Conquest of Siberia. Conquest and colonization of Siberia Conquest of Western Siberia

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The conquest of Siberia is one of the most important processes in the formation of Russian statehood. The development of the eastern lands took more than 400 years. Throughout this period, many battles, foreign expansions, conspiracies, and intrigues took place.

The annexation of Siberia is still in the center of attention of historians and causes a lot of controversy, including among members of the public.

Conquest of Siberia by Ermak
The history of the conquest of Siberia begins with the famous campaign of Ermak. This is one of the Cossack atamans. There is no exact information about his birth and ancestors. However, the memory of his exploits has reached us through the centuries. In 1580, the wealthy merchants Stroganov invited the Cossacks to help protect their possessions from constant raids by the Ugrians. The Cossacks settled in a small town and lived relatively peacefully. The bulk were Volga Cossacks. There were a little more than eight hundred of them in total. In 1581, a campaign was organized with money from merchants. Despite its historical significance (in fact, the campaign marked the beginning of the era of the conquest of Siberia), this campaign did not attract the attention of Moscow. In the Kremlin, the detachment was called simple “bandits.” In the fall of 1581, Ermak’s group boarded small ships and began to sail up the Chusovaya River, all the way to the mountains. Upon landing, the Cossacks had to clear their way by cutting down trees. The coast turned out to be completely uninhabited. The constant ascent and mountainous terrain created extremely difficult conditions for the transition. The ships (plows) were literally carried by hand, since due to the continuous vegetation it was not possible to install rollers. With the approach of cold weather, the Cossacks set up camp on the pass, where they spent the entire winter. After this, rafting began on the Tagil River. Conquest of Western Siberia
After a series of quick and successful victories, Ermak began to move further east. In the spring, several Tatar princes united to repel the Cossacks, but were quickly defeated and recognized Russian power. In the middle of summer, the first major battle took place in the modern Yarkovsky region. Mametkul's cavalry began an attack on the Cossack positions. They sought to quickly close in and crush the enemy, taking advantage of the horseman's advantage in close combat. Ermak personally stood in the trench where the guns were located and began firing at the Tatars. After just a few volleys, Mametkul fled with the entire army, which opened the passage to Karachi for the Cossacks. Further conquest of Siberia: briefly
The exact burial place of the ataman is unknown. After the death of Ermak, the conquest of Siberia continued with renewed vigor. Year after year, more and more new territories were subjugated. If the initial campaign was not coordinated with the Kremlin and was chaotic, then subsequent actions became more centralized. The king personally took control of this issue. Well-equipped expeditions were regularly sent out. The city of Tyumen was built, which became the first Russian settlement in these parts. From then on, systematic conquest continued using the Cossacks. Year after year they conquered more and more territories. Russian administration was installed in the captured cities. Educated people were sent from the capital to conduct business.

In the mid-17th century there was a wave of active colonization. Many cities and settlements are founded. Peasants are arriving from other parts of Russia. Settlement is gaining momentum. In 1733, the famous Northern Expedition was organized. In addition to conquest, the task of exploring and discovering new lands was also set. The data obtained was then used by geographers from all over the world. The entry of the Uryakhan region into the Russian Empire can be considered the end of the annexation of Siberia.

Row of paintings

Godforgotten side

Stern gentleman

And a miserable worker - a man

With my head down...

How the first one got used to rule!

How the second one slaves!

N. Nekrasov

Humanity owes its civilization to two centers lying at two opposite ends of the continent of the Old World. European civilization arose on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Chinese civilization - on the eastern outskirts of the mainland. These two worlds, European and Chinese, lived separate lives, barely aware of each other's existence, but not completely without intercourse with each other. The works of these individual countries, and perhaps even ideas, were transmitted from one end of the continent to the other. In the interval between the two worlds lay the path of international relations, and this communication between East and West brought about greater or lesser successes in sedentism and culture along the way, despite the fact that the path itself passed through deserted places, where fertile areas are found in fits and starts and separated by waterless spaces. Siberia, more convenient than these deserts for settlement and culture, lay aside from this international path, and therefore, until later centuries, did not receive any significance in the history of human development.

It remained almost completely unknown to both civilized worlds of the Old World, because the borders of this country were surrounded by such difficult conditions that penetration into the country presented serious obstacles.

In the north, the mouths of its large rivers, similar to sea branches, are blocked by the ice of the Northern Ocean, along which a path has only recently been laid. To the east it borders the foggy, stormy and little-visited Sea of ​​Okhotsk and Bering Sea. It is cut off from the civilized south of Asia by the steppes. In the west, the forested Urals blocked the entrance to it. Under such conditions, relations with neighboring countries could not develop, civilization did not penetrate here either from the west or from the east, and information about this vast country was the most confusing and fabulous. From the father of history, Herodotus, almost to the famous imperial ambassador Herberstein, instead of reliable reports about Siberia, only fables were transmitted. Or they said that in the extreme northeast there live one-eyed people and vultures guarding gold; or they said that there people were imprisoned behind mountains that had only one opening through which they came out once a year to trade; or, finally, they assured that they hibernate for the winter, like animals, freezing to the earth's surface through the liquid that flows from their nose. The fabulous nature of the news indicates that during the entire period of the formation of the Russian state, relations with Siberia were very difficult and rare, due to the impassability of the forested Urals. The pass over this ridge, along which the rail track now spans, was in ancient times a real international barrier. Even in the last century, the astronomer Delisle, who traveled through the Urals to Berezov for observations, stated that anyone who travels through the Urals will be surprised that there are people who do not dare to accept the Urals as the border between Europe and Asia.

In the 16th century, an attempt to form a state in Siberia was made by the Turkestans. The path from Turkestan to Siberia lay through the steppe inhabited by the Kirghiz, a people engaged in cattle breeding and raids on their neighbors. It was a predatory, mobile population that did not know any power over itself. Dissatisfied people from neighboring Turkestan settled states, both ordinary people and princes, fled here, and often some capable adventurer rallied around himself a significant gang of daredevils, with whom he made raids on settled areas, first for robbery, and then for conquest, - raids that sometimes ended with the founding of a new and strong dynasty. It was probably these brave men who founded the first embryos of Tatar, actually Turkestan, colonization in Siberia.

At first several separate principalities arose. One of them, the oldest, was Tyumen, another prince lived in Yalutorovsk, the third in Iskera. A strong colonization of Tatar settlements was established along the rivers. In the settlements that were the residences of the princes, fortresses or towns were built in which squads lived, obliged to collect tribute to the prince from the surrounding wandering tribes. These colonists pioneered agriculture and crafts. Farmers, tanners and other craftsmen, as well as merchants and preachers of Islam, came here from Turkestan; The mullahs brought letters and books here. Individual princes, of course, did not live peacefully among themselves; from time to time, personalities appeared between them, striving to unite the region under their personal power.

Prince Ediger managed to accomplish the first unification. Immediately this new kingdom became known on the western side of the Urals. Until Ediger formed the entire Siberian kingdom from all the small Tatar settlements, the Trans-Urals did not attract the attention of either Russian statesmen or ordinary industrialists. The small peoples of Siberia lived in their wilderness, without making themselves known. Under Ediger, clashes between border residents led to relations between Moscow and Siberia, and in 1555 the first Siberian ambassadors came to the capital of the Moscow state. Perhaps those gifts that were brought to Moscow indicated the wealth of the Siberian region in furs, and then the idea of ​​taking possession of this region appeared. The fate of the Trans-Ural region in the minds of Moscow government officials was decided; The Moscow Tsar began to communicate, through an embassy, ​​with Siberia. Ediger recognized himself as a tributary, and annually sent a thousand sables. But this tribute was suddenly stopped. The steppe rider Kuchum, with a crowd of the Tatar horde, attacked Ediger and conquered his kingdom. Of course, the Moscow governors would have forced Kuchum to recognize Moscow power, but they were warned by a gang of freemen led by Ermak. One of the Siberian chronicles attributes the initiative to the eminent citizen Stroganov; the folk song is for Ermak himself.

The song hints that the Volga freemen were constrained on all sides and were not given room to roam, and so the Cossacks gathered on the Astrakhan pier “in a single circle to think a little thought out of the cry of the mind, with full reason.” - “Where to run and escape?” Ermak asks:

“What about living on the Volga? - reputed to be thieves...

Should I go to Yaik? - the transition is great.

