The era of gold rushes in Russia began in the 19th century, after the Senate passed a law in 1812 that allowed Russian citizens to search for and develop gold ores with the payment of taxes to the state. Until that time, they were looking for gold anyway. But they did it secretly and under the threat of severe punishment.
They say that the Demidovs mined gold and silver in their estates in the Urals. But only secretly! They also claim that they minted coins from what they got. The same rubles, made of the same silver as the state at its mint. But these actions were then called “theft”.
Learn about gold mining in those days in more detail …
On May 28, 1812, the Senate adopted a decree entitled "On granting the right to all Russian subjects to search for and develop gold and silver ores with payment of taxes to the treasury." The law for the first time defined the relationship between the state and individuals involved in the extraction of gold and silver. Gold mining was allowed only to certain estates.
Egor Lesnoy
Gold mining in Siberia began in 1828 on the Sukhoi Berikul River in the Tomsk province (now the Tisulsky district of the Kemerovo region). Prior to that, Yegor Lesnoy, an Old Believer peasant (according to other sources, exiled), mined gold on Sukhoi Berikul. Yegor Lesnoy lived with his pupil on Lake Berchikul, fifteen to twenty kilometers from the Sukhoi Berikul River. Yegor kept the place of extraction a secret.
Promotional video:
Preliminary exploration of deposits
In 1827, wine merchants - the merchant of the first guild Andrei Yakovlevich Popov and his nephew Feodot Ivanovich Popov, decided to go into gold mining. Having received permission to search for gold sands and ores throughout Siberia, they went in search of gold in the Tomsk province. Having learned about the large finds of Yegor Lesnoy, Andrei Popov sent his people to him. They failed to find out where the gold was mined. Then Andrei Popov personally went to Egor Lesnoy, but by his arrival the hermit prospector had already been strangled. On August 11, 1828, the merchant Andrei Yakovlevich Popov submitted an application to the Dmitrovsky volost administration of the Tomsk province for a plot on the Berikul River. According to one version, the location of the site was revealed by the pupil of Yegor Lesnoy. The government willingly issued permits for gold mining, but there were few willing to invest big money in exploration. Feodot Ivanovich Popov spent more than 2 million rubles on exploration. F. I. Popov died in Tomsk on April 20, 1832, and A. Ya. Popov died in 1833 in St. Petersburg, and was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Start of mining
Mine "1st Berikulskaya area" in 1829 gave 1 pood 20 pounds of gold. In 1830 - more than four and a half poods, and in 1835 gold mining by the Popov merchants at Sukhoy Berikul, Mokrom Berikul and several other small tributaries of the Kiya increased to more than 16 pounds.
In 1829, next to the popovs merchants' mines in the Kiya River tributaries - Mokry Berikul, Sukhoi Berikul, Makarak, Maly Kundat - new mines were opened. They belonged to the companies of the merchants Ryazanov, Kazantsev, Balandin.
In 1830, the Popovs discovered gold in the Salair Ridge, in the Koktekbinsky, Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk districts of the Yenisei province. In 1832 - in the Achinsk district along the Uryupa, Abakan, Iyus and Kazyra rivers. In 1831 the Popovs already owned more than twenty mines. More than thirty mines belonged to the companies of Ryazanov, Balandin, fifteen - Astashev. In 1838, gold deposits were discovered in the Kansk and Nizhneudinsk districts.
Mine Old Berikul, Gornyaka street, Tisulsky district, July 2006.
On May 31, 1843, private gold mining was allowed in Western Transbaikalia. In the same year, the private Verkhneudinsky mountain district was created. In Eastern Transbaikalia, private gold mining was allowed on November 3, 1863, and in 1865 a private Nerchinsk mountain district was created in Nerchinsk.
Mass mining
New gold-bearing deposits were discovered. In Western Siberia, along the rivers: Bolshoi Kozhukh, Tisul, Tuluyul, Kiysky Shaltyr, along the Kundustuyul Big and Small, along the Golden Kitat. In Eastern Siberia, along the rivers Biryusa, Mane, along the Upper and Lower Tunguska, along the Pitu River and their large and small tributaries.
The gold rush began. In the 30s of the XIX century, more than 200 people were engaged in private artisanal mining. In the 1840s, several hundred search parties worked in Siberia. Each party consisted of about a dozen people. The miners had to be provided with food, clothing, weapons, horses, tools, etc. The gold mining industry provided jobs for thousands of people. In 1838, only 102,843 people lived in the Yenisei province. In 1835, 5936 people lived in Krasnoyarsk. In 1834, 5927 people were hired at the mines of the Mariinsky taiga, of whom 4863 were exiled settlers.
