We read admiringly about European sailors, about great discoveries and travels. But it remains behind the scenes that the Russian Pomors paved the way to England half a century earlier than the British sailed to Russia. The sea is named after the deceased Dutch explorer Barents. But it remained behind the scenes that he “discovered” the lands that Russians had mastered long ago. He died during the "discovery" of Novaya Zemlya, where the Pomors went regularly, not considering it something special and heroic.
They saved the remnants of the Barents expedition, which were wrecked and dying on Novaya Zemlya. By the way, Academician V. N. Skalon discovered that how the Barents map of the northern seas turned out to be completely wrong. But the Russian explorers of the 17th century. knew how to make maps even more accurately than the certified geographers of the 19th century. Are they inferior to the western discoverers of the voyages of Semyon Dezhnev, Poyarkov, Erastov, Yerilo, Bugra, the travels of Khabarov, Stadukhin, Galkin, Beketov, Zyryan, Moskvitin, Shelkovnikov, Gavrilov and other pioneers.
Through the efforts of these brave and purposeful people, the territory of Russia has almost doubled in half a century! Our country has grown in vast expanses of Siberia and the Far East. It grew under the rule of the first Romanovs, and the wise policy of the tsars contributed to this. Moscow's decrees required the establishment of friendships with local residents. Not conquest, but the establishment of mutually beneficial relationships. The orders and instructions of the sovereigns to the governors repeated the same thing over and over again: "Bring foreigners under the sovereign's high hand" and collect yasak "with caress, not cruelty." "To keep affection and greetings and care to them, and they cannot do anything wrong with vain cruelties and no taxes, so that they do not needlessly be embittered and not driven away from the sovereign's mercy." It was forbidden to apply the death penalty to the yasak, even in the event of uprisings! And to the Russian Cossacks, hunters,the peasants who reached out to Siberia for the trades were strictly forbidden to "land at the yasak imati".
It was allowed to settle only in "loose places". For oppression and attempts to take away someone else's land, they beat with a whip. So the story of the purchase of Manhattan for 24 thalers in Russia would never have passed. Foreigners back in the 17th century. wondered how "a handful of people took possession of such a huge space." They gave the correct answer: the reason for the success was not "the conquest by military force, but according to the conviction of the natives." And already in 1901, the American Senator Beveridge, who visited the Far East, noted: "The Russian differs from other nations in that he does not show any offensive way of treating the races with which he gets along well." The result is known: at the time of Yermak, the indigenous peoples of Siberia numbered about 200 thousand people. Over 200 years, their number has increased 4 times - this is not counting the mixed population, since Russians often created families with Tatars,Yakuts, Buryats. And in North America at the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century. there were 2 million Indians - in the twentieth century. there are 200 thousand left, mainly in Canada.