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If need be the reigning monarch was declared to beno rightful ruler, or even Antichrist, but in his or herplace was put another, the rightful ruler, falsely said tohave been dead, actually alive and with the rebels, orsoon to join them, his faithful subjects. Hence the longline of pretender tsars who appeared so frequently andat times with such alarming success ever since the firstFalse Dmitry (1604; cf, pp. 82,206), and who illustrate soforcibly the sway among the illiterate masses of rumour,child-like make-believe, and daring impersonation. Theconduct of Pugachov and his associates best reveals thenature of the pretender idea.Pugachov, who was actually a runaway Don Cossackwanted by the police, gave himself out as Peter III,Catherine the Great's husband who had been deposedand murdered in 1762. Rumours that he was still aliveand near at hand had been rife, and there were at leastfour pretenders assuming his name before Pugachov,and at least one after him. Peter III enjoyed a certainposthumous popularity owing to the repercussions ofhis edict of 1762 absolving the gentry from compulsoryservice (see p. 143). This was believed to be either thework, not of the tsar, but of his enemies, or to be theharbinger of an emancipation edict for the peasantry thathad been secretly suppressed. The belief took veryconfused forms, but always there was the idea that Peterhad been about to save the serfs from their owners,when he was foully supplanted."There is great reason," Pugachov explained to hisfollowers, "why I am not loved by the gentry: many ofthem, young men and others of middling years, so ithappened . . . though fit to serve and given posts, wentoff into retirement and lived at their will off the peasantsin their villages and quite ruined them, poor folk, andthey alone almost ruled for themselves the whole empire.So I began to compel them to service and wanted totake away from them their villages, so that they serveonly for wages. And the officials who judge suitsunjustly and oppress the people I punished and wishedto hand over to the block.to dig a ditch for me.And so, for this they beganAnd when I went to take a row168