Yemelyan Pugachev
Yemelyan Pugachev led the largest peasant revolt in Russian history by claiming to be a murdered tsar. Born around 1742 into a Don Cossack family, he served in the Seven Years' War and against the Ottomans, fell ill, was refused a discharge, deserted, and spent years as a fugitive moving between Cossack communities and Old Believer settlements. Catherine II had taken the throne in 1762 after her husband Peter III was deposed and killed. A rumour persisted that he had escaped, and around forty impostors claimed his identity. Pugachev did so in 1773 among the Yaik Cossacks, who were in dispute with the government over their privileges. He was illiterate, could not describe the court, and it did not matter. His manifestos promised what people wanted: land, freedom from serfdom, the abolition of the poll tax and conscription, freedom for Old Believers to keep their rites and their beards, and for the Bashkir, Tatar and Kazakh peoples the return of their lands and religion. The rising spread across the Urals and the Volga, drawing in serfs, Cossacks, factory workers from the ironworks — who cast him cannon — and the steppe nations. He besieged Orenburg for six months, took Kazan in July 1774 and burned it. The end of the Turkish war released regular troops. He was defeated at Tsaritsyn and handed over by his own officers for the reward. He was taken to Moscow in an iron cage, and beheaded and quartered in January 1775. Catherine renamed the Yaik river and abolished the Zaporozhian Sich.
- Lived: 1742 CE – 1775 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: rebel_leader, military_leader
