History of the development of the Siberian region. Russian colonization of Siberia

8.2. Siberia before Yermak's campaign

The first Russians in Siberia. The harsh North also attracted Novgorodians. After all, from the “midnight countries” came the furs that made Novgorod rich. To the north, the Novgorodians moved along lakes and rivers; on the watersheds, from where the rivers begin, the boats were dragged by drag.

From here came the names of the cities Volokolamsk (Volok Lamsky) and Vologda. Following the Novgorodians, the Vladimir princes moved north: on the Sukhona they founded the city of Veliky Ustyug, an important center of Russian colonization of the North, fought with the Novgorodians for access to the furs of Perm the Great. And Perm was famous for furs. The mysterious Ugra lying to the east of Perm was even more famous for its furs. There were legends about the riches of Ugra. The First Novgorod Chronicle dated 1193 reports that in Ugra "silver and sable and other patterned things" are in abundance. Another chronicle (Ipatovskaya, 1114) conveys a story about the wonders of the Yugra land:

“The old men went beyond Yugra and beyond Samoyed, who saw themselves in the midnight countries, a cloud was falling and in that cloud the decline was a young viveritsa, like it was first-born, and it grew up and dispersed over the earth, and packs there is another cloud and deer fall in it and increase and spread out over the earth.”

But it was not the "deer" that attracted the Novgorodians, they sought to Ugra for the best falcons in the world, "fish tooth" (walrus tusks) and expensive furs of sable, arctic fox and ermine, walking on the mantles of kings. Moving to the east, the pioneers reached the mountains, nicknamed by them "Yugorsky stone", crossed "through the Stone" and already in 1096 reached the lower reaches of the Ob. The Novgorodians were not embarrassed by the "path of evil", nor were they afraid of the risk of death in battles with the "Ugra" (Voguls, Samoyeds), which happened. The chronicles tell of the sad end of many pioneers: 1032 - the campaign of the governor Ugleb "to the Iron Gates ... and few of them returned back, but many died there"; 1187 - a detachment of Novgorodians was exterminated in Pechora and Zavolochye - "the heads of a hundred well-known people fell"; 1193 - almost the entire detachment of voivode Andrey was killed behind the "Stone", 1329 - the entire Novgorod trading expedition, which was marching to Ugra, perished.

But the Novgorodians only became more insistent. In the XII century. they founded the city of Khlynov (Vyatka), which became the center of the colonization of the Pechora Territory, laid the "Through the Stone Way" - a system of river routes and portages to the "Zakamennaya Yugra" (lower reaches of the Ob). At the end of the XIII century. in Novgorod, new ships appeared for military and trading expeditions - ushki, named after polar bears, in Pomeranian ushkui. The nose and stern of the ears were decorated with the heads of bears, as on the ship of the epic Nightingale Budimirovich: “On that falcon-ship there are two white bears from overseas.” Narrow and long lugs were fast-moving, “driving rowing and sailing”, along rivers and seas, bow forward and stern forward, because the bow of the ushku did not differ from the stern. In each ushkuy there were 30 rowing warriors, ushkuyniks. The number is sufficient to drag the ship to another river.

Daring, well-armed, the ushkuyniki took possession of the river system of Russia and the Golden Horde. They drove the Golden Horde khans to despair, plundered the entire river Volga region, repeatedly ravaged the Golden Horde cities and even stormed the capital of the Golden Horde - Saray. On sea ears, the Novgorodians went out into the Barents Sea and plundered the Norwegian coast, and in the Baltic they penetrated Finnish skerries and attacked Swedish fortresses from the rear. Ushkuiniki were popular in Novgorod; daring fellows, often from good families, went to the ushkuiniki. A.K. Tolstoy dedicated the poem "Ushkuinik" to one of them:

Overcame the power-remove me, well done,

Not a stranger, her heroic prowess!

And in the heart melting prowess does not fit,

And the heart will break from the distance!

I'll go to the father in the distance to cry bitterly,

I’ll go to my mother to bow at my feet:

Let go of your wanker offspring,

Novgorod orders something unlearned.

Release to play kids games:

Those convoys beat grassroots, merchants,

Crimson on the sea Urman boats,

Yes, on the Volga, burn the prisons of the infidels!

The Ushkuyniki and Ugra did not ignore. In 1363, the ushkuiniki, led by Alexander Abakumovich and Stepan Lepa, reached the Ob River. Here they split up - part of the "children of the boyars and young people" went to the lower reaches of the Ob to the very "Cold Sea" to take furs and "fish tooth" from the locals, while others went for a walk along the upper reaches of the Ob in the lands of the Siberian Tatars. In the XIV century. Yugra near the Urals was included in the Novgorod volosts, although the possessions of Veliky Novgorod were fragile.

From the 14th century, the northeastern expansion of the Moscow principality began. As early as 1332, Prince Ivan Danilovich (Kalita) “raised his anger against the Ustyugs and the Novgorodians” that they did not pay tribute to the Horde king from Vychegda and Pechora “began to collect tribute from the Perm people.” In 1364 Moscow captured Veliky Ustyug. In 1367, Prince Dmitry Ivanovich (Donskoy) "arrested in Nougorod and the people of Nougorod reconciled." Prince Dmitry took the Perm land "according to that peace". Soon, St. Stephen of Perm founded the Perm diocese and engaged in the enlightenment of the Komi-Zyryans (1379-1395): he baptized them, created an alphabet for them, and translated part of the Holy Scripture into the Komi language.

With the annexation of Novgorod to the Russian state (the end of the 15th century), circumpolar campaigns to Yugra continued. Pomors were engaged in them - the descendants of the Novgorodians who settled in the XII - XIII centuries. the southern coast of the White Sea and mixed there with local Finnish tribes. Excellent shipbuilders, Pomors built the most perfect ships for ice navigation at that time - kochi. Kochi were adapted for swimming on broken ice and for dragging on ice floes. They had a double skin of the hull and a round bottom, thanks to which the ice floes did not crush them, but squeezed them to the surface of the ice floes.

The skills of polar navigation allowed the Pomors to master the nomadic routes along the Studenoy (Kara) Sea. In the XVI century. they opened a sea route to the Gulf of Ob and up the Ob - to the pantry of "soft junk". By the beginning of the XVII century. Pomors reached the mouth of the Yenisei. The following nomadic passages in the Kara Sea are known: "Mangazeya passage", "Novaya Zemlya passage", "Yenisei passage". "Mangazeya way" - the path to the Gulf of Ob and the city of Mangazeya, built on the Taz River in 1601. The path passed along the coast of the Barents Sea, through the Yugorsky Shar Strait into the Kara Sea to the western coast of the Yamal Peninsula, where the ships went by rivers. The Yenisei Way led from Pomorye to the mouth of the Yenisei River, and the Novaya Zemlya Way led to the northern regions of Novaya Zemlya.

The word Siberia in the annals first appears in 1407 in connection with the message that Khan Tokhtamysh was killed in the Siberian Land. In 1465, the governor Vasily Skryaba with a detachment went beyond the Stone and collected tribute from the Yugra in favor of Ivan III. Voivode Fyodor Motley in 1472 finally subjugated Great Perm and founded the town of Cherdyn in the Urals. In 1483, Princes Fyodor Kurbsky-Cherny and Ivan Saltykov-Travin made a big trip to Siberia. The Russian army dragged the ships across the Stone Belt and reached the place where the Irtysh flows into the Ob, scoring a number of victories along the way. Since then, Ivan III began to be called the Grand Duke of Yugorsky, Prince Kondinsky and Obdorsky. In 1499, "the great prince Ivan ordered his governors, Peter Ushaty and Prince Semyon Kurbsky, with a large army, to go to conquer Pechora and pacify the Voguls." More than four thousand warriors marched on the campaign. They overcame the high Northern Urals and made war on the Yugra land - 58 princes were brought to "shert according to their faith."

But these gains were fragile. For the Yugra (Voguls and Ostyaks), the Russian sovereign was far away, and the Tatars were here, at hand. Again and again the Vogul and Ostyak princes expressed their obedience to the Siberian khans. Everything changed in the second half of the 16th century, when the Kazan kingdom was conquered by Ivan IV. Nothing now interfered with the development of the Urals and Trans-Urals. But Ivan the Terrible did not have the opportunity to deal with the Perm land - all his forces were fettered by the struggle with the Crimean Khanate, the uprisings of the Tatars and Cheremis (Mari) in the Volga region, the impending war with Livonia. Therefore, in 1558, he granted the industrialists the Stroganov brothers, Yakov and Grigory, lands along the Kama and Chusovaya rivers and ordered them to be developed.

The Stroganovs were allowed to invite free people to new places - “not taxable and not runaway” - and exempt them from taxes for 20 years:

“And who will come to those fortresses to Yakov and Grigori to live, and they will teach to set up villages and repairs, and arable land to plow up non-literate and non-hard people, and in those preferential summers from those places, my tsar and grand duke don’t need tribute, nor yam ... nor any other taxes, nor the abandonment of their crafts and lands in those places until the appointed years.

The tsar ordered the Stroganovs to start settlements, arable lands and salt pans, granted the right to trade salt and fish without duty for 20 years, but with the obligation “not to make ores”, and if they find silver, or copper, or tin, then immediately notify the sovereign’s treasurers. He allowed them to set up towns and prisons to protect against raids by "Nogai and other hordes", to have a firearm, gunners and soldiers at their own expense.

Now the Russians moved close to the Stone Belt not only in the north, but in its middle part (the Bashkirs owned the Southern Urals). A new reality was realized in Qashlyk. The Siberian Khan Ediger, who ruled there, was in a difficult situation - from the south he was threatened by the pretender to the throne, Khan Kuchum, with an army of Uzbeks, Nogais and Bashkirs, from the east the Mongol Dzungar Khanate was gaining strength, and in the west the formidable Russian power was advancing. Ediger feared Kuchum most of all and, having decided to enlist the support of Moscow, in 1555 he sent envoys with a request to the “white king” that he “take all the Siberian land in his name and defend (defend) from all sides and put his tribute on them and sent his darugu to whom to collect tribute.

Ivan Vasilievich graciously agreed to take Siberia "under his own hand." To the names of kingdoms and principalities in his title was added "ruler of all Siberian lands." They boasted about the annexation of Siberia abroad, everywhere reporting that “the Siberian prince Yediger beat our sovereign with his brow, so that the king sovereign would keep the Siberian land and take tribute from the Siberian people, but he would not bring them from the Siberian land.” But the tribute did not work out. The ambassadors promised to pay to the royal treasury “a sable from every black man, and a Siberian squirrel per person for the sovereign’s daruga,” but when the Russian tributary (daruga) arrived, Yediger did not give him anything, but sent his Murza to Moscow with 700 sables. In the Kremlin, they hoped for 30 thousand sables, the number of men in the Siberian kingdom. The king "scorched" and put Murza in prison. Later, Yediger, and his affairs worsened, decided to completely submit. He sent to Moscow "a charter with a prince's seal that the prince had become a serf, he laid a tribute on all his land, so that from now on, every year and without translation, that tribute to the tsar and the grand prince from all the Siberian land would be given."

To the charter he attached tribute "a thousand sables and a Daruzh duty of 160 sables." Ivan Vasilievich resigned himself, accepted tribute and released Murza from prison. The amount of tribute was determined at a thousand sables, and the ambassadors promised to pay tribute "from now on annually and irrevocably." But Yediger's star set: in 1563, Khan Kuchum defeated him, captured him and executed him. Kuchum hated Russia, although at first he hid, was busy restoring order in his kingdom. At the same time, Dani did not send. When in 1569 the Ambassadorial order reminded him, Kuchum replied that he was collecting tribute, and recognized Ivan Vasilyevich as "the elder brother." Later, having learned about the defeat of the Turkish army near Astrakhan (1569), the khan decided to pay tribute anyway and in 1571 sent a thousand sables to Moscow. In the same year, Devlet-Giray burned Moscow, and Kuchum again vacated Russia. In 1573, his best commander, nephew Mametkul, raided the Stroganovs' possessions in Perm.

In response, Ivan the Terrible in 1574 grants Yakov and Grigory Stroganov an “open leaf” to the Siberian lands along the Tura, Tobol, Ob and Irtysh with the right to “set up yards, and cut forests, and plow arable land and own land”, trade and fish, and the beast, and, in retribution for good service, "make ore." The tsar allowed the Stroganovs to hire eager people to protect the towns and crafts, “where it’s useful for saving and we want to sleep, make fortresses and keep watchmen with a fiery outfit.” He instructed the brothers to protect "Ostyaks and Vogulichs and Yugrichs" who wished to "leave behind" Kuchum and pay tribute. The Stroganovs’ troops should act against Kuchum together with the native militia, “taking willing people and Ostyaks, and Vogulich, and Yugrich and Samoyed, with their hired Cossacks and with their outfit, send them to fight, and imati full of Siberians and bring in tribute for us.”

Meanwhile, the Voguls allied with Kuchum continued their raids. In the summer of 1581, the “godless Murza” Begbeliy Agtakov, with Voguls and “many others” plundered graveyards and villages along Chusovaya and Sylva and stole many into slavery. The Stroganovs organized a chase. Many "poimasha and beating" Begbelia was also caught. But a month later, the "Prince of Pelym" made a new raid because of the Stone. The raid was supported by local Vogul (Mansi) tribes. The life of the settlers became unbearable. The Stroganovs turned to the sovereign for help. They wrote: “But the Vogulichi live close to their settlements, and the place is a goblin, but they will not give their people and peasants a way out of the prisons, and they will not give arable land and firewood. And small people come to them stealing, they drive away horses, cows and beat people, and they took away their fishing in the settlements and do not give salt to cook. Semyon and Maxim Stroganov asked the tsar for permission to conduct a new set of "eager people." They received permission (December 20, 1581), but only for the recruitment of residents of the Perm land (and they hoped for permission to hire Cossacks).

Russians always break the law when they really want to. Not counting on peaceful Permians, the Stroganovs entered into negotiations with the Cossacks, many of whom were subject to the sovereign's disgrace for robbery. In the spring of 1582, a detachment of ataman Yermak, numbering 540 people, appeared in the Stroganov estates. In the summer of 1582, the idea of ​​a campaign for the Stone Belt was formed. At the end of August, when the preparations for the campaign were completed, there was a raid by the son of Kuchum Aley and the Pelym prince Ablegerim. With an army of 700 Tatars, Voguls, Ostyaks and Bashkirs, they attacked the possessions of the Stroganovs on Chusovaya, but were repulsed by the Cossacks. Then Aley and Ablegerim turned the army to the lands of the Perm governor and laid siege to the Perm capital Cherdyn, but the city survived. Then they went to Solikamsk, took the city by storm, killed the inhabitants, burned and plundered graveyards and villages along the Kama. Yermakovites did not take part in the defense of Perm. Instead, on September 1, 1582, the Cossacks set out on a campaign for the Stone Belt.

