At the end of the 16th century, Yermak's detachment cut through the door to Siberia for Russia, and since then the harsh lands beyond the Urals have been stubbornly mastered by small but persistent detachments of miners who set up forts and moved further and further east. By historical standards, this movement did not take so long: the first Cossacks clashed with the Siberian Tatars of Kuchum on Tura in the spring of 1582, and by the beginning of the 18th century the Russians had secured Kamchatka. Many were attracted by the riches of the new land, and first of all - furs.
A number of cities, founded during this advancement, still stand safely to this day - Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk, Tobolsk, Yakutsk. Once they were the advanced forts of service and industrial people who went farther and farther behind the "fur Eldorado". However, many settlements suffered the fate of mining towns during the American gold rush: having received fifteen minutes of fame, they fell into desolation when the resources of the surrounding lands were depleted.
Mangazeya
In the 17th century, one of the largest such cities arose on the Ob. It existed for a little over 70 years, but went into legends, became the first polar city in Siberia, a symbol of Yamal, and in general its history was short but bright. In the fierce frosty lands inhabited by warlike tribes, the quickly famous Mangazeya grew up.
The Russians knew about the existence of the country beyond the Urals long before Yermak's expedition. Moreover, several stable routes to Siberia have developed. One of the paths led through the basin of the Northern Dvina, Mezen and Pechora. Another option was to travel from the Kama River through the Urals.
The most extreme route was developed by the Pomors. On koch - ships adapted for navigation in ice, they walked along the Arctic Ocean, making their way to Yamal. Yamal was crossed by portage and along shallow rivers, and from there they went out into the Ob Bay, which is also the Mangazeya Sea. The "sea" here is hardly an exaggeration - it is a freshwater bay up to 80 km wide and 800 kilometers long, and a three-hundred-kilometer branch to the east - Tazovskaya Bay - departs from it.
Pomorskiy koch
The Mangazeya Way was a route for the most desperate sailors, and the bones of those who were unlucky became the property of the ocean forever. One of the lakes on the Yamal pass has a name that is translated from the language of the aborigines as “the lake of the dead Russians”. So there was no need to think about regular safe travel. In addition, there was not even a hint of some kind of base at the end of the path, where it was possible to rest, to repair ships. In fact, to the Gulf of Ob and back the Kochi made one long way.
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There were enough furs at the mouth of the Ob, but there was no need to dream of a permanent trading post: it was too difficult to supply it with everything necessary in such conditions. Everything changed at the end of the 16th century. The Russians crushed the loose "empire" of Kuchum, and soon service and industrial people poured into Siberia. The first expeditions went to the Irtysh basin, the first Russian city in Siberia - Tyumen, so the Ob was the first in line for colonization.
Tyumen / Nikolaas Witsen
Rivers for the Russians were a key transport artery throughout the entire Siberian conquest: a large flow is both a landmark and a road that does not need to be laid in impenetrable forests, not to mention the fact that boats increased the volume of cargo transported by an order of magnitude. So at the end of the 16th century, the Russians moved along the Ob, building up the coast with fortresses, in particular, Berezov and Obdorsk were founded there. And from there, by the standards of Siberia, it was only a step to take to the Ob Bay.
In 1600, an expedition of 150 servicemen left Tobolsk under the command of voivods Miron Shakhovsky and Danila Khripunov. The Gulf of Ob, to which they rafted without any special adventures, immediately showed their character: the storm hit the kochi and barges. The bad beginning did not discourage the governor, it was decided to demand from the local Samoyeds that the expedition be delivered to the destination in deer. On the way, however, the Samoyeds attacked the travelers and beat them badly, and the remnants of the detachment retreated on the selected deer.
Nevertheless, apparently, some part of the injured detachment nevertheless reached the Taz Bay, and a fortification grew on the shore - Mangazeya. Soon a city was erected near the prison. The name of the town planner is known - it is a certain Davyd Zherebtsov. A detachment of 300 servicemen went to the fortress - a large army by the standards of time and place. The work got underway, and by 1603 a guest yard and a church with a priest had already appeared in Mangazeya.