Should I go to Kazan? - the king stands formidable.

Should I go to Moscow? - to be intercepted,

Seated in different cities,

And sent to dark prisons..."

Ermak decided to go to Usolye, to the Stroganovs, take their supply of grain and guns and attack Siberia. The chronicle says that Ermak arrived in the lands of the Stroganovs in the fall of 1579. The Stroganovs were rich peasants who made their money by extracting salt from the varnishes. They bought large lands from foreigners, established towns, and kept garrisons and cannons in them. Maxim Stroganov, the then head of this family, was frightened by Ermak’s gang that appeared in the Urals, but had to humble himself and do everything that the decisive ataman demanded of him; he supplied Ermak's squad with lead, gunpowder, crackers, cereals, they gave him guns and leaders from Zyryan. In the first summer, Ermak ran on a ship from Chusovaya to the wrong river, which he should have, and therefore he had to spend the winter here. Only in 1580, Ermak appeared on the Siberian slope of the Ural ridge; he went up in boats along Chusovaya and Serebryannaya and went down to Tura.

The first natives met him in the yurts of Prince Epanchi, where the city of Turinsk is now. Here the first battle was fought. Cossack shots rang out; The Tatar population, having never seen firearms before, fled. From here Ermak went down in boats, down the river, to Tobol and Tobol until it flows into the Irtysh. Here was the Tatar city of Siberia or Isker, i.e. a small village surrounded by an earthen rampart and ditch; it served as the residence of the Siberian Tsar Kuchum. Ermak previously attacked the small town of Atikin, which lay close to Siberia. The Tatars were defeated and fled. This battle decided the fate of Tatar rule in the country. The Tatars did not dare to confront the Cossacks anymore and abandoned the city of Siberia. The next day, the Cossacks were surprised by the silence that reigned outside the city ramparts - “and there was no voice anywhere.” The Cossacks did not dare to enter the city for a long time, fearing an ambush. Kuchum took refuge in the southern steppes of Siberia, and from a sedentary king turned into a nomad. Ermak became the owner of the region. He hit the Moscow sovereign with his forehead.

The song says that he came to Moscow and first bribed the Moscow boyars with sable fur coats so that they would report him to the tsar. The king accepted the gift and forgave Ermak and his comrades for the murder of the Persian ambassador. The royal army was immediately sent to Siberia under the command of the governor Bolkhovsky. It occupied the city of Siberia, but due to tedious marches, a lack of food supplies and the lack of management of the governor, starvation began among the troops and the governor himself died. Ermak again became the main ruler of the region, but not for long. At this time, he heard that a Bukhara caravan was heading along the Irtysh to Siberia. Ermak went to meet him, but on the way he was surrounded by Tatars and died in this dump.

This happened in 1584. The song says that there were only two kolomenki with him; Ermak wanted to jump from one road to another to help his comrades. He stepped onto the end of the passage; at this time, the other end of the board rose and fell on his “wild head” - and he fell into the water.

The Cossacks fled from Siberia. All the conquered cities were again occupied by the Tatar princes, and Prince Seydyak appeared in Isker. Moscow still knew nothing about this and sent new troops to Siberia to continue and strengthen the conquest. Therefore, the Cossacks had not yet reached the Urals when they met Governor Mansurov with troops and guns on his way to Siberia. Mansurov did not stop in Siberia, sailed down the Irtysh, until it flowed into the Ob, and then founded the town of Samarovo, in a desert country occupied by the non-warlike Ostyaks. Only the following governors began to build cities in more important places occupied by the Tatars.

For several years, the Russians were not the only masters in the region. Tatar princes lived next to them and collected yasak for themselves. Tatar fortresses interspersed with Russian ones. Voivode Chulkov founded the city of Tobolsk in 1587, several miles from Siberia, traces of which are still preserved near Tobolsk. The governor did not dare to take the Tatar city by force, as Ermak did. Once, the chronicle says, the Tatar prince Seydyak, with two other princes: Saltan and Karacha, and with a retinue of 400 people, left the Tatar city on a hawk hunt and drove up under the walls of the Russian city. Voivode Chulkov invited them to his city. When the Tatars wanted to enter with weapons in their hands, the governor stopped them with the words that “that’s not how people go to visit.” The princes left their weapons and, with a small retinue, entered the Russian city. The guests were brought to the governor’s house, where the tables were already prepared.

A long conversation began about “peaceful settlement”, i.e. peaceful division of power over Siberia and the conclusion of eternal peace. Prince Seydyak sat thoughtful and did not eat anything; heavy thoughts and suspicions came into his head. Voivode Danilo Chulkov noticed the embarrassment and said to him: “Prince Seydyak! If you think evil of Orthodox Christians, neither drink nor taste.” Seydyak replied: “I don’t think any harm against you.” Then the Moscow governor took the cup of wine and said: “Prince Seydyak, if you and Tsarevich Saltan and Karacha do not think evil against us, Orthodox Christians, drink this to your health.” Seydyak took the cup, began to drink - and choked. After him, the princes Saltan and Karacha began to drink - and they also choked - God denounced them. Those who saw this, the governor and the army of people, as if Prince Seydyak and others thought evil of them, want their death - and the governor Danilo Chulkov waved his hand, and the people of the army began to beat the filthy.” Seydyak with the best people was captured and sent to Moscow. This happened in 1588. From that time on, the power of the Moscow governor was established in Siberia.

Before the discovery of Siberia, the Volga was a channel through which the so-called dangerous elements left the state. Both the tax evader and the criminal fled here; An energetic person who was looking for broad activities went here; not only serfs, tramps and walking people fled here, but also individuals from the common people, outstanding in intelligence and character, who did not have the proper course in life. When Ermak led part of the Volga freemen beyond the Ural ridge, everything that had previously fled to the Volga rushed to Siberia. Instead of robbing trade caravans on the Volga, emigration on new soil began to conquer wandering tribes and tax them with tribute from sables in favor of the Moscow sovereign, and, of course, a significant share fell to the conquerors themselves. But in order to take a sable from a foreigner, you must have an advantage in strength, you must have courage and other conditions. Therefore, part of the emigration turned directly to the sable fishery. Rumors about a countless number of sables in Siberia, stories, perhaps exaggerated, that foreigners for an iron cauldron would give as many sable skins as the cauldron would hold, caused increased emigration not only from serf Moscow, but also from the free population of the ancient Novgorod region . Residents of the present Olonets, Vologda and Arkhangelsk provinces, who have long been familiar with animal trades, set off to Siberia to hunt for expensive animals. All these emigrants, starting with Ermak’s military squad, went to Siberia either by boat or on foot. Therefore, the first flood of emigration to the new country took place along the forest belt, through river communications. There was no emigration to the southern steppes because they did not have horses to raid the nomads living in the steppes; Moreover, the nomads had nothing but cattle, and the emigrants needed expensive sable skins - and the emigration climbed far to the north, closer to the Arctic Ocean. In view of this, in the XYII and early XYIII centuries, the north of Siberia was much busier than it is now. The northern cities of Siberia were founded earlier than the southern ones. The city of Mangazeya was especially famous in old Siberia (the songs give it the epithet “getting rich”), which lay almost off the coast of the Arctic Ocean and now does not exist at all. The geography of northern Siberia and even the Taimyr Peninsula was known to the Russians of the 18th century better than in later times. But when sable and other expensive animals were exterminated in the north, the population began to rise up the rivers and found southern cities.

The spread of Russian power in the region proceeded in this order. Having strengthened themselves on the Tobol and its tributaries, the Russians began to expand their possessions in Siberia down the Irtysh and Ob. In 1593, the city of Berezov was founded on the lower reaches of the Ob. In the same year, the Russians climbed the Ob River up from the mouth of the Irtysh and founded another city, Surgut. A year later, in 1594, a detachment of one and a half thousand military men climbed the Irtysh above the mouth of the Tobol and founded the city of Tara. At Tara, military enterprises up the Irtysh stopped and began again in this direction only after all of Siberia, right up to the Pacific Ocean, and Kamchatka and Amur were conquered. The Omsk fortress, located just 400 versts south of Tara, was founded only in 1817, therefore, 224 years after the founding of Tara.