As a result of the raid of the son of Kuchum and the prince of Pelym, the Russians suffered significant losses. It was obvious that if Yermak's Cossacks had not gone beyond the Stone, there would have been fewer losses. About this, Ivan Vasilievich received a denunciation from the Cherdyn governor V.I. Pelepelitsyn, and a letter of disgrace came to the Stroganovs (dated November 16, 1582). In the letter, the tsar accused the Stroganovs of "theft and treason":

“You Vogulich and Votyakov and Pelyntsov took away from our salary and bullied them, and with that enthusiasm you quarreled with the Siberian Saltan. And having called the Volga chieftains to themselves, they hired thieves in their prisons without our decree. And those chieftains and Cossacks used to quarrel with us with the Nogai Horde, the Nogai ambassadors on the Volga, they beat the Ordobazartsy and robbed and beat our people, and repaired many robberies and losses to our people. And they had their guilt covered by the fact that it was our Perm land to protect, and they did it together with you according to the same way they repaired and stole on the Volga: on which day Vogulichi came to Cherdyn on September 1, and on the same day a day from you from the prisons Yermak and his comrades went to fight Vogulich, but Perm was not helped in any way.

It should be “those Cossacks, Yermak and his comrades”, from Siberia to turn back and, dividing, send to Perm and Usolye Kamskoye, so that under the command of the Moscow governors they cover their guilt and, together with the Perm and Vyatchans, fought the Pelym prince. And if the Stroganovs disobey, then Terrible's sentence was short:

“And don’t send the Volga Cossacks, Ataman Yermak Timofeev and his comrades from your prisons to Perm, but teach them to keep them with you ... and we have to put our own disgrace on you, and the atamans and Cossacks who listened to you and served you, and our land was given away, we order it to be hung up.

The Stroganovs, with all their desire, could not please the tsar. The Cossacks were already behind the Stone Belt. Events moved to Siberia.

Western Siberia on the eve of the arrival of Yermak. In the XVI century. in the vast Western Siberia lived only about 80 thousand people. The majority belonged to the Ural race, transitional between Mongoloids and Caucasoids. In the far north, in the coastal strip of Yamal and the Gulf of Ob, the oldest inhabitants, Sirtya, hunters of sea animals, are still preserved. In the legends of the Nenets, the coastal people went underground, but in reality the Sirts were exterminated or mixed with the Nenets.

The main population of the tundra and the northern taiga were the Samoyed peoples - the Nenets and Enets (8-9 thousand) and the Nganasans (less than 1 thousand). The most numerous were the Nenets (about 8 thousand), known to the Novgorodians since the 11th century. under the name "Samoyed, Samoyed". In the XVI century. the Nenets have not yet switched to tundra reindeer husbandry. Their herds of deer were small, and hunting and fishing served as a help. The Nenets were involved in trade with the Russians. Many paid yasak, but as the Kremlin clerks indignantly found out: visiting daredevils "imposed tribute from them." It was possible to restore order only with the construction of the town of Mangazeya (1601) and the sending of a governor and archers.

Samoyedic peoples lived not only in the north. The Samoyed Selkups (about 3 thousand) lived along the Middle Ob from Tym to Chulym. The Selkups rode reindeer and hunted in the taiga. They were called the Piebald Horde after the colorful clothes made from pieces of fur. The Russians also included the Kets (less than 1,000), culturally similar to the Selkups, but speaking a special Ket language, to the Piebald Horde.

The Ob Ugrians (about 20 thousand), originally known to Russians under the name Yugra, were divided into Khanty and Mansi. The Khanty, or Ostyaks (12,000) scattered scatteredly settled a vast territory along the Middle and Lower Irtysh and the Ob. They lived in log huts, in the summer they set up birch bark plagues in the places of fishing. They were engaged in taiga hunting and fishing. In "Description of the Siberian peoples and the facets of their lands" (c. 1703) SU. Remezov gives the following description of the Ostyaks:

“Their custom is this ... they don’t know how to believe and write, they devour [sacrifice] cattle and animals in front of an idol cage ... And they eat raw and boiled meat, and drink raw blood ... They have clothes from fish - sturgeon, sterlet and burbot, motley. They eat bear and beef meat and all reptiles and grass and roots. They stain their faces and hands with black spots in their various signs. The faces are flat and the hair is shaved; the dress is worn tucked up; legs are thin and sudden. Their weapons are bows and arrows. They ride dogs and sleds, and go skiing.”

Mansi, or Voguls, Vogulichi (about 8 thousand) lived on both sides of the Middle Urals. In the XVI century. under pressure from the Komi and Russians, they moved to the Trans-Urals. The northern Mansi were close to the Khanty in their way of life, the southern Mansi bred horses and sheep and switched to agriculture. Remezov gives a description of Mansi:

“Vogulichi are of medium age, they don’t shave their hair, they look like Ostyaks in their faces, they are small in business and not handicraft; they run from the neighborhood into the distance, into the darkness of the forests, for the unity [in solitude] of life ... they worship trees and bushes ... They do not have letters and laws, they are stingy [greedy] by custom, but they are not acquisitive, decadent and lazy, wild ; their weapons are bows and arrows, they ride horses and are happy with cattle ... they make clothes from the skins of animals and cattle.

The southern Ugrians - Mansi and Khanty - had princes who had warriors and lived in fortified towns, community members and slaves. Before the arrival of the Russians, the princes of the southern Ugric peoples were vassals of Kuchum.

In the south of Western Siberia, in the forest-steppe and in the mountains of Altai and the Western Sayan, the Turks lived. Siberian Tatars predominated (about 30 thousand), who settled in the forest-steppe and adjacent taiga. Altai Turks (1-2 thousand) lived in the Altai mountains. The militant Yenisei Kyrgyz (about 13 thousand) lived in the Minusinsk Basin. To the south of the Tatars, in the steppes of Kazakhstan, Kazakhs, Nogai and Mongols-Oirats (Kalmyks) roamed.

Siberian Tatars were the only people of Siberia who had in the XVI century. a single state - the Siberian Khanate. The Tatars were engaged in cattle breeding, agriculture, hunting and fishing.

They had fortified towns where artisans and merchants lived. A considerable income was brought to them by intermediary trade. Fabrics, weapons, silver (especially valued by the Ugrians), dried fruits went to Siberia from Central Asia and Iran, and from Siberia - furs and birds of prey. Most of the Tatars converted to Islam and were part of the Siberian Khanate. The Chulym and Ob Tatars lived on the outskirts, east of the Ob to the Yenisei. They preserved the religion of the ancient Turks, who worshiped Tengri - the "Blue Sky".

The Turks appeared in the south of Western Siberia at the end of the first millennium BC. e. At first they obeyed the Huns, and in the VI century. became part of the Turkic Khaganate. From the 8th to the 10th century in the Irtysh region there was a nomadic Kimak Khaganate. To the east of the Kimaks, the state of the Yenisei Kyrgyz was formed in the 9th century. The first state of the ancestors of the Siberian Tatars was formed at the beginning of the 12th century. on Ishim. At the beginning of the XIII century. Southern Siberia was conquered by Genghis Khan (1207) and became part of the Jochi ulus, and under his son Batu, it became part of the Golden Horde. But Batu did not rule in the Siberian and Kazakh steppes: he transferred these lands to his brother Horde Ichen (1242). The state of Ordu Ichen and his descendants was called "Kok Orda" - the Blue Horde - and was in vassal dependence on the Golden Horde. In the Blue Horde itself there were specific principalities - uluses and yurts. Horde Ichen allocated an ulus in the Kazakh steppes to the younger brother Sheibani. Thus began the Sheibanid dynasty. Another inheritance, known as the Tyumen yurt, was owned by the Taibugids, the descendants of the Mongol warrior Taibugi.

At the beginning of the XIV century. The Tyumen yurt was divided into the Tyumen yurt proper with its center in Chingi-tour (on the site of Tyumen) and the Siberian yurt with its capital in the Siberian-tour on the Irtysh, not far from Tobolsk. Taibugids ruled in both yurts. At the end of the XIV century. By order of the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek, the Islamization of the Siberian Tatars began. The pagans fiercely resisted: 330 out of 336 sheikhs-educators and 1148 soldiers accompanying them died. In 1468, the Sheibanid Ibak captured the Tyumen yurt, and in 1480 the Siberian yurt. Ibak destroyed the rulers of the Taibugids, but violated the "Yasa" of Genghis Khan, allowing their children to live. In 1481, Ibak attacked the winter quarters of the Khan of the Golden Horde Ahmad on the Lower Volga and killed him. This was the end of the Golden Horde and the rise of a single Siberian Khanate. But the violation of the "Yasa" was not in vain: in 1495, Ibak was killed by Taibugid Muhammad, who avenged Ibak for his grandfather. The Taibugids returned to power.

Muhammad moved the capital to the banks of the Irtysh, to Sibir Tura, which received the name Kashlyk. His state had every reason to be called a khanate, but Muhammad was not a descendant of Genghis Khan and could not bear the title of khan. The Russians called the Taibugids princes, and the Tatars called beks. Soon events occurred that had far-reaching consequences. At the beginning of the XVI century. Shah-Bakht Mohammed Sheibani, who was at the head of the Kypchak tribes, who adopted the name Uzbeks in honor of Khan Uzbek, conquered the Central Asian possessions of Timur's heirs. The Uzbek-Kipchaks and a considerable part of the Siberian Tatars left Sheibani for Central Asia, where, having mixed with the local population, they laid the foundation for modern Uzbeks. The Blue Horde ceased to exist, and the Siberian kingdom lost its passionaries. As Gumilyov writes: “Together with Sheibani, the most active and combat-ready part of the population of the Blue Horde left for Central Asia, which decades later had a negative impact on the fate of the Kuchumov kingdom.”

Since 1530, the Taibugid Ediger (Yadgar ben Gazi) ruled the Siberian kingdom. The main danger for him was the descendants of Khan Ibak, who lived in Bukhara, and sought to retake the Siberian throne. Yediger, foreseeing a war with the Sheibanids, decided to enlist the support of Moscow. In 1555, he offered to pay tribute to the White Tsar, to which Ivan Vasilyevich readily agreed. The payment of tribute did little to help Ediger: Ibai's grandson, Kuchum, with the support of the Bukharans and Nogais, managed to defeat him in a few years. In 1563, Kuchum captured Kashlyk and executed Yediger and his brother Bekbulat. But the Taibugids had many supporters. They managed to save the son of Bekbulat Seydyak (Seid), the future enemy of Kuchum. Kuchum had to fight with the rebellious Murzas, and then in the wilds of the forest to seek out and bring to obedience the Ostyak and Vogul princes. The struggle lasted seven years and was merciless. Kuchum not only conquered the Tatars, Ostyaks and Voguls, but converted them to Islam. By 1571, with the help of the Nogai and Bukhara warriors, Kuchum managed to completely suppress the resistance and even conquer new tribes.

Under Kuchum, the Siberian Khanate was strengthened. Like Genghisides, he was a legitimate khan. Kuchum expanded the boundaries of possessions to the lower reaches of the Ob. Under him, the Siberian Khanate bordered in the south with the Kazakh Khanate, in the southwest - with the Nogai Horde, in the northwest, along the Ural Mountains - with the possessions of the Stroganovs, in the north - with the Nenets, in the east - with the Piebald Horde. The core of the khanate was the Tatars, who settled in the forest-steppe zone between the Tobol, Tura and Irtysh with Om.

Prosperous at first glance, the Siberian Khanate was fragile. Although some of the Tatars sincerely accepted Kuchum, many hoped for the return of the Taibugids. The Vogul and Ostyak princes brought to Sherty by force were unreliable.

Calmness in the country was maintained only due to the weakened passionarity of the Tatars, who had lost a generation of batyrs, who left Sheibani for Central Asia, and the low passionarity of the Ugric peoples, who had long passed into the phase of ethnic homeostasis. Passionaries grouped around Kuchum, but they, like the khan himself, were aliens, people from other Turkic ethnic groups, alien to the Siberian Tatars in customs and behavior. In other words, the khanate of Kuchum, first of all, lacked unity, the very asabiya, which, according to P. Turchin, holds together ethnic groups and states. An external push was enough for such a state to collapse.

Meanwhile, to the west of the Siberian Khanate, the situation was changing - Russia was expanding. In 1554, the Khan of the Great Nogai Horde recognized himself as a vassal of the White Tsar, in 1556 the Astrakhan Khanate was conquered, in 1569, most of the Turkish army thrown to capture it died near Astrakhan. In the same year, the Ambassadorial Order reminded Kuchum of the debt to pay tribute. The Siberian Khan decided to submit and in 1571 sent an ambassador to Moscow with a tribute of a thousand sables. “Kuchum the bogatyr tsar” expressed his obedience to the “Peasant White Tsar” and promised to pay tribute. An entry appeared in the Ambassadorial Order: “Yes, Kuchum sent that his tsar and grand duke take into his own hands, and he took tribute from all the Siberian lands according to the old custom.”

Kuchum considered his humility a great humiliation, and as soon as it seemed to him that Russia had weakened, he decided to take revenge. The burning of Moscow by the Crimean Khan in 1571 convinced Kuchum of the weakness of the tsar. He immediately broke off tributary relations, and in 1573 sent his nephew Mametkul (Mukhammed Kula) with an army to the possession of the Stroganovs. Mametkul “robbed and burned” the Permyaks and Votyaks, and not the Russian settlers, but for the Stroganovs it was painful: after all, the Permyaks and Votyaks paid tribute in furs. And absolutely defiant was the murder of the tsarist ambassador, the son of the boyar Tretyak Chebukov, who was heading to the Kazakh khan.

Ivan the Terrible, busy with the war with the Poles and Swedes, did not have the opportunity to send an army against the recalcitrant vassal. Historians consider the reports of the Solikamsk Chronicle and the Note Book about sending a detachment of the regimental governor Afanasy Lychenitsyn to Siberia in 1574, defeated by Kuchum, unreliable. Lychenitsyn is not on the lists of the governor of Grozny, and, moreover, such an attack contradicts the cautious policy of the tsar, who sought to subdue Kuchum without a war. Kuchum also preferred to act by proxy, he supported the uprisings of the Cheremis (Mari) and set the Vogul princes against the Russian princes, encouraging the Tatars and Bashkirs to participate in their campaigns. In 1582, the Khan had already directly sent his eldest son Alei (Ali) with Tatars and Voguls to raid the lands of the Stroganovs and Perm, but the patience of the Stroganovs was exhausted. Subsequent events (with an error of a year) are described in the Vychegodsko-Vymsky chronicle:

“In the summer of 7089, the Siberian tsar came from the Vogulichi and the Ugorians to the Great Perm to the towns on the Sylvensky and Chusovsky, plundered the Stroganov estates. The same summer, the Pelyn prince Kikek, who came from the Totars, the Bashkirs, Ugorians, Vogulechi, burned and plundered the Permian towns of Solikamsk and Sylvensky and Yayvensky and burned the Vym settlements of Koygorod and Volosenets, and set about Cherdynya, but did not take it. That same summer, Maksim and Grigory Stroganovs of the Cossack vatamans, and with them hunting people, fought the Siberian land and the Cossacks who marched for one year fought the entire Siberian one, brought them for the great prince.

Kuchum clearly underestimated the Stroganovs, who decided to call on the Cossacks and use them not only for defense, but also for the offensive. Kuchum underestimated the combat capabilities of the Cossacks in comparison with his own army. What kind of forces did the Siberian Khan have at the beginning of Yermak's campaign? According to the Posolsky order, Kuchum could put up to ten thousand soldiers in the field, although R.G. Skrynnikov considers this number too high. M. Abdirov, on the contrary, estimates the number of Kuchum's troops at 10-15 thousand people. Yu.S. Khudyakov believes that the army of the Siberian Khan "numbered more than one tumen" (tumen - 10 thousand soldiers). If we estimate the population of the Khanate of Kuchum at 50 thousand people (including the Ugrians), then men over 15 years old, with a life expectancy of 50 years, there were 70% of 25 thousand, i.e. about 17 thousand. Consequently, with total mobilization, Kuchum could put a 15,000-strong army into the field, but in fact - 7-8 thousand.

