INSURRECTIONS AND PRETENDERS
A riot in Moscow having clearly revealed the depths of barbarism in which were still plunged the lower classes of the capital—the domestic serfs, lackeys, and factory-workers; the insurrection headed by Pugatchev will show what elements of disorder were still fermenting in the most remote provinces of the empire. The peasants upon whom fell the whole burden of state charges, as well as the exactions of proprietors and functionaries, dreamed in their ignorance of all sorts of impossible changes, and were always ready to follow impostors; many were the false Peters and Ivans and Pauls who started up with worthless claims to trade on the credulity of these simple minds, deeply imbued as they were with the distrust of “women on the throne.” The raskolniks, made savage and fanatical by previous persecutions, remained in their forests on the Volga, irreconcilable enemies of this second Roman empire that was stained with the blood of so many martyrs. The Cossacks of the Don and the Zaparogians of the Dnieper chafed under a yoke to which they were unused, and the pagan, Mussulman, or orthodox tribes of the Volga were but awaiting an opportunity to regain their former liberty and retake the lands occupied by the Russians.
How little these various ungovernable elements could accommodate themselves to the conditions of a modern state has been shown, when, in 1770, three hundred thousand of the Kalmuck-Turguts abandoned their encampments. Add to these malcontents a crowd of vagabonds of all sorts, ruined nobles, unfrocked monks, fugitive serfs, and pirates of the Volga, and it will be seen that Russia contained in its eastern portion all the materials necessary for an immense jacquerie, such as had before been unchained by the false Dmitri, or Stenka Radzin.
A Bokharian of Siberia
It was the Cossacks of the Jaik, cruelly repressed after their insurrection in 1766, who were to provide the rebel serfs with a leader in the person of Emilian Pugatchev, a raskolnik who had escaped from prison to Siberia. Passing himself off as Peter III, who had been rescued from the hands of the executioner, he raised the banner of the Holsteins and declared his intention of marching on St. Petersburg to punish his wife and place his son on the throne. With a following of but three hundred men he laid siege to the little fortress of Jaik. All the troops that were sent against him passed over to his side. He caused all the officers to be hanged, and put to death all the nobles in the towns through which he passed, capturing by means of such terrorisation several small fortresses on the steppes. By his intimates who knew the secret of his origin, he was treated in private as a simple Cossack, but the populations were deceived and received him with the ringing of bells. Certain Polish confederates who were captives in these regions organised for him a body of artillery. For nearly a year he kept Kazan and Orenburg in a state of terror, defeating all the generals that were sent against him. Peasants began to rise against the nobles, Tatars and other tribes against the Russians, until the bitterest of social wars was unchained in the whole Volga basin. Moscow with its one hundred thousand serfs was thrown into agitation; among the lower classes there was talk of liberty and extermination of the masters. Catherine II charged Alexander Bibikov to check the progress of sedition.
Bibikov was aghast, on arriving at Kazan, to see the extent of the demoralisation. He set about reassuring the nobles and soothing the lower classes, but in letters to his wife he wrote: “Conditions are frightful, I fear all will go ill!” Without great confidence in his own troops he decided to attack the impostor, whom he recognised as merely an instrument in the hands of the Cossacks. He defeated Pugatchev twice, once at Tatistchev and once at Kargula, dispersing his army and seizing his cannon. Bibikov died in the full flush of victory, but his lieutenants, Michelson, Collongues, and Galitzin, continued to pursue the vanquished pretender. Hunted to the lower Volga, Pugatchev suddenly ascended the river and pillaged and burned Kazan, but was afterwards defeated on the Kazanka. Descending the river he entered Saransk, Samara, and Tsaritsin, and though hotly pursued by his enemies took time to establish there new municipalities. Meanwhile the populations on the route to Moscow were awaiting his coming, and to meet this expectation innumerable Peter III’s and Pugatchevs arose, who at the head of furious bands went about assassinating proprietors and burning châteaux. It was high time that Pugatchev should be brought to justice. Tracked down between the Volga and the Jaik by Michelson and the indefatigable Suvarov, he was taken to Moscow, where the people were given the spectacle of his execution.
[1775 A.D.]
These troubles had been a warning to Catherine II, and she still bore them in mind when she destroyed the Zaparogian Republic in 1775. The valiant tribes of the Dnieper, expulsed under Peter the Great and recalled under Anna Ivanovna, no longer recognised their former territory of Ukraine. Southern Russia, freed from the incursions of the Tatars, was rapidly being colonised; cities were springing up on all sides and the vast herb-covered steppes were becoming transformed into cultivated fields. The Zaparogians were highly displeased at the transformation, and wished to have their lands restored to them in their former condition. They protected the haïdamaks who were constantly harassing the colonists, until Potemkin, the actual creator of “new” Russia, wearied of such uncomfortable neighbours, occupied on the empress’ order the sitcha and destroyed it. The malcontents fled for refuge to the lands of the sultan; the rest were organised into the Cossacks of the Black Sea, and in 1792 the island of Phanagoria and the southern shore of the sea of Azov were assigned to them as residence. Such was the end of the great Cossack uprising which is heard of to-day only in the songs of the kobzars.[d]