That's why:
in January 1555, ambassadors of the Siberian Khan Ediger came to Moscow to congratulate Ivan IV on the acquisition of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates and ask to take the entire Siberian land under his hand.
Ivan the Terrible agreed and laid down a tribute: give 1 (one) sable and 1 squirrel from each person. “And our people,” said the Siberian ambassadors, “are 30,700 people.” [It must be assumed that this figure included only the adult population and was, for obvious reasons, an underestimate.]
The ambassador and tribute collector Dmitry Kurov was sent to Siberia from Moscow, who returned to Moscow at the end of 1556, two years later, together with the Siberian ambassador Boyanda. They brought only 700 tribute sables, i.e. 30 thousand pieces were “undercollected”, or 98.7% of the tribute!
The tsar put Ambassador Boyanda in custody, confiscated all his personal property, and sent Moscow Tatars to Siberia with a letter to collect all the tribute without fail.
In September 1557, the messengers returned, bringing 1000 sables and 104 sables in exchange for 1000 squirrels, as well as a written commitment from Ediger to pay tribute annually with the explanation that due to his continuous war with the Sheybanids (Uzbeks, Kazakhs) it was impossible to collect all the tribute.
But Moscow was not interested in the internal strife of the Tatars; the tsar even refused to understand Ediger’s hint about the need to assist him against the Sheibanids.
Ivan IV was interested in only one thing - to receive as much tribute as possible, and he demanded it, threatening punishment.
In 1563, Ediger was killed by the new khan, Sheibanid Kuchum. The latter decided that due to the distance to Moscow and the impossibility of control, he could afford to stop collecting tribute for Ivan IV. To make this absolutely clear, he killed the Moscow ambassador who came with a reminder about the timely collection of tribute. Moreover, Kuchum began to persecute the Mansi and Khanty (Voguls and Ostyaks), who paid tribute to Moscow in the Perm region.
In 1572, he finally broke off vassalage relations with Moscow. [As we see, the hostility of Kuchum’s policy towards Moscow especially intensified after the raid on Moscow by the Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey in 1571-1572]
In 1573, the khan began to bother the Stroganovs who seized the Perm land as their property. (The army of Tsarevich Mametkul (son of Kuchum, according to other sources, his nephew) came to the Chusovaya River.) The Stroganovs began to hire Cossacks to protect their possessions.
In July 1579, 540 people came to them. Volga Cossacks led by Ataman Ermak Timofeevich and his henchmen - Ivan Koltso, Yakov Mikhailov, Nikita Pan, Matvey Meshcheryak. They served for two years with the Stroganovs, until September 1581.
In July 1581, about 700 people attacked. Tatars and Ostyaks (from the Kuchum Khanate) to the Stroganov towns. The attackers were defeated by Ermak's Cossacks. In connection with this, the idea arose to pursue them beyond the Urals, to send a military expedition to the Trans-Urals, “to fight the Siberian saltan.”
September 1, 1581 Ermak and his comrades, having 840 people. (300 warriors were given by the Stroganovs), armed with arquebuses and cannons, with the necessary supplies of winter shoes, clothing, food, equipped with local guides along the rivers of Siberia and translators (interpreters) from local languages (Tatar, Mansi, Khanty, Permyak), set off to conquer Siberia khanates.
Campaign of Ermak Timofeevich to the Siberian Khanate
(1 September 1581 – 15 August 1584)
September 1, 1581, the beginning of the campaign [according to R.G. Skrynnikov, Ermak’s campaign began exactly a year later - September 1, 1582]
1. For four days the detachment walked [from the Nizhne-Chusovsky town] on plows up the Chusovaya River to the mouth of the Serebryannaya River.
2. Then for two days we sailed along the Serebryannaya river up to Siberian road, passing through a drag that separated the basins of the Kama and Ob rivers.
3. From Kokuy the boats were dragged along a portage to the Zharovlya (Zheravlya) river.
spring 1582
4. Zharovley, Baranchey and Tagil sailed to the Tura River, where the Tatar Tyumen (Siberian) Khanate began with its capital in Chimge-Tur, which was then moved to the 16th century. in the city of Isker, on the Irtysh.
5. Sailing down the Tura, the Cossacks captured Tatar towns and twice defeated the Tatar troops, who fled in panic from the numerically smaller Russian army, equipped with firearms completely unknown to the Tatars of Siberia.
It is no coincidence that, characterizing the reasons for the rapid conquest of Siberia by Ermak, the Russian historian S.M. Solovyov limits himself to a single, but exhaustively explaining the situation, phrase - “The gun defeated the bow and arrows.”
summer 1582
6. Having moved from Tura to the Tavda River, Ermak’s troops continued to instill fear in the Tatars and sought to find out the location of the main military forces of Khan Kuchum. At the mouth of the Tavda, detachments of Tatars were defeated.
7. Meanwhile, Khan Kuchum, waiting for the approach of the Russian Cossacks, fortified himself in the city of Isker (Siberia) on the steep right bank of the Irtysh, at the mouth of the Sibirka River, on a slope rising 11.5 m above the river level.
8. To meet Ermak, who had already approached Tobol, Kuchum sent the army of Tsarevich Mametkul, which Ermak also easily defeated in the Babasan tract, on the banks of the Tobol.
9. The next battle took place on the Irtysh, where the army under the leadership of Kuchum was again defeated. Here the Cossacks took the town of Atik-Murza.
10. Due to the onset of frost, Tsarevich Mametkul and the Ostyak princes allied with him hoped that the Russians would be stopped, especially since a special abattoir was set up in front of Isker to prevent the movement of the enemy.
11. However, Ermak launched a night attack on the enemy’s positions, used artillery and won a fierce battle, forcing the Tatars to flee, abandoning the capital’s fortifications.
winter 1582-1583
12. On October 26, 1582, Ermak’s troops entered the deserted capital of the Khanate, where they spent the winter. In December 1582, they were unexpectedly attacked by the Tatars, however, having suffered casualties, they held their positions.
spring 1583
13. Ermak again began military operations against the Tatars and finally defeated Mametkul’s troops in his camp on the Vagai River, and took Mametkul himself prisoner.
summer 1583
14. Ermak undertook the conquest of Tatar settlements along the Irtysh and Ob. He also took the capital of the Khanty, Nazim.
September 1583
15. Returning to Isker (Siberia), Ermak made his successes known, firstly, to the Stroganovs, and secondly, to Moscow, sending Ivan IV, as a personal representative of Ataman Ivan, a ring with gifts (mainly with furs - sable, squirrel).
In his message, Ermak reported that he defeated Khan Kuchum, captured his son and commander-in-chief - Tsarevich Mametkul, captured the capital of the Khanate, Siberia, subjugated all its inhabitants in populated areas along the main rivers.
November-December 1583
16. The Tsar, having received news from Ermak in Moscow, immediately sent two royal governors - Prince Semyon Bolkhovsky and Ivan Glukhov with 300 people. warriors to reinforce Ermak with the aim of taking over the “Khanate of Siberia” from Ermak.
At the beginning of December 1583, the governors left Moscow and headed to the Stroganovs, from whom they were supposed to learn the way to Ermak.
winter 1584
17. The royal governors arrived to the Stroganovs in the Chusovsky towns only in February 1584, i.e. in the midst of winter, and immediately, with great difficulty, began to advance to the Irtysh, where Ermak was located, taking with them another 50 people. warriors at the Stroganovs.
18. At this time, Moscow realized that, in fact, they had sent completely unprepared people into the unknown and that they needed to be detained, let them spend the winter with the Stroganovs, because it was dangerous to move along the Siberian roads in winter.
On January 7, 1584, the Tsar sent the Stroganovs an order to build 15 plows by spring, with a crew of 20 people. on each, with a supply of food, building materials, clothing, tools, in order to transport all this to Ermak along with the ambassadors in the spring.
spring-summer 1584
19. However, Bolkhovsky and Glukhov had already reached the Irtysh, where they arrived only at the end of summer, without food, weapons, without food, without sledges, and thus not only could not help Ermak, but also turned out to be a burden.
When the Tatars saw that Ermak had decided to seriously settle in Siberia, that reinforcements were coming to him, this worried them extremely and intensified their actions against Ermak.
20. Meanwhile, the forces of Ermak, forced to fight continuously for two years, were exhausted. Suffering losses in people, constantly experiencing a shortage of food, a lack of shoes and clothing, Ermak’s troops gradually began to lose their combat effectiveness. Kuchum, who migrated to the upper reaches of the rivers inaccessible to Ermak’s plows - the Irtysh, Tobol and Ishim, all the time closely monitored all the actions and movements of Ermak and his squads and tried to inflict damage on them with unexpected attacks on parts of Ermak’s detachments.
21. Following the destruction of Nikita Pan’s detachment in Nazim (summer 1583), Ivan Koltso and Yakov Mikhailov, who returned from Moscow, were killed (March 1584), and also suffered heavy losses, although he defeated the Kuchumov detachment, Ataman Meshcheryak (summer 1584 G.).
August 1584
22. On the night of August 5-6, 1584, Ermak himself died, leaving with a small detachment of 50 people. along the Irtysh and fell into a Tatar ambush. All his men were also killed. [According to R.G. Skrynnikov, which he substantiates in the book below, and most other researchers, the chronology of Ermak’s campaign is shifted by one year and, accordingly, Ermak died in August 1585 and the circumstances of his death were somewhat different. Actually, V. Pokhlebkin indirectly confirms this date with the facts given below. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the gap of a whole year between the death of Ermak and the expedition of I. Mansurov.]
23. There were so few Cossacks left that the governor Glukhov and the only surviving atamans, Matvey Meshcheryak, decided on August 15, 1584 to leave Siberia and flee along the Irtysh and Ob, and then through the Ural ridge to Russia.
Thus, two years after the “victorious conquest,” Siberia was lost. The Khanate of Kuchum was restored there. By this time, Ivan IV had also died, and the new Tsar, Fyodor I Ioannovich, did not yet know about the death of Ermak and the flight of his commanders from Siberia.
Not receiving any news from Siberia, Boris Godunov, who actually managed state affairs under Feodor I, decided to send a new governor and a new military detachment to the Kuchum Khanate.
Secondary conquest of the Siberian Khanate
(summer 1585 - autumn 1598)
1. In the summer of 1585, governor Ivan Mansurov was sent to Siberia with a detachment of archers and Cossacks, who met ataman Matvey Meshcheryak returning from Siberia on the Tura River. According to other sources, Mansurov did not meet Meshcheryak, but having arrived in Siberia and not finding any of the Russians there, he spent the winter at the confluence of the Irtysh and the Ob, founding the Big Ob town on the right bank of the Ob (until the 18th century it was called Rush-Vash in Khanty - Russian city, [according to other sources, the Ob town existed only until 1594]).
2. Following Mansurov, archery heads were sent from Moscow to Siberia - Vasily Sukin, Ivan Myasnoy, Daniil Chulkov with three hundred warriors and a supply of firearms and artillery. These detachments did not go to the capital of Kuchum on the Irtysh, but went up the Tura to the former Tatar capital Chimgi-Tura and at the mouth of the Tyumenka river they founded the Tyumen fortress (1586), and at the mouth of the Tobol river - the Tobolsk fortress (1587). ).
These fortresses became the bases for all further Russian advances in Siberia. Occupying strategically dominant heights and key points on rivers, they became a solid military and defense basis for further colonization of the region and for control over the local population.
3. The tactics of hasty military campaigns were changed to the tactics of sequential consolidation on rivers by building fortresses on them and leaving permanent garrisons in these fortresses.
4. The steady, consistent movement of the Russians and the consolidation of garrison points are carried out primarily along the rivers Tura, Pyshma, Tobol, Tavda, and then Lozva, Pelym, Sosva, Tara, Keti and, of course, the Ob.
5. In the 90s, the following network of Russian fortresses was created:
1590 Lozvinsky town on the Lozva river;
1592-1593 Pelym on the Tavda River;
1593 Surgut on the Ob River;
Berezov on the Sosva River;
1594 Tara on the Tara river;
Obdorsk on the Lower Ob;
1596 Ket town on the Ob River;
1596-1597 Narym town on the Ket river;
1598 The city of Verkhoturye was founded, in which the customs office was located;
The official Babinovskaya road to Siberia has been opened
6. All this forced Kuchum, who was actually forced out of the most attractive region of Siberia, to migrate with his hordes to the south, and, continuing to disturb the lands colonized by the Russians from time to time, at the same time reduce his activity, being deprived of the main transport and water network and operational space.
7. At the same time, the new plan for the conquest of Siberia developed by Boris Godunov practically excluded bloody battles and other direct military actions (and losses!), forcing the enemy to take passive defensive positions.
8. Kuchum’s attempts in the 90s of the 16th century. repeatedly amassing strength and taking revenge by attacking accumulations of Russian forces, or taking a large Russian fortress invariably ended in defeat.
In 1591, Kuchum was defeated by governor Vladimir Masalsky-Koltsov.
In 1595, Kuchum's troops were put to flight by governor Domozhirov.
In 1597, Kuchum’s troops unsuccessfully tried to capture the Tara fortress, and
in August 1598, Kuchum’s army was completely defeated by the troops of the governor Andrei Matveyevich Voeikov, almost all of it was killed, the family was captured. The khan himself barely escaped and was later killed in the Nogai steppes [ Further fate Kuchuma is not known for certain: according to other sources, the Bukharans, having lured him “to Kolmaki, killed him,” according to others, he drowned in the Ob].
