Pugachev's peasant war can be briefly described as a massive one that shook the Russian Empire from 1773 to 1775. Riots took place in vast territories, including the Urals, the Volga region, Bashkiria and the Orenburg region.

The leader of the uprising was Emelyan Pugachev - Don, who declared himself emperor. The reasons for the uprising were the discontent of the Yaik Cossacks associated with the loss of liberties, unrest among indigenous peoples such as the Bashkirs and Tatars, the tense situation in the Ural factories and the extremely difficult situation of serfs.

The uprising began on September 17, 1773, when Pugachev, on behalf of the dead Emperor Peter III, announced his first decree to the Yaitsky army and, together with a detachment of 80 people, advanced to the Yaitsky town. On the way, more and more supporters join him. It is not possible to take the Yaitsky town due to the lack of artillery, and Pugachev decides to move further along the river Yaik.

Iletsk town is greeted as a legitimate sovereign. His army is replenished with garrison Cossacks and city artillery cannons. The rebel troops continue to move, occupying, with or without battle, all fortresses in their path. Soon, Pugachev's army, which by that time had reached an impressive size, approached Orenburg and on October 5 began the siege of the city.

The punitive corps of Major General Kara, sent to suppress the riot, is defeated and hastily retreat. Inspired by their successes, the rebels occupy more and more settlements, their forces are growing rapidly. However, they still fail to take Orenburg. The next military expedition led by Bibikov forces the rebels to lift the siege from the city. The rebels gather the main forces in the Tatishchevskaya fortress. As a result of the battle, which took place on March 22, 1774, the rebels suffered a crushing defeat.

Pugachev himself fled to the Urals, where, having again collected a significant army, he again sets out on a campaign. On July 12, the rebels approach Kazan and occupy the city, with the exception of the Kazan Kremlin, where the remnants of the garrison settled. However, the government troops arriving in time in the evening are forcing Pugachev to retreat. In the ensuing battle, the rebels were utterly defeated. Pugachev runs across the Volga, where he gathers a new army and announces a decree about the liberation of the serfs. This causes massive unrest among the peasants.

Pugachev talks about going to, but turns to the south. During the battle at the Solenikova gang, the rebels suffer a crushing defeat. Pugachev flees to the Volga, but his comrades-in-arms betray him and hand him over to the government. On January 10, 1775, the leader of the uprising was executed. At the beginning of the summer, the Pugachev rebellion was finally suppressed. The uprising resulted in the death of thousands of people and multimillion-dollar damage to the economy. Its result was the transformation of the Cossacks into regular military units, as well as some improvement in the lives of workers in the factories of the Urals. The position of the peasants practically did not change in any way.

A garrison of government troops was deployed, 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, never before had the Cossacks been branded, they had not cut out their tongues. A large number of participants in the performance took refuge in distant steppe farms, excitement reigned everywhere, the state of the Cossacks was like a compressed spring.

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

The situation at the fast-growing factories in the Urals was also explosive. Beginning with Peter, the government solved the problem of labor in metallurgy mainly by attributing state peasants to state and private mining plants, allowing new breeders to buy serf villages and granting an unofficial right to keep runaway serfs, since the Berg Collegium, which was in charge of the factories, tried not to notice violations of the decree on the capture and expulsion of all fugitives. At the same time, it was very convenient to use the powerlessness and the hopeless position 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.

The peasants assigned to state and private factories dreamed of returning to their usual village work, while the situation of the peasants in serf estates was not much better. The economic situation in the country, almost continuously waging one war after another, was difficult. The landowners are increasing the area under crops, the corvee is increasing. To top it off, this was followed by the Decree of Catherine II of August 22, 1767 prohibiting the peasants from complaining about the landowners personally to the Empress (the decree did not forbid complaining about the landowners in the usual way).

In this situation, the most fantastic rumors about imminent freedom or about the transfer of all the peasants to the treasury, about the ready decree of the tsar, who was killed for this by his wife and boyars, about the fact that the tsar was not killed, and he was hiding until better times, all of them fell on the fertile ground of general human dissatisfaction with their present situation.

The beginning of the uprising

Emelyan Pugachev. Portrait attached to the publication of "History of the Pugachev rebellion" by A. Pushkin, 1834

Despite the fact that the internal readiness of the Yaik Cossacks for the uprising was high, the performance lacked a unifying idea, a core that would rally the hiding and hidden participants in the 1772 unrest. The rumor that the emperor Pyotr Fyodorovich, who miraculously escaped, appeared in the army, instantly spread throughout the Yaik. Pyotr Fedorovich was the husband of Catherine II, after the coup in he abdicated and then died mysteriously.

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

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

In September, hiding from the search detachments, Pugachev, accompanied by a group of Cossacks, arrived at the Budarinsky outpost, where on September 17 his first decree to the Yaitsky army was announced. The author of the decree was one of the few literate Cossacks, 19-year-old Ivan Pochitalin, sent by his father to serve the "Tsar". From here a detachment of 80 Cossacks headed up the Yaik. On the way, new supporters joined, so that by the time of the arrival of September 18 to 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. The second insurgent attack on 19 September was also repulsed with artillery. The insurgent detachment did not have its own guns, 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, at which the troops elected Andrei Ovchinnikov as the marching chieftain, all the Cossacks swore allegiance to the great Emperor Peter Fedorovich, after which Pugachev sent Ovchinnikov to the Iletsk town with decrees to the Cossacks: “ And whatever you wish, you will not be denied all benefits and salaries; and your glory will not expire forever; and both you and your descendants are the first to be the first with me, the great, sovereign, to commit". Despite the opposition of the Iletsk ataman Portnov, Ovchinnikov persuaded the local Cossacks to join the uprising, and they greeted Pugachev with bell ringing and bread and salt.

All Iletsk Cossacks swore allegiance to Pugachev. The first execution took place: according to the complaints of the residents - “I hurt them great and ruined them” - Portnov was hanged. A separate regiment was formed from 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 artillery.

Rebellion Initial Stage Map

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

The Rassypnaya fortress was taken by a lightning storm on September 24, and the local Cossacks, in the midst of the battle, went over to the rebel side. On September 26, the Nizhneozernaya fortress was taken. On September 27, the patrols of the rebels appeared in front of the Tatishcheva fortress and began to persuade the local garrison to surrender and join the army of the "sovereign" Pyotr Fedorovich. The garrison of the fortress consisted of at least a thousand soldiers, and the commandant, Colonel Yelagin, hoped to fight back with the help of artillery. The exchange of fire continued throughout the day on September 27. A detachment of Orenburg Cossacks sent out on a sortie, under the command of the centurion Podurov, went over to the side of the rebels in full force. Having managed to set fire to the wooden walls of the fortress, from which a fire started in the town, and taking advantage of the panic that began in the town, the Cossacks broke into the fortress, after which most of the garrison laid down their arms. The commandant and officers resisted to the last, perishing in battle; those captured, including their families, were shot after the battle. The daughter of the commandant Elagin Tatyana, the widow of the commandant of the Nizhneozernaya fortress Kharlov, who was killed the day before, was taken by Pugachev as a concubine. Her brother Nikolai was left with her, in front of whom, after the battle, his mother was killed. Cossacks shot Tatyana and her young brother a month later.

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

The road to Orenburg was open, but Pugachev decided to head to the Seitov settlement and Sakmarsky town, since the Cossacks and Tatars who arrived from there assured him of universal loyalty. On October 1, the population of the Seitovaya Sloboda solemnly met the Cossack army, putting a Tatar regiment in its ranks. In addition, a decree was issued in the Tatar language, addressed to the Tatars and Bashkirs, in which Pugachev granted them “lands, waters, forests, residences, grasses, rivers, fish, bread, laws, arable lands, bodies, monetary salaries, lead and gunpowder. ". And already on October 2, the insurgent detachment entered the Sakmara Cossack town under the bell ringing. In addition to the Sakmara Cossack regiment, workers from neighboring copper mines, miners Tverdyshev and Myasnikov, joined Pugachev. In the Sakmara town, Khlopusha appeared as part of the rebels, initially sent by Governor Reinsdorp with secret letters to the rebels promising pardon if Pugachev was extradited.

On October 4, the army of the rebels headed for the Berdskaya settlement near Orenburg, the inhabitants of which also swore allegiance to the "resurrected" tsar. By this time, the army of the impostor numbered about 2500 people, of which - about 1500 Yaik, Iletsk and Orenburg Cossacks, 300 soldiers, 500 Kargaly Tatars. The artillery of the rebels consisted of several dozen cannons.

Siege of Orenburg and the first military successes

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

Panorama of Orenburg. 18th century engraving

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

And on October 5, Pugachev's army approached the city, setting up a temporary camp five miles from it. The Cossacks were sent to the rampart, who managed to convey Pugachev's decree to the troops of the garrison with an appeal to lay down their arms and join the "sovereign". In response, the cannons from the city rampart began shelling the rebels. On October 6, Reinsdorp ordered a sortie, a detachment of 1,500 men under the command of Major Naumov returned to the fortress after a two-hour battle. At the military council convened on October 7, it was decided to defend behind the walls of the fortress under the cover of fortress artillery. One of the reasons for this decision was the fear of soldiers and Cossacks going over to the side of Pugachev. The sortie showed that the soldiers were reluctant to fight, Major Naumov reported on the "Shyness and fear in their subordinates".

The outbreak of the siege of Orenburg for six months fettered the main forces of the rebels, without bringing any of the parties to military success. On October 12, a repeated sortie of the Naumov detachment was made, but the successful actions of artillery under the command of Chumakov helped to repel the attack. allowed to come close to the shaft.

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

On October 14, Catherine II appointed Major General V.A.Kara as commander of a military expedition to suppress the rebellion. At the end of October Kar arrived in Kazan from St. Petersburg and headed for Orenburg at the head of a corps of two thousand soldiers and one and a half thousand militias. On November 7, near the village of Yuzeeva, 98 versts from Orenburg, detachments of the Pugachev atamans A.A. Ovchinnikov and I.N. Zarubin-Chiki attacked the vanguard of the Kara corps and, after a three-day battle, forced him to retreat back to Kazan. On November 13, near Orenburg, a detachment of Colonel Chernyshev was captured, numbering up to 1100 Cossacks, 600-700 soldiers, 500 Kalmyks, 15 guns and a huge baggage train. Realizing that instead of a non-prestigious, but victory over the rebels, he could receive a complete defeat from untrained peasants and Bashkir-Cossack irregular cavalry, Kar, under the pretext of illness, left the corps and went to Moscow, leaving command to General Freiman.

