Pugachev's legend in the Urals. Ural legends about Pugachev

V. G. Korolenko

Pugachev legend in the Urals

V. G. Korolenko. Collected works. V. 4 Ogonyok Library M., Pravda, 1953 OCR Bychkov MN One extract from the investigation of the Orenburg secret commission about Yemelyan Pugachev begins like this: “The place where this monster was born is the Cossack Little Russian Zimoveyskaya village; born and raised, according to his apparent atrocity, so to speak, with hellish milk from the Cossack of that village, Ivan Mikhailov Pugachev, wife Anna Mikhailova. All modern official characteristics of Pugachev were compiled in the same clerical-cursing style and draw in front of us not real person, but some incredible monster, brought up precisely by the “hellish milk” and almost literally stinking with flame. This tone was established for a long time in official correspondence. It is known how at that time they treated all kinds of titles, in which even scraping a slip was considered a crime. Pugachev also had his own official title: "The famous state thief, monster, villain and impostor Emelka Pugachev." Eloquent people, who had the gift of words and were good at writing, managed to decorate this title with various, even more expressive superstructures and additions. But to say less than that [was] indecent, and perhaps even unreliable and dangerous. Literature did not lag behind the official tone. The “educated” society of that time, which consisted of nobles and officials, felt, of course, that the entire force of the popular movement was directed precisely against it, and it is understandable in what form the person personifying the terrible danger appeared to him. “You vile, impudent man,” Sumarokov exclaimed in pietic zeal at the news of Pugachev’s capture, “Suddenly whom nature cast down to a blissful age To the misfortune of many people: Forgetting both the truth and yourself, And only loving satan, He thought about God without fear ... “This barbarian,” says the same poet in another poem: ... did not spare either age or gender, The dog is so mad that he meets, he gnaws, Likewise, the Dragon hissing crawls into the meadow from the blatist valley. For this, of course, “there is no execution worthy of him in the world”, “it is not enough to burn him”, etc. The feelings of his contemporaries, of course, are easily explained. Unfortunately for the subsequent story, the initial investigation about Pugachev fell into the hands of an insignificant and completely mediocre person, Pavel Potemkin, who, apparently, made every effort to ensure that the original appearance of the monster brought up by the “hellish milk” was somehow not distorted by real features. . And since at his disposal were graciously provided to him great Catherine dungeons and torture, it is clear that all the material of the investigation was formed in this biased direction: a popular, one-color image was reinforced by forced testimony, and the real appearance of a living person was buried under the Suzdal daub of torture protocols. The mediocrity of this “second cousin” of the all-powerful temporary worker was so great that even purely factual details major episodes previous life of Pugachev (for example, his trip to the Terek, where, apparently, he also tried to stir up trouble) became known from later random finds in provincial archives (One of his contemporaries, in a letter to Pavel Potemkin himself, pointed out that even after escaping from Kazan prison, the appearance of Pugachev on Yaik, a significant part of the adventures of the impostor remains untraceable.). Pavel Potemkin tried only to thicken the "hellish milk" as much as possible and preserve the "satanic appearance". It must be said that the task was carried out with great success. Immediately after the mutiny was pacified, the military dictator Panin, invested with unlimited power, ordered that one gallows, one wheel and one verb for hanging “by the rib” (!) Not only rebels, but also everyone “who will recognize and pronounce this villain, the impostor Emelka Pugachev, as the real one, as he was called (i.e., Peter III). And who does not "delay and not will present to the authorities such speakers, those villages, all without exception (!) Age-old men ... will be sent by teams to be executed with the most painful deaths, and their wives and children will be sent to the hardest work. It is quite clear what a thunderstorm hung after that over all sorts of stories about Pugachev, when gallows, wheels and verbs with hooks stood along the roads, teams went through the villages, and scammers snooped among the people. Anything not marked with an official tone, anything even just neutral stories became dangerous. Oral tradition about the events associated with the name of Pugachev, was divided: part went into the depths of people's memory, away from the authorities and gentlemen, gradually clothed in a haze of superstition and ignorance, the other, recognized and, so to speak, official, took shape in a gloomy, clumsy and also monotonous legend. The real look mysterious person, the original springs of the movement and many of its purely factual details have disappeared, perhaps forever, in the fog of the past. “Still, the beginning of this invention,” Ekaterina wrote to Panin, “remains closed.” It remains unclear to this day. The actual history of the rebellion outside developed in detail and in detail, but its main character remains a mystery. The initial fear of “society” left its mark both on subsequent views and on history ... As a truly brilliant artist, Pushkin managed to renounce the template of his time so much that in his novel Pugachev, although passing in the background, is a completely living person. Sending his story of the Pugachev rebellion to Denis Davydov, the poet wrote, among other things: Here is my Pugach. At first glance, He is visible: a rogue, a straight Cossack. In your forward detachment, the constable would have been dashing. There is a huge distance between this image and not only the Sumarokovsky monster who loved Satan, but even Pugachev of later images (for example, in Danilevsky's "Black Year"). Pushkin's roguish and dexterous Cossack, a bit of a robber in the song style (remember his conversation with Grinev about the eagle and the raven) - not devoid of movements of gratitude and even generosity - is a real living face, full of life and artistic truth. However, a great difficulty arises every time when this "dashing officer" has to be brought to the forefront of a huge historical movement. Already Pogodin at one time turned to Pushkin with a number of questions that, in his opinion, were not resolved by the “History of the Pugachev Rebellion”. Many of these questions, despite the very valuable subsequent works of historians, are still waiting for their solution even today. And the main one is enigmatic personality, which stood at the center of the movement and gave it its name. Historians are hindered by a pile of consciously and unconsciously falsified investigative material. Our artistic literature, after Pushkin, even took a step back in understanding this major and, in any case, interesting historical personality. From the "dashing sergeant" and the rogue Cossack, we moved in the direction of the "hellish milk" and the popular villain. And it can be said without exaggeration that in our written and printed history, in the very center not very remote from us and in the highest degree an interesting period is some kind of sphinx, a man without a face. The same cannot be said about Pugachev of folk legends, which have almost died out in the rest of Russia, but are extremely vividly preserved in the Urals, at least in the older Cossack generation. Here, neither strict decrees, nor Panin's verbs and hooks had time to erase from the people's memory the image of the "runaway" tsar, which remained in her inviolable, in the very, albeit rather fantastic, form in which this “king” first appeared from the mysterious distance of the steppe among the ordinary Cossacks, crushed, crushed, insulted and deeply humiliated by the senior side. Trying to collect ancient legends that have not yet completely died out, to bring them together and, perhaps, to find among this fantastic heap the living features that stirred up the first wave of a major popular movement on Yaik - was one of the goals of my trip to the Urals in 1900. I was warned that in view of the isolation of the Cossacks and their distrust of any “out-of-town”, especially those who come from Russia, this task would be difficult to accomplish. And, indeed, once I had to stumble upon a rather comical failure. From one of the inhabitants of the Krugloozernaya village (Svistun), an old and respected Cossack Phil. Sidorovich Kovalev, I learned that in Uralsk, in kurens, near the church, there lives the grandson of Nikifor Petrovich Kuznetsov (Ustinya Petrovna's natural nephew), Natoriy (Enatoriy) Felisatovich Kuznetsov, a literate and inquisitive person who allegedly made some notes from the words of his grandfather, lover and keeper of the legends of the Kuznetsov family. The stories of this grandfather, Nikifor Kuznetsov, were already used by the famous Ural writer Yosaf Ign. Zheleznov, but I was still curious to see his grandson, the living successor of this tradition. I actually found him behind the cathedral, in the kurens, in an old, recently burnt house. However, when I explained to him the purpose of my visit and even referred to F.S. Kovalev's instructions, Natoriy Kuznetsov only frowned. “I can't tell you anything. The foster grandfather was right about what he said ... Well, only I can’t. Why? - These are political speeches ... I was sincerely surprised. — Excuse me, Natoriy Felisatovich. Why, your grandfather told Zheleznov, and Zheleznov published it. However, no harm came of this for your grandfather. — Zheleznov wrote. Right. Well, only grandfather told him maybe a tenth ... To break this mistrust, I opened Zheleznov's book, which I had deliberately taken with me, and began to read Nikifor Kuznetsov's story written down by the author. Natorius listened and nodded his head approvingly, inserting his remarks. I was already beginning to hope that the ice would be broken, but at that moment Kuznetsov's wife, a dark-skinned Cossack woman with black determined eyes, got up from the threshold of the hut (our conversation took place in the yard). "Be quiet, Natorius," she said ominously. "If only there was one head... otherwise you have a family." Crying in her arms infant, and Natorius immediately stopped short. - No, it's impossible, - he said, - political speeches ... Whenever I was not shaken ... - That is, how was it "shaking"? .. And for what? - But for this very thing - for Pugachev ... - What are you talking about! Who needs it now. - It is evident that it is necessary ... See how it was. "Be quiet, Natorii," said the Cossack girl again. - No, well, it's possible, nothing. See. So I'm going somehow railway to Peremetnaya. There were also in the car different nations like merchants. They began to talk among themselves in the same way: one, for example, says: “the king was real, that is, as he expressed about himself, he was real truth"... Well, the other is opposite to him:" here, he says, it is written in Zheleznov: he admits that he is a Don Cossack. And he mentioned my grandfather. I, as I was right there, and say: “Zheleznov, then, my grandfather told, well, not everything. If everything, I say, had explained, then Zheleznov would have written something else. We say that, and then the conductor. Was an acquaintance. He pulled me by the sleeve, took me aside and said: “You, he says, Natoriy Felisatov, cannot express these words.” - “What, they say?” “Yes, don’t express these speeches. Speech, listen, political. Well, I did. Only suddenly at one station - gendarmes. They locked the car so that no one could get out, and they said: “Who here expressed political speeches? That's the point... Agreed... - Well, probably, they didn't do anything to anyone. - That's it: they, therefore, are merchants, they say: “we are here according to the book. Mr. Zheleznov wrote, officer. Please take a look." Well, I mean, thanks to the conductor, aside. Just escaped with fear. And if only I had expressed everything ... - Now, be quiet, - cut off his wife. - And then I am silent. I visited him twice. Both times he very willingly talked about his grandfather, about the former residence of the Kuznetsovs, about their relationship, and at the same time indirectly told me a lot of interesting things both in everyday life and in historical terms. But as soon as the conversation touched more directly on the forbidden topic, the Cossack woman again pierced him with her black eyes, and he bit his tongue. “I can’t, political speeches,” he repeated stubbornly. - If only they didn’t shake ... However, we parted with this representative of the “queen's family” amicably, and I even think that he could hardly tell me anything more characteristic than this small episode from our living modernity. In other places, especially during my tour of the villages, I was happier. The elderly Cossacks are more courageous than the youth, and more willing to share their knowledge and their deep conviction on this subject. Having collected what I managed to write down by personal feedback and what was written down by others, and looking through this material in a row, I was struck by the remarkable integrity of the image that grew out of these fragments, as well as by the deep faith of the narrators in its reality. The belief that the stranger who raised the fatal storm in 1773 was the real Peter Fedorovich, keeps in the Urals not only in a simple ordinary Cossacks. I got to know pretty well historical family Sheludyakov, whose ancestors took an active part in the fatal drama. Pugachev was very fond of one of the Sheludyakovs and for some reason called his godfather. Subsequently, he was captured near Orenburg and was tortured to death in a dungeon. Thus, in this family, as in many others in the Urals, historical interest is mixed family tradition. Already the parents of the current Sheludyakovs were quite intelligent people, and, however, when his father was dying (in the early seventies), he expressed regret that he would not live to see 1875, when, according to common belief, the seal of secrecy from the Pugachev case should be removed at that time. it should have been revealed that Yaik in general and the Sheludyakov families in particular served a just cause. They say that Pushkin, during his visit and short stay in Uralsk, showed contemporaries of the rebellion a portrait of the real Pyotr Fedorovich, whose Holstein physiognomy, as you know, did not at all resemble the Cossack appearance of Pugachev. However, now I heard from several lips that in this portrait the Cossacks recognized just the same person who was with them on Yaik. In general, when pointing to the resolute denial by history of any possibility of this identity, even among intelligent