Conquest of Siberia years. History of Siberia

Beyond the great Stone Belt, the Urals, lie the vast expanses of Siberia. This territory occupies almost three quarters of the entire area of ​​our country. Siberia is larger than the second largest country (after Russia) in the world - Canada. More than twelve million square kilometers contain inexhaustible reserves of natural resources, which, if used wisely, are sufficient for the life and prosperity of many generations of people.

Trekking beyond the Stone Belt

The development of Siberia began in the last years of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The most convenient outpost for moving deeper into this wild and uninhabited region at that time was the middle Urals, the undivided owner of which was the Stroganov family of merchants. Using the patronage of the Moscow kings, they owned vast territories of land, on which there were thirty-nine villages and the city of Solvychegodsk with a monastery. They also owned a chain of forts that stretched along the border with the possessions of Khan Kuchum.

The history of Siberia, or more precisely, its conquest by the Russian Cossacks, began with the fact that the tribes inhabiting it refused to pay the Russian Tsar yasyk - the tribute that they had been subject to for many years. Moreover, the nephew of their ruler, Khan Kuchum, with a large detachment of cavalry, carried out a series of raids on villages belonging to the Stroganovs. To protect themselves from such unwanted guests, rich merchants hired Cossacks led by ataman Vasily Timofeevich Alenin, nicknamed Ermak. Under this name he entered Russian history.

First steps in an unknown region

In September 1582, a detachment of seven hundred and fifty people began their legendary campaign beyond the Urals. It was a kind of discovery of Siberia. Along the entire route, the Cossacks were lucky. The Tatars who inhabited those regions, although superior in numbers, were inferior militarily. They had virtually no knowledge of firearms, which were so widespread by that time in Russia, and fled in panic every time they heard a volley.

The khan sent his nephew Mametkul with an army of ten thousand to meet the Russians. The battle took place near the Tobol River. Despite their numerical superiority, the Tatars suffered a crushing defeat. The Cossacks, building on their success, came close to the khan's capital, Kashlyk, and here they finally crushed their enemies. The former ruler of the region fled, and his warlike nephew was captured. From that day on, the Khanate practically ceased to exist. The history of Siberia is taking a new turn.

Fights with foreigners

In those days, the Tatars were subject to a large number of tribes that they conquered and were their tributaries. They did not know money and paid their yasyk with the skins of fur-bearing animals. From the moment of the defeat of Kuchum, these peoples came under the rule of the Russian Tsar, and carts with sables and martens reached distant Moscow. This valuable product has always and everywhere been in great demand, and especially in the European market.

However, not all tribes accepted the inevitable. Some of them continued their resistance, although it weakened every year. The Cossack detachments continued their campaign. In 1584, their legendary ataman Ermak Timofeevich died. This happened, as often happens in Russia, due to negligence and oversight - no sentries were posted at one of the rest stops. It so happened that a prisoner who had escaped a few days earlier brought an enemy detachment at night. Taking advantage of the Cossacks' oversight, they suddenly attacked and began to slaughter the sleeping people. Ermak, trying to escape, jumped into the river, but a massive shell - a personal gift from Ivan the Terrible - carried him to the bottom.

Life in a conquered land

From that time on, active development began. Following the Cossack detachments, hunters, peasants, clergy and, of course, officials flocked to the taiga wilderness. Everyone who found themselves beyond the Ural ridge became free people. There was no serfdom or landownership here. They paid only the tax established by the state. Local tribes, as mentioned above, were taxed with a fur yasyk. During this period, income from the treasury from Siberian furs was a significant contribution to the Russian budget.

The history of Siberia is inextricably linked with the creation of a system of forts - defensive fortifications (around which, by the way, many cities subsequently grew), which served as outposts for the further conquest of the region. Thus, in 1604 the city of Tomsk was founded, which later became the largest economic and cultural center. After a short time, Kuznetsk and Yenisei forts appeared. They housed military garrisons and the administration that controlled the collection of yasyk.

Documents from those years testify to many facts of corruption among government officials. Despite the fact that, by law, all furs had to go to the treasury, some officials, as well as Cossacks directly involved in collecting tribute, inflated the established norms, appropriating the difference in their favor. Even then, such lawlessness was strictly punished, and there are many cases where covetous people paid for their deeds with freedom and even their lives.

Further penetration into new lands

The process of colonization became especially intense after the end of the Time of Troubles. The goal of everyone who dared to seek happiness in new, unexplored lands was this time Eastern Siberia. This process proceeded at a very rapid pace, and by the end of the 17th century the Russians reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. By this time, a new government structure had emerged - the Siberian Order. His responsibilities included establishing new procedures for managing controlled territories and promoting governors, who were locally authorized representatives of the tsarist government.

In addition to the fur collection, furs were also purchased, the payment for which was made not with money, but with all kinds of goods: axes, saws, various tools, as well as fabrics. History, unfortunately, has preserved many cases of abuse here too. Often, the arbitrariness of officials and Cossack elders ended in riots of local residents, which had to be pacified by force.

Main directions of colonization

Eastern Siberia was developed in two main directions: to the north along the sea coast, and to the south along the borders with neighboring states. At the beginning of the 17th century, the banks of the Irtysh and Ob were settled by Russians, and after them large areas adjacent to the Yenisei. Cities such as Tyumen, Tobolsk and Krasnoyarsk were founded and began to be built. All of them were destined to become major industrial and cultural centers over time.

Further advance of the Russian colonists was carried out mainly along the Lena River. Here in 1632 a fort was founded, which gave rise to the city of Yakutsk - the most important stronghold at that time in the further development of the northern and eastern territories. Largely thanks to this, just two years later the Cossacks, led by them, managed to reach the Pacific coast, and soon they saw the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin for the first time.

Conquerors of the Wild Land

The history of Siberia and the Far East preserves the memory of another outstanding traveler - the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev. In 1648, he and the detachment he led on several ships circumnavigated the coast of North Asia for the first time and proved the existence of a strait separating Siberia from America. At the same time, another traveler, Poyarov, passed along the southern border of Siberia and climbed up the Amur, reaching the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

After some time, Nerchinsk was founded. Its significance is largely determined by the fact that as a result of moving east, the Cossacks came closer to China, which also laid claim to these territories. By that time, the Russian Empire had reached its natural borders. Over the next century, there was a steady process of consolidating the results achieved during colonization.

Legislative acts related to new territories

The history of Siberia in the 19th century is characterized mainly by the abundance of administrative innovations introduced into the life of the region. One of the earliest was the division of this vast territory into two governor generals, approved in 1822 by a personal decree of Alexander I. Tobolsk became the center of the Western, and Irkutsk became the center of the Eastern. They, in turn, were divided into provinces, and those into volost and foreign councils. This transformation was a consequence of the well-known reform

In the same year, ten legislative acts were published, signed by the tsar and regulating all aspects of administrative, economic and legal life. Much attention in this document was paid to issues related to the arrangement of places of deprivation of liberty and the procedure for serving sentences. By the 19th century, hard labor and prisons had become an integral part of this region.

The map of Siberia in those years is replete with the names of mines in which work was carried out exclusively by convicts. These are Nerchinsky, and Zabaikalsky, and Blagodatny and many others. As a result of the large influx of exiles from among the Decembrists and participants in the Polish rebellion of 1831, the government even united all Siberian provinces under the supervision of a specially formed gendarmerie district.

The beginning of industrialization of the region

Of the main ones that received widespread development during this period, gold mining should be noted first of all. By the middle of the century, it accounted for the majority of the total volume of precious metal mined in the country. Also, large revenues to the state treasury came from mining enterprises, which by this time had significantly increased the volume of mineral extraction. Many other branches are also developing.

In the new century

At the beginning of the 20th century, the impetus for the further development of the region was the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The history of Siberia in the post-revolutionary period is full of drama. A fratricidal war, monstrous in scale, swept across its expanses, ending with the liquidation of the White movement and the establishment of Soviet power. During the Great Patriotic War, many industrial and military enterprises were evacuated to this region. As a result, the population of many cities is increasing sharply.

It is known that only for the period 1941-1942. More than a million people arrived here. In the post-war period, when numerous giant factories, power plants and railway lines were built, there was also a significant influx of visitors - all those for whom Siberia became their new home. On the map of this vast region appeared names that became symbols of the era - the Baikal-Amur Mainline, Novosibirsk Akademgorodok and much more.

One of the most remarkable pages in Russian history is the development of Siberia. Today, the Siberian expanses make up the majority of Russian territory. And at the beginning of the 15th century, Siberia was a real “blank spot”. For our country, the feat of Ermak, who conquered Siberia for Russia, became one of the most epochal events in the formation of the Russian state.

In the 15th century, between the lands of the Golden Horde (meaning the Astrakhan, Crimean and Kazan khanates) and the Moscow state there were vast expanses of “no man’s” land. Despite the fact that the territories were very attractive for development, the Russians looked with longing and pity at the fertile, fatty steppe lands that they did not dare to develop.

Only the brave Cossacks were not afraid to set up their settlements in the zone of the “no man’s” steppe. The most desperate people flocked to these villages, looking for a free life, ready to fight and not afraid of military campaigns.

In response to the raids of the steppe inhabitants, the Cossacks made campaigns against the Nogai, Crimean and Kazan lands. Often the Cossacks took loot from the Tatar hordes returning after plundering Russian lands and freed the captives. Thus, the Cossacks took an active part in the war against the enemies of Rus'.

The most famous Cossack who fought for Rus' was Ermak Timofeevich (Ermak was the nickname he adopted, but his real name was Erema). Even before the famous Siberian campaign, he honed his skills and gained experience as the chieftain of a Cossack detachment on the border of the steppes. Little information has been preserved about Ermak’s personality: it is known that he was strong, eloquent and “black-haired.”

According to one legend, Ermak’s grandfather, Afanasy Alenin, helped the Murom robbers. Ermak himself worked for some time on plows that sailed along the Volga and Kama. But soon he took up robbery.

There were many rumors about Ermak's robber past. For example, the English traveler John Perry argued in his notes that Ermak was a noble robber: he did not kill anyone, robbed only the rich and shared the proceeds with the poor. However, historians doubt the reliability of this information. Thus, they reject the widespread legend that Ermak, together with the Volga Cossacks, robbed the Persian ambassadors. However, based on information from the “Land Book of the Ambassadorial Order”, it follows that the ambassadors were robbed several years after the death of Ermak. Thus, we can conclude that information about Ermak’s robber past may be incorrect - and this is the first mystery.

The second historical mystery is that it is unknown in what year Ermak Timofeevich went with his comrades on a Siberian campaign. According to various sources, this could have happened in the period 1579-1582. And it happened like this.

Having repulsed another attack by the warriors of the Horde prince Ali, the Cossacks began to prepare for a long campaign. The wealthy merchant clan of the Stroganovs provided them with everything they needed, including ammunition and a large supply of bread. All reserves should have been enough for two years. About a thousand Cossacks went on a campaign.

Why did Ermak and his army move towards Siberia?

At that time, the Siberian Khanate was part of the previously disintegrated Golden Horde. For a long time it lived peacefully with neighboring Russia. However, when Khan Kuchum took power in the khanate, numerous detachments of Tatars began to attack Russian lands located in the Western Urals. In one of these raids, the horde of Tsarevich Ali, who lost the battle to the Cossacks near Nizhny Chusovsky, did not return to their Siberian estates, but retreated to Cherdyn. The Ermakovites did not catch up with him; they decided to take advantage of the unique moment when the Siberian expanses were left without the protection of the horde in order to conquer Siberia and, at the same time, end this endless war. The Cossacks understood that the defeat of Ali’s hordes was not enough for complete victory and that the entire force of the numerous khan’s troops settled in the Siberian region would come out against them.

Before the campaign, priests in the churches of Chusovskie Gorodki served a prayer service and blessed the soldiers on their difficult journey, bells rang, and the Cossacks marched under the banner with the face of Jesus Christ. The chronicles say that during the entire Siberian campaign, the Cossacks observed all Orthodox fasts and participated in prayer services before battles. In the meantime, the Cossacks set off along the river on three dozen plows. At that time, the safest way to travel across the southern Russian steppes was to move along the river on plows, since in this way it was easiest to get away from the fast Tatar horses. Each plow was about ten meters long, with 18 rowers located at the sides. The Cossacks rowed alternately, and when the enemy appeared, they took up arms. The plows had to be dragged by hand in case of crossing a watershed.

It is not known exactly who became the instigator of the Siberian campaign of the Cossacks. But it has been established for certain that the Stroganov merchants financed the performances. The merchants hoped that the military campaign would stop the Tatar raids and serve to protect their property. It is possible that Ivan the Terrible instructed the Stroganovs to organize and pay for a trip to uncharted Siberian lands. There is a version that the tsar, having learned about the Cossacks’ impending campaign to Siberia, wrote a letter to the Stroganovs, demanding that the Cossacks be sent to defend the towns that were attacked by the troops of Khan Kuchum and his eldest son Aley.

Ermak’s campaign was successful; in several battles, the army of the Cossack ataman won a victory over the Tatar troops. With battles, the Cossacks, led by Ermak, reached the Irtysh River and captured the capital of the Siberian Khanate - now the city of Kashlyk. Ermak received numerous delegations of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, took an oath on behalf of Ivan the Terrible and forced them to pay tribute in favor of the Russian state.

Ermak did not stop at capturing the main city of the Siberian Khanate: his detachment moved further along the Irtysh and Ob. The Cossacks captured one ulus after another and took the oath to the Russian Tsar. For several years, until 1585, Ermak’s squad fought with the warriors of Khan Kuchum in the vastness of Siberia.

After Ermak considered his duty to annex Siberia under the hand of the Russian Tsar completed, he sent an ambassador to Ivan the Terrible with a victorious report. Ivan IV was very happy and hastened to thank not only the ambassador for the good news, but also all the Cossacks participating in the campaign. The ambassador took two chain mail pieces of excellent work to Ermak himself. According to the chronicles, one of them previously belonged to the famous governor Shuisky. The chain mail weighed about 12 kg, it was made in the form of a shirt, consisted of 16 thousand rings, on the right side of the chain mail was attached a copper plate with the image of a double-headed eagle.

On August 6, 1585, a detachment of Cossacks numbering up to 50 people, together with ataman Ermak Timofeevich, stopped for the night on the Irtysh, not far from the mouth of the Vagai River. Several detachments of Khan Kuchum unexpectedly attacked the Cossacks, killing all Ermak’s fighters. The chieftain himself tried to swim to get to the plows. He was wearing two chain mail donated by the king. They became the cause of Ermak’s death; he drowned in the water of the Irtysh.

