Salawat Yulayev
Salawat Yulayev
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Salawat Yulayev

Salawat Yulayulı, Russianized to Salavat Yulayev (Bashkir: Салауат Юлай-улы, romanizedSalawat Yulay-ulı; Russian: Салават Юлаев, romanizedSalavat Yulayev; June 1754 – 8 October 1800) was a Bashkir national hero who helped lead the Pugachev's Rebellion. He was also a poet and singer.

Salawat Yulayev was born in the village of Tekeyevo, Orenburg Governorate in the Urals (now Salavatsky District, Bashkortostan). Tekeyevo no longer exists, as it was burned down in 1775.

Salawat Yulayev was at the head of the Bashkortostan uprising from the very beginning of the country war of 1773–1775. The Russian imperial authorities seized him on 24 November 1774, and his father, Yulay Aznalin, was captured even earlier. They were sent to Moscow in chains. Yulay Aznalin was a votchinnik (holder of the patrimonial estate), a rich, intelligent and influential man. He was held in general esteem among Bashkirs and was a Bauermeister (district foreman). The local authorities gave credence to him; his fidelity to the Imperial Russian government could not be doubted.

In 1768 the Orenburg governor prince Putyatin himself appointed Yulay as the foreman of the Bashkir command. But soon the merchant Tverdyshev was granted collegiate accessory rank and deprived Yulay Aznalin of his land to build Simsky plant and villages. The Bashkir land was falling to ruin, and so Yulay Aznalin and his nineteen-year-old son Salawat stood up under Yemelyan Pugachev’s banners.

Ten months after Salawat's capture, in September 1775, he and his father were publicly lashed in those places where the largest battles with the Russian governmental armies took place. In that month they were both dragged by their nostrils, and their foreheads and faces were branded. On 2 October 1775, their hands and legs chained, Salawat and Yulay were sent on two carts under "protection" to the Baltic fortress Rogervik (nowadays the city of Paldiski in Estonia) for life. The transport with convicts passed Menzelinsk, Kazan, Nizhni Novgorod, Moscow, reaching Tver on 14 November and then continuing on through Novgorod, Pskov, and Revel and arriving finally in Rogervik on 29 November.

The Baltic port Rogervik had been founded by Peter the Great. However, when participants of the Bashkir uprising arrived in Rogervik, the fortress was practically deserted. There was only a small garrison and a small number of prisoners. Here Salawat and Yulay met their brothers-in-arms in struggle: Pugachev Colonel I.S. Aristov, Colonel Kanzafar Usaev, and others. Salawat Yulayev and his father lived the rest of their lives in Rogervik.

When Paul I ascended the throne, the commandant of the fortress Langel submitted an inquiry about moving the remaining participants of the Pugachev Uprising to Taganrog or to Irkutsk to a cloth factory. The resolution came from the Senate: The aforementioned convicts are subject to be moved… For their villainies they are banished by imperial command, and it is ordered to keep them in this port with possible caution that they could not run away." There was a special manifest on 17 March 1775 which was published by the late empress Catherine II. By her order all participants of the Pugachev revolt were to be imprisoned forever, and their names should "be condemned to eternal oblivion and deep silence." Under this manifest, local authorities pursued everyone who pronounced the names of the freedom fighter rebels against Russian overlordship.

Salawat was literate. He wrote in Old Tatar, which used to be a common written language for Turkic peoples in the Volga-Ural region. Documents signed by him have been preserved. Researchers believe that Salavat also spoke Russian.[citation needed] After all, he had to communicate with the rebels against Russian imperialism, with the Russian leaders of the uprising.

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