While the 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 his father, who had made a huge fortune in Solvychegodsk by the salt industry, decided to start salt pans on a large scale in the new region, populate it, start arable farming and trade. The settlement of empty places, the establishment of new industries was, of course, very beneficial for the entire state, and therefore the tsar not only willingly ceded land 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 for twenty years got rid of all taxes and duties; then the right was given to build fortifications and keep armed detachments for defense against attacks by neighboring peoples (Ostyaks, Cheremis, Nogays, etc.). Finally, the Stroganovs were allowed to recruit willing people, Cossacks, and go to war against hostile foreigners. Soon the Stroganovs had to face the tribes that lived in the neighborhood, beyond the Ural Mountains. Here, on the banks of the rivers Tobol, Irtysh and Tura, there was a Tatar kingdom; main city called Isker, or Siberia, on the Tobol River; by the name of this city and the whole 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 to 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 find the way to the Stroganov towns, and here he beat many Moscow tributaries, took their wives and children into captivity. The Stroganovs notified Ivan the Terrible of this and beat him with a brow to allow them to fortify beyond the Urals, keep a fire squad (artillery) for defense and recruit volunteers at their own expense to fight the khans of Siberia. The king allowed. This was in 1574. Grigory and Yakov Stroganov were no longer alive. The business was continued by their younger brother Semyon and children: Maxim, the son of Yakov, and Nikita, the son of Grigory.

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

In the southern and eastern steppe outskirts of the Muscovite state, as it was said, since the 15th century, free, walking people, eager for war, have been appearing - Cossacks. Some of them lived in the villages, carried out the sovereign service, defended the borders from the attacks of the robber bands of the Tatars, while others, in the full sense of the free "steppe birds", left from any supervision, "walked" in the steppe expanse, attacked, at their own peril. , on the Tatars, robbed them, hunted in the steppe, fished along the rivers, smashed the Tatar merchant caravans, and sometimes Russian merchants were not allowed to descend ... Gangs of such Cossacks walked along the Don and along 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 get them.

It was really very tricky to catch gangs of these "thieves'" Cossacks, as they were called, in the wide steppes.

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

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

On the slander of one governor, the unkindness of the Stroganovs, the tsar ordered them to return Yermak and not bully the Siberian "Saltan"; but the royal letter came late: the Cossacks were already far away.

At first they sailed on plows and canoes up the Chusovaya River; then turned into the Serebryanka River. This path was difficult, in other places it was necessary to sail on rafts in shallow water. From Serebryanka, Yermak's people were dragged through passages in the Ural Range to the Zharovlya River, which flows into Tagil, from here they descended into the Tura River. Until now, the Cossacks have not encountered any interference; they rarely even saw people along the banks: the land here was wild, almost completely deserted. The river Tura became more crowded. Here for the first time we met the town (now the city of Turinsk), where the Siberian prince Yepancha ruled. Here they had to put their weapons into action, because from the shore they began to shoot at Yermak's Cossacks with bows. They fired their guns. Several Tatars fell; the rest fled in horror: they had never seen a firearm before. The town of Yepanchi was ravaged by the Cossacks. Soon they had to disperse another crowd of Tatars with firing. Those captured were fired with shots, they were shown how bullets pierce their armor, and information was obtained from them about Kuchum and his forces. Yermak purposely set some of the captives free so that they spread fear everywhere with their stories about the miraculous properties of Russian weapons.

“The Russian warriors are strong,” they said, according to the chronicle, “when they shoot from their bows, then fire blazes from them, great smoke comes out, and it seems like thunder will break out.” Arrows are not visible, but wounded and beaten to death. It is impossible to protect yourself from them with any armor; our kuyaks, shells and chain mail - they all pierce through!

Of course, a handful of brave men, led by Yermak, hoped most of all for a gun, who conceived no more, no less, how to conquer an entire kingdom and conquer tens of thousands of people.

Map Siberian Khanate and Yermak'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 great forces of the enemy and various ominous predictions, did not intend to surrender without a fight. He gathered all his 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 notch here just in case, and ordered Tsarevich Makhmet-Kul forward with a large army, towards the Cossacks Yermak. He met them on the banks of the Tobol, at the Babasan tract, started a battle, but could not overpower them. They swam forward; on the way they took another Siberian town; they found rich booty here, took it with them and set off further. At the confluence of the Tobol into the Irtysh, the Tatars again overtook the Cossacks and showered them with arrows. Yermak's men also repulsed this attack, but they already had several dead, and almost all of them were wounded by arrows. The matter was getting hot. The Tatars, it is true, saw that there were not too many enemies, and they leaned on them with all their might. But Yermak 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 notch and seize the capital. The Cossacks were thoughtful: Kuchum had much more strength - for every Russian, perhaps, there were twenty Tatars. The Cossacks gathered in a circle and began to interpret what to do: whether to go forward or go back. Some began to say that we must return; others and Yermak himself reasoned differently.

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

Everyone agreed with this, decided to stay and fight to the death.

At dawn, October 23, Yermak's Cossacks moved to the notch. The guns and muskets now served them well. The Tatars fired clouds of arrows from behind their fence, but did little harm to the Russian daring men; finally, they themselves broke through their notch in three places and hit the Cossacks. A terrible hand-to-hand fight began. Here the guns did not help: they had to cut with swords or grab directly with their hands. It turned out that Yermak's people showed themselves to be heroes here too: despite the fact that the enemies were twenty times more numerous, the Cossacks broke them. Mahmet-Kul was wounded, the Tatars mixed up, many lost heart; other Siberian princelings subject to Kuchum, seeing that the enemies were overpowering, left the battle. Kuchum fled first to his capital Siberia, seized his belongings here and fled further.

The conquest of Siberia by Yermak. Painting by V. Surikov, 1895

On October 26, Yermak's Cossacks occupied Siberia, abandoned by the inhabitants. The victors were depressed in the empty city. They have greatly diminished: in the last battle alone, their 107 people fell; there were many wounded and sick. It was no longer possible for them to go further, and meanwhile their supplies had run out and a fierce winter was setting in. Hunger and death threatened them...

But after a few days, the Ostyaks, Voguliches, Tatars with their princelings began to come to Yermak, beat him with their foreheads - they brought him gifts and various supplies; he also took them to the oath to the sovereign, encouraged them with his mercy, treated them kindly and let them go without any offense to their yurts. The Cossacks were strictly forbidden to offend the submissive natives.

The Cossacks spent the winter calmly; only Makhmet-Kul attacked them, Yermak defeated him, and for some time he did not disturb the Cossacks; but with the onset of spring, he thought it was a surprise to attack them, but he himself fell into a mess: the Cossacks lay in wait for the enemies, attacked them sleepy at night and captured Makhmet-Kul. Yermak treated him very kindly. The captivity of this brave and zealous Tatar knight was a blow to Kuchum. At this time, his personal enemy, one Tatar prince, was at war with him; finally, his governor cheated on him. Kuchum's affairs were quite bad.

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

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

The formidable tsar accepted Ivan the Ring graciously, not only forgave him and his comrades for their previous crimes, but generously rewarded him, and Yermak, they say, sent 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 Yermak, and it would be difficult for him to keep his conquest without help. Mahmet-Kul was sent to Moscow, where he entered the service of the king; but Kuchum still managed to recover and enter into force. Russian soldiers had a bad time in Siberia: they often suffered shortcomings in life supplies; diseases spread among them; it happened that the Tatar princelings, pretending at first to be loyal tributaries and allies, then destroyed the detachments of Yermak, who trusted them. So Ivan Koltso died with several comrades. The governor, sent by the king, died of an illness.