Cossacks you will encounter an expression of hesitation and skepticism. However, it must be admitted that, as already mentioned above; written history suffers from great omissions, incompleteness, and sometimes even outright contradictions. And most importantly, she leaves central figure a man without a face. The popular imagination cannot, of course, reconcile itself to this. He, of course, is alien historical criticism, but on the other hand, the semi-fantastic image drawn by folk tradition is distinguished by remarkable fullness and brightness. This is a living person with all the advantages and disadvantages of a real person, and if a mystical and mysterious element is sometimes mixed with these real features, then this only applies to his royal title. Pyotr Fedorovich of Cossack legends - real man, with flesh and blood, seething with desires and passions; Tsar Peter III is surrounded by a halo of mystery and fatal, not quite natural influences. The reasons for his overthrow from the throne are drawn with particular realism. Cossack tradition presents Peter III as a broad nature, a reveler and an unfaithful husband. His behavior is one of those that have to be justified famous saying: come true is not a reproach to the young man. Catherine, on the contrary, at this time is portrayed, although rather obstinate, but still faithful wife trying to appease her husband. On this basis, a catastrophe is played out. Once a foreign ship came, and Pyotr Fedorovich went on it, and even went on a spree with the noble maiden Vorontsova. The indication of this name, coinciding with historical reality, shows how widely, in fact, various court "komerages" spread in those days. “After all, from us,” Cossack Bakirev told Zheleznov, “from time immemorial, every year, Cossacks traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg with royal kus ... So how can one not know. You can’t hide an awl in a bag ... ”The spies reported to the queen that the king was laying with Vorontsova. That, as a wife, it seemed insulting, she could not stand it and ran there herself. She came and said: "Isn't it time to go home?" But her husband, who had gone on a spree, rudely drove her away: “I went home myself, as long as I am intact.” Then the insulted Catherine invited her adherents, raised the icons and declared herself queen. When the tsar, with a hangover in his victorious little head, finally decided to return home on the third or fourth night, he found the gates locked, and the sentry announced that there was no tsar, but there was a queen. He poked his head into Kronstadt (again, a historical trait), but they didn't let him in there either. Then, fearing the hostile boyars, Pyotr Fedorovich decided to hide ... At this point, the personality of Pyotr Fedorovich disappears in the fog, and a mystical power is established over the king higher power some mysterious predestination. It turns out that somewhere it was supposed from time immemorial that the royal grandson of Peter the Great would have to know a lot of grief and suffer like a simple exile, persecuted and persecuted in within fifteen (according to other options twelve) years. He was supposed to show up at the earliest. But the regal wanderer, who learned from himself all the suffering of the people and all the untruth of the authorities, having also ended up on Yaik, at that time he really “suffered great misery”, groaning under the pressure of blatant untruth and terrible repressions, after the Traubenberg case, could not stand it and, having obeyed again, although in a different direction, his stormy nature, violated the dictates of fate and showed up earlier. It's a breach of command higher will, caused by compassion and unbearable pity for the tormented people, is in the legends the tragic engine that determined the fate of the movement. Everything was for Pugachev, but he could not win his case precisely because he did not start on time. And he knew it. It is extremely interesting that family tradition Kuznetsov connects the very marriage of the fugitive tsar with this tragic consciousness. In the stories recorded by Zheleznov, this marriage is motivated by various considerations: firstly, the law is not written for kings; secondly, the law also allows marriage after a seven-year separation; thirdly, Catherine was his persecutor; fourthly, finally, at that time (true, but belated) rumors were circulating on Yaik about Catherine's intention to marry Orlov. But the aforementioned Enatoriy Kuznetsov, in the midst of his restrained conversation, informed me that both Pugachev and even Ustinya were well aware of the fatal significance of this wedding. When Pugachev began to clearly express his intentions regarding the matchmaking, then Ustinya, a cheerful, broken and good songwriter, allegedly composed a song in which she spoke very boldly about a husband who is wooing from a living wife. Pugachev took her aside and said: “It would be better if one of my heads disappears than the whole of Russia disappears. Now troops and generals are coming from St. Petersburg to me; if they stick to me, then all of Russia will be worn out, the smoke will become a pillar all over the world. And when I marry a Cossack girl, the troops will not come to me, my fate will end and Russia will calm down. I heard the repetition of the same tragic motif in other places in the Urals. Thus, the tsar-wanderer, involuntarily violating the dictates of fate, dutifully walked towards her, and Ustya went towards his will ... The public execution of Pugachev in Moscow (January 10, 1775) in the presence of hundreds of thousands of people did not shake this faith in the least. On the contrary, it must be said that some of the circumstances of this execution were accompanied by just those ambiguities of motives and oddities about which I spoke above and which are very helpful to harmonious folk tradition. According to the maxim approved by Catherine, Pugachev was subject to quartering. First, his arms and legs were to be cut off, and then his head. However, it is known that this was not carried out. After reading the sentence and fulfilling the formalities, the executioner grabbed Pugachev from behind, knocked him down and, first of all, cut off his head. After that, amid the silence, the voice of the executor was heard, reproaching the executioner and threatening him with execution for violating the sentence (Un d'entre-eux [i.e., one of the closest spectators], que je crois avoir êtê un des juges censura à haute voix le bourreau de sa mêprise (“One of them, I believe one of the judges, scolded the executioner in a loud voice for his mistake,” eyewitness correspondence in the Utrecht Gazette, March 3, 1775, Thu. in O-ve East. and others. Bolotov calls this official an executor. ). This indisputable fact, established both by Russian and foreign testimonies, served as the subject of astonished talk. Mrs. Bielke, an enthusiastic admirer and correspondent of Catherine, having read about this in foreign newspapers, suggested in her next letter that this was done "according to the humane will of the Empress, and not by mistake of the executioner." Catherine willingly went towards such an interpretation of her European admirer. “To tell you the truth,” she wrote, “you correctly guessed about the mistake of the executioner during the execution of Pugachev: I think that the prosecutor general and the police chief helped to make this mistake happen, because when the first one left Petersburg, I told him jokingly:“ never meet my eyes if you admit the slightest opinion that you forced whoever endure torment, and I see that he took note of this ”(Collection of Historical Islands, XXVII, 32. Italics in the quotation are mine.). It is permissible, however, to think that this explanation is not entirely accurate. That before Vyazemsky's departure the tsarina had conversations with him is, of course, natural; hardly only they were joking. That the fact of a sharp violation of the sentence could not also be explained by a simple mistake of the executioner is hardly possible to doubt. However, if it was meant to prevent unnecessary suffering whoever it was- then, firstly, Catherine had a direct means for this - in the mitigation of all executions, and then humanity would have touched more than one Pugachev. Meanwhile, on the same day and in the same place, other Pugachev accomplices were executed, and no one mentions the mitigation of the execution of, for example, Perfiliev. It is hardly logical to assume that Catherine's humanity touched only one main culprit and bypassed the secondary ones. And then, of course, the executor could not have been unaware of this, by his shouting at the executioner only emphasized the deviation from the sentence, which otherwise could have passed less noticed. Be that as it may, this strange episode was not only mysterious to the hundreds of thousands of spectators who gathered on the day of the execution in the Swamp, but remains not fully explained for history either. To this it should only be added that among the crowd of thousands of troops and people there was also the Zimovaya Yaitskaya village, which consisted of the "faithful", that is, the senior side of the Cossacks, who, even fighting Pugachev, for the most part still considered him a real tsar, fighting against the queen ... And, returning to Yaik, the Cossacks told about the strange episode of the execution. The legend made good use of this riddle. She knows no inconsistencies and contradictions. It is whole, harmonious, often very fantastic, sometimes absurd, but completely consistent and logical. The Ural army did not believe in the execution of Pugachev. The king cannot be executed. The man whom Bolotov describes on the scaffold "completely inconsistent with such deeds as this monster did," but rather resembling "some kind of canteen or a shabby eater," according to the Cossacks, was not at all the one whom the army saw on horseback and who one of his appearance upset the ranks of opponents. It was, according to the legend, a figurehead, some ordinary criminal. And when he supposedly wanted to say that he was dying instead of the real king, they hurried to cut off his head ... To joined this new fact, historically correct and capturing the imagination of the people, namely sudden death Martemyan Borodin ... Martemyan Borodin is the most prominent figure among the Cossack opponents of Pugachev, who played a huge, almost decisive role in the pre-Pugachev ferment in the Urals, and a direct antithesis of Pugachev in the eyes of the "army". The rich man, who captured immeasurable spaces of the “common” steppe, the owner of serfs on free Cossack lands, a rapist, a robber, a man with an iron will, a stormy temperament, and at the same time a cunning diplomat who knew how to cajole and appease the St. party, which before the appearance of Pugachev even bore the name "Borodino". Even Catherine's personal decrees were directed against him and his actions, but he knew how to turn them into nothing, skillfully causing unrest, after which his opponents turned out to be guilty. It can be assumed with a high degree of probability that if Martemyan Borodin had not been on Yaik, there would not have been the murder of Traubenberg, which preceded the Pugachevshchina, there would not have been, perhaps, Pugachev ... But, as often happens, Martemyan, the true culprit who caused in general dissatisfaction and just anger in the army, which led to an outbreak - then, by fighting against the movement caused by it, it not only “deserved” its thefts and heavy guilt, but also appeared in the eyes of the government in an aura of devotion and self-sacrifice. In the fight against Pugachev, for Martemyan, it was about his own head, over which the accusations and curses of the entire army weighed heavily, but Martemyan very cleverly presented this enmity of the troops towards him as his services to the throne. At the very appearance of Pugachev, Martemyan realized the danger, first of all for himself personally, and rushed through the Kyrgyz steppe to Orenburg ... Subsequently, when Pugachev was already put in an iron cage, Catherine's generals knew that Martemyan would be his best watchman. And, indeed, Martemyan was instructed to accompany the captive to Moscow ... () 1 “According to the legends of the Cossacks,” says Zheleznov (III, 203), “Borodin was among Pugachev’s escorts, but according to some information that has come down to me, I conclude that he did not escort Pugachev, but arrived in Petersburg already in November or even in December 1774". This is not true. Among the extracts made by me from the military archive, there is an extract from the Decree Ch. Kriegs-Commissariat from the office to Mr. Prime Major Borodin dated 22 December. 1774, which provides a calculation of the money following “for the arrival with you from Yaitsky’s army with fish, and for the transfer of the villain Pugachev to Moscow, which is in command of your light village” (total complaints., run., As well as for buckets and sabers 633 rubles). Thus, obviously, in this respect the Cossack tradition is not mistaken, and Pugachev was accompanied to Moscow by Martemyan Borodin. Cossack legends give many details of this path. First of all, behind the city rampart and the tower along the Kazan highway, Borodin's relatives went out, according to custom, to see him on the road. They began to drink vodka and liqueur. Pugach looked out of the cage and said: “Martemyan Mikhailovich! Bring it to me too." But Martemyan rudely refused. Pugachev turned pale from the insult and said: “Very well! You want to see me die. It won't work. I'd rather see you." A little later, one of the foremen, Mikhailov, came up to him and offered him from his glass. Pugachev drank and said: “Thank you, my friend. I won't forget you. Remember what I will say, - said Pugach to everyone who was here: - from now on, the Mikhailov family will rise, and the Borodin family will fall ”(Zheleznov, vol. III, p. 205. The prediction was not completely justified. The son of Martemyan Borodin was a military chieftain. However, he died he is childless, and now there are no direct descendants of Martemyan.). Dear Pugach also warned Borodin and said to him with a grin: “Martemyan Mikhailovich, think about it, where are you going, why? .. Hey, Martemyan Mikhailovich. Turn the shafts back while there is time ... ”The aged Cossack of the Trebuhinskaya village, Ananiy Ivanovich Khokhlacheva, with deep conviction, confirming to me everything written down by various people Zheleznov, added to this a few more episodes, heard, according to him, from the participants themselves or from next of kin. By the way, with Martemyan Borodin, as an orderly, was his favorite, a young Cossack Mikhailo Tuzhilkin. Once, somewhere at a halt, during a rest, the stern chieftain forced Tuzhilkin to search in his head. Finding this moment suitable for an intimate conversation, Tuzhilkin asked: "Tell me, Martemyan Mikhailovich, who are we taking: the tsar or the