Despite the transfer of the first fortified town of Saratov from the left bank to the right, the raids of the Tatars and Kalmyk nomads and their attacks on Saratov did not stop. Soon after that, the lower-ranking Volga freemen, especially developed in the reign of Alex Mikhailovich, joined the primordial enemies of the peaceful development of the new city. The main contingent of this freemen were peasants and Cossacks; every poor soul, looking for freedom, space and revelry, willingly joined gangs of robbers. All this burned and plundered wherever possible, and in the end, gathering in huge gangs, almost small armies, they attacked cities, having almost no means of defending themselves from the robbers. The memory of Stenka Razin and Pugachev has not died in the Saratov province to this day; it is preserved in folk songs, fairy tales and legends.
As for Stenka Razin, he mastered Saratov’s cunning: approaching the city walls, the robber begged to be allowed into the city to pray in the church, promising not to eat any evil. Most of the residents, imagining that they could so easily escape the strange fate that befell the cities taken by Razin, believed his words and let Razin into the city; but he broke in with him and his entire huge gang and the city was plundered. Saratov suffered the most from Pugachev.
At the time when Pugachev moved to Saratov from Penza, which had just been defeated by his hordes, the city had less than five hundred regular troops. It was difficult to defend with such limited forces against the countless gang of reckless rabble that made up Pugachev’s army, and then the Saratov authorities increased the difficulty by starting an untimely dispute about who should take command in the defense of the city - a dispute that continued even at the time when Pugachev was already standing under the walls of the city. Colonel Boshnyak and the article's adviser Ladyzhenevmy argued about which rank was higher, the rank of colonel or civil adviser. The poet Derzhavin, who held the rank of lieutenant in the guards, also took an active part in the dispute. The noble competition between these three persons, and mainly between two of them, ended in the victory of the colonel; Boshnyak took command of the Saratov army, and Derzhavin and Ladyzhensmy considered it best to leave the city before Pugachev burst into it. The question of the fate of Saratov was resolved very quickly: the army of Colonel Boshnyak, which entered into battle with Pugachev under the walls of the city, was completely suppressed by the enormous number of Pugachevites, and Saratov was betrayed to the most barbaric plunder and any violence on the part of bandits. It was August 5, 1774.
Saratov experienced a lot of hardships from all sorts of internal disorder, which were facilitated by the wicked governors, who often showed examples of such extortion and creative deeds that even Pugachev was fit for it; for example, when Saratov was ruled by voivode Khovansvy, its residents were not guaranteed, as they say, even from baiting by bears. Already at the time when, having become a provincial city, Saratov began to grow rapidly and become wealthy, it was more than once subjected to very serious debacles; Thus, in 1807 it suffered greatly from the plague, in 1810 a terrible fire destroyed the best part of the city, and
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— 114 three hundred catches a day, so that in total up to 10 thousand inhabitants died out in the city; in 1848, cholera recurred in even more terrible proportions. Despite all the misfortunes, the population of the Saratov region and the city of Saratov grew very quickly, which was partly helped by the artificial population of the province; Also, for example, in 1828, 500 families, former pupils of an orphanage, were sent to Saratov; Of these, 5 villages were subsequently formed: Mikhailovskoe, Martinskoe, Konstantinovskoe, Nikolaevskoe and Aleksandrovskoe. In terms of trade and industry, the development of Saratov also proceeded very quickly and its current economic situation is quite rightly characterized by the name given to Saratov as the Volga capital. Thanks to its black soil and the vast space it occupies, Saratov province is not without reason called one of the breadbaskets of Russia. The main subject of the Saratov beef trade is bread in all its forms, and therefore the factory industry of the region is aimed especially at processing agricultural products. Not superfluous will also mention the widespread production of sar-
Imperial 1st Anthem in Cavani.