However, there is indirect evidence that this story had a continuation. Popular rumor says that a day later (according to some sources, eight days) Ermak’s body fell into the fishing nets of a Tatar fisherman, who hastened to report his discovery to Khan Kuchum himself. In order to make sure of the death of the famous Russian ataman, the entire Tatar nobility gathered. The joy was so great that the Tatars continued celebrating the death of Ermak for several days. Having fun, the Tatars, for a week, shot at Ermak’s body with bows. They took his chain mail with them. The daring chieftain was buried secretly, and the exact location of his grave is still unknown.

The further fate of Khan Kuchum also did not work out. After the annexation of Siberian lands to Russia, he roamed near Tobolsk for a long time, but did not enter into battle with the Russians, only ruining the settlements of his former subjects. All his sons were gradually captured and taken to Moscow. He was repeatedly offered to go into the service of the Russian Tsar, but the aged Kuchum replied that he was a free man and wanted to die a free man too. He failed to regain the throne of Siberia.

It so happened that the deaths of two opponents – Kuchum and Ermak – remained a mystery. Both of them have unknown graves, and legends live about them among the Tatar people.

In history, Ermak looks like a hero, and Khan Kuchum suffered the fate of a villain, although, in fairness, his desire for independence and love of freedom should be recognized, which means it is worth looking at his personality from the other side.

It so happened that Ermak Timofeevich became not only a historical figure, but also a key figure in Russian national folklore. There are many tales, legends and songs about him. In them, the dashing chieftain Ermak Timofeevich is described as a person of exceptional courage and bravery. Although it must be admitted that there is very little real data about the conqueror of Siberia, and the available information is quite contradictory. It is this circumstance that forces many researchers to again and again look for new information about the national hero of Rus', and now Russia.

While failures in the west greatly upset Ivan the Terrible, he was unexpectedly pleased with the conquest of vast Siberia in the east.

Back in 1558, the tsar gave the wealthy industrialist Grigory Stroganov large uninhabited lands on both sides of the Kama River to Chusovaya for 146 miles. Grigory Stroganov and his brother Yakov, following the example of their father, who made a huge fortune in Solvychegodsk from the salt industry, planned to establish large-scale salt pans in the new region, populate it, start arable farming and trade. The settlement of empty places and the establishment of new industries was, of course, very beneficial for the entire state, and therefore the tsar not only willingly ceded lands to enterprising industrialists, but also gave them great benefits.

The Stroganovs were given the right to call free people to their lands, to judge the settlers, who were freed from all taxes and duties for twenty years; then the right was given to build fortifications and maintain armed detachments for defense against attacks by neighboring peoples (Ostyaks, Cheremis, Nogais, etc.). Finally, Stroganov was allowed to recruit willing people, Cossacks, and go to war against hostile foreigners. Soon the Stroganovs had to face the tribes that lived next door, beyond the Ural Mountains. Here, on the banks of the Tobol, Irtysh and Tura rivers, was the Tatar kingdom; the main city was called Isker, or Siberia, on the Tobol River; After the name of this city, the entire kingdom was called Siberian. Previously, the Siberian khans sought the patronage of the Moscow Tsar, at one time they even paid him yasak (tribute) in furs, but the last Khan Kuchum showed hostility towards Moscow, beat and captured the Ostyaks who paid tribute to her; and the Siberian prince Makhmet-Kul went with his army to the Chusovaya River to explore the routes to the Stroganov towns, and here he beat many Moscow tributaries, took their wives and children captive. The Stroganovs notified Ivan the Terrible about this and beat him to allow them to fortify themselves beyond the Urals, keep a fire outfit (artillery) there for defense, and at their own expense recruit volunteers to fight the khans of Siberia. The king allowed it. This was in 1574. Grigory and Yakov Stroganov were no longer alive. The business was continued by their younger brother Semyon and children: Maxim, son of Yakov, and Nikita, son of Gregory.

It was not difficult to recruit a squad of daredevils at that time.

Along the southern and eastern steppe outskirts of the Moscow state, as was said, since the 15th century, free, walking people eager for war have been appearing - the Cossacks. Some of them lived in the villages, carried out the sovereign's service, defended the borders from attacks by bandit Tatar gangs, while others, in the full sense of the free “steppe birds,” escaped from any supervision, “walked” in the expanse of the steppe, attacked at their own peril , on the Tatars, robbed them, hunted in the steppe, fished along the rivers, broke up Tatar merchant caravans, and sometimes they didn’t let Russian merchants go... Gangs of such Cossacks walked both along the Don and the Volga. To the complaints of the Nogai Khan that the Cossacks, despite the fact that he was at peace with Moscow, were robbing Tatar merchants on the Don, Ivan the Terrible replied:

“These robbers live on the Don without our knowledge, they run from us. We have sent more than once before to catch them, but our people cannot catch them.”

It was indeed very difficult to catch gangs of these “thieving” Cossacks, as they were called, in the wide steppes.

A gang of such Cossack freemen, more than 500 people, was brought into the service of the Stroganovs by Ataman Vasily Timofeev, nicknamed Ermak. He was a daredevil of heroic strength, and, moreover, very dexterous and quick-witted... Ermak’s main assistants were Ivan Koltso, who was sentenced to death for his robberies, but was not caught, Nikita Pan and Vasily Meshcheryak - all of these were fellows who, as they say, went through fire and water, who knew no fear. The rest of Ermak’s comrades were like them. The Stroganovs needed such people, ready for anything. They wanted not only to defend their possessions from the attacks of the Siberian king, but to give him a warning in order to discourage him from attacks for a long time. To do this, it was decided to attack Kuchum in his own Siberia. This enterprise, which promised both good booty and military glory, was very much to the liking of Ermak and his fellows. The Stroganovs provided them with everything they needed: food supplies, guns, even small cannons.

Several dozen more daring hunters joined Ermak’s detachment, so that in total there were 840 people in the detachment. Taking with him counselors who knew the river routes well and interpreters, Ermak on September 1, 1582 set off with his daring squad to Siberia to seek his fortune.

According to the slander of one governor, the unkindness of the Stroganovs, the tsar ordered them to return Ermak and not to bully the Siberian “Saltan”; but the royal letter arrived late: the Cossacks were already far away.

At first they sailed on plows and canoes up the Chusovaya River; then we turned into the Serebryanka River. This path was difficult; in some places it was necessary to swim in shallow water on rafts. From Serebryanka, Ermak's people were transported by drag through passes in the Ural ridge to the Zharovlya River, which flows into Tagil, from here they descended into the Tura River. Until now the Cossacks had not encountered any obstacles; Rarely did they even see people along the banks: the land here was wild, almost completely deserted. The Tura River became more crowded. Here we first met the town (now the city of Turinsk), where the Siberian prince Epancha ruled. Here we had to use our weapons, because from the shore they began to shoot at Ermak’s Cossacks with bows. They fired a volley of guns. Several Tatars fell; the rest fled in horror: they had never seen firearms before. The town of Epanchi was ravaged by the Cossacks. Soon they had to disperse another crowd of Tatars with gunfire. They frightened those captured with shots, showed them how bullets pierced their armor, and obtained information from them about Kuchum and his forces. Ermak deliberately released some of the captives so that they would spread fear everywhere with their stories about the miraculous properties of Russian weapons.

“Russian warriors are strong,” they said, according to the chronicle, “when they shoot from their bows, then fire blazes out of them, great smoke comes out, and it’s as if thunder strikes.” The arrows are not visible, but they wound and kill. It is impossible to protect yourself from them with any armor; our kuyaks, armor and chain mail - they all pierce through!

The gun, of course, was what the handful of brave men, led by Ermak, hoped most of all for, planning no more, no less, than to conquer an entire kingdom and subjugate tens of thousands of people.

Map of the Siberian Khanate and Ermak's campaign

The Cossacks sailed down the Tobol, and more than once they had to disperse crowds of natives with shots. The ruler of Siberia, Kuchum, although he was frightened by the stories of the fugitives about the large forces of the enemy and various ominous predictions, did not intend to give up without a fight. He gathered his entire army. He himself encamped on the banks of the Irtysh, near the mouth of the Tobol (not far from the present city of Tobolsk), on Mount Chuvashevo, set up a new ambush here just in case, and sent Tsarevich Makhmet-Kul forward with a large army to meet Ermak’s Cossacks. He met them on the banks of the Tobol, at the Babasan tract, started a battle, but could not defeat them. They floated forward; On the way we took another Siberian town; They found rich booty here, took it with them and moved on. When the Tobol flowed into the Irtysh, the Tatars again overtook the Cossacks and showered them with arrows. Ermak's people repulsed this attack, but they already had several killed, and almost all were wounded by arrows. Things were getting hot. The Tatars probably saw that there weren’t too many enemies, and they attacked them with all their might. But Ermak was already not far from the capital; the fate of his Siberian campaign was soon to be decided. It was necessary to knock Kuchum out of his abattoir and take possession of the capital. The Cossacks began to think: Kuchum had much more strength - for each Russian, perhaps, there were twenty Tatars. The Cossacks gathered in a circle and began to discuss what to do: whether to go forward or go back. Some began to say that we had to return; others and Ermak himself thought differently.

“Brothers,” they said, “where should we run?” Autumn is already: the ice is freezing in the rivers... Let's not accept bad glory, let's not lay reproach on ourselves, let's hope in God: He is also a helper for the helpless! Let us remember, brothers, the promise we made to honest people (the Stroganovs). We cannot return back from Siberia in shame. If God helps us, then even after death our memory will not fade in these countries, and our glory will be eternal!

Everyone agreed with this and decided to stay and fight until death.

At dawn, October 23, Ermak's Cossacks moved to the abatement. Cannons and rifles have now served them well. The Tatars fired clouds of arrows from behind their fence, but did little harm to the Russian daredevils; Finally, they themselves broke through their ambush in three places and attacked the Cossacks. A terrible hand-to-hand battle began. Here guns didn’t help: we had to cut with swords or grab them directly with our hands. It turned out that Ermak’s people showed themselves to be heroes here too: despite the fact that the enemies were twenty times more numerous, the Cossacks broke them. Makhmet-Kul was wounded, the Tatars mixed up, many lost heart; Other Siberian princes subject to Kuchum, seeing that the enemies were prevailing, left the battle. Kuchum first fled to his capital Siberia, seized his belongings here and fled further.

Conquest of Siberia by Ermak. Painting by V. Surikov, 1895

On October 26, Ermak’s Cossacks occupied Siberia, abandoned by its inhabitants. The victors in the empty city were despondent. Their numbers have greatly diminished: in the last battle alone, 107 people fell; there were many wounded and sick. They could no longer bear to go any further, but meanwhile their supplies had run out and a fierce winter was approaching. Hunger and death threatened them...

But after a few days, the Ostyaks, Vogulichs, Tatars with their princelings began to come to Ermak, beat him with their foreheads - they brought him gifts and various supplies; He swore the oath to the sovereign, reassured them with his mercy, treated them kindly and released them without any offense to their yurts. The Cossacks were strictly forbidden to offend the conquered natives.

The Cossacks spent the winter quietly; As soon as Makhmet-Kul attacked them, Ermak defeated him, and he did not bother the Cossacks for some time; but with the onset of spring, I thought about attacking them by surprise, but I myself was in trouble: the Cossacks waylaid the enemies, attacked them sleepy at night and captured Makhmet-Kul. Ermak treated him very kindly. The captivity of this brave and zealous Tatar knight was a blow for Kuchum. At this time, his personal enemy, a Tatar prince, went to war against him; Finally, his governor betrayed him. Things were very bad for Kuchum.

The Cossacks spent the summer of 1582 on campaigns, conquering Tatar towns and uluses along the Siberian rivers Irtysh and Ob. Meanwhile, Ermak let the Stroganovs know that he “defeated Saltan Kuchum, captured his capital city and captured Tsarevich Makhmet-Kul.” The Stroganovs hastened to please the Tsar with this news. Soon a special embassy from Ermak appeared in Moscow - Ivan Ring with several comrades - to beat the sovereign with the kingdom of Siberia and present him with a gift of precious products of the conquered Siberia: sable, beaver and fox furs.

For a long time, contemporaries say, there has not been such joy in Moscow. The rumor that God's mercy towards Russia had not diminished, that God had sent her a new vast Siberian kingdom, quickly spread among the people and brought joy to everyone who had become accustomed in recent years to hearing only about failures and disasters.

The Terrible Tsar received Ivan the Ring graciously, not only forgave him and his comrades for their previous crimes, but generously rewarded him, and, they say, sent Ermak a fur coat from his shoulder, a silver ladle and two shells as a gift; but most importantly, he sent the governor, Prince Volkhovsky, to Siberia with a significant detachment of troops. Very few daredevils remained under the hand of Ermak, and it would have been difficult for him to maintain his conquest without help. Makhmet-Kul was sent to Moscow, where he entered the service of the Tsar; but Kuchum still managed to recover and gain strength. Russian soldiers had a bad time in Siberia: they often suffered from shortages of life supplies; diseases spread among them; It happened that the Tatar princes, at first pretending to be loyal tributaries and allies, then destroyed Ermak’s troops, who trusted them. This is how Ivan Koltso and several comrades died. The governor sent by the king died of illness.

Conquest of Siberia by Ermak. Painting by V. Surikov, 1895. Fragment

Soon Ermak himself died. He found out that Kuchum was going to intercept the Bukhara caravan on its way to Siberia. Taking with him 50 of his daredevils, Ermak hurried to meet the Bukhara merchants in order to protect them from predators on their way along the Irtysh. The Cossacks waited all day for the caravan at the confluence of the Vagaya River with the Irtysh; but neither the merchants nor the predators showed up... The night was stormy. The rain was pouring down. The wind raged on the river. The exhausted Cossacks settled down to rest on the shore and soon fell asleep like the dead. Ermak made a mistake this time - he didn’t post guards, he didn’t think, it’s obvious that the enemies would attack on such a night. And the enemy was very close: on the other side of the river, the Cossacks were lying in wait! . At the direction of the spies, the Tatars secretly crossed the river, attacked the sleeping Cossacks and cut them all down, except two. One escaped and brought to Siberia the terrible news of the beating of the detachment, and the other - Ermak himself, hearing groans, jumped up, managed to fight off the killers who rushed at him with his saber, rushed from the shore into the Irtysh, thinking to escape by swimming, but drowned from the weight of his iron armor (5 August 1584). A few days later, Ermak’s body was washed ashore by the current of the river, where the Tatars found him and, judging by his rich armor with a copper frame, with a golden eagle on his chest, they recognized the drowned man as the conqueror of Siberia. It is clear how happy Kuchum was about this, how all his enemies celebrated the death of Ermak! And in Siberia, the news of the leader’s death led the Russians to such despair that they no longer tried to fight Kuchum, they left Siberia to return to their homeland. This happened after the death of Ivan the Terrible.

