The Pugachev Rebellion

Originally from the Don River region, Emilian Pugachev was a serial deserter from the Russian Army who sought refuge in the mid-1700s with the traditionally independent Yaik (Urals) Cossacks.  Pugachev's personal disputes with Russian authority dovetailed with violent Yaik reaction against a 1748 plan to form them into Cossack regiments.   Aided and abetted by Yaik leaders, who sought a figurehead for a Cossack rebellion, Pugachev declared himself to be the deposed and murdered Tsar Peter III.  What followed was perhaps the most serious outbreak of peasant resistance in Russian history.   Combining public espousal of Old Belief with ethnically charged appeals to downtrodden peasants on the settlement fringes of the Empire, Pugachev (as Peter) was able to cobble together an army that at peak was 10,000 strong.  With it he attempted -- with some success -- to foment a general rural rising.  The first of the documents below is a petition originating in the Perm district on the eastern side of the north-central Urals.  It reflects common peasant reaction to grapevine-spread news of Pugachev's activities.  The second is the most sweeping declaration of Pugachev's 'principles' that is known.

1.  Why are the Perm peasants sending an appeal to Pugachev?  What is it that they want?

2.  Why do you think they are so cautious about making a definite commitment to Pugachev?

3.  What general promises does Pugachev offer the peasantry?  Why might they have resonated well?

4.  What does Pugachev say should be done with Russia's nobility (especially landowners), and why?

Petition of the Serfs in Kungur District, Perm' Province, to "Peter III"

Most brilliant and autocratic Great Sovereign Petr Fedorovich, Autocrat of all Russia, of Little and White Russia, etc., etc.!

This declaration comes from the Guselinovka ward of the village of Spasskoe in Kungur District, in the name of the entire community through its authorized representatives, Kornilo Prokopov'ev Shiriaev and Ustin Ananienich Medvedev.  It addresses the following points:

1. By the grace of God, we your slaves have heard that Your Imperial Majesty, coming from the southern lands in Orenburg Province, has taken on great strength.  We have praised God that our beautful sun of old, after having hidden beneath the ground, now rises in the East and in its mercy wishes to warm us, Your humble and loyal slaves, with its grace.  With one accord we peasants therefore bow our heads to the very ground. 

2. We Your slaves, all the peasants of the aforementioned ward, most humbly request the Tsar's mercy from the officers and do not wish to oppose them in any way.  Your Majesty did not declare His anger and punishment towards us.  Thus we ask the Lords who are His officers to spare us from the fatal sword and [ask them] to obey His [Majesty's] orders.

3. We also have great hope that His Tsarist Majesty mercifully will spare us from those wild and vicious poisonous animals, the boiars and officers, and break off their sharp claws -- for example, Mikhail Ivanovich Bashmakov at the Iugov State Factories, also Aleksei Sem'enovich Elchanov; and in the town of Kungur, Aleksei Sem'enovich Elchanov and Dmitrii Popov.  These lords make us angry, declaring that whoever invokes the great name of Petr Fedorovich shall be treated like a great evildoer and done to death.

4. To this end, we slaves, all the peasants, have sent reliable people to discover the truth about Your Majesty and to make a deep bow to the very ground before your military commanders, not to resist them.  Therefore, if you please, give them encouragement so that we slaves may know of Your Tsarist Majesty's health, for which we slaves would have great jubilation.

5. May the humble petition of us slaves receive the gracious attention of Your Majesty, so that we humble folk shall not suffer any harm at the hands of your troops.

Pugachev's ukaz of June 1774

By the grace of God We, Peter III, Emperor and Autocrat of all Russia, etc. etc., declare for all the people to know:

By this personal ukaz, and with our Imperial, paternal compassion, We enjoin all those who formerly were peasants and in subjugation to the landowners to be dutiful slaves subject directly to Our crown.  We grant them the ancient cross and prayer, haircut and beard, and freedom and liberty.  They are to be Cossacks forever, not liable to recruitment into the army or to the soul tax or other money taxes.  We grant them tenure of the land and the forests and the hay meadows and the fisheries and the salt lakes, without purchase and without obrok [quit-rent].  We liberate all the aforementioned from the villainous nobles and from the bribe-takers in the city (the officials who imposed taxes and other burdens on the peasants and the whole people). 

We wish everyone salvation of the soul and a peaceful life in this world, for which We have tasted and suffered exile and great wrongs from those villains, the nobles.  But since by the power of the right hand of the Almighty, Our name now flourishes in Russia, We accordingly do ordain by this personal ukaz that those who formerly were nobles living on estates are enemies to Our power, disrupters of the empire, and oppressors of the peasantry.  They should be caught, executed and hanged.  They should be treated just as they -- who have no Christianity -- dealt with you peasants.  When these enemies and villains have been eliminated, all may enjoy peace and a quiet life that will last for all time.

Given on this, the 31st day of June, 1774

Peter

Source: Translation from the Russian.  Revised (syntax clarifications, repunctuation, other emendations) Jon Bone.