Pugachev uprising: results, progress and reasons

In Russian history, the reign of Catherine II is invariably called the golden age. On the throne, the empress reigned, resembling her main aspirations for the great reformer Peter, just as he, who wants to make Russia part of a civilized Europe. The empire strengthens, new powers are joined by powerful military force, science and art develop under the supervision of the educated queen. But there was also the "horror of the XVIII century" - as Catherine called the Great Pugachev uprising. Its results, like the reasons and the course, revealed the sharp contradictions hidden behind the luxurious façade of the golden age.

Reasons for the uprising

The first decrees of Catherine after the dismissal of Peter III were manifestos on the release of noblemen from compulsory military and public service. The landlords were given the opportunity to engage in their economy, and in relation to the peasants they became slaveholders. The serfs received only intolerable duties, and even the right to complain about the owners of them was taken away. In the hands of the master was the fate and very life of the serf.

The share of those peasants that were attributed to the factories was not better. Attached workers were mercilessly exploited by mining workers. In terrible conditions they worked in heavy and dangerous industries, and they had neither the strength nor the time to work on their own allotments.

No wonder it was in the Urals and in the Volga region that Pugachev's uprising was on fire. The results of the repressive policy of the Russian Empire in relation to the national suburbs are the appearance in the rebel army of hundreds of thousands of Bashkirs, Tatars, Udmurts, Kazakhs, Kalmyks, Chuvashes. The state drove them from the ancestral lands, building new factories there, implanting a new faith for them, forbidding the old gods.

On the river Yaike

The fuse, from which the great flame of people's wrath occupied the vast space in the Urals and the Volga, was the performance of the Yaik Cossacks. They protested against the deprivation of their economic (state monopoly on salt) and political (concentration of power among the supported by the authorities of foremen and atamans) freedoms and privileges. Their performances of 1771 were brutally suppressed, which made the Cossacks look for other methods of struggle and new leaders.

Some historians state that the Pugachev uprising, the reasons, the course, the results of it were largely determined by the top of the Yaik Cossacks. They managed to subordinate their influence to the charismatic Pugachev and make him their blind instrument in achieving Cossack liberties. And when the danger came, they betrayed him and tried to save their lives in exchange for his head.

The peasant "anpirator"

Tension in the social and political atmosphere of that time was supported by rumors about the forcibly deposed czarina Ekaterina, Peter Fedorovich. It was said that Peter III prepared a decree "On Liberty of the Peasants", but did not have time to proclaim it and was captured by noblemen - opponents of emancipation of peasants. He miraculously escaped and will soon appear before the people and raise him to fight for the return of the royal throne. The faith of the common people in the right king, the anointed of God, having special marks on the body, was often used in Russia by various impostors to fight for power.

Miraculously saved Peter Fedorovich really showed up. He showed obvious signs on his chest (which were traces of scrofula transferred) and called the nobles the main enemies of the working people. He was strong and brave, had a clear mind and an iron will. At birth, his name was Emelyan Pugachev.

Don Cossack from the village Zimoveyskaya

He was born in 1740 or 1742 in the same places, where a hundred years before his birth another legendary rebel - Stepan Razin. The uprising of Pugachev, the results of his campaigns along the Volga and the Urals, frightened the authorities so much that she tried to destroy the very memory of the "peasant tsar". There are very few reliable data on his life.

Emelian Ivanovich Pugachev was young in his youth with a lively mind and restless temper. He participated in the war with Prussia and Turkey, and was awarded the title of Corun. He returned to the Don by illness, could not achieve official resignation from military service and began to hide from the authorities.

He visited Poland, the Kuban and the Caucasus. For some time he lived with the Old Believers on the banks of one of the tributaries of the Volga River Irgiz. There was an opinion that it was one of the prominent schismatics - Father Filaret - who gave Pugachev the idea of affecting the wonderfully saved true emperor. So the "anchor" Peter Fyodorovich appeared among the freedom-loving Egg Cossacks.

Riot or peasant war?

Events that began as a struggle for the return of Cossack liberties, acquired all the features of a large-scale war against the oppressors of the peasantry and the working people.

The manifestos and decrees proclaimed on behalf of Peter III contained ideas that had a tremendous appeal for the majority of the population of the empire: the emancipation of the peasantry from serf bondage and overburdened taxes, the allocation of land to it, the elimination of the privileges of the nobility and bureaucracy, the elements of self-government of national suburbs,

Such slogans on the banner of the army of the insurgents ensured rapid quantitative growth and had a decisive influence on the entire Pugachev uprising. The causes and results of the peasant war of 1773-75 became a direct product of these social problems.