The only conquest made with the help of Tara was in the land of the Baraba Tatars. On the contrary, parties from northern cities went much further east. The Berezovites founded a city in 1600, almost at the very Arctic Sea, on the Taz River, and called it Mangazeya; Surgut Cossacks went up the Ob and founded the Ket fort on its tributary, the Keti River; having climbed even higher along the Ob, they met the Tom River, and on it, 60 versts above the mouth, the city of Tomsk was founded in 1604; fourteen years later, i.e. in 1618, the city of Kuznetsk was founded on the same Tom River, but above Tomsk.

Here the conquerors of Siberia first reached the South Siberian mountains, which separate it from Mongolia. The founding of Kuznetsk ended the occupation of the vast Ob River system; a third of Siberia was occupied; further to the east there remained two more equally large river systems: the Yenisei, which was occupied immediately after the conquest of the Ob system, and the Lenskaya, which lies east of the Yenisei.

The occupation of the Yenisei system began in the far north. In the same year as the city of Tomsk was founded in the Ob system, the Mangazeya Cossacks, or industrial people, established a winter quarters on the Yenisei, where the city of Turukhansk now stands. By 1607, the Samoyeds and Ostyaks, who lived on the Yenisei and the Pyasida River, were subject to tribute; and in 1610, the Russians, going down the Yenisei on ships, reached its mouth, i.e. went out into the Arctic Sea. The middle parts of the Yenisei system were discovered by the Ket Cossacks, who, taxing the Ostyaks up the Keti, in 1608 reached the Yenisei in the place where the Yeniseisk hill now stands, and from there rose to the outskirts of present-day Krasnoyarsk. Near Yeniseisk they found the Ostyaks, who were nicknamed blacksmiths because they knew blacksmithing. Soon after the tribute was imposed, the Ostyaks of the forge volost were attacked by the Tungus, who came from the Tunguska River. The Russians who were in the volost collecting yasak were also beaten. This was the first meeting of the Russians with a new tribe - the Tungus. The hostile actions of the latter against the tribute-laden Ostyaks caused the construction, around 1620, of the city of Yeniseisk, on the banks of the Yenisei River. After this, within two years, both the Tungus, who lived along the Tunguska River, and the Tatars, who lived up the Yenisei, were brought into submission, and subject to tribute. In 1622, the first news was received about a new people - the Buryats.

It was the Yeniseis who heard that the Buryats, numbering 3,000 people, had come to the Kan River, which flows into the Yenisei from the right. This lime made the Russians think about a stronger position on the upper Yenisei, opposite the Kan. For this purpose, in 1623, it was founded on the Yenisei, in the lands belonging to the Tatars-Arins, at the mouth of the Kacha, in 300 years. above Yeniseisk, the new city is Krasnoyarsk. The sphere of action of the Krasnoyarsk people was directed mainly to the south, where they met the nomadic Tatar tribe of the Kirghiz, with whom the Tomsk Cossacks had previously fought a stubborn battle. In the east, the Krasnoyarsk people limited themselves to only exploring the valleys of the Kan and Mana rivers, in which they found hunting Samoyed-Ostyak tribes: Kamash, Kotovtsev, Mozorov and Tubintsev.

Discoveries in an eastern direction were developed with more significant consequences from the middle and lower Yenisei. One of the Yenisei parties, sent up the Tunguska and Angara, under the command of Perfiryev, reached the mouth of the Ishim; the other, under the leadership of centurion Beketov, rose even higher, she crossed dangerous rapids, reached the Oka River, and imposed tribute on the Tungus living here. The Ishim River, flowing into the Angara above the Oka, opened the way for the Russians to a new, more eastern region, to the system of the large Lena River. In 1628, the foreman Bugor with ten Cossacks climbed up the Ishim, dragged himself into the valley of the Kuta River and along it descended into the Lena River, along which he sailed to the mouth of the Chai River. The high quality of the sables exported by this party to Yeniseisk was tempting for the Yeniseis. In the same year, they sent another party to Lena, under the command of Ataman Galkin; and in 1632 they sent Beketov, already famous for his dexterity and ability to conduct such enterprises, with orders to build the city of Yakutsk in the lands occupied by the Yakuts. These parties, going down the Lena, already found here Russian industrial people from the city of Mangazei, who, through Turukhansk, reached the Lena and the land of the Yakuts ten years earlier than the Yeniseis. Five years after the founding of Yakutsk, precisely in 1637, the Cossacks under the command of the foreman Buza, descending the Lena, first reached its mouth and went out into the Arctic Sea; from here they entered the Olensk and Yana rivers in order to impose tribute on the Tungus and Yakuts living on them. Two years later, in 1639, therefore, sixty years after the capture of Siberia by Ermak, a party of Tomsk Cossacks, who came to Yakutsk with Ataman Kopylov, looking for new lands and taxing foreigners with tribute, having climbed up the Aldan and May, saw the waves of the Pacific Ocean for the first time. They came ashore where the small river Ulya flows into the ocean.

Still unoccupied in Siberia were the Baikal region, Transbaikalia, Amur and the extreme northeast, with Kamchatka. The Russians approached the northern shores of Lake Baikal, gradually expanding their power up the Angara River. In 1654, the Balagansky fort was built on the Angara, where now the city of Balagansk is, 200 versts below Irkutsk; and in 1661 Irkutsk was built, 60 versts from the shores of Lake Baikal. The Russians arrived on the southern shore of Lake Baikal, going around the lake from the east. The first fort in Transbaikalia, Barguzinsky, was founded in 1648, i.e. 13 years earlier than Irkutsk and 6 years earlier than Balagansk. From here the Russian wave gradually spread across Transbaikalia to the west and south, to Kyakhta and Nerchinsk. The parties that walked along the southern tributaries of the Lena, i.e. According to Olekma and Aldan, they learned about the existence of the large Amur River, flowing behind the ridge on the south side. The first one dared to cross the Poyarkov ridge in 1643. He went down the Zeya River, swam along the Amur River to its mouth, and went out to sea. and, making his way north near the shore, he reached the Ulya River, from where he crossed to Aldan along the very road along which the Tomsk Cossacks first discovered the Pacific Ocean. After 1648, the industrialist Khabarov, having recruited a squad of hunters on the Lena, came to the Amur, climbing the Olekma and Tugir. He reached the Amur far above the mouth of the Zeya, and from here he descended to the mouth of the Sungari and returned back along the old road with enormous booty. This was, in general terms, the geographical course of the conquest of Siberia.

This conquest was more the work of the men than the governor. Things usually happened in this way: Before a Cossack party, sent from the nearest fort or city, appeared in a new country, sable industrialists appeared in it and set up winter huts or trapping huts in it. Having caught sables with their own traps, or having collected them from local residents under the pretext of collecting yasak, they brought the prey to the city or prison to sell the goods to Moscow merchants. The news of a new country rich in sables reached the governor or the ataman in charge of the prison, and he sent a Cossack party to the newly discovered country. In this way, long before the appearance of the Cossack parties, the Yenisei and Lena were discovered. When the Cossack detachments arrived in these places, they already found the Mangazeans, who had established their winter quarters here and caught sables. At the end of the conquest period in Siberia, campaigns to discover new lands turned into a very profitable trade. Small parties began to be formed from private individuals, from simple fur traders, with the goal of opening lands, conquering them under the sovereign's hand and taxing them with tribute. Such parties, having collected sables from foreigners, gave a smaller part to the treasury, and kept the larger part, as Siberian chroniclers testify, for their own benefit. Eventually, these parties began to become crowded; simple fur traders began to appear as conquerors of vast countries. Khabarov, a simple fur trader from the Lena River, who was engaged in cooking salt on Kirenga, gathered a squad of one and a half hundred volunteers and with it destroyed almost the entire Amur region. Cossack search parties, presumably, were formed not so much at the initiative of the governor, but rather at the Cossacks’ own hunt. The Cossacks founded an artel, approached the governor with requests to supply them with gunpowder, lead and supplies, and set off on a campaign, hoping to bring a significant number of sables to their share. The Cossack conquest parties were mostly small: 20 or even 10 people.

So, the main role in the occupation and colonization of Siberia belongs to the common people. The peasantry singled out from among itself all the most important leaders of the cause. From his own environment came: the first conqueror of Siberia - Ermak, the conqueror of the Amur - Khabarov, the conqueror of Kamchatka - Atlasov, the Cossack Dezhnev, who rounded the Chukotka nose; ordinary industrialists discovered mammoth bone. These were brave people, good organizers, created by nature itself to control the crowd, resourceful in difficult situations, able to turn around with small means in case of need, and inventive.