impostor?" “The Tsar, Mishenka,” Martemyan seemed to answer. Tuzhilkin was horrified. - What are we doing! he exclaimed. “But what was there to do ... Anyway, neither he nor our strength would have taken it,” answered Borodin. In the Sakmara fortress, where a train with Pugachev in a cage allegedly arrived, they were met by a courier from St. Petersburg (It is interesting that, according to Cossack legends, Pugachev was apparently being taken through Orenburg. Otherwise, the train could not get to Sakmara.). Going up to the cage and seeing Pugachev there, the courier trembled and threw up his hands (Ananiy Ivanovich very dramatically and picturesquely portrayed the horror of the courier and his gestures). “Oh my God, what did they do!” - he shouted, - unlock it, unlock it now! .. What will happen now? Cossacks and "just" go with Pugachev to Petersburg, to the queen. This naive sentence reflects the feature of the Yaik legends about the "runaway tsar" already mentioned above. His fate, as a king, had already been decided, his case was lost, he violated the dictates of fate, and the kingdom remained with Catherine. But his person was sacred, and, moreover, he remained the husband of the queen and the father of the prince, the heir ... Borodin did not obey, and for this he really suffered the execution, as Pugach predicted. Fate punished Pyotr Fedorovich, who violated her decrees, but the same fate could not bypass the person who encroached on the dignity of the "tsar" and carried him in a cage like a beast. The very death of Martemyan Borodin is told differently, but most of the legends attribute it to Pavel Petrovich (All the way Martemyan fought with Pugach and reproached each other. Martemyan threatened him with a queen, and Pugach was his heir. “Give me time,” said Martemyan, “to get to the queen : she will give you a bath, you won’t forget until the new brooms. " And Pugach to him: "Give him time to get to Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich. He will give you such heat that the sky will seem like a sheepskin." (Zheleznov.)). When Martemyan came to the palace to the heir, - Anani Ivanovich Khokhlachov told me, - he said to him: - What was it to you, ataman sir, not to accept my dad? If you accepted, then my dad would be in Russia now, and I, and you are the third. Well, now, ataman sir, do not seek. And they struck the big bell. The winter Yaitskaya village stands on the square near the palace, waiting for its marching ataman, but he is still not there. And suddenly they hear: a big bell is ringing, as if in remembrance ... The adjutant came out onto the porch and said to the Cossacks: “Your chieftain is gone. The ataman died overnight. Go with God." The very kind of death is also depicted differently. In the stories of homebody Cossacks who have not been to the capitals, it is said that Pavel Petrovich, angry, grabbed the door “lock” (a wooden bolt that moves the gate) and hit Borodin on the head with it. According to other options, the execution was even crueler, up to skinning a living person. She's obviously played here before. creative role deep hatred of the then army for Martemyan. Finally, some legends attribute the death of Borodin to Catherine herself, who could not forgive rough treatment with her husband. “Martemyan Mikhailovich got ready to leave St. Petersburg (says one legend recorded by Zheleznov) and went to say goodbye to the empress, and ordered the batman to gradually pack up. Suddenly he ran to the apartment, frightened, pale, as if someone was chasing him. "Run for the carts, let's go." Dear Martemyan kept shouting to the driver: drive on! We passed a few stations, Martemyan says to the driver in Kyrgyz: - What a miracle, brother, I saw ... I stand at the queen's mother in the bedchamber, telling her how we fought against the villain Amelka. And he, Pugach, suddenly jumps out from behind the screen, like a fierce beast, and as he rushes at me with his fists, I froze indo ... Now, brother, I see that I made a mistake: I wouldn’t come here at all. God bless them... Khosh published that he was Amelka Pugachev, but it turns out - that's what Pugach he is... He didn't have time to finish how the courier catches up with them from behind and demands Martemyan again to the queen. Another version draws the same episode with even more real details. Pugach lies in the bedchamber behind white muslin curtains, “it looks like he just got out of the bath: his hair is wet, and his face is red. At his feet, on a chair, sits the prince, and the queen by the window. And everyone is crying, wiping their tears with handkerchiefs. And at the lintel, like a vested soldier, stands Martemyan Mikhailovich - he stands and trembles, as if in the cold. (Zheleznov.) Ananiy Ivanovich Khokhlachev adds to this that Borodin's widow received Catherine's handwritten letter and two velvet dresses: one green, the other black. “And it was written in the letter that, they say, I am guilty of your grief, I am a sinner ...” And Anania Ivanovich’s fiancée, who lived there, saw the letter and dresses herself ... It should be noted that neither the exact date, nor even the year of Martemyan’s death Borodin are unknown, and this event is also covered with some kind of uncertainty. Zheleznov doubts that Borodin accompanied Pugachev, as the Cossack traditions assure him. He attributes the death of Borodin to April 1775 on the grounds that in May a new military foreman Akutin was appointed. But in this case, Zheleznov is mistaken, and the legend is right. Firstly, Borodin was not a military leader, but only a marching ataman, but he undoubtedly accompanied Pugachev, and there is a high probability that he died during this trip. In the files of the Ural military archive, I found an indication that the thousand rubles assigned as a reward to Borodin were received in Orenburg, by proxy of Borodin's widow, by Grigory Telnov of the fiftieth (which was followed by a decree of the Orenburg provincial office dated November 28, 1774). Then I did not come across any mention of Martemyan Borodin in my files until August 1775. when in one of the petitions the dead Major Borodin is mentioned quite by accident. This dull and indefinite interval produces a strange impression, after the name of an active foreman had previously come across at every step ... There is no doubt that M. Borodin's "guilt" before the government was enormous. Catherine wrote decrees, sent generals to stop abuses, but the foremen's party, whose soul was Borodin, bullied the generals and turned the queen's decrees into nothing until it caused a revolt and bloody pacification, which paved the way for Pugachevism. The army explained these abuses and impotence of power by the fact that it was not a real king on the throne, but a woman ... And when the king appeared, the army met him with delight. In general, the Pugachev movement seems to me, in its psychological basis, one of the most loyal movements of the Russian people. Of course, in the very embryo of it lurked (and even then quite imperceptibly) conscious deception. When in a mysterious merchant, dressed in a bad shirt and simple trousers, it was necessary to recognize the tsar and announce this to the army, then the Cossack Myasnikov, shrugging his shoulders, said: “Okay. We'll make a prince out of mud." But not everyone, even among the first participants, thought this. When Pugachev, dressed in royal clothes (a caftan was presented by the Kirghiz Khan), on an excellent horse, with two banners and a detachment, rode to the outposts, then sincere faith and sincere feeling who accompanied him all the time to the chopping block. At the same time, it is remarkable that the image of Catherine (as you know, hated and still hated by the people in peasant Russia) surrounds the Ural tradition with some kind of reverence and gentleness. She was a woman, and that was her shortcoming on the throne. “We do not slander the empress,” the Bashkirs said at the meeting. “She is just, but justice has not departed from her and has not come to us.” The same, of course, could be said by the Cossacks, whose deputies more than once returned from St. Petersburg, in vain encouraged by Catherine herself. But this applied to the queen and to matters of government. Personally, the legend refers to Catherine rather mildly. Insulted, as a woman and wife, she feels understandable indignation and decides on a coup. But at the same time, she cannot forgive her rough treatment of her husband, and when, after so many adventures, he returns, she puts him to bed and weeps over his suffering. Her relationship with Ustinya Kuznetsova (actually unsympathetic and cruel: poor Ustya was imprisoned for life in a fortress) in the tradition of the Cossacks is also marked by generosity and feminine kindness. Ekaterina summons Ustya to Petersburg and treats her very kindly. This theme - the meeting of two wives of supposedly the same troubled husband - is developed in detail and willingly in many stories recorded by Zheleznov. I also heard it from the lips of Ananiy Ivanovich and partly Natoriy Kuznetsov. In all the stories, one feature is mentioned: when Ustya, along with her sister, was brought to the palace, Catherine ordered to bring different people to her and kept asking: is this your betrothed? Ustya answered everything in the negative. Finally, Pugach was taken out, and she threw herself on his neck. “Well,” said Ekaterina, “say goodbye to him, you will never see him again.” there were often people from the Urals who came to the capital. I have to mention one more cycle of these legends, which shows what passionate love Yaik had for the image of his "runaway king", which cost him so many tears, grief and blood. It is known that passionate love does not reconcile with the fact of the death of a loved one. And Pugachev, caught and even executed, still flickered on Yaik and appeared to his followers either in the steppes or in the city itself. These legends about the wandering and again persecuted Pugachev are already completely fantastic, but they cannot be denied a kind of poetry, full of melancholy and sadness. One of these stories (recorded from the words of the old Iletsk Cossack S. V. Krylov, now, in 1900, living in Uralsk) finds Pugachev wandering around the Common Syrt (after fleeing from Berda). Pugachev with a small detachment rides across the steppe and runs into a large stone. Having ordered the Cossacks to hobble their horses and wait for him, Pugachev approaches the stone and falls on it with bitter tears. The stone rises, and Pugachev goes underground. After a while, he comes out and calls for the Cossacks. In the dungeon they are met by a majestic woman who greets the Cossacks and invites them to reinforce their forces. To do this, she has only a small piece of bread, but when she starts cutting it, the bread does not decrease. Pugachev calls her aunt, and in conversation she reproaches him that he did not wait for the time appointed for the test and, having announced earlier, he also got married. A strange woman, transported by some unknown means to the Yaitsky steppes and, moreover, underground, was Elizaveta Petrovna. Saying goodbye to his aunt, Pugach again galloped with his companions to the steppe towards a mysterious fate ... In the evening on the very day that Pugach was taken away from the Yaitsky town, says another legend recorded by Zheleznov, the Kuznetsovs - his relatives - were sitting at dinner. Suddenly: the doors opened and a merchant entered (it is known that for the first time Pugachev appeared on Yaik in the form of a merchant). “Bread and salt,” he said, entering, and all the Kuznetsovs shuddered and their spoons fell out of their hands ( “That means he was there, they recognized him by his voice”). “Don’t be afraid, it’s me,” says the merchant. “I came to reassure you… By the grace of God, I won’t be lost.” Farewell, live better and healthier. He said and was. The Kuznetsovs ran out into the street, and his trace disappeared, only the bell rang ... That same evening, two hours earlier, the same merchant was even at the chieftain. And again, at first they didn’t recognize him, and when another merchant who came to the chieftain recognized him, then again everyone was so dumbfounded that the mysterious visitor managed to hide ... Only again the bell rang on the way to the Chuvash umet ... This faith was once so strong that in In the papers of the military archive, I came across cases that arose precisely on this basis. So, the foreman's wife Praskovya Ivanaeva, who was a cook at the "Queen Ustinya" and cooked in the "palace" for Pugachev, was twice whipped for not believing in the final defeat of the "tsar" and, in every quarrel with the triumphant "foreman's party" "(And the old woman, apparently, was of an obstinate temper), "talked about the impostor for society obscene and ungodly" and even threatened his new arrival, "which was supposedly famous at that time." It is known, finally, that soon after the pacification, the authorities were alarmed by the appearance of Pugachev allegedly again, under the name of Metla or Zametail. But it turned out to be a simple robber, a pathetic parody in which there was nothing that could really stir up the weary popular feeling. Such are these legends, still alive, but already beginning to fade in the people's memory in the Urals. I found them interesting. All of them are marked by a deep belief in the truth of Pugachev's royal dignity, and the person they portray is very far from the real and undoubted personality of the insignificant Peter III. Cossack Pyotr Feodorovich does not look like a German at all (although in some stories it is mentioned that he was a German). Stormy, frivolous, unrestrained, he insults Catherine, his lawful wife, for which he is forced to wander and be punished. Cleansed by this redemptive period, he remains just as unrestrained in his passionate pity for the people and violates the dictates of fate (or "old scriptures"), appearing before the appointed time. Then he releases again passionate nature and marries Ustinya. From this, his business perishes. And, however, the fight against him and especially the insult to his personality is an insult to the mystically superstitious people's idea of ​​​​the true king, and the main culprit of this crime is duly punished ... For Yaik, this was only a fatal clash between two representatives of power, tragically divided, but equally having great reasons ... The queen won because the ardent king violated the dictates of fate ... Yes, this image was only a shadow of the persecuted king. But this shadow shook Russia... A haze of the steppe, a ghost - and a whole series of conquered fortresses and won battles... For this, someone's infernal treachery and sedition were not enough. For this, deep suffering and faith were needed ... And it was, however, all imbued with ignorance and political superstition, which, unfortunately, lived for a long time in the dark masses, as these fantastic legends live in the Urals now. 1901