This last battle of the Russian troops with the troops of Khan Kuchum, which ended the conquest of the Siberian Khanate over two decades, later colorfully depicted in various fiction novels, historical works, reflected in folk songs and even in the paintings of Surikov, in reality was not at all epic, grandiose in nature and did not even have any significant military scale.
If the conquest of Kazan took part Russian army 150 thousand people and in the battles, and even more so in the repressions after the Russian victory, a total of about a quarter of a million Tatars, Chuvash, Mari and Russians died, then in the last decisive battle with Kuchum for the Siberian Khanate, only 404 people took part on the Russian side:
397 soldiers, among whom were Lithuanians (prisoners exiled to Siberia), Cossacks and pacified Tatars, and the command staff included: 3 sons of boyars (Russians), 3 atamans (Cossacks), 1 Tatar head, i.e. 7 officers with the rank of company, platoon (or platoon) commanders.
On Kuchum’s side, the army also numbered no more than 500 people. and did not have any firearms.
Thus, less than one thousand people took part in the “great battle” for the conquest of Siberia on both sides!
9. Kuchum was nominally succeeded as Siberian Khan by his son Ali (1598-1604), who was forced to wander through uninhabited, desert territories Western Siberia, having no shelter, and with his death the history of the Siberian Tatar state both formally and actually ceased (captured in 1604, ended his life in a Russian prison in 1618, his younger brother Altanai was captured in 1608 at the age of about 12 years and sent to Moscow).
In 1594, after a long struggle, the Pelym principality was finally annexed to Russia - the most significant of the Mansi principalities (known since the mid-15th century, it included the basins of the Pelym and Konda rivers). The Pelym princes repeatedly invaded Russia. For example, in 1581, the Pelym prince Kihek captured and burned Solikamsk, destroyed settlements and villages, and took away their inhabitants. The further annexation of Siberia to Russia proceeded relatively peacefully, and in 1640 the Russians came to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
"From Ancient Rus' to the Russian Empire." Shishkin Sergey Petrovich, Ufa.
A.N. Radishchev "A shortened narrative about the acquisition of Siberia."
Skrynnikov R.G. "Ermak's Siberian Expedition". Novosibirsk, "Science" Siberian branch, 1982.
Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation
Kursk State Technical University
Department of History
Abstract on the topic:
"Conquest of Siberia"
Completed by: senior group ES-61
Zatey N.O.
Checked by: K.I.N., Associate Professor of the Department of History
Goryushkina N.E.
K U R S K 2 0 0 6
1. Introduction............................................... ........................................................ .3
2. Conquest of Siberia.................................................. .....................................4
2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance.................................................4
2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state....................................10
2.3 Joining Eastern Siberia………………………………….20
Conclusion................................................. ...................................................28
List of used literature
Introduction
Relevance of the topic: The conquest and annexation of new territories strengthen the state with the influx of a new mass of taxes, minerals, as well as the influx of new knowledge received from the conquered peoples. New lands provide new prospects for the development of the country, in particular: new access to the seas and oceans, borders with new states, making it possible to increase the volume of trade.
Goal of the work: Study in depth the conquest and annexation of Siberia to the Russian state.
Tasks:
Study Ermak's campaign;
Study the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state;
Find out which nationalities were conquered;
Historiography overview: Once upon a time, Russian colonists were pioneers in the development of new lands. Ahead of the government, they settled in the “wild field” in the Lower Volga region, on the Terek, on Yalik and on the Don. The campaign of Ermak's Cossacks to Siberia was a direct continuation of this popular movement.
Ermak's Cossacks took the first step. Following them, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to the East. In the fight against harsh nature, they conquered land from the taiga, founded settlements and established centers of agricultural culture.
Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. His oppression was experienced equally by both local tribes and Russian settlers. The rapprochement of the Russian working people and Siberian tribes was conducive to the development of productive forces and overcoming centuries-old disunity Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.
2. Conquest of Siberia
2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance
Long before the Russian development of Siberia, its population had connections with the Russian people. The first to begin their acquaintance with the Trans-Urals and Western Siberia were the Novgorodians, who already in the 11th century tried to master the Pechora route beyond Kamen (Ural). Russian people were attracted to Siberia by the rich fur and sea trades and the opportunities for barter with local residents. Following the sailors and explorers, Novgorod squads began to periodically appear in the northwestern reaches of Siberia, collecting tribute from the local population. The Novgorod nobility has long officially included the Yugra land in the Trans-Urals as part of the possessions of Veliky Novgorod24. In the 13th century The Rostov princes stood in the way of the Novgorodians, who founded in 1218 at the mouth of the river. Ugra, the city of Ustyug, and then the initiative for development passed to the Moscow Principality.
Taking control of the “volosts” of Veliky Novgorod, the government of Ivan III three times sent detachments of military men beyond the Urals. In 1465, voivode Vasily Skryaba went to Ugra and collected tribute in favor of the Grand Duke of Moscow. In 1483, governors Fyodor Kurbsky and Ivan Travnin with military men “walked up the Kama tributary of the Vishera River, crossed the Ural Mountains, scattered the troops of the Pelym prince Yumshan and moved “down the Tavda River past Tyumen into the Siberian land”25. Bypassing possession of the Tyumen Khan Ibak, the detachment moved from Tavda to Tobol, Irtysh and Ob. There, Russian warriors “made war” on Ugra, capturing several Ugric princes.
This campaign, which lasted several months, had important consequences. In the spring of the following year, an embassy “from all the lands of Koda and Ugra” arrived in Moscow, delivered gifts to Ivan III and a request to release the prisoners. The ambassadors recognized themselves as vassals of the Russian sovereign and pledged to annually supply his treasury with tribute from the population of the areas under their control.
However, the established tributary relations of a number of Ugric lands with Russia turned out to be fragile. At the end of the 15th century. The government of Ivan III undertook a new campaign to the east. More than 4 thousand warriors under the leadership of Moscow governors Semyon Kurbsky, Pyotr Ushaty and Vasily Zabolotsky set out in the winter of 1499. Until March 1500, 40 towns were occupied and 58 princes were captured. As a result, the Yugra land was subjugated, and the collection of tribute began to be carried out systematically. The delivery of furs was the responsibility of the “princes” of the Ugric and Samoyed associations. From the middle of the 16th century. Special government collectors “tribute workers” began to be sent to the Ugra land, who delivered the tribute collected by the local nobility to Moscow.
At the same time, Russian commercial development of Western Siberia was underway. This was facilitated by the peasant colonization of the northern regions of Russia, the Pechora, Vychegda, and Urals basins. From the 16th century Trade relations between Russians and residents of the Trans-Ural region are also developing more intensively. Russian fishermen and trading people are increasingly appearing beyond the Urals, using the fishing villages of North-Eastern Pomerania (Pustozersky fort, Ust-Tsilemskaya Sloboda, Rogovoy Gorodok, etc.) as transshipment bases. Villages of industrial people also appeared in the Trans-Urals. These were temporary fishing winter huts, on the site of which the Russian forts Berezovsky, Obdorsky and others later appeared. In turn, the Ugrians and Samoyeds began to come to exchange goods in the Pustozersky fort and Rogovoy Gorodok.
Close communication with the inhabitants of Northwestern Siberia led to the fact that Russian fishermen borrowed hunting and fishing techniques from them and began to use deer and dogs for riding. Many of them, living for a long time in Siberia, knew how to speak the Ugric and Samoyed languages. The Siberian population, in turn, using iron products brought by the Russians (knives, axes, arrowheads, etc.), improved the techniques of hunting, fishing and sea fishing.
In the 16th century The Siberian Khanate, which arose on the ruins of the Tyumen “kingdom,” became Ugra’s southern neighbor. After the capture of Kazan by the troops of Ivan IV in 1552 and the annexation of the peoples of the Volga and Ural regions to Russia, favorable conditions arose for the establishment of permanent ties with the Siberian Khanate. The ruling Taibugins (representatives of a new local dynasty), the brothers Ediger and Bekbulat, frightened by the events in Kazan and pressed from the south by Genghisid Kuchum, the son of the Bukhara ruler Murtaza, who laid claim to the Siberian throne, decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Russian government. In January 1555, their ambassadors arrived in Moscow and asked Ivan IV to “take the whole Siberian land in his name, and stand up for everyone, and put his tribute on them, and send his man (“the road”) for its collection
From now on, Ivan IV added to his titles the title of “ruler of all Siberian lands.” The ambassadors of Ediger and Bekbulat, while in Moscow, promised to pay “to the sovereign for every black man a sable, and for the sovereign’s road a squirrel per person for a Siberian one. Later, the size of the tribute was finally determined at 1,000 sables.
The tsar's envoy, the boyar's son Dmitry Nepeytsin, went to the capital of the Siberian Khanate, located on the Irtysh not far from modern Tobolsk, where he swore an oath of allegiance to the Russian tsar of the Siberian rulers, but could neither rewrite the “black” population of the kingdom, nor collect a full tribute. Vassal relations between the Siberian Khanate and Russia turned out to be fragile. In the conditions of constantly growing strife between the Tatar uluses and the growing discontent of the “black people” and the conquered Ugric and Bashkir tribes, the position of the Siberian rulers was unstable. Kuchum took advantage of this, who in 1563 defeated their troops, seized power in the Siberian Khanate and ordered the death of Ediger and Bekbulat, who were captured.
Kuchum was hostile towards Russia from the very beginning. But the change of dynasty in the Siberian “kingdom” was accompanied by turmoil. For several years, Kuchum had to fight the rebellious nobility and the tribal princelings, seeking obedience from them. Under these conditions, he did not dare to break off diplomatic relations with the Moscow government. In 1571, in order to lull the vigilance of the Russian Tsar, he even sent his ambassador and a tribute of 10,000 sables to Moscow.
The arrival of Kuchum's ambassadors came at a difficult time for Moscow. In 1571, it was attacked and burned by troops of the Crimean Khan Devletgirey. Rumors began to spread among residents of the capital about Russia's failures in the Livonian War. When the ambassadors informed Kuchum about their observations made in Moscow, he openly decided to put an end to Russian influence in the Trans-Urals. In 1573 he was killed at his headquarters royal ambassador Tretyak Chubukov and all the serving Tatars accompanying him, and in the summer of the same year, the armed detachments of Kuchum, led by his nephew Mametkul, crossed the Kamen to the river. Chusovaya and devastated the area. From that time on, raids into the Kama region began to be carried out systematically, and Russian settlements in it were thoroughly destroyed. Kuchum also did not spare anyone who was oriented towards an alliance with Russia: he killed, took captives, and imposed a heavy tribute on the peoples of all the vast possessions of the Khanty and Mansi of the Ob and Ural, Bashkir tribes, Tatar tribes of the Trans-Urals and Barabinsk steppe.
In this situation, the government of Ivan IV took some countermeasures. In 1574, it sent a letter of grant to the large patrimonial owners, the Stroganovs, who were developing the Perm region, which assigned them lands on the eastern slopes of the Urals along the river. Tobol and its tributaries. The Stroganovs were allowed to hire a thousand Cossacks with arquebuses and build fortresses in the Trans-Urals on the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob.
The Stroganovs, using the right given to them by the government, formed a mercenary detachment, the command of which was taken over by Ataman Ermak Timofeevich. Information about who Ermak was by origin is scanty and contradictory. Some sources call him a Don Cossack, who came with his detachment to the Urals from the Volga. Others are a native inhabitant of the Urals, a townsman Vasily Timofeevich Olenin. Still others consider him a native of the northern volosts of the Vologda district. All this information, which is based on oral folk tradition, reflected the desire of residents of various Russian lands to consider Ermak folk hero my fellow countryman. The only reliable fact is that Ermak, before his campaign beyond the Urals, served for 20 years in Cossack villages in the “wild field,” guarding the borders of Russia.
On September 1, 1581, the 31st squad of Ermak, consisting of 540 Volga Cossacks, set out on a campaign and, having ascended the river. Chusovoy and having crossed the Ural ridge, began its advance to the east. They sailed on light plows along the Siberian rivers Tagil, Tura, and Tobol in the direction of the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Kashlyk. Siberian chronicles record several major battles with Kuchum’s troops, which Ermak’s squad took on along the route. Among them was the battle on the banks of the Tobol near the Babasan yurts (30 versts below the mouth of the Tavda), where one of the experienced military leaders Kuchum Mametkul tried to detain the squad. Not far from the mouth of the Tavda, the squad had to fight with the detachments of the Murza of Karachi.
Having fortified himself in the town of Karachi, Ermak sent a group of Cossacks led by Ivan Koltso to the Stroganovs for ammunition, food and servicemen. In winter, the Cossacks reached the estates of Maxim Stroganov on sledges and skis, and in the summer. 1582 they returned back with reinforcements of 300 service people. In September of this year, Ermak’s replenished squad moved into the depths of Siberia. Having reached the confluence of the Tobol and the Irtysh, the detachment began to climb up the Irtysh.
The decisive battle took place on the 20th of October on the approaches to the capital at the so-called Chuvash Cape. Kuchum hoped to stop the Cossacks by making a fence on the cape of fallen trees, which was supposed to protect his soldiers from Russian bullets. Sources also report that 1 or 2 cannons were installed on the cape, brought to Kashlyk from the Kazan Khanate (before it was occupied by the Russians).
But many years of wars with the Tatars and Turks, which hardened the Cossacks, taught them to discern enemy tactics and take full advantage of their weapons. In this battle, Mametkul was wounded and barely escaped capture. The servants managed to transport him to the other side of the Irtysh. Panic began in Kuchum's army. According to legend, the vassal Khanty and Mansi princes left their positions after the first volleys and thereby made it easier for the Cossacks to win.