The conquest of Siberia by Yermak. Painting by V. Surikov, 1895. Fragment

Yermak himself soon died. He found out that Kuchum was going to intercept a Bukhara caravan on its way to Siberia. Taking with him 50 of his brave men, Yermak hastened to meet the Bukhara merchants in order to protect them from predators on the way along the Irtysh. The whole day the Cossacks waited for the caravan at the confluence of the Vagaya River with the Irtysh; but neither merchants nor predators showed up... The night was stormy. The rain poured down. The wind blew on the river. The exhausted Cossacks settled down to rest on the shore and soon fell asleep like the dead. Ermak blundered this time - he didn’t set up watchmen, he didn’t think, it’s clear that the enemies would attack on such a night. And the enemy was very close: on the other side of the river, the Cossacks lay in wait! .. Kuchumov’s scouts found a ford in the river, made their way to the Russians and then brought their good news that Yermak’s Cossacks were sleeping like a dead man, as proof of which they presented three squeakers and powder flasks stolen from them . At the direction of the scouts, the Tatars secretly crossed the river, attacked the sleeping Cossacks and cut them all, except for two. One escaped and brought to Siberia the terrible news of the beating of the detachment, and the other, Yermak himself, hearing the groans, jumped up, managed to beat off the killers who rushed at him with his saber, rushed from the shore to the Irtysh, thinking to escape by swimming, but drowned from the weight of his iron armor (August 5, 1584). A few days later, the body of Yermak was washed ashore by the river, where the Tatars found him and, by rich armor with a copper frame, with a golden eagle on his chest, recognized the conqueror of Siberia in the drowned man. It is clear how delighted Kuchum was at this, how all his enemies triumphed over the death of Yermak! And in Siberia, the news of the death of the leader led the Russians to such despair that they no longer tried to fight Kuchum, they left Siberia to return to their homeland. This happened already after the death of Ivan the Terrible.

But Yermak's cause did not perish. The way to Siberia was indicated, and the beginning of Russian rule here was laid. After the death of Grozny and the death of Yermak, the Russian detachments, one after another, followed the path that he indicated, beyond the Stone Belt (Urals) to Siberia; the native half-savage peoples, one after the other, fell under the authority of the Russian tsar, brought him their yasak (tribute); Russian settlements were planted in the new region, cities were built, and little by little the whole north of Asia with its inexhaustible wealth fell to Russia.

Ermak was not mistaken when he said to his associates: "Our memory will not be impoverished in these countries." The memory of the brave men 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 says about Yermak, how he, having defeated Kuchum, sent a message to the king:

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

Preserved in Siberia and local legends about Yermak; 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.

Row of paintings

Godforsaken Side

Severe lord

And a miserable worker - a man

With a bowed head...

As the first to rule accustomed!

How slaves the second!

N. Nekrasov

Mankind owes civilization to two centers lying on two opposite ends of the continent of the Old World. European civilization born on the coast mediterranean sea, Chinese - on the eastern outskirts of the mainland. These two worlds, European and Chinese, lived a separate life, barely aware of the existence of each other, but not completely without intercourse with each other. The works of these individual countries, and perhaps ideas, were transferred from one end of the mainland to the other. In the interval between the two worlds lay the path of international relations, and this communication between East and West caused greater or lesser successes in settlement and culture along the way, despite the fact that the path itself passed through desert places, where fertile areas meet in fits and starts and are 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 the development of mankind.

It remained even 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, sea-like rivers are blocked by ice. northern ocean, along which the path has only recently been paved. In the east, it adjoins the foggy, stormy and little visited Seas of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. It is cut off from the civilized south of Asia by the steppes. In the west, the wooded Ural 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 inconsistent, 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 live one-eyed people and vultures guarding gold; or they said that there people were imprisoned behind the mountains, which have only one opening, through which they go out once a year for trade; or, finally, they were assured that they hibernated for the winter, like animals, freezing to the earth's surface through the liquid that flows from their noses. The fabulousness of the news testifies that during the entire time that the Russian state was taking shape, relations with Siberia were very difficult and rare, due to the impassability of the wooded Urals. The pass through this ridge, along which the rail track is now thrown, was a real international barrier in remote times. Even in the last century, traveling through the Urals to Berezov, for observations, the astronomer Delisle stated that anyone who endures the journey through the Urals will be surprised that there are people who do not dare to take the Urals beyond 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 who were 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 the neighboring Turkestan settled states, both ordinary people and princes, fled here, and often some capable adventurer rallied around him a significant gang of daring people, from which he made raids on settled areas, first for robbery, and then for conquests, - raids, sometimes ending in the foundation of a new and strong dynasty. Probably, it was such and such daring people who founded the first embryos of the Tatar, actually Turkestan, colonization in Siberia.

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

The first unification was accomplished by Prince Ediger. Immediately this new kingdom became known on the western side of the Urals. Until Ediger formed the whole Siberian kingdom from all the small Tatar settlements, the Trans-Urals did not attract the eyes of either the statesmen of Russia or ordinary industrialists. The small peoples of Siberia lived in their wilderness, not making themselves felt. Under Yediger, however, clashes between border residents led to relations between Moscow and Siberia, and in 1555 the first Siberian ambassadors arrived in the capital of the Muscovite state. Perhaps those gifts that were brought to Moscow pointed to the wealth of the Siberian region in furs, and at the same time the idea arose to take possession of this region. The fate of the Trans-Ural region in the minds of Moscow statesmen was decided; the Muscovite tsar began to communicate, by means of an embassy, ​​with Siberia. Ediger admitted that he was a tributary, and annually sent a thousand sables. But this tribute was abruptly terminated. The steppe rider Kuchum, with a crowd of the Tatar horde, attacked Yediger and conquered his kingdom. Of course, the Moscow governors would have forced Kuchum to recognize the Moscow authorities, but they were warned by a gang of freemen, led by Yermak. One of the Siberian chronicles ascribes the initiative to the eminent citizen Stroganov; the folk song - to Yermak himself.

The song hints that the Volga freemen were constrained from all sides and did not give her room to roam, and now the Cossacks gathered on the Astrakhan pier “in a single circle to think a little thought from the cry of the mind, from full of reason.” - “Where to run and save yourself?” Yermak asks:

“And live on the Volga? - to be known as thieves ...

Go to Yaik? - the transition is great.

Go to Kazan? - the king is formidable.

Go to Moscow? - be intercepted

Scattered in different cities,

And sent to dark prisons ... "

Ermak decided to go to Usolye, to the Stroganovs, to take from them a supply of grain and guns and attack Siberia. The chronicle tells that Yermak arrived in the Stroganov lands in the autumn of 1579. The Stroganovs were wealthy peasants who made a fortune on extracting salt from the vats. They bought from foreigners big lands, brought towns, kept garrisons and guns in them. Maxim Stroganov, the then head of this family, was frightened by the appearance of Yermak's gang in the Urals, but he had to reconcile himself and fulfill everything that the decisive chieftain demanded of him; he supplied Yermak's squad with lead, gunpowder, breadcrumbs, cereals, gave him cannons and leaders from Zyryan. In the first summer, Yermak ran on a ship from Chusovaya to the wrong river, and therefore he had to spend the winter here. Only in 1580, Yermak appeared on the Siberian slope of the Ural Mountains; he went up in boats along the Chusovaya and Silver and went down to Tura.

