'God forbid you see a Russian rebellion—senseless and merciless,' Pushkin wrote in 'The Captain's Daughter'... and removed the chapter with these words from the novel. The words are beautiful, but wrong.

A Russian rebellion is not at all senseless. Nor is it always merciless. And witnessing it is a cruel experience, but cleansing for the mind and soul.

The rebellion of Yemelyan Pugachev shook the Russian Empire from 1773 to 1775. For Russia, this was a time of absolutism and world leadership. But how did the Age of Enlightenment give rise to the Horde demands of the rebels? Everything about the Pugachev rebellion is very complex. It had very bizarre causes and was heterogeneous to the point of fantasticalness. Alexei Ivanov's book 'Pitchforks' is a search for an answer to the question 'What is the Pugachev rebellion?'