but was treacherously captured and extradited.

Pugachev, pursued by the tsarist troops, with the remnants of his detachments 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 Sakmarsky town, prominent leaders of the uprising were captured: Ivan Pochitalin, Andrey 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 Perfiliev broke through the Samara line and went to Bashkiria to join Pugachev.

The attempt of the Orenburg and Stavropol Kalmyks to break into Bashkiria ended less happily - only an insignificant part of them could go there. The rest went to the Zasamara steppes. On May 23, they were defeated by government troops. The Kalmyk leader Derbetov died of his wounds.

The events of the beginning of 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, the Dekalong detachment, hurrying to catch up with the Pugachev detachment, approached it. Pugachev had an army of more than 11,000 people, but it was not trained, poorly armed, and therefore was defeated in the battle near the Trinity Fortress. Pugachev retreated towards Chelyabinsk. Here, at the fortress of Varlamova, 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 immediately, close to the scaffold, they stuck his head on the spire on the gallows in the middle, which was removed this year in May and in the last days.”

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 the peasant troops, the guard officer of the Buguruslan rebel ataman Gavrila Davydov, who was brought there after his capture, was stabbed to death in prison by a guard officer. But on June 12, troops under the command of Colonel Mikhelson 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, urging them to fight against the nobles and officials, the peasants began to revolt without waiting for his arrival. This gave him momentum. The army grew and grew.

The arrival of Pugachev was awaited by the workers and peasants of Central Russia, 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 resistance, and occupied settlements, cities one after another. Everywhere he was met with bread and salt, with banners and icons.

On August 1, the Pugachev detachments approached Penza and took it almost without resistance. On August 4, Petrovka was taken, followed by Saratov in the coming days. Entering the city, Pugachev everywhere released prisoners from prison, opened bread and salt shops and distributed goods to the people.

On August 17, Dubovka was taken, and on August 21, the Pugachevites approached Tsaritsyn and stormed. Tsaritsyn was the first city after Orenburg that Pugachev could not take. Having learned that Michelson's detachment was approaching Tsaritsyn, he lifted the siege of the city, and went south, thinking of making his way to the Don and raising its entire population to rebellion.

A detachment of Colonel Michelson operated near Ufa. He defeated Chika's detachment and headed for 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 into the mountains along the Verkhne-Uiskaya line, burning all the fortresses on his way.

On the night of August 24-25, near Cherny Yar, the rebels were overtaken by a detachment of Mikhelsov. There was a big final battle. In this battle, Pugachev's army was finally defeated, losing more than 10,000 people killed and taken prisoner. Pugachev himself and several of his entourage managed to make their way to the left bank of the Volga. They intended to raise against the government the peoples who roamed the Caspian steppes, and arrived in a village located near the Bolshie Uzen river.

The government sent manifestos everywhere, in which they promised 10,000 rewards and forgiveness to those who extradite 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 the defeat of Pugachev, they conspired to save their venal skin. Close associates of Pugachev - Chumakov, Curds, 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.

November 4, 1774 in an iron cage, like a wild beast, Pugachev, accompanied by his wife Sophia and son Trofim, was taken to Moscow, where the investigation began. The Commission of Inquiry 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.

“The maxim about 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 a cause in such circumstances, conforming to the unparalleled mercy of Her Imperial Majesty, knowing Her compassionate and philanthropic heart, and finally, arguing that the law and duty require justice, and not revenge, nowhere inconsistent with the Christian law, they unanimously sentenced and determined , for all the atrocities committed, the rebel and impostor Emelka Pugachev, by virtue of the prescribed Divine and civil laws, inflict the death penalty, namely: quarter, stick his head on a stake, smash the body parts in four parts of the city and put on wheels, and then on those burn the same places. His main accomplices contributing to his atrocities: 1. Yaitsky Cossack Afanasy Perfilyev, as the main favorite and accomplice in all evil intentions, enterprise and deeds of the monster and impostor Pugachev, most of all by anger and betrayal of his worthy cruelest execution, and whose deeds are in the horror of everyone hearts can lead that this villain, being in St. Petersburg at the very time when the monster and the impostor showed up in front of Orenburg, he himself voluntarily presented himself to the authorities with such a proposal, supposedly being prompted by loyalty to the common good and tranquility, he wanted to persuade the main accomplices of the villainous, Yaitsky Cossacks to conquer the legitimate authorities, and bring the villain together with them with confession. According to this exact certificate and oath, he was sent to Orenburg; but the burnt conscience of this villain, under the cover of good intentions, was hungry for malice: having arrived in a host of villains, he introduced himself to the main rebel and impostor, who was then in Berd, and not only refrained from performing the service that he promised and swore to perform, but, what-b to assure the impostor of fidelity, openly declared to him all his intention, and uniting his treacherous conscience with the vile soul of the monster himself, he remained from that time to the very end unshakable in zeal for the enemy of the fatherland, was the main accomplice of his brutal deeds, carried out all the most painful executions on those unfortunate people whom a disastrous fate condemned to fall into the bloodthirsty hands of villains, and finally, when the villainous crowd was destroyed later under Cherny Yar, and the very favorites of the monster Pugachev rushed to the Yaik steppe, and, seeking salvation, broke into different gangs, the Cossack Pustobaev exhorted his comrades their own to appear in the Yaitsky city with a confession, to which others agreed; but this hated traitor said that he would rather be buried alive in a zea than surrender into the hands of Her Imperial Majesty certain authorities; however, he was caught by the sent team; what he himself, the traitor Perfilyev, is dressed and accused of before the court; - to quarter in Moscow.

