The political tradition of imposture has a rich history and permeates Russian culture, beginning with the Time of Troubles, after which the Tsardom of Muscovy, expanding its borders to the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates, Siberia, and part of Livonia, was faced not only with an internal state crisis, but also with the culture of the Other. The entanglement of different forms of domination (social, economic, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and epistemological) characteristic for the Russian Empire allows for the placement of the phenomenon of imposture in the analytical frame of postcolonial theory, while making a number of conceptual adjustments to framework itself. The historical material used for the analysis is Pugachev's Rebellion (1773-1775) and its subsequent cultural reception.