peasant leadership and the pugachev revolt

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Peasant leadership and thePugachev revoltPhilip LongworthPublished online: 05 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: Philip Longworth (1975) Peasant leadership and thePugachev revolt, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2:2, 183-205

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Peasant Leadership and the PugachevRevolt

by

Philip Longworth*This paper examines the leadership of the Pugachev revolt,the vast peasant uprising which took place in Russiabetween 1773 and 1775. It is also concerned with certaingeneral issues, particularly those concerning the raising andsubsequent sustaining of large-scale peasant movements in'pre-industrial' societies where peasant organisations beyondvillage level are lacking. The Pugachev revolt had peculiar-ities which are of intrinsic interest, but it also providessignificant parallels and contrasts to other peasant uprisings(not only in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russia)and generally serves to highlight the problems of the articula-tion of rural protest in backward societies.

7. The ContextThe great uprising of 1773-5 was the last and largest of its kindto take place in Russia before 1905. It involved the population of avast area comprising the eastern provinces of European Russia andWestern Siberia—at the very least, 2 million people.1 It was ledlargely by non-peasants, was radical in its social programme, gaveserf-owners and government a considerable fright but ended incomplete defeat.

Russia at that time was still overwhelmingly agrarian and gen-erally primitive in its use of farming techniques; literacy rates werevery low and both communications and the market relatively poorlydeveloped. The rising itself was the product, on the one hand, ofvarious long-term developments, notably the enserfment and in-creasing exploitation of the peasantry, and, on the other, of variousshort-term factors, notably increases in taxation and conscriptiondue to the Russo-Turkish War of 1769-1774.2

Following the pattern of its three great precursors (the Bolotnikovrevolt of 1605, Stenka Razin's rebellion of 1670 and the Bulavinrising of 1707) it originated in the borderlands; began in a Cossack,not a peasant, community (in this case that of the Yaik, or Ural,Cossacks), and derived its fighting core and many of its leaders(including Yemelyan Pugachev himself) from among the Cossacks.3

Only about 3,000 Cossacks, however, virtually all of them fromthe Yaik (though Pugachev himself came from the Don), wereinvolved in the rising. Primarily frontier warriors in State service,

* Author of The Cossacks.

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184 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES

the Yaik Cossacks (like the Don, Terek and Zaporozhian Cossacksof the time) enjoyed a much higher status than the peasantry andwere privileged in various ways (not least in their exemption fromtaxation), but carried a much more onerous military obligation.Many Cossacks in other areas, notably the Don, could be termed'near peasants' insofar as they had come to practice agriculture.However, the Yaik Cossacks had not yet reached the agriculturalstage. Fishing and stock-raising were still their prime income-earning occupations (though, to be sure, haymaking was alsoimportant). Nevertheless, although they were distinct from thepeasantry proper (by virtue of their occupations, status and specificsocial formations), Cossacks were more or less recent descendantsof peasant runaways, and some retained significant links with thepeasantry proper. Moreover, gradual changes in the social struc-ture of the Yaik community, by which an oligarchical elite hademerged (with encouragement from central government) to under-mine the economic and political egalitarianism of this once freesocial formation, led the Cossack rank and file to fear reductionto regular soldier if not to peasant status. Indeed, this had beentheir motive both in rebelling against the communal oligarchs andthe central government in 1772 and in raising the much moremassive revolt of 1773.

The Yaik Cossacks, then, were non-peasants and they bothinitiated the revolt and provided the bulk of its leaders. Since, how-ever, the leadership process is essentially one of interactionbetween the leaders and the led, one must have some regard forthe movement's following.

The vast majority of the following were peasants. Hence, themovement's characterisation as a 'peasant war'.4 However, althoughat village level they organised themselves communally (like theCossacks), sharing out land and obligations among family house-holds, the Russian peasants were by no means socially or econ-omically homogeneous.5 Indeed, they comprised several overlap-ning groups—serfs (or seigneurial peasants) who constituted justover half the population and were of universally low legal andgenerally low economic status; State peasants, who enjoyed somelegal rights but were virtually State serfs; odnodvortsy—descend-ants of the once free warrior servitors of the old frontiers—whoseeconomic decline made them peasants by occupation and whowere fast being depressed to peasant status too insofar as theywere forced to pay quit-rent and taxes and perform various civiland military duties, while being deprived of the privileges and statusof minor 'gentry'; certain non-Russian ethnic groups (tribute-paying Mordvs, Chuvash, Tatars, etc.) who lived a settled existenceas tillers of the soil and were obligated accordingly; factory peas-ants (including State peasants and serfs sent to perform labourservice in the Ural mines and factories every year, permanentfactory peasants and some hired workers) who can be regarded

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PEASANT LEADERSHIP AND THE PUGACHEV REVOLT 185

as a proletariat in the making, but virtually all of whom cultivatedland, etc.

In addition, the participants included tribal Kalmyks, who wereorganised (and obligated) roughly on Cossack lines, and othernon-Russian ethnic groups, notably the Bashkirs, who were inpart settled 'peasants' and in part semi-nomads. Finally, manytownsmen also joined the revolt. However, since these urbanpopulations were subject to a very high degree of seasonal migra-tion, it is virtually impossible to draw the line between tradesmenand artisans on the one hand and peasants on the other.

The rebels, therefore, constituted a cross-section of all the lowerorders in the Russian social pile and, though the movement coheredround a central Cossack core, the participants were overwhelminglypeasant in composition. (The use of the term 'peasant' in thiscontext, however, should not be construed as implying an exclusiveoccupation with agriculture nor any homogeneity in terms of incomeand status, though in general the peasants concerned can be char-acterised as oppressed and their lot was a deteriorating one).The movement's enemies, by contrast, comprised the serf-owninggentry—the class in whose interests Russia was governed, whichstaffed the bureaucracy and the officer corps, and which wasresented, if not hated, by Cossacks and peasants alike.

2. The Problems of 'Take-Off'The fact that the Pugachev revolt, like so many other peasant move-ments, occurred within the context of a backward society createdcritical problems for its leadership—not least the problem of raisinglarge scale support, of building up momentum to the point of'take off'.

Perhaps the basic problem was the lack of any existing organ-isational structure (whether guild, craft union, assembly or politicalparty) in which leadership could operate and round which a move-ment could form. To be sure, there were peasant organisations atvillage level which were strong cohesive agents, notably theobschina (mir)—a commune concerned with land-equalisation, themanagement of commonlands, forests, fisheries, etc., and with taxcollection. But there was no inter-village organisation such as theSwiss had for controlling traffic over the Alps or Dutch peasantshad for maintaining dykes. Even the fairly sophisticated Cossackorganisational structures embraced only the particular communityconcerned. There was thus a wide scattering of isolated organisa-tional nodes at the grass-roots, but no obvious way of uniting theminto an articulated movement on a regional or national scale. Theproblem, then, was not (to extend Marx's analogy) to get thepotatoes into sacks, but to gather the scattered sacks together.

