Yemelyan Pugachev
Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev () (c. 1742 – ) was a Russian Cossack who led a great popular insurrection during the reign of Catherine the Great, claiming to be her late husband, Emperor Peter III. Alexander Pushkin wrote a notable history of the rebellion, "The History of Pugachev", and he recounted some of the events in his novel "The Captain's Daughter" (1836).
Pugachev's Rebellion
The Imperial government endeavored to keep the matter of the rebellion strictly secret or, failing that, to portray it as a minor outbreak that would soon be quelled. The absence of an independent Russian press at the time, particularly in the provinces, meant that foreigners could read only what the government chose to print in the two official papers, or whatever news they could obtain from correspondents in the interior. (Alexander, 522) Russian government undertook to propagate in the foreign press its own version of events and directed its representatives abroad to play down the revolt.