A study of Siberia in the 17th century. Mastering Siberia and the Far East: dates, events, pioneers

It was in the 17th century that the development of Siberia assumed a mass character. Entrepreneurs, travelers, adventurers and Cossacks were sent to the east. At that time the oldest Russian Siberian cities were founded, some of them are now megacities.

Siberian furs trading

The first detachment of Cossacks appeared in Siberia in the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The army of the famous ataman Ermak fought against the Tatar khanate in the basin of the Ob. It was then that Tobolsk was founded. At the turn of the XVI and XVII centuries. The Time of Troubles began in Russia. Because of the economic crisis, the famine and military intervention of Poland, as well as peasant uprisings, the economic development of remote Siberia was suspended.

Only when the Romanov dynasty came to power, and the country was put in order, the active population again directed its gaze to the east, where vast spaces were empty. In the 17th century, the development of Siberia was carried out for the sake of furs. Fur was valued in European markets in gold. Those wishing to profit from the trade were organized by hunting expeditions.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Russian colonization mainly affected the taiga and tundra areas. First, it was there that valuable furs. Secondly, the steppes and forest-steppes of Western Siberia were too dangerous for settlers because of the threat of invasions of local nomads. In this region, fragments of the Mongolian empire and Kazakh khanates continued to exist, whose inhabitants considered the Russians their natural enemies.

Yenisei expeditions

On the northern route, the settlement of Siberia was more intensive. At the end of the XVI century the first expeditions reached the Yenisei. In 1607, the town of Turukhansk was built on its bank. For a long time it was the main transshipment point and a springboard for the further advance of the Russian colonists to the east.

The industrialists searched here for sable fur. Over time, the number of wild animals has significantly decreased. This became an incentive to move on. The Yenisei tributaries of the Lower Tunguska and Podkamennaya Tunguska were the leading arteries deep into Siberia. At that time, the cities were only winter huts, where the industrialists stopped to sell their goods or wait out the severe frosts. In the spring and summer they left the parking lot and almost all the year round they fished.

Journey of Pianda

In 1623, the legendary traveler Pianda reached the shores of Lena. About the person of this person, almost nothing is known. A few words about his expedition were passed by industrialists from mouth to mouth. Their stories were written down by historian Gerard Miller already in the Petrine era. The exotic name of the traveler can be explained by the fact that he belonged nationally to Pomor people.

In 1632, on the site of one of his wintering grounds, the Cossacks founded a prison, which was soon renamed Yakutsk. The city became the center of the newly created province. The first Cossack garrisons faced the enemy attitude of the Yakuts, who even tried to besiege the settlement. In the 17th century, the development of Siberia and its most distant borders was controlled from this city, which became the northeastern border of the country.

The nature of colonization

It is important to note that at that time colonization was spontaneous and popular. At first, the state practically did not interfere in this process. People went to the east on their own initiative, taking all the risks on themselves. As a rule, they were motivated by the desire to make money on trade. Also peasants who fled from their native places sought to escape from serfdom. The desire to gain the will drove thousands of people into unexplored areas, which made a huge contribution to the development of Siberia and the Far East. The 17th century enabled peasants to start a new life on a new land.

The villagers had to go on a real labor feat to start a farm in Siberia. The steppe was occupied by the nomads, and the tundra was not suitable for cultivation of the land. Therefore, the peasants had to build their own plowland in dense forests with their own hands, reclaiming a plot outside the site from nature. With this kind of work, only purposeful and energetic people could cope. The authorities, on the other hand, sent detachments of servicemen after the colonists. They not so much opened the land, how many were engaged in development of already opened, and also were responsible for safety and tax collection. That's exactly in the southern direction, on the banks of the Yenisei, to protect civilians was built a prison, which later became a rich city of Krasnoyarsk. This happened in 1628.

Activities Dezhnev

The history of the development of Siberia captured on its pages the names of many brave travelers who spent their years in risky businesses. One of these pioneers was Semyon Dezhnev. This Cossack ataman was from Veliky Ustyug, and went to the east to engage in fur mining and trade. He was a skilled navigator and spent most of his active life in the northeast of Siberia.

In 1638, Dezhnev moved to Yakutsk. His closest associate was Peter Beketov, who founded such cities as Chita and Nerchinsk. Semyon Dezhnev was engaged in collecting yasak from the indigenous peoples of Yakutia. It was a special type of tax, designated by the state for the natives. Payments were often violated, as local princes periodically rebelled, not wanting to recognize Russian power. It was in this case that the Cossack detachments were needed.

Ships in the Arctic Seas

Dezhnev was one of the first travelers who visited the banks of the rivers that flow into the Arctic seas. We are talking about such arteries as Yana, Indigirka, Alazeya, Anadyr, and so on.