The core of Kuchum's army was the Khan's guard - hired Nogai, Bashkir and Bukhara cavalry and Chuvash, who lived in the fortified Chuvash town - about a thousand soldiers in total. The guards wore chain mail and had a variety of edged weapons, not much inferior to the weapons of the Cossacks. The Tatar aristocracy was also well armed. Their number also did not exceed a thousand soldiers. The bulk of Kuchum's troops were militias from uluses and detachments of Mansi and Khanty (Voguls and Ostyaks). Simple ulusniks were usually without armor. They were armed with bows and spears. Almost all Tatars were horsemen and were distinguished by great mobility. There were also many Voguls on horseback, who had mastered the fighting skills of the Tatars. The Vogul and Ostyak princes usually wore chain mail, but the bulk of the warriors did not have armor.

The Siberian Tatars did not have firearms. Kuchum had two cannons, but they never fired during the battle, and Kuchum ordered them to be thrown into the Irtysh. The main weapon of the Tatars was the Mongolian bow, which is not bad at all compared to the squeakers, which require three minutes to reload. In a collision with the Cossacks, dressed in armor and chain mail, the bow could serve as a formidable weapon, but only in the presence of heavy armor-piercing arrows with hardened (steel) tips that could push the chain mail rings and even pierce the shell. There were few armor-piercing arrows among the Tatars (and even more so among the Voguls and Ostyaks), and light arrows with iron and even more often bone tips, effective in battles with a lightly armed enemy, were almost useless in collisions with Yermak's iron army.

Kuchum was not prepared for a serious war with the Russians. He tried to get cannons from the Crimean Khan, but did not think about armor-piercing arrows, but they could be purchased in Bukhara or made on the spot - there were experienced blacksmiths in Siberia. The convocation of the militia was also a mistake, which increased the mass of the army, but lowered its stamina. In the Battle of Chuvasheva Mountain, the Ostyaks were the first to run, followed by the Voguls, and then the ulus Tatars. Other circumstances of the collapse of the Siberian Khanate did not depend on Kuchum. But in the subsequent struggle with Yermak, the Siberian Khan showed his strengths - an unbending will, the ability to recover from heavy defeats and patiently wait in the wings. Special mention should be made of Kuchum's ability to correctly use the mobility of the cavalry and provide excellent reconnaissance. Do not forget that in the end Kuchum outplayed Yermak.

During the 17th century The vast Siberian Territory, sparsely populated by indigenous people, was passed by Russian explorers "meeting the sun" to the coast of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk and firmly established as part of Russia. The northern and eastern borders of the Russian state within Siberia almost coincided with the natural geographical borders of the northern part of the Asian continent.

The situation was different in the southern regions of Siberia. Russian advance to the south in the 17th century. faced a counter offensive by the Manchu, Mongol and Dzungar feudal lords and was suspended.

From the beginning of the 18th century, after the withdrawal of part of the Yenisei Kirghiz and Teleuts by the Dzungarian rulers to the south to the valley of the river. Or, the Russian settlement of the Yenisei basin south of Krasnoyarsk, Northern Altai and the Upper Ob region began. In the XVIII century. Russian settlement covered primarily the South Siberian lands. The tsarist government tried to avoid all kinds of conflicts and military clashes here. It tried to establish regular trade relations with the Kazakhs, Dzungaria, China, the Central Asian states and even India. At the same time, the southern borders were strengthened by building systems of fortresses.

The creation of a line of Irtysh fortresses further contributed to the settlement of forest-steppe regions by Russians. From the taiga districts, unfavorable in terms of climatic conditions for arable farming, mastered by Russian farmers as early as the 17th century, the resettlement of peasants to the forest-steppe began. Villages appear near the Omsk fortress, where peasants from the Tyumen district moved. Omsk and Chernolutsk settlements, the villages of Bolshaya Kulachinskaya, Malaya Kulachinskaya, Krasnoyarskaya, Miletina appear here. one

In the 30s of the XVIII century. West of the Irtysh, the Ishim fortified line was formed. It included up to 60 fortified settlements. It started at the Chernolutsk prison (slightly lower than the Omsk fortress), went to the Bolsheretskaya fortress, Zudilovsky prison, Korkinskaya settlement (Ishim), Ust-Lamenskaya and Omutnaya fortresses, then passed south of Kurgan to the Lebyazhy prison. 2

The territory of the forest-steppe lying south of the Ishim line to the river. Kamyshlovaya and bitter-salty lakes, remained in the 30s of the XVIII century. inhabited by no one. Only occasionally did hunter Tatars, Russian hunters, peasants and Cossacks come here for hunting and fishing. 3 By the middle of the XVIII century. north of the river Kamyshlovaya and bitter-salty lakes appeared Russian villages.

1 A. D. Kolesnikov. Russian settlement of the forest-steppe of the Irtysh region in the 18th century Izv. Omsk geographer, general, no. 6 (13), Omsk, 1964, p. 67.

2 S. V. Bakhrushin. Russian advance beyond the Urals. Scientific works, vol. III, part 1, M., 1955, p. 160. A. D. Kolesnikov gives a slightly different direction to the Ishim line (see: A. D. Kolesnikov. Russian settlement of the forest-steppe of the Irtysh region in the 18th century, page 68).

After the death of the Dzungarian ruler Galdan-Tseren in 1745, a struggle broke out between separate groups of feudal lords in Dzungaria. The aggravation of the internal political situation in the khanate led to the movements of the nomads of individual noyons and their offensive against the Kazakh pastoralists, who were pushed north into the Ishim and Irtysh steppes. Events in Dzungaria and information about the preparation of a military campaign in Dzungaria by the Manchu feudal lords prompted the tsarist government to strengthen the defense of the Siberian borders. 4 In 1745, the Russian government transferred regular military units (two infantry and three cavalry regiments) to the Siberian line under the command of Major General Kinderman. 5 By decree of the Senate, in 1752, the construction of a new line of fortifications began, which was called Presnogorkovskaya, or Gorkaya, which was completed in 1755. The line began from the Omsk fortress on the Irtysh, went west through the fortresses of Pokrovskaya, Nikolaevskaya, Lebyazhya, Poludennaya, Petropavlovskaya, Skopinsky, Stanovoy, Presnovskaya, Kabanya, Presnogorkovskaya to Zverinogolovskaya. With the construction of the Presnogorkovskaya line, the Ishimskaya line located to the north lost its significance. The vast forest-steppe region between the old Ishim and Presnogorkovskaya lines along the Ishim, Vagay and Tobol, favorable for arable farming, began to be actively settled and developed by Russian farmers. Already by the middle of the XVIII century. there was an intensive resettlement of peasants from the regions of Tobolsk, Tyumen and other territories to the Presnogorkovskaya line. In 1752 alone, more than 1,000 peasants from the Tobolsk, Ishim, and Krasnoslobodsk districts declared their desire to move to the area of ​​the line. 6

After the transition of the Altai industrial enterprises of the Demidovs into the hands of the tsar's Cabinet, Russian possessions in Altai were expanded and strengthened. At the end of the 50s of the XVIII century. formed the Kolyvan line of fortifications. It ran from the Irtysh along its tributary, the Uba, to the confluence of the Shemanaikha River. Further, the line went through the Shemanaikha outpost, the Zmeinogorsky mine, the Kolyvansky plant and to the village of Moralikhi. In the 60s of the XVIII century. defensive structures in Altai were somewhat shifted to the south. The new line was named Kolyvano-Kuznetskaya. It went from Ust-Kamenogorsk through a number of outposts (Krasnoyarsky, Ubinsky, Tigiretsky, Charyshsky, Antonevsky) to the fortresses of Anuiskaya, Katunskaya, Biyskaya and to the city of Kuznetsk. 7

Under the protection of the defensive lines, the mining and metallurgical industry of the Cabinet in Altai expanded, the Russian peasantry settled and developed the fertile lands of the southern part of Western Siberia.

The overwhelming majority of the peasants who arrived in Siberia were fugitives - from landlord estates, state-owned (chernososhnye) lands

3 A. D. Kolesnikov. Settlement of the Russian forest-steppe of the Irtysh region in the 18th century, p. 68.

4 N. G. Apollo. Economic and political relations of Kazakhstan with Russia in the XVIII-beginning of the XIX century. M., 1960, p. 93.

5 See: I. Ya. Zlatkin. History of the Dzungar Khanate (1635-1758). M., 1964, pp. 431-433.

6 M. M. Gromyko. Western Siberia in the XVIII century. Russian population and agricultural development. Novosibirsk, 1965, pp. 23, 98.

7 D. N. Belikov. The first Russian peasants-residents of the Tomsk Territory and different features in the conditions of their life and way of life. (General essay for the 17th and 18th centuries). Tomsk, 1898, p. 44; see also: GAAK, f. Office of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky mining authorities, op. 1, d. 866, ll. 513-518.

stranded northern European Russia. The main reason that pushed the peasants to leave their inhabited places for Siberia was the desire to get away from the growing burden of feudal duties and settle down on lands free from private owners. It was at this time that serfdom in Russia “assumed its most rude forms, it was no different from slavery.”8 Russian settlers had to overcome enormous difficulties, not only associated with vast expanses and impassability. The dominance of feudal relations in the country, the personal dependence of the peasants on the landlords, and the attachment of serfs to land allotments hindered the peasant resettlement to a much greater extent.

The extent of the free people's colonization of the Siberian Territory in the feudal era attracted the attention of a number of pre-revolutionary researchers (P. N. Butsinsky, N. N. Ogloblin, N. M. Yadrintsev, V. K. Andrievich, and others). Many of them emphasized the presence in the composition of the Russian population of Siberia of fugitive peasants who had broken with the feudal tax in their former place of residence. D. N. Belikov noted that the flight of peasants to Siberia acquired a particularly large scale in the first quarter of the 18th century. in connection with the wars and Peter's reforms, which were a heavy burden on the Russian people. Belikov wrote: “It is difficult to find a document during the time of Peter the Great concerning the internal life of the peasants, where there would be no government complaints about peasant flight. The peasants fled from taxes, from military service, from government work ... In vain on the paths along which the fugitives went, the government set up outposts. The Uteklets were able to make their way along the deaf paths, bypassing the barriers. ten

It is not possible to determine at least approximately the total number of peasants who fled to Siberia. For obvious reasons, the newcomers hid the fact of their flight from the feudal proprietor. The documents contain only separate information about the appearance of newcomers from the European part of the country in a particular settlement. Nevertheless, periodically held in the XVIII century. population revisions (I revision-1719-1722, II - 1744-1745, III -1762-1763, IV -1781-1782 and V-1795-1796; Table 1) invariably showed a significant increase in the Russian population in Siberia, and its growth was significantly higher than in the country as a whole (within the stable borders of the 20s of the 18th century).

8 V. I. Lenin, Poly. coll. cit., vol. 39, p. 70.

9 The table is based on the tables of V. M. Kabuzan and S. M. Troitsky. See: V. M. Kabuzan, S. M. Troitsky. The movement of the population of Siberia in the XVIII century. In: Siberia XVII-XVIII centuries, Novosibirsk, 1962, pl. 3 (p. 146), tab. 5, p. 153).

10 D. N. Belikov. The first Russian peasant settlers, p. 20.

From 1719 to 1795, the population of Siberia increased by 2.4 times, while the peasant population grew by 3.3 times.

Most intensively in the XVIII century. Russians settled in the eastern part of Western Siberia (Tomsk province), where not only settlers from the European part of Russia gathered, but also the migration of a part of the peasant population from the Tobolsk province began (Table 2).

Within the territory of the Tobolsk province from 1719 to 1795, the Russian population increased by 1.9 times (while the peasant population increased by 2.1 times), during the same time within the Tomsk province the Russian population increased by 3 times (the peasant population increased by 7 times) and within Irkutsk - by 2.8 times (peasants - by 4.1 times).

The most intensive influx of the Russian population to Siberia took place in 1760-1780, and at that time the mass of settlers vigorously mastered the sparsely populated eastern and southern regions.

At the same time, in the northern taiga and tundra regions, there was even a decrease in the Russian population. In the Tobolsk district, the most populated in the 17th century, the Russian population for 1767-1782. decreased by 30%, and in Tyumen and Turin increased very slightly. In the Berezovsky district, the Russian population for the 1740-1760s decreased by a quarter. 12

Speaking of population growth during the 18th century, one should not lose sight of the fact that Siberia was sparsely populated. According to the revision data, the entire population of Siberia (in the revision souls of the male sex) amounted to the population of Russia (within the 20s of the 18th century) in 1719 3.1%, in 1744 -3.4%, in 1762 -3.7 %, in 1782 -4.2%, in 1795 - 4.2%. 13 In fact, through the efforts and labor of a relatively small part of the Russian people (several tens of thousands of people), a huge region was developed, new settlements were founded, tract roads of grandiose length were laid, agriculture expanded, gradually shifting south, and mining and metallurgical industries were created.

The construction of fortresses along the Irtysh and the creation of the Irtysh fortified line largely prevented the raids of the Dzhungar tribes into the Baraba steppe, the upper Ob region and Northern Altai.

11 For ease of comparison, digital materials are given according to the administrative division of the beginning of the 19th century, when there were three provinces in Siberia: Tobolsk. Tomsk, Irkutsk. The table was compiled on the basis of data from V. M. Kabuzan and S. M. Troitsky. See: V. M. Kabuzan, S. M. Troitsky. The movement of the population of Siberia in the 18th century, tab. 5 (p. 153).

12 M. M. Gromyko. Western Siberia in the 18th century, pp. 25, 47.

13 V. M. Kabuzan. Materials of revisions as a source on the history of the population of Russia in the XVIII-first half of the XIX century (1719-1858). Abstract diss. M., 1959, p. 12. Percentages are derived.

The ethnically diverse population of Altai in the first half of the 18th century. experienced a significant impact of the neighboring nomadic state of Dzungaria. Some northern Altaians, inhabitants of the upper Ob region and groups of Baraba Tatars remained "two-dancers". The Southern Altaians were completely subordinate to Dzungaria. The Dzungarian state did not create a strong administrative apparatus in Altai and kept the Altaians in subjection through local nobility and visiting officials. The collection of tribute from the Altai tribes took place during periodic raids, which were essentially predatory military raids.

By the middle of the XVIII century. Dzungaria weakened due to the constant feuds of local feudal lords and military defeats inflicted on it by the Manchu troops. In 1755-1756. the imperial troops raided a significant part of the Dzungarian territory. “This capture,” wrote L.P. Potapov, “was accompanied by great cruelty towards the population.” 14 Fleeing from the persecution of the Chinese detachments, the Altaians subject to Dzungaria and part of the Dzungarian population migrated to the Russian border fortresses. In 1756, 12 Altai zaisans turned to the tsarist government with a request to accept them and their people into Russian citizenship. The request of the zaisans was granted. 15 By November 1756, the inhabitants of 13,000 wagons voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship.