NOTES

The essay was written in the autumn of 1900 and included by the writer as a separate chapter in the essays "At the Cossacks", submitted for printing to the magazine " Russian wealth". When the essays were already typed, the author took the Pugachev Legend back, suggesting, perhaps, to use it in the story The Runaway Tsar, from the era of the Pugachev movement, on which he was then working. However, Korolenko did not write this story, and Pugachev's Legend was never published during the writer's lifetime. It was first published after his death, in 1922, in the tenth book of the Voice of the Past magazine. Regarding the Pugachev Legend, on October 26, 1900, Korolenko wrote to N. F. Annensky that it “constitutes the best and most interesting chapter written so far ( we are talking about the essays "At the Cossacks."— Ed.). The material for it was partly printed works Cossack Zheleznov, partly the traditions I collected from the old Cossacks, and partly the military archive. Interestingly, while the "printed" historical Pugachev still remains a man "without a face", the Pugachev of legend is a living face, with extraordinarily bright and downright real features, an integral image, endowed with both the shortcomings of a person and the semi-mythical greatness of the "tsar ". I myself was struck by this when I put together all these stories ... "

Soon, on the thirteenth of September, Lieutenant Ishtiryakov reported to the mayor that the well, the petty-bourgeois widow Natalya Chuvakova, who was being held in custody by the balakhon magistrate in prison ... was in a grave illness, which is why it was impossible to send it.

Lukerya Petrova Sorokina, a compassionate balakhon bourgeois woman, took the ill-fated widow against a receipt from the magistrate to her house for treatment, - after which - again a prison and a workhouse ...

On the thirteenth of October, Chuvakova was returned from the order of public charity (in Nizhny Novgorod), with a message that she had worked out the twenty-five kopecks with legalized interest.

That's what the ring cost a forty-year-old dandy-widow.

And the ring itself? Nothing is mentioned about him in the file, but from what we know from many other cases, it is easy to guess that it hardly got to the peasant woman Antonova. One must think that it adorned the finger of some "food", clerk, clerk, or one of their lovers. Moreover, now the ring was already "cleansed" by the tears and suffering of the widow - and in addition, the beepers and clerks were not afraid of its mysterious power, just as doctors are not afraid of infection.

"Each generation treats the previous ones with regret or derision." We both laugh and feel sorry for all this mess, which surrounded the worthless ring with tears and shame of a knowingly innocent person. But ... other generations will come, they will read our deeds - and how much more unnecessary formalism, how much more unnecessary grief and tears they will open under the forms of our own life!

Pugachev's legend in the Urals*

One extract from the investigation of the Orenburg secret commission about Emelyan Pugachev begins like this: “The place where this monster was born is the Cossack Little Russian Zimoveyskaya village; born and raised, according to his apparent atrocity, so to speak, with hellish milk from the Cossack of that village, Ivan Mikhailov Pugachev, wife Anna Mikhailova.

All modern official characteristics of Pugachev were drawn up in the same clerical-cursing style and depict before us not a real person, but some kind of incredible monster, brought up precisely by the “hellish milk” and almost literally stinking with flames.

This tone was established for a long time in official correspondence.

It is known how at that time they treated all kinds of titles, in which even scraping a slip was considered a crime. Pugachev also had his own official title: "The famous state thief, monster, villain and impostor Emelka Pugachev." Eloquent people, who had the gift of words and were good at writing, managed to decorate this title with various, even more expressive superstructures and additions. But to say less than that [was] indecent, and perhaps even unreliable and dangerous.

Literature did not lag behind the official tone. The “educated” society of that time, which consisted of nobles and officials, felt, of course, that the entire force of the popular movement was directed precisely against it, and it is understandable in what form the person personifying the terrible danger appeared to him. “You are a vile, impudent person,” Sumarokov exclaimed in pietic zeal at the news of Pugachev’s capture, “

suddenly whom nature

Cast down to a blissful age

To the disaster of many people:

Forgetting the truth and myself

And only loving Satan

I thought about God without fear ... "

“This barbarian,” says the same poet in another poem:

... spared neither age nor gender,

The dog is taco mad, that he meets, he gnaws,

Like so on a meadow from a blatist valley

The dragon hissing crawls.

For this, of course, “there is no execution worthy of him in the world”, “it is not enough to burn him”, etc. The feelings of his contemporaries, of course, are easily explained. Unfortunately for the subsequent story, the initial investigation of Pugachev fell into the hands of an insignificant and completely incompetent person, Pavel Potemkin, who, apparently, made every effort to ensure that the original appearance of the monster brought up by the “hellish milk” was somehow not distorted. real features. And since he had at his disposal the dungeons and torture graciously provided to him by the great Catherine, it is clear that all the material of the investigation developed in this biased direction: the popular, monochrome image was reinforced by forced testimony, and the real appearance of a living person was buried under the Suzdal daub of torture protocols. The mediocrity of this “second cousin” of the all-powerful temporary worker was so great that even the purely factual details of the most important episodes of Pugachev’s previous life (for example, his trip to the Terek, where, apparently, he also tried to stir up confusion) became known from later random finds in provincial archives. Pavel Potemkin tried only to thicken the "hellish milk" as much as possible and preserve the "satanic appearance".

It must be said that the task was carried out with great success. Immediately after the mutiny was pacified, the military dictator Panin, invested with unlimited power, ordered that one gallows, one wheel and one verb for hanging “by the rib” (!) Not only rebels, but also everyone “who will recognize and pronounce this villain, the impostor Emelka Pugachev, as the real one, as he was called (i.e., Peter III). And whoever does not “detain and introduce such speakers to the authorities, all those villages without exception (!) Age men ... will be punished by sent teams with the most painful deaths, and their wives and children will be sent to the hardest work.”

It is quite clear what a thunderstorm hung after that over all sorts of stories about Pugachev, when gallows, wheels and verbs with hooks stood along the roads, teams went through the villages, and scammers snooped among the people. Anything not marked with an official tone, anything even just neutral stories became dangerous. Oral tradition about the events associated with the name of Pugachev was divided: part went into the depths of people's memory, away from the authorities and gentlemen, gradually clothed in a haze of superstition and ignorance, the other, recognized and, so to speak, official, took shape in a gloomy clumsy and also monotonous legend . The real appearance of the mysterious man, the initial springs of movement and many of his purely factual details have disappeared, perhaps forever, in the fog of the past. “Still, the beginning of this invention,” Ekaterina wrote to Panin, “remains closed.” It remains unclear to this day. The actual history of the rebellion from the outside is worked out in great detail, but its main character remains a mystery. The initial fear of "society" left its mark on subsequent views, and on history ...

As a truly brilliant artist, Pushkin managed to renounce the template of his time so much that in his novel Pugachev, although passing in the background, is a completely living person. Sending his story of the Pugachev rebellion to Denis Davydov, the poet wrote, among other things:

Here is my scarecrow. At first glance

He is visible: a rogue, a straight Cossack.

In your forward detachment

The constable would have been dashing.