He met the first natives 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, who had not seen firearms before, fled. From here, Yermak went down in boats down the river to the Tobol and the Tobol to its confluence with the Irtysh. Here was the Tatar city of Siberia or Isker, i.e. a small village surrounded by an earthen rampart and a moat; it served as the residence of the Siberian king Kuchum. Yermak had 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 resist the Cossacks anymore and abandoned the city of Siberia. The next day, the Cossacks were surprised by the silence that reigned beyond the city ramparts - "and nowhere was there a voice." 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 settled king turned into a nomad. Ermak became the owner of the region. He hit the Moscow sovereign with his brow.

The song says that he came to Moscow and previously bribed the Moscow boyars with sable coats to report him to the tsar. The king accepted the gift and forgave Yermak and his comrades for the murder of the Persian ambassador. The tsarist army was immediately sent to Siberia under the command of the voivode Bolkhovsky. It occupied the city of Siberia, but, due to tedious transitions, a lack of food supplies and the governor’s indiscipline, a pestilence began in the troops from hunger and the governor himself died. Ermak again became the main ruler of the region, but not for long. At that time, he heard that a Bukhara caravan was going along the Irtysh to Siberia. Yermak went to meet him, but on the way he was surrounded by Tatars and died in this dump.

This happened in 1584. Song says that he had only two columns with him; Yermak wanted to jump from one column to another in order to help his comrades. He stepped on the end of the passage; at this time, the other end of the board rose and fell on his "violent 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 managed to reach the Urals, when they met the governor Mansurov, who was going to Siberia, with troops and guns. Mansurov did not stop in Siberia, he sailed down the Irtysh to its confluence with the Ob, and here he founded the town of Samarovo, in a desert country occupied by non-belligerent Ostyaks. Only the next 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. Governor Chulkov in 1587 founded the city of Tobolsk, a few miles from Siberia, traces of which are still preserved near Tobolsk. The governor did not dare to take the Tatar city by force, as Yermak did. Once, the chronicle tells, the Tatar prince Seydyak, with two other princes: Saltan and Karachay, and with a retinue of 400 people, left the Tatar city for hawk hunting and drove up under the walls of the Russian city. Governor Chulkov invited them to his city. When the Tatars wanted to enter with weapons in their hands, the voivode stopped them with the words that “they don’t go to visit like that.” 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 ready.

A long conversation began about the "peaceful setting", i.e. peace-loving division of power over Siberia and the conclusion of eternal peace. Prince Seydyak sat deep in thought and ate nothing; heavy thoughts and suspicions crossed his mind. Governor Danilo Chulkov noticed embarrassment and said to him: “Prince Seydyak! That you think evil of Orthodox Christians, neither drink nor taste brashn. Seydyak replied: "I do not think of any evil against you." Then the Moscow governor took a cup of wine and said: “Prince Seydyak, if you don’t think evil, you and Tsarevich Saltan and Karacha are against us, Orthodox Christians, and you drink this for health.” Seydyak took the cup, started drinking, and choked. After him, the princes Saltan and Karacha began to drink - and they also choked - God was rebuking them. Those who saw this, the voivode and the troops, as if thinking evil of them, Prince Seydyak and others, want them dead - and waving the hand of the voivode Danilo Chulkov, the troops 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 voivode established itself 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-payer and the criminal fled here; an energetic person who was looking for broad activities went here; not only serfs, vagabonds and walking people fled here, but also individuals from the common people, outstanding in mind and character, who did not have a proper course in life. When Yermak led part of the Volga freemen beyond the Ural Range, everything that had previously fled to the Volga rushed to Siberia. Instead of plundering trade caravans on the Volga, emigration on the new soil began to conquer wandering tribes and tax them with yasak from sables in favor of the Moscow sovereign, and, of course, a significant share fell to the conquerors themselves. But in order to take away a sable from a foreigner, one must have an advantage in strength, one must have courage and other conditions. Therefore, part of the emigration turned directly to the trade for sables. Rumors about a myriad of sables in Siberia, stories, perhaps exaggerated, that foreigners give as many sable skins for an iron cauldron as the cauldron will fit, caused increased emigration not only from serf Moscow, but also from the free population of the ancient Novgorod region . The inhabitants of the current Olonets, Vologda and Arkhangelsk provinces, who have long been familiar with animal trades, set off to Siberia to get an expensive animal. All these emigrants, starting with the military squad of Yermak, went to Siberia either by boat or on foot. Therefore, the first flood of emigration across the new country took place along the forest belt, by way of 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 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 now. The northern cities of Siberia were founded earlier than the southern ones. The city of Mangazeya was especially famous in old Siberia (songs give it the epithet "rich"), which lay almost on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and now does not exist at all. The geography of northern Siberia and even the Taimyr Peninsula was better known to Russians in the 17th century than in later times. But when the sable and other valuable 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 fortified on the Tobol and its tributaries, the Russians began to spread 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 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 people climbed the Irtysh above the mouth of the Tobol and founded the city of Tara. At Tara, military enterprises up the Irtysh ceased and began again in this direction only after all of Siberia, right up to the Pacific Ocean, had been conquered by Kamchatka and Amur. The Omsk fortress, which lies only 400 versts south of Tara, was founded only in 1817, therefore, 224 years after the foundation of Tara.

The only conquest made with the help of Tara is in the land of the Baraba Tatars. On the contrary, parties from the northern cities went much further east. Berezovtsy in 1600 founded a city, almost at the very Arctic Sea, on the river Taza, and called it Mangazeya; the Surgut Cossacks went up the Ob and founded, on its tributary, the Keti River, the Ket prison; having risen 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 river Tom, but higher than Tomsk.

Here the conquerors of Siberia for the first time reached the South Siberian mountains that separate it from Mongolia. The occupation of the vast system of the Ob River ended with the founding of Kuznetsk; a third of Siberia was occupied; further to the east there were two more of the same large river systems: Yenisei, in the occupation of which immediately after the conquest of the Ob system, and was started, and Lena, lying east of the Yenisei.

The occupation of the Yenisei system began from the far north. In the same year as the city of Tomsk was founded in the Ob system, the Mangazeya Cossacks, or industrial people, started a winter hut 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 overlaid with yasak; and in 1610, the Russians, going down the Yenisei on ships, reached its mouth, i.e. 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 hillock now stands, and from there they went up to the outskirts of present-day Krasnoyarsk. Near Yeniseisk, they found Ostyakov, who, because they knew blacksmithing, were called blacksmiths. Soon after the yasak was imposed, the Ostyaks of the blacksmith 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 Ostyaks, who were taxed with yasak, caused the construction, around 1620, of the city of Yeniseisk, on the banks of the Yenisei River. After that, within two years, both the Tungus, who lived along the Tunguska River, and the Tatars, who lived up the Yenisei, were brought into obedience, and overlaid with yasak. In 1622, the first news was received about a new people - the Buryats.

