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).
Pugachyov
It was founded as the "sloboda" of Mechetnaya () in 1764 by Old Believers who returned from Poland. In 1835, it was granted town status and renamed Nikolayevsk (), after the ruling Tsar Nicholas I. In 1918, it was renamed after Yemelyan Pugachev, leader of the great Cossack insurrection of the 1770s.