There is a huge distance between this image and not only the Sumarokovsky monster who loved Satan, but even Pugachev of later images (for example, in Danilevsky's "Black Year"). Pushkin's roguish and dexterous Cossack, a bit of a robber in the song style (remember his conversation with Grinev about the eagle and the raven) - not devoid of movements of gratitude and even generosity - a real living face, full of life and artistic truth. However, a great difficulty arises whenever it is necessary to bring this "dashing sergeant" to the forefront of a huge historical movement. Already Pogodin at one time turned to Pushkin with a number of questions that, in his opinion, were not resolved by the “History of the Pugachev Rebellion”. Many of these questions, despite the very valuable subsequent works of historians, are still waiting for their solution even today. And the main one is a mysterious person who stood at the center of the movement and gave him his name. Historians are hindered by a pile of consciously and unconsciously falsified investigative material. After Pushkin, our fiction even took a step back in understanding this major and, in any case, interesting historical personality. From the "dashing sergeant" and the rogue Cossack, we moved in the direction of the "hellish milk" and the popular villain. And it can be said without exaggeration that in our written and printed history, in the very center of a period not very remote from us and extremely interesting, there is some kind of sphinx, a man without a face.

One extract from the investigation of the Orenburg secret commission about Emelyan Pugachev begins like this: “The place where this monster was born is the Cossack Little Russian Zimoveyskaya village; born and raised, according to his apparent atrocity, so to speak, with hellish milk from the Cossack of that village, Ivan Mikhailov Pugachev, wife Anna Mikhailova.

All modern official characteristics of Pugachev were drawn up in the same clerical-cursing style and depict before us not a real person, but some kind of incredible monster, brought up precisely by the “hellish milk” and almost literally stinking with flames.

This tone was established for a long time in official correspondence.

It is known how at that time they treated all kinds of titles, in which even scraping a slip was considered a crime. Pugachev also had his own official title: "The famous state thief, monster, villain and impostor Emelka Pugachev." Eloquent people, who had the gift of words and were good at writing, managed to decorate this title with various, even more expressive superstructures and additions. But to say less than that [was] indecent, and perhaps even unreliable and dangerous.

Literature did not lag behind the official tone. The “educated” society of that time, which consisted of nobles and officials, felt, of course, that the entire force of the popular movement was directed precisely against it, and it is understandable in what form the person personifying the terrible danger appeared to him. “You are a vile, impudent person,” Sumarokov exclaimed in pietic zeal at the news of Pugachev’s capture, “

suddenly whom nature
Cast down to a blissful age
To the disaster of many people:
Forgetting the truth and myself
And only loving Satan
I thought about God without fear ... "

“This barbarian,” says the same poet in another poem:

... spared neither age nor gender,
The dog is taco mad, that he meets, he gnaws,
Like so on a meadow from a blatist valley
The dragon hissing crawls.

For this, of course, “there is no execution worthy of him in the world”, “it is not enough to burn him”, etc. The feelings of his contemporaries, of course, are easily explained. Unfortunately for the subsequent story, the initial investigation of Pugachev fell into the hands of an insignificant and completely incompetent person, Pavel Potemkin, who, apparently, made every effort to ensure that the original appearance of the monster brought up by the “hellish milk” was somehow not distorted. real features. And since he had at his disposal the dungeons and torture graciously provided to him by the great Catherine, it is clear that all the material of the investigation developed in this biased direction: the popular, monochrome image was reinforced by forced testimony, and the real appearance of a living person was buried under the Suzdal daub of torture protocols. The mediocrity of this “second cousin” of the all-powerful temporary worker was so great that even the purely factual details of the most important episodes of Pugachev’s previous life (for example, his trip to the Terek, where, apparently, he also tried to stir up confusion) became known from later random finds in provincial archives. Pavel Potemkin tried only to thicken the "hellish milk" as much as possible and preserve the "satanic appearance".

It must be said that the task was carried out with great success. Immediately after the mutiny was pacified, the military dictator Panin, invested with unlimited power, ordered that one gallows, one wheel and one verb for hanging “by the rib” (!) Not only rebels, but also everyone “who will recognize and pronounce this villain, the impostor Emelka Pugachev, as the real one, as he was called (i.e., Peter III). And whoever does not “detain and introduce such speakers to the authorities, all those villages without exception (!) Age men ... will be punished by sent teams with the most painful deaths, and their wives and children will be sent to the hardest work.”

It is quite clear what a thunderstorm hung after that over all sorts of stories about Pugachev, when gallows, wheels and verbs with hooks stood along the roads, teams went through the villages, and scammers snooped among the people. Anything not marked with an official tone, anything even just neutral stories became dangerous. Oral tradition about the events associated with the name of Pugachev was divided: part went into the depths of people's memory, away from the authorities and gentlemen, gradually clothed in a haze of superstition and ignorance, the other, recognized and, so to speak, official, took shape in a gloomy clumsy and also monotonous legend . The real appearance of the mysterious man, the initial springs of movement and many of his purely factual details have disappeared, perhaps forever, in the fog of the past. “Still, the beginning of this invention,” Ekaterina wrote to Panin, “remains closed.” It remains unclear to this day. The actual history of the rebellion from the outside is worked out in great detail, but its main character remains a mystery. The initial fear of "society" left its mark on subsequent views, and on history ...

As a truly brilliant artist, Pushkin managed to renounce the template of his time so much that in his novel Pugachev, although passing in the background, is a completely living person. Sending his story of the Pugachev rebellion to Denis Davydov, the poet wrote, among other things:

Here is my scarecrow. At first glance
He is visible: a rogue, a straight Cossack.
In your forward detachment
The constable would have been dashing.

There is a huge distance between this image and not only the Sumarokovsky monster who loved Satan, but even Pugachev of later images (for example, in Danilevsky's "Black Year"). Pushkin's roguish and dexterous Cossack, a bit of a robber in the song style (remember his conversation with Grinev about the eagle and the raven) - not devoid of movements of gratitude and even generosity - a real living face, full of life and artistic truth. However, a great difficulty arises whenever it is necessary to bring this "dashing sergeant" to the forefront of a huge historical movement. Already Pogodin at one time turned to Pushkin with a number of questions that, in his opinion, were not resolved by the “History of the Pugachev Rebellion”. Many of these questions, despite the very valuable subsequent works of historians, are still waiting for their solution even today. And the main one is a mysterious person who stood at the center of the movement and gave him his name. Historians are hindered by a pile of consciously and unconsciously falsified investigative material. After Pushkin, our fiction even took a step back in understanding this major and, in any case, interesting historical personality. From the "dashing sergeant" and the rogue Cossack, we moved in the direction of the "hellish milk" and the popular villain. And it can be said without exaggeration that in our written and printed history, in the very center of a period not very remote from us and extremely interesting, there is some kind of sphinx, a man without a face.

The same cannot be said about Pugachev of folk legends, which have almost died out in the rest of Russia, but are extremely vividly preserved in the Urals, at least in the older Cossack generation. Here, neither strict decrees, nor Panin's verbs and hooks had time to erase from the people's memory the image of the "runaway" tsar, who remained inviolable in it, in the very, albeit rather fantastic, form in which this "tsar" first appeared from the mysterious steppe given among the broken, crushed, insulted and deeply humiliated by the foreman's side of the ordinary Cossacks.

Trying to collect ancient legends that have not yet completely died out, to bring them together and, perhaps, to find among this fantastic heap the living features that stirred up the first wave of a major popular movement on Yaik - was one of the goals of my trip to the Urals in 1900. I was warned that given the isolation of the Cossacks and their distrust of any “out-of-town”, especially those who come from Russia, this task is difficult to implement. And, indeed, once I had to stumble upon a rather comical failure.

From one of the inhabitants of the Krugloozernaya village (Svistun), an old and respected Cossack Phil. Sidorovich Kovalev, I learned that in Uralsk, in kurens, near the church, there lives the grandson of Nikifor Petrovich Kuznetsov (Ustinya Petrovna's natural nephew), Natoriy (Enatoriy) Felisatovich Kuznetsov, a literate and inquisitive person who allegedly made some notes from the words of his grandfather, lover and keeper of the legends of the Kuznetsov family. The stories of this grandfather, Nikifor Kuznetsov, were already used by the famous Ural writer Yosaf Ign. Zheleznov, but I was still curious to see his grandson, the living successor of this tradition.

I actually found him behind the cathedral, in the kurens, in an old, recently burnt house. However, when I explained to him the purpose of my arrival and even referred to the instructions of F.S. Kovalev, Natoriy Kuznetsov only frowned.

I can't tell you anything. The foster grandfather was right about what he said ... Well, only I can’t.

Why?

These are political speeches...

I was genuinely surprised.

Excuse me, Natoriy Felisatovich. Why, your grandfather told Zheleznov, and Zheleznov published it. However, no harm came of this for your grandfather.

Zheleznov wrote. Right. Well, only grandpa told him maybe a tenth...

In order to break this distrust, I opened Zheleznov's book, which I had deliberately taken with me, and began to read Nikifor Kuznetsov's story written down by the author. Natorius listened and nodded his head approvingly, inserting his remarks. I was already beginning to hope that the ice would be broken, but at that moment Kuznetsov's wife, a dark-skinned Cossack woman with black determined eyes, got up from the threshold of the hut (our conversation took place in the yard).

Be quiet, Natorius, she said ominously. - If only there was one head ... otherwise you have a family.

In her arms, a baby began to cry, and Natorius immediately broke off.

No, it's impossible, - he said, - political speeches ... If only they wouldn't shake me ...

That is, how did they “shake” it? .. And for what?

But for this very thing - for Pugachev ...

What are you saying! Who needs it now.

It can be seen what is needed ... See how it was.

Be quiet, Natoriy, - the Cossack woman said again.

No, well, it's possible, nothing. See. So, I'm going somehow by rail to Peremetnaya. There were other peoples in the carriage, like merchants. They began to say the same way among themselves: one, for example, says: “the tsar was real, that is, as he expressed about himself, it was real truth” ... Well, the other is opposite to him: “here, he says, it is written in Zheleznov: he admits so that the Don Cossack. And he mentioned my grandfather. I, as I was right there, and say: “Zheleznov, then, my grandfather told, well, not everything. If everything, I say, had explained, then Zheleznov would have written something else. We say that, and then the conductor. Was an acquaintance. He pulled me by the sleeve, took me aside and said: “You, he says, Natoriy Felisatov, cannot express these words.” - “What, they say?” “Yes, don’t express these speeches. Speech, listen, political. Well, I did. Only suddenly at one station - gendarmes. They locked the car so that no one could get out, and they say: “Who here expressed political speeches?” That's the point... Agreed...

Well, they probably didn't do anything to anyone.

That's it: they, therefore, are merchants, they say: “We are here according to the book. Mr. Zheleznov wrote, officer. Please take a look." Well, I mean, thanks to the conductor, aside. Just escaped with fear. And if I expressed everything ...

Now shut up, - cut off the wife.

And then I am silent.

I visited him twice. Both times he very willingly talked about his grandfather, about the former residence of the Kuznetsovs, about their relationship, and at the same time indirectly told me a lot of interesting things both in everyday life and in historical terms. But as soon as the conversation touched more directly on the forbidden topic, the Cossack woman again pierced him with her black eyes, and he bit his tongue.

I can’t, political speeches,” he repeated stubbornly. - If only they didn’t shake ...

However, we parted with this representative of the “queen's family” amicably, and I even think that he could hardly tell me anything more characteristic than this small episode from our living present.

In other places, especially during my tour of the villages, I was happier. The elderly Cossacks are more courageous than the youth, and more willing to share their knowledge and their deep conviction on this subject.