Russian colonists penetrated into the basins of these rivers as follows. At first the ships descended the Lena. Having reached the sea, vessels went east along the continental shores. So they fell into the estuaries of other rivers, climbing along which the Cossacks found themselves in the most uninhabited and outlandish places of Siberia.

Discovery of Chukotka

The main achievements of Dezhnev were his expeditions to Kolyma and Chukotka. In 1648 he went to the North to find places where it would be possible to obtain a valuable walrus bone. His expedition was the first to reach the Bering Strait. Here ended Eurasia and America began. The strait separating Alaska from Chukotka was not known to the colonialists. In 80 years after Dezhnev, the scientific expedition of Bering was organized here, organized by Peter I.

The journey of desperate Cossacks lasted 16 years. Another 4 years have gone to return to Moscow. There, Semyon Dezhnev received all the money due to him from the tsar himself. But the importance of his geographical discovery became clear after the death of a bold traveler.

Khabarov on the banks of the Amur River

If Dezhnev conquered new frontiers in the north-eastern direction, then in the south was his hero. They became Erofei Khabarov. This pioneer became known after in 1639 he discovered salt mines on the banks of the Kuta River. Erofei Khabarov was not only an outstanding traveler, but also a good organizer. The former peasant laid the salt production in the modern Irkutsk region.

In 1649, the Yakut commander made Khabarov commander of a Cossack detachment sent to Dauria. It was a distant and poorly understood region on the borders with the Chinese Empire. In Dauria, the natives lived, who could not seriously impede Russian expansion. Local princes voluntarily passed into the citizenship of the tsar, after the detachment of Erofey Khabarov was on their lands.

However, the Cossacks had to turn back when the Manchus entered the conflict with them. They lived on the banks of the Amur River. Khabarov made several attempts to gain a foothold in the region through the construction of fortified jails. Because of the confusion in the documents of that era, it is still not clear when and where the famous pioneer died. But despite this, the memory of him was alive among the people, and much later, in the 19th century, one of the Russian cities based on the Amur was named Khabarovsk.

Disputes with China

The South Siberian tribes, which were becoming citizens of Russia, did this to save themselves from the expansion of wild Mongol hordes that lived only by war and the ruin of their neighbors. Duchers and daurs suffered especially. In the second half of the 17th century, the foreign policy environment in the region became even more complicated after the troubled Manchus captured China.

The emperors of the new Qing dynasty began aggressive campaigns against peoples who lived nearby. The Russian government tried to avoid conflicts with China, because of which the development of Siberia might suffer. Briefly, diplomatic uncertainty in the Far East persisted throughout the 17th century. Only in the next century, the states concluded a treaty that officially stipulated the borders of countries.

Vladimir Atlasov

In the middle of the XVII century Russian colonists learned about the existence of Kamchatka. This territory of Siberia was shrouded in mysteries and rumors, which in time only multiplied because this region remained inaccessible even to the most courageous and enterprising Cossack detachments.

"Kamchatka Yermak" (in the words of Pushkin) was the explorer Vladimir Atlasov. In his youth he was a collector of yasaka. Public service was given to him easily, and in 1695 the Yakut Cossack became a clerk in the faraway Anadyr jail.

His dream was Kamchatka ... Having realized about it, Atlasov began to prepare an expedition to the far peninsula. Without this enterprise it would be incomplete to develop Siberia. The year of preparation and gathering of necessary things was not in vain, and in 1697 the prepared detachment of Atlasov set out on his way.

Study of Kamchatka

The Cossacks crossed the Koryak mountains and, having reached Kamchatka, split into two parts. One detachment went along the western shore, the other studied the east coast. Having reached the southern tip of the peninsula, Atlasov saw from afar unknown to the Russian explorers of the island. It was the Kuril archipelago. In the same place, in the Kamchadals in captivity, a Japanese named Denbey was discovered. This merchant was shipwrecked and fell into the hands of the natives. The liberated Denbay went to Moscow and even met with Peter I. He became the first Japanese ever to be met by the Russians. His stories about his native country were popular objects of conversation and gossip in the capital.

Atlasov, on returning to Yakutsk, prepared the first written description of Kamchatka in Russian. These materials were called "fairy tales". They were accompanied by maps compiled during the expedition. For his successful campaign in Moscow he was awarded a reward of one hundred rubles. Also Atlasov became a Cossack's head. A few years later he again returned to Kamchatka. The famous pioneer died in 1711 during the Cossack revolt.

Thanks to such people in the 17th century, the development of Siberia became a profitable and useful enterprise for the whole country. It was in this century that the distant land was finally annexed to Russia.