The first parties of Russian settlers to Siberia brought with them to the new soil the primary forms of social organization: the Cossacks - a military circle; sable-industrialists - artel, farmers - community. Along with these forms of self-government in Siberia, a voivodeship administration was also established. Ermak was forced to call him; he realized that without sending new people and a “fiery battle” - in a word - without the support of the Moscow state, he, with his small Cossack artel, would not be able to hold Siberia. In Siberia, two colonizations developed simultaneously: the free people's, which led the way, and the government, led by the governors.

In the early days of Siberian history, Cossack communities retained their self-government. They were especially independent far from the voivodeship cities, on the Siberian outskirts, where they maintained garrisons of forts abandoned among hostile tribes. If they themselves, without the governor’s initiative, went in search of new tributaries, then the entire administration of the newly occupied region was in their hands. The first Siberian cities were nothing more than settled Cossack squads or artels, controlled by a “circle”. These settled Cossack artels divided yasak Siberia among themselves, and each of them had its own area for collecting yasak. Sometimes disputes arose about who should collect yasak from this or that tribe, and then one Cossack city went to war with another. Tobolsk was considered the eldest among the Siberian cities, which insisted that it alone had the right to receive foreign ambassadors. In later times, the freedom and initiative of these artels and communities decreased; but back in the 18th century, many cases, even criminal ones, were resolved by remote Cossack communities themselves. In the event of a conspiracy being discovered, the garrison of a remote fort would gather a gathering, sentence the criminals to death and carry it out, then only informing the nearest voivode's office. This is, for example, what the residents of the city of Okhotsk did with the rebellious Koryaks at the end of the last century. This self-government and lynching, however, gradually disappeared in the face of the expanding voivodeship power. But occasionally attempts to restore Siberian antiquity flared up. So the stories about the deposition of the governors in Irkutsk and Tara remained. Traces of this struggle have been preserved in Siberian archives in small numbers; but in reality, there were more. By the last century, self-government in Siberian cities had completely fallen. The remnants of self-government survived only in villages abandoned in the taiga, far from the main highway.

Not only the first conquerors who came with Ermak - the Cossacks and the rabble of the Volga freemen - but also the later emigrants, the more peaceful fur traders, were people either averse to farming, or who had never engaged in it. These parties took care of provisions, put them on sleighs, or the so-called chunits, which had to be dragged on themselves, and left to the east one after another. They found the beginnings of local agriculture only where settlements were founded by Tatar colonization. Of course, these rudiments were insignificant and could not satisfy the trapping teams that arrived one after another. In addition to bread, these latter also needed “fiery combat.” Both of these circumstances made trapping artels dependent on the distant metropolis. Since the sable trade was immediately appreciated by Moscow, the Moscow state took upon itself the responsibility of supplying industrialists with provisions and shells. In general, the passion for sable fishing was beneficial for the state. All the fur-hunters' spoils were transferred to the state treasury. Sable, like gold later, was recognized as a state regalia; It was ordered that all sable caught in Siberia be handed over to the treasury. Some of the sables went into it as tribute; but even those sables that came for sale from foreigners or were caught by Russian industrialists and then bought by buyers could not escape the treasury. The buyers, under severe punishment, were obliged to bring them to Moscow and hand them over to the Siberian Prikaz, from which they were given money based on their assessment, just as they are now given to a gold industrialist when he pours the gold he has mined into a smelting furnace in Barnaul or Irkutsk. In its orders or instructions to the Siberian governors, the Moscow government insisted - to try by all means “so that throughout Siberia sables would be in the Great Sovereign’s treasury alone.” Only thin furs were allowed to be exported to China; Bukhara merchants were completely prohibited from exporting furs to Turkestan; The governors themselves were strictly forbidden to wear sable fur coats and sable hats. The governors had to select both undressed skins and sewn furs from the region and send them to Moscow. To do this, goods were sent to them from Moscow, which they had to give to the Ostyaks, Yakuts and Tungus for production; They were also allowed to sell vodka from the treasury to the uluses in order to exchange furs for it.

Trying to turn all the production from the sable fishery into favor of the treasury, the government had to fulfill two tasks: to provide food for industrial parties and to combat smuggling. To prevent Russian merchants from bringing sables secretly, customs outposts were established in cities along the large Moscow highway. But, in addition to Russian merchants, Bukhara merchants were involved in smuggling in Siberia. The latter consisted partly of the descendants of those Turkestans who settled in Siberia before Ermak, partly of immigrants who came to Siberia after its conquest by the Russians. They had land in Siberia and were the only landowners in it. Even before the Russians appeared, they were already conducting a lively trade with Siberian foreigners - they took sables from them, and they were given paper fabrics. Russian merchants, in exchange for sables, began to offer Russian canvas and dye to the Siberian residents; but Russian material was both worse and more expensive, so competition with the Bukharians was difficult. In addition to the fact that Bukharan's goods were more profitable for foreigners, Bukharan gained an advantage over Russian and the long history of his relations with Siberia; The Bukharians had wives and families in foreign camps, and were related to local princelings; finally, they were more educated than the Russian newcomers. In the XYII century they were the only people in Siberia who had a book in their hands. In the XYIII century, foreigners who came to Siberia found rare manuscripts there. For example, the captured Swede Stralenberg discovered a Turkestan chronicle written by the Khivan prince Abulgazi, entitled “Genealogy of the Tatars” from one of the Tobolsk Bukharians. The Russians had to withstand competition in Siberia with the trade-savvy Turkestanis, famous for the antiquity of their culture, dating back to the Christian era. This struggle continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and partly even into the 19th century. The depopulation of foreigners continued to take place under Russian rule; The conversion of pagans to Islam went hand in hand with the conversion to Christianity, and some tribes, such as the Barabinsk Tatars, only in the half of the last century switched from shamanism to Mohammedanism - and the voices of the Tobolsk bishops were heard in vain about taking measures against Muslim preaching. The struggle with the Bukharans was no less difficult in terms of trade. In the 17th century, the Bukharians controlled all internal trade in Siberia; in the 18th century, only Asian trade remained in their hands; but even forced out of the domestic market, the Bukharans seemed to be serious rivals to the Ustyug merchants, who controlled the trade of Siberia with European Russia. Siberian residents, both foreigners and Russians, loved Asian fabrics more than Russian ones. In the last century, all of Siberia, according to the famous Radishchev, dressed in underwear made from Asian calico, and on holidays they wore silk shirts from Chinese fanza. On Sundays, peasant women wore scarves and caps made of Chinese silk fabric - goli; priestly vestments were also made from Chinese goli; all correspondence from Siberia was written in Chinese ink; An Irkutsk merchant wrote a petition to Moscow with it, and all the papers in the regimental offices on the Irtysh were written with it.

Both the Ustyug merchant and the Moscow government could not like this filling of the Siberian market with Asian goods and the primacy of the Bukharans. The government could have liked it all the less because Bukharetz demanded furs from foreigners in exchange for his fabrics. Contrary to government decrees, there was an extensive fur smuggling trade in Siberia. It was difficult for the local administration to keep track of it, because the entire population was interested in the existence of smuggling. The population wanted to wear silk, not canvas shirts, and therefore everyone - Russians, foreigners, merchants, and Cossacks - were secretly selling furs to the Bukharians. To put an end to the smuggling and export of sables to Turkestan, the government completely banned Bukharians from entering Siberia. With this measure, at the beginning of the 19th century, the government managed to give the Russian merchant an advantage over Bukharts and establish Russian manufacturing in Siberia. Already at the end of the last century this change became noticeable. Not only did the import of Asian paper goods into Siberia decrease, but the export of Russian paper textiles to China and Turkestan began. And in the first half of the 19th century, the export of this product took precedence over the import.

Another concern of the government in relation to Siberia was its food supply. These concerns continue throughout the 18th century, and partly into the present century. Animal traders, carried away by the ease of profit from sable hunting, did not want to take up the plow. The government began to establish villages in Siberia, build roads, establish postal pits, recruit cultivators in Russia and settle them along Siberian roads. Each settler, according to the royal decree, had to take with him the required amount of livestock and poultry, as well as agricultural tools and seeds. The immigrant's wagon looked like a small Noah's Ark. Sometimes the government recruited horses from Russia and sent them to Siberia for distribution to settlers. But these measures were not enough. The government established state-owned arable land in Siberia, obliged the peasants to cultivate them, forced them to build planks and melt grain on them to grain-starved places.

