21 January — in Moscow, the execution of Yemelyan Pugachev and his closest associates took place on Bolotnaya Square. According to eyewitness accounts, a great many people attended the rebel’s execution, and the cold was bitter. After the manifesto was read, Pugachev, standing on the scaffold, crossed himself toward the cathedrals, bowed to all sides, and repented before the people. Then the head cut off by the executioner was shown to the crowd and was set on a pike, while the rest of the body was placed on the wheel. Perfiliev was executed the same way; Shigaev, Podurov, and Tornov were hanged.
According to a number of sources, the executioner had secret instructions from Catherine II to shorten the condemned men’s suffering; therefore, Pugachev and Perfiliev were beheaded first and only afterward were quartered. Their severed limbs were carried to Moscow’s outposts and burned the next day, and the executioners scattered the ashes.
When Pugachev had already been captured, the name Salavat Yulaev still inspired fear in what is now Ufa Governorate: he spared no one, especially Russians. At last, in February, he was captured and sentenced to flogging with the knout and lifelong penal labor in Rogervik (the Baltic port).
17 September — Catherine II ordered Prince Potemkin to found Kherson.
In April — the War of Independence began in North America, a liberation war of 13 English colonies that resulted in the creation of an independent state—the United States. It had the character of a bourgeois revolution.