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

Began mass joining the uprising of the Bashkirs. The Bashkir foreman Kinzya Arslanov, who entered the Pugachev Secret Duma, sent messages to the foremen and ordinary Bashkirs, in which he assured that Pugachev was providing all kinds of support to their needs. On October 12, Sergeant Major Kaskyn Samarov took the Resurrection Copper Smelter and, at the head of a detachment of Bashkirs and factory peasants of 600 people with 4 guns, arrived in Berdy. In November, as part of a large detachment of Bashkirs and Mishars, Salavat Yulaev went over to Pugachev's side. In December, Salavat Yulaev formed a large insurgent detachment in the northeastern part of Bashkiria and successfully fought with the tsarist troops in the area of ​​the Krasnoufim fortress and Kungur.

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

Ataman Ivan Gryaznov, who took part in the capture of Sterlitamak and Tabynsk, gathered a detachment of factory peasants and seized factories on the Belaya River (Voskresenskiy, Arkhangelskiy, Epiphany factories). In early November, he proposed to organize the casting of cannons and cannonballs for them at the nearby factories. Pugachev promoted him to the rank of colonel and sent him to organize detachments in the Isetskaya province. There he took the Satka, Zlatoust, Kyshtym and Kaslinsky factories, the Kundravinsky, Uvelsky and Varlamov settlements, the Chebarkul fortress, defeated the punitive teams sent against him, and in January with a four-thousandth detachment approached Chelyabinsk.

In December 1773, Pugachev sent ataman Mikhail Tolkachev with his decrees to the rulers of the Kazakh Junior Zhuz Nurali Khan and the Sultan Dusala with an appeal to join his army, but the khan decided to wait for the development of events, only riders of the Srym Datov clan joined Pugachev. On the way back, Tolkachev gathered Cossacks in his detachment in fortresses and outposts on the lower Yaik and went with them to Yaitsky town, collecting guns, ammunition and provisions in passing fortresses and outposts. On December 30, Tolkachev approached Yaitsky town, seven miles from which he defeated and captured the Cossack command of Sergeant Major N.A. Most of the Cossacks greeted their comrades and joined the Tolkachev detachment, the Cossacks of the elders' side, the soldiers of the garrison, led by Lieutenant Colonel Simonov and Captain Krylov, locked themselves in the "retransmission" - the fortress of the Archangel Michael 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 the approximate estimates of historians, there were from 25 to 40 thousand people in the ranks of the Pugachev army by the end of 1773, more than half of this number were Bashkir detachments. To control the troops, Pugachev created the Military Collegium, which served as an administrative-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 was the "Duma" clerk, and M. D. Gorshkov was secretary.

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 the Yaik, to the Guryev town, seized its Kremlin by storm, captured rich trophies and replenished the detachment with local Cossacks, bringing them to the Yaitsky town. At the same time, Pugachev himself arrived in Yaitsky town. He took over the leadership of the protracted siege of the city fortress of the Archangel Michael Cathedral, but after a failed assault on January 20 he returned to the main army at Orenburg. At the end of January, Pugachev returned to the Yaitsk town, where a military circle was held, in which N.A. Kargin was chosen as a military ataman, and A.P. Perfiliev and I.A.Fofanov were foremen. At the same time, the Cossacks, wanting to finally make the king with the army, married him to a young Cossack woman Ustinya Kuznetsova. In the second half of February and early March 1774, Pugachev again personally led the attempts to seize the besieged fortress. On February 19, an explosion of a mine tunnel blew up and destroyed the bell tower of the Mikhailovsky Cathedral, but the garrison each time managed to repel the attacks of the besiegers.

Detachments of the Pugachevites under the command of Ivan Beloborodov, who grew up to 3 thousand people in the campaign, approached Yekaterinburg, seizing a number of nearby fortresses and factories on the way, and on January 20, as the main base of their operations, they seized the Demidov Shaitan plant.

The situation in besieged Orenburg by this time was already critical, famine began in the city. Having learned about the departure of Pugachev and Ovchinnikov with part of the troops to the Yaitsky town, Governor Reinsdorp decided to make a sortie on January 13 to the Berdskaya Sloboda to lift the siege. But the unexpected attack did not work, the patrol Cossacks managed to raise the alarm. The atamans M. Shigaev, D. Lysov, T. Podurov and Khlopusha who remained in the camp led their detachments to the ravine that surrounded the Berdskaya Sloboda 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 guns, weapons, ammunition and ammunition, the semi-encircled Orenburg troops hastily retreated to Orenburg under the cover of the city walls, having lost only 281 people killed, 13 cannons with all the shells for them, a lot of weapons, ammunition and ammunition.

On January 25, 1774, the Pugachevites undertook the second and last assault on Ufa, Zarubin attacked the city from the southwest, from the left bank of the Belaya River, and the ataman Gubanov from the east. At first, the detachments were successful and even broke into the outskirts of the city, but there their offensive impulse was stopped by the defenders' grape fire. Having pulled all 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 revolted and tried to seize power in the city, hoping for the help of 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 two thousandth corps of General I.A.Decolong, who had approached from Siberia, entered Chelyaba. Throughout January, battles unfolded on the outskirts of the city and on February 8, Decolong took it for the best to leave the city to the Pugachevites.

On February 16, Khlopushi's detachment stormed the Iletsk Defense, 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 Peasant War area

When news reached St. Petersburg about the defeat of the expedition of V.A.Kara and the unauthorized departure of Kara himself to Moscow, Catherine II, by a 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 north-western borders of the empire to Kazan and Samara, and besides them all the garrisons and military units located in the uprising zone and the remains of the corps Kara. Bibikov arrived in Kazan on December 25, 1773 and immediately began the movement of regiments and brigades under the command of P. M. Golitsyn and P. D. Mansurov towards Samara, Orenburg, Ufa, Menzelinsk, and Kunguru, besieged by the Pugachev troops. Already on December 29, the 24th light field command, led by Major K.I. Arapov with several dozen Pugachevites who remained with him retreated to Alekseevsk, but the brigade led by Mansurov defeated his troops in battles near Alekseevsk and at the Buzuluk fortress, after which in Sorochinskaya it united on March 10 with the corps of General Golitsyn, who approached there, advancing behind near Menzelinsky and Kungur.

Having received information about the advance of the brigades of Mansurov and Golitsyn, Pugachev decided to withdraw the main forces from Orenburg, effectively lifting the siege, and concentrate the main forces in the Tatishchev fortress. Instead of burnt walls, an ice wall was built, all available artillery was collected. Soon a government detachment of 6,500 men and 25 cannons approached the fortress. The battle took place on March 22 and was extremely fierce. Prince Golitsin in his report to A. Bibikov wrote: "The matter was so important that I did not expect such 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 departure remained to cover the Cossack regiment of Ataman Ovchinnikov. With his regiment, he staunchly defended himself until the cannon charges ran out, and then with three hundred Cossacks managed to break through the troops surrounding the fortress and retreated to the Lower Lake Fortress. This was the first major defeat of the rebels. Pugachev lost about 2 thousand people killed, 4 thousand wounded and prisoners, all the artillery and baggage. Ataman Ilya Arapov was among the dead.

Map of the second stage of the Peasant War

At the same time, the St. Petersburg carabinier regiment under the command of I. Mikhelson, previously stationed in Poland and aimed at suppressing the uprising, arrived in Kazan on March 2, 1774 and reinforced by cavalry units on the move was 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 Isetskaya provinces over the detachments of Salavat Yulaev and other Bashkir colonels, he did not succeed in suppressing the Bashkir uprising as a whole, since the Bashkirs switched to partisan tactics.

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

In early April, PD Mansurov's brigade, reinforced by the Izyum hussar regiment and the Cossack detachment of the Yaik foreman M.M. Borodin, headed from the Tatishcheva fortress to the Yaitsky town. The fortresses of Nizhneozernaya and Rassypnaya, Iletsk town were taken from the Pugachevites, on April 12, the Cossack insurgents were defeated at the Irtetsk outpost. In an effort to stop the advance of the punishers to their native Yaitsk town, the Cossacks headed by A.A. Ovchinnikov, A.P. Perfiliev and K.I.Dekhtyarev decided to meet Mansurov. The meeting took place on April 15, 50 versts east of 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 panicky flight. Pursued by the hussars, the Cossacks retreated to the Rubezhny outpost, having lost hundreds of people killed, among whom was Dekhtyarev. Gathering people, the ataman Ovchinnikov led the detachment to the South Urals in the wilderness steppes, to join the troops of Pugachev, who had gone beyond the Belaya River.

On the evening of April 15, when in Yaitsky town they learned about the defeat at Bykovka, a group of Cossacks, wanting to curry favor with the punishers, tied up and gave Simonov the atamans Kargin and Tolkachev. Mansurov entered the Yaitsky town on April 16, finally liberating the city fortress, which had been besieged by the Pugachevites on December 30, 1773. The Cossacks who fled to the steppe could not make their way to the main area of ​​the uprising, in May-July 1774 the teams of the Mansurov brigade and the Cossacks of the elders' side began to search and defeat in the Priyaitskaya steppe, near the Uzen and Irgiz rivers, the rebel detachments of F.I.Derbetev, S.L Rechkina, I. A. Fofanova.

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

On April 9, 1774, the commander of military operations against Pugachev, A.I.Bibikov, died. After him, Catherine II entrusted the command of the troops to Lieutenant-General FF Shcherbatov, as the senior in rank. Offended that he was not 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 for three months in Orenburg. Intrigues between the generals gave Pugachev a much-needed respite, he managed to gather scattered small detachments in the South Urals. The pursuit was also suspended by the spring thaw and floods on the rivers, which became impassable roads.

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

On the morning of May 5, Pugachev's five-thousandth detachment approached the Magnetic Fortress. By this time, Pugachev's detachment consisted mainly of weakly armed factory peasants and a small number of personal egg guards under the command of Myasnikov, the detachment did not have a single cannon. The beginning of the assault on Magnitnaya was unsuccessful, about 500 people died in the battle, Pugachev himself was wounded in his right arm. After withdrawing the troops from the fortress and discussing the situation, the rebels, under the cover of the darkness of the night, made a new attempt and were able to break into the fortress and capture it. As trophies, they got 10 guns, rifles, ammunition. On May 7, detachments of atamans 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 Karagai, Peter and Paul and Stepnaya, and on May 20 approached the largest Troitskaya. By this time, the detachment numbered 10 thousand people. During the onset of the assault, the garrison tried to repel the attack with artillery fire, but overcoming desperate resistance, the rebels broke into Troitskaya. Pugachev got artillery with shells and supplies of gunpowder, supplies of provisions and fodder. On the morning of May 21, the Decolong corps attacked the rebels who were resting after the battle. Taken by surprise, the Pugachevites suffered a heavy defeat, losing 4,000 people killed and just as many wounded and captured. Only fifteen hundred mounted Cossacks and Bashkirs were able to retreat along the road to Chelyabinsk.

