The relevance of the topic of the article lies in the need of studying various aspects of the relationship between government and society in the historical process. A good opportunity for this is presented by the times of the rupture of historical everyday life, which arose in the context of the aggravation of contradictions between the Crown and subjects. The Pugachev revolt of 1773-1775 can be attributed to such times. The protest movement was led by Don Cossack E.I. Pugachev, who led tens of thousands of people under the name of Emperor Peter III. The study was conducted on the basis of published and unpublished sources, the latest of which are kept in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. The article analyzes various variants of Pugachev’s version of the palace coup of 1762. Among other things, with their help, the impostor justified his identity with the deposed tsar Peter Fedorovich. The opinion expressed in historiography about the existence in everyday life of E.I. Pugachev of a single explanatory model of the miraculous rescue of the emperor from the hands of assassins – organizers of the palace coup is disputed. Four editions of Pugachev’s history of the coup were identified and analyzed, which were given conditional names at the place of creation. A comparative analysis of different editions made it possible to identify common and special features in them, to determine their addressing and purpose. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time in historiography, a typology of Pugachev’s versions of the history of the palace coup of 1762 is proposed, various editions of which are subjected to comparative historical comparison. Pugachev’s fictions are considered in the context of folk socio-utopian legends about returning deliverer kings, deeply studied by K.V. Chistov. In addition, it is shown that their content was determined by the peculiarities of the traditional culture, the bearers of which were himself and all his associates. It was the very thing that ensured the confidence of the impostor on the part of his closest supporters and the ordinary masses of Pugachevites.
Key words: the palace coup of 1762, Catherine II, Peter III, imposture, Yemelyan Pugachev, yaik cossacks, traditional culture, utopian legends
1_Мауль-№1-8-20Citation link: Maul V.Ya. «It's not true, he's not dead»: the palace coup of 1762 in the view of E.I. Pugachev and the pugachevites // Humanities researches of the Central Russia. – 2024. – №3. – P. 7-18.
DOI: 10.24412/2541-9056-2025-134-7-19