Having collected what I managed to write down from personal reviews and what was written down by others, and looking through this material in a row, I was struck by the remarkable integrity of the image that grew out of these fragments, as well as by the deep faith of the narrators in its reality. The belief that the stranger who raised the fatal storm in 1773 was the real Pyotr Fedorovich is held in the Urals not only by ordinary Cossacks. I got to know quite closely the historical Sheludyakov family, whose ancestors took an active part in the fatal drama. Pugachev was very fond of one of the Sheludyakovs and for some reason called his godfather. Subsequently, he was captured near Orenburg and was tortured to death in a dungeon. Thus, in this family, as in many others in the Urals, family tradition is mixed with historical interest. Already the parents of the current Sheludyakovs were quite intelligent people, and, however, when his father was dying (in the early seventies), he expressed regret that he would not live to see 1875, when, according to common belief, the seal of secrecy from the Pugachev case should be removed at that time. it should have been revealed that Yaik in general and the Sheludyakov families in particular served a just cause. They say that Pushkin, during his visit and short stay in Uralsk, showed contemporaries of the rebellion a portrait of the real Pyotr Fedorovich, whose Holstein physiognomy, as you know, did not at all resemble the Cossack appearance of Pugachev. However, now I heard from several lips that in this portrait the Cossacks recognized just the same person who was with them on Yaik. In general, when pointing to the resolute denial by history of any possibility of this identity, even among intelligent Cossacks you will encounter an expression of hesitation and skepticism.

However, it must be admitted that, as already mentioned above; written history suffers from great omissions, incompleteness, and sometimes even outright contradictions. And most importantly - it leaves the central figure of a man "without a face." The popular imagination cannot, of course, reconcile itself to this. He, of course, is alien to historical criticism, but on the other hand, the semi-fantastic image drawn by folk tradition is distinguished by remarkable fullness and brightness. This is a living person with all the advantages and disadvantages of a real person, and if a mystical and mysterious element is sometimes mixed with these real features, then this only applies to his royal title. Pyotr Fedorovich of Cossack legends is a real person, with flesh and blood, seething with desires and passions; Tsar Peter III is surrounded by a halo of mystery and fatal, not quite natural influences.

The reasons for his overthrow from the throne are drawn with particular realism. Cossack tradition presents Peter III as a broad nature, a reveler and an unfaithful husband. His behavior is one of those that have to be justified by the well-known saying: a true story is not a reproach to a young man. Catherine, on the contrary, at this time is portrayed, although rather obstinate, but still a faithful wife, trying to appease her husband. On this basis, a catastrophe is played out. Once a foreign ship came, and Pyotr Fedorovich went on it, and even went on a spree with the noble maiden Vorontsova. The indication of this name, coinciding with historical reality, shows how widely, in fact, various court "komerages" spread in those days. “After all, from us,” said Cossack Bakirev to Zheleznov, “from time immemorial, every year, Cossacks traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg with royal kus ... So how can one not know. You can’t hide an awl in a bag ... ”The spies reported to the queen that the king was laying with Vorontsova. That, as a wife, it seemed insulting, she could not stand it and ran there herself. She came and said: "Isn't it time to go home?" But her husband, who had gone on a spree, rudely drove her away: “I went home myself, as long as I am intact.” Then the insulted Catherine invited her adherents, raised the icons and declared herself queen. When the tsar, with a hangover in his victorious little head, finally decided to return home on the third or fourth night, he found the gates locked, and the sentry announced that there was no tsar, but there was a queen. He poked his head into Kronstadt (again, a historical trait), but they didn't let him in there either. Then, fearing the hostile boyars, Pyotr Fedorovich decided to hide ...

At this point, the personality of Pyotr Fedorovich disappears into the fog, and the mystical power of a higher power, some kind of mysterious predestination, is established over the tsar. It turns out that somewhere it was supposed from time immemorial that the royal grandson of Peter the Great would have to know a lot of grief and suffer, like a simple exile, persecuted and persecuted for fifteen (according to other options, twelve) years. He was supposed to show up at the earliest. But the regal wanderer, who learned from himself all the suffering of the people and all the untruth of the authorities, having also got to Yaik, at that time he really “suffered great misery”, groaning under the pressure of blatant untruth and terrible repressions, after the Traubenberg case, could not stand it and, having obeyed again, although in a different direction, his stormy nature, violated the dictates of fate and showed up earlier.

This violation of the command of the higher will, caused by compassion and unbearable pity for the tormented people, is in the legends the tragic engine that determined the fate of the movement. Everything was for Pugachev, but he could not win his case precisely because he did not start on time. And he knew it. It is extremely interesting that the Kuznetsov family tradition connects the very marriage of the runaway tsar with this tragic consciousness. In the stories recorded by Zheleznov, this marriage is motivated by various considerations: firstly, the law is not written for kings; secondly, the law also allows marriage after a seven-year separation; thirdly, Catherine was his persecutor; fourthly, finally, at that time (true, but belated) rumors were circulating on Yaik about Catherine's intention to marry Orlov. But the aforementioned Enatoriy Kuznetsov, in the midst of his restrained conversation, informed me that both Pugachev and even Ustinya were well aware of the fatal significance of this wedding. When Pugachev began to clearly express his intentions regarding the matchmaking, then Ustinya, a cheerful, broken and good songwriter, allegedly composed a song in which she spoke very boldly about a husband who is wooing from a living wife. Pugachev took her aside and said: “It would be better if one of my heads disappears than the whole of Russia disappears. Now troops and generals are coming from St. Petersburg to me; if they stick to me, then the whole of Russia will be worn out, the smoke will become a pillar all over the world. And when I marry a Cossack girl, the troops will not come to me, my fate will end and Russia will calm down. I heard the repetition of the same tragic motif in other places in the Urals. Thus, the tsar-wanderer, who unwittingly violated the dictates of fate, dutifully walked towards her, and Ustya walked towards his will ...

The public execution of Pugachev in Moscow (January 10, 1775) in the presence of hundreds of thousands of people did not shake this faith in the least. On the contrary, it must be said that some of the circumstances of this execution were accompanied by just those ambiguities of motives and oddities about which I spoke above and which are very helpful to harmonious folk tradition. According to the maxim approved by Catherine, Pugachev was subject to quartering. First, his arms and legs were to be cut off, and then his head. However, it is known that this was not carried out. After reading the sentence and fulfilling the formalities, the executioner grabbed Pugachev from behind, knocked him down and, first of all, cut off his head. After that, among the silence that had settled, the voice of the executor was heard, reproaching the executioner and threatening him with execution for violating the sentence. This indisputable fact, established both by Russian and foreign testimonies, served as the subject of astonished talk. Mrs. Bielke, an enthusiastic admirer and correspondent of Catherine, having read about this in foreign newspapers, suggested in her next letter that this was done "according to the humane will of the Empress, and not by mistake of the executioner." Catherine willingly went towards such an interpretation of her European admirer. - “To tell you the truth,” she wrote, “you correctly guessed about the mistake of the executioner during the execution of Pugachev: I think that the prosecutor general and the police chief helped to make this mistake happen, because when the first one left Petersburg, I told him jokingly:“ never meet my eyes if you admit the slightest opinion that you forced whoever endure torment, and I see that he took note of it.

It is permissible, however, to think that this explanation is not entirely accurate. That before Vyazemsky's departure the tsarina had conversations with him is, of course, natural; hardly only they were joking. That the fact of a sharp violation of the sentence could not also be explained by a simple mistake of the executioner - it is hardly possible to doubt this. However, if it was meant to prevent unnecessary suffering whoever it was- then, firstly, Catherine had a direct means for this - in the mitigation of all executions, and then humanity would have touched more than one Pugachev. Meanwhile, on the same day and in the same place, other Pugachev accomplices were executed, and no one mentions the mitigation of the execution of, for example, Perfiliev. It is hardly logical to assume that Catherine's humanity touched only one main culprit and bypassed the secondary ones. And then, of course, the executor could not have been unaware of this, by his shouting at the executioner only emphasized the deviation from the sentence, which otherwise could have passed less noticed.

Be that as it may, this strange episode was not only mysterious to the hundreds of thousands of spectators who gathered on the day of the execution in the Swamp, but remains not fully explained for history either. To this it should only be added that among the crowd of thousands of troops and people there was also the Zimovaya Yaitskaya village, which consisted of the "faithful", that is, the senior side of the Cossacks, who, even fighting Pugachev, for the most part still considered him a real tsar, fighting against the queen ... And, returning to Yaik, the Cossacks told about the strange episode of the execution.

The legend made good use of this riddle. She knows no inconsistencies and contradictions. It is whole, harmonious, often very fantastic, sometimes absurd, but completely consistent and logical.

The Ural army did not believe in the execution of Pugachev. The king cannot be executed. The man whom Bolotov describes on the scaffold "completely inconsistent with such deeds as this monster did," but rather resembling "some kind of canteen or a shabby eater," according to the Cossacks, was not at all the one whom the army saw on horseback and who one of his appearance upset the ranks of opponents. It was, according to the legend, a figurehead, some ordinary criminal. And when he allegedly wanted to say that he was dying instead of the real king, they hurried to cut off his head ...

This was joined by a new fact, historically true and striking the imagination of the people, namely the sudden death of Martemyan Borodin ...

Martemyan Borodin is the most prominent figure among the Cossack opponents of Pugachev, who played a huge, almost decisive role in the pre-Pugachev ferment in the Urals, and a direct antithesis of Pugachev in the eyes of the “army”. The rich man, who captured the immeasurable spaces of the "common" steppe, the owner of serfs on the free Cossack lands, a rapist, a robber, a man with an iron will, a stormy temperament and at the same time a cunning diplomat who knew how to bribe and cajole the St. party, which before the appearance of Pugachev even bore the name "Borodino". Even Catherine's personal decrees were directed against him and his actions, but he knew how to turn them into nothing, skillfully causing unrest, after which his opponents turned out to be guilty. It can be assumed with a high degree of probability that if Martemyan Borodin had not been on Yaik, there would not have been the murder of Traubenberg, which preceded the Pugachevshchina, there would not have been, perhaps, Pugachev ... But, as often happens, Martemyan, the true culprit who caused in general discontent and just anger in the army, which led to an outbreak - then, by fighting against the movement caused by it, it not only “deserved” its thefts and grave guilt, but also appeared in the eyes of the government in an aura of devotion and self-sacrifice. In the fight against Pugachev, for Martemyan, it was about his own head, over which the accusations and curses of the entire army weighed heavily, but Martemyan very cleverly presented this enmity of the troops towards him as his services to the throne. At the very appearance of Pugachev, Martemyan realized the danger, first of all for himself personally, and rushed across the Kyrgyz steppe to Orenburg ... Subsequently, when Pugachev was already put in an iron cage, Catherine's generals knew that Martemyan would be his best watchman. And, indeed, Martemyan was instructed to accompany the captive to Moscow ...