Recovered after being wounded, Salavat Yulaev managed to organize at this time in Bashkiria, east of Ufa, resistance to Mikhelson's 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 have success in them, did not let his troops inflict significant losses. On June 3, he united with Pugachev, by this time the Bashkirs made up two-thirds of the total number of the army of the rebels. On June 3 and 5, on the Ai River, they gave new battles to Michelson. Neither side got the desired success. Retreating to the north, Pugachev regrouped his forces while Mikhelson retreated to Ufa in order to drive off the Bashkir detachments operating near the city and replenish ammunition and provisions.

Taking advantage of the respite, Pugachev headed for Kazan. On June 10, the Krasnoufimskaya fortress was taken, on June 11, a victory was won in the battle at Kungur against the garrison that 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 Osa and blocked the city fortress. Four days later, the main forces of Pugachev came here and engaged in siege battles with the garrison entrenched in the fortress. On June 21, the defenders of the fortress, having exhausted the possibilities of further resistance, surrendered. During this period, an adventurer merchant Astafiy Dolgopolov ("Ivan Ivanov") appeared to Pugachev, posing as the emissary of Tsarevich Paul and thus decided to improve his financial situation. Pugachev figured out his adventure, and Dolgopolov, by agreement with him, acted for some time as a "witness to the authenticity of Peter III."

Having mastered Wasp, Pugachev ferried the army across the Kama, took the Votkinsk and Izhevsk ironworks, Elabuga, Sarapul, Menzelinsk, Agryz, Zainsk, Mamadysh and other cities and fortresses along the way, and in early July approached Kazan.

View of the Kazan Kremlin

A detachment under the command of Colonel Tolstoy went out to meet Pugachev, and on July 10, 12 versts from the city, the Pugachevites won a complete victory. The next day, a detachment of rebels camped outside 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 areas of the city were taken, the garrison that remained in the city locked itself in the Kazan Kremlin and prepared for a siege. A strong fire began in the city, in addition, Pugachev received news of the approach of Mikhelson's troops, who followed him on the heels of Ufa, so the Pugachev troops left the burning city. As a result of a short battle, Mikhelson made his way to the Kazan garrison, 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 weakly armed peasants who had just joined the uprising, the Tatar and Bashkir cavalry, armed with bows, and a small number of the remaining Cossacks. The competent actions of Michelson, who struck first of all on 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 in the national news

We grant this named decree with our royal and paternal
by the mercy of all who were previously in the peasantry and
in the citizenship of landlords, to be loyal slaves
our own crown; and reward with the ancient cross
and prayer, heads and beards, liberty and freedom
and forever by the Cossacks, without requiring recruitment, capitation
and other cash taxes, land ownership, forestry,
grasslands and fishing grounds and salt lakes
no purchase and no rent; and free everyone from the previously repaired
from the villains of the nobles and the bribe-taker-judges from the villains to the peasants and everything
to 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 wandering and no small calamity.

And what is our name now to the power of the Most High right hand in Russia
thrives, for that sake we command this by our named decree:
koi were previously nobles in their estates and vodchinas - these
opponents of our power and the troublemakers of the empire and the renegades
peasants, to catch, execute and hang, and act in the same way,
how they, not having Christianity in themselves, repaired with you peasants.
By the extermination of which opponents and villains-nobles, everyone can
to feel the silence and calm life, which will continue until the century.

Given July 31 days 1774.

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

Emperor and autocrat of All Russia and passing,

And through and through.

Even before the start of the battle on July 15, Pugachev announced in the camp that he would go from Kazan to Moscow. Rumors about this instantly spread throughout all the nearby 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 with his detachments continued the hostilities near Ufa, the Bashkir detachments in the Pugachev detachment were led by Kinzya Arslanov. On July 20, Pugachev entered Kurmysh, on the 23rd entered Alatyr without hindrance, after which he headed for Saransk. On July 28, on the central square of Saransk, a decree on freedom for the peasants was read, the residents were given supplies of salt and bread, the city treasury “Driving through the city fortress and along the streets ...... On July 31, the same solemn meeting awaited Pugachev in Penza. The decrees provoked numerous peasant revolts in the Volga region; in total, scattered detachments operating within their estates numbered tens of thousands of fighters. The movement covered most of the Volga districts, approached the borders of the Moscow province, and really threatened Moscow.

The publication of decrees (in fact, manifestos on the emancipation 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 gripped the peasants of the Volga region led to the fact that a population of more than a million people was involved in the uprising. They could not give anything to Pugachev's army in the long-term military plan, since the peasant detachments operated no further than their estate. But they turned Pugachev's campaign 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 Pugachev's army 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, in the summer of 1774, at least 3 thousand nobles and government officials were killed.

In the second half of July 1774, when the flames of the Pugachev uprising approached the borders of the Moscow province and threatened Moscow itself, the alarmed empress was forced to agree to the proposal of Chancellor N.I. rebels. General F.F. Shcherbatov was expelled from this post on July 22, and by a decree of July 29, Catherine II endowed Panin with extraordinary powers "In suppressing the riot and restoring internal order in the provinces of Orenburg, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod"... It is noteworthy that under the command of P.I. Panin, who received the Order of St. George I class, distinguished in that battle and the Don cornet Emelyan Pugachev.

To speed up the conclusion of peace, the conditions of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi peace treaty were relaxed, and the troops liberated on the Turkish borders - a total of 20 cavalry and infantry regiments, were withdrawn from the armies for action against Pugachev. As Catherine noted, against Pugachev "So many troops are dressed up that such an army was almost scary and the neighbors were"... A remarkable fact is that in August 1774, Lieutenant General Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, at that time already one of the most successful Russian generals, was recalled from the 1st Army, which was in the Danube principalities. Panin entrusted Suvorov with command of the troops that were to defeat the main Pugachev army in the Volga region.

Suppression of the uprising

After the triumphant entry of Pugachev into Saransk and Penza, everyone expected his march to Moscow. In Moscow, where 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 to place artillery near his house. The police increased their supervision and sent informants to crowded places in order to grab all those who sympathized with Pugachev. Mikhelson, who was promoted to colonel in July and pursued the rebels from Kazan, turned to Arzamas 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 Muffel 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 outrage sensitive and insensitive people"... Excerpts from the report of the captain of the Novokhopyorsk battalion Butrimovich are indicative:

“... I went to the village of Andreevskaya, where the peasants kept the landowner Dubensky under arrest for his extradition to Pugachev. I was about to free him, but the village rebelled and dispersed the team. Ottol I went to the villages of Mr. Vysheslavtsev and Prince Maksyutin, but I also found them under the arrest of the peasants, and I freed them, and took them to Verkhniy Lomov; from the village of kn. I saw Maksyutin as a mountain. Kerensk was on fire and, returning to Verkhniy Lomov, he learned that in it all the inhabitants, except for the clerks, had rebelled when they learned about the burning of Kerensk. Engineers: one-yard man Yak. Gubanov, Matv. Bochkov, and Streletskaya Sloboda Desyatskaya Bezboroda. I wanted to grab them and present them to Voronezh, but the residents not only did not let me in before, but almost put me under their guard myself, but I left them and 2 miles away from the city I heard the cry of the rioters. I don’t know how it ended, but I heard that Kerensk, with the help of the captured Turks, fought off the villain. In my passage everywhere I noticed among the people a spirit of rebellion and a tendency towards the Pretender. Especially in the Tanbow district, the department of the prince. Vyazemsky, in the economic peasants, who for the arrival of Pugachev and bridges everywhere were fixed and the roads were repaired. On top of that, the Lipnei village elder sat down with the tenants, having considered me an accomplice of the villain, came to me, and fell to their knees. "

Final Stage of the Rebellion Map

But from Penza, Pugachev turned south. Most historians point to the reason for this Pugachev's plans to attract the Volga and, especially, the Don Cossacks into his ranks. It is possible that another reason was the desire of the Yaik Cossacks, who were tired of fighting and had already lost their chief chieftains, to hide again in the remote steppes of the lower Volga and Yaik, where they once took refuge after the uprising of 1772. An indirect confirmation of such fatigue is the fact that it was on these days that a conspiracy of Cossack colonels began with the aim of surrendering Pugachev to the government in return for receiving a pardon.

On August 4, the army of the impostor took Petrovsk, and on August 6, Saratov was surrounded. The voivode with part of the people along the Volga managed to get out 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 ruler of the Kalmyks Tsenden-Darzha with an appeal to join his army. But by this time, the punitive detachments under the general command of Mikhelson were literally following on the heels of the Pugachevites, and on August 11 the city came under the control of government forces.

After Saratov, we went down the Volga to Kamyshin, which, like many cities before him, met Pugachev with bell ringing 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 members of which, together with the leader, Academician Georg Lovitz, were hanged along with local officials who had failed to escape. The son of Lovitz, Tobias, later also an academician, managed to survive. Having joined a detachment of 3,000 Kalmyks, 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 orders to join the Donets to the uprising. A detachment of government troops who had approached from Tsaritsyn was defeated on the Proleika River near the village of Balyklevskaya. Further along the road was Dubovka, the capital of the Volga Cossack army. The Volga Cossacks, who remained loyal to the government, led by the ataman, the garrisons of the Volga cities strengthened the defense of Tsaritsyn, where the thousandth detachment of the Don Cossacks arrived under the command of the marching ataman Perfilov.

Pugachev is under arrest. 1770s engraving

On August 21, Pugachev tried to attack Tsaritsyn, but the assault failed. Having received news of the arriving corps of Michelson, Pugachev hastened to lift the siege from Tsaritsyn, the rebels moved to the Black Yar. Panic began in Astrakhan. On August 24, at the Solenikova fishing band, 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 attack. In a fierce battle, more than 2,000 rebels were killed, among them Ataman Ovchinnikov. More than 6,000 people were taken prisoner. Pugachev and the Cossacks, breaking up into small detachments, fled across the Volga. In pursuit of them, the search detachments of Generals Mansurov and Golitsyn, the Yaik 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 and September, most of the participants in the uprising were caught and sent for investigation to Yaitskiy gorodok, Simbirsk, Orenburg.

Pugachev with a detachment of Cossacks fled to the Uzens, not knowing that since mid-August Chumakov, Tvorogov, Fedulyov 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 pursuit, they divided the detachment so as to separate the Cossacks loyal to Pugachev along with the ataman Perfiliev. On September 8, near the Bolshoy Uzen River, they attacked and tied Pugachev, after which Chumakov and Tvorogov went to the Yaitsky town, where on September 11 they announced the capture of the impostor. Having received promises of pardon, they informed the accomplices, and on September 15 they brought Pugachev to the Yaitsky town. The first interrogations took place, one of them was conducted personally by Suvorov, he also volunteered to escort the impostor to Simbirsk, where the main investigation was underway. For the transportation of Pugachev, a cramped cage was made, installed 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, the head of secret commissions of inquiry, and the count. PI Panin, commander of the government's punitive troops.