But Ermak’s case did not die. The path to Siberia was indicated, and the beginning of Russian rule was laid here. After the death of Ivan the Terrible and the death of Ermak, Russian detachments, one after another, followed the path that he indicated, beyond the Stone Belt (Ural) to Siberia; the native semi-wild peoples, one after another, fell under the power of the Russian Tsar and brought him their yasak (tax); Russian villages were established in the new region, cities were built, and little by little the entire north of Asia with its inexhaustible riches went to Russia.

Ermak was not mistaken when he told his companions: “Our memory will not fail in these countries.” The memory of the daredevils who laid the foundation for Russian rule in Siberia lives to this day both here and in their homeland. In their songs, our people still remember the daring Cossack chieftain, who atoned for his guilt before the tsar by conquering Siberia. One song talks about Ermak, how he, having defeated Kuchum, sent to tell the king:

“Oh, you are a goy, Nadezhda Orthodox Tsar!
They didn’t order me to be executed, but they told me to say:
Like me, Ermak, son Timofeevich,
Just like I walked on the blue sea,
What about the blue sea along the Khvalynsky (Caspian),
Just like I broke bead ships...
And now, Nadezhda the Orthodox Tsar,
I bring you a wild little head
And with a wild little head the kingdom of Siberia!”

Local legends about Ermak have also been preserved in Siberia; and in 1839 in the city of Tobolsk, not far from the place where the ancient Isker, or Siberia, was located, a monument was erected to perpetuate the memory of the daring conqueror of this region.

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Kursk State Technical University

Department of History

Abstract on the topic:

"Conquest of Siberia"

Completed by: senior group ES-61

Zatey N.O.

Checked by: K.I.N., Associate Professor of the Department of History

Goryushkina N.E.

K U R S K 2 0 0 6

1. Introduction............................................... ........................................................ .3

2. Conquest of Siberia.................................................. .....................................4

2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance.................................................4

2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state....................................10

2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia………………………………….20

Conclusion................................................. ...................................................28

List of used literature

Introduction

Relevance of the topic: The conquest and annexation of new territories strengthen the state with the influx of a new mass of taxes, minerals, as well as the influx of new knowledge received from the conquered peoples. New lands provide new prospects for the development of the country, in particular: new access to the seas and oceans, borders with new states, making it possible to increase the volume of trade.

Goal of the work: Study in depth the conquest and annexation of Siberia to the Russian state.

Tasks:

Study Ermak's campaign;

Study the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state;

Find out which nationalities were conquered;

Historiography overview: Once upon a time, Russian colonists were pioneers in the development of new lands. Ahead of the government, they settled in the “wild field” in the Lower Volga region, on the Terek, on Yalik and on the Don. The campaign of Ermak's Cossacks to Siberia was a direct continuation of this popular movement.

Ermak's Cossacks took the first step. Following them, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to the East. In the fight against harsh nature, they conquered land from the taiga, founded settlements and established centers of agricultural culture.

Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. His oppression was experienced equally by both local tribes and Russian settlers. The rapprochement of the Russian working people and Siberian tribes was conducive to the development of productive forces and overcoming the centuries-old disunity of the Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.

2. Conquest of Siberia

2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance

Long before the Russian development of Siberia, its population had connections with the Russian people. The first to begin their acquaintance with the Trans-Urals and Western Siberia were the Novgorodians, who already in the 11th century tried to master the Pechora route beyond Kamen (Ural). Russian people were attracted to Siberia by the rich fur and sea trades and the opportunities for barter with local residents. Following the sailors and explorers, Novgorod squads began to periodically appear in the northwestern reaches of Siberia, collecting tribute from the local population. The Novgorod nobility has long officially included the Yugra land in the Trans-Urals as part of the possessions of Veliky Novgorod24. In the 13th century The Rostov princes stood in the way of the Novgorodians, who founded in 1218 at the mouth of the river. Ugra, the city of Ustyug, and then the initiative for development passed to the Moscow Principality.

Taking control of the “volosts” of Veliky Novgorod, the government of Ivan III three times sent detachments of military men beyond the Urals. In 1465, voivode Vasily Skryaba went to Ugra and collected tribute in favor of the Grand Duke of Moscow. In 1483, governors Fyodor Kurbsky and Ivan Travnin with military men “walked up the Kama tributary of the Vishera River, crossed the Ural Mountains, scattered the troops of the Pelym prince Yumshan and moved “down the Tavda River past Tyumen into the Siberian land”25. Bypassing possession of the Tyumen Khan Ibak, the detachment moved from Tavda to Tobol, Irtysh and Ob. There, Russian warriors “made war” on Ugra, capturing several Ugric princes.

This campaign, which lasted several months, had important consequences. In the spring of the following year, an embassy “from all the lands of Koda and Ugra” arrived in Moscow, delivered gifts to Ivan III and a request to release the prisoners. The ambassadors recognized themselves as vassals of the Russian sovereign and pledged to annually supply his treasury with tribute from the population of the areas under their control.

However, the established tributary relations of a number of Ugric lands with Russia turned out to be fragile. At the end of the 15th century. The government of Ivan III undertook a new campaign to the east. More than 4 thousand warriors under the leadership of Moscow governors Semyon Kurbsky, Pyotr Ushaty and Vasily Zabolotsky set out in the winter of 1499. Until March 1500, 40 towns were occupied and 58 princes were captured. As a result, the Yugra land was subjugated, and the collection of tribute began to be carried out systematically. The delivery of furs was the responsibility of the “princes” of the Ugric and Samoyed associations. From the middle of the 16th century. Special government collectors “tribute workers” began to be sent to the Ugra land, who delivered the tribute collected by the local nobility to Moscow.

At the same time, Russian commercial development of Western Siberia was underway. This was facilitated by the peasant colonization of the northern regions of Russia, the Pechora, Vychegda, and Urals basins. From the 16th century Trade relations between Russians and residents of the Trans-Ural region are also developing more intensively. Russian fishermen and trading people are increasingly appearing beyond the Urals, using the fishing villages of North-Eastern Pomerania (Pustozersky fort, Ust-Tsilemskaya Sloboda, Rogovoy Gorodok, etc.) as transshipment bases. Villages of industrial people also appeared in the Trans-Urals. These were temporary fishing winter huts, on the site of which the Russian forts Berezovsky, Obdorsky and others later appeared. In turn, the Ugrians and Samoyeds began to come to exchange goods in the Pustozersky fort and Rogovoy Gorodok.

Close communication with the inhabitants of Northwestern Siberia led to the fact that Russian fishermen borrowed hunting and fishing techniques from them and began to use deer and dogs for riding. Many of them, living for a long time in Siberia, knew how to speak the Ugric and Samoyed languages. The Siberian population, in turn, using iron products brought by the Russians (knives, axes, arrowheads, etc.), improved the techniques of hunting, fishing and sea fishing.

In the 16th century The Siberian Khanate, which arose on the ruins of the Tyumen “kingdom,” became Ugra’s southern neighbor. After the capture of Kazan by the troops of Ivan IV in 1552 and the annexation of the peoples of the Volga and Ural regions to Russia, favorable conditions arose for the establishment of permanent ties with the Siberian Khanate. The ruling Taibugins (representatives of a new local dynasty), the brothers Ediger and Bekbulat, frightened by the events in Kazan and pressed from the south by Genghisid Kuchum, the son of the Bukhara ruler Murtaza, who laid claim to the Siberian throne, decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Russian government. In January 1555, their ambassadors arrived in Moscow and asked Ivan IV to “take the whole Siberian land in his name, and stand up for everyone, and put his tribute on them, and send his man (“the road”) for its collection

From now on, Ivan IV added to his titles the title of “ruler of all Siberian lands.” The ambassadors of Ediger and Bekbulat, while in Moscow, promised to pay “to the sovereign for every black man a sable, and for the sovereign’s road a squirrel per person for a Siberian one. Later, the size of the tribute was finally determined at 1,000 sables.

The tsar's envoy, the boyar's son Dmitry Nepeytsin, went to the capital of the Siberian Khanate, located on the Irtysh not far from modern Tobolsk, where he swore an oath of allegiance to the Russian tsar of the Siberian rulers, but could neither rewrite the “black” population of the kingdom, nor collect a full tribute. Vassal relations between the Siberian Khanate and Russia turned out to be fragile. In the conditions of constantly growing strife between the Tatar uluses and the growing discontent of the “black people” and the conquered Ugric and Bashkir tribes, the position of the Siberian rulers was unstable. Kuchum took advantage of this, who in 1563 defeated their troops, seized power in the Siberian Khanate and ordered the death of Ediger and Bekbulat, who were captured.

Kuchum was hostile towards Russia from the very beginning. But the change of dynasty in the Siberian “kingdom” was accompanied by turmoil. For several years, Kuchum had to fight the rebellious nobility and the tribal princelings, seeking obedience from them. Under these conditions, he did not dare to break off diplomatic relations with the Moscow government. In 1571, in order to lull the vigilance of the Russian Tsar, he even sent his ambassador and a tribute of 10,000 sables to Moscow.

The arrival of Kuchum's ambassadors came at a difficult time for Moscow. In 1571, it was attacked and burned by troops of the Crimean Khan Devletgirey. Rumors began to spread among residents of the capital about Russia's failures in the Livonian War. When the ambassadors informed Kuchum about their observations made in Moscow, he openly decided to put an end to Russian influence in the Trans-Urals. In 1573, the tsar's ambassador Tretyak Chubukov and all the Tatar servicemen accompanying him were killed at his headquarters, and in the summer of the same year, Kuchum's armed detachments, led by his nephew Mametkul, crossed the Kamen to the river. Chusovaya and devastated the area. From that time on, raids into the Kama region began to be carried out systematically, and Russian settlements in it were thoroughly destroyed. Kuchum also did not spare anyone who was oriented towards an alliance with Russia: he killed, took captives, and imposed a heavy tribute on the peoples of all the vast possessions of the Khanty and Mansi of the Ob and Ural, Bashkir tribes, Tatar tribes of the Trans-Urals and Barabinsk steppe.

In this situation, the government of Ivan IV took some countermeasures. In 1574, it sent a letter of grant to the large patrimonial owners, the Stroganovs, who were developing the Perm region, which assigned them lands on the eastern slopes of the Urals along the river. Tobol and its tributaries. The Stroganovs were allowed to hire a thousand Cossacks with arquebuses and build fortresses in the Trans-Urals on the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob.

The Stroganovs, using the right given to them by the government, formed a mercenary detachment, the command of which was taken over by Ataman Ermak Timofeevich. Information about who Ermak was by origin is scanty and contradictory. Some sources call him a Don Cossack, who came with his detachment to the Urals from the Volga. Others are a native inhabitant of the Urals, a townsman Vasily Timofeevich Olenin. Still others consider him a native of the northern volosts of the Vologda district. All this information, which is based on oral folk tradition, reflected the desire of the inhabitants of various Russian lands to consider Ermak the national hero as their fellow countryman. The only reliable fact is that Ermak, before his campaign beyond the Urals, served for 20 years in Cossack villages in the “wild field,” guarding the borders of Russia.

On September 1, 1581, the 31st squad of Ermak, consisting of 540 Volga Cossacks, set out on a campaign and, having ascended the river. Chusovoy and having crossed the Ural ridge, began its advance to the east. They sailed on light plows along the Siberian rivers Tagil, Tura, and Tobol in the direction of the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Kashlyk. Siberian chronicles record several major battles with Kuchum’s troops, which Ermak’s squad took on along the route. Among them was the battle on the banks of the Tobol near the Babasan yurts (30 versts below the mouth of the Tavda), where one of the experienced military leaders Kuchum Mametkul tried to detain the squad. Not far from the mouth of the Tavda, the squad had to fight with the detachments of the Murza of Karachi.

Having fortified himself in the town of Karachi, Ermak sent a group of Cossacks led by Ivan Koltso to the Stroganovs for ammunition, food and servicemen. In winter, the Cossacks reached the estates of Maxim Stroganov on sledges and skis, and in the summer. 1582 they returned back with reinforcements of 300 service people. In September of this year, Ermak’s replenished squad moved into the depths of Siberia. Having reached the confluence of the Tobol and the Irtysh, the detachment began to climb up the Irtysh.

The decisive battle took place on the 20th of October on the approaches to the capital at the so-called Chuvash Cape. Kuchum hoped to stop the Cossacks by making a fence on the cape of fallen trees, which was supposed to protect his soldiers from Russian bullets. Sources also report that 1 or 2 cannons were installed on the cape, brought to Kashlyk from the Kazan Khanate (before it was occupied by the Russians).

But many years of wars with the Tatars and Turks, which hardened the Cossacks, taught them to discern enemy tactics and take full advantage of their weapons. In this battle, Mametkul was wounded and barely escaped capture. The servants managed to transport him to the other side of the Irtysh. Panic began in Kuchum's army. According to legend, the vassal Khanty and Mansi princes left their positions after the first volleys and thereby made it easier for the Cossacks to win.

Kuchum watched the battle from the mountain. As soon as the Russians began to prevail, he, his family and the Murzas, seizing the most valuable property and livestock, fled to the steppe, abandoning their headquarters to the mercy of fate.

The local tribes, conquered by Kuchum, treated the Cossacks very peacefully. The princes and Murzas hastened to come to Ermak with gifts and declared their desire to accept Russian citizenship. In Kashlyk, the Cossacks found rich booty, especially furs, collected into the khan's treasury for many years. Ermak, following the laws of free Cossacks, ordered the booty to be divided equally among everyone.

In December 1582, Ermak sent messengers to Rus' led by Ivan Koltso with a report on the capture of the Siberian Khanate. He himself, having settled down for the winter in Kashlyk, continued to repel the raids of Kuchum’s troops. In the spring of 1583, Mametkul's headquarters on the banks of the Vagai was defeated. Mametkul himself was captured. This significantly weakened Kuchum's forces. In addition, from the south, from Bukhara, a descendant of the Taibugins, the son of Bekbulat Sepdyak (Seyid Khan), who at one time managed to escape reprisal, returned and began to threaten Kuchum. Anticipating new strife, the nobility began to hastily leave the Khanek's court. Even one of his most loyal confidants, Murza Karami, “left” Kuchum. Having captured nomadic camps along the river. Omi, he entered into single combat with Ermak, seeking the return of the ulus near Kashlyk.

In March 1584, Karachi lured a detachment of Cossacks from Kashlyk, led by Ermak’s faithful associate Ivan Koltso, who had returned from Moscow, and destroyed it. Until the summer, the Tatars, having besieged Kashlyk, kept Ermak’s detachment in a ring, depriving him of the opportunity to replenish his meager food supplies. But Ermak, waiting for the moment, organized a sortie from the besieged town one night and defeated the Karachi headquarters with a sudden blow. Two of his sons were killed in the battle, but he himself and a small detachment managed to escape.

Kuchum's power was no longer recognized by some local tribes and their princelings. Back in the spring of 1583, Ermak sent 50 Cossacks led by Bogdan Bryazga along the Irtysh to the Ob and imposed tribute on a number of Tatar and Khanty volosts.