The Dzungars of the Irtysh region also entered into Russian citizenship. In 1757, there were 747 Kalmyks in the department of the Omsk fortress, 277 in Ust-Kamenogorsk. 16

After the final defeat of Dzungaria by Chinese troops in 1758, the situation on the southern border of Siberia continued to be alarming. The government built fortifications, attracted new personnel to carry out the military guard border service. To replenish the garrisons of the southern Siberian fortresses in 1763-1764. Several cavalry and foot detachments were formed from the fugitive schismatics (Old Believers) returned to Russia, who lived in the regions of Starodubye and the Polskaya Vetka. They were placed mainly in the department of the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress along the tributaries of the Irtysh - Ube, Ulba and Glubokaya, partly - in the Baraba steppe. Almost at the same time, a significant number of Don Cossacks were transferred to the Siberian defensive lines, introducing them into the "linear" Cossacks. In the early 70s of the XVIII century. 150 Zaporizhzhya Cossacks exiled to Siberia were settled in fortified points of the border strip.

After the fall of the Dzungarian state, the tsarist government was able to annex to Russia the southern Altaians who lived along the upper reaches of the Irtysh at the confluence of the Ulba, Bukhtarma and Narym, as well as in the upper reaches of the Biya, Katun and in the region of Lake Teletskoye. 17

In 1760, an expedition of Major Shansky was sent from the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress up the Irtysh, and then along the Bukhtarma to its sources. In 1763, a Russian fortress (Bukhtarma) was founded at the mouth of the Bukhtarma, but in the valley of the river. Bukhtarma did not undertake the construction of a line of fortifications.

The Kolyvano-Kuznetskaya line was reinforced with new fortifications and renamed the Biysk Cossack line. Altaians roamed south of the Russian border fortifications. Gradually behind the line of fortifications

14 L.P. Potapov. Essays on the history of the Altaians. M.-L., 1953, p. 179.

15 Ibid., pp. 179-181.

16 G. N. Potanin. Materials for the history of Siberia. CHOYDR, book. 4, M., 1866, pp. 103, 108.

17 L.P. Potapov. Essays on the history of the Altaians, p. 180.

Russians also began to settle in the river valleys and mountain gorges, mainly artisans and factory peasants who fled from the Altai industrial enterprises, as well as newcomers from different regions of the country who fled from their feudal owners.

The mountainous region of Altai, which lay behind the fortified line, received the name Belovodie, i.e., “the land of the free, abundant and convenient for settlement,” as the local historian wrote about this in the middle of the 19th century. S. I. Gulyaev. 18 Russian settlers of Belovodie in the 18th century. were called "masons", that is, the inhabitants of a mountainous country - "Stone". "Bricklayers" in Belovodye settled in remote, hard-to-reach places, were engaged in fishing, beat deer and wild goats, hunted sable and squirrel in winter. The “industrial huts” of the “masons”, most often scattered one by one, were located in the gorges of the Listvyazhny Ridge, Kholzun and Katunsky proteins. Russian aliens also lived in the valley of the river. Bukhtarmy.

"Bricklayers" originally consisted mainly of fugitive artisans and soldiers; Among the first settlers of Belovodye were exclusively men, who settled several people in each dwelling. Only gradually in the villages of "masons" did women begin to appear, families were formed.

The inhabitants of Belovodye exchanged the furs and skins they got for grain, cattle, clothes from the Chinese and Russians, secretly coming to the villages located near the border line. Salt was mined in salt lakes near the Irtysh fortifications. On a small scale, they were engaged in arable farming and cattle breeding. Closely connected by the common interests of the struggle for the preservation of free life, the desire to hide from the tsarist administration, the inhabitants of Belovodie lived in isolation, mutually supporting and helping each other. In urgent cases, to solve common cases, as well as to conduct the court, "masons" gathered "for a general gathering." Among them, the firm orders and traditions established by the collective reigned, for the violation of which the guilty person was punished by tying him to a small raft and letting him go along the fast Bukhtarma. The highest measure of punishment was the expulsion from the society of "masons". nineteen

Intensified search for ore deposits, carried out by the administration of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky plants, led in 1784 to the discovery of a copper mine in the Bukhtarma valley. 20 In 1791, G. Zyryanov found a rich deposit of polymetals along the Berezovka River (a tributary of the Bukhtarma), which was called Zyryanozsky. The open Zyryanovsky mine was the southernmost of the Altai mines. 21

The free life of "masons", Belovodye came to an end. Not wanting to be returned to the factories or become ascribed peasants, they began negotiations with the official Priezzhev on the conditions for their acceptance of "Russian citizenship". The government of Catherine II, interested in strengthening the ore regions of Altai within Russia, “forgave” the “masons” for fleeing to Belovodie, accepted them into Russian citizenship and freed them from all factory duties and recruitment fees. This was formalized by a special protocol on June 25, 1792. 22 "Bricklayers" were equated with the non-Russian population of Altai, yasak was imposed on them, and later, according to Speransky's charter, they were classified as settled

eighteen . G. Karpenko. Mining and metallurgical industry of Western Siberia in 1700-1860. Novosibirsk, 1963, p. 98.

19 D. N. Belikov. The first Russian peasants-occupants..., p. 42; 3. G. Karpenko. Mining and metallurgical industry..., p. 99.

20 N. V. Alekseenko. Russian colonization of Rudny Altai in the 18th-19th centuries. Abstract diss. L., 1961, p. 6.

21 3. G. Karpenko. Mining and metallurgical industry, p. 65.

22 Ibid., p. 99.

lykh "foreigners". In total, in the early 90s of the XVIII century. there were up to 30 settlements of "masons", in which 205 men showed up to the government in 1792 (in fact, there were much more of them).

The existence of defensive lines of fortresses, outposts and redoubts created a favorable environment for the economic development of the local peoples and the Russian population of Siberia. The lines had a dual character: they served as military fortifications and at the same time were a chain of Russian settlements in the south. There is clearly a combination of military and peaceful development of the region.

The tsarist government, creating the Siberian fortified lines, initially transferred some service people there from Tyumen, Tara, Tobolsk, Tomsk and other cities. They began to be called "linear" Cossacks, in contrast to the "police" who made up the garrisons of cities. The initial economic development of the southern regions fell on their shoulders. In addition to military guard duty and work related to the strengthening of the line, they were engaged in agriculture, cattle breeding and fishing.

The increase in the number of troops, by the middle of the XVIII century. stationed in Siberian fortresses, caused difficulties in supplying them with food. The necessary provisions came from the "tithe arable land" in the form of grain dues from farmers and were purchased at the Siberian market. Established in the 17th century the main grain-producing region of Siberia (Verkhotursko-Tobolsk) lay far away, and the delivery of grain and flour on the line was fraught with great difficulties. Every year more than two thousand peasants broke away from the farm in the summer to transport flour, cereals and oats to the Upper Irtysh fortresses 23 . There was an attempt to procure food and fodder in the Tomsk and Kuznetsk districts. 24 In connection with the registration of the Kuznetsk and Tomsk peasants from 1747 to the cabinet enterprises of Altai, the obligation to supply food to the Siberian lines was removed from them.

By order of Major General Kinderman, an attempt was made to establish state arable land near the fortresses; Cossacks and soldiers were involved in its processing. State-owned plowing was available near Omsk along the Irtysh line and in Altai (near the Kabanova protection, the Katun and Anui fortresses and in the village of Tyryshkina). The crop failure of 1749, which engulfed the whole of Western Siberia, led to a sharp reduction in crops near the fortresses. It was difficult for the Cossacks and soldiers to combine military guard duty with arable farming, and the attempt to develop agriculture by military border units was not successful. The government had to raise the question of the settlement of the southern regions by peasants.

The desire of Russian farmers to the steppe regions, which became safe from the invasion of nomads after the construction of fortified lines, was revealed as early as the 40s of the 18th century. In 1745, 29 families of peasants from Berdsky, Chaussky Ostrog and Beloyarskaya Sloboda appealed to the commander of the Siberian lines, General Kinderman, with a request to allow them to move to the department of the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress. In 1746, peasants of Ishim, Yalutorovsk and Tara districts (a total of 200 males) handed over their petition, drawn up in the name of the Senate, to Kinderman, who were looking for places convenient for arable farming near Ust-Kamenogorsk. In 1747, under the protection of the Omsk fortress, there were already about a thousand revision souls - 687 commoners and 285 peasants. 25

23 N. V. Alekseenko. Russian colonization of the ore Altai..., pp. 6, 7.

24 Documents of the Berdsk jail. Scientific Library of Tomsk University, Manuscript Department, Vitr. 796, ll. 35, 87, 88, etc.

25 P. A. Slovtsov. Historical review of Siberia, book. II. SPb., 1886, p. 29.

The development of new lands for arable farming in the border region was difficult, so in 1752 the Senate decided to resettle only volunteer peasants to the fortresses under construction, freeing them from paying taxes and dues for three years. 26 The Siberian Provincial Chancellery sent an order to all counties: to identify from the plowed and quitrent peasants and from the raznochintsy who wish to move to the areas of the Irtysh line, the Biysk fortress, the Kuznetsk and Kolyvan lines, as well as to the regions of the upper reaches of the Ob. 27 This prescription did not give great results. The Tyumen voivode reported that until 1758 "no one has appeared in the Tyumen voivodship office to this day, and there were no reports from the sotskys in the filing about this." 28 The reason for this phenomenon lay, apparently, in the fact that the military authorities for the new settlers along the Irtysh, Kolyvan and Kuznetsk lines established the norm for processing state arable land at the fortresses: for each adult peasant (male) allotted "not less than a tithe in each field »; to plow "beyond that about their allowance" was allowed "as much as they can." 29 In addition, the peasants were frightened off by the threat of registration with the Kolyvano-Voskresensky factories. A serious obstacle to the settlement of the southern lines by peasants in the 50s of the XVIII century. there was also an alarming situation in the border areas.

In connection with the weak population of Siberia by Russians, the tsarist government in the 18th century, despite the demands of the landlords, actually did not take measures to stop the free-people colonization of the region. There were almost no cases of the return of fugitive peasants to the European part. The Siberian administration sought only to identify new newcomers in order to impose a poll tax and dues on them and resettle them in areas that were of particular importance to the government (cabinet lands, tract roads, border lines). The government saw in the peasant resettlement an opportunity not only to expand the revenues of the treasury at the expense of the feudal dues levied from the farmers "instead of the landowner's income", but also to solve the problem of food supply to the troops on the border line and the mining population of the Kolyvano-Voskresensky and Nerchinsk factories and mines.

Brigadier Andrei Beer, who headed the commission for the transfer of Demidov enterprises in Altai to the authority of the tsar's Cabinet, in his report of 1745 indicated that even the unauthorized settlement of new places by peasants was beneficial for the government, as it ensured the economic development of the territory. The task of the administration is only to direct this resettlement to the areas necessary for the government. thirty

Beer's proposal was accepted by the government. In order to populate the territory of the cabinet possessions in Altai, a mass forced relocation of all volunteers who had come to Siberia again, identified after the generals' census and the second revision, was undertaken. The decree of May 1, 1747 stated: “These newcomers, whoever they are, must earn in factories: the first is state taxes of 70 kopecks, the other is landlord taxes of 40 kopecks.” 31

In February 1748, Beer demanded that the Siberian provincial office immediately identify newcomers in all counties and send them under escort to Barnaul. Gathering places of identified colonists:

26 PSZ, vol. XV, no. 11124, p. 538.

27 GATOT, f. Tyumen Voivodship Office, op. 1, d. 467, l. 32 vol.

29 PSZ, vol. XV, no. 11101, pp. 509, 510.

30 Yu. S. B ulygin. Colonization by the Russian peasantry of the basins of the Charysh and Alei rivers until 1763. Questions of the history of Siberia, no. 1, Tomsk, 1964, page 17

31 Ibid., p. 20.

there were Tobolsk, Tara, Irkutsk, Kyakhta, Nerchinsk and other points. However, not all identified new settlers were transferred to the Altai. So, for example, in the list of 1750, 2336 revision souls assigned to resettlement are named by name; Of these, only 1,670 people actually arrived and were settled in Altai. The rest did not come for various reasons. Some of them were left by the local administration in the former settlement, as they acquired an economy, and it was unprofitable for the voivodship offices to lose solvent taxpayers. Others died before being sent or on their way to Altai. Part was running during shipment. Such a resettlement continued until 1754. The vast majority of those brought to Barnaul with an escort were settled in villages in the Charysh and Alei basins, the rest were left directly at the factories and mines. Some settlers were recognized in Barnaul as unfit for settlement due to old age, disability or infancy and were sent back by the Kolyvano-Voskresensky authorities. With such rude, inhuman, typically feudal methods, the tsarist administration in Siberia carried out the redistribution of free colonists across the territory of the region, providing industrial enterprises in the Altai with ascribed peasants.

The peasants forcibly driven to the Altai took root with great difficulty. So, in the village of Bolshoi Kurye, three years after the settlement of 11 families and 3 single peasants transferred from Irkutsk, “there was not a single fully built yard. There were 4 huts without a roof, one unfinished, and the construction of one hut had just begun. . . Due to lack of funds, the peasants united several families and built one hut. 32

The need for accelerated settlement of the area adjacent to the defensive lines of Altai and the tract zone in the Baraba steppe was repeatedly reported to the government by local military authorities and the Siberian governor F. I. Soymonov. In 1760, two Senate decrees appeared on the settlement of the most important regions of Siberia. The first of them is “On the occupation of places in Siberia from the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress along the Bakhturma River and further to Lake Teleutskoye; about the construction of fortresses there in convenient places and about the settlement of that country along the rivers Ubda, Ulba, Berezovka, Glubokaya and other rivers flowing into the onya, and into the Irtysh river, by Russian people up to 2000 people. According to the decree, the Siberian authorities were recommended to populate this area with peasants and raznochintsy of the Tobolsk province who expressed a desire to resettle, as well as state peasants of the Ustyug and Vyatka provinces, who are temporarily in Siberia "for their trades." Settlers were granted a three-year exemption in the payment of the poll tax and dues. 33 The implementation of the Senate decree on the settlement of the Altai and the upper Irtysh by volunteers did not give great results. In 1760, 211 revision souls wished to move from the Tobolsk province. In subsequent 1761 and 1762. only a few families moved.

According to another Senate decree of 1760, the landlords were granted the right to send their yard people and peasants to Siberia in recognition of recruits “for presumptuous deeds” (Table 3). It was supposed to be sent with the families of healthy men not older than 45 years old, suitable for arable farming. For family members, the landowner received a monetary reward from the treasury: for a boy under 5 years old - 10 rubles, from 5 to 15 years old - 20 rubles. (from the age of 15 and older, going to Siberia, he read out for

32 Ibid., pp. 21-23, 26.

33 PSZ, vol. XV, no. 11124, pp. 537, 538.

recruit); women were paid at half the rate. 34 This decree was one of the most striking examples of arbitrariness and violence against the personality of the peasant in the feudal era. The barbaric living conditions of the exiles during the long and difficult journey to Siberia led to the fact that not all of those sent reached the appointed place. According to the Siberian governor Chicherin, only a quarter of them ended up in Siberia. 35

Courtyard people and peasants exiled to Siberia by the landlords fell into the group of so-called settlers. Part of the settlers at the new place of residence enjoyed a three-year exemption from the payment of the poll tax and dues, and then they were equated in legal status and in their duties to state peasants. According to the documents that have come down to us, it is difficult to accurately determine the number of settlers who arrived in Siberia on the basis of the Senate decree of 1760.

