Catherine the Great

At first, before Catherine realized the gravity of the uprising, she attempted to play down its importance in the eyes of western Europe. In January 1774, she wrote to Voltaire that “this impudent Pugachev” was merely “a common highway robber.” She personally did not intend that Pugachev’s antics should disturb the stimulating conversations she was having in St. Petersburg with her famous visitor Denis Diderot, editor of the Encyclopedia. Voltaire agreed that Catherine’s dialogue with one of the leaders of the Enlightenment ought not to be interrupted by the “exploits of a brigand.” She complained that the European press was making too much fuss over the “Marquis de Pugachev who is giving me a little trouble in the Urals.” When she passed along the information that the impertinent fellow was actually claiming to be Peter III, Voltaire picked up her airy, dismissive tone, mentioning to d’Alembert “this new husband who has turned up in the province of Orenburg.” But the “new husband” and “Cossack brigand” was giving Catherine more trouble than she admitted. By the spring of 1774, when Pugachev’s army had grown to over fifteen thousand men, she understood that a local Cossack revolt was becoming a national revolution. After General Kar failed to capture the “miscreant,” and the besieged governor of Orenburg reported severe shortages of food and ammunition, she confessed to Voltaire that “for more than six weeks I have been obliged to devote my uninterrupted attention to this affair.”

Determined to crush the rebels, Catherine summoned the experienced General Alexander Bibikov and gave him full power over all military and civilian authorities in southeastern Russia. Bibikov was a veteran of the wars in Prussia and Poland, and had acquired national prestige as president-marshal of the Legislative Commission. Although the Turkish war still prevented the withdrawal of any significant part of the regular army, Bibikov was assigned as many troops as could be found. He arrived in Kazan on December 26, made it his headquarters, and took immediate steps to stabilize the situation. Nobles were persuaded to form a volunteer militia, arming peasants they considered loyal. Catherine had also ordered Bibikov to establish in Kazan a commission of inquiry to investigate the source of the revolt by “this motley crowd which is moved only by seething fanaticism or by political inspiration and darkness.” It was to interrogate captured rebels to ascertain whether any foreign influence was at work. Was Turkey implicated? France? What or who had prompted Pugachev to assume the name of Peter III? Were there any traces of conspiracy involving her own subjects? What were his connections with the Old Believers? With disgruntled nobles? Bibikov was instructed not to use torture. “What need is there to flog during investigations?” she wrote to him. “For twelve years the Secret Branch under my own eyes has not flogged a single person during interrogations, and yet every single affair has been properly sorted out, and always more came out than we needed to know.” If guilt was established, Bibikov was empowered to execute death sentences, although in cases of nobles or officials found guilty, his judgments were to be referred to the empress for confirmation.

Before sending Bibikov on his mission, Catherine had issued another manifesto, for use only in the region of the rebellion:

A deserter and fugitive has been collecting … a troop of vagabonds like himself … and has had the insolence to arrogate to himself the name of the late emperor Peter III.… As we watch with indefatigable care over the tranquility of our faithful subjects … we have taken such measures to annihilate totally the ambitious designs of Pugachev and to exterminate a band of robbers who have been audacious enough to attack the small military detachments dispersed about these countries, and to massacre the officers who have been taken prisoner.

Two weeks later, after reports confirmed the expansion of the revolt, Catherine decided that the rebellion could no longer be concealed from the public. To explain her decision, she wrote to the governor of the Novgorod region:

Orenburg has already been besieged two full months by the crowd of a bandit who is committing frightful cruelties and ravages. General Bibikov is departing there with troops who will pass through your gubernia in order to curb this distemper which will bring neither glory nor profit to Russia. I hope, however, that with God’s aid, we shall prevail. This riffraff is a rabble of miscreants who have at their head a deceiver as brazen as he is ignorant. Probably it will all end on the gallows; but what sort of expectation is that for me who has no love for the gallows? European opinion will relegate us to the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. That is the honor we must expect from this contemptible escapade.