The forces of Ermak’s squad were reinforced in the summer of 1584. The government of Ivan IV, having received a report of the capture of Kashlyk, sent a detachment of 300 servicemen to Siberia, led by governor S. D. Bolkhovsky. This is a detachment in the winter of 1584/85. found himself in a difficult position. Lack of housing and food, severe Siberian frosts caused severe famine. Many archers died, and the governor Semyon Bolkhovsky also died.

Kuchum, who wandered with his ulus in the steppes, gathered forces, demanding help from the Tatar Murzas in the fight against the Russians with threats and flattery. In an effort to lure Ermak out of Kashlyk, he spread a rumor about the delay of a Bukharan trade caravan heading to Kashlyk. Ermak decided to take another campaign against Kuchum. This was Ermak's last campaign. With a detachment of 150 people, Ermak left on plows in July

1585 from Kashlyk and moved up the Irtysh. During an overnight stay on the Irtysh island, not far from the mouth of the river. While Vagay, the detachment was unexpectedly attacked by Kuchum. Many Cossacks were killed, and Ermak, wounded in hand-to-hand combat with the Tatars, while covering the detachment’s retreat, managed to make his way to the shore. But the plow, onto the edge of which he unsuccessfully jumped, overturned, and, dressed in heavy armor, Ermak drowned. This happened on the night of August 5-6, 1585.

Having learned about the death of their leader, the archers, led by Ivan Glukhov, left Kashlyk for the European part of the country along the Pechora route - through the Irtysh, Ob, and Northern Urals. Some of the Cossacks with Matvey Meshcheryak, together with a small detachment sent from Moscow by I. Mansurov, remained in Siberia and laid down at the mouth of the river. Irtysh, the first Russian fortification is the Ob town.

Following Ermak's Cossacks, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to Siberia, and intensive commercial and agricultural development of the region began.

The tsarist government used Ermak's campaign to extend its power to Siberia. “The last Mongol king Kuchum, according to K-Marx, was defeated by Ermak” and with this “the foundation of Asian Russia was laid.” Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. Russian settlers equally experienced his oppression. But the rapprochement of the working Russian people and local tribes was conducive to the development of production forces, overcoming the centuries-old disunity of Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.

The people glorified Ermak in their songs and stories, paying tribute to his courage, devotion to his comrades, and military valor. For more than three years his squad did not know defeat; neither hunger nor severe frosts broke the will of the Cossacks. It was Ermak’s campaign that prepared the annexation of Siberia to Russia.

Archive of Marx and Engels. 1946, vol. VIII, p. 166.

2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state

The question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state and the significance of this process for the local and Russian population has long attracted the attention of researchers. Back in the middle of the 18th century, historian-academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gerard Friedrich Miller, one of the participants in a ten-year scientific expedition in the Siberian region, having become acquainted with the archives of many Siberian cities, expressed the idea that Siberia was conquered by Russian weapons.

The position put forward by G. F. Miller about the aggressive nature of the inclusion of the region into Russia was quite firmly entrenched in noble and bourgeois historical science. They only argued about who was the initiator of this conquest. Some researchers assigned an active role to the activities of the government, others argued that the conquest was carried out by private entrepreneurs, the Stroganovs, and others believed that Siberia was conquered by the free Cossack squad of Ermak. There were also supporters of various combinations of the above options.

Miller's interpretation of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into Russia also passed into the works of Soviet historians of the 20-30s. of our century.

Research by Soviet historians, careful reading of published documents and the identification of new archival sources made it possible to establish that, along with military expeditions and the deployment of small military detachments in Russian towns founded in the region, there were numerous facts of the peaceful advancement of Russian explorers and fishermen and the development of large areas of Siberia. A number of ethnic groups and nationalities (Ugrians-Khanty of the Lower Ob region, Tomsk Tatars, chat groups of the Middle Ob region, etc.) voluntarily became part of the Russian state.

Thus, it turned out that the term “conquest” does not reflect the entire essence of the phenomena that took place in the region during this initial period. Historians (primarily V.I. Shunkov) proposed a new term “annexation”, the content of which includes the facts of the conquest of individual regions, the peaceful development by Russian settlers of the sparsely populated valleys of the Siberian taiga rivers, and the facts of the voluntary acceptance of Russian citizenship by some ethnic groups.

The question of what joining the Russian state brought to the peoples of Siberia was resolved in different ways. Noble historiography, with its inherent apologetics for tsarism, sought to embellish government activities. G. F. Miller argued that the tsarist government, in managing the annexed territory, practiced “quietness,” “affectionate persuasion,” “friendly treats and gifts,” and showed “severity” and “cruelty” only in cases where “affection” didn't work. Such “affectionate” management, according to G. F. Miller, allowed the Russian government in Siberia to “do a lot of useful things” with “considerable benefit to the country there.” This statement of Miller, with various variants, was firmly held for a long time in the pre-revolutionary historiography of Siberia and even among individual historians of the Soviet period.

The noble revolutionary of the late 18th century viewed the issue of the significance of the inclusion of Siberia in Russia for the indigenous Siberian population in a different way. A. N. Radishchev. He gave a sharply negative characterization of the actions of tsarist officials, merchants, moneylenders and the Orthodox clergy in Siberia, emphasizing that they were all “greedy”, “self-seeking”, shamelessly robbing the local working population, robbing them of their furs, driving them into impoverishment.

Radishchev's assessment found support and further development in the works of AP. Shchapov and S.S. Shashkov. A.P. Shchapov in his writings passionately denounced government policy towards Siberia in general and its peoples in particular, while he emphasized the positive impact of economic and cultural communication between Russian peasants and artisans with Siberian peoples.

The negative assessment of the results of the activities of the tsarist administration in Siberia, put forward by A. N. Radishchev, was shared by Shchapov’s contemporary SS. Shashkov. Using specific materials from Siberian life, showing the oppressed position of the working non-Russian population of the region to expose contemporary social reality, democrat and educator S.S. Shashkov in his journalistic articles came to the conclusion about the generally negative significance of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state. Unlike Shchapov, S.S. Shashkov did not consider the issue of the activities of the working Russian population in developing the productive forces of the region and the influence of this activity on the economy and social development of local Siberian residents.

This one-sidedness of S.S. Shashkov in resolving the issue of the significance of the region’s entry into Russia was adopted and further developed by representatives of Siberian regionalism with their opposition of Siberia and the Siberian population of Russia to the entire Russian population of the country.

S.S. Shashkov’s negative assessment was also received by the bourgeois-nationalistic part of the intelligentsia of the Siberian peoples, who contrasted the interests of the local indigenous population with the interests of the Russian inhabitants of the region and condemned the very fact of Siberia’s annexation to Russia.

Soviet researchers, who had mastered the Marxist-Leninist materialist understanding of the history of society, had to, based on the source base, decide the question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia in the

of the Russian state and determine the significance of this process both for the non-Russian population of the region and its Russian settlers, and for the development of the country as a whole.

Intensive research work in the post-war period (second half of the 40s - early 60s) culminated in the creation of a collective monograph “History of Siberia”, five volumes of which were published in 1968. The authors of the second volume of “History of Siberia” summed up the results of the previous study of the issue on the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state, showed the role of the masses in the development of the productive forces of the region, revealed “the significance of Russian colonization in general and agriculture in particular as the leading form of economy, which subsequently had a decisive influence on the economy and way of life of local indigenous peoples. This confirmed the thesis about the fruitful and largely peaceful nature of the Russian annexation and development of Siberia, about the progressiveness of its further development, conditioned by the joint life of the Russian and indigenous peoples.”

The annexation of the vast territory of the Siberian region to Russia was not a one-time act, but a long-term process, the beginning of which dates back to the end of the 16th century, when, after the defeat of the last Genghisid Kuchum on the Irtysh by the Cossack squad of Ermak, Russian resettlement in the Trans-Urals and development by alien peasants, fishermen, artisans, first of the forest belt of Western Siberia, then of Eastern Siberia, and with the onset of the 18th century, of Southern Siberia. The completion of this process occurred in the second half of the 18th century.

The annexation of Siberia to Russia was the result of the implementation of the policy of the tsarist government and the ruling class of feudal lords, aimed at seizing new territories and expanding the scope of feudal robbery. It also met the interests of the merchants. Cheap Siberian furs, valued on the Russian and international (European) markets, became a source of enrichment for him.

However, the leading role in the process of annexation and development of the region was played by Russian migrants, representatives of the working population, who came to the distant eastern region to work in the fields and settled in the Siberian taiga as farmers and artisans. The presence of free lands suitable for agriculture stimulated the process of their subsidence.

Economic, everyday, and cultural contacts were established between newcomers and local residents. The indigenous population of the Siberian taiga and forest-steppe for the most part had a positive attitude towards joining the Russian state.

The desire to get rid of the devastating raids of stronger southern nomadic neighbors, the desire to avoid constant inter-tribal clashes and strife that damaged the economy of fishermen, hunters and cattle breeders, as well as the perceived need for economic ties encouraged local residents to unite with the Russian people as part of one state.

After the defeat of Kuchum by Ermak’s squad, government detachments arrived in Siberia (in 1585 under the command of Ivan Mansurov, in 1586 led by governors V. Sukin and I. Myasny), the construction of the Ob town on the banks of the Ob began, and in the lower reaches of the Tura the Russian fortress Tyumen, in 1587 on the banks of the Irtysh opposite the mouth of the Tobol-Tobolsk, on the waterway along the Vishera (a tributary of the Kama) to Lozva and Tlvda-Lozvinsky (1590) and Pelymsky (1593) towns. At the end of the 16th century. in the Lower Ob region the city of Berezov was built (1593), which became the Russian administrative center on the Yugra land.

To consolidate the lands of Prnobya above the mouth of the Irtysh into Russia, a small group of servicemen with governors F. Baryatinsky and Vl. was sent from Moscow in February 1594. Anichkov. Having arrived in Lozva by sleigh, the detachment in the spring moved by water to the town of Ob. From Berezov, Berezovsky servicemen and the Khanty codekke with their prince Igichey Alachev were sent to join the arriving detachment. The detachment moved up the Ob River to the Bardakov “principality”. The Khanty prince Bardak voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship and assisted in the construction of a Russian fortress, erected in the center of the territory under his control on the right bank of the Ob River at the confluence of the Surgutka River. The new city began to be called Surgut. All Khanty villages subject to Bardak became part of the Surgut district. Surgut became a stronghold of tsarist power in this region of the Middle Ob region, a springboard for an attack on the Selkup union of tribes, known as the Piebald Horde. The need to bring the Piebald Horde under Russian citizenship was dictated not only by the desire of the tsarist government to expand the number of yasak payers in the Ob region. Representatives of the Selkup nobility, led by the military leader Voneya, at this time had close contacts with the rank-gisnd Kuchum, expelled from Kashlyk, who in 1596 “nomadic” to the Piebald Horde and was going to raid the Surgut district in 1597.

To strengthen the Surgut garrison, servicemen from the Ob town were included in its composition, which ceased to exist as a fortified village. Negotiations undertaken with Vonya did not lead to positive results for the royal governors. To prevent Vony’s military uprising on the side of Kuchum, Surgut servicemen, on the instructions of the governor, built a Russian fortification in the center of the Piebald Horde - the Narymsky fort (1597 or 1593).

Then the advance began to the east along the right tributary of the Ob River. Keti, where Surgut servicemen set up the Ket fort (presumably in 1602). On the portage from Ket to the Yenisei basin in 1618, a small Makovsky fort was built.

Within the southern part of the taiga and in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia in the 90s. XVI century The fight against the remnants of Kuchum's horde continued. Expelled by Ermak's Cossacks from Kashlyk, Kuchum and his supporters wandered between the Ishim and Irtysh rivers, raiding Tatar and Bashkir uluses that recognized the power of the Russian Tsar, and invading the Tyumen and Tobolsk districts.

To prevent the ruinous invasions of Kuchum and his supporters, it was decided to build a new Russian fortress on the banks of the Irtysh. A significant number of local residents were attracted to this construction: Tatars, Bashkirs, Khanty. The construction work was headed by Andrey Yeletsky. In the summer of 1594, on the banks of the Irtysh near the confluence of the river. The city of Tara appeared, under the protection of which the inhabitants of the Irtysh region had the opportunity to get rid of the domination of the descendants of the Genghisids of Kuchum. The service people of Tara performed military guard duty in the border region with the steppe, struck back at Kuchum and his supporters - the Nogai Murzas and Kalmyk taishas, ​​expanding the territory subject to the Russian Tsar.

Following the instructions of the government, the Tara governors tried to start negotiations with Kuchum. In 1597, he was sent a royal letter calling on him to stop the fight with Russia and accept Russian citizenship. The Tsar promised to assign nomads along the Irtysh to Kuchum. But it soon became known that Kuchum was preparing for a raid on the Tara district and was negotiating military assistance with the Nogai Horde and the Bukhara Khanate.

By order from Moscow, preparations began for a military campaign. The detachment staffed in Tara by Andrei Voeikov consisted of Russian servicemen and Tatars from Tobolsk, Tyumen and Tara. In August 1598, after a series of small battles with Kuchum’s supporters and people dependent on him in the Baraba region, A. Voeikov’s detachment suddenly attacked the main camp of the Kuchum Tatars, located in a meadow near the mouth of the Irmen River, the left tributary of the Ob. The Chat Tatars and White Kalmyks (Teleuts) who lived next door in the Ob region did not have time to help Kuchum. His headquarters was destroyed, members of the khan's family were captured. In the battle, many representatives of the nobility, relatives of the khan, and over 150 ordinary Tatar warriors were killed; in Kuchum itself, with a small group of his supporters, they managed to escape. Soon Kuchum died in the southern steppes.

The defeat of Kuchum on the Ob was of great political significance. Residents of the forest-steppe zone of Western Siberia saw in the Russian state a force capable of protecting them from the devastating invasions of the nomads of Southern Siberia, from the raids of Kalmyk, Uzbek, Nogai, and Kazakh military leaders. The Chat Tatars were in a hurry to declare their desire to accept Russian citizenship and explained that they could not do this before because they were afraid of Kuchum. The Baraba and Terenin Tatars, who had previously paid tribute to Kuchum, accepted Russian citizenship. The Tatar uluses of Baraba and the river basin were assigned to the Tatar district. Omn.