To the Yaitsky Cossack Ivan Chika, who was also Zarubin, who called himself Count Chernyshev, the constant favorite of the villain Pugachev, and who, at the very beginning of the rebellion, approved the villain more than anyone else in imposture, set a seductive example for many others and with extreme zeal hid 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 accomplices, commanded the separated crowd, besieged the city of Ufa. For violating the oath given before Almighty God of allegiance to Her Imperial Majesty for clinging to a rebel and an impostor, for performing his vile deeds, for all ruin, kidnapping and murder - cut off his head, and stick it on a stake for a nationwide spectacle, and burn his corpse with scaffold And to carry out this execution in Ufa, as if in the main of those places where all his ungodly deeds were carried out.

Yaitsky Cossack Maxim Shigaev, Orenburg Cossack Sotnik Podurov and Orenburg unemployed Cossack Vasily Tornov, of which the first Shigaev, because, according to a rumor about an impostor, he voluntarily went to him to meet him, or an inn to Stepan Abalyaev, who was not far from the city of Yaitsky, conferred in favor of discovering the villain and impostor Pugachev, he divulged about him in the city, and since his meaning attracted the likelihood of ordinary people, he made many people there attached to the rebel and impostor; and then, when the villain, having already clearly stolen the name of the late Sovereign Peter the Third, proceeded to the Yaik city, he was with him from his first associates. During the taxation of Orenburg, at any time, when the main villain himself went away from there to the Yaik city, he left him the head of his rebellious crowd. And in this hated bosses, he made Shigaev many anger: he hanged the reiter cavalry regiment sent to Orenburg from the Major General and Cavalier Prince Golitsyn of the Life Guards with the news of his approach, solely for the true loyalty to Her Imperial Majesty, her rightful Empress, preserved by the said reiter . The second Podurov, like a real traitor, who not only surrendered himself to the villain and impostor, but also wrote many letters corrupting among the people, exhorted the Yaik Cossacks loyal to Her Imperial Majesty to surrender to the villain and rebel, naming him and assuring others that he would be a true Sovereign , and finally wrote threatening letters to the Orenburg Governor General-Lieutenant and Cavalier Reinsdorp, to the Orenburg Ataman Mogutov and to the faithful Sergeant Major of the Yaitsky army Martemiaiu Borodin, which this traitor convinced and confessed by letters. The third Tornov, like a real villain and the destroyer of human souls, who ruined the Nagaybatsky fortress and some residences, and, moreover, clung to the impostor for the second time, to hang all three of them in Moscow.

Yaitzzhih Cossacks, Vasily Plotnikov, Denis Karavaev, Grigory Zakladnov, Meshcheryat Sotnik Kaznafer Usaev, and 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, and having agreed with him about the indignation of the Yaik Cossacks, they made the first disclosures to the people, and Karavaev told that he had seen the Royal signs on the villain ... Thus tempting ordinary people, this Karavaev and Plotikov, according to the rumor about the impostor, being taken under guard , was not announced. Zakladnov was like the first of the initial divulgers about the villain, and the very first before whom the villain dared to call himself the Sovereign. Kaznafer Usaev was twice in the villainous crowd, traveled to different places to revolt 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 Mikhelson during the defeat of the villainous gang near the city of Ufa, and released with a ticket for 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 to the villain again. Flog all five of them with a whip, put up signs and tear out their nostrils, exile them to hard labor, and of them keep Dolgopolov in chains.