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

Pugachev under escort. 1770s engraving

At this time, in addition to the 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, Karanay Muratov, Kachkyn Samarov, Selyausin Kinzin on Nogayskaya, Bazargul Yunayev, Yulaman Kushaev and Mukhamet Safarov in the Bashkir Trans-Urals. They pinned down a significant contingent of government troops. In early August, even a new assault on Ufa was undertaken, but as a result of the weak organization of interaction between the various detachments, it was unsuccessful. Along the entire length of the border line, Kazakh detachments were alarmed by raids. Governor Reinsdorp reported: “The Bashkir and Kyrgyz people are not pacified, the latter are crossing the Yaik every minute, and they grab people from outside Orenburg. The local troops are either pursuing Pugachev, or blocking his path, and I do not admonish the Kyrgyz to go to the Kyrgyz people, I admonish the khan and the Saltans. They replied that they could not keep the Kyrgyz, whom the whole horde was revolting. " With the capture of Pugachev, the direction of the liberated government troops to Bashkiria, the Bashkir elders began to go over to the side of the government, many of them joined the punitive detachments. After the capture of Kanzafar Usaev and Salavat Yulaev, the uprising in Bashkiria began to decline. Salavat Yulaev gave his last battle on November 20 under the besieged Katav-Ivanovsk plant and after defeat was captured on November 25. But individual insurgent groups in Bashkiria continued to resist until the summer of 1775.

Until the summer of 1775, unrest continued in the Voronezh province, in the Tambov district and along the rivers Khopru and Vorona. Although the operating units were small and there was no coordination of joint actions, according to an eyewitness, Major Sverchkov, "Many landowners, leaving their houses and savings, move to remote places, and those who are left in their houses save their lives from threatening death, spend the night in the forests"... The terrified landowners stated that "If the Voronezh provincial chancellery does not speed up the extermination of those villainous gangs that turned out to be, then such bloodshed will inevitably follow as it did in the last mutiny."

To bring down the wave of riots, punitive squads began mass executions. In every village, in every town that received Pugachev, on the gallows and "verbs" from which they barely managed to remove the officers, landowners, and judges who were hanged by the impostor, the leaders of the riots and the city heads and chieftains of local detachments appointed by the Pugachevites began to be hanged. To enhance the frightening effect, the gallows were installed 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 transported to Moscow for a general investigation. They were placed in the building of the Mint at the Iberian Gate of Kitai-Gorod. The interrogations were supervised by Prince M. N. Volkonsky and chief secretary S. I. Sheshkovsky. During interrogation, E.I. Pugachev gave detailed testimony about his relatives, about his youth, about his participation in the Don Cossack army in the Seven Years and the Turkish Wars, about his wanderings in Russia and Poland, about his plans and intentions, about the course of the uprising. Investigators tried to find out whether the instigators of the uprising were agents of foreign states, or schismatics, or someone 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 have been 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 terminate the investigation, since Pugachev and other defendants could not add anything new to their testimony during interrogations and could neither alleviate nor aggravate their guilt in any way. In a report to Catherine, they were forced to admit that they “… During this investigation they were trying to find the beginning of the evil undertaken by this monster and his accomplices, or… to that evil undertaking by mentors. But for all that, nothing else was revealed, somehow, that in all his villainy the first beginning took its origin in the Yaitsky army "

File: Execution of Pugachev.jpg

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

On December 30, 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 bring Pugachev to the next court session. Early in the morning of December 31, under a reinforced escort, he was transported 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 was supposed to answer, after which he was led into the courtroom and forced to kneel. After a formal interrogation, he was taken out of the hall, the court ruled: "To 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 the imposition of each appropriate type of execution or punishment. On Saturday, January 10, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, an execution was carried out with a huge crowd of people. Pugachev behaved with dignity, ascending to the place of execution, he 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. Perfiliev, the executioner chopped off the head first, that 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 at the beginning of February 1775.

Sheet-cutting shop. Painting of Demidov serf artist P.F.Hudoyarov

The Pugachev uprising caused enormous damage to the metallurgy of the Urals. 64 out of 129 factories existing in the Urals fully joined the uprising, the number of peasants assigned to them was 40 thousand people. The total amount of losses from destruction and downtime of factories 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 peasants, whom he considered the leading force of the uprising, supplied the impostor with weapons and joined his troops, because the breeders oppressed their assigned peasants, forcing the peasants to overcome long distances to the factories, did not allow them to cultivate and sell them food 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, then everything is very thorough, and I think that there is nothing else to do with these, how to buy factories and, when there are state-owned ones, then the peasants will be cleaned up"... On May 19, a manifesto was issued on the general rules for the use of registered peasants in state and private 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.

Research and collections of archival documents

• A. Pushkin "History of Pugachev" (censored title - "History of the Pugachev revolt")
• Groth Ya. K. Materials for the history of the Pugachev rebellion (Papers of 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 archive of Pugachev. Documents, decrees, correspondence. M.-L., State Publishing House, 1926. Volume 2. From investigative materials and official correspondence. M.-L., State Publishing House, 1929 Volume 3. From the archive of Pugachev. M.-L., Socekgiz, 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 Yemelyan Pugachev in Chuvashia. Collection of documents. Cheboksary, 1972
• Peasant war led by Yemelyan Pugachev in Udmurtia. Collection of documents and materials. Izhevsk, 1974
• Gorban N.V., The peasantry of Western Siberia in the peasant war of 1773-75. // Questions of history. 1952. No. 11.
• Muratov Kh. I. Peasant War of 1773-1775 in Russia. M., Military Publishing, 1954

Art

The Pugachev uprising in fiction

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

Cinema

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

Links

• Peasant War led by Pugachev on the site History of the Orenburg region
• Peasant War led by Pugachev (TSB)
• Gvozdikova I. Salavat Yulaev: historical portrait ("Belskie open spaces", 2004)
• Collection of documents on the history of the Pugachev uprising on the site Vostlit.info
• Maps: Map of the lands of the Yaitsk army, the Orenburg region and the Southern Urals, Map of the Saratov province (maps of the early XX century)

The great questions of the time are decided not by the speeches and resolutions of the majority, but by iron and blood!

Otto von Bismarck

By the middle of the 18th century, a catastrophic situation had developed in Russia for serfs. They practically had no rights. The landlords killed serfs, beat them to death, tortured them, sold them, gave them away, lost at cards and exchanged them for dogs. This arbitrariness and complete impunity of the landlords led to the rise of the peasant war.

Causes of the war

Emelyan Pugachev was born on the Don. He served in the Russian army and even took part in the Seven Years War. However, in 1771, the future head of the rebellious peasants fled from the army and went into hiding. In 1773, Pugachev went to Yaik, where he declared himself the miraculously escaped Emperor Peter 3. The war began, which can be divided into three main stages.

The first stage of the peasant war

The peasant war led by Pugachev began on September 17, 1773... On this day, Pugachev spoke to the Cossacks and declared himself Emperor Peter 3, who miraculously managed to escape. The Cossacks eagerly supported the new "emperor" and during the first month about 160 people joined Pugachev. The war began. Pugachev's delights rampaged in the southern lands, capturing cities. Most of the cities did not offer resistance to the rebels, since revolutionary sentiments were very strong in the south of Russia. Pugachev, without a fight, entered the cities, where residents replenished his ranks. On October 5, 1773, Pugachev approached Orenburg and laid siege to the city. Empress Catherine II sent a detachment numbering one and a half thousand people to suppress the rebellion. General Kara led the army. The general battle did not happen, the government troops were defeated by Pugachev's ally, A. Ovchinnikov. The besieged Orenburg was seized by panic. The siege of the city had already lasted six months. The empress again sent an army against Pugachev, led by General Bibikov. On March 22, 1774, a battle took place near the Tatishchev Fortress, in which Bibikov won. At this, the first stage of the war was over. Its result: the defeat of Pugachev by the tsarist army and failure at the siege of Orenburg.

The second stage of the war led by Yemelyan Pugachev

The peasant war under the leadership of Pugachev continued with the second stage, which lasted from April to July 1774. At this time, Pugachev, who was forced to lift the siege from Orenburg, withdrew to Bashkiria. Here his army was replenished at the expense of the workers of the Ural factories. In a short time, the number of Pugachev's army exceeded 10 thousand people, and after moving deep into Bashkiria, 20 thousand. In July 1774, Pugachev's army approached Kazan. The rebels managed to capture the outskirts of the city, but the Kremlin, in which the tsarist garrison took refuge, was impregnable. Mikhelson with a large army went to help the besieged city. Pugachev deliberately spread false rumors about the fall of Kazan and the destruction of Mikhelson's army. The empress was horrified by this news and was preparing to leave Russia at any moment.

The third, final, stage of the war

The peasant war under the leadership of Pugachev at its final stage acquired a real mass character. This was facilitated by the Decree of July 31, 1774, which was published by Pugachev. He, as "Emperor Peter III" announced the complete release of the peasants from dependence and exemption from all taxes. As a result, all the southern lands were absorbed by the rebels. Pugachev, capturing a number of cities on the Volga, went to Tsaritsyn, but failed to capture this city. As a result, he was betrayed by his own Cossacks, who, wishing to soften their account, on September 12, 1774, seized Pugachev and handed him over to the tsarist army. has been completed. Individual uprisings in the south of the country continued, but within a year they were finally suppressed.

On January 10, 1775, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, Pugachev and all his immediate entourage were executed. Many of those who supported the "emperor" were killed.

Results and significance of the uprising

Peasant War Map

Key dates

Chronology of the events of the peasant war by Yemelyan Pugachev:

• September 17, 1773 - the beginning of the peasant war.
• October 5, 1773 - Pugchev's troops began the siege of Orenburg.
• March 22, 1774 - battle at the Tatishchevskaya fortress.
• July 1774 - battles for Kazan.
• July 31, 1774 - Pugachev declares himself Peter 3.
• September 12, 1774 - Emelyan Pugachev was captured.
• January 10, 1775 - after long torture, Pugachev was executed.