At the beginning of the 17th century. The prince of the Tomsk Tatars (Eushtin-tsev) Toyan came to Moscow with a request to the government of Boris Godunov to take the villages of the Tomsk Tatars under the protection of the Russian state and “establish” a Russian city on their land. Toyan pledged to help the royal administration of the new city in levying yasak on the Turkic-speaking groups neighboring the Tomsk Tatars. In January 1604, a decision was made in Moscow to build a fortification on the land of the Tomsk Tatars. Sent from Moscow, Toyan arrived in Surgut. The Surgut governors, having sworn in Toyan (sherti), sent several servicemen with him as accompanying people to the Tomsk land to select the site for the construction of the future city. In March, in Surgut, a detachment of builders was being recruited under the command of the assistant to the Surgut governor G.I. Pisemsky and the Tobolsk boyar's son V.F. Tyrkov. In addition to Surgut servicemen and carpenters, it included servicemen who arrived from Tyumen and Tobolsk, Pelym archers, Tobolsk and Tyumen Tatars and Koda Khanty. In the spring of 1604, after the ice drift, the detachment set off from Surgut on boats and planks up the Obn to the mouth of the Tom and further up the Tom to the lands of the Tomsk Tatars. During the summer of 1604, a Russian city was built on the right bank of the Tom. At the beginning of the 17th century. Tomsk city was the easternmost city in Russia. The adjacent region of the lower reaches of the Tom, Middle Ob and Prnchulymya became part of the Tomsk district.

Collecting yasak from the Turkic-speaking population of Pritomya, Tomsk servicemen in 1618 founded a new Russian settlement in the upper reaches of the Tom - Kuznetsk fort, which became in the 20s. XVII century administrative center of Kuznetsk district. At the same time, in the basin of the right tributary of the Ob-Chulym, small forts were erected - Melessky and Achinsky. In them, depending on the weather, there were Cossacks and archers from Tomsk, who performed military guard duty and protected the yurts of local residents from incursions by detachments of Kyrgyz princes and Mongolian Altyn Khans.

Growing contacts of the annexed part of the Ob region with the center and north of the country already at the end of the 16th century. the issue of improving communication routes was urgently raised. The official route to Siberia from the Kama region through the town of Lozvinsky was long and difficult. In the second half of the 90s. XVI century Solvychegodsk townsman Artemy Sofinov-Babinov took a contract from the government to build a road from Solikamsk to Tyumen. From Solikamsk it went through mountain passes to the upper reaches of the river. Tours. In 1598, the Verkhoturye town was established here, in the construction of which carpenters, peasants, and archers who were transferred here from Lozva participated.

Verkhoturye on the Babinovskaya road throughout the 17th century. played the role of the “main gate to Siberia”, through which all connections between Moscow and the Trans-Urals were carried out, and customs duties were collected on transported goods. From Verkhoturye the road ran along the river. Tours to Tyumen. In 1600, halfway between Verkhoturye and Tyumen, the Turin fort arose, where coachmen and peasants transferred from the European part of the state were settled to serve the needs of the Babinovskaya road.

By the beginning of the 17th century. Almost the entire territory of Western Siberia from the Gulf of Ob in the north to Tara and Tomsk in the south became an integral part of Russia.

2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia

Russian fishermen back in the 16th century. They hunted fur-bearing animals on the right bank of the lower Ob, in the basins of the Taza and Turukhana rivers, and gradually moved east to the Yenisei. They founded winter huts (which grew from temporary to permanent), and entered into exchange, production, household and even family relations with local residents.

The political inclusion of this tundra region into Russia began later than the settlement of Russian fishermen here - at the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries. with construction in 1601 on the banks of the river. Taza of the Mangazeya town, which became the administrative center of the Mangazeya district and the most important trade and transshipment point in northern Asia, a place where fishermen flocked in preparation for the next hunting season. Until 1625, there was no permanent detachment of service people in Mangazeya. Military guard duty was performed by a small group of “year-olds” (30 people) sent from Tobolsk and Berezov. After creating a permanent garrison (100 people), the Mangazeya governors created several tribute winter huts, began sending fur collectors to the treasury on the banks of the Lower Yenisei, on its right-bank tributaries - Podkamennaya Tunguska and Lower Tunguska, and further to the Pyasina and Khatanga basins.

As already noted, the penetration of Russians into the middle Yenisei proceeded along the right tributary of the Ob-Ket, which in the 17th century. became the main road from the Ob basin to the east. In 1619, the first Russian administrative center was built on the banks of the Yenisei - the Yenisei fort, which quickly grew into a significant transshipment point for fishermen and traders. The first Russian farmers appeared in the region adjacent to Yeniseisk.

The second fortified town on the Yenisei was the Krasnoyarsk fort, founded in 1628, which became the main stronghold of defense of the borders in the south of the Yenisei region. Throughout the 17th century. south of Krasnoyarsk there was a fierce struggle with the nomads, caused by the aggression of the Kyrgyz princes of the upper Yenisei, who relied in the first half of the century on the strong state of the Altyn Khans (which formed in Western Mongolia), and in the second half - on the Dzungar rulers, whose vassals they became. The princes considered the local Turkic-speaking groups of the upper Yenisei to be their kishtyms (dependent people, tributaries): the Tubnians, Yarintsev, Motortsy, Kamasintsy, etc.

Almost every year, the rulers of the Kyrgyz uluses besieged the Krasnoyarsk fortress, exterminated and captured the indigenous and Russian population, captured livestock and horses, and destroyed crops. Documents tell about repeated military campaigns against the steppe nomads of groups of Krasnoyarsk, Yenisei, Tomsk and Kuznetsk servicemen.

The situation changed only at the beginning of the 18th century, when, by order of the Dzungar contaisha Tsevan-Raptan, the forced resettlement of the Kyrgyz uluses and kishtyms of the nobility began to the main Dzungar nomads in Semirechye. The military leaders failed to completely transfer ordinary residents of the Kyrgyz uluses to new places. Local residents took refuge in the forests; some of those driven away fled while crossing the Sayan Mountains. For the most part, the population dependent on the Kyrgyz princes remained in their former habitats and was then included in Russia. The consolidation of the territory of the upper Yenisei ended with the construction of the Abakan (1707) and Sayan (1709) forts.

From Russian traders, the Mangazeya and Yenisei governors learned about the rich fur of the Lena Land. They began to send service people to the middle Lena, where the Yakuts lived, for yasak. Already in 1632, on the banks of the Lena, a small group of Yenisei Cossacks led by P. Beketov set up the Yakut fort, the first Russian village, which later became the center of the Yakut (Lena) voivodeship.

Some Yakut toyons and princelings of individual associations tried to fight yasak collectors, defending their right to exploit their relatives, but not all groups of Yakuts took part in this “struggle.” Intertribal strife, as well as the desire of some representatives of the Yakut nobility to take advantage of the help of service people , located on Leia, weakened the resistance of the Yakut groups to political subordination to the tsarist government. In addition, the majority of the Yakut population was convinced of the unprofitability of violating peaceful ties with Russian fishermen and traders. With all the “untruths” perpetrated by the fishermen to local residents in the fisheries, the predatory nature of the exchange the activity of fishing colonization was the main incentive for the inclusion of the main part of Yakutia into Russia.

Soviet researchers have established that Russian fishermen were the first to penetrate the Lena, and subsequently, within Eastern Siberia, they, as a rule, outnumbered the detachments of servicemen. The inclusion of the Evenks, Evens, and Yukaghirs into Russia and the imposition of yasak taxes on them in the royal treasury dragged on until the middle of the 17th century. Some geographical discoveries of Russian explorers date back to this time. Thus, the Cossacks, led by I. Rebrov and I. Perfilyev, in 1633 went along the Lena to the Arctic Ocean. On the sea moats built in Yakutsk, they reached the mouth of the river by sea. Yana, and then the mouth of the Indigirka. Almost simultaneously, another group of Cossacks under the leadership of S. Kharitonov and P. Ivanov, setting off from Yakutsk, opened a land road to the upper reaches of the Yana and Indigirka. Commercial development of this area began, Russian winter huts appeared (Verkhoyanskoye, Nizhneyanskoye, Podshiverskoye, Olubenskoye, Uyandinskoye).

Of particular importance in the geographical discoveries of the northeastern part of Asia was the sea voyage that began in 1648 under the leadership of S. Dezhnev and F. Popov, in which up to 90 people of traders and fishermen took part. From Yakutsk the expedition reached the mouth of the Lena, went out to sea and headed east. For the first time, the sea roach of Russian sailors rounded the northeastern tip of the continent, opened the strait between the continents of Asia and America, passed through this strait from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and reached the mouth of the river. Anadyr. In 1650 on the river. Anadyr by land from the banks of the river. A group of Cossacks with Stadukhin and Motora passed through Kolyma.

The advance from Lena to the east to the Okhotsk coast began in the 30s. XVII century, when the Tomsk Cossacks with D. Kopylov founded the Butal winter quarters on Aldan. A group of Cossacks, headed by I. Moskvitin, sent from the Butal winter quarters, following the rivers Aldan, Mae and Yudoma, reached a mountain range, crossed the mountains and along the river. Houllier reached the coast, where in the early 40s. Kosoy fort was built (which served as the beginning of the future Okhotsk).

Due to natural and climatic conditions, Russian development of Eastern Siberia was predominantly of a commercial nature. At the same time, Russian settlers identified areas in which arable farming was possible. In the 40s XVII century The first arable lands appeared at the mouths of the Olekma and Vitim rivers and on the middle reaches of the Amga.

The annexation of the lands of the Buryat tribes was complicated by external circumstances. The Buryat nobility placed certain groups of Evenks and the Turkic-speaking population of the right bank of the Yenisei in a dependent position, collected tribute from them and therefore opposed their inclusion in the tribute payers of Russia. At the same time, the Buryats themselves were subjected to frequent raids by Mongolian (especially Oi-Rat) feudal lords; they were interested in protecting themselves from the ruinous invasions of their southern neighbors with the help of Russian military detachments. The interest of the Buryat population in trade relations also pushed for good neighborly relations with the Russians.

The first Russian settlements in this region appeared in the early 30s. - Ilimsky and Bratsk forts. Under the protection of the Ilimsk fort in the middle of the 17th century. More than 120 families of Russian farmers lived there. In the 40s Yasak collectors began to appear among the Buryats living near Lake Baikal. At the confluence of the Irkut and the Angara on the island. The clerk established the Irkutsk yasak winter hut in 1652, and in 1661, opposite this winter hut on the banks of the Angara, the Irkutsk fort was built, which became the administrative center of the Irkutsk district and an important trading point in Eastern Siberia.

In the middle of the 18th century. The first fortified winter huts, founded by Russian fishing gangs, appeared in Transbaikalia. Some of them later became forts and administrative centers (Nerchinsky, Udnnsky, Selenginsky, etc.). Gradually, a network of fortified villages emerged, which ensured the safety of Transbaikalia from external invasions and contributed to the economic development of this area by Russian settlers (including farmers).

The first information about the Amur region arrived in Yakutsk in the early 40s. XVII century from the Russian fisherman S. Averkiev Kosoy, who reached the mouth of the Argun. In 1643, an expedition by V. Poyarkov was formed in Yakutsk, whose participants for three years walked along the rivers Aldan, Uchur, Gonoy, made a portage to the Amur water system, and descended the river. Bryande and Zeya to the Amur, then moved on ships down the Amur to its mouth. Having set out to sea, V. Poyarkov’s expedition moved north along the coast and reached the mouth of the river. Hives. From here, along the path laid earlier by a group of Cossacks, I. Moskvitina returned to Yakutsk. This campaign of V. Poyarkov, unparalleled in difficulty and the distance of the unknown path, gave a lot of information about the Amur, about the inhabitants who inhabited its banks, and their jams, but it has not yet led to the annexation of the Amur region.

More successful in this regard was the campaign organized in 1649 by the Ustyug merchant E.P. Khabarov-Svyatitsky. Khabarov's campaign was supported by the Yakut governor Frantsbekov. Participants in the campaign (over 70 people) joined Khabarov at their own request. The leader of the campaign received an official “order” from the Yakut governor, that is, he could act as a representative of government authorities. From Yakutsk the expedition set off along the river. Lena to its tributary Olekma, then up the Olekma to the portages into the Amur basin. During 1650-1653. The participants of the campaign were on the Amur. The Middle Amur was inhabited by Tungus-speaking Evenks, Dyuchers and Mongol-speaking Daurs. The Evenks were engaged in nomadic cattle breeding and fishing, and the Daurs and Duchers were familiar with arable farming. The Daurs and their neighboring Duchers began the process of establishing a class society; they had fortified towns ruled by their “princes.”

The natural resources of the Amur region (fur-bearing animals, fish) and the climate favorable for arable farming attracted settlers from the Yenisei, Krasnoyarsk, Ilimsk and Yakutsk districts. According to V.A. Aleksandrov, throughout the 50s. XVII century “At least one and a half thousand people went to the Amur. Quite a few “free, willing people” took part in E. Khabarov’s campaign itself.”4 Fearing the depopulation of the areas from which settlers (fishermen and peasants) were leaving, the Siberian administration set up a settlement at the mouth of the river. Olekma outpost. Unable to prevent the process of spontaneous settlement of the Amur region, the tsarist government decided to establish its own administration here, designating the Nerchnsky fort (founded in 1652) as the administrative center in 1658.

Ruled in the 17th century. in China, the Manchu Qing dynasty from time to time subjected the settlements of Daurs and Duchers on the Amur to predatory raids, although the territory they occupied lay outside the boundaries of the empire. In annexing the Amur region to Russia, the Qing dynasty saw a threat to the rapprochement of the borders of Manchuria with Russia and therefore decided to prevent Russian development of this area. In 1652, Manchu troops invaded the Amur and for almost six years waged military operations against small Russian troops. At the end of the 50s. The Manchus began to forcibly resettle the Daurs and Duchers into the Sungari basin, destroying their towns and agriculture. By the beginning of the 60s. Manchu troops went into the empire.

The Russian population resumed the development of the deserted Amur lands from Nerchinsk to the mouth of the river. Zei. The center of Russian settlements on the Amur became the Albazinsky fort, built in 1665 on the site of the former town of the Daurian prince Albazy. The population of Albazin - Cossacks and peasants - was made up of free migrants. The exiles made up an extremely small part. The first residents and builders of Russian Albazin were fugitives from the Ilimsk district, participants in the popular unrest against the governor, who came to the Amur with N. Chernigovsky. Here the newcomers declared themselves Albazin servicemen, established an elected government, elected N. Chernigovsky as Albazin's clerk, and began collecting yasak payments from the local population, sending furs through Nerchinsk to the royal treasury in Moscow.

Since the late 70s and especially in the 80s. The situation of the Russians in Transbaikalia and the Amur region again became complicated. The Manchu Qing dynasty provoked protests by Mongol feudal lords and Tungus princes against Russia. Intense military operations unfolded near Albazin and the Selenginsky fort. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed in 1689, marked the beginning of establishing a border line between the two states.

The Buryat and Tungus population acted together with the Russians in defense of their lands against the Manchu troops. Separate groups of Mongols, together with the Taishi, recognized Russian citizenship and migrated to Russia.

Conclusion

Ermak's campaign played a big role in the development and conquest of Siberia. This was the first significant step to begin the development of new lands.