It was the Yenisei who heard that the Buryats came to the river Kan, which flows into the Yenisei on the right, among 3,000 people. This news made the Russians think about a stronger position on the upper Yenisei, against 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 ver. above Yeniseisk, a new city - Krasnoyarsk. The sphere of action of the Krasnoyarsk people was turned mainly to the south, where they met the nomadic Tatar tribe of the Kirghiz, with whom the Tomsk Cossacks had already fought stubbornly. In the east, the Krasnoyarsk people limited themselves to exploring the valleys of the Kana and Mana rivers, in which they found hunting Samoyed-Ostyak tribes: Kamash, Kotovtsy, Mozorov and Tubintsy.

Discoveries in eastbound 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 Perfiriev, reached the mouth of the Ishim; the other, under the leadership of the centurion Beketov, rose even higher, she crossed the dangerous rapids, reached the Oka River, and overlaid the Tungus living here with yasak. The Ishim River, which flows 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, foreman Bugor with ten Cossacks climbed up the Ishim, dragged himself to the valley of the Kuta River and descended along it into the Lena River, along which he sailed to the mouth of the Chaya River. The high quality of the sables exported by this consignment to Yeniseysk was tempting for the Yenisey people. They, in the same year, sent another party to the Lena, under the command of Ataman Galkin; and in 1632, Beketov, already famous for his dexterity and ability to conduct such enterprises, was sent with an order to build the city of Yakutsk in the lands occupied by the Yakuts. These parties, going down the Lena, already found Russians here industrial people from the city of Mangazeya, who, through Turukhansk, reached the Lena and the land of the Yakuts ten years earlier than the Yeniseys. Five years after the founding of Yakutsk, namely, in 1637, the Cossacks under the command of the foreman Buza, descending the Lena, for the first time reached its mouth, and entered the Arctic Sea; from here they entered the Olensk and Yana rivers in order to impose yasak on the Tungus and Yakuts living on them. Two years later, in 1639, therefore, sixty years after the capture of Siberia by Yermak, a party of Tomsk Cossacks who came to Yakutsk with Ataman Kopylov, looking for new lands and taxing foreigners with yasak, having risen up the Aldan and Maya, saw the waves of the Pacific Ocean for the first time. They came ashore where the small river Ulya flows into the ocean.

Still remained unoccupied in Siberia: the Baikal country, 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, Balagansky prison was built on the Angara, where the city of Balagansk is now, 200 miles below Irkutsk; and in 1661 Irkutsk was also built, 60 versts from the shores of Lake Baikal. The Russians came to the southern shore of Lake Baikal, bypassing the lake from the east. The first prison 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 went along the southern tributaries of the Lena, i.e. along the Olekma and Aldan, they learned about the existence of a large Amur river flowing behind the ridge from the south side. The first one dared to cross the Poyarkov Range 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 same 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, appeared on the Amur, climbing the Olekma and Tugir. He went to the Amur far above the mouth of the Zeya, and from there he went down to the mouth of the Sungari and returned back by the old road with huge booty. This was, in general terms, the geographical course of the conquest of Siberia.

This conquest was more the work of the peasants than the governor. Things usually went like this: Before a Cossack party, sent from the nearest prison or city, appears in a new country, sable industrialists appear in it and start wintering or hunting huts in it. Having caught sables with your own traps, or by collecting them from local residents under the pretext of collecting yasak, they brought booty to the city or prison in order to sell the goods to Moscow merchants. The news of a new country rich in sables reached the governor or the ataman who was 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 appeared in these places, they already found the Mangazeians, who set up 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 ordinary animal merchants, with the aim of discovering lands, subjugating them under the sovereign's hand and imposing yasak. Such parties, having collected sables from foreigners, gave a smaller part to the treasury, and most, as the Siberian chroniclers testify to this, kept in their favor. In the end, these parties began to become crowded; simple animal merchants began to appear as conquerors of vast countries. Khabarov, a simple animal trader from the Lena River, who boiled salt on the Kirenga, gathered a squad of one and a half hundred volunteers and with it destroyed almost the entire Amur Territory. The Cossack search parties, presumably, were formed not so much on the initiative of the governor, but on the Cossacks' own hunting. 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 take out a significant number of sables for their share. The Cossack conquering parties were for the most part not crowded: 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 its midst all the chief leaders of the cause. From his environment came out: the first conqueror of Siberia - Ermak, the conqueror of the Amur - Khabarov, the conqueror of Kamchatka - Atlasov, the Cossack Dezhnev, who rounded the Chukchi nose; simple industrialists discovered a mammoth bone. They were brave people, good organizers, created by nature itself to control the crowd, resourceful in a difficult situation, able, in case of need, to turn around with small means and resourceful.

The first parties of Russian settlers to Siberia brought with them to the new soil the primary forms of social organization: the Cossacks - the military circle; sable industrialists - an artel, farmers - a community. Along with these forms of self-government in Siberia, a voivodeship administration was also established. Yermak 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, could not hold Siberia. In Siberia, two colonizations developed simultaneously: the free people, which went ahead, and the government, led by governors.

In the early days of Siberian history, the Cossack communities retained their self-government. They were especially independent away from the voivodeship cities, on the Siberian outskirts, where they maintained garrisons of prisons abandoned among hostile tribes. If they themselves, without a voivodship initiative, went in search of new tributaries, then the entire management 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 there were disputes about who should collect yasak from this or that tribe, and then one Cossack city went to another war. 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 have been reduced; but back in the 18th century, many cases, even criminal, remote Cossack communities decided on their own. In the event of the discovery of a conspiracy, the garrison of a remote prison gathered a meeting, awarded the criminals to death penalty and performed it, then only letting them know to the nearest voivodship office. So, for example, the inhabitants of the city of Okhotsk acted with the rebellious Koryaks at the end of the last century. This self-government and lynching, however, gradually disappeared before the spreading voivodeship power. But occasionally flashed attempts to restore Siberian antiquity. So there were stories about the deposition of governors in Irkutsk and Tara. Traces of this struggle have been preserved in the Siberian archives in a small number; but in reality there were more. By the last century, self-government in Siberian cities had finally fallen. The remnants of self-government survived only in villages abandoned in the taiga, far from the main road.

Not only the first conquerors who came with Yermak - the Cossacks and the rabble of the Volga freemen - but also the later emigrants, more peaceful animal merchants, were people either unwilling to engage in agriculture, or never engaged in it. These parties were engaged in provisions, piled it on a sleigh, or the so-called chunitsy, which had to be dragged on oneself, and went east one after the other. They found the beginnings of local agriculture only where the settlements were founded by the Tatar colonization. Of course, these rudiments were insignificant and could not satisfy the hunting artels that arrived one after the other. In addition to bread, these latter also needed a “fiery battle”. Both of these circumstances made the hunting artels dependent on the distant metropolis. Since the sable trade was immediately appreciated by Moscow, the Muscovite state took upon itself the concern of supplying the industrialists with provisions and shells. In general, the passion for sable fishing was beneficial for the state. All the booty of the hunters was turned into the state treasury. Sable, like later gold, was recognized as a state regalia; it was ordered that all sable caught in Siberia should be handed over to the treasury. Part of the sables entered it like yasak; but even those sables that came from foreigners for sale or were caught by Russian industrialists and then bought by fences could not bypass the treasury. Buyers, under severe punishment, were obliged to bring them to Moscow and hand them over to the Siberian Order, from which they were given money, according to an estimate, as they are now given to a gold merchant when he pours the gold he 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 in all Siberia sables were in one of his Great Sovereign's treasury." Only thin furs were allowed to be exported to China; Bukhara merchants were completely forbidden to export furs to Turkestan; The governors themselves were strictly forbidden to wear sable coats and sable hats. Both undressed skins and sewn furs, the governors had to select from the region and send them to Moscow. To do this, they were sent goods from Moscow, which they were to give out to the Ostyaks, Yakuts and Tungus for booty; they were also allowed to sell vodka from the treasury through the uluses in order to exchange furs for it.