The enormity of this problem is illustrated by the number oftimes discontent among the fragmented peasantry burst out intoviolence in the decades prior to the Pugachev rising without

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coalescing into any single major movement. A whole scale ofpeasant reaction was exemplified—flight, petitioning, murder ofbailiffs and landlords, banditry and armed uprisings on village andeven district level.6 There were disturbances among Cossacks too,including a wholesale-uprising on the Yaik in 1772, just a yearbefore Pugachev appeared on the scene fsee Rozner, 1966 andLongworth, 1969: 180-6J. These manifestations indicate widespreaddiscontent; yet they were all ephemeral and sporadic. None 'tookoff' into a general movement. The reason for this cannot beattributed solely, nor even mainly, to the authorities' effectivenessin putting these movements down (though this clearly played apart). An essential ingredient was lacking, namely some co-ordinating agency capable of concentrating the diffuse energy ofgeneral discontent into a powerful and concentrated thrust.

Not that there was any lack of would-be leaders. Quite apart fromthe activists in the localised revolts already alluded to and in addi-tion to leaders of bandit gangs of marginalised men which occasion-ally co-operated with rebellious villagers, there were dozens ofwould-be leaders seeking followings. Yet none succeeded in attract-ing support on a sufficient scale to stand up effectively against agovernment determined to crush any opposition from the lowerorders.

This brings us to a critical sub-problem: in such circumstancesa would-be leader trying to mobilise peasants and create a revolu-tionary movement from scratch disposes of rto organisationalsanction (as, say, bureaucrats, army officers, union leaders, orfactory managers do), that is, he has no means other than persua-sion of getting people to obey him (whether by promise of rewardsor threat of punishment)— whereas the enemy (in this case theState) not only enjoys considerable patronage and force, but alsothe advantage of inertia, that is, the propensity of people broughtup in obedience to traditional authority to continue to obey it how-ever much they may resent it. Thus, Harry Truman's celebrateddefinition of a leader as 'a man who has the ability to get otherpeople to do what they don't want to do, and like it' is deceptiveas a definition of leaders (or would-be leaders) of peasant move-ments in their initial stages, insofar as it presupposes either hope ofreward (or altruism) on the part of the follower, or else the leader'spower to coerce.

If a movement does 'take off', of course, it tends to becomeorganised, its leaders coming to dispose of sanctions as in anyother institutional context. But this stage cannot be reached untilpeasants (and others) of scattered communities are mobilised ona massive scale. Thus, given traditional peasant suspicion of out-siders and a government unprepared to compromise, a would-beleader has somehow to convince masses of people to have con-fidence in him as a man who can lead them successfully towardsthe realisation of their goals in the teeth of all the resources the

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State can command. In effect, he cannot raise such support unlesshe somehow manages to 'prove' that his is the legitimate authorityand that the authority of the State he confronts is illegitimate andnot to be obeyed.

Some understanding of the legitimacy problem is thus essentialto an understanding of the Pugachev revolt's leadership processand Weber's typology of legitimate authority is relevant to suchan understanding.7 Weber's first 'pure' type of legitimate authority(legal-rational, or loyalty to office) hardly applies in the Russiancontext. So far as 'traditional' authority (the legitimacy of status,or loyalty to the person of the chief) is concerned, loyalty to theTsar's person was characteristic of the mass of Russians at thetime (as loyalty to the family patriarch also seems to have been),although this did not necessarily include loyalty to the Tsar'scounsellors and bureaucrats, still less to the all-powerful nobility(attacks on the Tsar's evil advisers had in fact figured prom-inently in the programmes of Pugachev's three major precursors).Weber's third ideal type—charismatic authority based on personaltrust, a devotion to a specific and exceptional sanctity or heroism—also attached to the person of the Tsar. However, in addition tothis automatic charisma through accession or imperial heredity,charisma could be attained by military or bandit heroes (like thelegendary Stenka Razin),8 and it could also be lost. Whatever thevalidity of the doubts expressed about Weber's theory,9 his con-tention that charisma both legitimises authority and on occasionoperates in an anti-authoritarian direction is nowhere better illus-trated than in the case of Russia [Weber, 1964: 386-7J.10

3. How Pugachev Acquired CharismaA peasant movement, then, requires leadership to get it under way,and, given the circumstances in Russia, such leadership requireda legitimacy based upon charisma to sanction it. Yet how couldPugachev — a fugitive deserter, a man without status, with nofollowing, no organisation to back him, no patronage and no force—gain charisma? How could such a man convince prospective follow-ers that he should be obeyed as the man capable of leadingthem successfully to attain their aspirations?

In other circumstances and in another age concepts of the 'Rightsof Man' or a broken 'social contract' might have been appealed to,but such notions of legitimacy would have meant nothing to theRussians of Pugachev's time, and in the event the technique whichPugachev adopted was more economical in that it proclaimed hislegitimacy as leader, challenged that of the reigning Empress and,implicitly suggested a generalised programme simultaneously: hepretended, simply, to be the rightful Tsar of Russia.

In doing so he was exploiting a powerful social myth and follow-ing a well-established tradition. The Russian peasant seems to havecherished an abstract ideal of a 'just Tsar', of a Tsar who was

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God's representative on earth, the 'little father' counterpart of theirFather in Heaven. As such the Tsar was regarded as the fountof all justice, the protector of the poor, the embodiment of all thatwas right. But since the Tsar was just by definition, if a particularTsar's actions did not square with the peasants' unarticulated ideaof natural justice peasants tended to believe either that the Tsar'scommands were being perverted by his aides and executants orelse that the Tsar was an impostor—in which case the discontentedlooked about for a supposedly rightful Tsar who would put theirgrievances to rights.

The idea had been powerful and widespread in Russia ever sincethe extinction of the Rurikid dynasty at the end of the sixteenthcentury, and it was closely connected with peasant discontent[see Troitski, 1969: 134-46 and Longworth, 1975]. The seventeenthcentury had seen claims to be the 'just Tsar' registered by morethan twenty pretenders and both Bolotnikov and Razin associatedthemselves with the myth (Bolotnikov by gaining credence asa leader by virtue of appointment by a false Tsarevich Dmitri,and Razin by keeping a Tsarevich Alexei' in his entourage togive his movement an aura of legitimacy). True, the 'Saviour' infolklore was not always a Tsar (sometimes he was a Cossackhero of the past) but, increasingly, the 'saviour' was a dead ordeposed Tsar whom the peasantry (and others) supposed still tobe alive but wandering about the country or in hiding.11 During theeighteenth century no fewer than forty pretenders declared them-selves.

This is not to imply that there was any exact correlation betweenthe appearance of pretenders and peasant risings but it does seemto have become increasingly difficult to get any large scale move-ment off the ground other than by exploiting the pretender myth[see Chistov, 1967: 179-80 passimj.12 There were 10 pretendersbetween 1730 and 1760; no fewer than 25 between 1760 and 1790.Almost all of them derived from the lower strata of society andmost seem to have used the pretence in order to acquire the auraof legitimacy, necessary to collect a mass following for a subversivepurpose. Most of these men certainly seem to have understood thepower over the peasants with which the image of the 'just Tsar'could invest them. So did the authorities. Hence the vigour withwhich they hunted down pretenders and the severity with whichthey dealt with them fsee Sivkov, 1950: 88ff]. By the 1770s, then,the myth of the 'just Tsar' was deeply entrenched in peasant tradi-tion—a myth symbolising a rebellious cause.