The eggs and Cossacks, who became the core of the main military force of the uprising, were joined by workers and accredited peasants of the Urals plants, landlord serfs. The equestrian part of the rebel army was mainly Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kalmyks and other inhabitants of the steppes on the edge of the empire.

To manage their motley in composition by the army, the leaders of the Pugachev army were formed a military collegium - the administrative and political center of the uprising. For the successful functioning of this insurgent staff, the will and knowledge of the Pugachev commanders were not enough, although the actions of the rebel army occasionally provoked surprise by their organized officers and generals, though it was a rare phenomenon.

Gradually, the confrontation acquired the features of a real civil war. But the rudiments of the ideological program, which could be seen in Emelian's "royal decrees," could not withstand the robbery of his army. The results of the Pugachev uprising later showed that the robberies and unprecedented cruelty in reprisals against the oppressors turned the speech against the state system of oppression into that same - senseless and ruthless - Russian riot.

The course of the uprising

The gigantic space from the Volga to the Urals was covered with the fire of the uprising. Initially, the performance of the Yaik Cossacks led by the self-styled spouse did not arouse fears of Catherine. Only when the army of Pugachev began to replenish rapidly, when it became known that the "anpirator" was greeted with bread and salt in small villages and large settlements, when the authorities seized - often without a fight - many fortresses in the Orenburg steppes, the authorities took good care. It was the inexcusable negligence of the authorities that explained the rapid intensification of Cossack outrage Pushkin, who studied the results and significance of the uprising. Pugachev led to the capital of the Urals - Orenburg - a powerful and dangerous army that defeated several regular military formations.

But the Pugachev freemen could not really resist the punitive forces sent from the capital, and the first stage of the uprising ended with the victory of the tsarist troops at Tatische Fortress in March 1774. It seemed that the insurrection of Pugachev, the results of which consisted in the flight of an impostor with a small detachment to the Urals, was suppressed. But this was only the first stage.

The Kazan landowner

Already three months after the rout of Orenburg, a 20,000-strong rebel army came to Kazan: the losses were filled with an instant influx of new forces among those dissatisfied with their position. Hearing about the approach of the "Emperor Peter III" many peasants themselves dealt with the owners, met with bread and salt Pugachev and poured into his army. Kazan almost submitted to the rebels. They could not take by storm only the Kremlin, where there remained a small garrison.

Wishing to support the Volga nobility and the landlords of the region covered by the insurrection, the empress declared herself a "Kazan landowner" and sent to Kazan a powerful military group under the command of Colonel II Michelson, who was ordered to suppress the Pugachev insurrection. The results of the Kazan battle were again unfavorable for the impostor, and he left the remnants of the troops on the right bank of the Volga.

The End of the Pugachev Uprising

In the Volga region, which was a zone of solid serfdom, the bonfire of the insurrection received a new supply - the peasants released from captivity by the manifesto of "Petr Fedorovich" poured into his army. Soon already in Moscow itself they began to prepare for the rebuff of a huge insurgent army. But the results of the uprising of Pugachev in the Urals showed him that the peasant army can not resist the trained and well-armed regular units. It was decided to move to the south and raise the Don Cossacks to fight, on their way was a powerful fortress - Tsaritsyn.

It was on the approaches to him that Mikhelson defeated the rebels. Pugachev tried to hide, but was betrayed by Cossack sergeants, seized and handed over to the authorities. In Moscow, the trial of Pugachev and his closest associates took place, in January 1775 he was executed, but spontaneous peasant demonstrations continued for a long time.

Preconditions, reasons, participants, progress and results of Pugachev uprising

The table below summarizes this historical event. It shows who and for what purpose participated in the uprising, and why it was defeated.

Mark on history

After the defeat of the Pugachevs, Catherine the Great tried to do everything so that the memory of the uprising disappeared forever. The river Yaik was renamed into the Urals , the Yaikian Cossacks became known as the Urals, the Don village of Zimoveiskaya - the birthplace of Razin and Pugachev - became Potemkin. But too much shock for the empire was the Pugachev Troubles to dissolve in history without a trace. Almost every new generation has its own assessment of the outcome of Emelian Pugachev's uprising, calling his leader a hero or a bandit. So it was led in Russia - it is a good goal to achieve unrighteous methods, and labels should be hung from a safe time interval.