Yaitsky Cossack Ivan Pochitalin, Iletsky Maxim Gorshkov and Yaitsky Ilya Ulyanov for the fact that Pochitalin and Gorshkov were producers of written cases under the impostor, compiled and signed his nasty sheets, calling Sovereign manifestos and decrees, through which multiplying debauchery in ordinary people, were the fault their non-participation and destruction. Ulyanov, as if he was always with them in villainous gangs, and who, like them, carried out murders, whip all three of them with a whip and, tearing out their nostrils, exile them to hard labor.

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

Retired Guards Furrier Mikhail Golev, Saratov merchant Fyodor Kobyakov and schismatic Pachomius, the former for sticking to the villain and the temptations from their disclosures, and the latter for false testimony to be whipped, Golev and Pachomius in Moscow, and Kobyakov in Saratov, and the Saratov merchant Protopopov for non-preservation in the necessary case of due fidelity, flogged with whips.

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

The death penalty determined for the villains in Moscow is to be carried out in a swamp, this Genvar is 10 days old. Why bring the villain Chika, who is scheduled for execution in the city of Ufa, and after the local execution of the same hour, send him to execution in the place appointed for him. And in order to publish this maxim, and to express mercy to the forgiven, and to send decrees from the Senate, where appropriate, about the proper preparations and outfits. Concluded on Genvara on the 9th day of 1775.

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

The kulaks who betrayed Pugachev were pardoned. The verdict of Catherine II was approved. Condemned do not sit for mercy.

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

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

A brutal reprisal took place with the rank and file participants in the uprising. A lot of prisoners were thrown into prison. In Orenburg at the beginning of April 1774, up to 4,000 people were kept. Prison, Gostiny Dvor - everything was overcrowded. The prisoners were even kept in "drinking houses". For the investigation, members of the secret investigative commission, captains Mavrin and Lunin, were sent to Orenburg. Particularly brutal massacre was carried out on the right bank of the Volga. The entire leadership of the uprising - chieftains, colonels, centurions - were executed by death, ordinary participants in the uprising were whipped and "cut down several at one ear" and out of 300 people, by lot, "executed one by death."

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

Orenburg Governor Reinsdorf, Colonel Mikhelson and other commanders were rewarded with new ranks, villages with serfs and lands, as well as large sums of money for suppressing the popular uprising.

The results of the uprising

The peasant war led by 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 "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 Territory, the distribution of state lands increased in the form of "most merciful awards" to officers, officials, Cossack foremen who participated in the suppression of the peasant war. In 1798, a general survey of lands began in the province. It assigned to the landowners all their lands, including those arbitrarily seized. The government encouraged the noble-landlord colonization of the region, therefore, in the last quarter of the 18th century. the resettlement of landowners and their peasants intensified, especially in 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, wishing to erase from 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 to burn the house where Pugachev was born. At the same time, a funny thing happened. Since Pugachev's house had previously been sold and moved to another estate, he was ordered to put it in its original place and then, by virtue of the decree, they burned it. The Yaik River was named Ural. The Yaik army is the Ural Cossack army, the Yaitsky town is in the Urals, the Verkhne-Yaitskaya pier is in the Verkhneuralsky, etc. The personal decree of the Senate on this matter reads:

“... for the complete oblivion of this unfortunate incident on Yaik, the river Yaik, according to which both this army and the city had its name until now, due to the fact that this river flows from the Ural Mountains, rename the Urals, and therefore and call the army Ural, and henceforth not call Yaitsky, and henceforth the Yaitsky city will be called Uralsk; about which, for information and execution, this is published.

(Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire.

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

In an effort to subordinate the Cossacks to their interests, to turn 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 in an army way. The Cossack elites are given the right to own serfs, serfs, 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 fixed.

Tatar and Bashkir princes and murzas were allowed to use the "liberties and advantages" of the Russian nobility, including the right to own serfs, though only of the Muslim faith. The largest of the Muslim landlords, 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 the military service population. In 1798, canton administration was introduced in Bashkiria. In the formed 24 canton regions, administration was carried out on a military basis.

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

To improve the monitoring of the order in the region in 1782, a new reform was carried out. 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 vicegerency consisted of two regions - Orenburg and Ufa. The structure of the Orenburg region included the 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 teams. 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.

Meanwhile, uprisings were rising in the country. After the government, in dire need of funds to continue the difficult war in Ukraine, issued copper money (and taxes were collected in silver), the position of the masses became very difficult. There was a lot of counterfeit money. For one silver ruble they took twelve copper ones. Some prominent guests and close associates of the king were involved in abuses with copper money; among them - the father-in-law of the tsar I. D. Miloslavsky. Service people refused to take copper money. Streltsy and soldiers fled from the regiments. An attempt by the government to obtain a silver loan abroad was unsuccessful. In 1662, in the conditions of several years of crop failure, a new collection of the “fifth money” was announced, and the archery tax was ordered to be paid in bread. All this led to acute discontent among the townspeople and a new major uprising in Moscow, known as the "copper riot".