The climate was particularly propitious for Pugachev's pretence.In 1763 and again in 1766 rumour was rife in the Ural-Orenburgregion (the area where the Pugachev movement began) that theEmperor Peter III (the Empress Catherine II's husband who hadbeen murdered in 1763 and was widely, though incorrectly, thoughtto have intended to emancipate the serfs) was hiding in the area.

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In 1772, it was reported that Peter was living with the DonCossacks, and the same year a 'Peter' actually appeared in theperson of a peasant runaway, boat-hauler, hired labourer and soldiercalled Fedor Bogomolov, who raised hundreds of supporters alongthe lower Volga, and created great excitement among the Cossacksof the Don and of the Yaik. In all, Pugachev had at least six pre-cursors as 'Peter III', who served to build up expectation of the'saviour's' imminent appearance to a very high point, especially inthe areas in which he was to operate.

It is a curious comment on peasant mentality that these pretend-ers and in particular Pugachev gained any credence as fake Tsars.None of the 13 or so pseudo-Peters III, of whom he was one, isknown to have possessed a German accent; nor could most of themhave borne any physical resemblance to the real Peter. Yet theirfollowers seem to have been comparitively easily satified so faras physiognomies and autobiographical alibis were concerned.Nevertheless a credible pretender does seem to have needed certainqualities of appearance, voice, and style, to make promises consist-ent with those which a just Tsar might be expected to make, and, ifpossible, be able to reveal an imperial birthmark, or even stigmata[see Sivkov, 1950]P

Pugachev himself wore a large beard which no eighteenth cen-tury Russian emperor had ever worn, although this conformed toa traditional image of a Tsar. He enhanced his not altogether pre-possessing appearance by wearing a fine red coat, a large silvermedal and the sash of the Order of St. Anne. He passed off somewhite scrofula scars on his chest as 'Tsar's signs'; he deflectedattention from his illiteracy by pretending to read, by scribblingaway and claiming he was writing German, and by announcingmysteriously that he must not actually sign his name in Russianuntil he reached Moscow. He also told a very tall story to accountfor his supposed escape from death in 1762 and his eleven-yearabsence from the scene.

In all he was a good actor. One of his followers pictured himconvincing a crowd of people that he was the true Tsar come toliberate them:

He would weep, wipe his eyes with a kerchief, sigh, and say, 'Behold,my children. After twelve years of exile God has brought me to ruleover you again. . . . I have been in Jerusalem, in Constantinople andin Egypt'. Then rising from his chair and waving his hand he would say:'I reward you all with lands, waters, forests, cross and beard [i.e. freedomfor Old Believers] and all freedoms'. [Golubtsov, 1931: 210]

As a government commission reported, 'many testify to his . . .[abil i ty t o ] dissemble, saying that he could shed tears wheneverhe wanted, which served to convince the simple people that whathe told them was the truth'.14 The response was evidently enthus-

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iastic, and the effect could be lasting. Sixty years later one survivingCossack follower told the poet Pushkin: 'He may have beenPugachev to you. Your Honour, but to me he was the great LordPeter Fedorovich [Peter III ] ' [Pushkin, 1834]. This ability to playhis role convincingly was an essential attribute in circumstanceswhen a Tsar' had so often to be seen to be believed.

Nevertheless, it must be said that most of his followers werepredisposed to believe him and some Yaik Cossacks who did notbelieve pretended to, once satisfied that Pugachev was convincingenough to attract allies from among the peasantry and other lessadventurous groups. As one of them confessed, they noticed 'aquickness and ability in him, and so thought of making him lordover us' fOvchinnikov in Mavrodin, 1966-70: vol. 2, 416]. Thepretence, then, was not credible to all those who professed faithin it: but such people evidently realised that only a 'just Tsar' couldserve as a magnet to attract mass support for an insurrectionarymovement.

Having attracted a huge following, Pugachev had to maintainhis pretence. More and more people had to be attracted to his sideand there was always a danger of his charisma being destroyedby some old acquaintance unmasking him15 or by someone whohad set eyes on the real Tsar in question denouncing him as animpostor. (Hence the care pretenders generally took to stake theirclaims in areas distant from the communities from which theyderived.) Yet on at least two occasions, Pugachev was confrontedin public by people from his past and coped. Suddenly encounteredby his long-abandoned wife and children, he promptly acknowl-edged them as the wife and children of a man called Pugachev whohad once done him a service and was now dead, and had themescorted to his camp. Later, when saluted by some old DonCossack associates, one of whom called out to him by name,Pugachev coolly pretended not to be Petter III at all, urged themto join the movement and promised to intercede with the 'all-gracious monarch' on their behalf.

Pugachev, then, was clearly cool and self-reliant. He was alsocourageous. Declaring himself to be Tsar, after all, meant goingto the top of the wanted list and death if caught. Moreover, heshowed contempt for danger on several occasions during the revolt,and though eventually broken by torture, he maintained a remark-ably good spirit after capture [see Grot, 1876: 70ff and Ovchinnikovin Mavrodin, 1966-70: vol. 3, 405]. Furthermore, as the governmentrecognised, he was intelligent—or in the words of a secret invest-igatory committee report, 'sly, very cunning and scheming' [seenote 14]. Above all, Pugachev was able to carry himself in a man-ner consistent with the popular image of a Tsar and exercised apersonality capable of inspiring confidence and awe. This helpedhim to retain charisma even after a series of shattering defeats bygovernment troops in the spring and summer of 1774.

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4. OrganisationAs 'Peter III' Pugachev attracted a huge following in a very shorttime. However, since his pretence involved an immediate and totalconfrontation with the established power, Pugachev had to pre-pare to wage war and to organise his following accordingly.16 Theprocess of leadership in peasant movements of the type underdiscussion is thus divisible into two overlapping stages: firstly,obtaining a following (or gaining acceptance as leader), andsecondly, establishing an organisation, and a sanction, in order tomaintain cohesion among the following and direct it towards thegoal, a viable organisation being a prerequisite for any movementgrowing to a considerable size and still retaining the cohesionnecessary to success."

We have seen how Pugachev got his movement off the ground,but how did he go about moulding an anarchic mob of followersinto an effective instrument of power? How far was he successfulin creating an organisation capable of administering whole provincesand on a war footing? What kind of organisation did the rebelsevolve?

Pugachev and his associates had very little, if any, administrativeexperience: there is no evidence indicating any long-term conspiracyor any detailed plan of campaign. True, Pugachev enjoyed the pro-tection of certain Old Believers prior to the revolt.18 Old Believersgave him money, sheltered him, arranged his rescue from gaolonce, and, indeed, introduced him to some Old Believer Yaik Cos-sacks who formed his initial following—facts which suggest theexistence of some sort of Old Believer network if not an organisedoppositionist underground in Russia. It is also true that a groupof Yaik Cossack conspirators hid Pugachev from the authoritiesfor a short period immediately before the outbreak of the revolt.But their security was imperfect and the local authorities quicklybecame suspicious. As a result, the conspirators were forced outinto the open prematurely, which made speed of action the morevital to any degree of success—speed in mobilising a large numberof followers, in improvising a strategy and in implementing it underpressure on an ad hoc basis—all this in the absence of any nascentorganisation capable of carrying such a plant into action, a handi-cap which the Pugachev movement carried in common with mostother attempted peasant movements in eighteenth-century Russia.