The listing sheet for the Tomsk District, for example, indicates that during the period of the III revision (1762-1763), settlers (494 men, 54 women) lived in 7 villages, “sent from Russia from the landlords as a recruit, who are revered along with state peasants." In 1781, in the same villages of settlers, there were 562 men and 373 women. 37 In the Tara district for three years (1765-1767) 1317 people were settled. In 1782, 3,009 exiled men and 2,730 women lived in 13 villages in this county. 38

The main mass of exiles in the credit of recruits settled within Western Siberia, in the districts of Cannes, Omsk, Kurgan and Ishim. This is shown in Table. 3, compiled according to the data of the Tobolsk State Chamber of 1781.

The peasants sent by the landlords from the European part of the country were used by the office of the Tobolsk governorship mainly to settle Baraba in the area of ​​the Moscow-Irkutsk tract.

34 Ibid., no. 11166, p. 583.

35 A. D. Kolesnikov. Russian settlement of the forest-steppe of the Irtysh region in the 18th century, p. 74.

36 GATOT, f. Tobolsk State Chamber, op. 11, d. 170, ll. 191-196, 217-248, 277-286, 724-734.

37 GATOT, f. Tobolsk State Chamber, op. 11, d. 170, ll. 498-518.

38 A. D. Kolesnikov. Russian settlement of the forest-steppe of the Irtysh region in the 18th century, p. 79.

Until the middle of the XVIII century. The Baraba steppe was very sparsely populated by Russians. The laying of the Moscow-Irkutsk tract required the creation of stations (settlements serving the needs of the tract). Appointed in 1757 by the Siberian governor F. I. Soymonov, he obtained a decree on the transfer of more than 1,500 coachmen from the Demyansky and Samarovsky pits (located in the lower reaches of the Irtysh and along the Ob) to Baraba to serve the main Siberian highway. 39 True, it was not possible to carry out in full the planned transfer of coachmen to the main tract of the Siberian administration.

The composition of the Russian population in the Baraba steppe was replenished in the 60s of the XVIII century. at the expense of the landlord peasants exiled to Siberia, who were expelled from the Polskaya Vetka, schismatics and newcomers who fled from Russia on their own initiative.

In 1762, a Senate decree instructed the Siberian governor Soimonov to pay attention to the forced settlement of the section of the road following Baraba from the Chaussky prison to Tomsk and from Tomsk to the village of Tulun, which lay on the border of the Irkutsk province. This section of the Siberian horse-drawn railway was supposed to be populated by peasants and raznochintsy of the Krasnoyarsk and Yenisei districts, freeing them from paying the poll tax and dues and recording them all as coachmen, and instead of them enrolling in the class of state peasants the same number of coachmen living in the villages between Verkhoturye and Tobolsk . 40

On the section of the tract from the river. From 1768, seven villages of exiled settlers (606 revision souls) arose from the Ob to Tomsk, and 289 revision souls of exiles were settled from Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk. 41

In 1771, there were 25 villages in Western Baraba, the population of which consisted of exiled landlord peasants and fugitives. At the same time, there were 12 villages of exiled settlers in East Baraba, in which, according to incomplete data, more than 500 people (adults) lived. 42

The Senate decree of August 6, 1762 allowed the exiles to settle in the Irtysh region from the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress to Omsk. The settlement of the Irtysh region was carried out in order to facilitate the delivery of provisions to military teams stationed in the Upper Irtysh fortresses. 43

The first results of the Russian settlement of the border strip of southern Siberia were summed up in the report of the Senate to Catherine II on December 16, 1765. The materials for this report were prepared by the commander of the Siberian fortified lines, Lieutenant-General Springer. He said that "for the reproduction of arable farming" the Presnogorkovskaya and Kuznetskaya lines were populated by retired soldiers and Cossacks, on the Irtysh line in the department of the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress settled volunteer peasants from the Tobolsk province and exiled settlers who arrived from the European part of the country, including those sent by landowners to offset of recruits peasants and courtyard people. In total, according to Springer, on the Presnogorkovskaya line in 1765 there were 436 cultivators (male workers fit for farming); on the Irtysh line, 144 people were released from among the liberated “kolodniks”; in the Ust-Kamenogorsk department of settlers who arrived from Russia - 520 people; on the Kuznetsk line of retired soldiers - 63 people. Thus, there were 1163 farmers (adult men) on all lines.

39 PSZ, vol. XV, no. 11185, p. 620.

40 Ibid., vol. XVI, no. 11633, pp. 44, 45.

41 V. K. Andrievich. Historical sketch of Siberia, vol. IV, Catherine's time. SPb., 1887, p. 77.

42 M.M. Gromyko. Western Siberia in the 18th century, pp. 102, 103, 121.

43 PSZ, vol. XVI, no. 11633, pp. 39-41.

In addition, up to 200 peasant families, who arrived on their own initiative, concentrated in the district closest to the Biysk fortress. 44

Despite the presence of more than a thousand farmers in the border zone, the government has not yet been able to fully resolve the issue of food supply to military units. The new Siberian governor D. I. Chicherin, like Springer, explained the insignificant size of the crops by “ordinary local peasants laziness in arable land” and spoke with regret that Russian settlers prefer to catch animals and fish. The small size of the peasant plowings, the absence of outbuildings in the yards of the settlers were, of course, not the result of “laziness” and negligence, but of serious difficulties in settling in a new place. The vast majority of newcomers in the border zone (retired soldiers, freed "kolodniks", landlord peasants sent as recruits) did not have the tools, draft animals and money necessary for agricultural production to equip themselves in a new place. The government loan was too small, and it was not given to all the farmers. The Siberian administration, instead of real assistance in the organization of the peasant economy, tried to stimulate an increase in sown areas by measures of military supervision and coercion, but it “could not strengthen the economic position of the settlers and significantly influence the increase in arable farming. Even Governor Chicherin in 1765 was forced in his report to the Senate to admit the ineffectiveness of the measures he had taken and bitterly conclude: “. . . but their laziness (peasants, - Auth.) overcame everything and there is no success in that. 45

In the 30s-80s of the XVIII century. a significant number of new settlements arose, workers' settlements appeared at the Altai and Nerchinsk factories and mines, administrative centers, fortresses, coachmen on the highway, settlements, villages and villages grew. The bulk of the settlers settled in the southern regions of Siberia. The old-timers also moved there. As a result of the settlement of the southern part of the Siberian territory by Russian aliens, new counties were formed, which were transformed in the second half of the 18th century. to the districts: Ishimsky, Kurgansky, Yalutorovsky, Omsky, Cannes, Achinsky. In the Kolyvan region formed in 1779, which included cabinet possessions in Western Siberia, there were 4 counties, of which two were old, formed back in the 17th century. (Tomsky and Kuznetsky), and two new ones (Barnaulsky and Burlinsky). 46 The number of villages in the Kolyvan region is evidenced by Table. 4.

Thus, of all the Russian villages in the Kolyvan region, 55.6% were concentrated in the counties that formed during the 18th century.

The gradual shift of the Russian population to the south is also characterized by the data of the Tobolsk State Chamber. According to these data, in 1763, within the limits of the future Tobolsk governorate, there were Russian farmers (peasants, settlers, retired soldiers and soldiers' children, coachmen, etc.) 141,194 revision souls, of which in the districts: Omsk, Ishim, Kurgan, Yalutorovsk, Cannes and Achinsk - 78989 revision souls, which accounted for 55.9% of the entire agricultural population. In 1781, there were 188,833 census souls of Russian farmers on the territory of the viceroy, of which 114,859, or 60.8%, were in the above districts. 47 These figures show that between

44 V. K. Andriyevich. Historical essay on Siberia, vol. IV. Appendix No. 6, pp. 259, 260.

45 Ibid., p. 261.

46 PSZ, vol. XX, no. 14868, pp. 814-816.

47 GATOT, f. Tobolsk State Chamber, op. 11, d. 170, ll. 13-734.

111 And IV revisions In the southern region of the Tobolsk viceroy, the number of farmers increased by 144.1%, while in the old more northern districts of the viceroy, mastered by Russian farmers since the end of the 16th-beginning of the 17th century, the number of farmers increased only by 118.9%. In general, the Russian rural population increased by 133.7% in the vicegerency.

The internal migration of peasants in Siberia played a huge role in the economic development of the region, in the creation of new agricultural regions, in the development of crafts, handicrafts and industry.

On their own initiative, Russian farmers living in Siberia settled the Baraba, the Irtysh, the middle and upper Ob, the Minusinsk basin, the valleys of the Altai rivers, the territory of the Baikal and Transbaikalia.

A review of the revision tales compiled for the Yalutorovsky district in 1782 shows that between the III and IV revisions, 90 new villages appeared here, in which 5742 revision souls of peasants who moved here from different places without permission were identified. 49 In addition, at the direction of the administration, 1882 exiled settlers (settlers) settled in the newly built Lebyazhya Sloboda and 10 villages subordinate to it. 50 386 men and 363 women lived in Verkhne-Suerskaya Sloboda and the villages subordinated to it, of which 140 men and 134 women arbitrarily arrived “and live in their own homes”. In other words, over 36% of the inhabitants were newly arrived peasants. 51 The same picture can be observed in other southern districts of the Tobolsk governorate.

In Eastern Siberia, within the Irkutsk province, the progress of the Russian agricultural population to the south was less than in Western Siberia. Ilimsk district during almost the entire XVIII century. occupied the first place among other districts of the Irkutsk province in terms of the number of peasants. 52 The settlement of the southern region, more favorable for arable farming in terms of climatic conditions, was hindered by the general disorder of the border along the Amur.

48 The table was compiled according to the List of settlements in the Kolyvan region for 1782 (D.N. Belikov. The first Russian peasants-settlers ..., pp. 113-138).

49 GATOT, f. Tobolsk State Chamber, op. 12, d. 6, l. eight; d. 8, ll. SO vol. - 96 vol.; d. 9, ll. 21-23; d. 10, ll. 32-140; d. 11, ll. 11-32; d. 12, ll. 11-32; d. 13, ll. 74 vol.-106; d. 18, ll. 32-227 rpm; d. 17, ll. 32-157; 16, ll. 33-277; 14, ll. 16-126.

50 Ibid., op. 12, d. 7, ll. 1-125 rev.

51 Ibid., op. 12, d. 19, ll. 13-39 about.

52 V. N. Sherstoboev. Ilim arable land, vol. II. Irkutsk, 1957, p. 39.

As in Western Siberia, land development in the eastern regions was associated with the movement of peasants from developed and more densely populated areas to areas sparsely populated, but suitable for agriculture. Some resettlements were carried out by local authorities on special government decrees, others took place without permission, at the initiative of the farmers themselves. In Eastern Siberia, part of the peasants were sent by the administration to the Nerchinsk mining district to create state-owned plowing there. According to V.N. Sherstoboev, during 1722-1745. local authorities undertook several resettlements of peasants from the Ilim district. The bulk of the resettled - 426 revision souls were sent to Argun, 58 male souls - to Yakutsk, Okhotsk, Kamchatka. 53 Peasants were transferred from the Lena volosts of the Ilimsk district to the Irkutsk and Balagansky districts.

Most of the Russians in northeastern Siberia settled in the basin of the river. Lena. In the 1930s and 1980s, the area of ​​Russian settlement expanded, and their number increased. 34 machines (stations) of the Irkutsk-Yakutsk tract are populated by exiled peasants from Verkholensk villages. At the end of the XVIII century. along the banks of the Lena there were 39 Russian villages, in which about 2100 male peasants lived. 54 There were fewer Russians on the coast of Okhotsk and Kamchatka than on the Lena. However, even there, among the rarely scattered camps of local residents, Russian villages (winter huts and prisons) appeared. Among them were: on the Okhotsk coast - Okhotsk, founded as a tributary winter hut back in 1647 and turned into a 30-ies of the XVIII century. to the Russian port, and Tauysky jail; Yamsk (1739) at the southern entrance to Penzhinsky Bay; Gizhiginsk (1752) near the mouth of the river. Gizhigi; Aklansky prison on the bank of the river. Penzhiny; in Kamchatka - Tigilsky prison, founded at the beginning of the 18th century, at the mouth of the river. crucible; Bollyyeretsky prison on the bank of the river. Large; Peter and Paul Harbor (1740), Nizhne-Kamchatsky and Verkhne-Kamchatsky prisons. 55

The Okhotsk-Kamchatka Territory was acutely aware of the lack of food, especially bread, due to the difficulty of delivering goods to Okhotsk and further to Kamchatka. Food was previously delivered to Yakutsk, from there it was transported along the tract laid from the end of 1729 to Okhotsk, and from Okhotsk on small sea vessels to Kamchatka villages. Even in the first quarter of the nineteenth century the price of a pood of bread (which cost 1 ruble in Irkutsk) in Kamchatka reached 14 rubles. 56

In 1731, the Irkutsk Chancellery instructed the administration of the Okhotsk-Kamchatka Territory to start, where possible in this harsh climatic region, state plowing. In the 1930s and 1940s, several hundred families from the upper reaches of the Lena and Angara were resettled to the coast of Okhotsk. The transfer of the peasants was forced: rural societies chose by lot "young, healthy and subsistence" peasants who were obliged to move to a distant land with their families and property. Settlers were given a small monetary and food "help", sometimes agricultural tools. The transferred peasants were initially settled in three points of the Okhotsk Territory: near the Udsk prison, on the right bank of the river. Ini near its mouth and along the Okhotsk tract, 70 versts from Okhotsk.

53 Ibid., pp. 29, 41.

54 F. G. Safronov. Russian peasants in Yakutia (XVII-beginning of XX century). Yakutsk, 1961, pp. 30, 31, 52, 63, 64, 143.

55 F. G. Safronov. Okhotsk-Kamchatsky region. (Means of communication, population, supply and agriculture before the revolution). Yakutsk, 1958, pp. 39-52.

56 Ibid., p. 59.

Trial crops were unsuccessful. Winter and spring rye, oats and barley perished from frost and cold dew. Only vegetable crops gave a harvest: turnip, radish, swede, cabbage and onion. The failure of attempts to develop arable farming forced the peasant settlers to turn to hunting and fishing as their main occupations. 57

In the 30s of the XVIII century. an attempt was made to produce experimental crops of grain and vegetable crops in Kamchatka. About 30 peasant families were resettled from the banks of the Lena, settled between the Klyuchevskaya hill and the Nizhne-Kamchatsky prison. Near the Upper Kamchatka prison in 1743, the village of Milkova arose.

S. P. Krasheninnikov, a member of the academic expedition, who stayed in Kamchatka from 1737 to 1741, on the basis of his own experiments, was convinced that, despite fertile soils, damp rainy weather and early frosts prevent the ripening of cereal crops; turnips, radishes and beets were harvested from vegetables. 58 The peasants resettled in Kamchatka suffered from systematic crop failures and therefore gradually abandoned arable farming, switching to fishing, hunting and seafaring. Solve the problem of supplying Russian residents with bread by developing arable farming in Kamchatka in the 18th century. failed.

The islands washed by the Arctic Ocean (Bear, Lyakhovskie), the coast of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, the Shantar, Kuril, Commander, Aleutian Islands, as well as Alaska and the western coast of America attracted the attention of merchants and fishermen with the wealth of their fur and sea trades (beavers, foxes, blue foxes, fur seals, walruses, seals 59 .

