PUGACHEV

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 637 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PRE-PYR

PUGACHEV , EMEL'YAN IVANOVICH (? 1741-1775), Russian pretender, the date of whose

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

is uncertain, was the son of a small Cossack landowner. He married a Cossack girl Sofia Nedyuzheva, in 1758, and the same year was sent with his fellow Cossacks to Prussia, under the lead of Count Zachary Chernuishev. In the first Turkish War (176974) of Catherine II. Pugachev, now a Cossack

ensign

ENSIGN (through the Fr. enseigne from the Latin plural insignia)

, served under Count Peter Panin and was present at the siege of

Bender

BENDER (more correctly BENDERY)

. Invalided

home

, he led for the next few years a wandering life; was more than once arrested and imprisoned as a deserter; and finally, after frequenting the monasteries of the " Old Believers," who exercised considerable influence over him, suddenly proclaimed himself (1773) to be Peter III. The story of Pugachev's strong resemblance to the murdered emperor is a later legend. Pugachev dubbed himself Peter III. the better to attract to his standard all those (and they were many) who attributed their misery to
2 See Zoologist for 1878, pp. 233240.
the government of Catherine II., for Peter III. was generally remembered as the determined opponent of Catherine. As a matter of fact Pugachev and his followers were hostile to every form of settled government. The one thought of the destitute thousands who joined the new Peter was to sweep away utterly the intolerably oppressive upper-classes. Pugachev's story was that he and his principal adherents had escaped from the clutches of Catherine, and were resolved to redress the grievances of the people, give absolute liberty to the Cossacks, and put Catherine herself away in a monastery. He held a sort of mimic court at which one Cossack impersonated Nikita Panin, another Zachary Chemuishev, and so on. The Russian government at first made light of the rising. At the beginning of October 1793 it was simply regarded as a

nuisance

NUISANCE (through Fr. noisance, nuisance, from Lat. nocere, to hurt)

, and 500 roubles was considered a sufficient reward for the head of the troublesome Cossack. At the end of November 28,000 roubles were promised to whomsoever should bring him in alive or dead. Even then, however, Catherine, in her correspondence with Voltaire, affected to treat " l'affaire du Marquis de Pugachev "-.as a mere joke, but by the beginning of 1774 the joke had developed into a very serious danger. All the forts on the

Volga

VOLGA (known to the
Tatars
- TATARS (the common form Tartars is less correct)
as Etil, Jill or Atel; to the Finnish tribes as Rau, and to the ancients as Rha and Oarus)

and Ural were now in the hands of the rebels; the Bashkirs had joined them; and the

governor

GOVERNOR (from the Fr. gouverneur, from gouverner, O. Fr. governer, Lat. gubernare, to steer a ship, to direct, guide)

of Moscow reported

great

GREAT

restlessness among the population of central Russia. Shortly afterwards Pugachev captured Kazan, reduced most of the churches and monasteries there to ashes, and massacred all who refused to join him. General Peter Panin, the conqueror of

Bender

BENDER (more correctly BENDERY)

, was thereupon sent against the rebels with a large army, but difficulty of trans-port, lack of discipline, and the gross insubordination of his ill-paid soldiers paralysed all his efforts for months, while the in-numerable and ubiquitous bands of Pugachev were victorious in nearly every engagement. Not till August 1774 did General Mikhelson inflict a crushing defeat upon the rebels near Tsaritsyn, when they lost ten thousand in killed and prisoners. Panin's savage reprisals, after the capture of Penza, completed their discomfiture. Pugachev was delivered up by his own Cossacks on attempting to fly to the Urals (Sept. 14), and was executed at Moscow on the 11th of January 1775.
See N. Dubrovin, Pugachev and his Associates (Rus.;

Petersburg

PETERSBURG

, 1884); Catherine II., Political Correspondence (Rus. Fr. Ger.;

Petersburg

PETERSBURG

, 1885, &c.); S. I. Gnyedich, Emilian Pugachev (Rus.; Petersburg, 1902). (R. N. B.)

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