Most other movements, even if they attracted quite sizeablefollowings, failed to create an organisation capable of co-ordinatingthem effectively. By contrast Pugachev, despite all his initial dis-advantages, achieved a surprising degree of success. At an earlystage in the revolt, with recruits arriving daily in response to hispersuasive manifestos, Pugachev ordered the formation of a centraladministrative organ, an office of 'written affairs' which was tobe known as the 'College of War'.

Since Pugachev pretended to be Peter III it is not surprising

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that he should try to create his own State apparatus on the modelof the existing one, as an extension, as it were, of his pretence.Nor is it surprising that Pugachev, a Don Cossack whose closestaides were Yaik Cossacks, should model the movement's organisa-tion on the government organ which directed military affairs includ-ing the administration of the Cossack communities — the realCollege of War in St Petersburg.

The rebels created a mirror image of the State, but the image wasa very distorted one. Pugachev and his Cossack lieutenants, afterall, had a very inadequate understanding of how the real Collegeof War functioned, and their ability to reflect the model at allaccurately was necessarily limited by their extremely hazy percep-tion of it. Nevertheless, the rebel 'College of War' was quicklyadapted to meet the movement's needs.

As originally conceived, the 'College' was designed to issuemanifestos in 'the Tsar's' name, but it was rapidly expanded bothin size and function, and soon became the executive nerve-centreof the movement. Staffed by a number of differentiated office-holders it not only issued orders and manifestos, but organisedsupplies, collected and disposed of funds, and tried to enforcediscipline. At the height of its effectiveness, the 'College' fulfilledmany of the functions not only of a general staff and commissariat,but of supreme court, and provisional government too—functionsfar more extensive than those of the 'model' on which it was based.

Nor was the 'College' the only central organ of the movement'sleadership. There was also a 'campaign chancery' to direct militaryactivity, and a council of intimates, headed by Pugachev himself,which formed a sort of kitchen cabinet and planned the strategy.The fact that several of Pugachev's cronies assumed the namesof real people at the Empress's court further exemplifies the rebels'tendency to set up mirror-images of the State.

The 'Great Army' was organised on Cossack lines under cen-turions, atamans and colonels, Cossack practice providing a ready-made organisational model and Cossack personnel providing someorganisational experience of a military nature which peasantsgenerally lacked. In the early, more static, period of the revoltthere was a discernible, and quite sophisticated, organisationalstructure consisting of a degree of lateral division of command func-tions, and a vertical, or 'line' command hierarcy linked with local,elective, and partly self-governing organs, each with its chancery,or scribe, at town, factory, fort, village and district (volost) levelsin the areas under rebel control. Regional commanders, appointedfrom the centre, supervised civil administration as well as militaryoperations in their areas, though at a lower level, military andcivil organisation tended to diverge. Attempts were even made todefine the functions of the local organs of leadership—functionsthat included liaison with, and the supply of, rebel units operatingin the area, the collection of taxes as ordered by the 'College',

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the circulation of rebel manifestos and ukazy, the maintenance ofdiscipline, the resolution of local disputes, the issue of passes, etc.[see Mavrodin, 1966-70: vol. 3, 463-4].

Though the central organisational core remained, in the later,highly mobile, stage of the revolt, the structure as a whole tendedto collapse, especially at lower levels. Moreover one cannot claimthat the leadership was ever in control of those parts of itsfollowing that were distant from the organisation's headquartersat any stage. Nevertheless, despite its transistory nature and scarcedocumentation, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that therebels' organisation was consistent with the general hypothesisthat the organisation of a peasant movement tends to reflect theculture of the society in which it occurs.

The organisational pattern of the Pugachev movement certainlymirrored, however imperfectly, established organisational patternsas they existed (or had existed) at governmental and at villagelevels. Indeed the zemskiye izby established at factory and districtlevels to organise defence, liaise with rebel units and supply them,act as a local court and generally administer the area, seem tohave been an adaptation of a local government institution intro-duced under Peter the Great and abandoned as early as 1721 [ibid.].This reconstruction of a dimly remembered institution (as of theCollege of War) was, however, imperfect in so far as it was basedon perceived truth about'the model, on an external and sketchyknowledge rather than any thorough comprehension of it.

In general terms the authoritarian nature of the Russian Statewas reflected in the authoritarian nature of the central institu-tions created by the Pugachev movement. On the other hand thecommunal decision-making of the mir and the traditional grass-roots democracy in Cossack settlements (of which peasants andCossacks did have direct knowledge) was not only reflected, butaccurately reflected, in the rough-and-ready elections of lower-tier leaders including junior military commanders and focal officials.Moreover the democratic element was extended beyond the con-fines of the village—a reflection of Cossack practice which wasalso a popular ideal among the peasantry. Yet although the organi-sation of a peasant movement may tend to reflect existing organi-sational patterns, these have to be adapted to meet the require-ments of the situation. In the case of the Pugachev revolt theyseem to have been surprisingly well adapted, not least in recon-ciling contrasting authoritarian and democratic elements withinthe system.

5. Composition of the Leading GroupPeasant movements commonly rely on outside leadership. In moredeveloped societies such leadership often derives from the middleclass, from the ranks of educated social critics or representativesof a rising class of entrepreneurs. Eighteenth-century Russia, how-

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ever, boasted only a nascent intelligentsia and bourgeoisie. Norwas the Pugachev movement led by renegade noblemen or byclergy as was common in medieval European peasant movements.19

As in earlier large-scale Russian peasant movements, its leadershipwas drawn mainly (though by no means exclusively) from a mili-tary caste—the Cossacks (a group comparable in many ways tothe Szeklers, haiduk and Uskoks in Slavic regions farther to thewest), that is, from members of a group freer in status than thepeasant, but with strong traditional links with peasantry, and whichgenerally inspired peasant confidence.

Cossacks occupied a disproportionately high number of theleading positions in the movement, staffing most of the higher postsin the 'College of War' and tending to dominate the inner council.Andrei Vitoshnov was President of the 'College', I. A. Tvorogovwas a judge and, at a later stage. Chief Secretary to the 'College',a post which the Cossacks I. Ya. Pochitalin, drafter of the firstrebel manifesto and Maxim Gorshkov also held at various times.Another judge of the 'College' (M. G. Shigayev), the Chief Atamanof the Cossack forces (A. A. Ovchinnikov) and the rebel com-mander of the Ufa region, I. N. Zarubin-Chika, were Cossack mem-bers of the inner council. Nevertheless, although a few of theseCossack leaders had held minor office in the Yaik community priorto the rising and some belonged to the more prosperous segmentof it, the vast majority of them did not derive from the Cossackelite.

Cossack predominance in the leadership is not to be attributedsimply to the fact that they initiated the revolt. As Cossacks, theyhad some military experience which qualified them as leaders inwhat was, after all, a peasant war20, while the tendency of peasantsto idealise Cossacks as libertarian heroes and even as their cham-pions was an additional qualification. In fact, as AcademicianMavrodin has recently emphasised, the Cossacks were the onlygroup in Russia who 'could provide crowds of insurgent peasantswith cohesion and military training' [see Mavrodin, 1966-70; vol.3, 468]. Only Cossacks, it appears, could spread the revolt overa broad area, arouse general hope of victory against governmenttroops. Indeed, once the government succeeded in bringing theCossack communities under strict control, no peasant movementof any comparable scale was to take off until the twentieth century.