On the islands of the Arctic Ocean in the area between the mouths of the Indigirka and the Kolyma, fisheries were organized by Nikita Shalaurov and the merchant Ivan Lyakhov. At the request of the latter, in 1773, the government of Catherine II secured the exclusive right of fishing for the Lyakhovskys on all the Lyakhovsky Islands.

Since the 40s of the XVIII century. commercial development of the Aleutian Islands begins, the beginning of which was laid by the peasant Emelyan Basov, who developed fisheries on Medny Island. In 1745, a company of merchants (Yakov Chuprov, Afanasy Chabaevsky and Nikifor Trapeznikov) sent a ship to the Aleuts under the command of the Tobolsk peasant Mikhail Nevodchikov, who discovered Attu Island and wintered there. The crafts on the Commander Islands were captured by the Moscow merchant Andrey Serebrennikov. On the islands of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, fur seals were hunted together.

The ridge of the Kuril Islands was also developed by Russian merchants, who established trades here since 1743. They especially got rich in the Kuril trades in the 60s of the 18th century. Yakut merchants Zakharovs. In the 70s of the XVIII century. on the Kuril Islands, the Rylsky tradesman G. I. Shelikhov begins trading and fishing activities. In 1776, Shelikhov sent his first merchant ship to the shores of America. From the first half of the 80s of the XVIII century. he begins fishing activities on the Kodiak Islands and the shores of Alaska. In 1788, the navigator Pribilov, who set sail on Shelikhov's ship with a team of 40 fishermen, discovered a group of islands in the Bering Strait, later called Pribilov, stayed there for two years and brought out huge booty: 40 thousand seals, 6 thousand blue arctic foxes, 2,000 beavers, 1,000 poods of walrus tusks, 500 poods of whalebone.

57 Ibid., pp. 63-80

58 S.P. Krasheninnikov. Description of the land of Kamchatka. M.-L., 1949. pp. 195-197.

59 S.V. Bakhrushin. Russian advance beyond the Urals. Scientific works, vol. III, 1. p. 158.

In 1787, G. I. Shelikhov founded a trading and fishing company called American. Irkutsk merchants Sharapov, M. Sibiryakov, Peter and Ivan Michurins, I. Sizov and others took part in it. At the same time, large Irkutsk merchants headed by S. Mylnikov founded the Irkutsk commercial company. In 1798, she merged with Shelikhov's company. 60 Adopted under the patronage of the central government, in 1799 it received the name of the Russian-American Company and until the 60s of the XIX century. owned part of North America and the islands in the North Pacific Ocean.

Despite the colonial policy of the tsarist government, the system of levying yasak from the non-Russian population, the pumping out of furs by merchants and fishermen, which led to the devastation of commercial hunting grounds in some areas of the Siberian taiga, in general in Siberia there was no destruction of the hunting and fishing economy of the indigenous population. There were no agricultural plantations created where the labor of indigenous people would be exploited. Attempts to cultivate state arable land by the forces of the Voguls-Mansi and Siberian Tatars failed already at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries.

Russian peasants, townspeople and Cossacks became close to the locals in everyday life, entered into marriage ties. There was a mutual influence of methods of economic activity, Russian fishermen perceived local methods of hunting, fishing, riding deer and dogs. The indigenous people gradually became involved in agricultural production, borrowed from the Russian peasants the methods of arable farming, the preparation of hay for the winter period for livestock, the construction of log huts, etc.

Russian people who came from the European part of the country to Siberia or moved from one region to another for one reason or another, played a huge role in the development of productive forces, in the development of virgin lands, in the creation of domestic industry, crafts and trades, in the development of trade and monetary ties and had a positive impact on improving the methods of economic activity of the indigenous Siberian population.

The increase in the number of Russian inhabitants occurred both due to free people's colonization (in the vast majority in the form of peasant resettlement), and through a number of government measures. The government sought to forcibly populate the most important economic and military-strategic areas for it: the highway, the territories of mountain mines and metallurgical plants adjacent to the fortified land line. It sent exiled Don and Zaporizhzhya Cossacks to Siberia, fugitive schismatics returned to Russia, used landlord peasants and householders sent by the owners for "prejudiced deeds" to offset recruits for the development of the region, carried out a forced redistribution of the Russian population across the territory of the region.

As a result, in the 80s of the XVIII century. Siberia had over a million people (both sexes) of the population, tens of thousands of settlements, large in terms of the scale of the 18th century. metallurgical production in the Altai and Nerchinsk mountain regions. Siberian farmers used hundreds of thousands of acres of land for arable farming, and supplied food to the millionth population of the region. In the 30-80s of the XVIII century. The Russian people have done a great job of further developing Siberia and unlocking its production potential.

60 F. A. Kudryavtsev, G. A. Vendrich. Irkutsk. Essays on the history of the city. Irkutsk, 1958, p. 65.

The accession to Russia of the peoples inhabiting Eastern Siberia took place mainly during the first half of the 17th century, the outlying territories in the south, east and northeast of Siberia became part of Russia in the second half of the 17th century, Kamchatka and the adjacent islands - in at the very end of the 17th-first half of the 18th century.

The accession of Eastern Siberia began from the Yenisei basin, primarily from its northern and northwestern parts. In the second half of the XVI century. Russian industrialists from Pomorye began to penetrate into the Gulf of Ob and further east to the lower reaches of the Yenisei. The industrialists passed to the indicated area either by sea (through the Yugorsky Shar, the Kara Sea and the Yamal Peninsula), or through the Urals. In 1616-1619. the Russian government, fearing the penetration of the ships of the British and Dutch companies into the mouth of the Ob, forbade the use of the sea route.

Entire generations of Pomor industrialists were successively associated with fur trades in the Yenisei region. They founded numerous winter huts and even "towns" that served as strongholds and transshipment points, established various ties with local residents - economic, domestic, and sometimes related. In the first decades of the 17th century Russian industrialists began to vigorously develop areas along the largest eastern tributaries of the Yenisei - the Lower and Podkamennaya Tunguska, and also move along the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the northeastern shores of Taimyr.

Government activity to establish political domination began only at the turn of the 17th century. The industrialists, seeking to retain their monopoly on the exploitation of local fur trades, apparently managed to organize the action of the Samoyed tribes against the domination of the tsarist government over them. Despite the initial defeat, the Russian troops still managed to gain a foothold in this area and in 1601, on the banks of the Taza River, they founded the city of Mangazeya, which became the local administrative center and the most important trading and transshipment point.

The main part of the indigenous population of the Mangazeya district at that time were the ancestors of the three modern ethnic groups of the northern Samoyeds-Nganasans, the Tundra and Forest Enets, the ancestors of the modern Kets-Ostyaks and the ancestors of the modern Evenks-Tungus. The explanation of this population, which was fragmented and did not have any stable tribal organizations, nevertheless dragged on until the 1630s.

By 1607, the Turukhankoe and Enbat (Inbatskoe) winter huts were founded on the lower Yenisei, and the yasak regime was extended to most of the Enets and Ostyak clans. Tungus clan associations that lived east of the Yenisei until the mid-20s of the 17th century. the yasak regime was practically unknown. After the formation of a permanent garrison in Mangazeya in 1625, the local authorities as a whole completed the process of enlisting the indigenous population in the lower reaches of the Yenisei, only the northern group of the Samoyed population - the Yuraks (Nenets) became part of the yasak population in the middle of the 17th century. Thus, the territory under consideration politically became part of the Russian state by the time when the fur trades of Russian industrialists and their economic ties with the local population were already in full bloom. As the main fur trade areas moved east, Mangazeya began to lose its significance as a trading and transshipment point from the 1930s, its role was transferred to the Turukhansk winter hut in the lower reaches of the Yenisei.

The penetration of Russians into the basin of the middle reaches of the Yenisei began in the 17th century. After the founding of Surgut (1594) and Narym (1596) in the Ob basin, and somewhat later Tomsk (1604) and Ketsk (1602), Russian troops reached the Yenisei. Simultaneously with the foundation of Mangazeya in the first decade of the 17th century. a few tribal associations of the Ostyaks, as well as the Arins, who lived up the Yenisei in the area where the Krasnoyarsk prison was later founded, became part of Russia. The accession of these regions was hampered by the opposition of some Tungus, Buryat, Oirat and Kirghiz princes, who considered the Yenisei population as subject to them and mercilessly ruined it. The Tungus prince Tasey fought especially stubbornly. However, his irreconcilable position did not meet with support from other representatives of the tribal Tungus elite. In 1628, on the Angara, the "non-peaceful" Tungus were defeated and, probably, concluded an agreement with the Russians, according to which the Tungus princes finally joined Russia, having received the right to independently collect yasak from their tribal groups and hand it over to yasak collectors. The joining of the Pit, Vargagan and Angara Tunguses, as well as the Asans, who lived along the tributaries of the Angara, occurred during the 20s of the 17th century.

By this time, the Yenisei prison became an important transshipment center for Russian industrialists, and Russian agriculture began to develop around it. The permanent Russian population on the middle reaches of the Yenisei was initially concentrated around the Yenisei prison. Until the middle of the XVII century. Russian villages and settlements arose along the main fishing and trade routes stretching from Western Siberia through the Makovsky prison to the Yenisei and from it further east along the Angara or north down the Yenisei. In the second half of the XVII century. after the construction in 1669 of the Kemsky and Velsky prisons, the Kem and Belaya basins began to be most intensively populated, attracting settlers with "great and grain-growing" fields, an abundance of mowing and a drill "red forest". The second most populated area was the area between the Yeniseisk and the mouth of the Angara, and the third - along the lower Angara and its tributary Taseeva, from which the Kansk steppes stretched to the south. By 1719, there were already 120 villages in the Yenisei district. The total number of the Russian population of the county by this time reached 18 thousand people.

The accession to the Russian state of small Turkic tribal formations - Tubins, Arints, Kamasins, Motorians and others, who lived in the Yenisei basin south of Krasnoyarsk, dragged on for many decades. Until the end of the XVII century. in this area there was a fierce struggle caused by the aggression of the Kirghiz princes, who relied on the strong political formations that had developed in Western Mongolia, first on Altyn Khan, and in the second half of the 17th century. - on the Dzungarian khans. Until 1640, it was complicated by invasions of the strong Buryat prince Oilan into the basin of the Kana River. The aggression of the Kirghiz and Buryat princes spread along the Yenisei even into the territory of the Ostyak clans. The strengthening of Russian statehood in this area brought security to the local population from extortionate extortions and prevented their physical destruction. In 1628, after four years of preparation, the Russian authorities founded the Krasnoyarsk prison on the Yenisei, which later became the main stronghold of the Russian defense of the Yenisei Territory in the south. After the founding of this prison, the struggle against the Kirghiz princes escalated and continued until 1642. It was accompanied by almost annual raids by Kyrgyz troops on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, sieges of the prison itself, extermination and deportation of the indigenous and Russian population, capture of cattle and horses, destruction of crops. The local population, driven away by the Kirghiz or leaving with them under the pressure of their threats, as a rule, every time after the military successes of the Krasnoyarsk service people, sought to return back to their "pedigree" lands. In 1642, the Tomsk detachments in a decisive battle for the Bely Iyus River (a tributary of the Chulym River) defeated the Kirghiz princes. However, as a result of this victory, only the Arins and in 1647 the Kachins managed to finally become part of Russia.

The accession of the population along the river Kan to the Russian state began immediately after the construction of the Krasnoyarsk prison, but in the fight against the Tuba and Buryat princes and the detachments of Altyn Khan, Russian servicemen managed to gain a foothold there only in 1636-1637, when the Kansk prison was built. After the victory over the Kirghiz princes, the Krasnoyarsk detachments, together with the Arins, Kachins and the Kan population in August 1645, after a difficult three-week campaign to the east, somewhere "between the Oka rivers", inflicted a crushing defeat on the Buryat prince Oilan and forced him to give "wool forever". Seven years later, in 1652, the Krasnoyarsk militia, which consisted mainly of yasak people (Arints, Kachintsy, etc.), defeated Oilan's younger relatives and finally secured the Kan basin from the east.

In the 1660s, the Kyrgyz princes, relying on the growing strength of the Dzungar khans, who defeated Altyn Khan in 1667, resumed the war. Among them, Erenyak, the son of Ishey, one of the initiators of the struggle against the Russians in the 1620s and 1640s, stood out for his energy in organizing predatory raids. This war was the longest and most difficult of all military clashes that took place in the south of Siberia with nomadic feudal formations. The Kirghiz and Tuba princes sought not only to return under their rule the local indigenous population, who sought salvation in Russian citizenship, but also to ruin the areas of intensive Russian settlement. The Yenisei and Krasnoyarsk authorities were forced to carry out serious fortification work, reinforce the artillery of the fortresses and the garrison of Krasnoyarsk. For 3 decades, the armed struggle continued with varying success. However, the decisiveness and consistency of the Russian offensive forced the Kirghiz princes to seek peace (1701). It became obvious that the Kyrgyz and Dzungarian aggression was failing, which its initiators could not but understand. In addition, the Dzungar ruler Galdan (Boshoktu Khan), who entered the war with the Manchus over Northern Mongolia, after a series of brilliant military successes, was driven back by the Manchus from the Great Wall of China, suffered a heavy defeat and died in 1697. Under these circumstances, the further struggle of the Kirghiz princes with Russia could be regarded by Galdan's successor, his nephew Tsevan-Raptan, as too dangerous. Therefore, in 1702, Tsevan-Raptan took part of the Yenisei Kirghiz from the Abakan steppe. The remaining indigenous population, which then formed the basis of the Khakass, became a subject of Russia. The construction of the Abakan (1707) and Sayan (1709) prisons finally ensured the safety of the Russian and yasak population of the Yenisei Territory.

The development of the lower and middle parts of the Yenisei basin by the Russians was an important stage in the process of annexation to Russia of the peoples of Siberia, who inhabited the Lena and Baikal basins. The accession of Yakutia and Buryatia to Russia began almost simultaneously, but it took place in peculiar conditions and had its own characteristics.

For the first time, Russian industrialists penetrated into Yakutia in the early 20s of the 17th century. from Mangazeya, along the Lower Tunguska. Initially, the Toyon nobility tried to defend the exclusive right to exploit their relatives and actively opposed the Russians, who began to explain the local population.

This struggle by no means reflected the whole essence of the process of joining Yakutia to Russia. The Russian detachments were so few in number that, despite the superiority in weapons, they practically could not establish control over the local population. Even the largest detachments consisted of 30-50 people. Not all Yakut clans took part in the struggle. Its aggravation was often explained by tribal strife, the desire of individual princes to use Russian detachments in internecine strife, either going over to the side of the Russians, or fighting against them.

The failures of the Yakut princes showed the difficulty of fighting the Russians, but it was not the main reason for the termination of their resistance. Most of the Yakut population quickly became convinced of the benefits of peaceful ties with the Russian population who came to Yakutia - industrialists and merchants. With all the "untruths" perpetrated by Russian industrialists, non-equivalent exchange, armed clashes in the fields, the benefits from contact with them were obvious and accelerated the accession of Yakutia to Russia. Formation of the Yakut province in 1641. completed the initial stage of the process of joining Yakutia to Russia.

The bulk of the Yakuts, who became part of Russia in 1632-1636, lived in a compact array in the central part of Yakutia on both banks of the Lena. The accession of other groups of the Yakut population and the Yukagirs in the north and northeast, as well as the Tungus population living in the east, in the areas adjacent to the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk, was mainly associated with the same process of fishing entrepreneurship. It dragged on until the middle of the 17th century. and was marked by remarkable geographical discoveries.