The establishment of arable land, cattle breeding, and settled settlements required an increase in women in Siberia, and a predominantly male population went to the new country. Due to the lack of women, at first Siberia was not distinguished by morality. In the absence of Russian women, the Russians took foreign wives and, according to the custom of the Bukharts, had several of them, so that the Moscow Metropolitan Philaret had to preach against Siberian polygamy. Foreign wives were obtained either by purchase or by capture. Numerous riots of foreigners, which were caused by unjust exactions and oppression of yasak collectors, gave rise to numerous military campaigns in foreign camps, and the imaginary disobedients were beaten, and their wives and children were taken captive and then sold into slavery in Siberian cities. Hunger from lack of bread and lack of catch of animals often forced the foreigners themselves to sell their children into slavery. The nomadic tribe of the Kirghiz, who occupied the southern steppes of Siberia, raiding the neighboring Kalmyks, always returned with prisoners and captives and also sometimes sold them in the Siberian border cities.

The Tsar's decree of 1754 limited the right of distillation to one class of nobles; merchants were prohibited from smoking wine. But since there was no nobility in Siberia, this law did not initially apply to Siberia. Suddenly, two years later, a certain Evreinov, a trustee of Prosecutor General Glebov, appears in Irkutsk and demands the surrender of distilleries, or “kashtak” in Siberian, into the possession of Glebov, to whom they were supposedly leased by the treasury. The merchants did not believe it; Irkutsk Vice-Governor Wulf himself took this as a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake. Prosecutor General Glebov actually rented taverns and kashtaki in Siberia in order to engage in a profitable wine trade.

The next year, after Evreinov’s arrival, investigator Krylov, sent by the Senate at the request of Glebov, came to Irkutsk. Before starting the investigation, Krylov consolidates himself in his apartment; he sets up a guardhouse, surrounds himself with soldiers, hangs the walls of his bedroom with various weapons, and goes to bed only with a loaded pistol under his pillow. Everything showed that Krylov was plotting something evil against the city society, capable of causing popular revenge, and was strengthening himself in his apartment in advance.

Until this home fortress was ready, Krylov, appearing in society, was very affectionate and friendly; but then he suddenly changed and began by shackling the entire magistrate and putting him in prison. Extortion of money from merchants began; under torture and lashes they were forced to confess to abuses in city government and the illegal trade in wine. Not only members of the magistrate, but also many other persons from the city society were implicated in this case through false denunciations. It has always been easy to do this in Siberia. As soon as a person in power showed an inclination to listen to denunciations, there were always more helpful people than the authorities asked for. One of the Irkutsk merchants, Elezov, left a particularly bad memory of himself. From the very beginning, he curried favor with Krylov and then showed him from whom and how much money could be obtained through imprisonment and torture. The merchant Bichevin turned out to be more stable than the others. He was a rich man who traded on the Pacific Ocean and thus made a great fortune. It is unlikely that, judging by the nature of his trading activities, he was involved in the abuses of the Irkutsk magistrate in the wine trade; but his wealth was a bait for Krylov, and therefore he was brought into the case and tortured. He was raised on his hind legs or temple: i.e. tied to his feet was a piece of wood or a raw block, like the one on which our butchers chop beef, weighing from 5 to 12 pounds. The martyr was lifted up the block by ropes tied to his hands and quickly lowered, preventing the log from hitting the ground; then, with the joints in his arms and legs turned out, the unfortunate man hung for the duration of the time determined by the tormentor, from time to time receiving blows from the whip on his body. Suspended from his temple, Bichevin stood strong and refused to admit his guilt. Without removing it from the whiskey, Krylov went to the merchant Glazunov for a snack. He stayed there for three hours. Bichevin hung on his hind legs all this time. When Krylov returned, Bichevin felt death approaching and agreed to sign up for 15,000 rubles. He was taken off the rack and taken home. And here Krylov did not leave him alone. He came to his house and before his death he extorted the same amount. In a similar brutal way, about 150,000 rubles were extorted from Irkutsk merchants and townspeople. In addition, Krylov, under the pretext of rewarding the treasury for losses, confiscated merchant property. He especially selected precious things, which he partly appropriated directly, without pretense, and partly he sold at auction, and he himself was both an appraiser, a seller, and a buyer. With this order, of course, everything valuable and best went into the chests of the investigator himself for next to nothing. These extortions and robbery of private property were accompanied by Krylov’s insulting treatment of Irkutsk residents. Krylov always appeared at the meeting drunk and went on a rampage; he hit merchants in the face with his fists and a cane, knocked out their teeth, and pulled their beards. Using his power, Krylov sent his grenadiers after the daughters of merchants and dishonored them. When the fathers complained to Vice-Governor Wulf, he only threw up his hands and said that Krylov was sent by the Senate and was not subordinate to him. Neither age nor lack of beauty guaranteed Irkutsk women from Krylov’s violence. He grabbed ten-year-old girls. The old women were also not spared from his persecution. One of the Siberian everyday life writers tells how Krylov forced the love of the merchant Myasnikova. The grenadiers grabbed her, brought her to Krylov, beat her, shackled her, locked her up; but the woman heroically endured the beatings and refused his caresses. Finally, Krylov called the husband of this woman, gave him a stick in his hands and forced him to beat his wife - and the husband beat, persuading his own wife to break the marriage...

The Siberian merchants behaved incredibly cowardly in this story. No one dared to complain and expose before the highest authorities the violence of a rabid man who accidentally fell into the hands of power over the region due to the greed of such an important government official as Governor-General Glebov. In Irkutsk there was a wealthy merchant Alexey Sibiryakov, who was known as a lawyer in the city. He loved to study laws, collected decrees and instructions for governing the Siberian region, since a code of laws did not yet exist, and compiled a complete collection of these state acts. Instead of coming out to defend his city, armed with knowledge, Sibiryakov fled somewhere in a remote village or just in the forest, living in a fur-trading hut. Krylov was frightened, thinking that Sibiryakov had gone to St. Petersburg with a denunciation, and sent a messenger in pursuit to bring the fugitive back. The messenger reached Verkhoturye and returned empty-handed. The fugitive abandoned his wife and family and brother in the city. Immediately Krylov put them in shackles and demanded directions to where Sibiryakov had disappeared. But, despite the lashes, neither the wife nor the fugitive’s brother could say anything, because Sibiryakov fled furtively even from his family. To top off the outrages against Irkutsk society, Krylov invited the Irkutsk merchants to send a deputation to St. Petersburg in order to ask Glebov for merciful leniency towards the accused merchants, among whom there were many allegedly guilty - and, according to Krylov’s wishes, his favorite and whistleblower was elected as a deputy Elezov.

For two years Krylov committed outrages in this manner in the region. The representative of the authorities, Lieutenant Governor Wulf, was silent and did not have the courage not only to stop him with his own power, but even to report the atrocities. Bishop Sophrony also hid and tried to make his existence invisible to Krylov, who began to interfere in all parts of the administration. One day, having been drunk at a meeting, Krylov wanted to flaunt his power in front of Wulf and began to scold him for omissions in his service. Although Wulf timidly objected to him, trying to refute the accusation, Krylov, under the influence of intoxication, became heated, ordered Wulf’s sword to be taken away, declared him arrested and dismissed from office, and himself took over the administration of the region. Only then, fearing for his freedom, and perhaps his life, did Wulf decide to notify his superiors about the events in Irkutsk. Secretly, he and Bishop Sophrony thought about this matter. The bishop wrote a denunciation, and Wulf sent him to Tobolsk with a secret messenger. An order came from Tobolsk to arrest Krylov. Wulf, however, did not dare to do this openly; he undertook this matter with great precautions. At night, a team of twenty selected Cossacks approached the investigator’s apartment, first seized the guns that were standing in bipods in front of the guardhouse, and then changed the guard. Then, the Cossack constable Podkorytov, famous for his daring, entered with several comrades into the room of the violent administrator. Krylov, seeing him, grabbed a gun from the wall and wanted to defend himself, but Podkorytov warned him and overpowered him. Krylov was put in shackles and sent to prison, and then, by order of the highest authorities, to St. Petersburg, where he was to stand trial. Empress Elizabeth, having learned about this matter, ordered that “this villain be dealt with regardless of any person.” The Senate, ignoring all of Krylov’s atrocities, charged him only with the arrest of Wulf and insulting the state emblem, which Krylov had the imprudence to nail to the gate of his apartment along with a plaque on which his own name was displayed, and deprived him of his ranks. “Even after a hundred years,” says one Siberian writer of everyday life, “it is difficult to judge this disgusting event in cold blood, especially for us, Siberians, whose ancestors died or went bankrupt under Krylov’s whip; but what must this executioner have seemed like to those who experienced his torture and violence?...”