Since 1769, Russia has been waging a difficult but very successful war with Turkey for the possession of the Black Sea region. However, in Russia itself it was very restless, at that time a rebellion began, which entered into under the name of the "Pugachev revolt". Many circumstances paved the way for such a riot, namely:

1. Increased discontent of the Volga peoples with national and religious oppression, as well as the arbitrariness of the tsarist authorities. All kinds of obstacles were put up for the traditional folk religion and in the activities of imams, mullahs, mosques and madrassas, and part of the indigenous population was imprudently subjected to violent Christianization. In the South Urals, on lands bought for a pittance from the Bashkirs, entrepreneurs built metallurgical plants, hired Bashkirs for support work for a pittance. Salt industries, river and lake banks, forest dachas and pastures were taken away from the indigenous population. Huge tracts of impenetrable forest were predatory cut down or burned to produce coal.

2. In the second half of the 18th century, serf oppression of the peasants intensified. After the death of Tsar Peter, a long period of "woman's rule" began in Russia, and the empresses distributed hundreds of thousands of state peasants to the landowners, including their numerous favorites. As a result, every second peasant in Great Russia became a serf. In an effort to increase the profitability of estates, the landowners increased the size of the corvee, their rights became unlimited. They could screw a person to death, buy, sell, exchange, send to the soldiers. In addition, a powerful moral factor of class injustice was superimposed on life. The fact is that on February 18, 1762, Emperor Peter III adopted a decree on the freedom of the nobility, which granted the ruling class the right to either serve the state or resign and leave for their estates. Since ancient times, the people, in its different classes, had a firm conviction that each class, to the best of its strength and abilities, serves the state in the name of its prosperity and the national good. Boyars and nobles serve in the army and institutions, peasants work on the land, in their estates and in noble estates, workers and artisans - in workshops, in factories, Cossacks - on the border. And here the whole class was given the right to idle around, to lie back on sofas for years, to get drunk, to be debauched and to eat free bread. This inactivity, uselessness, idleness and depraved life of the rich noblemen especially irritated and oppressed the working peasantry. The matter was aggravated by the fact that the retired noblemen began to spend most of their lives on their estates. Before, they spent most of their life and time in the service, and the estates were actually managed by the elders from their own local peasants. The nobles retired after 25 years of service, in their mature years, often sick and wounded, wiser by many years of service, knowledge and life experience. Now young and healthy people of both sexes literally languished and toiled from idleness, inventing new, often depraved, entertainments for themselves, which required more and more money. In impulses of unbridled greed, many landowners took the land from the peasants, forcing them to work in corvee all week. The peasants instinctively and intellectually understood that the ruling circles, freeing themselves from service and labor, were increasingly tightening the bondage of serfs and oppressing the laboring, but disenfranchised peasantry. Therefore, they tried to restore a just, in their opinion, past way of life, to make the presumptuous nobles serve the Fatherland.

3. There was also a great dissatisfaction of the mining workers with hard, backbreaking work and poor living conditions. Serfs were attributed to state factories. Their labor at the factory was counted as corvee work. These peasants had to receive funds for food from their subsidiary plots. The appointees were forced to work in factories up to 260 days a year, they had little time left to work in their farmsteads. Their farms became poorer and impoverished, and people lived in extreme poverty. In the 1940s, the "merchant" owners were also allowed to "export all ranks of people" to the Ural factories. Only the breeder Tverdyshev by the 60s of the 18th century acquired over 6 thousand peasants for his factories.

The serf breeders forced the slaves to work out the "lesson" not only for themselves, but also for the dead, sick, fugitive peasants, for the elderly and children. In a word, labor obligations increased many times over and people could not get out of life-long, heavy bondage. Along with the registered and serfs, workers, artisans and fugitive ("gatherings") people worked in the shops. For every fugitive soul hired, the owner paid 50 rubles to the treasury and owned it for life.

4. The Cossacks were also unhappy. Since ancient times, the Yaik Cossacks have been famous for their love of freedom, steadfastness in the old faith and in the traditions bequeathed by their ancestors. After the defeat of the Bulavin uprising, Peter I tried to limit the Cossack liberties on the Yaik, disperse the Old Believers and shave the beards of the Cossacks, and received a corresponding protest and opposition that lasted several decades, survived the emperor himself, and later gave rise to powerful uprisings. Since 1717, the Yaik atamans ceased to be elected, and they began to be appointed and in St. Petersburg there were continuous complaints and denunciations of the atamans appointed by the tsar. Verification commissions were appointed from St. Petersburg, which, with varying degrees of success, partly extinguished discontent, and partly, due to the corruption of the commissars themselves, exacerbated it. The confrontation between the state authorities and the Yaitsk army in 1717-1760 developed into a protracted conflict, during which the Yaik Cossacks dissociated themselves into "willing" chieftains and foremen and "dissenting" simple military Cossacks. The following case overflowed the cup of patience. Since 1752, the Yaik army, after a long struggle with the merchant clan of the Gurievs, took over the rich fisheries in the lower reaches of the Yaik. Ataman Borodin and the foremen used a profitable trade for their own enrichment. The Cossacks wrote complaints, but they were not given a go. In 1763, the Cossacks sent a complaint with the walkers. Ataman Borodin was removed from office, but the walker, the military sergeant major Loginov, was accused of slander and exiled to Tobolsk, and 40 Cossack signatories were punished with whips and expelled from Yaitsky town. But this did not humble the Cossacks, and they sent a new delegation to St. Petersburg, headed by the centurion Portnov. The delegates were arrested and sent under escort to Yaik. A new commission headed by General von Traubenberg also arrived there. This foreigner and bourbon began his activity by whipping seven elected respected Cossacks, shaving their beards and sending them under escort to Orenburg. This greatly angered the freedom-loving villagers. On January 12, the authoritative Cossacks Perfiliev and Shagaev gathered the Circle and a huge mass of Cossacks went to the house where the cruel general was located. Elders, women and a priest walked ahead with icons, they carried a petition, sang psalms and wanted to peacefully achieve a solution to controversial but important issues. But they were met by soldiers with guns and gunners with cannons. When the Cossack mass reached the square in front of the Voiskovaya hut, Baron von Traubenberg ordered to open fire from cannons and rifles. As a result of dagger fire, more than 100 people died, some of them fled, but most of the Cossacks, disdaining death, rushed to the cannons and killed and strangled the gunners with their bare hands. The guns were deployed and point-blank shot at the punitive soldiers. General Traubenberg was hacked with sabers, Captain Durnovo was beaten, the chieftain and foremen were hanged. A new chieftain, foremen and the Circle were immediately elected. But a detachment of punishers who arrived from Orenburg, led by General Freiman, abolished the new government, and then carried out the decision that had arrived from St. Petersburg on the case of the insurgent Cossacks. All participants were whipped, in addition, 16 Cossacks tore out their nostrils, burned out the “thief” brand on their faces and sent them to hard labor in Siberia, 38 Cossacks with their families were sent to Siberia, 25 were sent to the soldiers. The rest were imposed a huge contribution - 36,765 rubles. But the cruel reprisal did not humble the Yaik Cossacks, they only harbored their anger and anger and waited for the moment for a retaliatory strike.

5. Some historians do not deny the "Crimean-Turkish trace" in the Pugachev events, as indicated by some facts of Pugachev's biography. But Emelyan himself did not recognize the connection with the Turks and Crimeans, even under torture.

All this gave rise to acute discontent with the authorities, prompted to look for a way out in active protest and resistance. All that was needed was the instigators and leaders of the movement. The instigators appeared in the person of the Yaik Cossacks, and Emelyan Ivanovich Pugachev became the leader of the powerful Cossack-peasant uprising.

Rice. 1. Emelyan Pugachev

Pugachev was born on the Don, in 1742 in the village of Zimoveyskaya, the same one where the rebellious chieftain S.T. Razin. His father came from simple Cossacks. Until the age of 17, Emelya lived in his father's family, doing housework, and after his retirement, he took his place in the regiment. At the age of 19 he married, and soon went with the regiment on a campaign in Poland and Prussia and participated in the Seven Years War. For quickness and liveliness of mind, he was appointed adjutant of the regiment commander I.F. Denisov. In 1768 he went to war with Turkey, for the difference in the capture of the fortress of Bender he received the rank of cornet. But a serious illness makes him leave the army in 1771, the report says: "... and his chest and legs rotted." Pugachev tries to retire due to illness, but is refused. In December 1771, he secretly flees to the Terek. Before the Terek ataman Pavel Tatarnikov, he appears as a voluntary settler and is assigned to the village of Ischorskaya, where he was soon elected as the village ataman. The Cossacks of the villages of Ischorskaya, Naurskaya and Golyugaevskaya decide to send him to St. Petersburg to the Military Collegium with a petition for an increase in salary and provisions. Having received 20 rubles of money and a stanitsa stamp, he leaves for an easy stanitsa (business trip). However, in St. Petersburg he was arrested and put in a guardhouse. But together with the guard soldier, he escapes from custody and comes to his native place. There he was again arrested and escorted to Cherkassk. But with the help of a colleague in the Seven Years War, he again flees and hides in Ukraine. With a group of local residents, he leaves for the Kuban to the Nekrasov Cossacks. In November 1772, he arrived in Yaitsky town and was personally convinced of what tension and anxiety the Yaik Cossacks lived in anticipation of reprisals for the murdered tsarist punisher General von Traubenberg. In one of the conversations with the owner of the house, the Cossack Old Believer D.I. But upon a denunciation, Pugachev was arrested, beaten with batogs, shackled and sent to Simbirsk, then to Kazan. But he also runs from there and wanders across the Don, the Urals and in other parts. Downright a real Cossack Rambo or ninja. Long wanderings embittered him and taught him a lot. He witnessed with his own eyes the hard life of the oppressed people, and a thought arose in the violent Cossack head to help the powerless people find the desired freedom and live the whole world like a Cossack, widely, freely and in great abundance. On his next arrival in the Urals, he already appeared before the Cossacks as "Tsar Peter III Fedorovich", and under his name began to publish manifestos promising wide freedoms and material benefits to all who were dissatisfied. Written in an illiterate, but vivid, imaginative and accessible language, the Pugachev manifestos were, in the just expression of A.S. Pushkin, "an amazing example of folk eloquence." For many years, the legend about the miraculous salvation of Emperor Peter III and there were dozens of such impostors at that time, but Pugachev turned out to be the most outstanding and successful, walked through the endless expanses of Mother Russia. And the people supported the impostor. Of course, to his closest associates D. Karavaev, M. Shigaev, I. Zarubin, I. Ushakov, D. Lysov, I. Pochitalin, he admitted that he took the name of the tsar to influence ordinary people, it was easier to raise them to rebellion, and he himself is a simple Cossack. But the Yaik Cossacks badly needed an authoritative and skillful leader, under whose banner and leadership they would rise to fight the selfish and willful boyars, officials and cruel generals. In fact, not many people believed that Pugachev was Peter III, but many followed him, such was the thirst for rebellion. On September 17, 1773, about 60 Cossacks arrived at the farm of the Tolkachev brothers, located 100 versts from the Yaitsky town. Pugachev addressed them with a fiery speech and a "royal manifesto" written by Ivan Pochitalin. With this small detachment, Pugachev set off towards the Yaitsky town. On the way, dozens of common people pestered him: Russians and Tatars, Kalmyks and Bashkirs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. The detachment reached the number of 200 people and approached the Yaitsky town. The leader of the insurgents sent a formidable decree on voluntary surrender to the capital of the troops, but was refused. Not having captured the town by assault, the rebels went up the Yaik, took the Gnilovsky outpost and convened the Cossack Army Circle. Andrey Ovchinnikov was elected as the military ataman, Dmitry Lysov as colonel, Andrey Vitoshnov's chieftain, and here they chose the centurions and cornet. Moving up the Yaik, the rebels occupied the outposts of Genvartsovsky, Rubezhny, Kirsanovsky, Irteksky without a fight. Iletsk town tried to resist, but ataman Ovchinnikov appeared there with a manifesto and a garrison of 300 people with 12 cannons stopped resistance and met "Tsar Peter" with bread and salt. Dissatisfied crowds joined the insurgents, and, as Alexander Pushkin would later say, "a Russian revolt began, senseless and merciless."