Moscow uprising of 1662

On the morning of July 25, 1662, on the Lubyanka and in other parts of the city, sheets were found glued by someone with an inscription that the boyar I.D. guest Vasily Shorin - traitors.
A large group of townspeople went to the king in Kolomenskoye. There they handed over the “sheet” to the tsar and demanded that the persons named in the paper be extradited for reprisal. Meanwhile, in Moscow, attacks began on the yards of wealthy merchants, hated by the mass of townspeople. The uprising was headed by the archer K. Nagaev, the townspeople A. Shcherbok, L. Zhidkiy and others. The rebels, as in 1648, broke into Shorin's house and ruined it, and Shorin's son was captured as a hostage. Soon, however, the uprising was crushed by the tsarist troops. At least two and a half thousand people died under torture and were executed. The Moscow uprising of 1662 again revealed differentiation within the urban population. According to G. Kotoshikhin, “trading people were in that confusion, and their children, and bakers, and butchers, and pie-makers, and village, and walking, and boyar people ... But guests and trading people did not stick to those thieves one person, they also helped against those thieves, and they received praise from the king.

Strengthening the flight of peasants and townspeople

The Moscow uprising forced the government to abandon the further issue of copper money, which was stopped in 1663.
Following the suppression of the uprising, the government again increased pressure on the townspeople. In the autumn of 1662, the “streltsy bread” was doubled, which had a particularly hard effect on the position of the townspeople, who were not engaged or little engaged in agriculture. The townspeople were ruined, people fled from the towns. The peasants also fled, and in many cases they sacked the estates.
By a decree of 1661, for the reception of a fugitive peasant, in addition to the fine of 10 rubles established by the Cathedral Code, it was prescribed to take one "surplus peasant" (later their number was increased to four). For four years, in 1663 - 1667, about 8 thousand fugitive peasants and serfs were returned from the Ryazan district alone.
The main stream of fugitives was heading for the Don. Having no means of subsistence, many of the newcomers found themselves forced to go into bondage to the prosperous "household" Cossacks. After Azov remained behind Turkey, the Cossacks lost the opportunity to raid the coast of the Azov and Black Seas. The activity of the Cossacks now began to be directed to the Volga and the Caspian Sea, which contradicted the foreign policy plans of the Moscow government, which was interested in maintaining peaceful relations with Persia. The Cossack foreman, who was guided by Moscow, counteracted the desire of the Cossacks to march on the Volga and the Caspian. All this further aggravated the situation on the Don.

The beginning of the peasant war under the leadership of S.T. Razin

In the summer of 1666, the Cossack ataman Vasily Us undertook a campaign in the central regions of the Russian state, approaching Tula. The movement of the Usa detachment, which numbered about 500 people, caused strong excitement among the local peasantry. The detachment of the rebels grew to 3 thousand people. Before reaching Tula a few versts, Us turned back. Many peasants and serfs who fled from their masters left with him. Usa's campaign was a harbinger of a mass popular uprising that was brewing in those years. In the late 60s, the governors repeatedly reported to Moscow about the appearance in different places of detachments of "thieves' people", as they called in official documents all those who were recalcitrant to the government.
Under these conditions, the appearance of a bold and energetic leader of the movement acquired the significance of a long-awaited signal for a mass action. The Cossack Stepan Timofeevich Razin became such a leader. Having collected several hundred "bads", Razin in the spring of 1667 led them to the Volga for "zipuns" (prey). The Razin Cossacks attacked the merchant and royal caravans of ships, seized and divided wealth, exterminated the "primary people". Archers and working people who accompanied the caravans, as a rule, were released. In early June, on thirty-five plows, more than one and a half thousand people gathered under the command of Razin sailed into the Caspian Sea and went by sea to the mouth of the river. Yaik, to the Yaitsky town, and in March 1668 the Cossacks headed for the shores of Persia.
The Persian government put up large military forces against Razin, but Razin, apparently for tactical purposes, announced that he wanted to become a Shah. Soon, however, clashes began between the Cossacks and the inhabitants of the city of Rasht, where the Cossacks were waiting for negotiations with the Shah. The Persian government refused to accept Razin's Cossacks as Shah's subjects and sent a strong fleet against them. In June 1669, the Cossacks defeated the Persian fleet and turned to the Volga with rich booty. Actions of Razin on the Volga and the Caspian Sea in 1667 - 1669 were a spontaneous act of the Cossacks, who were looking for means to improve their share and saw these means in extracting wealth by force and dividing it among themselves.
In early August 1669, Razin went to the mouth of the Volga, captured the metropolitan fisheries and Persian ships that were going with gifts to the king, and on August 25 appeared at Astrakhan.