Trying to turn all the booty from the sable trade in favor of the treasury, the government had to fulfill two tasks: to provide food for industrial parties and to overcome smuggling. So that Russian merchants would not bring sables secretly, customs outposts were established in the cities along the large Moscow highway. But, in addition to Russian merchants, Bukhara merchants were engaged in smuggling in Siberia. The latter consisted partly of the descendants of those Turkestans who settled in Siberia before Yermak, and partly of natives who came to Siberia after the conquest of it by the Russians. They had land in Siberia and were the only landowners in it. Even before the appearance of the Russians, they were already engaged in 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 Siberian residents Russian canvas and krashenina; but Russian material was both worse and more expensive, so that competition with the Bukharians was difficult. In addition to the fact that the goods of the Bukhara were more profitable for the foreigner, the Bukhara took precedence over the Russian and the prescription of his relations with Siberia; The Bukharians had wives and families in foreign camps, 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 18th century, foreigners who ended up in Siberia found rare manuscripts with them. For example, the captive Swede Stralenberg opened the Turkestan chronicle, written by the Khiva prince Abulgazi, under the title "Genealogy about the Tatars" in one of the Tobolsk Bukharans. The Russians had to compete in Siberia with the trade-smart Turkestanis, famous for their antiquity of culture dating back to the Christian era. This struggle continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and partly even into the 19th century. The otatarization of foreigners continued to take place under Russian rule; the conversion of pagans to Islam went along with the conversion to Christianity, and some tribes, such as the Baraba Tatars, only in the middle of the last century switched from shamanism to Mohammedanism, and the voices of the Tobolsk bishops about taking measures against Muslim preaching were heard in vain. The struggle with the Bukharans was no less difficult in terms of trade. The Bukharans in the 17th century controlled all internal trade in Siberia; in the 18th century, only Asiatic trade remained in their hands; but also ousted from the internal market, the Bukharans seemed to be serious rivals to the Ustyug merchants, who held in their hands the trade of Siberia with European Russia. Siberian residents, both foreigners and Russians, loved Asian fabrics more than Russians. In the last century, the whole of Siberia, according to the well-known Radishchev, dressed in underwear made from Asian coarse calico, and on holidays they put on silk shirts made from Chinese fanza. Peasant women on Sundays went around in scarves and caps made of Chinese silk fabric - naked; priestly robes were also sewn from Chinese gole; all correspondence from Siberia was written in Chinese ink; an Irkutsk merchant wrote a petition to Moscow with her, and she wrote all the papers in the regimental offices on the Irtysh.

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 Bukharian demanded furs from foreigners for their fabrics. Contrary to the decrees of the government, there was an extensive smuggling trade in furs 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 linen shirts, and therefore everyone - both Russians, and foreigners, and merchants, and Cossacks - were secretly selling furs to Bukharians. To put an end to the smuggling and export of sables to Turkestan, the government completely forbade the Bukharians from entering Siberia. By such a measure, early XIX century, the government managed to give an advantage to the Russian merchant over Bukharts and set up a Russian factory in Siberia. Already at the end of the last century, this change became noticeable. Not only did the import of Asian paper goods to 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 to supply it with food. These worries continue throughout the eighteenth century, and in part even into the present century. The animal merchants, carried away by the ease of profit from sable fishing, did not want to take on the plow. The government began to establish villages in Siberia, build roads, establish post pits, recruit farmers in Russia and settle them along the Siberian roads. Each settler, by royal decree, had to take with him the prescribed amount of livestock and poultry, as well as agricultural tools and seeds. The settler's cart looked like a small Noah's Ark. Sometimes the government recruited horses in Russia and sent them to Siberia for distribution to settlers. But these measures were not enough. The government set up state-owned arable land in Siberia, obliged the peasants to work them, forced them to build plank houses and float bread on them to grainless places.

The establishment of arable land, cattle breeding, settled settlements required the multiplication of women in Siberia, and a predominantly male population went to the new country. From the lack of women, at first Siberia did not differ in morality. In the absence of Russian women, the Russians got wives from foreign women and, according to the custom of the Bukharians, got them several at a time, so that the Moscow Metropolitan Filaret had to preach against Siberian polygamy. Foreign wives were obtained either by purchase or by capture. Numerous revolts of foreigners, which were caused by unfair requisitions and oppression of yasak collectors, gave rise to numerous military campaigns in foreign camps, and imaginary disobedient people were beaten, and wives and children were taken prisoner and then sold in Siberian cities into slavery. Hunger from lack of bread and lack of catch of the beast often forced the foreigners themselves to sell their children into slavery. The nomadic tribe of the Kirghiz, who occupied the southern steppes of Siberia, making raids on the neighboring Kalmyks, always returned with captives and captives, and also sometimes sold them in the Siberian border towns.

The royal decree of 1754 limited the right of distillation to one class of nobles; Merchants were forbidden to smoke wine. But since there was no nobility in Siberia, this law at first did not apply to Siberia. Unexpectedly, two years later, a certain Evreinov, a trusted prosecutor general Glebov, appears in Irkutsk and demands that the distilleries, or “kashtak” in Siberian, be handed over to Glebov, to whom they seem to have been leased by the treasury. The merchants did not believe; the Irkutsk vice-governor Wolf himself took this for a mistake. But it wasn't a mistake. Prosecutor General Glebov really rented taverns and kashtaki in Siberia in order to engage in a profitable wine trade.