Kuchum watched the battle from the mountain. As soon as the Russians began to prevail, he, his family and the Murzas, seizing the most valuable property and livestock, fled to the steppe, abandoning their headquarters to the mercy of fate.
The local tribes, conquered by Kuchum, treated the Cossacks very peacefully. The princes and Murzas hastened to come to Ermak with gifts and declared their desire to accept Russian citizenship. In Kashlyk, the Cossacks found rich booty, especially furs, collected into the khan's treasury for many years. Ermak, following the laws of free Cossacks, ordered the booty to be divided equally among everyone.
In December 1582, Ermak sent messengers to Rus' led by Ivan Koltso with a report on the capture of the Siberian Khanate. He himself, having settled down for the winter in Kashlyk, continued to repel the raids of Kuchum’s troops. In the spring of 1583, Mametkul's headquarters on the banks of the Vagai was defeated. Mametkul himself was captured. This significantly weakened Kuchum's forces. In addition, from the south, from Bukhara, a descendant of the Taibugins, the son of Bekbulat Sepdyak (Seyid Khan), who at one time managed to escape reprisal, returned and began to threaten Kuchum. Anticipating new strife, the nobility began to hastily leave the Khanek's court. Even one of his most loyal confidants, Murza Karami, “left” Kuchum. Having captured nomadic camps along the river. Omi, he entered into single combat with Ermak, seeking the return of the ulus near Kashlyk.
In March 1584, Karachi lured a detachment of Cossacks from Kashlyk, led by Ermak’s faithful associate Ivan Koltso, who had returned from Moscow, and destroyed it. Until the summer, the Tatars, having besieged Kashlyk, kept Ermak’s detachment in a ring, depriving him of the opportunity to replenish his meager food supplies. But Ermak, waiting for the moment, organized a sortie from the besieged town one night and defeated the Karachi headquarters with a sudden blow. Two of his sons were killed in the battle, but he himself and a small detachment managed to escape.
Kuchum's power was no longer recognized by some local tribes and their princelings. Back in the spring of 1583, Ermak sent 50 Cossacks led by Bogdan Bryazga along the Irtysh to the Ob and imposed tribute on a number of Tatar and Khanty volosts.
The forces of Ermak’s squad were reinforced in the summer of 1584. The government of Ivan IV, having received a report of the capture of Kashlyk, sent a detachment of 300 servicemen to Siberia, led by governor S. D. Bolkhovsky. This is a detachment in the winter of 1584/85. found himself in a difficult position. Lack of housing and food, severe Siberian frosts caused severe famine. Many archers died, and the governor Semyon Bolkhovsky also died.
Kuchum, who wandered with his ulus in the steppes, gathered forces, demanding help from the Tatar Murzas in the fight against the Russians with threats and flattery. In an effort to lure Ermak out of Kashlyk, he spread a rumor about the delay of a Bukharan trade caravan heading to Kashlyk. Ermak decided to take another campaign against Kuchum. It was last trip Ermak. With a detachment of 150 people, Ermak left on plows in July
1585 from Kashlyk and moved up the Irtysh. During an overnight stay on the Irtysh island, not far from the mouth of the river. While Vagay, the detachment was unexpectedly attacked by Kuchum. Many Cossacks were killed, and Ermak, wounded in hand-to-hand combat with the Tatars, while covering the detachment’s retreat, managed to make his way to the shore. But the plow, onto the edge of which he unsuccessfully jumped, overturned, and, dressed in heavy armor, Ermak drowned. This happened on the night of August 5-6, 1585.
Having learned about the death of their leader, the archers, led by Ivan Glukhov, left Kashlyk for the European part of the country along the Pechora route - through the Irtysh, Ob, and Northern Urals. Some of the Cossacks with Matvey Meshcheryak, together with a small detachment sent from Moscow by I. Mansurov, remained in Siberia and laid down at the mouth of the river. Irtysh, the first Russian fortification is the Ob town.
Following Ermak's Cossacks, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to Siberia, and intensive commercial and agricultural development of the region began.
The tsarist government used Ermak's campaign to extend its power to Siberia. “The last Mongol king Kuchum, according to K-Marx, was defeated by Ermak” and with this “the foundation of Asian Russia was laid.” Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. Russian settlers equally experienced his oppression. But the rapprochement of the working Russian people and local tribes was conducive to the development of production forces, overcoming the centuries-old disunity of Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.
The people glorified Ermak in their songs and stories, paying tribute to his courage, devotion to his comrades, and military valor. For more than three years his squad did not know defeat; neither hunger nor severe frosts broke the will of the Cossacks. It was Ermak’s campaign that prepared the annexation of Siberia to Russia.
Archive of Marx and Engels. 1946, vol. VIII, p. 166.
2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state
The question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state and the significance of this process for the local and Russian population has long attracted the attention of researchers. Back in the middle of the 18th century, academic historian Russian Academy Sciences Gerard Friedrich Miller, one of the participants in a ten-year scientific expedition in the Siberian region, having become acquainted with the archives of many Siberian cities, expressed the idea that Siberia was conquered by Russian weapons.
The position put forward by G. F. Miller about the aggressive nature of the inclusion of the region into Russia was quite firmly entrenched in the nobility and bourgeoisie historical science. They only argued about who was the initiator of this conquest. Some researchers assigned an active role to the activities of the government, others argued that the conquest was carried out by private entrepreneurs, the Stroganovs, and others believed that Siberia was conquered by the free Cossack squad of Ermak. There were also supporters of various combinations of the above options.
Miller's interpretation of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into Russia also passed into the works of Soviet historians of the 20-30s. of our century.
Research by Soviet historians, careful reading of published documents and the identification of new archival sources made it possible to establish that, along with military expeditions and the deployment of small military detachments in Russian towns founded in the region, there were numerous facts of the peaceful advancement of Russian explorers and fishermen and the development of large areas of Siberia. A number of ethnic groups and nationalities (Ugrians-Khanty of the Lower Ob region, Tomsk Tatars, chat groups of the Middle Ob region, etc.) voluntarily became part of the Russian state.
Thus, it turned out that the term “conquest” does not reflect the entire essence of the phenomena that took place in the region during this initial period. Historians (primarily V.I. Shunkov) proposed a new term “annexation”, the content of which includes the facts of the conquest of individual regions, the peaceful development by Russian settlers of the sparsely populated valleys of the Siberian taiga rivers, and the facts of the voluntary acceptance of Russian citizenship by some ethnic groups.
The question of what joining the Russian state brought to the peoples of Siberia was resolved in different ways. Noble historiography, with its inherent apologetics for tsarism, sought to embellish government activities. G. F. Miller argued that the tsarist government, in managing the annexed territory, practiced “quietness,” “affectionate persuasion,” “friendly treats and gifts,” and showed “severity” and “cruelty” only in cases where “affection” didn't work. Such “affectionate” management, according to G. F. Miller, allowed the Russian government in Siberia to “do a lot of useful things” with “considerable benefit to the country there.” This statement of Miller, with various variants, was firmly held for a long time in the pre-revolutionary historiography of Siberia and even among individual historians of the Soviet period.
The noble revolutionary considered the question of the significance of the inclusion of Siberia in Russia for the indigenous Siberian population in a different way late XVIII V. A. N. Radishchev. He gave a sharply negative characterization of the actions of royal officials, merchants, moneylenders and Orthodox clergy in Siberia, emphasized that they are all “greedy”, “self-seeking”, shamelessly robbing the local working population, taking away their furs, driving them into impoverishment.
Radishchev's assessment found support and further development in the works of AP. Shchapov and S.S. Shashkov. A.P. Shchapov in his writings passionately denounced government policy towards Siberia in general and its peoples in particular, while he emphasized the positive impact of economic and cultural communication between Russian peasants and artisans with Siberian peoples.
The negative assessment of the results of the activities of the tsarist administration in Siberia, put forward by A. N. Radishchev, was shared by Shchapov’s contemporary SS. Shashkov. Using specific materials from Siberian life, showing the oppressed position of the working non-Russian population of the region to expose contemporary social reality, democrat and educator S.S. Shashkov in his journalistic articles came to the conclusion about the generally negative significance of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state. Unlike Shchapov, S.S. Shashkov did not consider the issue of the activities of the working Russian population in developing the productive forces of the region and the influence of this activity on the economy and social development of local Siberian residents.
This one-sidedness of S.S. Shashkov in resolving the issue of the significance of the region’s entry into Russia was adopted and further developed by representatives of Siberian regionalism with their opposition of Siberia and the Siberian population of Russia to the entire Russian population of the country.
S.S. Shashkov’s negative assessment was also received by the bourgeois-nationalistic part of the intelligentsia of the Siberian peoples, who contrasted the interests of the local indigenous population with the interests of the Russian inhabitants of the region and condemned the very fact of Siberia’s annexation to Russia.
Soviet researchers, who had mastered the Marxist-Leninist materialist understanding of the history of society, had to, based on the source base, decide the question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia in the
of the Russian state and determine the significance of this process both for the non-Russian population of the region and its Russian settlers, and for the development of the country as a whole.
Intensive research in the post-war period (second half of the 40s - early 60s) ended with the creation of a collective monograph “History of Siberia”, five volumes of which were published in 1968. The authors of the second volume of “History of Siberia” summed up the results of the previous study of the issue of annexation of Siberia to the Russian state, showed the role of the masses in the development of the productive forces of the region, revealed “the significance of Russian colonization in general and agriculture in particular as the leading form of economy, which subsequently had a decisive influence on the economy and way of life of local indigenous peoples. This confirmed the thesis about the fruitful and largely peaceful nature of the Russian annexation and development of Siberia, about the progressiveness of its further development, conditioned by the joint life of the Russian and indigenous peoples.”
The annexation of the vast territory of the Siberian region to Russia was not a one-time act, but a long-term process, the beginning of which dates back to the end of the 16th century, when, after the defeat of the last Genghisid Kuchum on the Irtysh by the Cossack squad of Ermak, Russian resettlement in the Trans-Urals and development by alien peasants, fishermen, artisans, first of the forest belt of Western Siberia, then of Eastern Siberia, and with the onset of the 18th century, of Southern Siberia. The completion of this process occurred in the second half of the 18th century.
The annexation of Siberia to Russia was the result of the implementation of the policy of the tsarist government and the ruling class of feudal lords, aimed at seizing new territories and expanding the scope of feudal robbery. It also met the interests of the merchants. Cheap Siberian furs, valued on the Russian and international (European) markets, became a source of enrichment for him.
However, the leading role in the process of annexation and development of the region was played by Russian migrants, representatives of the working population, who came to the distant eastern region to work in the fields and settled in the Siberian taiga as farmers and artisans. The presence of free lands suitable for agriculture stimulated the process of their subsidence.
Economic, everyday, and cultural contacts were established between newcomers and local residents. Indigenous people The Siberian taiga and forest-steppe for the most part had a positive attitude toward joining the Russian state.
The desire to get rid of the devastating raids of stronger southern nomad neighbors, the desire to avoid constant inter-tribal clashes and strife that damaged the economy of fishermen, hunters and cattle breeders, as well as the perceived need for economic ties encouraged local residents to unite with the Russian people as part of one state.
After the defeat of Kuchum by Ermak’s squad, government detachments arrived in Siberia (in 1585 under the command of Ivan Mansurov, in 1586 led by governors V. Sukin and I. Myasny), the construction of the Ob town on the banks of the Ob began, and in the lower reaches of the Tura the Russian fortress Tyumen, in 1587 on the banks of the Irtysh against the mouth of Tobol-Tobolsk, on waterway along the Vishera (a tributary of the Kama) to Lozva and Tlvda-Lozvinsky (1590) and Pelymsky (1593) towns. IN late XVI V. in the Lower Ob region the city of Berezov was built (1593), which became the Russian administrative center on the Yugra land.
To consolidate the lands of Prnobya above the mouth of the Irtysh into Russia, a small group of servicemen with governors F. Baryatinsky and Vl. was sent from Moscow in February 1594. Anichkov. Having arrived in Lozva by sleigh, the detachment in the spring moved by water to the town of Ob. From Berezov, Berezovsky servicemen and the Khanty codekke with their prince Igichey Alachev were sent to join the arriving detachment. The detachment moved up the Ob River to the Bardakov “principality”. The Khanty prince Bardak voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship and assisted in the construction of a Russian fortress, erected in the center of the territory under his control on the right bank of the Ob River at the confluence of the Surgutka River. New town became known as Surgut. All Khanty villages subject to Bardak became part of the Surgut district. Surgut became a stronghold of tsarist power in this region of the Middle Ob region, a springboard for an attack on the Selkup union of tribes, known as the Piebald Horde. The need to bring the Piebald Horde under Russian citizenship was dictated not only by the desire of the tsarist government to expand the number of yasak payers in the Ob region. Representatives of the Selkup nobility, led by the military leader Voneya, at this time had close contacts with the rank-gisnd Kuchum, expelled from Kashlyk, who in 1596 “nomadic” to the Piebald Horde and was going to raid the Surgut district in 1597.
To strengthen the Surgut garrison, servicemen from the Ob town were included in its composition, which ceased to exist as a fortified village. Negotiations undertaken with Vonya did not lead to positive results for the royal governors. To prevent Vony’s military uprising on the side of Kuchum, Surgut servicemen, on the instructions of the governor, built a Russian fortification in the center of the Piebald Horde - the Narymsky fort (1597 or 1593).