Nevertheless, non-Cossacks also figured prominently among theleaders. Of the 5 main regional commanders, 3 were non-Cossacks,and peasants appeared with increasing frequency lower down theleadership hierarchy. T. A. Sokolov, known as 'Khlopusha', a serforiginating from Tver, was a prominent member of the 'kitchencabinet', and appointed 'Colonel' of factory peasants; I. N.Beloborddov, an ascribed serf by origin, became a 'Chief Ataman'and 'Campaign Colonel'; 'Colonel' I. N. Gryaznov, a factory peasant,was appointed by the 'College' to command the Isetsk-Chelyabinsk

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region, and I. S. Trofimov, a hired labourer, became Secretary ofthe 'College'. Other prominent non-Cossack leaders included theex-peasant 'Ataman' Arapov of Stavropol, the blacksmith S. I.Volkov, who was elected ataman of 'factory and village Cossacks'at Rozhdestvensk, Ataman Ya. V. Kozlov and centurion T. Koplev(both of them factory peasants), esaul Gavrila Likhachev, who wasa domestic serf, the peasant 'Colonel' Makar, the peasant 'ataman'S. A. Novgorodov, who led 5,000 Siberian peasants, the ascribedpeasant A. Noskov, 'ataman' of llyinsk village, the peasant 'ataman'Vasili Sergeyev, the fighting Siberian priest Lavrenty Antonov, andothers.

Most of these leaders had derived from the groups they led andthis was particularly true of the tribal leaders—Kalmyks, Mishars,Tatars, etc., and most notably the Bashkirs, whose beys and mursas(77 of them) came over to Pugachev en masse, bringing theirpeople with them.

The top stratum of the movement's leadership was, therefore,not provided by middle-class or intellectual elements; but neitherwere even the lower-tier leaders drawn principally from amonglocal craftsmen, mechants, teachers and priests, etc., as one mightexpect in a 'backward' society. To be sure, priests, artisans andmerchants made appearances, but their numbers were not over-whelming and, Cossacks and tribesmen apart, some explanatorycategorisation other than those commonly advanced seems to berequired in this case.

In an attempt to identify other characteristics of the membersof the leading group (especially of the lower-tier leaders and suchof the top stratum who were neither Cossack nor members ofestablished tribal leadership groups) I have analysed the socialorigins, occupations, economic status, literacy, etc. of upwardsof a hundred leaders at all levels in the movement.21 At lowerlevels especially, the selection of persons investigated must beregarded as somewhat arbitrary, and there is an impressive numberof nil returns (marital status, for example, was particularly difficultto establish, and literacy had to be a matter of inference in manycases). Moreover, I have been very conscious of how misleadingthe use of such broadly-defined social categories as 'peasants' or'Cossack' can be. Many Don Cossacks, for example, were largelydependent on arable farming; many peasants doubled as artisans,foresters, merchants, or worked in industry or mining besides culti-vating land, while some people who are termed peasants in therecords were domestic serfs or full-time workers with virtually nocontact with the soil. Complications also attach to social definitionof the urban population, since many townsmen were serfs payingquit-rent to their lords, and various members of the artisan classeswere also classifiable by other occupations or status. Callingsomeone a peasant-serf, then, does not necessarily mean thathe was wholly, nor even partly, an agriculturalist, nor that a worker

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or soldier was not by origin a peasant, nor yet that a Cossackmight not be economically dependent on working his own oranother's land allotment.

Nevertheless, and bearing these qualifications in mind, it appearsthat, the Cossacks and tribal leaders apart, it was not higher status,nor non-peasant occupation, that determined leadership so muchas literacy or, much more commonly, knowledge of the worldoutside the immediate community, whether gained through thepractice of a trade, army service, or brushes with the law. Andthough this conclusion must be regarded as provisional, it iscorroborated by an analysis of those potential leaders of peasantmovements, the pretenders, and of the actual leaders of majorseventeenth and eighteenth century risings in Russia.

Non-Cossack leaders in the Pugachev movement included: I. S.Trofimov, latterly Secretary of the 'College', a thirty-year-old freehired labourer and son of a merchant, whose several aliases indi-cate a record of clashes with authority; Ataman Taskayev, a regis-tered townsman; elected esaul V. M. Zamyatov, a factory peasantand retired soldier; and Ataman Arapov, an ex-peasant and retiredTatar translator who had served a hard-labour sentence. Factorypeasants, most of them uprooted from their closed village existence,figure prominently. One of these, Ivan Gryaznov, was an ascribedpeasant, the son of a merchant from Simbirsk—a man who hadexperienced a fall in status and who seems to have had OldBeliever connections. Several rich peasants (as well as some well-to-do Cossacks, for example, Maxim Gorshkov) figure in the listsand one of them, A. A. Yeremkin, is known to have been literate,though I have so far been able to discover little about the experi-ences of the more important peasant Ataman, the relatively affluentS. A. Novgorodov or about another rich peasant. Ataman S. YaKuznetsov. One must also mention two leaders from the gentryclass—Ensign Shvanovich, a regular junior officer and 'Colonel'Mineyev—both of whom, apparently, turned renegade to save theirlives. However, the two outstanding examples of whom we havemore than minimal data are Sokolov and Beloborodov.

Afanasy Sokolov was 59, the son of a peasant serf of Tverprovince. Accused of robbery, he fled, but was caught, knouted andsent to work in a copper mill in Orenburg Province, where hemarried and had a son. Again accused of highway robbery, hewas knouted, branded, had his nostrils slit, and was exiled toTobolsk. He fled again, was arrested, knouted and branded again,and this time sent to Omsk. Escaping yet again, he was oncemore arrested, knouted a fourth time, and consigned to chainsin Orenburg prison. Soon after the outbreak of the revolt, however,he managed to join the rebels, whereupon he became one of theprincipal organisers of the factory peasants and a prominent leaderin the movement.

Beloborodov was 34. Born a peasant, he had been recruited into

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the army at eighteen, where he learned the arts of gunnery and hadexperience of a military hospital. He subsequently worked in aState gunpowder factory before being released, whereupon heresettled in the southern Urals and became a trader in honey, waxand other products. On the outbreak of the revolt he was calledup into a local militia, but deserted to the rebels and proved oneof their most competent military leaders.

So far as literacy is concerned, as many as 20 per cent of theleadership seems to have been able to read and write. Consideringthat peasant literacy was probably no more than about 2 per centthis proportion seems extraordinarily high, although it must berecognised that literacy was in itself a qualification for leadership,literates being in demand to staff the rebel chanceries at variouslevels, to copy and read the 'imperial ukazy' and charters, etc.Some leaders came from the richer sections, some had minimalleadership experience, others had experienced oppressive factoryregimes, or possessed a minimal education—but the most commoncharacteristic was experience of the world outside their village,often involving fighting or clashes with the law.