The conquest of Siberia is a very important step in the development of the Russian state, which more than doubled its territory. Siberia, with its fishing and fur trades, as well as gold and silver reserves, significantly enriched the state treasury.

List of used literature

1. G.F. Miller "History of Siberia"

2. M.V. Shunkov “History of Siberia” in 5 volumes. Tomsk, TSU 1987

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Kursk State Technical University

Department of History

Abstract on the topic:

"Conquest of Siberia"

Completed by: senior group ES-61

Zatey N.O.

Checked by: K.I.N., Associate Professor of the Department of History

Goryushkina N.E.

K U R S K 2 0 0 6

1. Introduction............................................... ........................................................ .3

2. Conquest of Siberia.................................................. .....................................4

2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance.................................................4

2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state....................................10

2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia………………………………….20

Conclusion................................................. ...................................................28

List of used literature

Introduction

Relevance of the topic: The conquest and annexation of new territories strengthen the state with the influx of a new mass of taxes, minerals, as well as the influx of new knowledge received from the conquered peoples. New lands provide new prospects for the development of the country, in particular: new access to the seas and oceans, borders with new states, making it possible to increase the volume of trade.

Goal of the work: Study in depth the conquest and annexation of Siberia to the Russian state.

Tasks:

Study Ermak's campaign;

Study the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state;

Find out which nationalities were conquered;

Historiography overview: Free Russian colonists were pioneers in the development of new lands. Ahead of the government, they settled in the “wild field” in the Lower Volga region, on the Terek, on Yalik and on the Don. The campaign of Ermak's Cossacks to Siberia was a direct continuation of this popular movement.

Ermak's Cossacks took the first step. Following them, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to the East. In the fight against harsh nature, they conquered land from the taiga, founded settlements and established centers of agricultural culture.

Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. His oppression was experienced equally by both local tribes and Russian settlers. The rapprochement of the Russian working people and Siberian tribes was conducive to the development of productive forces and overcoming the centuries-old disunity of the Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.

2. Conquest of Siberia

2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance

Long before the Russian development of Siberia, its population had connections with the Russian people. The first to begin their acquaintance with the Trans-Urals and Western Siberia were the Novgorodians, who already in the 11th century tried to master the Pechora route beyond Kamen (Ural). Russian people were attracted to Siberia by the rich fur and sea trades and the opportunities for barter with local residents. Following the sailors and explorers, Novgorod squads began to periodically appear in the northwestern reaches of Siberia, collecting tribute from the local population. The Novgorod nobility has long officially included the Yugra land in the Trans-Urals as part of the possessions of Veliky Novgorod24. In the 13th century The Rostov princes stood in the way of the Novgorodians, who founded in 1218 at the mouth of the river. Ugra, the city of Ustyug, and then the initiative for development passed to the Moscow Principality.

Taking control of the “volosts” of Veliky Novgorod, the government of Ivan III three times sent detachments of military men beyond the Urals. In 1465, voivode Vasily Skryaba went to Ugra and collected tribute in favor of the Grand Duke of Moscow. In 1483, governors Fyodor Kurbsky and Ivan Travnin with military men “walked up the Kama tributary of the Vishera River, crossed the Ural Mountains, scattered the troops of the Pelym prince Yumshan and moved “down the Tavda River past Tyumen into the Siberian land”25. Bypassing possession of the Tyumen Khan Ibak, the detachment moved from Tavda to Tobol, Irtysh and Ob. There, Russian warriors “made war” on Ugra, capturing several Ugric princes.

This campaign, which lasted several months, had important consequences. In the spring of the following year, an embassy “from all the lands of Koda and Ugra” arrived in Moscow, delivered gifts to Ivan III and a request to release the prisoners. The ambassadors recognized themselves as vassals of the Russian sovereign and pledged to annually supply his treasury with tribute from the population of the areas under their control.

However, the established tributary relations of a number of Ugric lands with Russia turned out to be fragile. At the end of the 15th century. The government of Ivan III undertook a new campaign to the east. More than 4 thousand warriors under the leadership of Moscow governors Semyon Kurbsky, Pyotr Ushaty and Vasily Zabolotsky set out in the winter of 1499. Until March 1500, 40 towns were occupied and 58 princes were captured. As a result, the Yugra land was subjugated, and the collection of tribute began to be carried out systematically. The delivery of furs was the responsibility of the “princes” of the Ugric and Samoyed associations. From the middle of the 16th century. Special government collectors “tribute workers” began to be sent to the Ugra land, who delivered the tribute collected by the local nobility to Moscow.

At the same time, Russian commercial development of Western Siberia was underway. This was facilitated by the peasant colonization of the northern regions of Russia, the Pechora, Vychegda, and Urals basins. From the 16th century Trade relations between Russians and residents of the Trans-Ural region are also developing more intensively. Russian fishermen and trading people are increasingly appearing beyond the Urals, using the fishing villages of North-Eastern Pomerania (Pustozersky fort, Ust-Tsilemskaya Sloboda, Rogovoy Gorodok, etc.) as transshipment bases. Villages of industrial people also appeared in the Trans-Urals. These were temporary fishing winter huts, on the site of which the Russian forts Berezovsky, Obdorsky and others later appeared. In turn, the Ugrians and Samoyeds began to come to exchange goods in the Pustozersky fort and Rogovoy Gorodok.

Close communication with the inhabitants of Northwestern Siberia led to the fact that Russian fishermen borrowed hunting and fishing techniques from them and began to use deer and dogs for riding. Many of them, living for a long time in Siberia, knew how to speak the Ugric and Samoyed languages. The Siberian population, in turn, using iron products brought by the Russians (knives, axes, arrowheads, etc.), improved the techniques of hunting, fishing and sea fishing.

In the 16th century The Siberian Khanate, which arose on the ruins of the Tyumen “kingdom,” became Ugra’s southern neighbor. After the capture of Kazan by the troops of Ivan IV in 1552 and the annexation of the peoples of the Volga and Ural regions to Russia, favorable conditions arose for the establishment of permanent ties with the Siberian Khanate. The ruling Taibugins (representatives of a new local dynasty), the brothers Ediger and Bekbulat, frightened by the events in Kazan and pressed from the south by Genghisid Kuchum, the son of the Bukhara ruler Murtaza, who laid claim to the Siberian throne, decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Russian government. In January 1555, their ambassadors arrived in Moscow and asked Ivan IV to “take the whole Siberian land in his name, and stand up for everyone, and put his tribute on them, and send his man (“the road”) for its collection

From now on, Ivan IV added to his titles the title of “ruler of all Siberian lands.” The ambassadors of Ediger and Bekbulat, while in Moscow, promised to pay “to the sovereign for every black man a sable, and for the sovereign’s road a squirrel per person for a Siberian one. Later, the size of the tribute was finally determined at 1,000 sables.

The tsar's envoy, the boyar's son Dmitry Nepeytsin, went to the capital of the Siberian Khanate, located on the Irtysh not far from modern Tobolsk, where he swore an oath of allegiance to the Russian tsar of the Siberian rulers, but could neither rewrite the “black” population of the kingdom, nor collect a full tribute. Vassal relations between the Siberian Khanate and Russia turned out to be fragile. In the conditions of constantly growing strife between the Tatar uluses and the growing discontent of the “black people” and the conquered Ugric and Bashkir tribes, the position of the Siberian rulers was unstable. Kuchum took advantage of this, who in 1563 defeated their troops, seized power in the Siberian Khanate and ordered the death of Ediger and Bekbulat, who were captured.

Kuchum was hostile towards Russia from the very beginning. But the change of dynasty in the Siberian “kingdom” was accompanied by turmoil. For several years, Kuchum had to fight the rebellious nobility and the tribal princelings, seeking obedience from them. Under these conditions, he did not dare to break off diplomatic relations with the Moscow government. In 1571, in order to lull the vigilance of the Russian Tsar, he even sent his ambassador and a tribute of 10,000 sables to Moscow.

The arrival of Kuchum's ambassadors came at a difficult time for Moscow. In 1571, it was attacked and burned by troops of the Crimean Khan Devletgirey. Rumors began to spread among residents of the capital about Russia's failures in the Livonian War. When the ambassadors informed Kuchum about their observations made in Moscow, he openly decided to put an end to Russian influence in the Trans-Urals. In 1573, the tsar's ambassador Tretyak Chubukov and all the Tatar servicemen accompanying him were killed at his headquarters, and in the summer of the same year, Kuchum's armed detachments, led by his nephew Mametkul, crossed the Kamen to the river. Chusovaya and devastated the area. From that time on, raids into the Kama region began to be carried out systematically, and Russian settlements in it were thoroughly destroyed. Kuchum also did not spare anyone who was oriented towards an alliance with Russia: he killed, took captives, and imposed a heavy tribute on the peoples of all the vast possessions of the Khanty and Mansi of the Ob and Ural, Bashkir tribes, Tatar tribes of the Trans-Urals and Barabinsk steppe.

In this situation, the government of Ivan IV took some countermeasures. In 1574, it sent a letter of grant to the large patrimonial owners, the Stroganovs, who were developing the Perm region, which assigned them lands on the eastern slopes of the Urals along the river. Tobol and its tributaries. The Stroganovs were allowed to hire a thousand Cossacks with arquebuses and build fortresses in the Trans-Urals on the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob.

The Stroganovs, using the right given to them by the government, formed a mercenary detachment, the command of which was taken over by Ataman Ermak Timofeevich. Information about who Ermak was by origin is scanty and contradictory. Some sources call him a Don Cossack, who came with his detachment to the Urals from the Volga. Others are a native inhabitant of the Urals, a townsman Vasily Timofeevich Olenin. Still others consider him a native of the northern volosts of the Vologda district. All this information, which is based on oral folk tradition, reflected the desire of the inhabitants of various Russian lands to consider Ermak the national hero as their fellow countryman. The only reliable fact is that Ermak, before his campaign beyond the Urals, served for 20 years in Cossack villages in the “wild field,” guarding the borders of Russia.

On September 1, 1581, the 31st squad of Ermak, consisting of 540 Volga Cossacks, set out on a campaign and, having ascended the river. Chusovoy and having crossed the Ural ridge, began its advance to the east. They sailed on light plows along the Siberian rivers Tagil, Tura, and Tobol in the direction of the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Kashlyk. Siberian chronicles record several major battles with Kuchum’s troops, which Ermak’s squad took on along the route. Among them was the battle on the banks of the Tobol near the Babasan yurts (30 versts below the mouth of the Tavda), where one of the experienced military leaders Kuchum Mametkul tried to detain the squad. Not far from the mouth of the Tavda, the squad had to fight with the detachments of the Murza of Karachi.

Having fortified himself in the town of Karachi, Ermak sent a group of Cossacks led by Ivan Koltso to the Stroganovs for ammunition, food and servicemen. In winter, the Cossacks reached the estates of Maxim Stroganov on sledges and skis, and in the summer. 1582 they returned back with reinforcements of 300 service people. In September of this year, Ermak’s replenished squad moved into the depths of Siberia. Having reached the confluence of the Tobol and the Irtysh, the detachment began to climb up the Irtysh.

The decisive battle took place on the 20th of October on the approaches to the capital at the so-called Chuvash Cape. Kuchum hoped to stop the Cossacks by making a fence on the cape of fallen trees, which was supposed to protect his soldiers from Russian bullets. Sources also report that 1 or 2 cannons were installed on the cape, brought to Kashlyk from the Kazan Khanate (before it was occupied by the Russians).

But many years of wars with the Tatars and Turks, which hardened the Cossacks, taught them to discern enemy tactics and take full advantage of their weapons. In this battle, Mametkul was wounded and barely escaped capture. The servants managed to transport him to the other side of the Irtysh. Panic began in Kuchum's army. According to legend, the vassal Khanty and Mansi princes left their positions after the first volleys and thereby made it easier for the Cossacks to win.

Kuchum watched the battle from the mountain. As soon as the Russians began to prevail, he, his family and the Murzas, seizing the most valuable property and livestock, fled to the steppe, abandoning their headquarters to the mercy of fate.

The local tribes, conquered by Kuchum, treated the Cossacks very peacefully. The princes and Murzas hastened to come to Ermak with gifts and declared their desire to accept Russian citizenship. In Kashlyk, the Cossacks found rich booty, especially furs, collected into the khan's treasury for many years. Ermak, following the laws of free Cossacks, ordered the booty to be divided equally among everyone.

In December 1582, Ermak sent messengers to Rus' led by Ivan Koltso with a report on the capture of the Siberian Khanate. He himself, having settled down for the winter in Kashlyk, continued to repel the raids of Kuchum’s troops. In the spring of 1583, Mametkul's headquarters on the banks of the Vagai was defeated. Mametkul himself was captured. This significantly weakened Kuchum's forces. In addition, from the south, from Bukhara, a descendant of the Taibugins, the son of Bekbulat Sepdyak (Seyid Khan), who at one time managed to escape reprisal, returned and began to threaten Kuchum. Anticipating new strife, the nobility began to hastily leave the Khanek's court. Even one of his most loyal confidants, Murza Karami, “left” Kuchum. Having captured nomadic camps along the river. Omi, he entered into single combat with Ermak, seeking the return of the ulus near Kashlyk.

In March 1584, Karachi lured a detachment of Cossacks from Kashlyk, led by Ermak’s faithful associate Ivan Koltso, who had returned from Moscow, and destroyed it. Until the summer, the Tatars, having besieged Kashlyk, kept Ermak’s detachment in a ring, depriving him of the opportunity to replenish his meager food supplies. But Ermak, waiting for the moment, organized a sortie from the besieged town one night and defeated the Karachi headquarters with a sudden blow. Two of his sons were killed in the battle, but he himself and a small detachment managed to escape.

Kuchum's power was no longer recognized by some local tribes and their princelings. Back in the spring of 1583, Ermak sent 50 Cossacks led by Bogdan Bryazga along the Irtysh to the Ob and imposed tribute on a number of Tatar and Khanty volosts.

The forces of Ermak’s squad were reinforced in the summer of 1584. The government of Ivan IV, having received a report of the capture of Kashlyk, sent a detachment of 300 servicemen to Siberia, led by governor S. D. Bolkhovsky. This is a detachment in the winter of 1584/85. found himself in a difficult position. Lack of housing and food, severe Siberian frosts caused severe famine. Many archers died, and the governor Semyon Bolkhovsky also died.