Cossack legends give many details of this path. First of all, behind the city rampart and the tower along the Kazan highway, Borodin's relatives went out, according to custom, to see him on the road. They began to drink vodka and liqueur. Pugach looked out of the cage and said: “Martemyan Mikhailovich! Bring it to me too." But Martemyan rudely refused. Pugachev turned pale from the insult and said: “Very well! You want to see me die. It won't work. I'd rather see you." A little later, one of the foremen, Mikhailov, came up to him and offered him from his glass. Pugachev drank and said: “Thank you, my friend. I won't forget you. Remember what I say, - said Pugach to everyone who was here: - from now on, the Mikhailov family will rise, and the Borodin family will fall.

Dear Pugach also warned Borodin and said to him with a grin: “Martemyan Mikhailovich, think about it, where are you going, why? .. Hey, Martemyan Mikhailovich. Turn the shafts back while there is time ... "

The aged Cossack of the Trebukhinskaya village, Ananiy Ivanovich Khokhlachev, with deep conviction confirming to me everything written down from various persons by Zheleznov, added to this a few more episodes, heard, according to him, from the participants themselves or from their closest relatives. By the way, with Martemyan Borodin, as an orderly, was his favorite, a young Cossack Mikhailo Tuzhilkin. Once, somewhere at a halt, during a rest, the stern chieftain forced Tuzhilkin to search in his head. Finding this moment suitable for an intimate conversation, Tuzhilkin asked:

Tell me, Martemyan Mikhailovich, whom are we taking: the tsar or the impostor?

Tsar, Mishenka, - Martemyan answered as if.

Tuzhilkin was horrified.

What are we doing! he exclaimed.

But what was there to do ... All the same, neither he nor our strength would have taken it, ”Borodin answered.

In the Sakmara fortress, where a train with Pugachev in a cage allegedly arrived, a courier from St. Petersburg met them. Going up to the cage and seeing Pugachev there, the courier trembled and threw up his hands (Ananiy Ivanovich very dramatically and picturesquely portrayed the horror of the courier and his gestures).

My god, what did they do! he shouted, “unlock it, unlock it now!.. What will happen now?”

This horror was explained, of course, by the fact that the officer recognized the tsar in the cage ... Then, going out with Borodin to the ramparts, the same courier persuaded him for a long time to disband the Cossacks and “just” go with Pugachev to St. Petersburg, to the queen. This naive sentence reflects the feature of the Yaik legends about the "runaway tsar" already mentioned above. His fate, as a king, had already been decided, his case was lost, he violated the dictates of fate, and the kingdom remained with Catherine. But his person was sacred, and besides, he remained the husband of the queen and the father of the prince, the heir ...

Borodin did not obey, and for this he really suffered an execution, as Pugach predicted. Fate punished Pyotr Fedorovich, who violated her decrees, but the same fate could not bypass the person who encroached on the dignity of the "tsar" and carried him in a cage like a beast. The very death of Martemyan Borodin is told differently, but most of the legends attribute it to Pavel Petrovich. When Martemyan appeared at the palace to the heir, - Anani Ivanovich Khokhlachov told me, - he said to him:

What was it to you, ataman sir, not to accept my dad? If you accepted, then my dad would be in Russia now, and I, and you are the third. Well, now, ataman sir, do not seek.

And they struck the big bell. The winter Yaitskaya village stands on the square near the palace, waiting for its marching ataman, but he is still not there. And suddenly they hear: a big bell is ringing, as if in remembrance ... The adjutant came out onto the porch and said to the Cossacks: “Your chieftain is gone. The ataman died overnight. Go with God."

The very kind of death is also depicted differently. In the stories of homebody Cossacks who have not been to the capitals, it is said that Pavel Petrovich, angry, grabbed the door “lock” (a wooden bolt that moves the gate) and hit Borodin on the head with it. According to other options, the execution was even more severe, up to skinning a living person. Here, obviously, the deep hatred of the then army for Martemyan already played a creative role. Finally, some legends attribute the death of Borodin to Catherine herself, who could not forgive the rough treatment of her husband. “Martemyan Mikhailovich got ready to leave St. Petersburg (says one legend recorded by Zheleznov) and went to say goodbye to the empress, and ordered the batman to gradually pack up. Suddenly he ran to the apartment, frightened, pale, as if someone was chasing him. "Run for the carts, let's go." Dear Martemyan kept shouting to the driver: drive on! We passed a few stations, Martemyan says to the driver in Kyrgyz:

What a miracle, brother, I saw ... I stand at the queen's mother in the bedchamber, telling her how we fought against the villain Amelka. And he, Pugach, suddenly jumps out from behind the screen, like a fierce beast, and as he rushes at me with his fists, I froze indo ... Now, brother, I see that I made a mistake: I wouldn’t come here at all. God bless them ... Khosh and published that he was Amelka Pugachev, but it turns out - that's what Pugach he is ...

Before he had time to finish, a courier overtook them from behind and demanded Martemyan again to the queen.

Another version draws the same episode with even more real details. Pugach lies in the bedchamber behind white muslin curtains, “it looks like he just got out of the bath: his hair is wet, and his face is red. At his feet, on a chair, sits the prince, and the queen by the window. And everyone is crying, wiping their tears with handkerchiefs. And at the lintel, like a vested soldier, stands Martemyan Mikhailovich - he stands and trembles, as if in the cold. (Zheleznov.)

Ananiy Ivanovich Khokhlachev adds to this that Borodin's widow received Catherine's handwritten letter and two velvet dresses: one green, the other black. “And in the letter it was written that, they say, I am guilty of your grief, I am a sinner ...” And Anania Ivanovich’s fiancée, who lived there, saw both the letter and the dresses herself ...

It should be noted that neither the exact date nor even the year of the death of Martemyan Borodin is known, and this event is also covered with some kind of uncertainty. Zheleznov doubts that Borodin accompanied Pugachev, as the Cossack traditions assure him. He attributes the death of Borodin to April 1775 on the grounds that in May a new military foreman Akutin was appointed. But in this case, Zheleznov is mistaken, and the legend is right. Firstly, Borodin was not a military leader, but only a marching ataman, but he undoubtedly accompanied Pugachev, and there is a high probability that he died during this trip. In the files of the Ural military archive, I found an indication that the thousand rubles assigned as a reward to Borodin were received in Orenburg, by proxy of Borodin's widow, by Grigory Telnov of the fiftieth (which was followed by a decree of the Orenburg provincial office dated November 28, 1774). Then I did not come across any mention of Martemyan Borodin in my files until August 1775, when in one of the petitions the deceased major Borodin was mentioned quite by accident. This dull and indefinite interval produces a strange impression, after the name of an active foreman had previously come across at every step ... There is no doubt that M. Borodin's "guilt" before the government was enormous. Catherine wrote decrees, sent generals to stop abuses, but the foremen's party, whose soul was Borodin, bullied the generals and turned the queen's decrees into nothing until it caused a revolt and bloody pacification, which paved the way for Pugachevism. The army explained these abuses and impotence of power by the fact that it was not a real king on the throne, but a woman ... And when the king appeared, the army met him with delight.

In general, the Pugachev movement seems to me, in its psychological basis, one of the most loyal movements of the Russian people. Of course, in the very embryo of it lurked (and even then quite imperceptibly) conscious deception. When the mysterious merchant, dressed in a bad shirt and simple trousers, had to recognize the king and announce this to the army, the Cossack Myasnikov, shrugging his shoulders, said: “Okay. We'll make a prince out of mud." But not everyone, even among the first participants, thought this. When Pugachev, dressed in royal clothes (a caftan was presented by the Kirghiz Khan), on an excellent horse, with two banners and a detachment, rode to the outposts, then sincere faith and sincere feeling rushed to meet him, which accompanied him all the time to the block.

At the same time, it is remarkable that the image of Catherine (as you know, hated and still hated by the people in peasant Russia) surrounds the Ural tradition with some kind of reverence and gentleness. She was a woman, and that was her shortcoming on the throne. “We do not slander the empress,” the Bashkirs said at the meeting. “She is just, but justice has not departed from her and has not come to us.” The same, of course, could be said by the Cossacks, whose deputies more than once returned from St. Petersburg, in vain encouraged by Catherine herself. But this applied to the queen and to matters of government. Personally, the legend refers to Catherine rather mildly. Insulted, as a woman and wife, she feels understandable indignation and decides on a coup. But at the same time, she cannot forgive her rough treatment of her husband, and when, after so many adventures, he returns, she puts him to bed and weeps over his suffering. Her relationship with Ustinya Kuznetsova (actually unsympathetic and cruel: poor Ustya was imprisoned for life in a fortress) in the tradition of the Cossacks is also marked by generosity and feminine kindness. Ekaterina summons Ustya to Petersburg and treats her very kindly. This theme - the meeting of two wives of supposedly the same troubled husband - is developed in detail and willingly in many stories recorded by Zheleznov. I also heard it from the lips of Ananiy Ivanovich and partly Natoriy Kuznetsov. In all the stories, one feature is mentioned: when Ustya, along with her sister, was brought to the palace, Catherine ordered to bring different people to her and kept asking: is this your betrothed? Ustya answered everything in the negative. Finally Pugach was brought out, and she threw herself on his neck. - Well, - said Catherine, - say goodbye to him, you will never see each other again. - Pugach was taken away, and Ekaterina Ustya took away the palace on Vasilyevsky Island, where she lived for a long time and where she was often visited by the Urals who came to the capital.

I have to mention one more cycle of these legends, which shows what passionate love Yaik had for the image of his "runaway king", which cost him so many tears, grief and blood. It is known that passionate love does not reconcile with the fact of the death of a loved one. And Pugachev, caught and even executed, still flickered on Yaik and appeared to his followers either in the steppes or in the city itself.

These legends about the wandering and again persecuted Pugachev are already completely fantastic, but they cannot be denied a kind of poetry, full of melancholy and sadness. One of these stories (recorded from the words of the old Iletsk Cossack S. V. Krylov, now living in Uralsk in 1900) finds Pugachev wandering around the Common Syrt (after fleeing from Berda). Pugachev with a small detachment rides across the steppe and runs into a large stone. Having ordered the Cossacks to hobble their horses and wait for him, Pugachev approaches the stone and falls on it with bitter tears. The stone rises, and Pugachev goes underground. After a while, he comes out and calls for the Cossacks. In the dungeon they are met by a majestic woman who greets the Cossacks and invites them to reinforce their forces. To do this, she has only a small piece of bread, but when she starts cutting it, the bread does not decrease. Pugachev calls her aunt, and in conversation she reproaches him that he did not wait for the time appointed for the test and, having announced earlier, he also got married. A strange woman, transported by unknown means to the Yaitsky steppes and, moreover, underground, was Elizaveta Petrovna. Saying goodbye to his aunt, Pugach again rode with his companions into the steppe towards a mysterious fate ...

On the evening of the very day that Pugach was taken away from the Yaitsky town, says another legend recorded by Zheleznov, the Kuznetsovs - his relatives - were sitting at dinner. Suddenly: the doors opened and a merchant entered (it is known that for the first time Pugachev appeared on Yaik in the form of a merchant). “Bread and salt,” he said, entering, and all the Kuznetsovs shuddered and their spoons fell out of their hands (“that means he was there, they recognized him by his voice”). “Don't be afraid, it's me,” says the merchant. - I came to reassure you ... I will not be lost by the grace of God. Farewell, live better and healthier. He said and was. The Kuznetsovs ran out into the street, and his trace was gone, only the bell rang ...

