The enterprising Pomors more than once passed to the north of Western Siberia, who took upon themselves the colonization of these lands.
Promising land
In 1562 Anthony Jenkinson, an English diplomat, merchant, emissary of the Moscow company, and probably also a spy, published in London his work entitled "Map of Russia, Muscovy and Tartary." Jenkinson's research (especially regarding the presence of a possible waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans along the northern coast of Eurasia) aroused particular interest in the English Admiralty. Moreover, the area of "Molgomzey" described by him, lying on this deserted territory, promised unprecedented profits from the extraction of furs and "fish tooth", as the walrus tusk was then called. But for the time being, the British were careful. By the side of Tsar Ivan IV, who had just defeated the Livonians near Marienburg, it was necessary to behave carefully …
The last prince
A description of several Siberian peoples has been preserved in the monument of ancient Russian literature, created a century earlier, "The Legend of the Unknown People in the Eastern Country and the Pink bystander". This legend contains the following gloomy text: “… on the eastern side, beyond the Yugorsk land, over the sea, the people of Samoyed live, the calling Molgonzei. Their poison is deer meat and fish, but they eat each other between themselves …"
It is believed that exactly the people who met the Pomors at the site of the trading settlement they founded are described here. The name "Molongozei" probably goes back to the Komi-Zyryan "molgon", or "extreme, final", that is, it means "border people". According to modern researchers, the "Molongozei" are the current Enets, the Samoyed people. The Enets, who worshiped the spirits of the earth, sun, fire and water, did not have a common self-name and were divided by clans, whose names were inherited by generations.
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The ancestral memory of the Samoyeds was preserved in Derichu - legends about the past. Derichu of one of these clans, now extinct, tells the story of Prince Makazei-Mongkasi, the founder of the Entsy clan Mongkasi. In ancient times, at the head of a squad of Samoyeds, as well as the Nenets and Selkups, he attacked the armed detachment of Miron Shakhovsky, sent in 1600 by Godunov to the Taz River in order to take the free Pomor settlement under the tsar's hand. Who advised Mongkasi to make this daring attack, history is silent, but the detachment of the governor Shakhovsky suffered serious losses. Out of a hundred archers, a third died, almost all the supplies and cattle that they drove with them disappeared. And if it were not for the help of the Pomors who met them on the bank of the Lososeva River, the sovereign's people would not have lived until spring and the arrival of reinforcements.
At the same time, the archers immediately settled separately - on the high bank of the Taz they set up a prison and a church. There, for negotiations, they summoned the foremen of Mongkasi, led by the prince. Out of curiosity, Makazey went to the settlement to look at an unprecedented business for these places - a growing five-tower city - and never came back. What exactly happened between him, Prince Shakhovsky and the written head Khripunov, is unknown. But after that, the Lososevaya river was called Mangazeya, and the city that appeared near its mouth was called Mangazeya. The Samoyeds believed that the river flowing near the city was colored by the blood of their elders.
Broken City
The very next year, immediately from the three nearest cities, in which strong garrisons were stationed - Tobolsk, Surgut and Berezov - a large detachment under the leadership of Savluk Pushkin and Prince Vasily Mosalsky arrives to help the voivode Shakhovsky. In a very short time, about 200 servicemen completed the construction of the prison and founded the posad. At the same time, the trading settlement of the Pomors in the lowland of Mangazeyka existed for some time in parallel with the city, which, because of this, seemed to be divided into two parts and was named "Tagarevs hard", which in the local dialect means "Broken City". But very soon this state of affairs ceased to suit the voivode of Mosalsky. In the future, the notorious leader of the Time of Troubles solved the problem of the Pomors simply and effectively. Once the archers cordoned off the Pomor settlement and dug down the settlement. This is how the Pomors learned the value of the sovereign's gratitude. It is not known what else Mosalsky would have distinguished himself in the North, but the events in the capital forced him to urgently leave home.
Fyodor Bulgakov, who arrived in his place in 1603 in the voivodeship, brought with him a whole army of priests and began to actively plant Christianity in these parts in order to finally consolidate the local residents in Russian citizenship. By 1608 Mangazeya became the main center for collecting yasak (mainly furs) in the region. In just 10 years, the largest guest house in Siberia has been growing here, where "eminent guests" from all over the North come. At one time there could be up to 2000 (!) Merchants of different citizenship.
Mangazeya with the Kremlin-Detinets, customs, three churches and more than one and a half hundred houses has become the most significant city in the region. Here stood a hundred with guns, Cossacks, if necessary, the militia gathered. All the "Taz and Yenisei foreigners" were at hand of the Mangazei voivode, and he received deductions from all trade transactions that "merchant people" made with them. The city's wealth was legendary. Gold did not run out here: Russian merchants could sell “soft junk” taken from the Samoyeds to merchants from overseas.