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

While this home fortress was not ready, Krylov, appearing in society, was very affectionate and affable; but then he suddenly changed and began by putting the entire magistrate in chains and putting him in prison. Extortion began from money merchants; under torture and lashes, they were forced to confess to abuses of city government and to the illegal trade in wine. Not only the members of the magistrate, but also many other persons from the city society were entangled in this matter by means of false denunciations. It has always been easy to do this in Siberia. As soon as a person invested with power showed a tendency to listen to denunciations, how helpful people always turned out to be in numbers that exceeded the request of the authorities. One of the Irkutsk merchants, Yelezov, left a particularly bad memory of himself. From the very beginning, he served Krylov and then indicated to him from whom and how much money could be obtained through dungeons and torture. The merchant Bichevin turned out to be more stable than the others. He was a rich man who traded on pacific ocean and thus amassed a great fortune. It is unlikely that he, judging by the nature of his trading activities, 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 to trial and tortured. He was raised on his hind legs or temple: i.e. a stump of a tree or a raw log like the one on which our butchers chop beef was tied to his feet, weighing from 5 to 12 pounds. The martyr was lifted up the block by ropes tied to the hands and quickly lowered, preventing the log from hitting the ground; then, with twisted joints in his arms and legs, the unfortunate man hung for the duration of the time determined by the tormentor, from time to time receiving lashes on his body. Suspended on his temple, Bichevin fastened and refused to admit his guilt. Without removing it from the whiskey, Krylov went to the merchant Glazunov for a snack. There he stayed for three hours. Bichevin hung on his hind legs all this time. When Krylov returned, Bichevin felt the approach of death and agreed to subscribe 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 still extorted the same amount. About 150,000 rubles were extorted from Irkutsk merchants and philistines in a similar brutal way. In addition, Krylov, under the pretext of rewarding the treasury for losses, confiscated merchant property. He especially took away precious things, which he partly appropriated directly, without circumlocution, partly sold at auction, while he himself was both an appraiser, and a seller, and a buyer. With this order, of course, everything valuable and best went into the chests of the investigator himself for nothing. These extortions and robbery of private property were accompanied by Krylov's insulting treatment of Irkutsk residents. At the meeting, Krylov always appeared drunk, and raged; beat merchants in the face with fists and a cane, knocked out their teeth, pulled their beards. Using his power, Krylov sent his grenadiers for the daughters of the merchants and dishonored them. When the fathers complained to Vice-Governor Wolf, he only shrugged and said that Krylov had been 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 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 of violence 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 rich merchant Alexei Sibiryakov, who had a reputation as a lawyer in the city. He loved to study the laws, collected decrees and instructions for the management of the Siberian region, since the code of laws did not yet exist, and compiled a complete collection of these state acts. Instead of arming himself with knowledge to defend his city, Sibiryakov fled somewhere in a remote village or just in the forest, living in an animal industry hut. Krylov was frightened, thinking that Sibiryakov had driven off to Petersburg with a denunciation, and sent a messenger after him to return the fugitive. The messenger drove to Verkhoturye, and returned empty-handed. The fugitive left his wife and family and brother in the city. Immediately Krylov shackled them and demanded an indication of where Sibiryakov had disappeared. But, despite the whips, neither the wife nor the brother of the fugitive could say anything, because Sibiryakov fled furtively even from his family. To complete the abuse of the Irkutsk society, Krylov suggested that the Irkutsk merchants send a deputation to St. Petersburg, in order to ask Glebov for gracious indulgence towards the accused merchants, among whom there were many allegedly guilty ones, and his favorite and informant was elected deputy Yelezov.

For two years, Krylov was outrageous in this way in the region. The representative of the authorities, Lieutenant-Governor Wolf, was silent and did not have the courage not only to stop him with his own power, but even to inform about 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. Once, having taken a walk at a meeting, Krylov, in a drunken state, wanted to flaunt his power in front of Wulf and began to scold him for omissions in the service. Although Wulf timidly objected to him, trying to refute the accusation, but Krylov, under the influence of intoxication, got excited, ordered the sword to be taken away from Wulf, declared him arrested and dismissed from his post, and himself entered into the administration of the region. Only then, fearing for his freedom, and, perhaps, his life, Wulff decided to inform his superiors about the events in Irkutsk. In secret, he and Bishop Sophrony considered this matter. The bishop wrote a denunciation, and Wulff sent it to Tobolsk with a secret courier. From Tobolsk came an order to arrest Krylov. Wulf, however, did not dare to do so openly; he undertook this undertaking with great precautions. At night, a team of twenty selected Cossacks approached the investigator's apartment, first seized the guns that were in the bipod in front of the guardhouse, then changed the guard. Then, the Cossack officer Podkorytov, famous for his prowess, 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 defeated him. They put shackles on Krylov and sent him to prison, and then, by order of the higher authorities, to Petersburg, where he was to appear before the court. Empress Elizabeth, having learned about this case, ordered that "this villain, regardless of any person, be dealt with." The Senate, ignoring all the atrocities of Krylov, charged him only with the arrest of Wulf and insult 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 put, and deprived him of his ranks. “In a hundred years, even,” 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 was this executioner supposed to look like to those who experienced his torture and violence?...”.

Unrest in Siberia grew; news of them more often began to reach the supreme power. To help the cause, they increased the powers of the chief commander of the region. Governor-General Selifontov, who ended in disgrace, was vested with such extensive authority - dismissal from service with a ban on entry to the capitals. Then the governor-general in Siberia is Pestel. He was a painfully suspicious person. At the very appointment to this high post, Pestel wrote with a trembling hand, among other things, to the Sovereign: “I am afraid, Sovereign, of this place. How many of my predecessors were broken by the Siberian snake! Not hoping and I will safely leave this position; better cancel your will - the Siberian scammers will ruin me. The sovereign did not agree to cancel his order, and Pestel had to go to Siberia upon taking office, he declared that he had come to crush the sneak. However, he did not directly manage Siberia: he handed over the affairs of management to his closest relatives and favorites, and he himself went to St. Petersburg and never returned. For eleven years he ruled Siberia, living in St. Petersburg, twisting the Highest Commands, circumventing them and replacing them with Senate orders. On the one hand, he deceived the government with false ideas; on the other hand, he deceived the local population with intimidation that in St. Petersburg the top authorities had turned their backs on him and despised him for his snitching.

Finally, Pestel's opponents managed to convince the Sovereign to revise Siberia. They say that one day, Emperor Alexander I looked out of the window of the Winter Palace and noticed something black on the spike of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. He called Count Rostopchin, who was famous for his wit, and asked if he would consider what it was. Rostopchin replied: “We must call Pestel. He sees from here what is happening in Siberia.” And in Siberia, indeed, something terrible was happening. The sovereign sent Speransky to Siberia. At the mere rumor of this, the Siberian administration went mad with fear. One of the arbitrarily despotic bigwigs of Siberia fell into a wild madness, from which he soon died; another time haggard and aged; the third hanged himself just before the start of the Speransky investigation.

Speransky appeared in Siberia. His management was actually only an "administrative journey" through Siberia. Two years later he left the region and returned to St. Petersburg. Suffering Siberia met him, the messenger of God. “Be a man sent from above!” wrote his contemporary, an educated Siberian, Slovtsov. And Speransky himself understood that his arrival in Siberia was an epoch for Siberian history. He called himself the second Yermak, because he discovered the 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 city 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 at the cards, got drunk, then fell asleep. The governor-general arrived at night and woke up this society 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 abuse; the amount of embezzled money stretched up to three million rubles! Presenting his audit report, Speransky petitioned the Sovereign to confine himself to punishing only the most significant culprits. This was prompted, firstly, by necessity, since to expel six hundred officials from service meant leaving Siberia without officials; secondly, it was not the people who were to blame for the abuses of the Siberian officials, but the management system itself. Only two hundred people were hurt; of these, only forty suffered a more severe punishment.