On the same evening, two hours earlier, the same merchant even visited the ataman. And again, at first they didn’t recognize him, and when another merchant who came to the chieftain recognized him, then again everyone was so dumbfounded that the mysterious visitor managed to hide ... Only again the bell rang on the way to the Chuvash umet ...

This belief at one time was so strong that in the papers of the military archive I came across cases that arose precisely on this basis. So, the foreman's wife Praskovya Ivanaeva, who was a cook at the "Queen Ustinya" and cooked in the "palace" for Pugachev, was twice whipped for not believing in the final defeat of the "tsar" and, in every quarrel with the triumphant "foreman's party" "(And the old woman, apparently, was of an obstinate temper), "talked about the impostor for society obscene and ungodly" and even threatened his new arrival, "which was supposedly famous at that time." It is known, finally, that soon after the pacification, the authorities were alarmed by the appearance of Pugachev allegedly again, under the name of Metla or Zametail. But it turned out to be a simple robber, a pathetic parody in which there was nothing that could really stir up the weary popular feeling.

Such are these legends, still alive, but already beginning to fade in the people's memory in the Urals. I found them interesting. All of them are marked by a deep belief in the truth of Pugachev's royal dignity, and the person they portray is very far from the real and undoubted personality of the insignificant Peter III. Cossack Pyotr Feodorovich does not look like a German at all (although in some stories it is mentioned that he was a German). Stormy, frivolous, unrestrained, he insults Catherine, his lawful wife, for which he is forced to wander and be punished. Cleansed by this redemptive period, he remains just as unrestrained in his passionate pity for the people and violates the dictates of fate (or "old scriptures"), appearing before the appointed time. Then he again gives free rein to his passionate nature and marries Ustinya. From this, his business perishes. And, however, the fight against him and especially the insult to his personality is an insult to the mystically superstitious people's idea of ​​​​the true king, and the main culprit of this crime is duly punished ... For Yaik, this was only a fatal clash between two representatives of power, tragically divided, but equally having great reasons ... The queen won thanks to the fact that the ardent king violated the dictates of fate ...

Yes, this image was only the shadow of the persecuted king. But this shadow shook Russia... A haze of the steppe, a ghost - and a whole series of conquered fortresses and won battles... For this, someone's infernal treachery and sedition were not enough. For this, deep suffering and faith were needed ... And it was, however, all imbued with ignorance and political superstition, which, unfortunately, lived for a long time in the dark masses, as these fantastic legends live in the Urals now.

Lesson #____

Subject: V.G.Korolenko "Pugachev's legend in the Urals".

Purpose: to study the originality of the historical sketch of Korolenko; revealing the assessment given by the writer to the image of Pugachev in Russian literature. Learning to work with a historical essay, development of speech, attention, logical thinking.

During the classes:

1. Organization of the lesson.

2. Formulating the purpose of the lesson.

A) The image of Pugachev in literature (Pushkin, Yesenin).

B) The image of Pugachev among local history writers (Isakov).

C) The image of Pugachev in painting.

D) Topic message. Formulation of the purpose of the lesson by students.

d) What questions would you like answered?

3. Teacher's message about Korolenko.

a) What is known about the writer and his works? Compilation of a cluster (highlighted abstracts).

man KOROLENKO writer

Among the largest Russian classic writers of the last third of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who contributed to the knowledge of Russian national identity, name of V.G. Korolenko stands out in particular, despite the neighborhood of great contemporaries who have acquired world fame. Created by himthe artistic universe is huge and unique , since it includes the existence of an immense multinational country, being essentiallychronicle of the spiritual history of the people . Responsible RoleChronicler and Enlightener made possible for him by virtue ofpersonal modesty and intelligence and at the same timeincorruptible honesty and steadfastness Vfight against any injustice . Contemporaries unanimously proclaimed Vladimir Galaktionovich"moral genius" », "righteous "," without which the building of literature and the public does not stand. The image of Korolenko reconciled even literary rivals: Maxim Gorky named histeacher and mentor « the ideal image of a Russian writer ”, and in the recall of the harsh and skeptical Ivan Bunin, there were warm, cordial epithets addressed to a fellow writer.

B) Why did Korolenko turn to the topic?

In fact, the Ural theme sounded quite powerful in Russian literature due to the appeal to it. outstanding artists words - A.S. Pushkin, V.I. Dahl, L.N. Tolstoy, and for two centuries attracted the attention of poets and writers. According to the established tradition, it was covered in two aspects: "Pugachev" (historical) and ethnographic. However, for Korolenko, the search for rare sources that shed light on the origins of Pugachevism was a prologue to a wide artistic study cultural characteristics, social structure, bright and original folk poetry of the Ural region.

The Ural folklore itself has hardly been studied, although it attracted the attention of well-known ethnographers, folklorists, and writers and was perceived as an integral part of the all-Russian folk culture.

We will be able to see that the use of V.G. Korolenko of the folklore of the Ural Cossacks bears the stamp of the highest skill and plays a leading role in the formation of the individual author's style of the essayist.

Interest V.G. Korolenko to the world of folk poetry is rooted in the childhood years of the prose writer. folk culture was one of the elements of his home education. And although acquaintance with it until a certain time was of a spontaneous nature, the first impressions of folklore turned out to be so strong that even many years later, in the work of the mature Korolenko, they unexpectedly manifested themselves, becoming plot basis stories and essays, reflected in certain images, views on the world, nature, the secrets of life.

Ural works of V.G. Korolenko is heterogeneous in genre composition: "At the Cossacks" - travel essays, "Pugachev's Legend in the Urals" - a historical essay.

SIGNIFICANCE OF ESSAYS: the essays "At the Cossacks" and "Pugachev's Legend in the Urals" are a new word in the process of understanding and recreating Russian literature at the turn of the century national character Russian citizen, his historical and cultural origins, his fate in the era of social cataclysms.

The Ural theme is included in the circle of topical for V.G. Korolenko creative problems gradually over a number of years. A kind of impetus that gave impetus to the writer's artistic imagination was his work at the Nizhny Novgorod Archival Commission, when he got acquainted with the documents about the Pugachev uprising stored there. Being, in his own words, "at a crossroads", in search of "new formulas", KorolenkoI felt in the Pugachev region the richest spiritual energy that had dried up in populism. In addition, an unresolved historical riddle, a certain national phenomenon associated with the figure of the Cossack ataman, could suddenly open up, reflected in modern times, revealing more deeply the reasons for the divergence of the Russian intelligentsia from their own people.

The writer approached the study of historical material very seriously. His knowledge of the Russian XVIII century was not inferior to the erudition of prominent scientists of that time. This was facilitated by the special principles of working with archival material that have developed in Nizhny Novgorod(Fortunatov N.M., 1986). However, he felt the insufficiency of book knowledge alone. For the reconstruction of the "true life of the past" (Bogdanovich T.A., 1963), it was necessary to find its traces in modern life, V cultural traditions, in the memory of several generations. In this regard, the writer undertakes trips to Arzamas (1890), to the Samara and Ufa provinces (1891), to the Urals (1900).

4. DZ of lesson No. 1: draw up a plan for an essay, prepare information "Participation of the Urals in the events of the Pugachev uprising."

5. Working with text. Stop reading.

6. Summing up.

7. Reflection:

What succeeded...

What was difficult….

Tasks for the next lesson...

In "The Captain's Daughter" A. S. Pushkin refers to the events peasant uprising 1773-1774 headed by Emelyan Pugachev. In this story, Pushkin managed to draw bright picture spontaneous peasant uprising, to show it against a broad national and social background. At the same time, he held the belief that the story should have “ historical era, developed in fictional narrative”.
The leader of the uprising, Yemelyan Pugachev, is depicted by Pushkin not as a bloodthirsty killer, as historians of the 18th-19th centuries showed him, but as a talented and courageous people's leader. The natural mind, intelligence, energy, outstanding abilities of this man contributed to the fact that he led the peasant uprising. People from all over the country began to flock to him: Belogorsk Cossacks, and Bashkirs, and Tatars, and Chuvashs, and peasants from the Ural factories. They respected Pugachev, trusted him in everything.
Pugachev brutally cracks down on those whom he considers the oppressors of the peasants. For him no good landowners and government officials. In the face of the nobles, he sees only enemies. Therefore, he is so merciless to Captain Mironov and his subordinates, although they were kind people. But Pugachev also remembers the kindness that was once done to him. As a reward for a glass of vodka offered to the “counselor” during a snowstorm, and for a hare sheepskin coat, Grinev gets life. Three times Pyotr Grinev tempted fate, and three times Pugachev pardoned him. “The thought of him was inseparable in me with the thought of mercy,” says Grinev, “given to me by him in one of the terrible moments of his life, and of the deliverance of my bride ...” And indeed, Pugachev shows generosity when he releases Masha Mironova from Shvabrin's hands, despite the fact that she is the captain's daughter, and releases Grinev with her. At the same time, he punishes Shvabrin, saying: “Execute like this, execute like that, favor like that.”
When meeting Pugachev, Grinev is convinced that this is not at all the kind of person that the tsarist authorities considered him to be. Even at their first meeting, when Pugachev acts as a “counselor”, Grinev is struck by the composure of this person. Then Grinev sees the “counselor” as common man, whose appearance nevertheless seems to him “remarkable”: “He was about forty, medium height, thin and broad-shouldered. Gray hair appeared in his black beard; alive big eyes so they ran. His face had a rather pleasant, but picaresque expression, ”this is how he describes the appearance of the hero.
Pushkin portrays Emelyan Pugachev not only as the leader of the uprising, but also as a simple Cossack. Pugachev's speech is filled with proverbs, sayings, allegories, which a person from another environment cannot understand. He forces to call himself the tsar-father, because the people have always had faith in the “good tsar”. In his relations with his subordinates, there is complete democracy, there is no respect for rank, everyone can freely challenge the opinion of his “sovereign”. “My street is cramped; I have little will. My guys are smart. They are thieves. I have to keep my eyes open: at the first failure, they will redeem their neck with my head, ”Pugachev realizes bitterly, who is no longer pleased with the authorities. The hero realizes that he is just an impostor. He feels his doom and lives only in hope for the future.
And yet the main thing in the image of Emelyan Pugachev is greatness and heroism, which found expression in symbolic sense tales of an eagle and a raven. The hero believes that it is better to live a short but worthy life than to live three hundred years and eat carrion. He associates himself with the eagle, who lives “only thirty-three years”, but drinks “living blood”.
Emphasizing in Pugachev courage and heroism, intelligence and ingenuity, Pushkin shows in this man best features Russian national character. But Pushkin is far from idealizing Pugachev, the leader of the peasant uprising. Author " captain's daughter” prefers reforms to revolution, he does not accept bloodshed. That is why we read in his stories that have become widely famous words: “God forbid to see a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless!” Considering the Pugachev uprising as nothing more than a senseless rebellion, the author, at the same time, did not set out to show the villainy of the Pugachevites in the story. He tried to recreate the history of the uprising and the personality of the peasant leader, and it should be noted that Pushkin masterfully realized this plan.