Yemelyan Pugachev
| Yemelyan Pugachev | |
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Yemelyan Pugachev
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| Born | c. 1742 present-day Kotelnikovsky District, Volgograd Oblast |
| Died | 1775 (aged 33) Moscow |
| Occupation | Leader of a Russian peasant uprising |
Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (Russian: Емелья́н Ива́нович Пугачёв) (c. 1742 – 21 January [O.S. 10 January] 1775) was a pretender to the Russian throne who led a great popular insurrection during the reign of Catherine II. Alexander Pushkin wrote a notable history of the rebellion, The History of Pugachev, and he recounted some of the events in his novel The Captain's Daughter (1836).
Pugachev, the son of a small Don Cossack landowner, was the youngest son of four children. Born in the stanitsa Zimoveyskaya (in present-day Volgograd Oblast), he signed on to military service at the age of 17. One year later, he married a Cossack girl, Sofya Nedyuzheva, with whom he had a total of five children, two of whom died in infancy. Shortly after his marriage, he joined the Russian Second Army in Prussia during the Seven Years' War under the command of Count Zakhar Chernyshov. He returned home in 1762, and for the next seven years would divide his time between his home village and several service assignments. During this period, he was recognized for his military skill and achieved the Cossack rank of khorunzhiy, which would be roughly equivalent to the post of company commander. It was also during this period, in 1770 at the siege of Bender, that he first displayed a flair for impersonation, boasting to his comrades that his sword was given to him by his "godfather", Peter I.
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