The epidemic of pretenders in those years invites reflection. A pretender was a symptom of a serious disorder in the body politic, a disorder which could not be corrected through any institutional procedures, or through the clash of corporate and representative bodies, for these did not exist. For most Russians, if the state was pursuing fundamentally misguided policies, then that was a sign that the Tsar was not really Tsar – that he was an impostor, who had usurped the throne, unordained by God. It followed that the logical mode of opposition was to find the ‘real’ Tsar, the one who carried God’s seal of approval (often thought to be discernible as an actual mark on his body) and to support his claim to the throne. It will be remembered that Ivan IV, when faced with a fundamental challenge to his rule, himself played the comedy of abdicating his royal powers, and even handing them over to another, in order to prove that he was in fact entitled to exercise divinely-ordained authority.24
Pugachev augmented his popularity by projecting an image of a suffering Christ-like leader, who had meekly accepted his dethronement, and instead of resisting had left St Petersburg to wander sadly among his people, learning of their sufferings and grievances. He also claimed to have visited Constantinople and Jerusalem, buttressing his sanctity and authority by these contacts with the second Rome and with the site of Christ’s crucifixion.
The circumstances in which Catherine came to power were calculated to provoke speculation about her legitimacy. She deepened resentment by curbing the freedom of the Cossacks and oppressed still further the already meagre rights of the serfs – for example by forbidding them to present petitions to the sovereign.
Pugachev’s first manifesto, addressed to the Yaik Cossacks and to Tatar and Kalmyk tribesmen, situated his appeal to them within the Muscovite tradition of state service as a legitimate corollary of their freedoms and privileges. He invoked the blood their fathers and grandfathers had shed in the service of previous Tsars, and in return for equivalent service promised them ‘Cossack glory … forever’, forgiveness of sins, and return of their material privileges: ‘the river from the heights to the mouth, and the land and grasses, and money, and lead, and powder, and provision of grain’.25
The major cause of Pugachev’s success was his capacity to appeal not just to any one social group, but to a wide variety of the empire’s discontented, finding enough in common in their grievances and aspirations to forge a sense of common purpose, however temporary it proved to be. The central feature of this appeal was the promise to restore a simplified, just and personalized service state of the kind which since the time of Peter I was gradually being replaced by more distant, impersonal and bureaucratic procedures. He certainly did not renounce autocracy: indeed, his improvised state offices were headed by a War College, on the Petrine model, while he himself granted notional estates and even notional serfs to his favoured followers.26 The key to his appeal was his rejection of secularism in church and state and his campaign of hatred against the nobility, with their Westernized ways.
The adoption of the Old Belief set the seal on this projected image of an older and better Russia, for it evoked the ancient myth of national unity which the imperial state had disavowed. In his manifesto of 31 July 1774 Pugachev set forth the ideal which he knew would have most appeal to the common people. ‘By God’s grace We, Peter III, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias … with royal and fatherly charity grant by this our personal ukaz to all who were previously peasants and subjects of the pomeshchiks to be true and loyal servants of our throne, and we reward them with the ancient cross and prayer, with bearded heads, with liberty and freedom and to be for ever Cossacks, demanding neither recruit enlistment, poll tax or other money dues, and we award them the ownership of the land, of forests, hay meadows and fishing grounds, and with salt lakes, without purchase and without dues in money or in kind, and we free peasants and all the people from the taxes and burdens which were previously imposed by the wicked nobles and mercenary urban judges.’ He further accused the landlords of ‘violating and abusing the ancient tradition of the Christian law, and having with pernicious intent introduced an alien law taken from German traditions, and the impious practice of shaving and other blasphemies contrary to the Christian faith.’27
Pugachev’s use of the symbols of the Old Belief is worth dwelling on, since recent research shows that few members of Old Believer communities actually participated in the rising.28 His appeal was rather to the numerous Old Believers among the Cossacks and odnodvortsy, and to Russian peasants generally, who he knew would respond strongly to evocations of the ancient Russian myth. The synthesis of Old Believer and Cossack ideals provided an alternative model of Russian nationhood which was deeply attractive in those unsettled regions.
This common appeal overarched specific promises made to each social group that enrolled under his banners: to the Cossacks the restoration of their traditional freedom and their democratic procedures, to the Bashkirs and Kalmyks the return of their tribal lands, to the possessional and ascribed serfs of the Urals factories either a release from their bonded manual labour or an improvement in then-pay and conditions, to the state peasants the easing of burdens and to the private serfs the ousting (and murder) of their landowners.
The Bashkirs were a special case. Their grievances at this time were deep and persistent. They were gradually losing their grazing lands both as a result of peasant settlement, the establishment of factories and of government attempts to persuade or compel them to settle down and take to agriculture. Like the Cossacks, they were being pressed into military service on the frontier, under conditions which were not always congenial. These grievances had stimulated bitter and tenacious armed rebellions in the first half of the eighteenth century.
The diversity of his appeal meant that when Pugachev suffered a serious setback, as he did in the spring of 1774, with the failure to capture Orenburg, and in the summer with the loss of Kazan’, he was able to move into a new area and raise large numbers of fresh supporters with a speed which took the authorities by surprise. His success in the final stages of his campaign, along the mid-and lower Volga, was especially remarkable, for here he managed to spark off a general peasant rising, a jacquerie of French 1789 proportions, merely by his general presence in the region. This was ‘Pugachevsh-china without Pugachev’, as one historian has called it.29
In the towns, as Pugachev’s host approached, the local clergy would come out with the principal townsmen to greet their new ‘Tsar’ with icons, bell-ringing, bread and salt. They would celebrate divine service in honour of their lord Peter Fedorovich, after which the rebels would plunder the state salt and liquor monopoly warehouses, handing out their contents to the citizens, and open up the jails, recruiting fresh troops, or ‘Cossacks’, from among the inmates.
In the villages, minor emissaries sufficed, calling themselves ‘Cossacks of Peter III’, or even the mere rumour that Pugachev was in the vicinity. Peasants would gather at the sound of the tocsin, seize whatever weapons they could lay their hands on – scythes, pitchforks, clubs, and perhaps a musket or two – and march on the local manor house or state kabak. Several thousand nobles and their families, as well as stewards, publicans, tax officials and sometimes clergymen, lost their lives, or would flee at the approach of trouble, only to have their property confiscated and their homes rendered uninhabitable. Pugachev’s emissaries would pronounce the peasants freed from private serfdom and exempt from the poll tax and military recruitment for the next seven years. The odnodvortsy also took a lively part in this stage of the rebellion.
In spite of the destruction he caused, and the fear he inspired both in landowners and the government, Pugachev succeeded in capturing only two major cities (Kazan’ and Saratov) and was unable to hold either for more than a few days. His army, at times numerically quite formidable – at least 10,000 during the siege of Orenburg