Kuchum, who wandered with his ulus in the steppes, gathered forces, demanding help from the Tatar Murzas in the fight against the Russians with threats and flattery. In an effort to lure Ermak out of Kashlyk, he spread a rumor about the delay of a Bukharan trade caravan heading to Kashlyk. Ermak decided to take another campaign against Kuchum. This was Ermak's last campaign. With a detachment of 150 people, Ermak left on plows in July

1585 from Kashlyk and moved up the Irtysh. During an overnight stay on the Irtysh island, not far from the mouth of the river. While Vagay, the detachment was unexpectedly attacked by Kuchum. Many Cossacks were killed, and Ermak, wounded in hand-to-hand combat with the Tatars, while covering the detachment’s retreat, managed to make his way to the shore. But the plow, onto the edge of which he unsuccessfully jumped, overturned, and, dressed in heavy armor, Ermak drowned. This happened on the night of August 5-6, 1585.

Having learned about the death of their leader, the archers, led by Ivan Glukhov, left Kashlyk for the European part of the country along the Pechora route - through the Irtysh, Ob, and Northern Urals. Some of the Cossacks with Matvey Meshcheryak, together with a small detachment sent from Moscow by I. Mansurov, remained in Siberia and laid down at the mouth of the river. Irtysh, the first Russian fortification is the Ob town.

The campaign of Ermak's Cossack squad created favorable conditions for the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state, for the subsequent widespread economic development of it by the Russian population. The reign of the Chin-Ghisids in the Siberian Khanate was put to an end. Many uluses of the West Siberian Tatars had already come under the protection of Russia. Russia included the Bashkirs, Mansi, and Khanty, who had previously been subject to Kuchum, who lived in the basins of the Tura, Tavda, Tobol, and Irtysh rivers, and the left bank part of the Lower Ob region (Ugra land) was finally assigned to Russia.

Following Ermak's Cossacks, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to Siberia, and intensive commercial and agricultural development of the region began.

The tsarist government used Ermak's campaign to extend its power to Siberia. “The last Mongol king Kuchum, according to K-Marx, was defeated by Ermak” and with this “the foundation of Asian Russia was laid.” Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. Russian settlers equally experienced his oppression. But the rapprochement of the working Russian people and local tribes was conducive to the development of production forces, overcoming the centuries-old disunity of Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.

The people glorified Ermak in their songs and stories, paying tribute to his courage, devotion to his comrades, and military valor. For more than three years his squad did not know defeat; neither hunger nor severe frosts broke the will of the Cossacks. It was Ermak’s campaign that prepared the annexation of Siberia to Russia.

Archive of Marx and Engels. 1946, vol. VIII, p. 166.

2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state

The question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state and the significance of this process for the local and Russian population has long attracted the attention of researchers. Back in the middle of the 18th century, historian-academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gerard Friedrich Miller, one of the participants in a ten-year scientific expedition in the Siberian region, having become acquainted with the archives of many Siberian cities, expressed the idea that Siberia was conquered by Russian weapons.

The position put forward by G. F. Miller about the aggressive nature of the inclusion of the region into Russia was quite firmly entrenched in noble and bourgeois historical science. They only argued about who was the initiator of this conquest. Some researchers assigned an active role to the activities of the government, others argued that the conquest was carried out by private entrepreneurs, the Stroganovs, and others believed that Siberia was conquered by the free Cossack squad of Ermak. There were also supporters of various combinations of the above options.

Miller's interpretation of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into Russia also passed into the works of Soviet historians of the 20-30s. of our century.

Research by Soviet historians, careful reading of published documents and the identification of new archival sources made it possible to establish that, along with military expeditions and the deployment of small military detachments in Russian towns founded in the region, there were numerous facts of the peaceful advancement of Russian explorers and fishermen and the development of large areas of Siberia. A number of ethnic groups and nationalities (Ugrians-Khanty of the Lower Ob region, Tomsk Tatars, chat groups of the Middle Ob region, etc.) voluntarily became part of the Russian state.

Thus, it turned out that the term “conquest” does not reflect the entire essence of the phenomena that took place in the region during this initial period. Historians (primarily V.I. Shunkov) proposed a new term “annexation”, the content of which includes the facts of the conquest of individual regions, the peaceful development by Russian settlers of the sparsely populated valleys of the Siberian taiga rivers, and the facts of the voluntary acceptance of Russian citizenship by some ethnic groups.

The question of what joining the Russian state brought to the peoples of Siberia was resolved in different ways. Noble historiography, with its inherent apologetics for tsarism, sought to embellish government activities. G. F. Miller argued that the tsarist government, in managing the annexed territory, practiced “quietness,” “affectionate persuasion,” “friendly treats and gifts,” and showed “severity” and “cruelty” only in cases where “affection” didn't work. Such “affectionate” management, according to G. F. Miller, allowed the Russian government in Siberia to “do a lot of useful things” with “considerable benefit to the country there.” This statement of Miller, with various variants, was firmly held for a long time in the pre-revolutionary historiography of Siberia and even among individual historians of the Soviet period.

The noble revolutionary of the late 18th century viewed the issue of the significance of the inclusion of Siberia in Russia for the indigenous Siberian population in a different way. A. N. Radishchev. He gave a sharply negative characterization of the actions of tsarist officials, merchants, moneylenders and the Orthodox clergy in Siberia, emphasizing that they were all “greedy”, “self-seeking”, shamelessly robbing the local working population, robbing them of their furs, driving them into impoverishment.

Radishchev's assessment found support and further development in the works of AP. Shchapov and S.S. Shashkov. A.P. Shchapov in his writings passionately denounced government policy towards Siberia in general and its peoples in particular, while he emphasized the positive impact of economic and cultural communication between Russian peasants and artisans with Siberian peoples.

The negative assessment of the results of the activities of the tsarist administration in Siberia, put forward by A. N. Radishchev, was shared by Shchapov’s contemporary SS. Shashkov. Using specific materials from Siberian life, showing the oppressed position of the working non-Russian population of the region to expose contemporary social reality, democrat and educator S.S. Shashkov in his journalistic articles came to the conclusion about the generally negative significance of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state. Unlike Shchapov, S.S. Shashkov did not consider the issue of the activities of the working Russian population in developing the productive forces of the region and the influence of this activity on the economy and social development of local Siberian residents.

This one-sidedness of S.S. Shashkov in resolving the issue of the significance of the region’s entry into Russia was adopted and further developed by representatives of Siberian regionalism with their opposition of Siberia and the Siberian population of Russia to the entire Russian population of the country.

S.S. Shashkov’s negative assessment was also received by the bourgeois-nationalistic part of the intelligentsia of the Siberian peoples, who contrasted the interests of the local indigenous population with the interests of the Russian inhabitants of the region and condemned the very fact of Siberia’s annexation to Russia.

Soviet researchers, who had mastered the Marxist-Leninist materialist understanding of the history of society, had to, based on the source base, decide the question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia in the

of the Russian state and determine the significance of this process both for the non-Russian population of the region and its Russian settlers, and for the development of the country as a whole.

Intensive research work in the post-war period (second half of the 40s - early 60s) culminated in the creation of a collective monograph “History of Siberia”, five volumes of which were published in 1968. The authors of the second volume of “History of Siberia” summed up the results of the previous study of the issue on the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state, showed the role of the masses in the development of the productive forces of the region, revealed “the significance of Russian colonization in general and agriculture in particular as the leading form of economy, which subsequently had a decisive influence on the economy and way of life of local indigenous peoples. This confirmed the thesis about the fruitful and largely peaceful nature of the Russian annexation and development of Siberia, about the progressiveness of its further development, conditioned by the joint life of the Russian and indigenous peoples.”

The annexation of the vast territory of the Siberian region to Russia was not a one-time act, but a long-term process, the beginning of which dates back to the end of the 16th century, when, after the defeat of the last Genghisid Kuchum on the Irtysh by the Cossack squad of Ermak, Russian resettlement in the Trans-Urals and development by alien peasants, fishermen, artisans, first of the forest belt of Western Siberia, then of Eastern Siberia, and with the onset of the 18th century, of Southern Siberia. The completion of this process occurred in the second half of the 18th century.

The annexation of Siberia to Russia was the result of the implementation of the policy of the tsarist government and the ruling class of feudal lords, aimed at seizing new territories and expanding the scope of feudal robbery. It also met the interests of the merchants. Cheap Siberian furs, valued on the Russian and international (European) markets, became a source of enrichment for him.

However, the leading role in the process of annexation and development of the region was played by Russian migrants, representatives of the working population, who came to the distant eastern region to work in the fields and settled in the Siberian taiga as farmers and artisans. The presence of free lands suitable for agriculture stimulated the process of their subsidence.

Economic, everyday, and cultural contacts were established between newcomers and local residents. The indigenous population of the Siberian taiga and forest-steppe for the most part had a positive attitude towards joining the Russian state.

The desire to get rid of the devastating raids of stronger southern nomadic neighbors, the desire to avoid constant inter-tribal clashes and strife that damaged the economy of fishermen, hunters and cattle breeders, as well as the perceived need for economic ties encouraged local residents to unite with the Russian people as part of one state.

After the defeat of Kuchum by Ermak’s squad, government detachments arrived in Siberia (in 1585 under the command of Ivan Mansurov, in 1586 led by governors V. Sukin and I. Myasny), the construction of the Ob town on the banks of the Ob began, and in the lower reaches of the Tura the Russian fortress Tyumen, in 1587 on the banks of the Irtysh opposite the mouth of the Tobol-Tobolsk, on the waterway along the Vishera (a tributary of the Kama) to Lozva and Tlvda-Lozvinsky (1590) and Pelymsky (1593) towns. At the end of the 16th century. in the Lower Ob region the city of Berezov was built (1593), which became the Russian administrative center on the Yugra land.

To consolidate the lands of Prnobya above the mouth of the Irtysh into Russia, a small group of servicemen with governors F. Baryatinsky and Vl. was sent from Moscow in February 1594. Anichkov. Having arrived in Lozva by sleigh, the detachment in the spring moved by water to the town of Ob. From Berezov, Berezovsky servicemen and the Khanty codekke with their prince Igichey Alachev were sent to join the arriving detachment. The detachment moved up the Ob River to the Bardakov “principality”. The Khanty prince Bardak voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship and assisted in the construction of a Russian fortress, erected in the center of the territory under his control on the right bank of the Ob River at the confluence of the Surgutka River. The new city began to be called Surgut. All Khanty villages subject to Bardak became part of the Surgut district. Surgut became a stronghold of tsarist power in this region of the Middle Ob region, a springboard for an attack on the Selkup union of tribes, known as the Piebald Horde. The need to bring the Piebald Horde under Russian citizenship was dictated not only by the desire of the tsarist government to expand the number of yasak payers in the Ob region. Representatives of the Selkup nobility, led by the military leader Voneya, at this time had close contacts with the rank-gisnd Kuchum, expelled from Kashlyk, who in 1596 “nomadic” to the Piebald Horde and was going to raid the Surgut district in 1597.

To strengthen the Surgut garrison, servicemen from the Ob town were included in its composition, which ceased to exist as a fortified village. Negotiations undertaken with Vonya did not lead to positive results for the royal governors. To prevent Vony’s military uprising on the side of Kuchum, Surgut servicemen, on the instructions of the governor, built a Russian fortification in the center of the Piebald Horde - the Narymsky fort (1597 or 1593).

Then the advance began to the east along the right tributary of the Ob River. Keti, where Surgut servicemen set up the Ket fort (presumably in 1602). On the portage from Ket to the Yenisei basin in 1618, a small Makovsky fort was built.

Within the southern part of the taiga and in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia in the 90s. XVI century The fight against the remnants of Kuchum's horde continued. Expelled by Ermak's Cossacks from Kashlyk, Kuchum and his supporters wandered between the Ishim and Irtysh rivers, raiding Tatar and Bashkir uluses that recognized the power of the Russian Tsar, and invading the Tyumen and Tobolsk districts.

To prevent the ruinous invasions of Kuchum and his supporters, it was decided to build a new Russian fortress on the banks of the Irtysh. A significant number of local residents were attracted to this construction: Tatars, Bashkirs, Khanty. The construction work was headed by Andrey Yeletsky. In the summer of 1594, on the banks of the Irtysh near the confluence of the river. The city of Tara appeared, under the protection of which the inhabitants of the Irtysh region had the opportunity to get rid of the domination of the descendants of the Genghisids of Kuchum. The service people of Tara performed military guard duty in the border region with the steppe, struck back at Kuchum and his supporters - the Nogai Murzas and Kalmyk taishas, ​​expanding the territory subject to the Russian Tsar.

Following the instructions of the government, the Tara governors tried to start negotiations with Kuchum. In 1597, he was sent a royal letter calling on him to stop the fight with Russia and accept Russian citizenship. The Tsar promised to assign nomads along the Irtysh to Kuchum. But it soon became known that Kuchum was preparing for a raid on the Tara district and was negotiating military assistance with the Nogai Horde and the Bukhara Khanate.

By order from Moscow, preparations began for a military campaign. The detachment staffed in Tara by Andrei Voeikov consisted of Russian servicemen and Tatars from Tobolsk, Tyumen and Tara. In August 1598, after a series of small battles with Kuchum’s supporters and people dependent on him in the Baraba region, A. Voeikov’s detachment suddenly attacked the main camp of the Kuchum Tatars, located in a meadow near the mouth of the Irmen River, the left tributary of the Ob. The Chat Tatars and White Kalmyks (Teleuts) who lived next door in the Ob region did not have time to help Kuchum. His headquarters was destroyed, members of the khan's family were captured. In the battle, many representatives of the nobility, relatives of the khan, and over 150 ordinary Tatar warriors were killed; in Kuchum itself, with a small group of his supporters, they managed to escape. Soon Kuchum died in the southern steppes.

The defeat of Kuchum on the Ob was of great political significance. Residents of the forest-steppe zone of Western Siberia saw in the Russian state a force capable of protecting them from the devastating invasions of the nomads of Southern Siberia, from the raids of Kalmyk, Uzbek, Nogai, and Kazakh military leaders. The Chat Tatars were in a hurry to declare their desire to accept Russian citizenship and explained that they could not do this before because they were afraid of Kuchum. The Baraba and Terenin Tatars, who had previously paid tribute to Kuchum, accepted Russian citizenship. The Tatar uluses of Baraba and the river basin were assigned to the Tatar district. Omn.

At the beginning of the 17th century. The prince of the Tomsk Tatars (Eushtin-tsev) Toyan came to Moscow with a request to the government of Boris Godunov to take the villages of the Tomsk Tatars under the protection of the Russian state and “establish” a Russian city on their land. Toyan pledged to help the royal administration of the new city in levying yasak on the Turkic-speaking groups neighboring the Tomsk Tatars. In January 1604, a decision was made in Moscow to build a fortification on the land of the Tomsk Tatars. Sent from Moscow, Toyan arrived in Surgut. The Surgut governors, having sworn in Toyan (sherti), sent several servicemen with him as accompanying people to the Tomsk land to select the site for the construction of the future city. In March, in Surgut, a detachment of builders was being recruited under the command of the assistant to the Surgut governor G.I. Pisemsky and the Tobolsk boyar's son V.F. Tyrkov. In addition to Surgut servicemen and carpenters, it included servicemen who arrived from Tyumen and Tobolsk, Pelym archers, Tobolsk and Tyumen Tatars and Koda Khanty. In the spring of 1604, after the ice drift, the detachment set off from Surgut on boats and planks up the Obn to the mouth of the Tom and further up the Tom to the lands of the Tomsk Tatars. During the summer of 1604, a Russian city was built on the right bank of the Tom. At the beginning of the 17th century. Tomsk city was the easternmost city in Russia. The adjacent region of the lower reaches of the Tom, Middle Ob and Prnchulymya became part of the Tomsk district.

