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 Oak
Legend says that after the defeat in the battle of Kazan and retreat to the Mari forests, the rest of Pugachev's troops stayed under the oak, and Pugachev personally watched the burning of Kazan from this oak. However, there are doubts that the particular oak is the tree Pugachev's rebels stayed under, and some researchers consider that tree is estimated to date to about 1650 and at the time of Pugachev revolt it was an ordinary tree. Another major oak tree, estimated to date to about 1400 existed in the nearby fields until the 1940s, when it died and was sawed in the 1950s. It was possibly the original Pugachev's Oak.