The Long Shadow of the Cossack Poet

Salavat Yulaev, you can never escape his name or his likeness in Ufa or anywhere else in Bashkortostan. The encyclopedias tell us he was a revolutionary, a martyr and a poet, gathering his followers around the same time as George Washington, yet living half a world away.  One of the representatives from the Kontinental Hockey League is a history student, and I asked her for a Russian version of this legend's history.  The following is a rephrasing from KHL's Maria:

In the late 1700's German-born Catherine the Great began her reign in Russia.  In her goal to close the gap with the economic giants of Europe, she made many concessions to the nobles and the ruling class of Russia, at the expense of the peasants.  A lot of poor, yet independent farmers found themselves toiling in factories and mines. Whatever freedom they had enjoyed was lost.

The proud cossacks who roamed the steppes and patrolled the Don River also lost privileges. Their primary income was from sales of fish, but Catherine forbid anyone to take salt.  The loss of salt crippled the Cossacks ability to preserve and sell fish, creating great hardships.  Soon there were two factions, the peasants and the cossacks, feeling the sting of Catherine's leadership, a woman Tsar that could barely speak the Russian language.  The masses needed a leader to unite them.

Young Salavat Yulaev was a Cossack from the Don River region.  When he was young he suffered an illness that left many marks on his skin. When consolidating his power he would show people his scars as a sign of being touched by some higher powers.  He allowed the uneducated to think he was really the late husband of Catherine, Peter the Third, having escaped Catherine's murderous plot.  He was a master at manipulating the hearts and minds of the Russian people.

Salavat's father was a soldier who gained hero's status fighting Poland.  The Russian government sent him to a Bashkir military post, which is how Salavat came to the region.  Catherine's Tsarist regime came to the Bashkirs to occupy the lands in the early 1770's, when Salavat was 19 years old.  Salavat joined his father, uniting the Peasants and the Cossacks in what is known in history books as Pugachev's rebellion.  They killed nobles and burned their estates in brutal class warfare. The intense fighting lasted from 1773 to 1775 before Salavat was finally arrested with all his family as the revolt was  quashed.

Heavy Metal

Much of Ulaev's family was eventually freed, but not Salavat.  He was branded and sent to a work camp in Estonia on the Baltic Sea where he spent over half his life before dying.  He wrote many poems about nature while locked up, and there remains a mystery over the authorship of the 500 poems credited to him.  But his legend lives on, most visibly in the 40 ton mega-statue towering over the Bela River in Ufa.  There is also a championship KHL team named after him,  a city in the Bashkirs, the State Prize and a major street in Ufa.  Mostly, he is part of the rich folklore of this region.

"My Fate is my People's Fate"