Collecting yasak from the Turkic-speaking population of Pritomya, Tomsk servicemen in 1618 founded a new Russian settlement in the upper reaches of the Tom - Kuznetsk fort, which became in the 20s. XVII century administrative center of Kuznetsk district. At the same time, in the basin of the right tributary of the Ob-Chulym, small forts were erected - Melessky and Achinsky. In them, depending on the weather, there were Cossacks and archers from Tomsk, who performed military guard duty and protected the yurts of local residents from incursions by detachments of Kyrgyz princes and Mongolian Altyn Khans.

Growing contacts of the annexed part of the Ob region with the center and north of the country already at the end of the 16th century. the issue of improving communication routes was urgently raised. The official route to Siberia from the Kama region through the town of Lozvinsky was long and difficult. In the second half of the 90s. XVI century Solvychegodsk townsman Artemy Sofinov-Babinov took a contract from the government to build a road from Solikamsk to Tyumen. From Solikamsk it went through mountain passes to the upper reaches of the river. Tours. In 1598, the Verkhoturye town was established here, in the construction of which carpenters, peasants, and archers who were transferred here from Lozva participated.

Verkhoturye on the Babinovskaya road throughout the 17th century. played the role of the “main gate to Siberia”, through which all connections between Moscow and the Trans-Urals were carried out, and customs duties were collected on transported goods. From Verkhoturye the road ran along the river. Tours to Tyumen. In 1600, halfway between Verkhoturye and Tyumen, the Turin fort arose, where coachmen and peasants transferred from the European part of the state were settled to serve the needs of the Babinovskaya road.

By the beginning of the 17th century. Almost the entire territory of Western Siberia from the Gulf of Ob in the north to Tara and Tomsk in the south became an integral part of Russia.

2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia

Russian fishermen back in the 16th century. They hunted fur-bearing animals on the right bank of the lower Ob, in the basins of the Taza and Turukhana rivers, and gradually moved east to the Yenisei. They founded winter huts (which grew from temporary to permanent), and entered into exchange, production, household and even family relations with local residents.

The political inclusion of this tundra region into Russia began later than the settlement of Russian fishermen here - at the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries. with construction in 1601 on the banks of the river. Taza of the Mangazeya town, which became the administrative center of the Mangazeya district and the most important trade and transshipment point in northern Asia, a place where fishermen flocked in preparation for the next hunting season. Until 1625, there was no permanent detachment of service people in Mangazeya. Military guard duty was performed by a small group of “year-olds” (30 people) sent from Tobolsk and Berezov. After creating a permanent garrison (100 people), the Mangazeya governors created several tribute winter huts, began sending fur collectors to the treasury on the banks of the Lower Yenisei, on its right-bank tributaries - Podkamennaya Tunguska and Lower Tunguska, and further to the Pyasina and Khatanga basins.

As already noted, the penetration of Russians into the middle Yenisei proceeded along the right tributary of the Ob-Ket, which in the 17th century. became the main road from the Ob basin to the east. In 1619, the first Russian administrative center was built on the banks of the Yenisei - the Yenisei fort, which quickly grew into a significant transshipment point for fishermen and traders. The first Russian farmers appeared in the region adjacent to Yeniseisk.

The second fortified town on the Yenisei was the Krasnoyarsk fort, founded in 1628, which became the main stronghold of defense of the borders in the south of the Yenisei region. Throughout the 17th century. south of Krasnoyarsk there was a fierce struggle with the nomads, caused by the aggression of the Kyrgyz princes of the upper Yenisei, who relied in the first half of the century on the strong state of the Altyn Khans (which formed in Western Mongolia), and in the second half - on the Dzungar rulers, whose vassals they became. The princes considered the local Turkic-speaking groups of the upper Yenisei to be their kishtyms (dependent people, tributaries): the Tubnians, Yarintsev, Motortsy, Kamasintsy, etc.

Almost every year, the rulers of the Kyrgyz uluses besieged the Krasnoyarsk fortress, exterminated and captured the indigenous and Russian population, captured livestock and horses, and destroyed crops. Documents tell about repeated military campaigns against the steppe nomads of groups of Krasnoyarsk, Yenisei, Tomsk and Kuznetsk servicemen.

The situation changed only at the beginning of the 18th century, when, by order of the Dzungar contaisha Tsevan-Raptan, the forced resettlement of the Kyrgyz uluses and kishtyms of the nobility began to the main Dzungar nomads in Semirechye. The military leaders failed to completely transfer ordinary residents of the Kyrgyz uluses to new places. Local residents took refuge in the forests; some of those driven away fled while crossing the Sayan Mountains. For the most part, the population dependent on the Kyrgyz princes remained in their former habitats and was then included in Russia. The consolidation of the territory of the upper Yenisei ended with the construction of the Abakan (1707) and Sayan (1709) forts.

From Russian traders, the Mangazeya and Yenisei governors learned about the rich fur of the Lena Land. They began to send service people to the middle Lena, where the Yakuts lived, for yasak. Already in 1632, on the banks of the Lena, a small group of Yenisei Cossacks led by P. Beketov set up the Yakut fort, the first Russian village, which later became the center of the Yakut (Lena) voivodeship.

Some Yakut toyons and princelings of individual associations tried to fight yasak collectors, defending their right to exploit their relatives, but not all groups of Yakuts took part in this “struggle.” Intertribal strife, as well as the desire of some representatives of the Yakut nobility to take advantage of the help of service people , located on Leia, weakened the resistance of the Yakut groups to political subordination to the tsarist government. In addition, the majority of the Yakut population was convinced of the unprofitability of violating peaceful ties with Russian fishermen and traders. With all the “untruths” perpetrated by the fishermen to local residents in the fisheries, the predatory nature of the exchange the activity of fishing colonization was the main incentive for the inclusion of the main part of Yakutia into Russia.

Soviet researchers have established that Russian fishermen were the first to penetrate the Lena, and subsequently, within Eastern Siberia, they, as a rule, outnumbered the detachments of servicemen. The inclusion of the Evenks, Evens, and Yukaghirs into Russia and the imposition of yasak taxes on them in the royal treasury dragged on until the middle of the 17th century. Some geographical discoveries of Russian explorers date back to this time. Thus, the Cossacks, led by I. Rebrov and I. Perfilyev, in 1633 went along the Lena to the Arctic Ocean. On the sea moats built in Yakutsk, they reached the mouth of the river by sea. Yana, and then the mouth of the Indigirka. Almost simultaneously, another group of Cossacks under the leadership of S. Kharitonov and P. Ivanov, setting off from Yakutsk, opened a land road to the upper reaches of the Yana and Indigirka. Commercial development of this area began, Russian winter huts appeared (Verkhoyanskoye, Nizhneyanskoye, Podshiverskoye, Olubenskoye, Uyandinskoye).

Of particular importance in the geographical discoveries of the northeastern part of Asia was the sea voyage that began in 1648 under the leadership of S. Dezhnev and F. Popov, in which up to 90 people of traders and fishermen took part. From Yakutsk the expedition reached the mouth of the Lena, went out to sea and headed east. For the first time, the sea roach of Russian sailors rounded the northeastern tip of the continent, opened the strait between the continents of Asia and America, passed through this strait from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and reached the mouth of the river. Anadyr. In 1650 on the river. Anadyr by land from the banks of the river. A group of Cossacks with Stadukhin and Motora passed through Kolyma.

The advance from Lena to the east to the Okhotsk coast began in the 30s. XVII century, when the Tomsk Cossacks with D. Kopylov founded the Butal winter quarters on Aldan. A group of Cossacks, headed by I. Moskvitin, sent from the Butal winter quarters, following the rivers Aldan, Mae and Yudoma, reached a mountain range, crossed the mountains and along the river. Houllier reached the coast, where in the early 40s. Kosoy fort was built (which served as the beginning of the future Okhotsk).

Due to natural and climatic conditions, Russian development of Eastern Siberia was predominantly of a commercial nature. At the same time, Russian settlers identified areas in which arable farming was possible. In the 40s XVII century The first arable lands appeared at the mouths of the Olekma and Vitim rivers and on the middle reaches of the Amga.

The annexation of the lands of the Buryat tribes was complicated by external circumstances. The Buryat nobility placed certain groups of Evenks and the Turkic-speaking population of the right bank of the Yenisei in a dependent position, collected tribute from them and therefore opposed their inclusion in the tribute payers of Russia. At the same time, the Buryats themselves were subjected to frequent raids by Mongolian (especially Oi-Rat) feudal lords; they were interested in protecting themselves from the ruinous invasions of their southern neighbors with the help of Russian military detachments. The interest of the Buryat population in trade relations also pushed for good neighborly relations with the Russians.

The first Russian settlements in this region appeared in the early 30s. - Ilimsky and Bratsk forts. Under the protection of the Ilimsk fort in the middle of the 17th century. More than 120 families of Russian farmers lived there. In the 40s Yasak collectors began to appear among the Buryats living near Lake Baikal. At the confluence of the Irkut and the Angara on the island. The clerk established the Irkutsk yasak winter hut in 1652, and in 1661, opposite this winter hut on the banks of the Angara, the Irkutsk fort was built, which became the administrative center of the Irkutsk district and an important trading point in Eastern Siberia.

In the middle of the 18th century. The first fortified winter huts, founded by Russian fishing gangs, appeared in Transbaikalia. Some of them later became forts and administrative centers (Nerchinsky, Udnnsky, Selenginsky, etc.). Gradually, a network of fortified villages emerged, which ensured the safety of Transbaikalia from external invasions and contributed to the economic development of this area by Russian settlers (including farmers).

The first information about the Amur region arrived in Yakutsk in the early 40s. XVII century from the Russian fisherman S. Averkiev Kosoy, who reached the mouth of the Argun. In 1643, an expedition by V. Poyarkov was formed in Yakutsk, whose participants for three years walked along the rivers Aldan, Uchur, Gonoy, made a portage to the Amur water system, and descended the river. Bryande and Zeya to the Amur, then moved on ships down the Amur to its mouth. Having set out to sea, V. Poyarkov’s expedition moved north along the coast and reached the mouth of the river. Hives. From here, along the path laid earlier by a group of Cossacks, I. Moskvitina returned to Yakutsk. This campaign of V. Poyarkov, unparalleled in difficulty and the distance of the unknown path, gave a lot of information about the Amur, about the inhabitants who inhabited its banks, and their jams, but it has not yet led to the annexation of the Amur region.

More successful in this regard was the campaign organized in 1649 by the Ustyug merchant E.P. Khabarov-Svyatitsky. Khabarov's campaign was supported by the Yakut governor Frantsbekov. Participants in the campaign (over 70 people) joined Khabarov at their own request. The leader of the campaign received an official “order” from the Yakut governor, that is, he could act as a representative of government authorities. From Yakutsk the expedition set off along the river. Lena to its tributary Olekma, then up the Olekma to the portages into the Amur basin. During 1650-1653. The participants of the campaign were on the Amur. The Middle Amur was inhabited by Tungus-speaking Evenks, Dyuchers and Mongol-speaking Daurs. The Evenks were engaged in nomadic cattle breeding and fishing, and the Daurs and Duchers were familiar with arable farming. The Daurs and their neighboring Duchers began the process of establishing a class society; they had fortified towns ruled by their “princes.”

The natural resources of the Amur region (fur-bearing animals, fish) and the climate favorable for arable farming attracted settlers from the Yenisei, Krasnoyarsk, Ilimsk and Yakutsk districts. According to V.A. Aleksandrov, throughout the 50s. XVII century “At least one and a half thousand people went to the Amur. Quite a few “free, willing people” took part in E. Khabarov’s campaign itself.”4 Fearing the depopulation of the areas from which settlers (fishermen and peasants) were leaving, the Siberian administration set up a settlement at the mouth of the river. Olekma outpost. Unable to prevent the process of spontaneous settlement of the Amur region, the tsarist government decided to establish its own administration here, designating the Nerchnsky fort (founded in 1652) as the administrative center in 1658.

Ruled in the 17th century. in China, the Manchu Qing dynasty from time to time subjected the settlements of Daurs and Duchers on the Amur to predatory raids, although the territory they occupied lay outside the boundaries of the empire. In annexing the Amur region to Russia, the Qing dynasty saw a threat to the rapprochement of the borders of Manchuria with Russia and therefore decided to prevent Russian development of this area. In 1652, Manchu troops invaded the Amur and for almost six years waged military operations against small Russian troops. At the end of the 50s. The Manchus began to forcibly resettle the Daurs and Duchers into the Sungari basin, destroying their towns and agriculture. By the beginning of the 60s. Manchu troops went into the empire.

The Russian population resumed the development of the deserted Amur lands from Nerchinsk to the mouth of the river. Zei. The center of Russian settlements on the Amur became the Albazinsky fort, built in 1665 on the site of the former town of the Daurian prince Albazy. The population of Albazin - Cossacks and peasants - was made up of free migrants. The exiles made up an extremely small part. The first residents and builders of Russian Albazin were fugitives from the Ilimsk district, participants in the popular unrest against the governor, who came to the Amur with N. Chernigovsky. Here the newcomers declared themselves Albazin servicemen, established an elected government, elected N. Chernigovsky as Albazin's clerk, and began collecting yasak payments from the local population, sending furs through Nerchinsk to the royal treasury in Moscow.

Since the late 70s and especially in the 80s. The situation of the Russians in Transbaikalia and the Amur region again became complicated. The Manchu Qing dynasty provoked protests by Mongol feudal lords and Tungus princes against Russia. Intense military operations unfolded near Albazin and the Selenginsky fort. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed in 1689, marked the beginning of establishing a border line between the two states.

The Buryat and Tungus population acted together with the Russians in defense of their lands against the Manchu troops. Separate groups of Mongols, together with the Taishi, recognized Russian citizenship and migrated to Russia.

Conclusion

Ermak's campaign played a big role in the development and conquest of Siberia. This was the first significant step to begin the development of new lands.

The conquest of Siberia is a very important step in the development of the Russian state, which more than doubled its territory. Siberia, with its fishing and fur trades, as well as gold and silver reserves, significantly enriched the state treasury.

List of used literature

1. G.F. Miller "History of Siberia"

2. M.V. Shunkov “History of Siberia” in 5 volumes. Tomsk, TSU 1987