Due to climatic and natural conditions in most of the territory of Yakutia, Russian development was predominantly commercial in nature. With the decline of sable crafts, Russian industrialists during the second half of the 17th century. began to leave Yakutia. However, separate groups of industrialists began to settle on distant rivers in the most favorable areas for animal and fishing trades, which by the end of the 17th century. formed a permanent Russian population on Anadyr, Kolyma, in the lower reaches of the Lena and Olenek. In the early 1640s, the Russians identified areas in Yakutia where agriculture was possible.

With the population of the extreme northeast and Kamchatka (Chukchi, Koryaks, Eskimos, Itelmens, Kuril Ainu), Yakut Cossacks and industrialists first came into contact. Some groups of Koryaks and Itelmens (Kamchadals) began to pay yasak already at the end of the 17th century. In the second decade of the XVIII century. The Kuril and Shantar Islands were annexed to Russia. The Chukchi and Asian Eskimos finally accepted Russian citizenship at the end of the 18th century.

The accession of Buryatia to Russia, which also began in the late 20s of the 17th century, was complicated by external circumstances. The Buryat princes subjugated part of the Angara Evenki and even sought to take possession of the Yenisei Turkic population. In turn, the Buryats were subjected to constant raids by the Mongol and Oirat feudal lords. Broad sections of the Buryat population were certainly interested in an alliance with the Russians in order to use them to protect themselves from the constant predatory invasions of stronger southern neighbors, as well as to expand trade ties. A significant part of the Buryat princes adhered to the same position. However, they did not want to lose their tributaries and opposed their inclusion in the general system of yasak relations established by the Russian authorities. Intertribal strife among the Buryats complicated the situation, which was used by the Oirat and Mongol feudal lords. Therefore, the annexation of Western Buryatia dragged on until the middle of the 17th century.

The first attempts to penetrate the Angara to Buryatia were made in 1625-1627. from Yeniseisk, then the Russians did not manage to overcome the Shaman thresholds, but they collected interesting data about the Buryat land, its wealth, internal political situation and trade relations.

For the first time in 1628, Russian detachments passed to Western Buryatia to the Okina and then Ust-Ud Buryats, were met there peacefully and received yasak. However, the frequent violence of the Krasnoyarsk Cossacks, who followed to Buryatia in 1629, caused opposition from the local population. During the founding of the Lensky (Ilimsky, 1630) and Bratsk (1631) prisons and the expansion of the yasak taxation, the position of the Buryat princes began to change, despite the desire of the Russian administration to rely on the Buryat tribal elite. At this moment, the Buryat princes, from whom the Russian authorities began to demand payment of yasak in full, managed to keep the Tungus dependent on them under their influence and opposed the Russian detachments. In 1634 they managed to win and burned the Fraternal prison. A detachment sent from Yeniseisk in 1635 restored the prison, but in 1638 the "fraternal" princes again "became disobedient." However, at this time, the princes began to gradually lose contact with their Tungus tributaries, and the ulus Buryats began to establish permanent peaceful relations with the Russians.

The Buryat population of the regions immediately adjacent to Baikal came into contact with the Russians from the beginning of the 1640s, when the Verkholensky prison was founded in the upper reaches of the Lena (1641). Some Verkholensk and Olkhon Buryat princes tried to retain their exclusive right to exploit the ulus population, however, in general, the Buryat population itself offered to "put up" and paid yasak. Immediately after the construction of the Verkholensky prison, the surrounding Buryats paid a significant yasak, and in 1643 the Baikal Buryats-Khorints and Batulins offered yasak at the first appearance of Russian detachments.

In 1654, at the mouth of the river. Ungi on the Angara, a Balagansky prison was built, and in 1661, the Irkutsk prison was built on the right bank of the Angara, which was the administrative center of the Irkutsk district and an important trading post in Eastern Siberia. The construction of these strongholds accelerated the annexation of the Angarsk Buryats to Russia and contributed to the strengthening of the security of the entire Buryat population. From the middle of the XVII century. Western Mongol feudal lords began to intensify raids on Buryat lands, which accelerated the final entry of the entire Western Buryat population into Russia. This fact was of great importance for the further history of the Buryats and the development of their culture.

In 1645-1647. in Transbaikalia, peaceful contacts were established with the Buryat and Tungus population and the Mongol princes, who sought to extend their power to the local population. Even peaceful relations began with the strong Mongol Tsetsen Khan. In the future, the Mongol khans, who were very interested in diplomatic and trade relations with Russia, as a rule, avoided serious clashes with the Russians and did not prevent the Transbaikal Buryats and Tunguses from joining Russia. The speed with which the Trans-Baikal population was annexed to Russia was explained primarily by the desire of the Eastern Buryats and a significant part of the Tungus to receive protection from the raids of the Mongol feudal lords and expand trade relations with the Russians.

The accession of the Amur region to Russia was also not without force of arms. Independent Daurian princes resisted. Collisions with them caused damage to the economy of the local population, which was greatly aggravated by the invasion of the Manchu troops on the Amur in 1652. The Manchu Qing dynasty managed to detain in the 50s of the 17th century by military action. the spread of Russian colonization along the Amur and provoke the performance of the indigenous population. However, in the 60s, the Manchu troops left the Amur, and the Russian population resumed the development of the deserted Amur lands.

The annexation of Transbaikalia and the Amur region was completed in the 60s of the 17th century. From the end of the 70s and throughout the 80s, the situation in Transbaikalia and the Amur region again became complicated as a result of the intensification of the aggressive policy of the Manchu Qing dynasty. In the 80s, the Russian population had to endure a difficult struggle with the Manchu troops on the Amur, and with the Mongolian troops in Transbaikalia. The decisive position of the Buryat and Tungus population, who came out together with the Russians in defense of their "pedigree" lands, to a large extent helped the Russian authorities organize the defense of Transbaikalia and achieve the conclusion of the Nerchinsk peace treaty (1689). Under the terms of the agreement, Russian settlers on the Amur had to leave part of the territory they had mastered. At the same time, fleeing the Manchu yoke and the bloody internecine struggle of the Khalkha and Oirat feudal lords, the Mongolian population began to leave for Russia. Threats to Russian settlements in Transbaikalia and on the Amur from the Manchus required serious defensive measures and the concentration of military forces. Therefore, service people in Transbaikalia and the Amur region in the 17th-early 18th centuries. constituted a significant part of the population.

The annexation of Siberia to the Russian state was not only a political act. Russian explorers in the 17th century. not only came to the shores of the Pacific Ocean and "brought ... under the high sovereign's hand" most of the modern territory of Siberia, but they settled and initially mastered it. Already in the course of the accession, Siberia became, both in terms of population composition and an economically organic part of the Russian state. The Russian settlement of Eastern Siberia, as well as Western, took place from north to south. In the 17th century the Russian permanent population mastered mainly the taiga regions.

The entry of Siberia into Russia, and in a relatively short time, was explained not only by the policy of the feudal Russian government aimed at capturing new territories and expanding the scope of robbery, not only by the aspirations of Russian merchant capital, but also by the diverse economic ties that were established between the Siberian peoples and those moving to the east. significant masses of the Russian population. As a rule, the accession of various regions of Siberia was in direct proportion to the intensity of Russian people's colonization, settlement and economic development of Siberian land by Russian settlers.

The need to fight the raids of stronger neighbors, the desire to avoid tribal strife, the need for economic ties, in turn, prompted the Siberian peoples to unite with the Russian people. Thus, the process of joining Siberia to the Russian state was a multilateral phenomenon, due to a number of circumstances in the historical development of the Russian and Siberian peoples.

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Russian colonization of Western Siberia

The article used materials from the site protown.ru

The process of incorporating the vast territories of Siberia and the Far East into the Russian state took several centuries. The most significant events that determined the future fate of the region took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In our article, we will briefly describe how the development of Siberia took place in the 17th century, but we will state all the available facts. This era of geographical discoveries was marked by the founding of Tyumen and Yakutsk, as well as the discovery of the Bering Strait, Kamchatka, Chukotka, which significantly expanded the borders of the Russian state and consolidated its economic and strategic positions.

Stages of development of Siberia by Russians

In Soviet and Russian historiography, it is customary to divide the process of developing the northern lands and incorporating them into the state into five stages:

1. 11th-15th centuries.
2. Late 15th-16th centuries
3. Late 16th-early 17th centuries
4. Mid 17th-18th centuries
5. 19th-20th centuries.

The goals of the development of Siberia and the Far East

The peculiarity of the accession of the Siberian lands to the Russian state is that the development was carried out spontaneously. The pioneers were the peasants (they fled from the landowners in order to work quietly on free land in the southern part of Siberia), merchants and industrialists (they were looking for material benefits, for example, the local population could exchange fur, which was very valuable at that time, for mere knick-knacks worth a penny). Some went to Siberia in search of glory and made geographical discoveries in order to remain in the memory of the people.

The development of Siberia and the Far East in the 17th century, as in all subsequent ones, was carried out with the aim of expanding the territory of the state and increasing the population. Free lands beyond the Ural Mountains attracted with high economic potential: furs, valuable metals. Later, these territories really became the locomotive of the country's industrial development, and even now Siberia has sufficient potential and is a strategic region of Russia.

Features of the development of the Siberian lands

The process of colonization of free lands beyond the Ural Range included the gradual advance of the discoverers to the East to the very Pacific coast and consolidation on the Kamchatka Peninsula. In the folklore of the peoples who inhabited the northern and eastern lands, the word "Cossack" is most often used to refer to Russians.

At the beginning of the development of Siberia by the Russians (16-17 centuries), the pioneers moved mainly along the rivers. By land, they walked only in places of the watershed. Upon arrival in a new area, the pioneers began peaceful negotiations with the local population, offering to join the king and pay yasak - a tax in kind, usually in furs. Negotiations did not always end successfully. Then the matter was decided by military means. On the lands of the local population, prisons or simply winter quarters were arranged. A part of the Cossacks remained there to maintain the obedience of the tribes and collect yasak. The Cossacks were followed by peasants, clergy, merchants and industrialists. The greatest resistance was offered by the Khanty and other large tribal unions, as well as the Siberian Khanate. In addition, there have been several conflicts with China.

Novgorod campaigns to the "iron gates"

The Novgorodians reached the Ural Mountains (“iron gates”) back in the eleventh century, but were defeated by the Yugras. Yugra was then called the lands of the Northern Urals and the coast of the Arctic Ocean, where local tribes lived. From the middle of the thirteenth century, Ugra had already been mastered by the Novgorodians, but this dependence was not strong. After the fall of Novgorod, the task of developing Siberia passed to Moscow.

Free lands beyond the Ural ridge

Traditionally, the first stage (11-15 centuries) is not yet considered the conquest of Siberia. Officially, it was started by Yermak's campaign in 1580, but even then the Russians knew that there were vast territories beyond the Ural Mountains that remained practically unmanaged after the collapse of the Horde. Local peoples were few and poorly developed, the only exception was the Siberian Khanate, founded by the Siberian Tatars. But wars were constantly boiling in it and internecine strife did not stop. This led to its weakening and to the fact that it soon became part of the Russian Tsardom.

The history of the development of Siberia in the 16-17 centuries

The first campaign was undertaken under Ivan III. Prior to this, domestic political problems did not allow Russian rulers to turn their eyes to the east. Only Ivan IV took seriously free lands, and even then in the last years of his reign. The Siberian Khanate formally became part of the Russian state back in 1555, but later Khan Kuchum declared his people free from tribute to the tsar.

The answer was given by sending Yermak's detachment there. Cossack hundreds, led by five atamans, captured the capital of the Tatars and founded several settlements. In 1586, the first Russian city, Tyumen, was founded in Siberia, in 1587, the Cossacks founded Tobolsk, in 1593, Surgut, and in 1594, Tara.

In short, the development of Siberia in the 16-17 centuries is associated with the following names:

1. Semyon Kurbsky and Peter Ushaty (campaign to the Nenets and Mansi lands in 1499-1500).
2. Cossack Ermak (campaign of 1851-1585, development of Tyumen and Tobolsk).
3. Vasily Sukin (was not a pioneer, but laid the foundation for the settlement of the Russian people in Siberia).
4. Cossack Pyanda (in 1623, a Cossack began a campaign through wild places, discovered the Lena River, reached the place where Yakutsk was later founded).
5. Vasily Bugor (in 1630 he founded the city of Kirensk on the Lena).
6. Pyotr Beketov (founded Yakutsk, which became the base for the further development of Siberia in the 17th century).
7. Ivan Moskvitin (in 1632 he became the first European who, together with his detachment, went to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk).
8. Ivan Stadukhin (discovered the Kolyma River, explored Chukotka and was the first to enter Kamchatka).
9. Semyon Dezhnev (participated in the discovery of Kolyma, in 1648 he completely passed the Bering Strait and discovered Alaska).
10. Vasily Poyarkov (made the first trip to the Amur).
11. Erofey Khabarov (secured the Amur region to the Russian state).
12. Vladimir Atlasov (in 1697 annexed Kamchatka).

Thus, in short, the development of Siberia in the 17th century was marked by the founding of the main Russian cities and the opening of ways, thanks to which the region later began to play a great national economic and defense value.

Siberian campaign of Yermak (1581-1585)

The development of Siberia by the Cossacks in the 16-17th centuries was started by Yermak's campaign against the Siberian Khanate. A detachment of 840 people was formed and equipped with everything necessary by the merchants Stroganovs. The campaign took place without the knowledge of the king. The backbone of the detachment was the chieftains of the Volga Cossacks: Yermak Timofeevich, Matvey Meshcheryak, Nikita Pan, Ivan Koltso and Yakov Mikhailov.

In September 1581, the detachment climbed along the tributaries of the Kama to the Tagil Pass. The Cossacks cleared their way by hand, at times they even dragged ships on themselves, like barge haulers. They erected an earthen fortification on the pass, where they remained until the ice melted in the spring. According to Tagil, the detachment rafted to Tura.

The first skirmish between the Cossacks and the Siberian Tatars took place in the modern Sverdlovsk region. Yermak's detachment defeated the cavalry of Prince Epanchi, and then occupied the town of Chingi-tura without a fight. In the spring and summer of 1852, the Cossacks, led by Yermak, fought several times with the Tatar princelings, and by the autumn they occupied the then capital of the Siberian Khanate. A few days later, Tatars from all over the Khanate began to bring gifts to the conquerors: fish and other food, furs. Yermak allowed them to return to their villages and promised to protect them from enemies. All who came to him, he overlaid with tribute.

At the end of 1582, Yermak sent his assistant Ivan Koltso to Moscow to inform the tsar about the defeat of Kuchum, the Siberian khan. Ivan IV generously endowed the envoy and sent him back. By decree of the tsar, Prince Semyon Bolkhovskoy equipped another detachment, the Stroganovs allocated forty more volunteers from among their people. The detachment arrived at Yermak only in the winter of 1584.

Completion of the campaign and the foundation of Tyumen

Ermak at that time successfully conquered the Tatar towns along the Ob and the Irtysh, without encountering violent resistance. But there was a cold winter ahead, which not only Semyon Bolkhovskoy, who was appointed governor of Siberia, but also most of the detachment could not survive. The temperature dropped to -47 degrees Celsius, and there were not enough supplies.