Gold mining contributed to the development of trade in Siberia. The volume of trade in grain and fodder in the Yenisei province increased from 350 thousand rubles in the 1830s to five million rubles by the end of the 1850s. In 1859, about 2 million poods of grain were supplied to the gold mines of the Yenisei province.
Horses were purchased in large quantities for use in gold mining operations: up to 8 thousand horses were supplied annually for the Yenisei gold-mining region alone in the late 1850s. Taking into account the delivery costs, the gold miners of the Yenisei province spent annually on the purchase of meat and horses up to 500 thousand rubles in silver. In 1854, 200 thousand poods of meat were purchased for the Irkutsk gold mines. In the late 1850s, up to 15 thousand heads of cattle were supplied to the mines of the Yenisei province. The export of fish from the Turukhansk region in the 1840s increased threefold in comparison with the 1820s.
Gold was sought everywhere - almost within the city limits. In Krasnoyarsk, gold was found on the Bugach River, some gold was found on Mount Afontova (not far from the railway station). A brigade of prospectors worked at Stolby; because of their activities, the stream got the name "Swarms" - from the word "dig". The situation in Krasnoyarsk was appropriate - ostentatious luxury, revelry, cards, fights, theft.
Krasnoyarsk gold miner N. F. Myasnikov made business cards from pure gold. The cost of one such "knick-knack" exceeded five rubles. In the 50s, a pood of sturgeon caviar cost five and a half rubles. In the 1850s - 1860s, the bankruptcies of gold miners began: the richest deposits were depleted, difficulties in hiring workers, high wages, risky lending (interest on loans reached 10% per month), a wasteful lifestyle, lack of competent management led to bankruptcies.
Kyiskaya Sloboda, which became a gathering point for miners, in 1856 turned into a district town, in 1857 it was named Mariinsk in honor of Empress Maria.
One of the most successful prospectors was the merchant Gavrila Masharov from Kansk. He discovered more than a hundred placers of gold, became the richest millionaire in the taiga. He ordered himself a 20-pound solid gold medal with the inscription “Gavrila Masharov - Emperor of All Taiga”; for which he received the nickname "taiga Napoleon." The legendary mine "Gavrilovsky" (owned by the merchant Ryazanov) opened by him from 1844 to 1864 yielded 770 poods of gold. The development of this mine continued after that for another quarter of a century. There were hundreds of similar mines in the Yenisei taiga.
In 1836, Masharov already lived among the taiga in his huge house with glass galleries, covered walkways, a greenhouse with pineapples. Near the house he built a factory for the production of Venetian velvet. The expenses led Masharov to problems with creditors, he was declared bankrupt.
In 1842, in the Urals, near Miass, Nikifor Syutkin found the largest nugget in Russia weighing 36.2 kg. The nugget was named "Big Triangle". Syutkin was paid 1226 rubles in silver. He died early.
As one of the first gold miners VD Skaryatin noted in his notes, the fishing of the first miners "was more like a game in which one could snatch a million, or lie with the bones, than like a properly rationally conducted industrial business." Only the richest placers were exploited predatory; areas with a lower gold content were filled with barren rock, imperfect sand washing technique led to the loss of almost a third of the precious metal contained in them. In 1861, steam engines were used in only three mines. Only the gold miners of the second wave, who came in the early 1860s of the 19th century, began to adhere to more rational methods of conducting gold mining.
January 10, 1898. A nugget weighing 31.6 kg was found at the Spaso-Preobrazhensky mine of the Achinsk district.
The discovery of gold placers in the Urals and Siberia made foreign geologists look for similarities in the geological and geomorphological environment in different countries with the situation in the Ural-Siberian "golden" zones, finding those in California, Australia, Egypt and other places on the planet. “The California snow chain in its mineralogical structure is completely similar to the rocks of Siberia,” wrote the English geologist R. Murchison. In 1848, gold was found in California. The famous "California Gold Rush" began.
According to the calculations of the Head Office of the Altai Mining District, from 1819 to 1861, 35,587 poods of gold were mined in Siberia, amounting to more than 470 million rubles. In 1861, 459 gold mining companies and partnerships were registered. 30,269 people worked at 372 mines. During the year, they mined 1,071 poods of gold. By 1861, 1,125 gold mining permits had been issued. Of these, 621 (55.3%) permits were received by nobles, hereditary honorary citizens - 87 (7.7%), merchants of the first and second guilds - 417 people. (37.0%).
