Vocabulary

1. a lieutenant-colonel – войсковой старшина

2. card gambling – игра в карты

3. to take into custody – взять под стражу

Matvey platov

Ataman Matvey Platov is considered to be the most popular cossack general and an outstanding military leader awarded almost with all the Russian and many foreign awards. He was born in 1751 in the town of Cherkassk. When he was 13 he joined the army and for his brave struggle against the Turks he was proclaimed an officer.

Serving in the Crimea he got acquainted with A.V. Suvorov who highly appreciated his military talent and heroic deeds during the battles of Ochakov and Ismail.

Platov’s activity was also appreciated and respected by Katherine II and Potemkin who awarded him more than once. However during the reign of Pavel I he was sent into the exile in Kastroma and then was taken into prison for a number of months in Petropavlovsky fortress being accused in organizing a rebellion against the czar. But when the conviction was reversed Platov got an award and was appointed the Don Army Ataman.

In 1806-1807 he heroically participated in severe battles against the Napoleon Army and was even awarded with the order by Napoleon himself but refused to accept the award from the enemy of his Motherland. His military career reached its culmination during the years of the Patriotic War in 1812-1814. The Cossacks under his command became the greatest threat for the enemy and glorified themselves in the battles of Borodino and Krasnyi. In 1814 ataman Platov with the Russian Army entered the defeated Paris. After some time he was awarded with the law diploma of Oxford University.

Ataman Matvey Platov died in 1818. His tomb is in Novocherkassk Cathedral and there is also a magnificent monument to him in this city. His deeds were described by such great Russian writers as N.S. Leskov, L.N. Tolstoy, A.I. Gertsen, M.A. Sholokhov and others and will always inspire gratitude among his compatriots.

Emelyan pugatchov

Emelyan Pugatchov was born in stanitsa Zimoveyskaya-on-Don about 1742. As many other Cossacks he honestly defended Russia in several wars but then being tired of constant struggle and hardships he fled from the army. For several years he lived among the peasants and understood that their life had not been better. So he made an attempt to persuade the Cossacks to move to the Kuban in search for «free lands». But he was arrested and sentenced to a penitentiary term in Siberia. In 1773 he managed to escape from the prison again and returned to the Cossacks. It was decided among them that Pugatchov would proclaim himself the emperor Peter III and organize a new rebellion of Cossacks and peasants against the tzar. His ultimate aims were as following: a just state can be ruled by a czar who was a poor common man himself.

Though having no special education he turned out to be an outstanding military leader and organizer of the peasant movement. He had an inborn wit and wisdom, he was brave and resolute. A lot of writers and artists were attracted by this outstanding character, however, the best psychological analysis of Pugatchov’s activity one can find in The Captain’s Daughter by A.S.Pushkin. In 1774 he was betrayed by several conspiracy-makers and arrested. After a trial in Simbirsk and Moscow he with four of his friends wereexecuted and his family was sent into the exile.