Rice. 2. The surrender of the fortress to Pugachev

Orenburg governor Reinsdorp ordered Brigadier Bilov with a detachment of 400 men with 6 cannons to move towards the rebels to the rescue of Yaitsky town. However, a large detachment of rebels approached the Rassypnaya fortress and on September 24 the garrison surrendered without a fight. On September 27, the Pugachevites approached the Tatishchevskaya fortress. A large fortification on the way to Orenburg had a garrison of up to 1000 soldiers with 13 guns. In addition, a detachment of Brigadier Bilov was in the fortress. The besieged repulsed the first attack. As part of Bilov's detachment, 150 Orenburg Cossacks of centurion Timofei Padurov fought, who were sent to intercept the rebels moving around the fortress. To the surprise of the Tatishchevskaya garrison, the detachment of T. Padurov openly went over to the side of Pugachev. This undermined the strength of the defenders. The rebels set fire to the wooden walls, rushed to the attack and broke into the fortress. The soldiers almost did not resist, the Cossacks went over to the side of the impostor. The officers were brutally dealt with: Bilov's head was cut off, the skin of the commandant, Colonel Elagin, was flayed, the body of the obese officer was used to treat wounds, the fat was cut off and the wounds were smeared. Elagin's wife was hacked to pieces, his beautiful daughter Pugachev took him as a concubine, and later, having amused himself following the example of Stenka Razin, he killed along with his seven-year-old brother.

Unlike all other Orenburg Cossacks, near the Tatishchevskaya fortress there was almost the only case of a voluntary transition of 150 Orenburg Cossacks to the side of the rebels. What made the centurion T. Padurov change his oath, surrender to the thieves' Cossacks, serve the impostor and ultimately end his life on the gallows? Sotnik Timofey Padurov comes from a wealthy Cossack family. He had a large allotment of land and a farm in the upper reaches of the Sakmara River. In 1766 he was elected to the Commission for the preparation of a new Code (code of laws) and for several years he lived in St. Petersburg and moved in court circles. After the dissolution of the commission, he was appointed ataman of the Iset Cossacks. In this position, he did not get along with the commandant of the Chelyabinsk fortress, Lieutenant Colonel Lazarev, and, starting in 1770, they bombarded Governor Reinsdorp with mutual denunciations and complaints. Failing to achieve the truth, the centurion left Chelyaba for Orenburg in the spring of 1772 for linear service, where he stayed with the detachment until September 1773. At the most crucial moment of the battle for the Tatishchevskaya fortress, he and a detachment went over to the side of the rebels, thereby helping to take the fortress and deal with its defenders. Apparently, Padurov did not forget his previous grievances, he was disgusted with the foreign German queen, her favorites and the magnificent surroundings that he observed in St. Petersburg. He truly believed in the high mission of Pugachev, with his help he wanted to overthrow the hated queen. Note that the tsarist aspirations of the Cossacks, their attempts to put their own, the Cossack tsar on the throne, were repeatedly repeated in Russian history of the 16th-18th centuries. In fact, since the end of the reign of the Rurik dynasty and the beginning of the accession of the new clan of the Romanovs, "tsars and princes" have constantly been nominated from the Cossack environment, aspirants to the Moscow crown. Emelyan himself played the role of the king well, forcing all his comrades-in-arms, as well as captured imperial officers and nobles, to play along with him, swear allegiance, kiss his hand.

Those who disagree were immediately severely punished - executed, hanged, tortured. These facts confirm the version of historians about the stubborn struggle of the Cossacks for their Cossack-Russian-Horde dynasty. The arrival of the intelligent, active and authoritative Cossack T. Padurov to the Pugachev camp turned out to be a great success. After all, this centurion knew court life well, he could tell ordinary people about the life and customs of the queen in living colors, debunk her depraved, lustful and thieving environment, give visible truthfulness and real colors to all the legends and versions about the royal origin of Pugachev. Pugachev highly appreciated Padurov, promoted him to colonel, appointed him to the "imperial person" and to act as Secretary of State. Together with the former corporal Beloborodov and the cornet of the Etkul stanitsa Shundeev, he carried out staff work and drew up "royal manifestos and decrees." But not only. With a small detachment of Cossacks, he rode out to meet the punitive detachment of Colonel Chernyshov, lost in the steppe. Having shown him his Golden Deputy Badge, he gained confidence in the colonel and led his detachment to the very center of the rebel camp. The surrounded soldiers and Cossacks threw their guns and surrendered, 30 officers were hanged. A large detachment of Major General V.A. Kara, who was appointed Commander-in-Chief, had more than 1,500 soldiers in total with 5 guns. The detachment had a hundred mounted Bashkirs of the batyr Salavat Yulaev. The Pugachevites surrounded a detachment of government troops near the village of Yuzeevka. At the decisive moment of the battle, the Bashkirs went over to the side of the rebels, which decided the outcome of the battle. Some of the soldiers joined the ranks of the rebels, some were killed. Pugachev granted Yulaev the rank of colonel, from that moment the Bashkirs took an active part in the uprising. To attract them, Pugachev threw populist slogans into the national masses: about the expulsion of Russians from Bashkiria, about the destruction of all fortresses and factories, about the transfer of all lands into the hands of the Bashkir people. These were false promises cut off from life, for it is impossible to reverse the movement of progress, but they fell in love with the indigenous population. The approach of new Cossack, Bashkir and workers' detachments near Orenburg strengthened Pugachev's army. During the six-month siege of Orenburg, the leaders of the uprising paid special attention to the training of troops. As an experienced combat officer, the tireless leader trained his militia in military affairs. Pugachev's army, like the regular one, was divided into regiments, companies and hundreds. Three types of troops were formed: infantry, artillery and cavalry. True, only the Cossacks had good weapons, common people, Bashkirs and peasants were armed with anything. Near Orenburg, the insurgent army grew to 30 thousand people with 100 cannons and 600 gunners. At the same time, Pugachev repaired the trial and reprisals against the prisoners and shed rivers of blood.

Rice. 3. Pugachev's court

But all attacks on the capture of Orenburg were repulsed with heavy losses for the besiegers. Orenburg at that time was a first-class fortress with 10 bastions. In the ranks of the defenders there were 3,000 well-trained soldiers and Cossacks of the Separate Orenburg Corps, 70 cannons fired from the walls. The defeated General Kar fled to Moscow and caused great panic there. Anxiety seized St. Petersburg as well. Catherine demanded an early peace with the Turks, appointed the energetic and talented General A.I. Bibikov, and instituted a reward of 10 thousand rubles for the head of Pugachev. But the far-sighted and intelligent General Bibikov said to the tsarina: "It is not Pugachev that is important, the general indignation is important ...". At the end of 1773, the rebels approached Ufa, but all attempts to take the impregnable fortress were successfully repulsed. Colonel Ivan Gryaznov was sent to the Isetskaya province to capture Chelyabinsk. On the way, he captured fortresses, outposts and villages, the Cossacks and soldiers of the Sterlitamak pier, the Tabyn town, the Epiphany plant, the villages of Kundravinskaya, Koelskaya, Verkhneuvelskaya, Chebarkulskaya and other settlements joined him. The detachment of the Pugachev colonel grew to 6 thousand people. The rebels moved to the Chelyabinsk fortress. The governor of the Isetskaya province A.P. Verevkin took decisive measures to strengthen the fortress. In December 1773, he ordered 1300 "temporary Cossacks" to be assembled in the district, and the garrison of Chelyaba grew to 2000 people with 18 guns. But many of its defenders sympathized with the rebels, and on January 5, 1774, an uprising broke out in the fortress. It was headed by the ataman of the Chelyabinsk Cossacks Ivan Urzhumtsev and the cornet Naum Nevzorov. The Cossacks, under the leadership of Nevzorov, seized the cannons that were standing near the voivodship house, and opened fire from them on the soldiers of the garrison. The Cossacks broke into the governor's house and inflicted a cruel reprisal on him, beating him half to death. But carried away by the reprisal against the hated officers, the rebels left the guns unattended. Second lieutenant Pushkarev with the Tobolsk company and the gunners fought them off and opened fire on the rebels. In the battle, the ataman Urzhumtsev was killed, and Nevzorov with the Cossacks left the city. On January 8, Ivan Gryaznov approached the fortress with troops and stormed it twice, but the garrison bravely and skillfully held the defense. The attackers suffered heavy losses from the fortress artillery. Reinforcements from Seconds-Major Fadeev and part of the Siberian Corps of General Decolong broke through to the besieged. Gryaznov lifted the siege and went to Chebarkul, but having received reinforcements, he again occupied the village of Pershino near Chelyabinsk. On February 1, in the Pershino area, a battle of the Decolong detachment with the rebels took place. Unable to achieve success, the government troops retreated to the fortress, and on February 8 they left it and retreated to Shadrinsk. The uprising spread, a huge territory was engulfed in an all-consuming fire of fratricidal war. But many fortresses stubbornly refused to surrender. The garrison of the Yaitsk fortress, not agreeing to any promises from the Pugachevites, continued to resist. The rebel commanders decided: if the fortress is taken, not only the officers, but also their families will be hanged. The places where this or that person will hang were outlined. The wife and five-year-old son of Captain Krylov, the future fabulist Ivan Krylov, appeared there. As in any civil war, the mutual hatred was so great that on both sides, everyone who could wear took part in the battles. The opposing troops included not only fellow countrymen-neighbors, but also close relatives. Father went to son, brother to brother. Old residents of Yaitsky town recounted a typical scene. From the rampart of the fortress, the younger brother shouted to his elder brother, who was approaching him with a crowd of rebels: "Dear brother, do not come near! I will kill you." And the brother from the stairs answered him: "I will give you, I will kill you! Wait, I will climb on the shaft, I will kick your forelock, henceforth you will not frighten your older brother." And the younger brother fired at him from the squeak and the older brother rolled into the ditch. The surname of the brothers, the Gorbunovs, has also been preserved. A terrible confusion reigned in the rebellious territory. Gangs of robbers-rams became more active. On a large scale, they practiced the hijacking of people from the border zone into captivity to the nomads. The commanders of the government troops, who were trying to extinguish the Pugachev uprising by all means, were often forced to get involved in battles with these predators along with the rebels. The commander of one of such detachments, Lieutenant G.R. Derzhavin, the future poet, having learned that a gang of nomads was rampaging nearby, raised up to six hundred peasants, many of whom sympathized with Pugachev, and with them and a team of 25 hussars attacked a large detachment of Kyrgyz-Kaisaks and freed up to eight hundred Russian prisoners. However, the freed captives announced to the lieutenant that they also sympathize with Pugachev.