The rise of the popular movement

Soon the Cossacks left Astrakhan and on October 1 they were already in Tsaritsyn, where they released all those who were in the voivodship prison and tried to kill the voivode. From here they went to the Don. Crowds of Cossacks and runaway peasants flocked to him in the Kagalnitsky town. The Cossacks said that they were going AGAINST the boyars and the initial people, but not against the tsar - the tsarist illusions among them were very strong. Razin himself spread rumors that “Tsarevich Alexei Alekseevich” and “Patriarch Nikon”, who was then in disgrace, were allegedly with him.
In mid-April 1670, Stepan Razin approached Tsaritsyn with 7,000 men and soon took possession of it with the active support of local residents. In the captured Tsaritsyn, Razin introduced a Cossack device. On June 19, he approached the heavily fortified Astrakhan, and on the night of June 22, he began an assault on it. The people of Astrakhan, who remembered Razin well, supported his actions. The initial people, governors, nobles were killed; documents of the Astrakhan voivodeship administration were burned. The management of Astrakhan was organized according to the Cossack model. Vasily Us, Fyodor Sheludyak and other atamans stood at the head of the department.
From Astrakhan through Tsaritsyn, 8 thousand Cossacks moved up the Volga. Saratov and Samara surrendered without a fight. Razin’s “charming letters” (sometimes on behalf of “Tsarevich Alexei Alekseevich” or “Patriarch Nikon”) dispersed throughout the Volga region with a call to exterminate boyars, governors, clerks, “worldly bloodsuckers”. Serfs and serfs, townspeople, schismatics - everyone who suffered from the requisitions and oppressions that were becoming unbearable, saw their leader in Razin. Successes in the fight against government troops gave hope for a quick outcome of the struggle. It seemed that it was enough to beat the boyars and nobles, ruin and destroy the master's estates, divide their property among themselves - and everything would go on well, under the rule of the "good" tsar, a new, free life would begin.
The people rose up to fight for freedom with the greatest energy and determination. In this struggle, the traditions of the class struggle were formed and strengthened, the traditions of the heroic joint struggle of the Russian and non-Russian peoples against the oppressors of the tsar and the nobility.
The uprising more and more assumed the character of a peasant war. Now, in 1670, in the Volga region, the bulk of the rebels were peasants. And among the Cossacks of Razin there were many peasants who fled from their masters to the Don.
September 4 Razin approached Simbirsk and began its siege. Government troops took refuge behind the walls of the fortress, but most of the city was in the hands of Razin. At this time, the uprising swept the new regions of the Volga region. Atamans Razin dispersed from under Simbirsk and raised the people to fight. Osipov took Alatyr, went further down the river. Sure, then occupied Kurmysh and Kozmodemyansk. In this area, detachments of Chuvash, Mari and Tatars joined the rebels. The uprisings took place in the commercial and industrial villages near Nizhny Novgorod - Lyskovo, Murashkin, Vorsma, Pavlov, etc. Having united with Osipov's detachment, the rebellious peasants besieged the Makaryev-Zheltovodsky monastery and took it. Ataman Mikhail Kharitonov occupied Saransk, moved to Penza, took it without a fight, captured the Lower and Upper Lomov. In the Kadom district, the rebels were led by the peasant Chirok, in the Shatsk district, by the peasant Shilov, and in Tambov, by the Cossack Meshcheryakov. The former peasant woman - the monastery old woman Alena - at the head of a detachment of rebels took possession of Temnikovo. On the left bank of the Volga, uprisings of the peasants of the Galich district took place, unrest also swept the Udmurt peasants.