In 1612, a collection of maps by the Dutch geographer Gessel Gerrits was published in Amsterdam, which included a map of Mangazeya, left by the Dutch trade agent Isaac Massa. The appearance of Massa's labor, which witnessed a whole series of events of the Time of Troubles, forced those forces that became interested in the fate of Mangazeya half a century earlier to act more actively.
English project
Working in the British archives at the beginning of the last century, the famous Russian historian Inna Ivanovna Lyubimenko discovered documents that radically changed the idea of the level of penetration of British diplomacy into the Russian North in the 17th century. The monograph she published in 1912 had the effect of an exploding bomb. Lyubimenko found irrefutable evidence that the British government had plans to seize land and establish its protectorate in Mangazeya and adjacent territories precisely in 1612, when the central government in Muscovy was practically absent, and the Polish interventionists tore the state to pieces. The British decided not to miss their chance: British money poured into Mangazeya, as a result, English merchants received the right to monopoly trade with the city and export furs by sea. Moreover, by the timeWhen the brave Pomors passed the Yamal Peninsula through the Mutnaya River and got to the Gulf of Ob, thus opening the sea route from Arkhangelsk to Mangazeya, the British had already founded their own trading post on the Taz River. The activity of English trade was growing, in parallel, the turnover of the "golden-boiling" Mangazeya and local governors grew.
It is not known who reported these "successes" to the distant city authorities, but the new government, headed by Patriarch Filaret, correctly assessed the situation. Already in 1620, a decree was issued prohibiting sailing by sea to Mangazeya on pain of death. The royal decree and the fire that happened a year earlier, during which, by a strange coincidence, the British trading station burned to the ground, not only dealt a blow to the well-being of Mangazeya, but also put an end to Britain's ambitious plans. But the troubles of the "golden-boiling Mangazeya" were just beginning …
Russian Troy
In 1629, two new governors arrived at Mangazeya at once - Andrey Palitsyn and Grigory Kokorev. Having found the still prosperous city, they immediately began to establish their own order here, each pulling the blanket over himself. By 1633, the situation escalated to the limit. The governors refused to recognize each other and were at enmity, shedding innocent blood.
And then the townspeople took power into their own hands. Gathering together, they all "Mangazei world" made a "single record", according to which they agreed to hold each other "firmly and fearlessly" and together to repulse the lawlessness of the governor. Oddly enough, this endeavor was a success. After several years of struggle, the governor was removed from Mangazeya, and one of them went to Tobolsk in the "glands". But this manifestation of civic unity was the last outstanding event in the history of the city.
Fires (the most severe - in 1642), a decrease in the number of furs in the region, the founding of two new cities at once - Turukhansk and Yeniseisk - led to the gradual extinction of the city. Everything could still change, but the new authorities remembered too well about the trade liberties and freedoms won by Mangazeya, and it became simply unprofitable for merchants to sail to the mouth of the Taz through several customs offices on the Ob, because the sea route was still closed. By 1660, the last stronghold of stability, which prolonged the life of the city, collapsed - the Samoyeds began to pay tribute in Yeniseisk. After another 20 years, Mangazeya is completely empty and disappears from maps and from people's memory for almost 200 years.
Macazey's prediction
Historians and geographers for a long time did not show interest in the legendary Siberian city. Regular excavations began here only during the 1946 expedition led by the famous ethnographer Valery Nikolaevich Chernetsov, who studied the relief of the settlement in detail. But during these years he could not pay enough attention to Mangazeya. Meanwhile, in the villages on the banks of the Taz, there was something to study. For example, there are still existing legends of the Enets about the "evil words" of Prince Makazey, which he allegedly uttered, dying at the hands of the governor Shakhovsky. The wealth of this land, the prince allegedly said, will remain on it, the "tower builders" (Russians) will not be able to take them. As the rumor goes, Makazey's prediction came true. The fires that followed one after another with a fiery tongue licked away all the city's wealth accumulated by the governors and merchants.
But the Siberian land was very abundant in those years, and it was not for nothing that Mangazeya was nicknamed "golden boiling". The warring governors Palitsyn and Kokorev during their confrontation did not forget to rob the city to the bone. The two treasures, as the legend says, were buried by them secretly from each other - in Detinets and at the place of the settlement. Moreover, these treasures are the gold that flowed into Siberia from across the sea in exchange for priceless fur, but did not reach the sovereign's pocket. Many tried to get these treasures, but either the will of the murdered prince Makazey, or the power of the Samoyed spirits, or the inexorable time itself reliably hide from us these treasures that the land of Mangazeya has swallowed forever.
Victor Arshansky