Having discovered the abuses of the bureaucracy and punished the most important culprits, Speransky changed the very system of government in Siberia, granting it the well-known special "Siberian Code". Each Siberian governor and governor-general is assigned a council consisting of officials appointed by the ministries. The Arakcheev Party prevented Speransky from introducing elected representatives from the 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 former rulers, a simple, accessible, affable, highly educated man with a broad statesmanship appeared in Irkutsk - in a word, a man that Siberia had never betrayed before. Speransky kept himself extremely simple in society. He entered into friendly relations with the old-timers; showed love and patronage for the sciences. The ruler of a vast region, its reformer, overwhelmed with cases of revision, bombarded with thousands of petitions, constituting at once several projects for the management of individual parts - he, at the same time, follows the current Russian literature with the liveliest interest, studies German literature, studies English language and he teaches Latin language one young student. Speransky's stay in Siberia is a bright episode in the history of this country, a solid, so to speak, picture of the triumph of truth over arbitrariness. Punishment, which befell the perpetrators of the abuses and, most importantly, the personal influence of Speransky, made for some time impossible the unrest on the previous scale. Then, the development of education in the metropolis, where the rulers of the region came from, the change in views on governance in general and the administration of the outskirts in particular, the softening of the morals of the rulers - finally made it completely impossible to repeat Krylovism and Pestelevism in Siberia. The special "Siberian Code" was intended to weaken the disturbances of governance that occurred from the remoteness of the region, by limiting the power of the chiefs of the region through the soviets, it was thought that this limitation would make the Siberian orders similar to Russian ones. However, the "Siberian Code" did not deliver this equality. The Siberian order is, after all, 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 anymore. Siberia, which has already entered the fourth century of its existence under the rule of Russia, is waiting for a new, more fundamental reform in governance.

On the occasion of the tercentenary anniversary of Siberia, the Sovereign word was heard from the height of the throne, giving the right to hope that, probably in the near future, those reforms that European Russia uses will be extended to Siberia. The Siberian administration finally declared the urgent importance and necessity of this, and the highest government authorities treated this statement with special attention and care.

Indeed, bringing Siberia into one whole with European Russia by establishing unity in the system of governance of both of these Russian territories is the first thing that is necessary in order to make Siberia not only a definitively Russian country, but also an organic part of our state organism - in consciousness as a European Russian and Siberian population. Then, it is necessary to finally consolidate the connection of Siberia with European Russia by railroad, which runs through the entire Siberian territory. Then, of course, quite naturally, a proper influx of population from European Russia to Siberia will be established and the abundance of Siberian natural wealth will receive a corresponding sale on the Russian and Western European markets. Only under this condition can Siberia be able to justify its ancient reputation as a "gold mine".

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

One of the most remarkable pages in the history of Russia is the development of Siberia. Today, the Siberian expanses make up most of the Russian territory. And at the beginning of the 15th century, Siberia was a real “blank spot”. For our country, the feat of Yermak, who conquered Siberia for Russia, became one of the most epoch-making 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 huge 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 "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 steppes, the Cossacks made trips to the Nogai, Crimean and Kazan lands. Often the Cossacks took booty from the Tatar hordes returning from the robbery of Russian lands and freed the captives. Thus, the Cossacks took an active part in the war against the enemies of Russia.

The most famous Cossack who fought for Russia was Ermak Timofeevich (Ermak is his nickname, and his real name was Yerema). Even before the famous Siberian campaign, he honed his skills and gained experience as an ataman Cossack detachment on the border of the steppes. Little information has been preserved about Yermak's personality: it is known that he was strong, eloquent and "black with hair."

According to one of the legends, Yermak's grandfather, Afanasy Alenin, helped the Murom robbers. Yermak himself worked for some time on plows that traveled along the Volga and Kama. But soon he took up robbery.

There were many rumors about Yermak's robbery past. For example, the English traveler John Perry in his notes claimed that Yermak 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 Yermak, 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 a few years after the death of Yermak. Thus, we can conclude that information about Yermak's robbery past may be incorrect - and this is the first mystery.

The second historical mystery is that it is not known in what year Yermak 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 beaten off another attack by the warriors of the Horde prince Ali, the Cossacks began to gather on a long campaign. The rich merchant clan of the Stroganovs provided them with everything they needed, including ammunition and a large supply of bread. All stocks should have been enough for two years. About a thousand Cossacks went on a campaign.

Why did Yermak and his army move precisely 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 the 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 Yermakovites 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 a complete victory, and the whole force of the numerous khan's detachments settled in the Siberian region would come out against them.

Before the campaign, the priests in the churches of Chusovskie Gorodoki served a prayer service and blessed the soldiers on their hard journey, the bells rang, 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 prayers before battles. In the meantime, the Cossacks on three dozen plows set off along the river. 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, 18 rowers were placed at the sides. The Cossacks rowed alternately, and when the enemy appeared, they took up arms. Plows had to be dragged by hand in case of crossing the 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 performances were financed by the merchants Stroganovs. 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 the unexplored Siberian lands. There is a version that the tsar, having learned about the impending campaign of the Cossacks in Siberia, wrote a letter to the Stroganovs, demanding that the Cossacks be sent to defend the towns that were attacked by the detachments of Khan Kuchum and his eldest son Alei.

Ermak's campaign developed successfully, in several battles the army Cossack ataman defeated the Tatar troops. With fighting, the Cossacks led by Yermak reached the Irtysh River and captured the capital of the Siberian Khanate - now the city of Kashlyk. Yermak 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 the capture of the main city of the Siberian Khanate: his detachment went further along the Irtysh and the Ob. The Cossacks captured one ulus after another and took the oath to the Russian Tsar. For several years, until 1585, Yermak's squad fought with the soldiers of Khan Kuchum in the expanses of Siberia.

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

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 the fighters of Yermak. The ataman himself tried to swim to the plows. He was wearing two, donated by the king, chain mail. They became the cause of the death of Yermak, he drowned in the water of the Irtysh.

However, there is circumstantial evidence that this story had a continuation. Popular rumor says that a day later (according to some sources, after eight days), Yermak's body fell into the fishing nets of a Tatar fisherman, who hastened to report his find to Khan Kuchum himself. In order to ascertain the death of the famous Russian ataman, the entire Tatar nobility gathered. The joy was so great that the Tatars continued to celebrate the death of Yermak for several days. Having fun, the Tatars, for a week, shot Yermak's body with bows. They took his chain mail with them. The remote ataman was buried secretly and the exact place of his grave is still unknown.

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

It so happened that the death of two opponents - Kuchum and Yermak remained secrets. Both of them have unknown graves, legends live about them among the Tatar people.

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

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

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

Ermak Timofeevich

The exact surname of this person has not been established, it is likely that she did not exist at all - Yermak was of an humble family. Ermak Timofeevich was born in 1532, in those days a middle name or nickname was often used to name a common person. The exact origin of Yermak has not been clarified, but there is an assumption that he was a runaway peasant, who stood out for his enormous physical strength. At first, Yermak was a chur among the Volga Cossacks - a laborer and a squire.

In battle, a smart and brave young man quickly got himself weapons, participated in battles, and thanks to his strength and organizational skills, he became an ataman in a few years. 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 ancestor of the first marines, which was then called the "plow army". There are other historical versions about the origin of Yermak, but this one is the most popular among historians.

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

The idea and goals of the trip

Back in 1579, the merchants Stroganovs invited the Cossacks of Yermak to their Perm region to protect the land from the raids of the Siberian Khan Kuchum. In the second half of 1581, Yermak formed a detachment of 540 soldiers. For a long time, the opinion prevailed that the Stroganovs were the ideologists of the campaign, but now they are more inclined to believe that this was the idea of ​​Yermak 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, such a decision became a consensus between the authorities, who wanted to get new lands, the merchants, who were concerned about safety from Tatar raids, and the Cossacks, who dreamed of getting rich and showing their prowess in 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 that Yermak be returned to protect the Perm lands.