Defeat of the uprising

The position of Razin's main forces near Simbirsk was difficult. The three-time assault on the Simbirsk fortress did not lead to success. Near Simbirsk, Razin suffered a serious defeat. For several more months, uprisings continued in the Volga region. In the autumn of the same year, an uprising broke out in Sloboda Ukraine, where Stepan Razin's brother, Frol, went.
The punitive actions of the tsarist troops everywhere ran into exceptionally stubborn resistance. In the second half of November, the uprising began again in the Arzamas district. The rebels stubbornly defended themselves in Temnikovo, big battles took place near Tambov. Only at the end of November was the suppression of the uprising in the Nizhny Novgorod region completed. Penza was taken by government troops only by the end of December 1670. Until the spring of 1671, the rebels defended themselves in the Yadrinsky and Tsivilsky districts. Until November 1671, the rebels held Astrakhan in their hands.
But the forces were unequal. The government dealt with the rebels with monstrous cruelty. Strugs with gallows slowly sailed down the Volga to intimidate the population. At least 11,000 people were executed in Arzamas.
Soon, the fate of Razin himself was tragically decided - in April, he, along with his brother, was captured by homely Cossacks and handed over to the government. On June 2, he was brought to Moscow. Two days after the interrogation, accompanied by torture, Razin was executed (quartered) in Moscow. Even captured and chained, even executed, Razin was terrible to the Moscow government. Triple ranks of archers and soldiers separated Razin from the assembled people. Only a small number of boyars and foreigners were admitted to the place of execution.
However, the resistance of the masses continued in different parts of the country and in various forms. Many people went to distant schismatic sketes. It is in those
years, terrible self-immolations began, when the schismatics preferred martyrdom to surrender to the tsarist detachments. In some places, the schismatic movement took on the character of a mass uprising, as happened in the Solovetsky Monastery.

Uprising in the Solovetsky Monastery

The monastery at the end of the 50s refused to recognize Nikon's reform. Attempts by church authorities to persuade the Solovetsky monks were unsuccessful. Archers sent from Moscow were met with cannon fire from the monastery walls. Thus began in 1668 the uprising in the Solovetsky Monastery. Large food supplies made it possible to withstand a long siege. The monastic peasants began to act more and more actively against the tsarist troops. The social composition of the rebels changed in the direction of strengthening the peasant elements. After the defeat of the Razin uprising, many of its participants came to the monastery. The leading role in the movement passed from the elders to the peasants. This was reflected in the attitude of the monks towards the uprising. As a result of their betrayal in January 1676, the monastery was taken by the tsarist troops. After the suppression of the Solovetsky uprising, the government intensified repressions against the leaders of the split. Archpriest Avvakum was sentenced to death.
With great difficulty, the tsarist government managed to drown the popular movements of the third quarter of the 17th century in blood.

B.A. Rybakov - "History of the USSR from ancient times to the end of the XVIII century." - M., "Higher School", 1975.

Pugachev's uprising (peasant war) 1773-1775 under the leadership of Emelyan Pugachev - the uprising of the Yaik Cossacks, which grew into a full-scale war.

Rationalism and disregard for tradition, so characteristic of the imperial regime, alienated the masses from it. The Pugachev uprising was the latest and most serious in a long chain of uprisings that took place on the southeastern borders of the Russian state, in that open and difficult to define region where the Old Believers and fugitives from the imperial authorities lived side by side with non-Russian steppe tribes and where the Cossacks who defended royal fortresses, still dreamed of the return of former liberties.

Causes of the Pugachev uprising

At the end of the 18th century, the control of official authorities in this area became more and more tangible. In general, the Pugachev uprising can be seen as the last - but most powerful - desperate impulse of people whose way of life was incompatible with a clearly defined and well-defined state power. The nobles received land in the Volga and Trans-Volga regions, and for many peasants who had lived there for a long time, this meant serfdom. Peasants from other regions of the country also settled there.

The landlords, wanting to increase their income and trying to take advantage of the opening opportunities in trade, increased the quitrent or replaced it with corvée. Soon after the accession of Catherine, these duties, still unusual for many, were fixed in the course of the census and measurement of the land. With the advent of market relations in the Volga territories, the pressure on more traditional and less productive activities increased.

A special group of the population of this region was made up of odnodvortsy, descendants of peasant soldiers sent to the Volga borders in the 16th-17th centuries. Most of the odnodvortsev were Old Believers. Remaining theoretically free people, they suffered greatly from economic rivalry from the nobles, and at the same time they were afraid of losing their independence and falling into the hard class of state peasants.

How it all began

The uprising began among the Yaik Cossacks, whose position reflected the changes brought about by increasingly intrusive state intervention. They have long enjoyed relative freedom, which made it possible to go about their own business, elect leaders, hunt, fish and raid the regions adjacent to the lower Yaik (Ural) in exchange for recognizing the authority of the king and providing, if necessary, certain services.

The change in the status of the Cossacks took place in 1748, when the government ordered the creation of the Yaik army from the 7 defense regiments of the so-called Orenburg line, which was built in order to separate the Kazakhs from the Bashkirs. Some of the Cossack foremen favorably accepted the creation of the army, in the hope of securing a firm status within the framework of the "Table of Ranks", but for the most part, ordinary Cossacks opposed joining the Russian army, considering this decision a violation of freedom and a violation of Cossack democratic traditions.