Then the advance began to the east along the right tributary of the Ob River. Keti, where Surgut servicemen set up the Ket fort (presumably in 1602). On the portage from Ket to the Yenisei basin in 1618, a small Makovsky fort was built.
Within the southern part of the taiga and in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia in the 90s. XVI century The fight against the remnants of Kuchum's horde continued. Expelled by Ermak's Cossacks from Kashlyk, Kuchum and his supporters wandered between the Ishim and Irtysh rivers, raiding Tatar and Bashkir uluses that recognized the power of the Russian Tsar, and invading the Tyumen and Tobolsk districts.
To prevent the ruinous invasions of Kuchum and his supporters, it was decided to build a new Russian fortress on the banks of the Irtysh. A significant number of local residents were attracted to this construction: Tatars, Bashkirs, Khanty. Headed construction works Andrey Eletsky. In the summer of 1594, on the banks of the Irtysh near the confluence of the river. The Tara city appeared, under the protection of which the inhabitants of the Irtysh region had the opportunity to get rid of the domination of the descendants of the Genghisids of Kuchum. The service people of Tara performed military guard duty in the border region with the steppe, struck back at Kuchum and his supporters - the Nogai Murzas and Kalmyk taishas, expanding the territory subject to the Russian Tsar.
Following the instructions of the government, the Tara governors tried to start negotiations with Kuchum. In 1597, he was sent a royal letter calling on him to stop the fight with Russia and accept Russian citizenship. The Tsar promised to assign nomads along the Irtysh to Kuchum. But it soon became known that Kuchum was preparing for a raid on the Tara district and was negotiating military assistance with the Nogai Horde and the Bukhara Khanate.
By order from Moscow, preparations began for a military campaign. The detachment staffed in Tara by Andrei Voeikov consisted of Russian servicemen and Tatars from Tobolsk, Tyumen and Tara. In August 1598, after a series of small battles with Kuchum’s supporters and people dependent on him in the Baraba region, A. Voeikov’s detachment suddenly attacked the main camp of the Kuchum Tatars, located in a meadow near the mouth of the Irmen River, the left tributary of the Ob. The Chat Tatars and White Kalmyks (Teleuts) who lived next door in the Ob region did not have time to help Kuchum. His headquarters was destroyed, members of the khan's family were captured. In the battle, many representatives of the nobility, relatives of the khan, and over 150 ordinary Tatar warriors were killed; in Kuchum itself, with a small group of his supporters, they managed to escape. Soon Kuchum died in the southern steppes.
The defeat of Kuchum on the Ob was of great political significance. Residents of the forest-steppe zone of Western Siberia saw in the Russian state a force capable of protecting them from the devastating invasions of the nomads of Southern Siberia, from the raids of Kalmyk, Uzbek, Nogai, and Kazakh military leaders. The Chat Tatars were in a hurry to declare their desire to accept Russian citizenship and explained that they could not do this before because they were afraid of Kuchum. The Baraba and Terenin Tatars, who had previously paid tribute to Kuchum, accepted Russian citizenship. The Tatar uluses of Baraba and the river basin were assigned to the Tatar district. Omn.
At the beginning of the 17th century. The prince of the Tomsk Tatars (Eushtin-tsev) Toyan came to Moscow with a request to the government of Boris Godunov to take the villages of the Tomsk Tatars under the protection of the Russian state and “establish” a Russian city on their land. Toyan pledged to help the royal administration of the new city in levying yasak on the Turkic-speaking groups neighboring the Tomsk Tatars. In January 1604, a decision was made in Moscow to build a fortification on the land of the Tomsk Tatars. Sent from Moscow, Toyan arrived in Surgut. The Surgut governors, having sworn in Toyan (sherti), sent several servicemen with him as accompanying people to the Tomsk land to select the site for the construction of the future city. In March, in Surgut, a detachment of builders was being recruited under the command of the assistant to the Surgut governor G.I. Pisemsky and the Tobolsk boyar's son V.F. Tyrkov. In addition to Surgut servicemen and carpenters, it included servicemen who arrived from Tyumen and Tobolsk, Pelym archers, Tobolsk and Tyumen Tatars and Koda Khanty. In the spring of 1604, after the ice drift, the detachment set off from Surgut on boats and planks up the Obn to the mouth of the Tom and further up the Tom to the lands of the Tomsk Tatars. During the summer of 1604, a Russian city was built on the right bank of the Tom. At the beginning of the 17th century. Tomsk city was the easternmost city in Russia. The adjacent region of the lower reaches of the Tom, Middle Ob and Prnchulymya became part of the Tomsk district.
Collecting yasak from the Turkic-speaking population of Pritomya, Tomsk servicemen in 1618 founded a new Russian settlement in the upper reaches of the Tom - Kuznetsk fort, which became in the 20s. XVII century administrative center of Kuznetsk district. At the same time, in the basin of the right tributary of the Ob-Chulym, small forts were erected - Melessky and Achinsky. In them, depending on the weather, there were Cossacks and archers from Tomsk, who performed military guard duty and protected the yurts of local residents from incursions by detachments of Kyrgyz princes and Mongolian Altyn Khans.
Growing contacts of the annexed part of the Ob region with the center and north of the country already at the end of the 16th century. the issue of improving communication routes was urgently raised. The official route to Siberia from the Kama region through the town of Lozvinsky was long and difficult. In the second half of the 90s. XVI century Solvychegodsk townsman Artemy Sofinov-Babinov took a contract from the government to build a road from Solikamsk to Tyumen. From Solikamsk it went through mountain passes to the upper reaches of the river. Tours. In 1598, the Verkhoturye town was established here, in the construction of which carpenters, peasants, and archers who were transferred here from Lozva participated.
Verkhoturye on the Babinovskaya road throughout the 17th century. played the role of the “main gate to Siberia”, through which all connections between Moscow and the Trans-Urals were carried out, and customs duties were collected on transported goods. From Verkhoturye the road ran along the river. Tours to Tyumen. In 1600, halfway between Verkhoturye and Tyumen, the Turin fort arose, where coachmen and peasants transferred from the European part of the state were settled to serve the needs of the Babinovskaya road.
TO early XVII V. Almost the entire territory of Western Siberia from the Gulf of Ob in the north to Tara and Tomsk in the south became an integral part of Russia.
2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia
Russian fishermen back in the 16th century. They hunted fur-bearing animals on the right bank of the lower Ob, in the basins of the Taza and Turukhana rivers, and gradually moved east to the Yenisei. They founded winter huts (which grew from temporary to permanent), and entered into exchange, production, household and even family relations with local residents.
The political inclusion of this tundra region into Russia began later than the settlement of Russian fishermen here - at the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries. with construction in 1601 on the bank of the river. Taza of the Mangazeya town, which became administrative center Mangazeya district and the most important trade and transshipment point in northern Asia, a place where fishermen flocked in preparation for the next hunting season. Until 1625, there was no permanent detachment of service people in Mangazeya. Military guard duty was performed by a small group of “year-olds” (30 people) sent from Tobolsk and Berezov. After creating a permanent garrison (100 people), the Mangazeya governors created several tribute winter huts, began sending fur collectors to the treasury on the banks of the Lower Yenisei, on its right-bank tributaries - Podkamennaya Tunguska and Lower Tunguska, and further to the Pyasina and Khatanga basins.
As already noted, the penetration of Russians into the middle Yenisei proceeded along the right tributary of the Ob-Ket, which in the 17th century. became the main road from the Ob basin to the east. In 1619, the first Russian administrative center was built on the banks of the Yenisei - the Yenisei fort, which quickly grew into a significant transshipment point for fishermen and traders. The first Russian farmers appeared in the region adjacent to Yeniseisk.
The second fortified town on the Yenisei was the Krasnoyarsk fort, founded in 1628, which became the main stronghold of defense of the borders in the south of the Yenisei region. Throughout the 17th century. south of Krasnoyarsk there was a fierce struggle with the nomads, caused by the aggression of the Kyrgyz princes of the upper Yenisei, who relied in the first half of the century on the strong state of the Altyn Khans (which formed in Western Mongolia), and in the second half - on the Dzungar rulers, whose vassals they became. The princes considered the local Turkic-speaking groups of the upper Yenisei to be their kishtyms (dependent people, tributaries): the Tubnians, Yarintsev, Motortsy, Kamasintsy, etc.
Almost every year, the rulers of the Kyrgyz uluses besieged the Krasnoyarsk fortress, exterminated and captured the indigenous and Russian population, captured livestock and horses, and destroyed crops. Documents tell about repeated military campaigns against the steppe nomads of groups of Krasnoyarsk, Yenisei, Tomsk and Kuznetsk servicemen.
The situation changed only in early XVIII c., when, by order of the Dzungar contaishi Tsevan-Raptan, the forced resettlement of the Kyrgyz uluses and kishtyms of the nobility began to the main Dzungar nomads in Semirechye. The military leaders failed to completely transfer ordinary residents of the Kyrgyz uluses to new places. Local residents took refuge in the forests; some of those driven away fled while crossing the Sayan Mountains. For the most part, the population dependent on the Kyrgyz princes remained in their former habitats and was then included in Russia. The consolidation of the territory of the upper Yenisei ended with the construction of the Abakan (1707) and Sayan (1709) forts.
From Russian traders, the Mangazeya and Yenisei governors learned about the rich fur of the Lena Land. They began to send service people to the middle Lena, where the Yakuts lived, for yasak. Already in 1632, on the banks of the Lena, a small group of Yenisei Cossacks led by P. Beketov set up the Yakut fort, the first Russian village, which later became the center of the Yakut (Lena) voivodeship.
Some Yakut toyons and princelings of individual associations tried to fight yasak collectors, defending their right to exploit their relatives, but not all groups of Yakuts took part in this “struggle.” Intertribal strife, as well as the desire of some representatives of the Yakut nobility to take advantage of the help of service people , located on Leia, weakened the resistance of the Yakut groups to political subordination to the tsarist government. In addition, the majority of the Yakut population was convinced of the unprofitability of violating peaceful ties with Russian fishermen and traders. With all the “untruths” perpetrated by the fishermen to local residents in the fisheries, the predatory nature of the exchange the activity of fishing colonization was the main incentive for the inclusion of the main part of Yakutia into Russia.
Soviet researchers have established that Russian fishermen were the first to penetrate the Lena, and subsequently, within Eastern Siberia, they, as a rule, outnumbered the detachments of servicemen. The inclusion of the Evenks, Evens, and Yukaghirs into Russia and the imposition of yasak taxes on them in the royal treasury dragged on until the middle of the 17th century. Some geographical discoveries of Russian explorers date back to this time. Thus, the Cossacks, led by I. Rebrov and I. Perfilyev, in 1633 went along the Lena to the Arctic Ocean. On the sea moats built in Yakutsk, they reached the mouth of the river by sea. Yana, and then the mouth of the Indigirka. Almost simultaneously, another group of Cossacks under the leadership of S. Kharitonov and P. Ivanov, setting off from Yakutsk, opened a land road to the upper reaches of the Yana and Indigirka. Commercial development of this area began, Russian winter huts appeared (Verkhoyanskoye, Nizhneyanskoye, Podshiverskoye, Olubenskoye, Uyandinskoye).
Especially great importance In the geographical discoveries of the northeastern part of Asia, he had a sea voyage that began in 1648 under the leadership of S. Dezhnev and F. Popov, in which up to 90 people of traders and fishermen took part. From Yakutsk the expedition reached the mouth of the Lena, went out to sea and headed east. For the first time, the sea roach of Russian sailors rounded the northeastern tip of the continent, opened the strait between the continents of Asia and America, passed through this strait from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and reached the mouth of the river. Anadyr. In 1650 on the river. Anadyr by land from the banks of the river. A group of Cossacks with Stadukhin and Motora passed through Kolyma.
The advance from Lena to the east to the Okhotsk coast began in the 30s. XVII century, when the Tomsk Cossacks with D. Kopylov founded the Butal winter quarters on Aldan. A group of Cossacks, headed by I. Moskvitin, sent from the Butal winter quarters, following the rivers Aldan, Mae and Yudoma, reached a mountain range, crossed the mountains and along the river. Houllier reached the coast, where in the early 40s. Kosoy fort was built (which served as the beginning of the future Okhotsk).
Due to natural and climatic conditions, Russian development of Eastern Siberia was predominantly of a commercial nature. At the same time, Russian settlers identified areas in which arable farming was possible. In the 40s XVII century The first arable lands appeared at the mouths of the Olekma and Vitim rivers and on the middle reaches of the Amga.
The annexation of the lands of the Buryat tribes was complicated by external circumstances. The Buryat nobility placed certain groups of Evenks and the Turkic-speaking population of the right bank of the Yenisei in a dependent position, collected tribute from them and therefore opposed their inclusion in the tribute payers of Russia. At the same time, the Buryats themselves were subjected to frequent raids by Mongolian (especially Oi-Rat) feudal lords; they were interested in protecting themselves from the ruinous invasions of their southern neighbors with the help of Russian military detachments. The interest of the Buryat population in trade relations also pushed for good neighborly relations with the Russians.
The first Russian settlements in this region appeared in the early 30s. - Ilimsky and Bratsk forts. Under the protection of the Ilimsk fort in the middle of the 17th century. More than 120 families of Russian farmers lived there. In the 40s Yasak collectors began to appear among the Buryats living near Lake Baikal. At the confluence of the Irkut and the Angara on the island. The clerk established the Irkutsk yasak winter hut in 1652, and in 1661, opposite this winter hut on the banks of the Angara, the Irkutsk fort was built, which became the administrative center of the Irkutsk district and an important trading point in Eastern Siberia.