Unrest in Siberia grew; news about them began to reach the supreme authorities more often. To help matters, the powers of the chief commander of the region were increased. Such extensive powers were vested in Governor General Selifontov, who ended in disgrace - dismissal from service with a ban on entry into the capital. Then Pestel became the governor general in Siberia. He was a painfully suspicious man. Upon his very appointment to this high post, Pestel wrote with a trembling hand, among other things, to the Emperor: “I am afraid, Emperor, of this place. How many of my predecessors were broken by the Siberian sneak! I don’t even hope to leave this position safely; It’s better to cancel your will, the Siberian informers will destroy me.” The Emperor did not agree to cancel his order, and Pestel had to go to Siberia upon taking office; he stated that he had come to crush the sneak. However, he did not directly govern Siberia: he transferred management matters into the hands of his closest relatives and favorites, and he himself left for St. Petersburg and never returned. For eleven years he ruled Siberia, living in St. Petersburg, altered the Highest commands, circumvented them and replaced them with Senate orders. On the one hand, he deceived the government with false representations; on the other hand, he deceived the local population with intimidation that in St. Petersburg the higher authorities had turned their backs on him and despised him for his sneaking.

Finally, Pestel’s opponents managed to convince the Emperor to carry out an audit of Siberia. They say that one day, Emperor Alexander I looked out of the window of the Winter Palace and noticed something black on the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. He called Count Rastopchin, famous for his wit, and asked if he would consider what it was. Rastopchin answered: “We need to call Pestel. From here he sees what is happening in Siberia.” And in Siberia, something truly terrible was happening. The Emperor sent Speransky to Siberia. At one rumor of this, the Siberian administration went mad with fear. One of the tyrannical despotic tycoons of Siberia fell into wild madness, from which he soon died; the other became haggard and old at once; the third hanged himself just before the start of Speransky’s investigation.

Speransky appeared in Siberia. His management was actually only an “administrative tour” across Siberia. Two years later he left the region and returned to St. Petersburg. Suffering Siberia met him, the messenger of God. “A man was sent from above!” wrote his contemporary, an educated Siberian, Slovtsov. And Speransky himself understood that his arrival in Siberia was an era for Siberian history. He called himself the second Ermak, because he discovered socially living Siberia, or as he put it: “discovered Siberia in its political relations,”

One of the Siberian writers, Mr. Vagin, tells the following anecdote. In some remote town in Transbaikalia they were waiting for Speransky. The officials were in a pack, but the Governor General was not coming. The company got bored, sat down to play cards, got tipsy, and then fell asleep. The Governor-General arrived at night and woke up this company with the words: “Behold, the bridegroom is coming at midnight!” The results were as follows: the Governor-General, two governors and six hundred officials were subject to trial for abuses; the amount of stolen money reached three million rubles! Presenting his report on the audit, Speransky petitioned the Emperor to limit punishment to only the largest culprits. This was prompted, firstly, by necessity, since expelling six hundred officials from service meant leaving Siberia without officials; secondly, it was not so much the people who were to blame for the abuses of Siberian officials, but rather the management system itself. Only two hundred people were injured; Of these, only forty people suffered a more severe punishment.

Having discovered the abuses of officials and punished the most important culprits, Speransky changed the very system of governance of Siberia, giving it the well-known special “Siberian Code”. Each Siberian governor and governor-general is assigned a council consisting of officials appointed by ministries. The Arakcheevsky party prevented Speransky from introducing elected representatives from local society into these councils. The practice of subsequent years proved that this new Code contributed very little to reducing administrative arbitrariness in Siberia.

The beneficial consequences of Speransky's stay in Siberia lie rather in the charming impression that he made on the local population with his personality. “In the nobles,” says Vagin, “the Siberians saw a man for the first time.” Instead of the previous rulers, a simple, approachable, friendly, highly educated man with a broad view of government came to Irkutsk - in a word, a man whom Siberia had never produced before. Speransky behaved extremely simply in society. He formed friendly relations with the old-timers; showed love and patronage for the sciences. The ruler of a vast region, its reformer, overwhelmed with audit cases, bombarded with thousands of petitions, drawing up several projects at once for the management of individual parts - he, at the same time, follows with the keenest interest current Russian literature, studies German literature, studies the English language and he himself teaches Latin to a young student. Speransky's stay in Siberia is a bright episode in the history of this country, a continuous, so to speak, picture of the triumph of truth over arbitrariness. The punishment that befell the perpetrators of the abuses and, most importantly, the personal influence of Speransky, made unrest on the previous scale impossible for some time. Then, the development of education in the metropolis, from where the governors of the region came, a change in views on government in general and the management of the outskirts in particular, a softening of the morals of the rulers - finally made it completely impossible for the repetition of Krylovism and Pestelism in Siberia. The special “Siberian Code” was aimed at weakening the administrative disorders that arose from the remoteness of the region, by limiting the power of the region’s leaders through councils; they thought that this limitation would make the Siberian order similar to the Russian one. However, the Siberian Code did not achieve this equality. Siberian orders are still constantly worse than those that exist in European Russia. True, they are better than those who were before Speransky, but the people in Siberia are not the same. Siberia, which has already entered the fourth century of its existence under Russian rule, is awaiting a new, more fundamental reform in governance.

On the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of Siberia, the Sovereign Word was heard from the height of the throne, giving the right to hope that, in the near future, probably, the reforms that European Russia is using will be extended to Siberia. The urgent importance and necessity of this was finally announced by the Siberian administration, and the highest government authorities treated this statement with special attention and care.

Indeed, bringing Siberia into one with European Russia by establishing unity in the system of governance of both of these Russian territories is the first thing necessary in order to make Siberia not only a definitively Russian country, but also an organic part of our state organism - in the consciousness as a European- Russian and Siberian populations. Then, it is necessary to finally consolidate the connection between Siberia and European Russia by rail running through the entire Siberian territory. Then, of course, quite naturally, there will be a proper influx of population from European Russia to Siberia and the abundance of Siberian natural resources will receive appropriate sales on the Russian and Western European markets. Only under this condition can there be an opportunity for Siberia to justify its ancient reputation as a “gold mine”.

* Picturesque Russia. - St. Petersburg; M., 1884. - T. 11. - P. 31-48.

Annexation of Siberia to Russia

“And when a completely ready, populated and enlightened region, once dark, unknown, appears before the astonished humanity, demanding a name and rights, then let history interrogate about those who erected this building, and also not inquire, just as it did not inquire who placed pyramids in the desert... And creating Siberia is not as easy as creating something under the blessed sky...” Goncharov I. A.

History has assigned the role of a pioneer to the Russian people. For many hundreds of years, Russians discovered new lands, settled them and transformed them with their labor, and defended them with arms in hand in the fight against numerous enemies. As a result, vast spaces were populated and developed by Russian people, and the once empty and wild lands became not only an integral part of our country, but also its most important industrial and agricultural areas.

Adygea, Crimea. Mountains, waterfalls, herbs of alpine meadows, healing mountain air, absolute silence, snowfields in the middle of summer, the murmuring of mountain streams and rivers, stunning landscapes, songs around the fires, the spirit of romance and adventure, the wind of freedom await you! And at the end of the route are the gentle waves of the Black Sea.

The development of Siberia is one of the most significant pages in the history of our country. The vast territories that currently make up most of modern Russia were, in fact, a “blank spot” on the geographical map at the beginning of the 16th century. And the feat of Ataman Ermak, who conquered Siberia for Russia, became one of the most significant events in the formation of the state.

Ermak Timofeevich Alenin is one of the most little-studied personalities of this magnitude in Russian history. It is still not known for certain where and when the famous chieftain was born. According to one version, Ermak was from the banks of the Don, according to another - from the outskirts of the Chusovaya River, according to the third - his place of birth was the Arkhangelsk region. The date of birth also remains unknown - historical chronicles indicate the period from 1530 to 1542.