The protracted siege of Orenburg and Yaitsky town allowed the tsarist governors to pull up large forces of the regular army and noble militias of Kazan, Simbirsk, Penza, Sviyazhsk to the city. On March 22, the rebels were severely defeated by government forces at the Tatishchevskaya fortress. The defeat had a depressing effect on many of them. The cornet Borodin tried to seize Pugachev and hand him over to the authorities, but unsuccessfully. Pugachev's colonel Mussa Aliyev captured and betrayed the prominent rebel to Khlopusha. On April 1, when leaving the Sakmarsky town to the Yaitsky town, the thousands of Pugachev's army was attacked and defeated by the troops of General Golitsyn. Prominent leaders were captured: Timofey Myasnikov, Timofey Padurov, clerks Maxim Gorshkov and Andrey Tolkachev, Duma clerk Ivan Pochitalin, chief judge Andrey Vitoshnov, treasurer Maxim Shigaev. Simultaneously with the defeat of the main forces of the rebels near Orenburg, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhelson with his hussars and carabinieri carried out a complete defeat of the rebels near Ufa. In April 1774, the Commander-in-Chief of the tsarist troops, General Bibikov, was poisoned in Bugulma by a captive Polish confederate. The new Commander-in-Chief, Prince F.F. Shcherbatov concentrated large military forces and tried to attract the indigenous population to fight the rebels. The rebels suffered more and more defeats from the regular army.

After these defeats, Pugachev decided to move to Bashkiria and from that moment began the most successful period of his war with the tsarist government. One by one, he occupied the factories, replenishing his army with workers, weapons and ammunition. After the assault and destruction of the Magnitnaya fortress (now Magnitogorsk), he convened a meeting of the Bashkir elders there, promised to return them lands and lands, destroy the fortifications of the Orenburg line, mines and factories, and expel all Russians. Seeing the destroyed fortress and the surrounding mines, the Bashkir elders met with great joy the promises and promises of the "hope-sovereign" began to help him with bread and salt, fodder and provisions, people and horses. Pugachev gathered up to 11 thousand rebel fighters, with whom he moved along the Orenburg line, occupied, destroyed and burned fortresses. On May 20, they stormed the most powerful Trinity Fortress. But on May 21, the troops of the Siberian corps of General Decolong appeared in front of the fortress. The rebels attacked them with all their might, but could not withstand the powerful onslaught of the brave and loyal soldiers, wavered and fled, losing up to 4 thousand killed, 9 guns and the entire baggage train.

Rice. 4. The battle at the Trinity Fortress

With the remnants of the army, Pugachev plundered the Nizhneuvelskoye, Kichiginskoye and Koelskoye fortifications, through Varlamovo and Kundrava went to the Zlatoust plant. However, near the Kundravs, the rebels had a counter battle with a detachment of I.I. Michelson and suffered a new defeat. The Pugachevites broke away from Mikhelson's detachment, which also suffered heavy losses and abandoned pursuit, plundered the Miass, Zlatoust and Satka factories and united with S. Yulaev's detachment. A young poet-horseman with a detachment of about 3,000 people was active in the mining and industrial zone of the Southern Urals. He managed to capture several mining plants, Simsky, Yuryuzansky, Ust-Katavsky and others, destroyed and burned them. In total, during the uprising, 69 factories in the Urals were partially and completely destroyed, 43 factories did not participate in the insurrectionary movement at all, the rest created self-defense units and defended their enterprises, or bought off the insurgents. Therefore, in the 70s of the 18th century, industrial production throughout the Urals declined sharply. In June 1774, the detachments of Pugachev and S. Yulaev united and laid siege to the Osa fortress. After a hard battle, the fortress surrendered, and the road to Kazan was opened for Pugachev, his army was quickly replenished with volunteers. With 20 thousand rebels, he attacked the city from four sides. On July 12, the rebels broke into the city, but the Kremlin held out. The tireless, energetic and skillful Michelson approached the city and a field battle unfolded near the city. The defeated Pugachevites, numbering about 400 people, crossed over to the right bank of the Volga.

Rice. 5. Pugachev's court in Kazan

With the arrival of Pugachev in the Volga region, the third and last stage of his struggle began. Huge masses of peasants and peoples of the Volga region stirred up and rose to fight for imaginary and real freedom. The peasants, having received Pugachev's manifesto, killed the landowners, hanged the clerks, burned the manor estates. The Pugachevsky detachment turned south, to the Don. The Volga cities surrendered to Pugachev without a fight, Alatyr, Saransk, Penza, Petrovsk, Saratov fell ... The offensive went on rapidly. They took cities and villages, repaired the court and reprisals against the gentlemen, freed the convicts, confiscated the property of the nobles, distributed bread to the hungry, took away weapons and ammunition, made up volunteers for the Cossacks and left, leaving behind flames and ashes. On August 21, 1774, the rebels approached Tsaritsyn, the indefatigable Mikhelson followed on his heels. The assault on the fortified city failed. On August 24, Mikhelson overtook Pugachev at the Black Yar. The battle ended in complete defeat, 2 thousand rebels were killed, 6 thousand were taken prisoner. With a detachment of two hundred rebels, the leader rode off to the Trans-Volga steppes. But the days of the rebellious chieftain were numbered. The active and talented General Pyotr Panin was appointed commander-in-chief of the troops operating against the rebels, and in the southern sector all forces were subdued by A.V. Suvorov. And what is very important, Pugachev was not supported by Don. This circumstance should be specially mentioned. The Don was ruled by a Council of Elders of 15-20 people and a chieftain. The circle met annually on January 1 and held elections for all elders, except for the chieftain. Tsar Peter I in 1718 introduced the appointment of chieftains (most often for life). This strengthened the central power in the Cossack regions, but at the same time led to the abuse of this power. Under Anna Ioannovna, the glorious Cossack Danila Efremov was appointed the Don chieftain, after a while he was appointed a military chieftain for life. But the power spoiled him, and under him the uncontrolled domination of power and money began. In 1755, for many merits of the ataman, he was awarded a major general, and in 1759, for merits in the Seven Years War, he was also a privy councilor with the presence of the empress, and his son Stepan Efremov was appointed as the chief ataman on the Don. Thus, by the highest order of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the power on the Don was transformed into hereditary and uncontrolled. From that time on, the ataman family crossed all moral boundaries in money-grubbing, and in revenge an avalanche of complaints fell upon them. Since 1764, on complaints from the Cossacks, Catherine demanded from Ataman Efremov a report on income, land and other possessions, his crafts and foremen. The report did not satisfy her and, on her instructions, the commission on the economic situation on the Don worked. But the commission did not work shakily, not shakily. In 1766, land surveying was carried out and the illegally occupied yurts were taken away. In 1772, the commission finally gave a conclusion on the abuses of the ataman Stepan Efremov, he was arrested and sent to St. Petersburg. This matter, on the eve of the Pugachev revolt, took a political turn, especially since the ataman Stepan Efremov had personal services to the empress. In 1762, being at the head of the light village (delegation) in St. Petersburg, he took part in the coup that elevated Catherine to the throne and was awarded a personalized weapon for this. The arrest and investigation in the case of Ataman Efremov defused the situation on the Don and the Don Cossacks were practically not involved in the Pugachev revolt. Moreover, the Don regiments took an active part in suppressing the rebellion, capturing Pugachev and pacifying the rebellious regions over the next few years. If the empress had not condemned the thieving chieftain, Pugachev, no doubt, would have found support in the Don and the scope of the Pugachev rebellion would have been completely different.

The hopelessness of the further continuation of the rebellion was also understood by prominent associates of Pugachev. His comrades-in-arms, the Cossacks Tvorogov, Chumakov, Zheleznov, Feduliev and Burnov, seized and tied Pugachev on September 12. On September 15, he was taken to Yaitsky town, at the same time Lieutenant-General A.V. Suvorov. The future generalissimo, during interrogation, marveled at the sound reasoning and military talents of the "villain". In a special cell, under a large escort, Suvorov himself escorted the robber to Moscow.

Rice. 6 Pugachev in a cage

On January 9, 1775, the court sentenced Pugachev to quartering, the empress replaced him with execution by beheading. On January 10, on Bolotnaya Square, Pugachev ascended the scaffold, bowed to four sides, quietly said: "Forgive me, Orthodox people" and laid his troubled head on the chopping block, which the ax instantly cut off. Here, four of his closest associates were executed by hanging: Perfiliev, Shigaev, Padurov and Tornov.

Rice. 7 Execution of Pugachev

Yet the uprising was not meaningless, as the great poet said. The ruling circles were able to convince themselves of the strength and fury of the people's anger and made serious concessions and indulgences. The breeders were instructed to "double the payments for the work and not force the work in excess of the established norms." Religious persecutions were stopped in the ethnic regions, they were allowed to build mosques and taxes were stopped from them. But the vindictive Empress Catherine II, noting the loyalty of the Orenburg Cossacks, was indignant at the Yaiks. The empress wanted to abolish the Yaik army altogether, but then, at Potemkin's request, forgave it. To consign the rebellion to complete oblivion, the army was renamed into Ural, the Yaik River into the Ural, the Yaitskaya fortress into Uralsk, etc. Catherine II abolished the military circle and elective administration. The choice of chieftains and foremen finally passed to the government. They took away all the guns from the troops and forbade them to have them in the future. The ban was lifted only 140 years later with the outbreak of world war. However, the Yaitsky army was still lucky. The Volga Cossacks, also involved in the riot, were resettled to the North Caucasus, and the Zaporozhye Sich was completely eliminated. After the riot for at least ten years, the Ural and Orenburg Cossacks were armed only with melee weapons, squeaked and received ammunition only when there was a threat of a clash. The victors' revenge was no less terrible than the bloody exploits of the Pugachevites. Punitive detachments raged in the Volga region and the Urals. Thousands of rebels: Cossacks, peasants, Russians, Bashkirs, Tatars, Chuvash were executed without any trial, sometimes just at the whim of the punishers. In Pushkin's papers on the history of the Pugachev revolt, there is a note that Lieutenant Derzhavin ordered the hanging of two rebels "out of poetic curiosity." At the same time, the Cossacks who remained loyal to the empress were generously rewarded.