In the middle of the 18th century. The first fortified winter huts, founded by Russian fishing gangs, appeared in Transbaikalia. Some of them later became forts and administrative centers (Nerchinsky, Udnnsky, Selenginsky, etc.). Gradually, a network of fortified villages emerged, which ensured the safety of Transbaikalia from external invasions and contributed to the economic development of this area by Russian settlers (including farmers).
The first information about the Amur region arrived in Yakutsk in the early 40s. XVII century from the Russian fisherman S. Averkiev Kosoy, who reached the mouth of the Argun. In 1643, an expedition by V. Poyarkov was formed in Yakutsk, whose participants for three years walked along the rivers Aldan, Uchur, Gonoy, made a portage to the Amur water system, and descended the river. Bryande and Zeya to the Amur, then moved on ships down the Amur to its mouth. Having set out to sea, V. Poyarkov’s expedition moved north along the coast and reached the mouth of the river. Hives. From here, along the path laid earlier by a group of Cossacks, I. Moskvitina returned to Yakutsk. This campaign of V. Poyarkov, unparalleled in difficulty and the distance of the unknown path, gave a lot of information about the Amur, about the inhabitants who inhabited its banks, and their jams, but it has not yet led to the annexation of the Amur region.
More successful in this regard was the campaign organized in 1649 by the Ustyug merchant E.P. Khabarov-Svyatitsky. Khabarov's campaign was supported by the Yakut governor Frantsbekov. Participants in the campaign (over 70 people) joined Khabarov at their own request. The leader of the campaign received an official “order” from the Yakut governor, that is, he could act as a representative of government authorities. From Yakutsk the expedition set off along the river. Lena to its tributary Olekma, then up the Olekma to the portages into the Amur basin. During 1650-1653. The participants of the campaign were on the Amur. The Middle Amur was inhabited by Tungus-speaking Evenks, Dyuchers and Mongol-speaking Daurs. The Evenks were engaged in nomadic cattle breeding and fishing, and the Daurs and Duchers were familiar with arable farming. The Daurs and their neighboring Duchers began the process of establishing a class society; they had fortified towns ruled by their “princes.”
The natural resources of the Amur region (fur-bearing animals, fish) and the climate favorable for arable farming attracted settlers from the Yenisei, Krasnoyarsk, Ilimsk and Yakutsk districts. According to V.A. Aleksandrov, throughout the 50s. XVII century “At least one and a half thousand people went to the Amur. Quite a few “free, willing people” took part in E. Khabarov’s campaign itself.”4 Fearing the depopulation of the areas from which settlers (fishermen and peasants) were leaving, the Siberian administration set up a settlement at the mouth of the river. Olekma outpost. Unable to prevent the process of spontaneous settlement of the Amur region, the tsarist government decided to establish its own administration here, designating the Nerchnsky fort (founded in 1652) as the administrative center in 1658.
Ruled in the 17th century. in China, the Manchu Qing dynasty from time to time subjected the settlements of Daurs and Duchers on the Amur to predatory raids, although the territory they occupied lay outside the boundaries of the empire. In annexing the Amur region to Russia, the Qing dynasty saw a threat to the rapprochement of the borders of Manchuria with Russia and therefore decided to prevent Russian development of this area. In 1652, Manchu troops invaded the Amur and for almost six years waged military operations against small Russian troops. At the end of the 50s. The Manchus began to forcibly resettle the Daurs and Duchers into the Sungari basin, destroying their towns and agriculture. By the beginning of the 60s. Manchu troops went into the empire.
The Russian population resumed the development of the deserted Amur lands from Nerchinsk to the mouth of the river. Zei. The center of Russian settlements on the Amur became the Albazinsky fort, built in 1665 on the site of the former town of the Daurian prince Albazy. The population of Albazin - Cossacks and peasants - was made up of free migrants. The exiles made up an extremely small part. The first residents and builders of Russian Albazin were fugitives from the Ilimsk district, participants in the popular unrest against the governor, who came to the Amur with N. Chernigovsky. Here the newcomers declared themselves Albazin servicemen, established an elected government, elected N. Chernigovsky as Albazin's clerk, and began collecting yasak payments from the local population, sending furs through Nerchinsk to the royal treasury in Moscow.
Since the late 70s and especially in the 80s. The situation of the Russians in Transbaikalia and the Amur region again became complicated. The Manchu Qing dynasty provoked protests by Mongol feudal lords and Tungus princes against Russia. Intense military operations unfolded near Albazin and the Selenginsky fort. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed in 1689, marked the beginning of establishing a border line between the two states.
The Buryat and Tungus population acted together with the Russians in defense of their lands against the Manchu troops. Separate groups of Mongols, together with the Taishi, recognized Russian citizenship and migrated to Russia.
Conclusion
Ermak's campaign played a big role in the development and conquest of Siberia. This was the first significant step to begin the development of new lands.
The conquest of Siberia is a very important step in the development of the Russian state, which more than doubled its territory. Siberia, with its fishing and fur trades, as well as gold and silver reserves, significantly enriched the state treasury.
List of used literature
1. G.F. Miller "History of Siberia"
2. M.V. Shunkov “History of Siberia” in 5 volumes. Tomsk, TSU 1987
Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation
Kursk State Technical University
Department of History
Abstract on the topic:
"Conquest of Siberia"
Completed by: senior group ES-61
Zatey N.O.
Checked by: K.I.N., Associate Professor of the Department of History
Goryushkina N.E.
K U R S K 2 0 0 6
1. Introduction............................................... ........................................................ .3
2. Conquest of Siberia.................................................. .....................................4
2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance.................................................4
2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state....................................10
2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia………………………………….20
Conclusion................................................. ...................................................28
List of used literature
Introduction
Relevance of the topic: The conquest and annexation of new territories strengthen the state with the influx of a new mass of taxes, minerals, as well as the influx of new knowledge received from the conquered peoples. New lands provide new prospects for the development of the country, in particular: new access to the seas and oceans, borders with new states, making it possible to increase the volume of trade.
Goal of the work: Study in depth the conquest and annexation of Siberia to the Russian state.
Tasks:
Study Ermak's campaign;
Study the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state;
Find out which nationalities were conquered;
Historiography overview: Free Russian colonists were pioneers in the development of new lands. Ahead of the government, they settled in the “wild field” in the Lower Volga region, on the Terek, on Yalik and on the Don. The campaign of Ermak's Cossacks to Siberia was a direct continuation of this popular movement.
Ermak's Cossacks took the first step. Following them, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to the East. In the fight against harsh nature, they conquered land from the taiga, founded settlements and established centers of agricultural culture.
Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. His oppression was experienced equally by both local tribes and Russian settlers. The rapprochement of the Russian working people and Siberian tribes was conducive to the development of productive forces and overcoming the centuries-old disunity of the Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.
2. Conquest of Siberia
2.1 Ermak’s campaign and its historical significance
Long before the Russian development of Siberia, its population had connections with the Russian people. The first to begin their acquaintance with the Trans-Urals and Western Siberia were the Novgorodians, who already in the 11th century tried to master the Pechora route beyond Kamen (Ural). Russian people were attracted to Siberia by the rich fur and sea trades and the opportunities for barter with local residents. Following the sailors and explorers, Novgorod squads began to periodically appear in the northwestern reaches of Siberia, collecting tribute from the local population. The Novgorod nobility has long officially included the Yugra land in the Trans-Urals as part of the possessions of Veliky Novgorod24. In the 13th century The Rostov princes stood in the way of the Novgorodians, who founded in 1218 at the mouth of the river. Ugra, the city of Ustyug, and then the initiative for development passed to the Moscow Principality.
Taking control of the “volosts” of Veliky Novgorod, the government of Ivan III three times sent detachments of military men beyond the Urals. In 1465, voivode Vasily Skryaba went to Ugra and collected tribute in favor of the Grand Duke of Moscow. In 1483, governors Fyodor Kurbsky and Ivan Travnin with military men “walked up the Kama tributary of the Vishera River, crossed the Ural Mountains, scattered the troops of the Pelym prince Yumshan and moved “down the Tavda River past Tyumen into the Siberian land”25. Bypassing possession of the Tyumen Khan Ibak, the detachment moved from Tavda to Tobol, Irtysh and Ob. There, Russian warriors “made war” on Ugra, capturing several Ugric princes.
This campaign, which lasted several months, had important consequences. In the spring of the following year, an embassy “from all the lands of Koda and Ugra” arrived in Moscow, delivered gifts to Ivan III and a request to release the prisoners. The ambassadors recognized themselves as vassals of the Russian sovereign and pledged to annually supply his treasury with tribute from the population of the areas under their control.
However, the established tributary relations of a number of Ugric lands with Russia turned out to be fragile. At the end of the 15th century. The government of Ivan III undertook a new campaign to the east. More than 4 thousand warriors under the leadership of Moscow governors Semyon Kurbsky, Pyotr Ushaty and Vasily Zabolotsky set out in the winter of 1499. Until March 1500, 40 towns were occupied and 58 princes were captured. As a result, the Yugra land was subjugated, and the collection of tribute began to be carried out systematically. The delivery of furs was the responsibility of the “princes” of the Ugric and Samoyed associations. From the middle of the 16th century. Special government collectors “tribute workers” began to be sent to the Ugra land, who delivered the tribute collected by the local nobility to Moscow.
At the same time, Russian commercial development of Western Siberia was underway. This was facilitated by the peasant colonization of the northern regions of Russia, the Pechora, Vychegda, and Urals basins. From the 16th century Trade relations between Russians and residents of the Trans-Ural region are also developing more intensively. Russian fishermen and trading people are increasingly appearing beyond the Urals, using the fishing villages of North-Eastern Pomerania (Pustozersky fort, Ust-Tsilemskaya Sloboda, Rogovoy Gorodok, etc.) as transshipment bases. Villages of industrial people also appeared in the Trans-Urals. These were temporary fishing winter huts, on the site of which the Russian forts Berezovsky, Obdorsky and others later appeared. In turn, the Ugrians and Samoyeds began to come to exchange goods in the Pustozersky fort and Rogovoy Gorodok.
Close communication with the inhabitants of Northwestern Siberia led to the fact that Russian fishermen borrowed hunting and fishing techniques from them and began to use deer and dogs for riding. Many of them, living for a long time in Siberia, knew how to speak the Ugric and Samoyed languages. The Siberian population, in turn, using iron products brought by the Russians (knives, axes, arrowheads, etc.), improved the techniques of hunting, fishing and sea fishing.
In the 16th century The Siberian Khanate, which arose on the ruins of the Tyumen “kingdom,” became Ugra’s southern neighbor. After the capture of Kazan by the troops of Ivan IV in 1552 and the annexation of the peoples of the Volga and Ural regions to Russia, favorable conditions arose for the establishment of permanent ties with the Siberian Khanate. The ruling Taibugins (representatives of a new local dynasty), the brothers Ediger and Bekbulat, frightened by the events in Kazan and pressed from the south by Genghisid Kuchum, the son of the Bukhara ruler Murtaza, who laid claim to the Siberian throne, decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Russian government. In January 1555, their ambassadors arrived in Moscow and asked Ivan IV to “take the whole Siberian land in his name, and stand up for everyone, and put his tribute on them, and send his man (“the road”) for its collection
From now on, Ivan IV added to his titles the title of “ruler of all Siberian lands.” The ambassadors of Ediger and Bekbulat, while in Moscow, promised to pay “to the sovereign for every black man a sable, and for the sovereign’s road a squirrel per person for a Siberian one. Later, the size of the tribute was finally determined at 1,000 sables.
The tsar's envoy, the boyar's son Dmitry Nepeytsin, went to the capital of the Siberian Khanate, located on the Irtysh not far from modern Tobolsk, where he swore an oath of allegiance to the Russian tsar of the Siberian rulers, but could neither rewrite the “black” population of the kingdom, nor collect a full tribute. Vassal relations between the Siberian Khanate and Russia turned out to be fragile. In the conditions of constantly growing strife between the Tatar uluses and the growing discontent of the “black people” and the conquered Ugric and Bashkir tribes, the position of the Siberian rulers was unstable. Kuchum took advantage of this, who in 1563 defeated their troops, seized power in the Siberian Khanate and ordered the death of Ediger and Bekbulat, who were captured.
Kuchum was hostile towards Russia from the very beginning. But the change of dynasty in the Siberian “kingdom” was accompanied by turmoil. For several years, Kuchum had to fight the rebellious nobility and the tribal princelings, seeking obedience from them. Under these conditions, he did not dare to break off diplomatic relations with the Moscow government. In 1571, in order to lull the vigilance of the Russian Tsar, he even sent his ambassador and a tribute of 10,000 sables to Moscow.
The arrival of Kuchum's ambassadors came at a difficult time for Moscow. In 1571, it was attacked and burned by troops of the Crimean Khan Devletgirey. Rumors began to spread among residents of the capital about Russia's failures in the Livonian War. When the ambassadors informed Kuchum about their observations made in Moscow, he openly decided to put an end to Russian influence in the Trans-Urals. In 1573, the tsar's ambassador Tretyak Chubukov and all the Tatar servicemen accompanying him were killed at his headquarters, and in the summer of the same year, Kuchum's armed detachments, led by his nephew Mametkul, crossed the Kamen to the river. Chusovaya and devastated the area. From that time on, raids into the Kama region began to be carried out systematically, and Russian settlements in it were thoroughly destroyed. Kuchum also did not spare anyone who was oriented towards an alliance with Russia: he killed, took captives, and imposed a heavy tribute on the peoples of all the vast possessions of the Khanty and Mansi of the Ob and Ural, Bashkir tribes, Tatar tribes of the Trans-Urals and Barabinsk steppe.