Similar broad characteristics emerge from an analysis of theeighteenth century pretenders. At least a third of them were armydeserters (though only about 3£ per cent of adult Russian maleswere soldiers), at least 3 were convicted bandits, and many othershad travelled extensively fsee Troitski, 1969: 134-46 and Longworth,1975]. Moreover, this pattern of experience, particularly in regardto travel, is further confirmed by a study of the careers of theleaders of Russian revolts before Pugachev. Bolotnikov had fledfrom slavery to join the Cossacks, had been sold into slaveryby Tatars, chained to the oar of a Turkish galley for years, thentaken to Venice, whence he had walked home across centralEurope. Razin, a Don Cossack by birth, twice visited Moscow andthe distant Solovetsk monastery on the White Sea. He also hadleadership experience within his own community, and turned piratechief before becoming a rebel leader. Bulavin travelled less widely,apparently, but he had considerable leadership experience as anelected Ataman, had fighting experience, too, and lived on acommunications cross-road between Russia and the Ukraine.

Pugachev himself also conformed to the pattern. He had foughtwith the Russian army in Germany and against the Turks, andsubsequently, as a fugitive-deserter, had wandered extensivelyabout Russia and seen the inside of several gaols. He had thusboth tasted oppression personally and observed the oppression ofothers in various areas far from home. ('Everywhere', he once said,'I have seen the people ruined.') Like so many other peasant leaders,then, Pugachev's social experience qualified him to act as culturalbroker to a backward peasantry.

In sum, the archetypal Russian peasant leader is similar in manyrespects to Hobsbawm's archetype of the social bandit. Indeed,

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but for the comparative sophistication of its organisation and itscoherent articulation of goals, the Pugachev revolt, like its pre-decessors, might be characterised as a movement of social banditryon a vastly escalated scale. Certainly, a bandit subculture similar,for example, to that in Mexico of Zapata's time, had grown upin the eighteenth century Russia. The songs and legends of theperiod which glorify the outlaw—the man who champions socialjustice by risking his life in conflict with the oppressive regime—were legion and widespread. Zapata heard such songs in youth[White, 1969: 101-69]: so in all probability did Pugachev.

Hobsbawm [1969] defines a bandit a type—the young unmarriedor divorced man, the shepherd, cowherd or military man, thewatcher rather than the watched, as well as the 'stiff-necked'peasant standing out against injustice. Such men are certainlyto be found in the leading ranks of peasant movements in seven-teenth and eighteenth-century Russia and in the Pugachev move-ment in particular. The Yaik Cossacks were primarily fishermenand stock-raisers; the Bashkirs were herdsmen and warriors; somefactory peasant leaders were overseer craftsmen and many of theother leaders had previous military or readership experience,whether as NCOs, centurions or village atamans.

However, the parallel is not borne out completely. The youngunmarried men were by no means the first to protest. Nor didthey provide an overwhelming number of leaders. Pugachev him-self was 31, married and indeed the father of three children. Theages of leaders under him range from 19 to 59. Their average agewas 34 and most of them were between 31 and 37. The sixpretenders between 1764 and 1774 whose ages I have been ableto establish conform very closely to this, ranging from 25 to 43and averaging 33—old enough to have acquired leadership experi-ence or experience necessary to fulfil their functions as culturalbrokers for isolated villagers; young enough to be militarily active.

6. Control of the FollowingA leader has to maintain his position; he also has to reconcile the(immediate) needs of individual followers with the cohesion ofthe following as a whole and to direct the movement towards theachievement of a clearly defined objective. Now Pugachev derivedcertain advantages in fulfilling these functions simply by virtue ofhis acceptance as the 'Liberator-Tsar', which put him in a positionto command the loyalty and obedience of various groups alreadyunited in a desire for radical change. Indeed, the very recognitionof Pugachev as the true Tsar indicated a willingness on the partof the following to postpone immediate gratifications, to risk dangerand even death, in order to work towards the common goal—ineffect the overthrow of 'illegitimate' State power.

Conversely, it is significant that despite the heterogeneous natureof Pugachev's following and the high proportion of non-peasants

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in the leadership, the well-known tendency for peasant allies towithdraw after a set-back, the 'betrayal syndrome' [Landsberger,n.d.: 68], was not much in evidence in the revolt. This is probablyexplained by the fact that, in general, the goals of the Cossacksand the others involved, though by no means identical, were notobviously incompatible (similarities of interest outweighing differ-ences especially in the early stages). Certainly Cossacks wereto be found in the movement's van even after very serious defeatswhen all seemed lost, and the peasant following seems alwaysto have considered Cossack leadership desirable. The situationwas thus basically dissimilar to the revolt led by Vasili Us in theseventeenth century where differences in goals led to the Cossackleaders disowning their more militant peasant followers; to certainepisodes in the Khmelnitsky movement in the seventeenth-centuryUkraine when Cossacks abandoned peasant followers when defeatseemed likely; or to the Yaik Cossack rebellion of 1772 whichmade no attempt to attract peasant support.

The fact that peasants aspired to Cossack status and, onceinvolved in the movement, often regarded themselves as Cossacksundoubtedly helped to strengthen the links between leadershipand following. It is possible that Old Belief also helped towardsthis end. Old Belief was another manifestation of dissidence. Manypeasants and merchants involved in the rising (as well as YaikCossacks) were Old Believers. The faith, or more particularly theoppression to which its followers were subject (even though someof their disabilities had been recently removed), certainly seemsto have nurtured mutual trust between Old Believers, and to haveheightened their sense of social justice. Indeed, though the fullsignificance of Old Belief in the Pugachev movement is stillobscure, and despite the Soviet historian Kadson's attempt [1960:222-30 and in Mavrodin, 1966-70: vol. 3, 348-64] to deny that ithad any influence at all, it may well be that Old Believers fulfilleda similar function to that of, say, the Franciscans in sixteenth-century Hungary and that their faith played a parallel role to thatof other brands of religious fundamentalism observable in peasantmovements of various periods in other parts of the world. Morespeculatively still, one might regard pseudo^Tsar and Old Beliefas twin pillars of the movement's mirror State corresponding toTsar and established Church. But in the present state of knowledgeone can do no more than speculate, and because of the difficultiesinherent in trying to reconstruct an historical underworld, we maynever be able to do more.

We are on much firmer ground in stating that since the Pugachevrevolt involved a civil war for nothing less than the control of theState, and since that war approached the absolute (there beingno real prospect of compromise with the regime), the bonds ofloyalty between leadership and following also tended to becomeabsolute—simply because of their common fear of the conse-

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quences of failure. Leadership and following seem to have recog-nised their mutual dependence if they were succeed or evensurvive—a situation conducive to a very high degree of solidarity.

Nevertheless the particular interests of Cossacks, peasants andother participating groups did not always coincide and effortshad to be made in order to keep the team together. Pugachev andhis colleagues seem to have shown a marked degree of flexibilityin dealing with this problem, responding quickly to the mood ofthe following. Time and again, for example, one finds the wantsof potential groups of followers being ascertained, and then trans-lated back to them in the form of a charter or manifesto, 'granting'their aspirations as rewards for their obeying the Tsar'. Thecontents of these manifestos, maintain a general policy line, butthe details vary markedly according to time, area and above allto the groups addressed—whether Cossacks, Old Believers, tribes-men or serfs.