Trek Mysteries: It is widely known that the Russians first penetrated into Siberia in quite ancient times. Quite definitely, Novgorodians sailed along the White Sea to the Yugorsky Shar Strait and further beyond it, to the Kara Sea, as early as 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 basis of the detachment was the Cossacks from the Don, headed by the glorious chieftains: Koltso Ivan, Mikhailov Yakov, Pan Nikita, Meshcheryak Matvey. In addition to the Russians, a certain number of Lithuanians, Germans and even Tatar soldiers entered the detachment. Cossacks are internationalists in modern terminology, nationality did not play a role for them. They accepted into their ranks all those who were baptized into the Orthodox faith.

But the discipline in the army was strict - the ataman demanded compliance with all Orthodox holidays, posts, did not tolerate laxity and revelry. The army was accompanied by three priests and one monk. The future conquerors of Siberia embarked on eighty plow boats and set sail towards dangers and adventures.

Crossing the "Stone"

According to some reports, the detachment set out on 09/01/1581, but other historians insist that it was later. The Cossacks moved along the Chusovaya River to Ural mountains. On the Tagil Pass, the fighters themselves cut the road with an ax. It was the Cossack custom to drag ships along the ground in the passes, but here it was impossible because of the large number of boulders that could not be removed from the path. Therefore, people had to carry the 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.

The defeat of the Siberian Khanate

The "acquaintance" of the Cossacks and local Tatars happened on the territory of the present Sverdlovsk region. The Cossacks were fired upon with bows by their opponents, but repulsed the impending attack of the Tatar cavalry with cannons, occupied the city of Chingi-tura in the present Tyumen region. In these places, the conquerors obtained jewelry and furs, participating in many battles along the way.

• On May 5, 1582, at the mouth of the Tura, the Cossacks fought with the troops of six Tatar princes.
• 07.1585 - the battle on the Tobol.
• July 21 - the battle at the Babasan yurts, where Yermak, with volleys of his cannon, stopped a cavalry army of several thousand horsemen galloping at him.
• At the Long Yar, the Tatars fired again at the Cossacks.
• August 14 - the battle near Karachin-gorodok, where the Cossacks captured the rich treasury of Murza Karachi.
• On November 4, Kuchum, with a fifteen thousandth army, organized an ambush near the Chuvash Cape, with him were hired squads of Voguls and Ostyaks. At the most crucial moment, it turned out that best squads Kuchum 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 Yermak 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 by extremely cruel methods. It is not surprising that after his defeat, the local peoples (Khanty) brought gifts and fish to Yermak. As the documents say, Yermak Timofeevich met 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.

Trek Mysteries: Yermak's campaign was not the first military campaign in Siberia. The very first information about the military campaign of the Russians in Siberia dates back to 1384, when the Novgorod detachment went to the Pechora, and then, on a northern campaign through the Urals, to the Ob.

Yermak promised to protect everyone from Kuchum and other enemies, overlaying them with yasak - an obligatory tribute. From the leaders, the ataman took an oath of tribute from their peoples - this was then called "wool". After the oath, these peoples were automatically considered subjects of the tsar and were not subjected to any persecution. At the end of 1582, part of Yermak's soldiers were ambushed on the lake, they were completely exterminated. On February 23, 1583, the Cossacks responded to the Khan by capturing his chief commander.

Embassy in Moscow

Yermak in 1582 sent envoys to the tsar, headed by a confidant (I. Koltso). The purpose of the ambassador was to tell the sovereign about the complete defeat of the khan. Ivan the Terrible graciously endowed the messengers, among the gifts were two expensive chain mail for the ataman. 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 attach them to the squad - this procedure was delayed. The detachment reached Kashlyk in November 1584, the Cossacks did not know in advance about such replenishment, so the necessary provisions were not prepared for the winter.

Conquest of the Voguls

In 1583, Yermak conquered the Tatar villages in the basins of the Ob and Irtysh. The Tatars put up fierce resistance. Along the river Tavda, the Cossacks went to the land of the Vogulichi, extending the power of the king to the river Sosva. 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, Yermak acts as a subtle psychologist who was well versed in people. Despite all the difficulties and difficulties of the campaign, not one of the atamans faltered, did not change his oath, until his last breath he was a faithful companion and friend of Yermak.

Chronicles have not preserved 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, Yermak had 1060 people left. It turns out that the losses of the Cossacks amounted to about 600 people.

Takmak and Yermak in winter

Hungry winter

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

Trek Mysteries: Who needs land? Until now, none of the Russian historians has given a clear answer to a simple question: why Yermak began this campaign to the east, to the Siberian Khanate.

The uprising of Murza Karach

In the spring of 1585, one of the leaders who submitted to Yermak on the Tura River suddenly attacked the Cossacks I. Koltso and Y. Mikhailov. Almost all the Cossacks died, and the rebels in their former capital blocked Russian army. 06/12/1585 Meshcheryak and his comrades made a bold sortie and threw back the army of the Tatars, but the Russian losses were enormous. At Yermak, at that moment, only 50% of those who went on a campaign with him survived. Of the five atamans, only two were alive - Yermak and Meshcheryak.

The death of Yermak and the end of the campaign

On the night of 08/03/1585, Ataman Ermak died with fifty fighters on the Vagae River. The Tatars attacked the sleeping camp, in this skirmish only a few soldiers survived, who brought terrible news to Qashlyk. Witnesses to Yermak's death claim that he was wounded in the neck, but continued to fight.

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

After receiving the news of the death of the leader, the Cossacks gathered for a meeting, where it was decided to return to their native lands - wintering again in these places was like death. On August 15, 1585, under the leadership of Ataman M. Meshcheryak, the remnants of the detachment moved in an organized manner along the Ob to the west, home. The Tatars were celebrating the victory, they did not yet know that the Russians would return in a year.

Campaign results

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

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

His perseverance in advancing through the territory of the Siberian Khanate is very, very reminiscent of the perseverance of the doomed. Yermak simply walked along the rivers of an unfamiliar land, counting on chance and military luck. Logically, the Cossacks had to lay down their heads in the campaign. But Ermak was lucky, he captured the capital of the Khanate and went down in history as a winner.

The conquest of Siberia by Yermak, painting by Surikov

Three hundred years after the events described, the Russian artist Vasily Surikov painted a painting. This is truly a 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 depicts one of the battles of a small detachment of Cossacks with a 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 fly over the heads of the Russians. The battle is headed by Yermak himself - he is at the head of his army and at first glance it catches the eye that the Russian commander is of remarkable strength and great courage. 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 the commander, he directs his soldiers forward.

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

Victoria Petrovna Brezhneva, the wife of Leonid Brezhnev, lived long enough interesting life. Although the biographical data of the "First Lady" of the country has always remained a secret. The early years of Victoria Brezhneva Brezhnev's wife Death and funeral She did not seek ...

Accession of Siberia to Russia

“And when a completely ready, populated and enlightened land, once dark, unknown, appears before the astonished humanity, demanding a name and rights for itself, then let the story of those who erected this building be interrogated, and they will also not try, just as they did not try, who set up pyramids in the desert... And creating Siberia is not as easy as creating something under the blessed sky...» Goncharov I.A.

History assigned the role of a pioneer to the Russian people. For many hundreds of years, the Russians discovered new lands, settled them and transformed them with their labor, defended with weapons in their hands in the fight against numerous enemies. As a result, vast areas were settled 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 regions.

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