In this situation, the government of Ivan IV took some countermeasures. In 1574, it sent a letter of grant to the large patrimonial owners, the Stroganovs, who were developing the Perm region, which assigned them lands on the eastern slopes of the Urals along the river. Tobol and its tributaries. The Stroganovs were allowed to hire a thousand Cossacks with arquebuses and build fortresses in the Trans-Urals on the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob.
The Stroganovs, using the right given to them by the government, formed a mercenary detachment, the command of which was taken over by Ataman Ermak Timofeevich. Information about who Ermak was by origin is scanty and contradictory. Some sources call him a Don Cossack, who came with his detachment to the Urals from the Volga. Others are a native inhabitant of the Urals, a townsman Vasily Timofeevich Olenin. Still others consider him a native of the northern volosts of the Vologda district. All this information, which is based on oral folk tradition, reflected the desire of the inhabitants of various Russian lands to consider Ermak the national hero as their fellow countryman. The only reliable fact is that Ermak, before his campaign beyond the Urals, served for 20 years in Cossack villages in the “wild field,” guarding the borders of Russia.
On September 1, 1581, the 31st squad of Ermak, consisting of 540 Volga Cossacks, set out on a campaign and, having ascended the river. Chusovoy and having crossed the Ural ridge, began its advance to the east. They sailed on light plows along the Siberian rivers Tagil, Tura, and Tobol in the direction of the capital of the Siberian Khanate, Kashlyk. Siberian chronicles record several major battles with Kuchum’s troops, which Ermak’s squad took on along the route. Among them was the battle on the banks of the Tobol near the Babasan yurts (30 versts below the mouth of the Tavda), where one of the experienced military leaders Kuchum Mametkul tried to detain the squad. Not far from the mouth of the Tavda, the squad had to fight with the detachments of the Murza of Karachi.
Having fortified himself in the town of Karachi, Ermak sent a group of Cossacks led by Ivan Koltso to the Stroganovs for ammunition, food and servicemen. In winter, the Cossacks reached the estates of Maxim Stroganov on sledges and skis, and in the summer. 1582 they returned back with reinforcements of 300 service people. In September of this year, Ermak’s replenished squad moved into the depths of Siberia. Having reached the confluence of the Tobol and the Irtysh, the detachment began to climb up the Irtysh.
The decisive battle took place on the 20th of October on the approaches to the capital at the so-called Chuvash Cape. Kuchum hoped to stop the Cossacks by making a fence on the cape of fallen trees, which was supposed to protect his soldiers from Russian bullets. Sources also report that 1 or 2 cannons were installed on the cape, brought to Kashlyk from the Kazan Khanate (before it was occupied by the Russians).
But many years of wars with the Tatars and Turks, which hardened the Cossacks, taught them to discern enemy tactics and take full advantage of their weapons. In this battle, Mametkul was wounded and barely escaped capture. The servants managed to transport him to the other side of the Irtysh. Panic began in Kuchum's army. According to legend, the vassal Khanty and Mansi princes left their positions after the first volleys and thereby made it easier for the Cossacks to win.
Kuchum watched the battle from the mountain. As soon as the Russians began to prevail, he, his family and the Murzas, seizing the most valuable property and livestock, fled to the steppe, abandoning their headquarters to the mercy of fate.
The local tribes, conquered by Kuchum, treated the Cossacks very peacefully. The princes and Murzas hastened to come to Ermak with gifts and declared their desire to accept Russian citizenship. In Kashlyk, the Cossacks found rich booty, especially furs, collected into the khan's treasury for many years. Ermak, following the laws of free Cossacks, ordered the booty to be divided equally among everyone.
In December 1582, Ermak sent messengers to Rus' led by Ivan Koltso with a report on the capture of the Siberian Khanate. He himself, having settled down for the winter in Kashlyk, continued to repel the raids of Kuchum’s troops. In the spring of 1583, Mametkul's headquarters on the banks of the Vagai was defeated. Mametkul himself was captured. This significantly weakened Kuchum's forces. In addition, from the south, from Bukhara, a descendant of the Taibugins, the son of Bekbulat Sepdyak (Seyid Khan), who at one time managed to escape reprisal, returned and began to threaten Kuchum. Anticipating new strife, the nobility began to hastily leave the Khanek's court. Even one of his most loyal confidants, Murza Karami, “left” Kuchum. Having captured nomadic camps along the river. Omi, he entered into single combat with Ermak, seeking the return of the ulus near Kashlyk.
In March 1584, Karachi lured a detachment of Cossacks from Kashlyk, led by Ermak’s faithful associate Ivan Koltso, who had returned from Moscow, and destroyed it. Until the summer, the Tatars, having besieged Kashlyk, kept Ermak’s detachment in a ring, depriving him of the opportunity to replenish his meager food supplies. But Ermak, waiting for the moment, organized a sortie from the besieged town one night and defeated the Karachi headquarters with a sudden blow. Two of his sons were killed in the battle, but he himself and a small detachment managed to escape.
Kuchum's power was no longer recognized by some local tribes and their princelings. Back in the spring of 1583, Ermak sent 50 Cossacks led by Bogdan Bryazga along the Irtysh to the Ob and imposed tribute on a number of Tatar and Khanty volosts.
The forces of Ermak’s squad were reinforced in the summer of 1584. The government of Ivan IV, having received a report of the capture of Kashlyk, sent a detachment of 300 servicemen to Siberia, led by governor S. D. Bolkhovsky. This is a detachment in the winter of 1584/85. found himself in a difficult position. Lack of housing and food, severe Siberian frosts caused severe famine. Many archers died, and the governor Semyon Bolkhovsky also died.
Kuchum, who wandered with his ulus in the steppes, gathered forces, demanding help from the Tatar Murzas in the fight against the Russians with threats and flattery. In an effort to lure Ermak out of Kashlyk, he spread a rumor about the delay of a Bukharan trade caravan heading to Kashlyk. Ermak decided to take another campaign against Kuchum. This was Ermak's last campaign. With a detachment of 150 people, Ermak left on plows in July
1585 from Kashlyk and moved up the Irtysh. During an overnight stay on the Irtysh island, not far from the mouth of the river. While Vagay, the detachment was unexpectedly attacked by Kuchum. Many Cossacks were killed, and Ermak, wounded in hand-to-hand combat with the Tatars, while covering the detachment’s retreat, managed to make his way to the shore. But the plow, onto the edge of which he unsuccessfully jumped, overturned, and, dressed in heavy armor, Ermak drowned. This happened on the night of August 5-6, 1585.
Having learned about the death of their leader, the archers, led by Ivan Glukhov, left Kashlyk for the European part of the country along the Pechora route - through the Irtysh, Ob, and Northern Urals. Some of the Cossacks with Matvey Meshcheryak, together with a small detachment sent from Moscow by I. Mansurov, remained in Siberia and laid down at the mouth of the river. Irtysh, the first Russian fortification is the Ob town.
The campaign of Ermak's Cossack squad created favorable conditions for the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state, for the subsequent widespread economic development of it by the Russian population. The reign of the Chin-Ghisids in the Siberian Khanate was put to an end. Many uluses of the West Siberian Tatars had already come under the protection of Russia. Russia included the Bashkirs, Mansi, and Khanty, who had previously been subject to Kuchum, who lived in the basins of the Tura, Tavda, Tobol, and Irtysh rivers, and the left bank part of the Lower Ob region (Ugra land) was finally assigned to Russia.
Following Ermak's Cossacks, peasants, industrialists, trappers, and service people moved to Siberia, and intensive commercial and agricultural development of the region began.
The tsarist government used Ermak's campaign to extend its power to Siberia. “The last Mongol king Kuchum, according to K-Marx, was defeated by Ermak” and with this “the foundation of Asian Russia was laid.” Tsarism brought oppression to the indigenous population of Siberia. Russian settlers equally experienced his oppression. But the rapprochement of the working Russian people and local tribes was conducive to the development of production forces, overcoming the centuries-old disunity of Siberian peoples, embodying the future of Siberia.
The people glorified Ermak in their songs and stories, paying tribute to his courage, devotion to his comrades, and military valor. For more than three years his squad did not know defeat; neither hunger nor severe frosts broke the will of the Cossacks. It was Ermak’s campaign that prepared the annexation of Siberia to Russia.
Archive of Marx and Engels. 1946, vol. VIII, p. 166.
2.2 Annexation of Siberia to the Russian state
The question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state and the significance of this process for the local and Russian population has long attracted the attention of researchers. Back in the middle of the 18th century, historian-academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gerard Friedrich Miller, one of the participants in a ten-year scientific expedition in the Siberian region, having become acquainted with the archives of many Siberian cities, expressed the idea that Siberia was conquered by Russian weapons.
The position put forward by G. F. Miller about the aggressive nature of the inclusion of the region into Russia was quite firmly entrenched in noble and bourgeois historical science. They only argued about who was the initiator of this conquest. Some researchers assigned an active role to the activities of the government, others argued that the conquest was carried out by private entrepreneurs, the Stroganovs, and others believed that Siberia was conquered by the free Cossack squad of Ermak. There were also supporters of various combinations of the above options.
Miller's interpretation of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia into Russia also passed into the works of Soviet historians of the 20-30s. of our century.
Research by Soviet historians, careful reading of published documents and the identification of new archival sources made it possible to establish that, along with military expeditions and the deployment of small military detachments in Russian towns founded in the region, there were numerous facts of the peaceful advancement of Russian explorers and fishermen and the development of large areas of Siberia. A number of ethnic groups and nationalities (Ugrians-Khanty of the Lower Ob region, Tomsk Tatars, chat groups of the Middle Ob region, etc.) voluntarily became part of the Russian state.
Thus, it turned out that the term “conquest” does not reflect the entire essence of the phenomena that took place in the region during this initial period. Historians (primarily V.I. Shunkov) proposed a new term “annexation”, the content of which includes the facts of the conquest of individual regions, the peaceful development by Russian settlers of the sparsely populated valleys of the Siberian taiga rivers, and the facts of the voluntary acceptance of Russian citizenship by some ethnic groups.
The question of what joining the Russian state brought to the peoples of Siberia was resolved in different ways. Noble historiography, with its inherent apologetics for tsarism, sought to embellish government activities. G. F. Miller argued that the tsarist government, in managing the annexed territory, practiced “quietness,” “affectionate persuasion,” “friendly treats and gifts,” and showed “severity” and “cruelty” only in cases where “affection” didn't work. Such “affectionate” management, according to G. F. Miller, allowed the Russian government in Siberia to “do a lot of useful things” with “considerable benefit to the country there.” This is Miller's statement various options for a long time it was firmly established in the pre-revolutionary historiography of Siberia and even among individual historians of the Soviet period.
The noble revolutionary of the late 18th century viewed the question of the significance of the inclusion of Siberia in Russia for the indigenous Siberian population in a different way. A. N. Radishchev. He gave a sharply negative characterization of the actions of tsarist officials, merchants, moneylenders and the Orthodox clergy in Siberia, emphasizing that they were all “greedy”, “self-seeking”, shamelessly robbing the local working population, robbing them of their furs, driving them into impoverishment.
Radishchev's assessment found support and further development in the works of AP. Shchapov and S.S. Shashkov. A.P. Shchapov in his writings passionately denounced government policy towards Siberia in general and its peoples in particular, while he emphasized the positive impact of economic and cultural communication between Russian peasants and artisans with Siberian peoples.
The negative assessment of the results of the activities of the tsarist administration in Siberia, put forward by A. N. Radishchev, was shared by Shchapov’s contemporary SS. Shashkov. Using specific materials from Siberian life, showing the oppressed position of the working non-Russian population of the region to expose contemporary social reality, democrat and educator S.S. Shashkov in his journalistic articles came to the conclusion about the generally negative significance of the inclusion of Siberia into the Russian state. Unlike Shchapov, S.S. Shashkov did not consider the issue of the activities of the working Russian population in developing the productive forces of the region and the influence of this activity on the economy and social development of local Siberian residents.
This one-sidedness of S.S. Shashkov in resolving the issue of the significance of the region’s entry into Russia was adopted and further developed by representatives of Siberian regionalism with their opposition of Siberia and the Siberian population of Russia to the entire Russian population of the country.
S.S. Shashkov’s negative assessment was also received by the bourgeois-nationalistic part of the intelligentsia of the Siberian peoples, who contrasted the interests of the local indigenous population with the interests of the Russian inhabitants of the region and condemned the very fact of Siberia’s annexation to Russia.
Soviet researchers, who had mastered the Marxist-Leninist materialist understanding of the history of society, had to, based on the source base, decide the question of the nature of the inclusion of Siberia in the
of the Russian state and determine the significance of this process both for the non-Russian population of the region and its Russian settlers, and for the development of the country as a whole.
