Uralsk and its History
We visited the Pushkin museum and Pugachev museum. Yes, Uralsk is the city where the most famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin came to do research about the biggest Russian rebellion against the empress Catherine the Great. Yes, the biggest rebellion that ever happened in the Russian Empire started here, in Uralsk.
In 1773 a fugitive Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev declared himself to be an emperor of Russia, the murdered Peter the Third, and people believed him. He gathered a troop of Yaik Cossacks and they wrote the manifest to start the rebellion. Here they took their first fortress. Here he became the ataman of Yaik Cossacks. Here he got married and celebrated his wedding.
Catherine the Great didn’t take his actions seriously in the beginning. She thought it was just a gang of Cossacks who were playing rebels. Surprisingly, only in a couple of months his little army of rebels grew into a very big international rebellion. Kazakhs, Russians, Tatars and many other ethnicities joined to fight against the empress. Pugachev kept taking a city after a city, while moving in the direction of St Petersburg. With every new victory his army kept growing and more and more people believed him. Catherine the Great had to pull big forces and send her most talented general to stop the rebellion. In the end, Pugachev was betrayed by his closest friends and executed in Moscow.
It was Catherine the Great who renamed the river originally called Yaik to Ural. She also ordered to rename Yaitsky City to Uralsk 🤩🥰. Catherine the Great wanted everybody to forget about the bloody rebellion, so she changed the names. The names were accepted, but nobody forgot about the rebellion. Pushkin and other writers and historians came to Uralsk to research it. Pushkin’s research about Pugachev inspired him to write his famous historical novel 'The Captain’s Daughter’. I am really proud that our city contributed to its creation 😊🥰🤗.
P.S: the spirit of the rebellion is still here. They say, people coming from Uralsk and the area are natural fighters! We are always ready to fight for our rights and principles. My former American colleagues from US Embassy mentioned that 😂😄. I was like hmm.. 🤔. Maybe not always, but I agree 😂👍.
