Yemelyan Pugachev lived a life full of victories and defeats, heady reckless love and desperate daring—before the executioner’s axe rose above his head. Eighteenth-century Russia… Unbridled morals, animal passions, the free-spirited license of Cossacks and common folk rushing out of the steppe, which was burning with rebellion—toward Moscow and St. Petersburg. Conspiracies and the tangled intrigues at the court of Mother-Governess Catherine the Great—herself just as lustful as she was cruel.
And alongside her, the celebrated statesmen… All of this brings to life the famous epic by Vyacheslav Shishkov—powerful, many-colored narration about one of the most dramatic epochs in Russian history. Relying on documentary facts and a wealth of his own knowledge of everyday life, V. Ya. Shishkov vividly recreated the scenes of the greatest popular movement of the 18th century led by Yemelyan Pugachev. In the novel, real historical events and figures are faithfully reproduced. The epic “Emelyan Pugachev” was Shishkov’s last, final work.