Intensive research work in the post-war period (second half of the 40s - early 60s) culminated in the creation of a collective monograph “History of Siberia”, five volumes of which were published in 1968. The authors of the second volume of “History of Siberia” summed up the results of the previous study of the issue on the annexation of Siberia to the Russian state, showed the role of the masses in the development of the productive forces of the region, revealed “the significance of Russian colonization in general and agriculture in particular as the leading form of economy, which subsequently had a decisive influence on the economy and way of life of local indigenous peoples. This confirmed the thesis about the fruitful and largely peaceful nature of the Russian annexation and development of Siberia, about the progressiveness of its further development, conditioned by the joint life of the Russian and indigenous peoples.”
The annexation of the vast territory of the Siberian region to Russia was not a one-time act, but a long-term process, the beginning of which dates back to the end of the 16th century, when, after the defeat of the last Genghisid Kuchum on the Irtysh by the Cossack squad of Ermak, Russian resettlement in the Trans-Urals and development by alien peasants, fishermen, artisans, first of the forest belt of Western Siberia, then of Eastern Siberia, and with the onset of the 18th century, of Southern Siberia. The completion of this process occurred in the second half of the 18th century.
The annexation of Siberia to Russia was the result of the implementation of the policy of the tsarist government and the ruling class of feudal lords, aimed at seizing new territories and expanding the scope of feudal robbery. It also met the interests of the merchants. Cheap Siberian furs, valued on the Russian and international (European) markets, became a source of enrichment for him.
However, the leading role in the process of annexation and development of the region was played by Russian migrants, representatives of the working population, who came to the distant eastern region to work in the fields and settled in the Siberian taiga as farmers and artisans. The presence of free lands suitable for agriculture stimulated the process of their subsidence.
Economic, everyday, and cultural contacts were established between newcomers and local residents. The indigenous population of the Siberian taiga and forest-steppe for the most part had a positive attitude towards joining the Russian state.
The desire to get rid of the devastating raids of stronger southern nomad neighbors, the desire to avoid constant inter-tribal clashes and strife that damaged the economy of fishermen, hunters and cattle breeders, as well as the perceived need for economic ties encouraged local residents to unite with the Russian people as part of one state.
After the defeat of Kuchum by Ermak’s squad, government detachments arrived in Siberia (in 1585 under the command of Ivan Mansurov, in 1586 led by governors V. Sukin and I. Myasny), the construction of the Ob town on the banks of the Ob began, and in the lower reaches of the Tura the Russian fortress Tyumen, in 1587 on the banks of the Irtysh opposite the mouth of the Tobol-Tobolsk, on the waterway along the Vishera (a tributary of the Kama) to Lozva and Tlvda-Lozvinsky (1590) and Pelymsky (1593) towns. At the end of the 16th century. in the Lower Ob region the city of Berezov was built (1593), which became the Russian administrative center on the Yugra land.
To consolidate the lands of Prnobya above the mouth of the Irtysh into Russia, a small group of servicemen with governors F. Baryatinsky and Vl. was sent from Moscow in February 1594. Anichkov. Having arrived in Lozva by sleigh, the detachment in the spring moved by water to the town of Ob. From Berezov, Berezovsky servicemen and the Khanty codekke with their prince Igichey Alachev were sent to join the arriving detachment. The detachment moved up the Ob River to the Bardakov “principality”. The Khanty prince Bardak voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship and assisted in the construction of a Russian fortress, erected in the center of the territory under his control on the right bank of the Ob River at the confluence of the Surgutka River. The new city began to be called Surgut. All Khanty villages subject to Bardak became part of the Surgut district. Surgut became a stronghold of tsarist power in this region of the Middle Ob region, a springboard for an attack on the Selkup union of tribes, known as the Piebald Horde. The need to bring the Piebald Horde under Russian citizenship was dictated not only by the desire of the tsarist government to expand the number of yasak payers in the Ob region. Representatives of the Selkup nobility, led by the military leader Voneya, at this time had close contacts with the rank-gisnd Kuchum, expelled from Kashlyk, who in 1596 “nomadic” to the Piebald Horde and was going to raid the Surgut district in 1597.
To strengthen the Surgut garrison, servicemen from the Ob town were included in its composition, which ceased to exist as a fortified village. Negotiations undertaken with Vonya did not lead to positive results for the royal governors. To prevent Vony’s military uprising on the side of Kuchum, Surgut servicemen, on the instructions of the governor, built a Russian fortification in the center of the Piebald Horde - the Narymsky fort (1597 or 1593).
Then the advance began to the east along the right tributary of the Ob River. Keti, where Surgut servicemen set up the Ket fort (presumably in 1602). On the portage from Ket to the Yenisei basin in 1618, a small Makovsky fort was built.
Within the southern part of the taiga and in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia in the 90s. XVI century The fight against the remnants of Kuchum's horde continued. Expelled by Ermak's Cossacks from Kashlyk, Kuchum and his supporters wandered between the Ishim and Irtysh rivers, raiding Tatar and Bashkir uluses that recognized the power of the Russian Tsar, and invading the Tyumen and Tobolsk districts.
To prevent the ruinous invasions of Kuchum and his supporters, it was decided to build a new Russian fortress on the banks of the Irtysh. A significant number of local residents were attracted to this construction: Tatars, Bashkirs, Khanty. The construction work was headed by Andrey Yeletsky. In the summer of 1594, on the banks of the Irtysh near the confluence of the river. The Tara city appeared, under the protection of which the inhabitants of the Irtysh region had the opportunity to get rid of the domination of the descendants of the Genghisids of Kuchum. The service people of Tara performed military guard duty in the border region with the steppe, struck back at Kuchum and his supporters - the Nogai Murzas and Kalmyk taishas, expanding the territory subject to the Russian Tsar.
Following the instructions of the government, the Tara governors tried to start negotiations with Kuchum. In 1597, he was sent a royal letter calling on him to stop the fight with Russia and accept Russian citizenship. The Tsar promised to assign nomads along the Irtysh to Kuchum. But it soon became known that Kuchum was preparing for a raid on the Tara district and was negotiating military assistance with the Nogai Horde and the Bukhara Khanate.
By order from Moscow, preparations began for a military campaign. The detachment staffed in Tara by Andrei Voeikov consisted of Russian servicemen and Tatars from Tobolsk, Tyumen and Tara. In August 1598, after a series of small battles with Kuchum’s supporters and people dependent on him in the Baraba region, A. Voeikov’s detachment suddenly attacked the main camp of the Kuchum Tatars, located in a meadow near the mouth of the Irmen River, the left tributary of the Ob. The Chat Tatars and White Kalmyks (Teleuts) who lived next door in the Ob region did not have time to help Kuchum. His headquarters was destroyed, members of the khan's family were captured. In the battle, many representatives of the nobility, relatives of the khan, and over 150 ordinary Tatar warriors were killed; in Kuchum itself, with a small group of his supporters, they managed to escape. Soon Kuchum died in the southern steppes.
The defeat of Kuchum on the Ob was of great political significance. Residents of the forest-steppe zone of Western Siberia saw in the Russian state a force capable of protecting them from the devastating invasions of the nomads of Southern Siberia, from the raids of Kalmyk, Uzbek, Nogai, and Kazakh military leaders. The Chat Tatars were in a hurry to declare their desire to accept Russian citizenship and explained that they could not do this before because they were afraid of Kuchum. The Baraba and Terenin Tatars, who had previously paid tribute to Kuchum, accepted Russian citizenship. The Tatar uluses of Baraba and the river basin were assigned to the Tatar district. Omn.
At the beginning of the 17th century. The prince of the Tomsk Tatars (Eushtin-tsev) Toyan came to Moscow with a request to the government of Boris Godunov to take the villages of the Tomsk Tatars under the protection of the Russian state and “establish” a Russian city on their land. Toyan pledged to help the royal administration of the new city in levying yasak on the Turkic-speaking groups neighboring the Tomsk Tatars. In January 1604, a decision was made in Moscow to build a fortification on the land of the Tomsk Tatars. Sent from Moscow, Toyan arrived in Surgut. The Surgut governors, having sworn in Toyan (sherti), sent several servicemen with him as accompanying people to the Tomsk land to select the site for the construction of the future city. In March, in Surgut, a detachment of builders was being recruited under the command of the assistant to the Surgut governor G.I. Pisemsky and the Tobolsk boyar's son V.F. Tyrkov. In addition to Surgut servicemen and carpenters, it included servicemen who arrived from Tyumen and Tobolsk, Pelym archers, Tobolsk and Tyumen Tatars and Koda Khanty. In the spring of 1604, after the ice drift, the detachment set off from Surgut on boats and planks up the Obn to the mouth of the Tom and further up the Tom to the lands of the Tomsk Tatars. During the summer of 1604, a Russian city was built on the right bank of the Tom. At the beginning of the 17th century. Tomsk city was the easternmost city in Russia. The adjacent region of the lower reaches of the Tom, Middle Ob and Prnchulymya became part of the Tomsk district.
Collecting yasak from the Turkic-speaking population of Pritomya, Tomsk servicemen in 1618 founded a new Russian settlement in the upper reaches of the Tom - Kuznetsk fort, which became in the 20s. XVII century administrative center of Kuznetsk district. At the same time, in the basin of the right tributary of the Ob-Chulym, small forts were erected - Melessky and Achinsky. In them, depending on the weather, there were Cossacks and archers from Tomsk, who performed military guard duty and protected the yurts of local residents from incursions by detachments of Kyrgyz princes and Mongolian Altyn Khans.
Growing contacts of the annexed part of the Ob region with the center and north of the country already at the end of the 16th century. the issue of improving communication routes was urgently raised. The official route to Siberia from the Kama region through the town of Lozvinsky was long and difficult. In the second half of the 90s. XVI century Solvychegodsk townsman Artemy Sofinov-Babinov took a contract from the government to build a road from Solikamsk to Tyumen. From Solikamsk it went through mountain passes to the upper reaches of the river. Tours. In 1598, the Verkhoturye town was established here, in the construction of which carpenters, peasants, and archers who were transferred here from Lozva participated.
Verkhoturye on the Babinovskaya road throughout the 17th century. played the role of the “main gate to Siberia”, through which all connections between Moscow and the Trans-Urals were carried out, and customs duties were collected on transported goods. From Verkhoturye the road ran along the river. Tours to Tyumen. In 1600, halfway between Verkhoturye and Tyumen, the Turin fort arose, where coachmen and peasants transferred from the European part of the state were settled to serve the needs of the Babinovskaya road.
By the beginning of the 17th century. Almost the entire territory of Western Siberia from the Gulf of Ob in the north to Tara and Tomsk in the south became an integral part of Russia.
2.3 Annexation of Eastern Siberia
Russian fishermen back in the 16th century. They hunted fur-bearing animals on the right bank of the lower Ob, in the basins of the Taza and Turukhana rivers, and gradually moved east to the Yenisei. They founded winter huts (which grew from temporary to permanent), and entered into exchange, production, household and even family relations with local residents.
The political inclusion of this tundra region into Russia began later than the settlement of Russian fishermen here - at the turn of the 16th - 17th centuries. with construction in 1601 on the bank of the river. Taza of the Mangazeya town, which became the administrative center of the Mangazeya district and the most important trade and transshipment point in northern Asia, a place where fishermen flocked in preparation for the next hunting season. Until 1625, there was no permanent detachment of service people in Mangazeya. Military guard duty was performed by a small group of “year-olds” (30 people) sent from Tobolsk and Berezov. After creating a permanent garrison (100 people), the Mangazeya governors created several tribute winter huts, began sending fur collectors to the treasury on the banks of the Lower Yenisei, on its right-bank tributaries - Podkamennaya Tunguska and Lower Tunguska, and further to the Pyasina and Khatanga basins.
As already noted, the penetration of Russians into the middle Yenisei proceeded along the right tributary of the Ob-Ket, which in the 17th century. became the main road from the Ob basin to the east. In 1619, the first Russian administrative center was built on the banks of the Yenisei - the Yenisei fort, which quickly grew into a significant transshipment point for fishermen and traders. The first Russian farmers appeared in the region adjacent to Yeniseisk.
The second fortified town on the Yenisei was the Krasnoyarsk fort, founded in 1628, which became the main stronghold of defense of the borders in the south of the Yenisei region. Throughout the 17th century. south of Krasnoyarsk there was a fierce struggle with the nomads, caused by the aggression of the Kyrgyz princes of the upper Yenisei, who relied in the first half of the century on the strong state of the Altyn Khans (which formed in Western Mongolia), and in the second half - on the Dzungar rulers, whose vassals they became. The princes considered the local Turkic-speaking groups of the upper Yenisei to be their kishtyms (dependent people, tributaries): the Tubnians, Yarintsev, Motortsy, Kamasintsy, etc.
Almost every year, the rulers of the Kyrgyz uluses besieged the Krasnoyarsk fortress, exterminated and captured the indigenous and Russian population, captured livestock and horses, and destroyed crops. Documents tell about repeated military campaigns against the steppe nomads of groups of Krasnoyarsk, Yenisei, Tomsk and Kuznetsk servicemen.
The situation changed only at the beginning of the 18th century, when, by order of the Dzungar contaisha Tsevan-Raptan, the forced resettlement of the Kyrgyz uluses and kishtyms of the nobility began to the main Dzungar nomads in Semirechye. The military leaders failed to completely transfer ordinary residents of the Kyrgyz uluses to new places. Local residents took refuge in the forests; some of those driven away fled while crossing the Sayan Mountains. For the most part, the population dependent on the Kyrgyz princes remained in their former habitats and was then included in Russia. The consolidation of the territory of the upper Yenisei ended with the construction of the Abakan (1707) and Sayan (1709) forts.
