Yemelyan Pugachev

Yemelyan Pugachev (c. 1742–1775) was a Don Cossack who led the greatest peasant uprising of Catherine the Great's reign. A veteran of the Seven Years' War and the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, he deserted in 1770 and drifted among discontented Cossacks and Old Believers.

In 1773 he proclaimed himself the murdered tsar Peter III and promised an end to serfdom, drawing a huge rebel army that overran the Volga and Urals lands and burned Kazan in 1774. Defeated near Tsaritsyn, he was handed over by his own men and beheaded in Moscow in January 1775.