Sudden wealth was dizzy. One gold miner made his business cards gold. The nouveau riches bathed the girls in champagne, built real multi-storey palaces in the taiga, with huge glass windows, with greenhouses in which they even grew pineapples. Whatever a suddenly rich man can invent! Some of them began to engage in other businesses, but many of the newly-minted millionaires blew enormous wealth and became poor again when the gold deposits they discovered dried up.
From the Yenisei, gold diggers went further and further east. In the second half of the 19th century, the development of the Lensky gold-bearing region began, the Lensky mines gave a large amount of gold. In the middle of the 19th century, about 20 tons of gold were mined annually in Siberia, which amounted to approximately 39% of world gold production.
The end of the "gold rush"
Siberian merchants occupied secondary positions in gold mining. For example, in 1845 Siberian merchants owned 30% of the mines, which produced 39.1% of gold. Most of the profits were exported from Siberia. Gold mining has led to an outflow of capital from manufacturing and other sectors of the economy. The capital accumulated in the gold mining was invested in shipping companies, trade with China in Kyakhta, and channeled to education and other social needs through charity.
In the early 1920s, gold production in Western and Eastern Siberia declined dramatically. In 1921, for example, a little more than a ton of gold was washed at the West Siberian mines. In May 1927, the Joint Stock Company Soyuzzoloto was created and 1930 became the year of the final liquidation of the private gold industry in Siberia and the Far East.
Already today in Khabarovsk and, probably, in other cities in the Far East, tourist trips to gold-bearing rivers are flourishing. The helicopter brings you in, you set up a camp and for two weeks you try to wash gold on weakly gold-bearing streams. We are ready to buy everything we find at the state price. And they say people really find gold!
And gold mining in our time has shifted even further east, to the Magadan region. There are prospecting artels, state-owned enterprises, and even “free prospectors” looking for gold.
Gold mining in Russia has been on the rise in recent years. From 2012 to 2015, Russia rose from the 4th place among the gold-mining countries to the 2nd, in 2015 the annual gold production amounted to 272 tons. After us - the USA and Peru, then Canada, South Africa and Indonesia.
What in the new "fevers" is similar to the "fevers" of the century before last? Thirst for quick and easy money, moreover, not associated with crime, and therefore without the risk of going to prison.
In the early 1980s, on a beach in Sandy Hook Bay, near New York, a local resident found a Spanish doubloon in the sand. On the same day, his friend found another doubloon on the same beach. The population of the village rushed to dig up the beach. In a few days they dug 5 more coins.
Reporters got wind of the event, interviewed, took some pictures … Museum specialists looked at the finds and issued an expert opinion that the coins belong to the period when a Spanish galleon known to historians with a load of gold could have sunk somewhere nearby …
New Yorkers rushed to these places. Suburban trains were packed with people and the roads were clogged with cars.
Serious dramas were played out on the beaches. Even with bloodshed. Someone was looking for gold, and someone tried to stake out pieces of the public beach and got into a fight, preventing the rest of the "prospectors" from trying to find their piece of golden happiness … Fights broke out in places. And the gold diggers fought with each other with furious ferocity.
After a couple of weeks, everything was quiet. 23 gold doubloons were found. But the sellers of ironmongery sold shovels, a rake and other entrenching tools to newly minted prospectors for several hundred thousand dollars. It was even suggested that they were the ones who buried a couple of dozen coins in the sand on the beach - to revive their business and to clear warehouses of stuck goods.
NEW RULES FOR MINING GOLD
The head of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation Sergey Donskoy has already sent amendments to the Law "On Precious Stones and Metals" for approval to the concerned departments, as well as to the law enforcement agencies, where, in turn, they must assess the possible risks of criminalization of the industry.
Recall, according to the draft law, Russian citizens will be able to go in search of gold, having issued only an individual entrepreneur. Then the entrepreneur will need to apply to Rosnedra and obtain a license to conduct excavations.
As the Ministry of Natural Resources explained, Russians will get the opportunity to extract the precious metal where deposits have long been explored and worked out for industrial purposes. Therefore, everyone who wishes will be issued a permit to mine gold on such a specific site with an area of no more than 15 hectares, where gold reserves are no more than 10 kg. People will be able to use manual labor or apply some new mining technology. By the way, entrepreneurs will not even have to pay the mineral extraction tax (MET).