From Russian traders, the Mangazeya and Yenisei governors learned about the rich fur of the Lena Land. They began to send service people to the middle Lena, where the Yakuts lived, for yasak. Already in 1632, on the banks of the Lena, a small group of Yenisei Cossacks led by P. Beketov set up the Yakut fort, the first Russian village, which later became the center of the Yakut (Lena) voivodeship.
Some Yakut toyons and princelings of individual associations tried to fight yasak collectors, defending their right to exploit their relatives, but not all groups of Yakuts took part in this “struggle.” Intertribal strife, as well as the desire of some representatives of the Yakut nobility to take advantage of the help of service people , located on Leia, weakened the resistance of the Yakut groups to political subordination to the tsarist government. In addition, the majority of the Yakut population was convinced of the unprofitability of violating peaceful ties with Russian fishermen and traders. With all the “untruths” perpetrated by the fishermen to local residents in the fisheries, the predatory nature of the exchange the activity of fishing colonization was the main incentive for the inclusion of the main part of Yakutia into Russia.
Soviet researchers have established that Russian fishermen were the first to penetrate the Lena, and subsequently, within Eastern Siberia, they, as a rule, outnumbered the detachments of servicemen. The inclusion of the Evenks, Evens, and Yukaghirs into Russia and the imposition of yasak taxes on them in the royal treasury dragged on until the middle of the 17th century. Some geographical discoveries of Russian explorers date back to this time. Thus, the Cossacks, led by I. Rebrov and I. Perfilyev, in 1633 went along the Lena to the Arctic Ocean. On the sea moats built in Yakutsk, they reached the mouth of the river by sea. Yana, and then the mouth of the Indigirka. Almost simultaneously, another group of Cossacks under the leadership of S. Kharitonov and P. Ivanov, setting off from Yakutsk, opened a land road to the upper reaches of the Yana and Indigirka. Commercial development of this area began, Russian winter huts appeared (Verkhoyanskoye, Nizhneyanskoye, Podshiverskoye, Olubenskoye, Uyandinskoye).
Of particular importance in the geographical discoveries of the northeastern part of Asia was the sea voyage that began in 1648 under the leadership of S. Dezhnev and F. Popov, in which up to 90 people of traders and fishermen took part. From Yakutsk the expedition reached the mouth of the Lena, went out to sea and headed east. For the first time, the sea roach of Russian sailors rounded the northeastern tip of the continent, opened the strait between the continents of Asia and America, passed through this strait from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and reached the mouth of the river. Anadyr. In 1650 on the river. Anadyr by land from the banks of the river. A group of Cossacks with Stadukhin and Motora passed through Kolyma.
The advance from Lena to the east to the Okhotsk coast began in the 30s. XVII century, when the Tomsk Cossacks with D. Kopylov founded the Butal winter quarters on Aldan. A group of Cossacks, headed by I. Moskvitin, sent from the Butal winter quarters, following the rivers Aldan, Mae and Yudoma, reached a mountain range, crossed the mountains and along the river. Houllier reached the coast, where in the early 40s. Kosoy fort was built (which served as the beginning of the future Okhotsk).
Due to natural and climatic conditions, Russian development of Eastern Siberia was predominantly of a commercial nature. At the same time, Russian settlers identified areas in which arable farming was possible. In the 40s XVII century The first arable lands appeared at the mouths of the Olekma and Vitim rivers and on the middle reaches of the Amga.
The annexation of the lands of the Buryat tribes was complicated by external circumstances. The Buryat nobility placed certain groups of Evenks and the Turkic-speaking population of the right bank of the Yenisei in a dependent position, collected tribute from them and therefore opposed their inclusion in the tribute payers of Russia. At the same time, the Buryats themselves were subjected to frequent raids by Mongolian (especially Oi-Rat) feudal lords; they were interested in protecting themselves from the ruinous invasions of their southern neighbors with the help of Russian military detachments. The interest of the Buryat population in trade relations also pushed for good neighborly relations with the Russians.
The first Russian settlements in this region appeared in the early 30s. - Ilimsky and Bratsk forts. Under the protection of the Ilimsk fort in the middle of the 17th century. More than 120 families of Russian farmers lived there. In the 40s Yasak collectors began to appear among the Buryats living near Lake Baikal. At the confluence of the Irkut and the Angara on the island. The clerk established the Irkutsk yasak winter hut in 1652, and in 1661, opposite this winter hut on the banks of the Angara, the Irkutsk fort was built, which became the administrative center of the Irkutsk district and an important trading point in Eastern Siberia.
In the middle of the 18th century. The first fortified winter huts, founded by Russian fishing gangs, appeared in Transbaikalia. Some of them later became forts and administrative centers (Nerchinsky, Udnnsky, Selenginsky, etc.). Gradually, a network of fortified villages emerged, which ensured the safety of Transbaikalia from external invasions and contributed to the economic development of this area by Russian settlers (including farmers).
The first information about the Amur region arrived in Yakutsk in the early 40s. XVII century from the Russian fisherman S. Averkiev Kosoy, who reached the mouth of the Argun. In 1643, an expedition by V. Poyarkov was formed in Yakutsk, whose participants for three years walked along the rivers Aldan, Uchur, Gonoy, made a portage to the Amur water system, and descended the river. Bryande and Zeya to the Amur, then moved on ships down the Amur to its mouth. Having set out to sea, V. Poyarkov’s expedition moved north along the coast and reached the mouth of the river. Hives. From here, along the path laid earlier by a group of Cossacks, I. Moskvitina returned to Yakutsk. This campaign of V. Poyarkov, unparalleled in difficulty and the distance of the unknown path, gave a lot of information about the Amur, about the inhabitants who inhabited its banks, and their jams, but it has not yet led to the annexation of the Amur region.
More successful in this regard was the campaign organized in 1649 by the Ustyug merchant E.P. Khabarov-Svyatitsky. Khabarov's campaign was supported by the Yakut governor Frantsbekov. Participants in the campaign (over 70 people) joined Khabarov at their own request. The leader of the campaign received an official “order” from the Yakut governor, that is, he could act as a representative of government authorities. From Yakutsk the expedition set off along the river. Lena to its tributary Olekma, then up the Olekma to the portages into the Amur basin. During 1650-1653. The participants of the campaign were on the Amur. The Middle Amur was inhabited by Tungus-speaking Evenks, Dyuchers and Mongol-speaking Daurs. The Evenks were engaged in nomadic cattle breeding and fishing, and the Daurs and Duchers were familiar with arable farming. The Daurs and their neighboring Duchers began the process of establishing a class society; they had fortified towns ruled by their “princes.”
The natural resources of the Amur region (fur-bearing animals, fish) and the climate favorable for arable farming attracted settlers from the Yenisei, Krasnoyarsk, Ilimsk and Yakutsk districts. According to V.A. Aleksandrov, throughout the 50s. XVII century “At least one and a half thousand people went to the Amur. Quite a few “free, willing people” took part in E. Khabarov’s campaign itself.”4 Fearing the depopulation of the areas from which settlers (fishermen and peasants) were leaving, the Siberian administration set up a settlement at the mouth of the river. Olekma outpost. Unable to prevent the process of spontaneous settlement of the Amur region, the tsarist government decided to establish its own administration here, designating the Nerchnsky fort (founded in 1652) as the administrative center in 1658.
Ruled in the 17th century. in China, the Manchu Qing dynasty from time to time subjected the settlements of Daurs and Duchers on the Amur to predatory raids, although the territory they occupied lay outside the boundaries of the empire. In annexing the Amur region to Russia, the Qing dynasty saw a threat to the rapprochement of the borders of Manchuria with Russia and therefore decided to prevent Russian development of this area. In 1652, Manchu troops invaded the Amur and for almost six years waged military operations against small Russian troops. At the end of the 50s. The Manchus began to forcibly resettle the Daurs and Duchers into the Sungari basin, destroying their towns and agriculture. By the beginning of the 60s. Manchu troops went into the empire.
The Russian population resumed the development of the deserted Amur lands from Nerchinsk to the mouth of the river. Zei. The center of Russian settlements on the Amur became the Albazinsky fort, built in 1665 on the site of the former town of the Daurian prince Albazy. The population of Albazin - Cossacks and peasants - was made up of free migrants. The exiles made up an extremely small part. The first residents and builders of Russian Albazin were fugitives from the Ilimsk district, participants in the popular unrest against the governor, who came to the Amur with N. Chernigovsky. Here the newcomers declared themselves Albazin servicemen, established an elected government, elected N. Chernigovsky as Albazin's clerk, and began collecting yasak payments from the local population, sending furs through Nerchinsk to the royal treasury in Moscow.
Since the late 70s and especially in the 80s. The situation of the Russians in Transbaikalia and the Amur region again became complicated. The Manchu Qing dynasty provoked protests by Mongol feudal lords and Tungus princes against Russia. Intense military operations unfolded near Albazin and the Selenginsky fort. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed in 1689, marked the beginning of establishing a border line between the two states.
The Buryat and Tungus population acted together with the Russians in defense of their lands against the Manchu troops. Separate groups of Mongols, together with the Taishi, recognized Russian citizenship and migrated to Russia.
Conclusion
Ermak's campaign played big role in the development and conquest of Siberia. This was the first significant step to begin the development of new lands.
The conquest of Siberia is a very important step in the development of the Russian state, which more than doubled its territory. Siberia, with its fishing and fur trades, as well as gold and silver reserves, significantly enriched the state treasury.
List of used literature
1. G.F. Miller "History of Siberia"
2. M.V. Shunkov “History of Siberia” in 5 volumes. Tomsk, TSU 1987
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The conquest of Siberia is one of the most important processes in the formation of Russian statehood. The development of the eastern lands took more than 400 years. Throughout this period, many battles, foreign expansions, conspiracies, and intrigues took place.
The annexation of Siberia is still in the center of attention of historians and causes a lot of controversy, including among members of the public.
Conquest of Siberia by Ermak
The history of the conquest of Siberia begins with the famous campaign of Ermak. This is one of the Cossack atamans. There is no exact information about his birth and ancestors. However, the memory of his exploits has reached us through the centuries. In 1580, the wealthy merchants Stroganov invited the Cossacks to help protect their possessions from constant raids by the Ugrians. The Cossacks settled in a small town and lived relatively peacefully. The bulk were Volga Cossacks. There were a little more than eight hundred of them in total. In 1581, a campaign was organized with money from merchants. Despite its historical significance (in fact, the campaign marked the beginning of the era of the conquest of Siberia), this campaign did not attract the attention of Moscow. In the Kremlin, the detachment was called simple “bandits.” In the fall of 1581, Ermak’s group boarded small ships and began to sail up the Chusovaya River, all the way to the mountains. Upon landing, the Cossacks had to clear their way by cutting down trees. The coast turned out to be completely uninhabited. The constant ascent and mountainous terrain created extremely difficult conditions for the transition. The ships (plows) were literally carried by hand, since due to the continuous vegetation it was not possible to install rollers. With the approach of cold weather, the Cossacks set up camp on the pass, where they spent the entire winter. After this, rafting began on the Tagil River. Conquest of Western Siberia
After a series of quick and successful victories, Ermak began to move further east. In the spring, several Tatar princes united to repel the Cossacks, but were quickly defeated and recognized Russian power. In the middle of summer, the first major battle took place in the modern Yarkovsky region. Mametkul's cavalry began an attack on the Cossack positions. They sought to quickly close in and crush the enemy, taking advantage of the horseman's advantage in close combat. Ermak personally stood in the trench where the guns were located and began firing at the Tatars. After just a few volleys, Mametkul fled with the entire army, which opened the passage to Karachi for the Cossacks. Further conquest of Siberia: briefly
The exact burial place of the ataman is unknown. After the death of Ermak, the conquest of Siberia continued with renewed vigor. Year after year, more and more new territories were subjugated. If the initial campaign was not coordinated with the Kremlin and was chaotic, then subsequent actions became more centralized. The king personally took control of this issue. Well-equipped expeditions were regularly sent out. The city of Tyumen was built, which became the first Russian settlement in these parts. From then on, systematic conquest continued using the Cossacks. Year after year they conquered more and more territories. Russian administration was installed in the captured cities. Educated people were sent from the capital to conduct business.
In the mid-17th century there was a wave of active colonization. Many cities and settlements are founded. Peasants are arriving from other parts of Russia. Settlement is gaining momentum. In 1733, the famous Northern Expedition was organized. In addition to conquest, the task of exploring and discovering new lands was also set. The data obtained was then used by geographers from all over the world. The entry of the Uryakhan region into the Russian Empire can be considered the end of the annexation of Siberia.
Annexation of Siberia to Russia
“And when a completely ready, populated and enlightened region, once dark, unknown, appears before the astonished humanity, demanding a name and rights, then let history interrogate about those who erected this building, and also not inquire, just as it did not inquire who placed pyramids in the desert... And creating Siberia is not as easy as creating something under the blessed sky...” Goncharov I. A.
History has assigned the role of a pioneer to the Russian people. For many hundreds of years, Russians discovered new lands, settled them and transformed them with their labor, and defended them with arms in hand in the fight against numerous enemies. As a result, vast spaces were populated and developed by Russian people, and the once empty and wild lands became not only an integral part of our country, but also its most important industrial and agricultural areas.
Adygea, Crimea. Mountains, waterfalls, herbs of alpine meadows, healing mountain air, absolute silence, snowfields in the middle of summer, the murmuring of mountain streams and rivers, stunning landscapes, songs around the fires, the spirit of romance and adventure, the wind of freedom await you! And at the end of the route are the gentle waves of the Black Sea.