It is almost impossible to reconstruct the biography of Ermak Timofeevich before the start of his Siberian campaign. It is not even known for certain whether the name Ermak is his own or is it still the nickname of the Cossack chieftain. However, from 1581-82, that is, directly from the beginning of the Siberian campaign, the chronology of events has been restored in sufficient detail.

Siberian campaign

The Siberian Khanate, as part of the collapsed Golden Horde, coexisted in peace with the Russian state for a long time. The Tatars paid an annual tribute to the Moscow princes, but when Khan Kuchum came to power, the payments stopped, and Tatar detachments began to attack Russian settlements in the Western Urals.

It is not known for certain who was the initiator of the Siberian campaign. According to one version, Ivan the Terrible instructed the merchants Stroganov to finance the performance of a Cossack detachment into uncharted Siberian territories in order to stop Tatar raids. According to another version of events, the Stroganovs themselves decided to hire Cossacks to protect their property. However, there is another scenario: Ermak and his comrades plundered the Stroganov warehouses and invaded the territory of the Khanate for the purpose of profit.

In 1581, having sailed up the Chusovaya River on plows, the Cossacks dragged their boats to the Zheravlya River in the Ob basin and settled there for the winter. Here the first skirmishes with Tatar detachments took place. As soon as the ice melted, that is, in the spring of 1582, a detachment of Cossacks reached the Tura River, where they again defeated the troops sent to meet them. Finally, Ermak reached the Irtysh River, where a detachment of Cossacks captured the main city of the Khanate - Siberia (now Kashlyk). Remaining in the city, Ermak begins to receive delegations from indigenous peoples - Khanty, Tatars, with promises of peace. The ataman took an oath from all those who arrived, declaring them subjects of Ivan IV the Terrible, and obliged them to pay yasak - tribute - in favor of the Russian state.

The conquest of Siberia continued in the summer of 1583. Having passed along the course of the Irtysh and Ob, Ermak captured settlements - uluses - of the peoples of Siberia, forcing the inhabitants of the towns to take an oath to the Russian Tsar. Until 1585, Ermak and the Cossacks fought with the troops of Khan Kuchum, starting numerous skirmishes along the banks of Siberian rivers.

After the capture of Siberia, Ermak sent an ambassador to Ivan the Terrible with a report on the successful annexation of the lands. In gratitude for the good news, the tsar gave gifts not only to the ambassador, but also to all the Cossacks who participated in the campaign, and to Ermak himself he donated two chain mail of excellent workmanship, one of which, according to the court chronicler, had previously belonged to the famous governor Shuisky.

Death of Ermak

The date August 6, 1585 is noted in the chronicles as the day of the death of Ermak Timofeevich. A small group of Cossacks - about 50 people - led by Ermak stopped for the night on the Irtysh, near the mouth of the Vagai River. Several detachments of the Siberian Khan Kuchum attacked the Cossacks, killing almost all of Ermak’s associates, and the ataman himself, according to the chronicler, drowned in the Irtysh while trying to swim to the plows. According to the chronicler, Ermak drowned because of the royal gift - two chain mails, which with their weight pulled him to the bottom.

The official version of the death of the Cossack chieftain has a continuation, but these facts do not have any historical confirmation, and therefore are considered a legend. Folk tales say that a day later, a Tatar fisherman caught Ermak’s body from the river and reported his discovery to Kuchum. All the Tatar nobility came to personally verify the death of the ataman. Ermak's death caused a great celebration that lasted for several days. The Tatars had fun shooting at the Cossack's body for a week, then, taking the donated chain mail that caused his death, Ermak was buried. At the moment, historians and archaeologists are considering several areas as the supposed burial places of the ataman, but there is still no official confirmation of the authenticity of the burial.

Ermak Timofeevich is not just a historical figure, he is one of the key figures in Russian folk art. Many legends and tales have been created about the ataman’s deeds, and in each of them Ermak is described as a man of exceptional courage and courage. At the same time, very little is reliably known about the personality and activities of the conqueror of Siberia, and such an obvious contradiction forces researchers again and again to turn their attention to the national hero of Russia.

One of the most important stages in the formation of Russian statehood is the conquest of Siberia. The development of these lands took almost 400 years and during this time many events occurred. The first Russian conqueror of Siberia was Ermak.

Ermak Timofeevich

The exact surname of this person has not been established; it is likely that it did not exist at all - Ermak was of an ordinary family. Ermak Timofeevich was born in 1532; in those days, a patronymic or nickname was often used to name a common person. The exact origin of Ermak is not clear, but there is an assumption that he was a runaway peasant, distinguished by enormous physical strength. At first, Ermak was a chur among the Volga Cossacks - a laborer and squire.

In battle, the smart and brave young man quickly obtained weapons for himself, participated in battles, and thanks to his strength and organizational skills, a few years later he became an ataman. In 1581 he commanded a flotilla of Cossacks from the Volga; there are suggestions that he fought near Pskov and Novgorod. He is rightfully considered the founder of the first marine corps, which was then called the “plow army.” There are other historical versions about the origin of Ermak, but this one is the most popular among historians.

Some are of the opinion that Ermak was of a noble family of Turkic blood, but there are many contradictory points in this version. One thing is clear - Ermak Timofeevich was popular among the military until his death, because the position of ataman was selective. Today Ermak is a historical hero of Russia, whose main merit is the annexation of Siberian lands to the Russian state.

Idea and goals of the trip

Back in 1579, the Stroganov merchants invited the Cossacks of Ermak to their Perm region to protect the lands from the raids of the Siberian Khan Kuchum. In the second half of 1581, Ermak formed a detachment of 540 soldiers. For a long time, the prevailing opinion was that the Stroganovs were the ideologists of the campaign, but now they are more inclined to believe that this was the idea of ​​Ermak himself, and the merchants only financed this campaign. The goal was to find out what lands lie in the East, make friends with the local population and, if possible, defeat the khan and annex the lands under the hand of Tsar Ivan IV.

The great historian Karamzin called this detachment “a small gang of vagabonds.” Historians doubt that the campaign was organized with the approval of the central authorities. Most likely, this decision became a consensus between the authorities who wanted to acquire new lands, merchants who were concerned about safety from Tatar raids, and the Cossacks who dreamed of getting rich and showing off their prowess on the campaign only after the khan’s capital fell. At first, the tsar was against this campaign, about which he wrote an angry letter to the Stroganovs demanding the return of Ermak to guard the Perm lands.

Riddles of the hike: It is widely known that the Russians first penetrated into Siberia in quite ancient times. Most definitely, the Novgorodians walked along the White Sea to the Yugorsky Shar Strait and further beyond it, into the Kara Sea, back in the 9th century. The first chronicle evidence of such voyages dates back to 1032, which in Russian historiography is considered the beginning of the history of Siberia.

The core of the detachment was made up of Cossacks from the Don, led by glorious atamans: Koltso Ivan, Mikhailov Yakov, Pan Nikita, Meshcheryak Matvey. In addition to the Russians, the detachment included a number of Lithuanians, Germans and even Tatar soldiers. Cossacks are internationalists in modern terminology; nationality did not play a role for them. They accepted into their ranks everyone who was baptized into the Orthodox faith.

But discipline in the army was strict - the ataman demanded observance of all Orthodox holidays and fasts, and did not tolerate laxity and revelry. The army was accompanied by three priests and one defrocked monk. The future conquerors of Siberia boarded eighty plow boats and set sail to meet dangers and adventures.

Crossing the "Stone"

According to some sources, the detachment set out on September 1, 1581, but other historians insist that it was later. The Cossacks moved along the Chusovaya River to the Ural Mountains. At the Tagil Pass, the fighters themselves cut the road with an ax. It is the Cossack custom to drag ships along the ground at passes, but here this was impossible due to the large number of boulders that could not be removed from the path. Therefore, people had to carry plows up the slope. At the top of the pass, the Cossacks built Kokuy-gorod and spent the winter there. In the spring they rafted down the Tagil River.

Defeat of the Siberian Khanate

The “acquaintance” of Cossacks and local Tatars took place on the territory of what is now the Sverdlovsk region. The Cossacks were fired upon by their opponents, but repelled the impending attack of the Tatar cavalry with cannons and occupied the city of Chingi-tura in the present Tyumen region. In these places, the conquerors obtained jewelry and furs, and along the way took part in many battles.