The Cossacks were also alarmed that in the army they would become ordinary soldiers. Suspicion intensified when, in 1769, to fight the Turks, it was proposed to form a certain “Moscow Legion” from small Cossack troops. This meant wearing a military uniform, training and, worst of all, shaving beards, which caused deep rejection on the part of the Old Believers.

Appearance of Peter III (Pugachev)

Emelyan Pugachev stood at the head of the discontented Yaik Cossacks. Being a Don Cossack by origin, Pugachev deserted from the Russian army and became a fugitive; he was caught several times, but Pugachev always managed to escape. Pugachev called himself Emperor Peter III, who allegedly managed to escape; he spoke out in defense of the old faith. Perhaps Pugachev went for such a trick at the prompt of one of the Yaik Cossacks, but accepted the proposed role with conviction and panache, becoming a figure not subject to anyone's manipulations.

The appearance of Peter III revived the hopes of peasants and religious dissidents, and some of the measures taken by Yemelyan as tsar strengthened them. Yemelyan Pugachev expropriated church lands, elevating monastic and church peasants to the more preferable rank of state; banned the purchase of peasants by non-nobles and stopped the practice of assigning them to factories and mines. He also eased the persecution of the Old Believers and granted forgiveness to schismatics who voluntarily returned from abroad. The release of the nobles from compulsory public service, which did not bring direct benefits to the serfs, nevertheless gave rise to expectations of similar relief for themselves.

Pugachev's court. Painting by V.G. Perov

Be that as it may, regardless of politics, the unexpected removal of Peter III from the throne aroused the strongest suspicions among the peasants, especially since his successor was a German woman, who, moreover, was not Orthodox, as many thought. Pugachev was not the first to make a name for himself by assuming the identity of the injured and hiding Tsar Peter, ready to lead the people to restore the true faith and the return of traditional freedoms. From 1762 to 1774, about 10 such figures appeared. Pugachev became the most visible person, partly because of the wide support given, partly because of his abilities; besides, he was lucky.

Pugachev's popularity increased in many respects due to the fact that he appeared in the form of an innocent victim, who humbly accepted the removal from the throne and left the capital in order to wander among his people, knowing their suffering and hardships. Pugachev declared that he had allegedly already visited Constantinople and Jerusalem, confirming his holiness and power by contacts with the "Second Rome" and the place of Christ's death.

The circumstances under which Catherine came to power really made her question her legitimacy. Dissatisfaction with the empress further intensified when she canceled some of her ex-husband's popular decrees, curtailing the freedoms of the Cossacks and further curtailing the already meager rights of serfs, depriving them, for example, of the ability to petition the sovereign.

The course of the uprising

Pugachev's uprising is usually divided into three stages.

The first stage - lasted from the beginning of the uprising until the defeat at the Tatishcheva fortress and the lifting of the siege of Orenburg.

The second stage was marked by a campaign to the Urals, then to Kazan and the defeat under it from Michelson's troops.

The beginning of the third stage is the crossing to the right bank of the Volga and the capture of many cities. The end of the stage is the defeat at Cherny Yar.

First stage of the uprising

Pugachev approached the Yaik town with a detachment of 200 people, there were 923 regular troops in the fortress. An attempt to take the fortress by storm failed. Pugachev left the Yaitsky town and headed up the Yaitsky fortified line. The fortresses surrendered one by one. The advanced detachments of the Pugachevites appeared near Orenburg on October 3, 1773, but the governor Reinsdorp was ready for defense: the ramparts were repaired, the garrison of 2,900 people was put on alert. One thing that the major general missed was that he did not provide the garrison and the population of the city with food supplies.

A small detachment from the rear units under the command of Major General Kara was sent to suppress the uprising, while Pugachev near Orenburg had about 24,000 people with 20 guns. Kar wanted to pincer the Pugachevites and divided his already small detachment.

Pugachev defeated the punishers in parts. At first, the grenadier company, without resisting, joined the ranks of the rebels. After that, on the night of November 9, Kar was attacked and fled 17 miles from the rebels. It all ended with the defeat of the detachment of Colonel Chernyshev. 32 officers, led by a colonel, were captured and executed.

This victory played a bad joke on Pugachev. On the one hand, he was able to strengthen his authority, and on the other hand, the authorities began to take him seriously and sent entire regiments to suppress the rebellion. Three regiments of the regular army under the command of Golitsyn met in battle with the Pugachevites on March 22, 1774 in the Tatishcheva fortress. The assault lasted for six hours. Pugachev was defeated and fled to the Ural factories. On March 24, 1774, detachments of rebels who besieged Ufa, near Chesnokovka, were defeated.