When interests diverged to the point of incompatibility theleadership tried to conciliate the parties concerned. The moststriking case involved some Bashkir elements who wanted toremove some Ural factory settlements from their traditional pasture-grounds and groups of peasants permanently tied to those fac-tories on which they depended for a living. This was a differencethe leadership tried hard to reconcile, though in the end theycould not prevent bloodshed and the desertion of some insurgentfactory peasants to the enemy. Another less serious clash ofinterests occurred in the early stages of the revolt when theCossack-dominated 'College of War' forbade the acceptance ofdebt-labourers as volunteers, an act which has been attributedto the influence of rich Cossacks who feared that they might losetheir labour force [Andruschenko, 1969: 69J.22 However, as thestruggle against the official forces became sharper, even richerCossack leaders became willing to sacrifice secondary interests inthe interests of solidarity. Indeed, apart from this particular case,there is little evidence to justify the contention that richer elementswere any less enthusiastically oriented towards the general goalsthat the poorer ones were. Only the obvious hopelessness of themilitary situation seems to have induced the leaders to desert, andthis applies equally to the peasant following.

In general, the leadership responded swiftly to its following,equating its extremism to theirs. This did not mean, however,that the leadership was always prepared to condone disorder.Responsiveness had its limits in the need for discipline and thereis at least in the early stages of the revolt of the line being drawnat looting and murder, and of attempts being made to protectpeasant and even government property. Nevertheless, in the lastresort, it is difficult to define the extent to which Pugachev, andthe leadership as a whole, controlled their following and the extentto which they were controlled by it. Insofar as they were ultra-

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responsive to the following, the leaders were also in a sense theled. Yet so long as the movement's organisation remained viable,the leadership exercised discipline and resolved conflicts, ft alsofulfilled its function, if not in dominating external circumstances,then at least in showing initiative—a function necessary to maintaingeneral confidence, the more so in a movement led by a charis-matic pretender of whom near-miraculous achievements wereexpected (even though Pugachev achieved success in this as muchthrough his remarkable ability to recover from defeat as throughhis victories).

7. Leadership and IdeologyFinally, a brief comment on the question of leadership and ideology.According to Landsberger [n.d.: 73 n 36], a movement's leader-ship, particularly its outside leadership, imparts to that movementsuch ideologies as they have, especially in the case of radicalideologies. In other words, outsiders indoctrinate peasants withideology. Yet, though 'outsiders' provided a substantial segmentof the Pugachev movement's leadership and though the move-ment's goals were radical enough (envisaging inter alia, the aboli-tion of serfdom), in general the leadership could be said to haveshared with the following such elements of ideology as it possessed—a peasant vision of an ideal society.23

Perhaps because of this, the Pugachev revolt is often assumedto have had no ideology at all — to have been a spontaneous,elemental, jacquerie-type movement. Certainly it had no ideologyin any narrowly Marxist sense. Nevertheless, there is evidenceof a widely shared belief (among Cossacks and other groups, aswell as peasants) in certain forms of social justice as representedby the myth of the 'just Tsar', and also a widespread aspiration—common to the Cossack rank and file as well as to peasants—to the ideal life of an historical Cossackdom, i.e. to an egalitariansociety organised communally on democratic lines. Both theseideas received concrete expression in the rebel manifestos.

Given the mentality of the participants, their restricted capacityto express their view of the world, and the nature of the changesthey envisaged in society, such conceptions must be regarded asmore than mere 'slogans', rallying-cries or ideology substitutes.Together they constituted a node of ideas so powerful and sofar-reaching in their implications as to justify their being termedelements of an albeit primitive ideology (or to follow Mannheim'susage, a Utopia).24

Like so many other social rebels, and, indeed, some revolutionaryleaders, Pugachev was an activist exploiting traditional myths,rather than a latter-day ideologist disseminating fresh ideas abouta new theoretical social order. The rebels also reflected certainborrowed forms and expressed themselves in terms of an idealisedpast. Nevertheless their programme was essentially their own and

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revolutionary for all its traditionalism, envisaging, as it did—andIndeed momentarily realising—basic changes in social and politicalstructure.

NOTES1 Tkhorzhevski [1930: 212] estimates that some 4½ million were involved

—out of a total population of approximately 20 million plus.2 For a fuller description of the revolt, its background and bibliography,

see Longworth [1973: 1-35] and [1974: 194-256].3 On the Bolotnikov, Razin, Bulavin and Pugachev movements in their

Cossack contexts see Longworth [1969: 78, 124-52, 161-4, 787-223J, andAvrich [1972: 10-7, 50-122, 132-77, 180-254].

4 See, for example, Mavrodin [1966-70]. In volume 3, p. 457 he uses theterm 'peasant war' simply to distinguish it from 'other forms of classstruggle' (e.g. fragmented local peasant uprisings). Van Bath [1963: 189ff]confines the term to instances where peasants defended themselvesagainst the encroachments of princes and already had their own organi-sation—by contrast to 'sudden outbursts of fierce defiance' which werebadly organised and of short duration. Van Bath's definition of 'peasantwar', however, seems too narrow. The Pugachev movement was clearlymuch more than a jacquerie, was fought on a scale tantamount to warand yet fails to satisfy Van Bath's criteria for a peasant war.

5 The best source on the peasantry in the period is still Semevski [1903].Blum [1967], is, however, a useful source in English.

6 Alefirenko [1958: 94ff, 114ff, 136ff. 184ff. 262ft] respectively on protestby serfs, monastery peasants and State peasants. See also Sivkov[1956: 166ff] and Vyatkin [1956: 179ff].

7 On 'charismatic authority' see Weber [1964: 328J and especially pp 358ff.The concept of charisma had been suggested previously by Frazer whoremarked [1909: 4] that government is greatly facilitated 'by a superstitionthat the governors belong to a superior order of things and possess certainsupernatural or magical powers, to which the governed can make noclaim and can offer no resistance'.

8 For evidence of the widespread and deeply entrenched myth of thecharismatic Stenka Razin, see Miller [1915: 683-777].

9 This has recently been discussed by Gordon Stewart and Longworth[forthcoming] [1974: 138ft]. See also Eistenstadt [1968] and Tucker[1968]: 731-56].

10 Successive peasant revolts in China (some of which succeeded in over-turning old dynasties and establishing new ones) present other excellentexamples—see Jean Chesneaux [1973: 21 esp.J.

11 'On the day when his time comes he [the saviour] will arise: he willwave his fist—and in a moment not a trace will remain of the offenders,the evil bloodsuckers.' Quoted by Shapiro [1965: 61-81]. Cp., for example,the legend of Owen Glendowr, the sleeping prince who would returnone day to free the Welsh; the seventeenth-century legend popular amongGerman peasants of the young hero-ruler who would cow the nobility,abolish serfdom, etc. (Simplicissumus, book 3, chapter 4); and par-ticularly the legends of medieval Western Europe about emperorssleeping in mountains awaiting 'their time' to return, as described byCohn [1970: 72 passim].

12 Cp. the medieval pretenders as described by Cohn [1970] and theirassociation with peasant unrest. Various details (e.g. the pretenders''proof in the form of a cross between the shoulder blades) are strikingover such distances of time, space and culture. Cp. too the 'John Frum'phenomenon in the New Hebrides more recently [Worsley, 1970: 164ff]where the 'broom' image of Frum's name corresponds with the pretender-

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associated legends of 'Metelkin' (from metla=broom) in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Russia [see Chistov, 1967: 178ff]. It is worthnoting in this context that the pretender undercurrent in Russia seemsto have been more constant, less spasmodic a phenomenon than Cohn'smillenarian emperors.

