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Pugachev’s Rebellion in the Bashkir Lands: 1773-1775
I would return home, but alas,
I am in chains, my Bashkirs!
The road home may be obscured by snow,
But come spring it shall melt -
I'm not dead yet, my Bashkirs!"
-Salavat Iulaev
Though the Russian Empire had stretched eastward by 1773 - the year that Yemelyan Pugachev's uprising against local authorities gathered steam - Ufa remained a provincial city in southern Russia. Pugachev himself was born into an Old Believer and Don Cossack family in 1740, but his rebellion's success hinged on a resource Orenburg Province had in droves: ethnic Bashkir Muslims. Bashkir elites were hardly ideological Pugachev's Iaik Cossacks' ideological allies, but they saw an opportunity for more pragmatic reasons: in a time-honored tradition of center-periphery relations, they bet on Pugachev's movement to expand their religious freedoms and reduce their tax burdens to Saint-Petersburg (Steinwedel, p. 72). Moreover, most Bashkirs held onto a traditional understanding of the tsar's authority, one which involved informal but well-understood limits on central control in Bashkir lands in exchange for traditional patterns of taxation (Steinwedel, p. 72). By January 1774, Bashkir soldiers in Pugachev's ranks numbered 10,000-12,000 men, over one-third of the total rebel forces (Steinwedel, p. 72).
Tsarist officials in Ufa were deeply concerned and sounded the alarm to the center. Administrators in the city found that Bashkir elites overwhelmingly supported Pugachev - 77 of 86 Bashkir elders favored the rebels over the tsarist forces, and the commoners followed suit. Some historians have referred to an "erosion" of the empire's position among non-Russians over the preceding forty years. When, in January 1774, Ufa was besieged by Pugachev's rebels, the imperial garrisons of the city could hardly expect local and surrounding populations to be on their side.
News of the siege of Ufa and the siege of nearby Orenburg reached Catherine the Great almost simultaneously. British ambassador Sir Robert Gunning reported back to England, "The Empress is at present a good deal out of order. The insurrection in Orenburg, and the height it has been allowed to get to, has certainly given her great uneasiness" (quoted in Dixon, p. 230). Ufa and Orenburg were provincial, but their encirclement by Pugachev's rebels nonetheless caused great consternation in the imperial capital. With tsarist forces lacking popular support in the Bashkir provinces, lifting the siege of Ufa would require an outside liberator.
Ufa was ultimately retaken that March by tsarist forces led by Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Mikhelson, one of the imperial side's heroes of the crushing of the rebellion. Writes Pushkin in the great Russian poet's account of the insurrection, "Having assumed command of his detachment on March 18, he immediately moved on Ufa" (Pushkin, p. 63). The results of the battle not only demonstrate the technological advantage of the empire's forces, but also the manpower advantages of the rebels: several hundred Bashkirs were killed in the liberation of Ufa, at a cost of just 23 killed (Clodfelter, p. 94). Pugachev turned his forces west towards Kazan, and despite considerable bloodshed on all sides, the rebellion was effectively extinguished in September 1774, when Mikhelson, with 900 men, defeated Pugachev's 6,000 rebels at Cherny Yar - prompting his own men to abandon him and turn him over to the Russian army (Clodfelter, p. 94). Catherine the Great's confidante Grigorii Potemkin then found himself in a strong enough bargaining position to demand that Bashkir leaders "pacify themselves" or face ruthless destruction - by October 1774, only six Bashkir elders refused to capitulate (Steinwedel, p. 73). The rebellion was officially over in Ufa in November 1774 when the most well-known Bashkir hero of the uprising, Salavat Iulaev, was captured. The poem quoted above was allegedly written by Iulaev in captivity. Iulaev is said to have died in 1800, having spent the last 25 years of his life in prison. In the Soviet period, a film directed by Yakov Protazanov celebrates Iulaev as a Bashkir hero, who fought alongside Russian factory peasants against tsarist forces, only to be betrayed by rich Bashkir elders and Cossack elites. Today, the local professional Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) team in Ufa bears Iulaev's namesake: "Salavat Iulaev Ufa."
This period, culminating with mass participation by Bashkir's in Pugachev's rebellion, reflects a battle for legitimacy between tsarist officials and local influences in the provinces. Archives in Ufa reveal the extent to which the center sought to control provincial affairs. Even matters as minute as applications for divorce would be cleared by officials in Moscow or Saint-Petersburg. Historian Robert Crews explains that it was typical for a woman to file a petition to the tsar via the local police, who would transmit the request to the governor, who would forward it on to the capital: "You have a local village very far away from Moscow [Saint-Petersburg] in which men waged disputes with their wives, with their children, with other villagers, all in a way that draws in the Kremlin [Saint-Petersburg] as a kind of referee in these very intimate disputes" (quoted in Corwin). Thus, the state inserted itself as the ultimate arbiter in disputes amongst minority civilians and elites alike. Pugachev offered an alternative to central authorities, which appealed to Bashkir elites in and around Ufa, who sensed that Pugachev's motley crew of Cossacks, peasants, and dissatisfied minorities would hardly be able to exert control and extract taxes as the empire had been able to do.
Pugachev's threat convinced Catherine of the need for change. Historian Nancy Shields Kollman writes that the 1775 administrative reforms, which were implemented in 1781, "helped to draw Bashkirs into loyal service to Russia" by introducing police and judicial organs "generally staffed with Russian and Bashkir military officers" and instituting courts which would "undermine the power of Bashkir elites" (Shields Kollman, p. 92).