Thus, in the 17th-18th centuries, the type of the Cossack was finally formed - a universal warrior, equally capable of participating in sea and river raids, fighting on land both on horseback and on foot, perfectly knowledgeable in artillery, fortification, siege, mine and subversion. ... But the main type of hostilities used to be sea and river raids. The Cossacks became predominantly horsemen later under Peter I, after the ban on going to sea in 1695. In essence, the Cossacks are a caste of warriors, Kshatriyas (in India - a caste of warriors and kings), who defended the Orthodox faith and the Russian land for many centuries. Through the exploits of the Cossacks, Russia became a powerful empire: Ermak presented Ivan the Terrible with the Siberian Khanate. Siberian and Far Eastern lands along the Ob, Yenisei, Lena, Amur rivers, also Chukotka, Kamchatka, Central Asia, the Caucasus were annexed largely thanks to the military valor of the Cossacks. Ukraine was reunited with Russia by the Cossack ataman (hetman) Bohdan Khmelnitsky. But the Cossacks often opposed the central government (their role in the Russian Troubles, in the uprisings of Razin, Bulavin and Pugachev is remarkable). Many and stubbornly Dnieper Cossacks rebelled in the Commonwealth. This was largely due to the fact that the ancestors of the Cossacks were ideologically brought up in the Horde on the laws of the Yasa of Genghis Khan, according to which only Genghisid could be a real king, i.e. descendant of Genghis Khan. All other rulers, including Rurikovich, Gediminovich, Piast, Jagiellon, Romanov and others, were not legitimate enough in their eyes, were “not real kings”, and the Cossacks were morally and physically allowed to participate in their overthrow, riots and other anti-government activities. And in the process of the collapse of the Horde, when in the course of strife and the struggle for power hundreds of Chingizids were destroyed, including Cossack sabers, the Chingizids also lost their Cossack piety. One should not discount the simple desire to "show", take advantage of the weakness of the authorities and take legitimate and rich trophies during the troubles. The papal ambassador to Sich, Father Pearling, who worked hard and successfully to direct the warlike fervor of the Cossacks to the lands of the heretics Muscovites and Ottomans, wrote about this in his memoirs: “The Cossacks wrote their history with a saber, and not on the pages of ancient books, but on the battlefield left its bloody trail of this feather. It was customary for the Cossacks to deliver thrones to all sorts of applicants. In Moldova and Wallachia, they periodically resorted to their help. For the formidable freemen of the Dnieper and Don, it was completely indifferent whether the real or imaginary rights belonged to the hero of the minute. For them, one thing was important - that they had good prey. Was it possible to compare the pitiful Danubian principalities with the boundless plains of the Russian land, full of fabulous riches? "

However, from the end of the 18th century until the October Revolution, the Cossacks unconditionally and diligently performed the role of defenders of Russian statehood and the support of the tsarist power, having even received the nickname "tsarist satraps" from the revolutionaries. By some miracle, the alien queen-German woman and her outstanding nobles, by a combination of reasonable reforms and punitive actions, managed to drive into the violent Cossack head the persistent idea that Catherine II and her descendants are "real" tsars, and Russia is a real empire, in some places "cooler" than the Horde. This metamorphosis in the minds of the Cossacks, which took place at the end of the 18th century, has in fact been little studied and studied by Cossack historians and writers. But there is an indisputable fact: from the end of the 18th century until the October Revolution, the Cossack riots vanished as if by hand, and the bloodiest, longest and most famous riot in the history of Russia, the "Cossack riot", was drowned.

Materials used:
Mamonov V.F. and other History of the Cossacks of the Urals. Orenburg, Chelyabinsk, 1992.
Shibanov N.S. Orenburg Cossacks of the 18th-19th centuries. Chelyabinsk, 2003.
A.A. Gordeev History of the Cossacks.

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The peasant war under the leadership of Yemelyan Pugachev from east to west covered the territories from Ryazan and Vladimir provinces to the cities of Shadrinsk and Troitsk in Siberia.

From north to south, the uprising covered the territories of the Yaik River and Astrakhan, the Voronezh province and Kazan, the cities of Perm and Yekaterinburg.

What is Pugachevshchina

The main forces of the movement, which in history received the name Pugachevshchina, were formed at the expense of attributed, appanage, possessory, landlord peasants. However, the support and initiators of the movement were the Ural Cossacks, which made it possible to organize the army like a Cossack army.

The leader of the movement, Emelyan Pugachev, was distinguished by religious tolerance, which made it possible to unite representatives of different religions under his command. The peasant wave captured the peoples living on the territory of the Volga region: Bashkirs, Mari, Tatars, Kirghiz, Kalmyks.

Emelyan Ivanovich's detachments were distinguished by greater discipline and organization, in contrast to his predecessors I.I.Bolotnikov and S.T.Razin. Nevertheless, the peasant uprising included unprepared participants, most of whom were not familiar with military life. This gave the movement a spontaneous character.

Among the associates of EI Pugachev are: Yulaev Salavat, Khlopusha, a former convict, raised to the rank of chieftain. Arslanov and Beloborodov, who led the insurgents in Issa and Yaik, respectively. Ovchinnikov was elected ataman, according to the vote of the Yaik Cossacks.

The reasons for the uprising of Pugachev

The reasons were:

1. Socio-economic inequality.
2. Disregard for the interests of the peasantry.
3. Difficult living conditions.
4. Dependence on landlords, lack of land rights.

The purpose of the uprising was the abolition of serfdom and deliverance from the oppression of the landlords. The plans of the Pugachevites included the enthronement of the "good tsar", the endowment of the peasants with their own land plots.

Stages of the peasant war 1773-1775

The peasant war can be conditionally divided into three stages: 1773-1774, associated with the creation of a military collegium, April 1774 - the first serious defeat, the third period - the war acquired a pronounced anti-serfdom direction.

Here, in the table, the main data are summarized.

Stage 1	In the fall, having failed in the town of Yaitsk, Emelyan Pugachev moved his troops to Orenburg. A month after the start of offensive operations, by October 1773, Orenburg was taken together with the adjacent fortresses. The army numbered fifty thousand people, for which there were one hundred guns. While besieging Orenburg, Pugachev's associates created an organ of power - a military collegium. The latter was engaged in supplying the troops with guns, provisions, equipment, and was responsible for the financial side of issues. Control over the besieged territories, the conduct of judicial proceedings was carried out by this authority until August 1774. At this time, in the capital, Catherine II made attempts to resolve the situation without attracting attention.
Stage 2	However, assessing the scale of the disasters, the Empress sent General-in-Chief A.I. Bibikov. The detachments under his command inflicted a serious defeat on the Cossack-peasant troops, defeating them in March 1774. The rebels under the leadership of I.N. Zarubina-Chiki and Salavat Yulaev were defeated near Ufa at the end of March of the same year. A difficult time came for the troops after the defeat on April 1 and the loss of guns. So, having collected the remnants of the troops, Emelyan Ivanovich moved to the mining areas. The latter made it possible to replenish the ranks of peasants and other people tired of the tyranny of landlords and employers. April 1774 Having captured Kazan, Pugachev failed to consolidate his position, which is associated with the troops of Colonel I.I. Michelson.
Stage 3	The rebels were forced to retreat. After a series of defeats, Pugachev crossed to the right bank of the Volga, hoping to enlist the support of the Don Cossacks. Alatyr, Saransk, Penza, Saratov were besieged along the way. Having acquired a national character, the uprising became more and more violent. A threat loomed over the central regions of the state. The spontaneity and destruction within the troops of Pugachev led to failure in the besieging of Tsaritsyn. A further attempt to hide behind the Volga led to the defeat of the troops under the leadership.

The consequences of the uprising of Yemelyan Pugachev

What happened as a result of all the actions:

1. The Zaporizhzhya Sich was abolished, the Cossacks were called up to the imperial service from 1775.
2. Decree of 1775, according to which the opening of handicraft production is available for all estates, the abolition of taxes (until 1782).
3. Reducing taxation for the Cossacks.
4. Reducing restrictions on factory peasants.
5. Introduction of the provincial reform of 1775
6. Formation of the nobility in the national outskirts.
7. The name of the river Yaik disappeared from the maps, the latter was renamed to Ural.

Q&A rubric

Here are the answers to frequently asked questions.

• In what year did the uprising under the leadership of E. Pugachev begin?

The uprising began in the fall of 1773.

• Under what empress did the Pugachev uprising take place?

The Pugachev revolt happened during the reign of Catherine II.

• Who was one of the closest associates of Pugachev?

Among the latter are Ivan Nikiforovich Zarubin-Chika, Ivan Naumovich Beloborodov, Ivan Gryaznov and Grigory Tumanov, Kinzya Arslanov and Salavat Yulaev.

• What atrocities were perpetrated by Pugachev and his associates?

Executions, robberies, fires (entire settlements were burned), rape, punishment in the form of skinning alive.

• Who suppressed the Pugachev uprising?

Suvorov Alexander Vasilyevich is a great commander who has not lost a single battle.

• What are the reasons for the defeat of the Pugachev uprising?

The defeat of the peasant revolt is associated with the following features:

• lack of organization;
• regular monitoring;
• insufficient weapons;
• the entry into the army of unprepared people - mostly serf-owners.

When was Pugachev executed?

Execution of E.I. Pugachev took place in Moscow on the swamp square in January 1775.

Shagaev, Padurov, Tornov were sent to the gallows, Perfiliev was quartered. Ivan Zarubin was taken to Ufa, where, according to the verdict, they cut off his head and pinned him on a stake for all to see.

About eight people were sent to hard labor. The officials who provided assistance to Pugachev were deprived of their powers and demoted. Representatives of the clergy were defrocked, and those who were thrown into a series of events, against their own will, became sextons.

The results of the Pugachev uprising

The Cossack detachments were renamed to army. Securing the title of nobility for Cossack officers and the ability to own serfs.

Expansion of provinces, due to the unification of small ones. On May 19, 1779, a manifesto was signed to shorten the working day and raise the wages of the assigned peasants.