13 As Worsley [1970: 289] rightly remarks, 'The charismatic leader, morethan any other kind of ruler whose leadership may repose on quitedifferent bases—patronage, force, constitutional authority, traditionalright to rule, etc.—is singularly dependent upon being accepted by hisfollowers.' Hence, incidentally, the need for 'signs' or 'proofs'.

14 Report of a government commission of enquiry, 21 May 1774 quoted byOvchinnikov in Mavrodin [1966-70: vol. 3, 397].

15 Weber [1964: 364] asserts that charisma is only transitory as organisationis built up. 'Indeed,' he writes, 'in its pure form, charismatic authoritymay be said to exist only in the process of originating.' Yet, here wehave an example of charisma in its pure Weberian form being continuallyexercised after the rebel organisation had been formed (see section 4).Even while exercising his charismatic right to formulate policy andcommand support for it [Worsley 1970: 289], Pugachev had to continueto be 'recognised' by yet new masses of prospective supporters. Andthere was always the danger that the 'emperor' might be seen to wearno clothes: the fragile spell might be shattered at almost any moment.

16 This accords with Weber's statement that 'as soon as the position ofauthority is well established . . . as soon as control over large massesof people exists it [charisma] gives way to the forces of everydayroutine' [1964: 374]. Nevertheless, although institutionalisation is anecessary second stage, charisma overlaps with, rather than immediatelygiving way to, it (see note 15).

17 As Landsberger rightly (but perhaps over-cautiously) states, a criticalobstacle 'faced by a new movement may well be that of creating a viableorganisational structure — authority, communications, decision-makingmechanisms, etc.—beyond the level of the community' [1974: 46].

18 Old Believers were observersof Russian Church rituals as they obtainedbefore the reforms of the Patriarch Nikon in the seventeenth century.Despite a century of oppression, the movement had millions of (mostlycovert) adherents among the peasantry and also among the Cossacks.Old Belief has been interpreted as a form of political and social protest(see, for example, Andreev [1870: vi passim]). It played a significantif shadowy r6le in the Pugachev movement, there being strong circum-stantial evidence that Old Believers encouraged Pugachev to stake hisclaim to be the true Tsar and conclusive evidence of Old Believersbeing courted as supporters as the revolt got under way [see Longworth,1969: 192ff].

19 There had been a strong noble element in the Bolotnikov rising. Thecomparatively low incidence of priests as leaders in the revolt bycontrast to their prominence in peasant movements in medieval WesternEurope (see, for example, R. H. Hilton in Landsberger [1974: 89-90])is conceivably a reflection of the standing of the priest in eighteenth-century Russia by contrast to his counterpart in medieval WesternEurope. The Russian village priest was usually illiterate and of com-paratively low status, while the Russian church could boast no equivalentto the preaching friars as agents of social ferment although there isevidence of Old Believers, including some renegade priests of the estab-lished church, playing such a part.

20 Not, however, as E. J. Hobsbawm has suggested, because they wereused to prolonged campaigning far from home. Unlike the Don Cossacks,the Yaik Cossacks performed their military service almost exclusivelyin their own frontier area. Moreover peasants could (and sometimes did)

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campaign for extensive periods far from home once relieved from obliga-tions to tend their lords' land and pay taxes, the labour of old men,women and boys often being sufficient to maintain production on familyfarms at subsistence level.

21 This material from which 'case histories' in the following paragraphs havebeen reconstructed has been collected from a variety of scatteredsources. The most convenient reference to be cited is the contributionby Limonoy, Mavrodin and Peneyakh in Mavrodin [1966-70: vol. 3, 436-55].

22 He also attributes the capitulation of many Yaik Cossacks after a defeatin April 1774 to the richer elements. The evidence, however, is suscep-tible to alternative interpretation.

23 Ted Robert Gurr writes [1971: 292]: 'A charismatic leader symbolisesand may even preclude the need for a doctrine of revolutionary actionon the part of his followers.' It could be claimed that Pugachev symbol-ised the doctrine but not that he or any other Russian pretenderprecluded the need for it (though they both exploited and strengthenedthe 'doctrine' and the myth).

24 Karl Mannheim [1936] defines ideologies and Utopias as idea complexeswhich direct activity towards and against the existing order respectively.

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v 30-50 godakh XVIII veka, Moscow and Leningrad.Andreev, V. V., 1870, Raskol i ego znacheniye narodoi russokoy istorii, St.

Petersburg.Andrushchenko, A. N., 1969, Krestyanskaya voina 1773-1775 gg, Moscow.Avrich, P., 1972, Russian Rebels (1600-1800), New York.Blum, J., 1967, Lord and Peasant in Russia, New York.Chesneaux, J., 1973, trans. C. A. Curwen, Peasant Revolts in China, London.Chistov, K. V., 1967, Russkiye narodnyye sotsialno-utopicheskiye legendy,

Moscow.Cohn, N., 1970, The Pursuit of the Millenium, London.Eisenstadt, S. N., ed., 1968, Max Weber on Charisma, Chicago.Frazer, J. G., 1909, Psyche's Task, London.Golubtsov, A., ed., 1931, Pugachevshchina, Moscow and Leningrad vol. 3.Grot, Ya. K., 1876, 'Materialy dlya istorii Pugachevskogo bunta', Sbornik

otdeleniya russkago yazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoi Academii Nauk,XV: 4, St. Petersburg.

Gurr, T. R., 1971, Why Men Rebel, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Hobsbawm, E., 1969, Bandits, London.Kadson, I. Z., 1960, in Yezhegodnik muzeya istorii religii i. atezima, IV.Landsberger, H. A., n.d., The Role of Peasant Movements and Revolts in

Development, New York.Landsberger, H. A., ed., 1969, Latin American Peasant Movements, Ithaca.Landsberger, H. A., 1974, Rural Protest, Peasant Movements and Social

Change, London.Longworth, P., 1969, The Cossacks. London.Longworth, p., 1973, 'The Last Great Cossack Peasant Rising', Journal of

European Studies. 3.Longworth, P., 1974, 'The Pugachev Revolt' In Landsberger [1974].Longworth, P., 1975, The Pretender Phenomenon in Eighteenth Century Russia',Past and Present. 66.Longworth, P., forthcoming, 'The Subversive Legend of Sten'ka Razin'.Mannheim, K., 1936, Ideology and Utopia, London.Mavrodin, V. V., ed., 1966-70, Krestyanksaya voina v Rossii, Leningrad 3 vols.Miller, V. F., 1915, Istoricheskiye pesni russkago naroda, Petrograd.Pushkin, A. S., 1834, Istoriya Pugachevskago Bunta 3 vols.

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2 vols.Shapiro, A. L., 1965, 'Ob istoricheskoi roli krestyanskikh voin XVII-XVIII vv v

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Istoricheski Zapiski, XXXI.Sivkov, K. Z., 1956, in Ocherki istorii SSRR: Period feodalizma, Moscow.Stewart, G., 1974, 'Charisma and Integration: an Eighteenth Century North

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Istorii. 3.Tucker, R. C , 1968, 'The Theory of Charismatic Leadership', Daedelus, 97,

summer.Van Bath, B. H. Slicher, 1963, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, London.Vyatkin, M. P., 1956, in Ocherki istorii SSRR: Period feodalizma, Moscow.Weber, M., 1964, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, New York

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peasant leadership and the pugachev revolt

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