Second phase

The second stage was distinguished by some features. A significant part of the population did not support the rebels. The Pugachev detachments arriving at the plant confiscated the factory treasury, robbed the factory population, destroyed the factory, and committed violence. The Bashkirs stood out in particular. Often the factories offered resistance to the rebels, organizing self-defense. 64 factories joined the Pugachevites, and 28 opposed him. In addition, the superiority in strength was on the side of the punishers.

May 20, 1774 - the Pugachevites captured the Troitskaya fortress with 11-12,000 people and 30 cannons. The next day, Pugachev was overtaken by General de Colong and won the battle. On the battlefield, 4,000 were killed and 3,000 were taken prisoner. Pugachev himself with a small detachment went to European Russia.

In the Kazan province, he was greeted with bells and bread and salt. The army of Emelyan Pugachev was replenished with new forces and near Kazan on July 11, 1774 already numbered 20,000 people. Kazan was taken, only the Kremlin held out. Mikhelson hurried to the rescue of Kazan, who was able to defeat Pugachev once again. And again Pugachev fled. 1774, July 31 - his next manifesto was published. This document freed the peasants from serfdom and various taxes. The peasants were urged to destroy the landowners.

Third stage of the uprising

At the third stage, one can already speak of a peasant war that engulfed the vast territory of Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Voronezh provinces. Of the 1,425 nobles who were in the Nizhny Novgorod province, 348 people were killed. It got not only to nobles and officials, but also to the clergy. In Kurmysh district, out of 72 killed, 41 were members of the clergy. In the Yadrinsky district, 38 members of the clergy were executed.

The cruelty of the Pugachevites should in fact be considered bloody and monstrous, but the cruelty of the punishers was no less monstrous. On August 1, Pugachev in Penza, on August 6 he occupied Saratov, on August 21 he approached Tsaritsyn, but could not take him. Attempts to raise the Don Cossacks were unsuccessful. On August 24, the last battle took place, in which Michelson's troops defeated Pugachev's army. He himself ran across the Volga with 30 Cossacks. In the meantime, A.V. arrived at Michelson's headquarters. Suvorov, urgently recalled from the Turkish front.

The capture of Pugachev

On September 15, his associates handed Pugachev over to the authorities. In the town of Yaik, Lieutenant Captain Mavrin made the first interrogations of the impostor, which resulted in the assertion that the uprising was caused not by the evil will of Pugachev and the rampage of the mob, but by the difficult living conditions of the people. At one time, wonderful words were said by General A.I. Bibik, who fought against Pugachev: “It is not Pugachev that is important, it is the general indignation that matters.”

From the town of Yaitsky, Pugachev was taken to Simbirsk. The convoy was commanded by A.V. Suvorov. October 1 arrived in Simbirsk. Here, on October 2, the investigation was continued by P.I. Panin and P.S. Potemkin. The investigators wanted to prove that Pugachev was bribed by foreigners or the noble opposition. It was not possible to break Pugachev's will, the investigation in Simbirsk did not achieve its goal.

November 4, 1774 - Pugachev was taken to Moscow. Here the investigation was led by S.I. Sheshkovsky. Pugachev persistently confirmed the idea of ​​popular suffering as the cause of the uprising. Empress Catherine did not like this very much. She was ready to admit external interference or the existence of a noble opposition, but she was not ready to admit the mediocrity of her government.

The rebels were accused of desecrating Orthodox churches, which was not the case. On December 13, the last interrogation of Pugachev was removed. Court sessions took place in the Throne Room of the Kremlin Palace on December 29-31. January 10, 1775 - Pugachev was executed on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. The reaction of the common people to the execution of Pugachev is interesting: "Some Pugach was executed in Moscow, but Pyotr Fedorovich is alive." Pugachev's relatives were placed in the Kexholm fortress. 1803 - freed prisoners from captivity. They all died in different years without offspring. The last to die in 1833 was Pugachev's daughter Agrafena.

The consequences of the Pugachev uprising

Peasant War 1773-1775 became the most massive spontaneous folk performance in Russia. Pugachev seriously frightened the Russian ruling circles Even during the uprising, by order of the government, the house in which Pugachev lived was burned down, and later his native village Zimoveyskaya was moved to another place and renamed Potemkinskaya. The Yaik River, the first center of disobedience and the epicenter of the rebels, was renamed the Urals, and the Yaik Cossacks began to be called the Ural Cossacks. The Cossack Army that supported Pugachev was disbanded and moved to the Terek. The restless Zaporizhzhya Sich, given its rebellious traditions, was liquidated in 1775 without waiting for the next performance. Catherine II ordered the Pugachev Rebellion to be forgotten forever.