In the spring of 1585, Murza Karacha rebelled, destroying the detachments of Yakov Mikhailov and Ivan Koltso. Yermak was surrounded in the capital of the former Siberian Khanate, but one of the atamans made a sortie and was able to drive the attackers away from the city. The detachment suffered significant losses. Less than half of those who were equipped by the Stroganovs in 1581 survived. Three out of five Cossack atamans died.

In August 1985, Yermak died at the mouth of the Vagai. The Cossacks, who remained in the Tatar capital, decided to spend the winter in Siberia. In September, another hundred Cossacks under the command of Ivan Mansurov went to their aid, but the servicemen did not find anyone in Kishlyk. The next expedition (spring 1956) was much better prepared. Under the leadership of the governor Vasily Sukin, the first Siberian city of Tyumen was founded.

Foundation of Chita, Yakutsk, Nerchinsk

The first significant event in the development of Siberia in the 17th century was the campaign of Pyotr Beketov along the Angara and the tributaries of the Lena. In 1627, he was sent as a governor to the Yenisei prison, and the next year - to pacify the Tungus who attacked Maxim Perfilyev's detachment. In 1631, Peter Beketov became the head of a detachment of thirty Cossacks, who were to pass along the Lena River and gain a foothold on its banks. By the spring of 1631, he had cut down a prison, which was later named Yakutsk. The city became one of the centers for the development of Eastern Siberia in the 17th century and later.

Campaign of Ivan Moskvitin (1639-1640)

Ivan Moskvitin participated in Kopylov's campaign in 1635-1638 to the Aldan River. The leader of the detachment later sent a part of the soldiers (39 people) under the command of Moskvitin to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. In 1638, Ivan Moskvitin went to the shores of the sea, made trips to the Uda and Taui rivers, and received the first data about the Uda region. As a result of his campaigns, the coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk was explored for 1300 kilometers, and the Uda Bay, Amur Estuary, Sakhalin Island, Sakhalin Bay, and the mouth of the Amur were discovered. In addition, Ivan Moskvitin brought good booty to Yakutsk - a lot of fur yasak.

Discovery of Kolyma and Chukotka expedition

The development of Siberia in the 17th century continued with the campaigns of Semyon Dezhnev. He ended up in the Yakut jail, presumably in 1638, proved himself by pacifying several Yakut princes, together with Mikhail Stadukhin made a trip to Oymyakon to collect yasak.

In 1643, Semyon Dezhnev, as part of the detachment of Mikhail Stadukhin, arrived in Kolyma. The Cossacks founded the Kolyma winter hut, which later became a large prison, which was called Srednekolymsk. The town became a stronghold for the development of Siberia in the second half of the 17th century. Dezhnev served in Kolyma until 1647, but when he set out on the return voyage, strong ice blocked the way, so it was decided to stay in Srednekolymsk and wait for a more favorable time.

A significant event in the development of Siberia in the 17th century took place in the summer of 1648, when S. Dezhnev entered the Arctic Ocean and crossed the Bering Strait eighty years before Vitus Bering. It is noteworthy that even Bering did not manage to pass the strait completely, limiting himself only to its southern part.

Securing the Amur region by Yerofey Khabarov

The development of Eastern Siberia in the 17th century was continued by the Russian industrialist Yerofey Khabarov. He made his first campaign in 1625. Khabarov was engaged in buying furs, discovered salt springs on the Kut River and contributed to the development of agriculture on these lands. In 1649, Erofey Khabarov went up the Lena and Amur to the town of Albazino. Returning to Yakutsk with a report and for help, he assembled a new expedition and continued his work. Khabarov treated harshly not only the population of Manchuria and Dauria, but also his own Cossacks. For this, he was transferred to Moscow, where the trial began. The rebels, who refused to continue the campaign with Yerofey Khabarov, were acquitted, he himself was deprived of his salary and rank. After Khabarov filed a petition to the Russian Emperor. The tsar did not restore the monetary allowance, but gave Khabarov the title of son of a boyar and sent him to manage one of the volosts.

Explorer of Kamchatka - Vladimir Atlasov

For Atlasov, Kamchatka has always been the main goal. Before the start of the expedition to Kamchatka in 1697, the Russians already knew about the existence of the peninsula, but its territory had not yet been explored. Atlasov was not a pioneer, but he was the first to pass almost the entire peninsula from west to east. Vladimir Vasilyevich described his journey in detail and compiled a map. He managed to persuade most of the local tribes to go over to the side of the Russian Tsar. Later, Vladimir Atlasov was appointed clerk to Kamchatka.

In the second half of the XVI century. The Russian state got rid of the consequences of feudal fragmentation, finally taking shape as a centralized state, covering the lands of the European part of the country with Russian and non-Russian populations. The long-standing ties and communication of the Russian people with the inhabitants of the Trans-Urals, the paths laid to the east by industrial and trading people, prepared the process of joining the Siberian Territory to Russia.

The desire to find a permanent source of furs, which at that time constituted a considerable share of the country's budget revenue and was valued in the foreign and domestic markets, strengthened the attempts of the Russian government to move the borders of the state to the east. This was also facilitated by those established since the end of the 15th century. diplomatic relations with the Tyumen Khan and tributary dependence of some Ugric tribal associations of the lower Ob region. In the middle of the XVI century. contacts were established with the rulers of the Siberian Khanate, who further expanded the ideas of the Russian government about the fur wealth of Siberia and strengthened the hope of making permanent receipts of Siberian furs to the royal treasury. The conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan and the voluntary accession to the Russian state of a number of peoples of the Volga and Middle Urals opened up the possibility for the government to advance in the Trans-Urals.

On the other hand, unfolding in the second half of the XVI century. English and Dutch expeditions in the waters of the Arctic Ocean, intensified search by foreign merchants for the "northern route to India" alarmed the government of Ivan IV, who was afraid of turning the northern part of Asia into an English or Dutch trading post.

At the same time, the elimination of the domination of the descendants of the Mongol conquerors on the Volga, the entry of the Bashkirs and other peoples of the Middle Urals into Russia opened up for the Russian people, and especially for the peasants, who were looking for shorter and more convenient ways to the east in flight to the outskirts of liberation from feudal oppression and exploitation. .

The beginning of the annexation of the vast Siberian Territory to the Russian state dates back to the end of the 16th century, when the resettlement of Russians in the Trans-Urals and its development began, primarily by peasants and artisans. This process, which on the whole marked the spread of socio-economic relations new to Siberia and the introduction of new types of economic activity, did not always proceed in the same way in different regions.

January 22, 1564 can be considered the official beginning of the colonization of Siberia. A royal charter dating from this date ordered the Stroganovs, the richest entrepreneurs who had estates in the Perm Territory, to build a new fortified point on the Kama below the town of Kankor (later called Orel-Gorodok or Kardegan) The military detachments of Kuchum could not pass through the Perm land "without a trace". The fortresses of Kankor and Kardegan were actually defensive structures on the eastern borders of the state, built at the direction of the government.

By the beginning of the annexation of Western Siberia to the Russian state, its indigenous inhabitants were still at the stage of the primitive communal system, more or less affected by the process of decomposition. Only among the so-called Tobolsk Tatars did tribal relations become obsolete, their own primitive statehood developed - the Siberian Khanate.

In the early 60s of the XVI century. (1563) the territory of the Siberian Khanate was captured by Genghisid Kuchum, who overthrew the rulers of the local Tatar dynasty (Taibugins), moved his central headquarters to the fortified town of Kashlyk (Siberia) on the banks of the Irtysh, imposed tribute (yasak) on the local population of the Khanate, conquered the Ugric tribes along the lower Irtysh and the Turkic-speaking population of the Baraba steppe.

Khan Kuchum skillfully used for his own purposes the strengthening of the Crimean Tatars, behind whose back stood Sultan Turkey, as well as rumors about the failures and defeats of Russian troops on the fronts of the Livonian War. But, apparently, he did not yet have sufficient forces for an open struggle against the Russian state, so he agreed to vassal dependence on the Russian Tsar and promised to collect tribute from the population of the Khanate to the treasury of Ivan IV.

Kuchum's open hostilities began in the summer of 1573. His armed detachments began to be grouped on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, on the border of the pastures of Kuchum and Nogai Murzas. Kuchum completely eliminated the relationship of the vassalage of the Siberian Khanate to the Russian Tsar. There was a threat of rejection from Russia of those regions of the Trans-Urals, the population of which was considered tributaries of Russia from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 16th century.

At the same time, the situation in the Kama region became more complicated. Using the dissatisfaction of the Mansi with the Stroganovs, the Mansi Murza Begbelij Agtaev in 1580 plundered the Russian villages on the banks of the river. Chusovaya, and in 1581 Prince Kihek captured and burned Solikamsk, ruined settlements and villages in the Kama region, and took away their inhabitants.

In this situation, the Stroganovs, using the right given to them by the government to recruit military people, formed a mercenary Cossack detachment. The detachment was commanded by ataman Ermak Timofeevich. Much remains unclear and controversial in the history of Yermak's campaign in Siberia. Information about the biography of Yermak himself is scarce and contradictory. Some historians consider Yermak a Don Cossack who came with his detachment to the Stroganovs from the Volga, others - a resident of the Urals, a townsman Vasily Timofeevich Alenin (Olenin)-Povolsky. The chronology of the campaign and the number of its participants are far from clear. According to most researchers, the campaign began in 1581.

The Cossack squad began offensive operations in September 1582. In the 20th of October, as a result of the fighting on the Chuvashevsky Cape (Cape Podchevash), Kuchum's army was defeated, and he himself, with his closest relatives and murzas, having captured the most valuable property and cattle, fled from his rates in the steppe. Yermak's Cossacks immediately occupied the deserted Kashlyk (the town of Siberia).

The news of the defeat and flight of Kuchum quickly spread among the indigenous population of Western Siberia. Khanty and Mansi leaders of territorial-tribal associations, Tatar murzas hastened to come to Yermak with gifts, to declare their desire to accept Russian citizenship.

Meanwhile, Kuchum, who fled to the steppe, did not lay down his arms. Wandering with his ulus in the steppes, Kuchum gathered forces, summoned Tatar murzas to him, demanding help from them to fight the Russians. Having deceived Yermak's squad from the prison, on the banks of the Irtysh near the mouth of the Vagai, Kuchum's detachment attacked them at night. Almost all the Cossacks were killed. Wounded in hand-to-hand combat with the Tatars, Yermak drowned. This event, according to chroniclers, took place on the night of August 5-6, 1585.

But as a result of the actions of the Cossack squad, an irreparable blow was dealt to Kuchum's dominance in the Siberian Khanate. Kuchum, who fled to the Ob steppes, continued to fight the Russian state for several more years, but the Siberian Khanate, after Yermak took the Khan's headquarters, actually ceased to exist. Separate Tatar uluses migrated with Kuchum, but most of the West Siberian Tatars came under the protection of Russia. Russia included the Bashkirs, Mansi, Khanty, previously subject to Kuchum, who lived in the basins of the Tura, Tavda, Tobol and Irtysh rivers, the Khanty and Mansi population of the left-bank part of the lower Ob (Yugorskaya land) was finally assigned to Russia.

Further information about Kuchum is contradictory. Some sources say that Kuchum drowned in the Ob, others report that the Bukhara people, having lured him "to Kolmaki, killed him by deceit."

The defeat of Kuchum on the Ob in 1598 had a great political effect. The peoples and tribes of the forest-steppe belt of Western Siberia saw in the Russian state a force capable of protecting them from the devastating raids of the nomads of Southern Siberia and the invasion of the Oirat, Uzbek, Nogai, Kazakh military leaders. The Chat Tatars were in a hurry to declare their desire to accept Russian citizenship and explained that they could not do this earlier because they were afraid of Kuchum. The Baraba and Tereninsky Tatars, who had previously paid tribute to Kuchum, accepted Russian citizenship.

Since one of the main incentives for the Russian colonization of Siberia at the initial stage was furs, then, naturally, the advance went first and foremost to the taiga and tundra regions of Siberia, the richest in fur animals. Progress in this direction was also due to the extremely weak population of the taiga and tundra and the threat of devastating raids on the forest-steppe and steppe regions of southern Siberia from the nomads of the Kazakh and Mongolian steppes.

Things were somewhat different in the south of Western Siberia. With the formation in the mid-30s of the XVII century. The Dzungar Khanate, which united many Oirat feudal estates, the situation on the southern borders of Russian possessions in Western Siberia became less tense. Trade and diplomatic relations began between Russia and Dzungaria. Kalmyk horses and cattle were sold among the Russian population of the Tyumen, Tara, Tobolsk and Tomsk districts. The clashes that arose were mostly resolved peacefully.

But the main contradiction that gave rise to conflicts between Russia and Dzungaria was the issue of collecting tribute from the Yenisei Kirghiz, Tuvans, Chulym Turks, Altaians, Barabans and other inhabitants of this region. There was even an idea of ​​dual citizenship and dual citizenship, put forward in 1640 by the Dzungarian ruler Batur-Khuntaiji. In fact, in the southern districts of Western Siberia, the inhabitants for a long time paid an unsalary yasak to the royal treasury and at the same time alman to the Dzhungar collectors. Disputes between the Russian and Dzungarian authorities were resolved, as a rule, peacefully. But armed conflicts were not uncommon. After the destruction of the Dzungar kingdom as a result of the Sino-Dzungarian war, the peoples of Altai were also under the threat of capture. They offered stubborn resistance to the conquerors, but the forces were unequal. Fleeing from enslavement or extermination, the Altaians fled to the Russian border, making their way to it with fierce battles. Sometimes only dozens of people out of thousands of detachments reached their goals. On behalf of all the zaisans, the zaisan of Naamky went to the Russians. He offered to pay yasak in advance and took the obligation to put up two thousand soldiers at the request of the Russian government. On May 2, 1756, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna issued a decree on the admission of the Altai people to Russia. Tyva (Tuva People's Republic) became part of Russia only on August 17, 1944.

The annexation of Western Siberia to the Russian state was not only a political act. A more significant role in the process of incorporating Siberia into Russia was played by the economic development of the territory by the Russian people, the development of productive forces, and the disclosure of the production capabilities of the region rich in natural resources.

Along with the advance of the Russians, fortified cities and fortresses were also built: Verkhoturye, Turinsk and Tyumen, located along the banks of the Tura River, Pelym on the banks of the Tavda River, Tara and Tobolsk on the banks of the Irtysh River, Berezov, Surgut and Narym on the Ob River, Ket prison on the river Keti; Tomsk and Kuznetsk on the river Tom. Many of them in the XVII century. became the centers of the formed counties. At the beginning of the XVIII century. the economic development of the tributaries of the Ob - Oyash, Umreva and Chausa began. In 1709, the Russian Bikatun fortress (city of Biysk) was founded at the source of the Ob River, soon destroyed by the nomads and restored in 1718 somewhat upstream of the mouth of the Biya River.

Since the 90s of the XVI century. A massive influx of immigrants from the European part of the country to Siberia unfolded. Here fled, fleeing from the growing feudal oppression, black-haired, landlord and monastic peasants. Having broken with the feudal tax in their old place of residence, they were called "walking people." Townsmen and peasants from the northern districts, as well as exiles recruited by governors of Siberian cities, arrived in Siberia.

By the end of the XVII century. in Western Siberia, the predominant group of Russian residents were no longer service people, but peasants and artisans engaged in industrial activities.

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Russian colonization of Eastern Siberia

The article used materials from the site protown.ru