• On 05.1582, at the mouth of the Tura, the Cossacks fought with the troops of six Tatar princes.
• 07.1585 – Battle of Tobol.
• July 21 - the battle of the Babasan yurts, where Ermak stopped a cavalry army of several thousand horsemen galloping towards him with volleys of his cannon.
• At Long Yar, the Tatars again fired at the Cossacks.
• August 14 - the battle of Karachin town, where the Cossacks captured the rich treasury of the Murza of Karachi.
• On November 4, Kuchum with an army of fifteen thousand organized an ambush near the Chuvash Cape, with him were mercenary squads of Voguls and Ostyaks. At the most crucial moment, it turned out that Kuchum’s best troops went on a raid on the city of Perm. The mercenaries fled during the battle, and Kuchum was forced to retreat to the steppe.
• 11.1582 Ermak occupied the capital of the Khanate - the city of Kashlyk.

Historians suggest that Kuchum was of Uzbek origin. It is known for sure that he established power in Siberia using extremely cruel methods. It is not surprising that after his defeat, local peoples (Khanty) brought gifts and fish to Ermak. As the documents say, Ermak Timofeevich greeted them with “kindness and greetings” and saw them off “with honor.” Having heard about the kindness of the Russian ataman, Tatars and other nationalities began to come to him with gifts.

Riddles of the hike: Ermak's campaign was not the first military campaign in Siberia. The very first information about the Russian military campaign in Siberia dates back to 1384, when the Novgorod detachment marched to Pechora, and further, on a northern campaign through the Urals, to the Ob.

Ermak promised to protect everyone from Kuchum and other enemies, imposing yasak on them - a mandatory tribute. The ataman took an oath from the leaders about taxes from their peoples - this was then called “wool”. After the oath, these nationalities were automatically considered subjects of the king and were not subject to any persecution. At the end of 1582, some of Ermak’s soldiers were ambushed on the lake and were completely exterminated. On February 23, 1583, the Cossacks responded to the khan, capturing his chief military leader.

Embassy in Moscow

Ermak in 1582 sent ambassadors to the king, headed by a confidant (I. Koltso). The ambassador's goal was to tell the sovereign about the complete defeat of the khan. Ivan the Terrible mercifully gave gifts to the messengers; among the gifts were two expensive chain mail for the chieftain. Following the Cossacks, Prince Bolkhovsky was sent with a squad of three hundred soldiers. The Stroganovs were ordered to select forty of the best people and join them to the squad - this procedure dragged on. The detachment reached Kashlyk in November 1584; the Cossacks did not know in advance about such a replenishment, so the necessary provisions were not prepared for the winter.

Conquest of the Voguls

In 1583, Ermak conquered Tatar villages in the Ob and Irtysh basins. The Tatars offered fierce resistance. Along the Tavda River, the Cossacks went to the land of the Vogulichs, extending the king’s power to the Sosva River. In the conquered town of Nazim, already in 1584, there was a rebellion in which all the Cossacks of Ataman N. Pan were slaughtered. In addition to the unconditional talent of a commander and strategist, Ermak acts as a subtle psychologist with an excellent understanding of people. Despite all the difficulties and difficulties of the campaign, not one of the atamans wavered, did not change their oath, and until their last breath they were Ermak’s faithful comrade-in-arms and friend.

The chronicles do not preserve the details of this battle. But, given the conditions and method of war used by the Siberian peoples, apparently, the Voguls built a fortification, which the Cossacks were forced to storm. From the Remezov Chronicle it is known that after this battle Ermak had 1060 people left. It turns out that the losses of the Cossacks amounted to about 600 people.

Takmak and Ermak in winter

Hungry Winter

The winter period of 1584-1585 turned out to be extremely cold, the frost was about minus 47°C, and winds constantly blew from the north. It was impossible to hunt in the forest because of the deep snow; wolves circled in huge packs near human dwellings. All the archers of Bolkhovsky, the first governor of Siberia from the famous princely family, died of hunger along with him. They did not have time to take part in the battles with the khan. The number of Cossacks of Ataman Ermak also decreased greatly. During this period, Ermak tried not to meet with the Tatars - he took care of the weakened fighters.

Riddles of the hike: Who needs land? Until now, none of the Russian historians have given a clear answer to a simple question: why Ermak began this campaign to the east, to the Siberian Khanate.

Revolt of the Murza of Karach

In the spring of 1585, one of the leaders who submitted to Ermak on the Ture River suddenly attacked the Cossacks I. Koltso and Y. Mikhailov. Almost all the Cossacks died, and the rebels in their former capital blocked the Russian army. 06/12/1585 Meshcheryak and his comrades made a bold foray and drove back the Tatar army, but the Russian losses were enormous. At this point, Ermak only had 50% of those who went on the hike with him survive. Of the five atamans, only two were alive - Ermak and Meshcheryak.

The death of Ermak and the end of the campaign

On the night of August 3, 1585, Ataman Ermak died with fifty soldiers on the Vagai River. The Tatars attacked the sleeping camp; only a few warriors survived this skirmish, who brought terrible news to Kashlyk. Witnesses to Ermak’s death claim that he was wounded in the neck, but continued to fight.

During the battle, the chieftain had to jump from one boat to another, but he was bleeding, and the royal chain mail was heavy - Ermak did not make the jump. It was impossible even for such a strong man to swim out in heavy armor - the wounded man drowned. Legend has it that a local fisherman found the body and brought it to the khan. For a month the Tatars shot arrows into the body of the defeated enemy, during which time no traces of decomposition were noticed. The surprised Tatars buried Ermak in a place of honor (in modern times this is the village of Baishevo), but behind the fence of the cemetery - he was not a Muslim.

After receiving the news of the death of their leader, the Cossacks gathered for a meeting, where it was decided to return to their native land - spending the winter in these places again would be like death. Under the leadership of Ataman M. Meshcheryak, on August 15, 1585, the remnants of the detachment moved in an organized manner along the Ob River to the west, home. The Tatars celebrated their victory; they did not yet know that the Russians would return in a year.

Results of the campaign

The expedition of Ermak Timofeevich established Russian power for two years. As often happened with pioneers, they paid with their lives for conquering new lands. The forces were unequal - several hundred pioneers against tens of thousands of opponents. But everything did not end with the death of Ermak and his warriors - other conquerors followed, and soon all of Siberia was a vassal of Moscow.

The conquest of Siberia often took place with “little blood”, and the personality of Ataman Ermak was overgrown with numerous legends. People composed songs about the brave hero, historians and writers wrote books, artists painted pictures, and directors made films. Ermak's military strategies and tactics were adopted by other commanders. The formation of the army, invented by the brave chieftain, was used hundreds of years later by another great commander - Alexander Suvorov.

His persistence in advancing through the territory of the Siberian Khanate is very, very reminiscent of the persistence of the doomed. Ermak simply walked along the rivers of an unfamiliar land, counting on chance and military success. According to the logic of things, the Cossacks should have laid down their heads during the campaign. But Ermak was lucky, he captured the capital of the Khanate and went down in history as a winner.

Conquest of Siberia by Ermak, painting by Surikov

Three hundred years after the events described, the Russian artist Vasily Surikov painted a painting. This is a truly monumental picture of the battle genre. The talented artist managed to convey how great the feat of the Cossacks and their chieftain was. Surikov’s painting shows one of the battles of a small detachment of Cossacks with the huge army of the khan.

The artist managed to describe everything in such a way that the viewer understands the outcome of the battle, although the battle has just begun. Christian banners with the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands flutter over the heads of the Russians. The battle is led by Ermak himself - he is at the head of his army and at first glance it is evident that he is a Russian commander of remarkable strength and great courage. The enemies are presented as an almost faceless mass, whose strength is undermined by fear of the alien Cossacks. Ermak Timofeevich is calm and confident, with the eternal gesture of a commander he directs his warriors forward.

The air is filled with gunpowder, it seems that shots are heard, flying arrows whistle. In the background there is hand-to-hand combat, and in the central part the troops raised an icon, turning to higher powers for help. In the distance you can see the Khan's stronghold - a little more and the Tatars' resistance will be broken. The atmosphere of the picture is imbued with a feeling of imminent victory - this became possible thanks to the great skill of the artist.

The information that has reached us about the life of ancient Russian princes is scattered and incomplete. However, historians know a lot about Prince Igor, and all due to his active foreign policy activities. Prince Igor in the Tale of Bygone Years: Igor's Campaigns...