Mangazeya turned into a Klondike. True, there was no gold, but a vast country full of sables stretched around. The bulk of the inhabitants dispersed to the neighborhoods stretching for many hundreds of kilometers. The fortress garrison was small, only a few dozen archers. However, the town was constantly crowded with hundreds, if not thousands of industrial people. Someone left to hunt the animal, someone came back and sat in taverns.
The city grew rapidly, and craftsmen came for industrial people - from tailors to bone carvers. In the city one could meet both merchants from central Russia and fugitive peasants. In the city, of course, a hut (office), a customs house, a prison, warehouses, shops, a fortress with several towers functioned. It is interesting that all this space was built up in accordance with a neat layout.
Fur was bought up from the natives with might and main, the Cossack detachments reached from Mangazeya even to Vilyui. Metal products, beads, small coins were used as currency. The sea passage revived sharply: despite all the risk, the delivery of goods that were badly needed on the spot (from lead to bread) and the return transportation of mammoth bones and "soft junk" - sables and polar foxes became more accessible. Mangazeya received the nickname "golden boiling". As such, gold was not found there, but there was an abundance of “soft” gold. Every year 30 thousand sables were exported from the city.
The tavern was not the only entertainment for the residents. Later excavations also uncovered the remains of books and beautifully crafted, decorated chessboards. Quite a few in the city were literate, which is no wonder for a trading post. Archaeologists have often found objects carved with the names of the owners. Mangazeya was not at all just a staging post: women and children lived in the city, the townsfolk had animals and kept households near the walls. In general, animal husbandry, of course, took into account the local specifics: Mangazeya was a typical old Russian city, but the inhabitants preferred to ride around the surroundings on dogs or deer.
Alas, taking off quickly, Mangazeya quickly fell. There were several reasons for this. First, the circumpolar zone is not a very productive place as such. The Mangazeyans dispersed hundreds of miles from the city for an obvious reason: furry animals disappeared too quickly from the surrounding area. For local tribes, sable did not have much value as an object of hunting, so in northern Siberia the population of this animal was huge and sables lasted for decades. However, sooner or later, the fur animal had to dry up, which happened. Secondly, Mangazeya fell victim to bureaucratic games within Siberia itself.
Map of Tobolsk, 1700
In Tobolsk, the local governors looked without enthusiasm to the north, where huge profits floated out of their hands, so they began to scribble complaints from Tobolsk to Moscow, demanding the closure of the Mangazeya sea passage. The rationale looked peculiar: it was assumed that in this way Europeans could penetrate into Siberia. The threat looked dubious. For the British or the Swedes, traveling through Yamal was becoming completely meaningless: too far, risky and expensive.
However, the Tobolsk governors achieved their goal: in 1619, streltsy outposts appeared on Yamal, deploying everyone who tried to overcome the passage. It was planned to expand trade flows to the cities of southern Siberia. However, the problems overlapped: Mangazeya was getting poorer in the future, and now administrative barriers were being added.
Internal turmoil began in Mangazeya. In 1628, the two governors did not share powers and started a real civil strife: the townspeople held their own garrison under siege, and both of them had guns. A mess inside the city, administrative difficulties, land depletion. In addition, Turukhansk, aka New Mangazeya, rapidly expanded to the south. The center of the fur trade was shifting, and people left for it. Mangazeya began to fade, but still lived by inertia from the fur boom.
Turukhansk (New Mangazeya) / Nikolaas Witsen
Even the fire of 1642, when the town was completely burnt down and the city archive perished in the fire, among other things, did not finish it off completely, as did a series of shipwrecks, due to which there were interruptions in bread. Several hundred fishermen spent the winter in the city in the 1650s, so Mangazeya remained a significant center by Siberian standards, but this was already only a shadow of the boom at the beginning of the century. The city was heading towards final decline slowly but steadily.
In 1672, an official decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was issued on the abolition of the city. The Streletsky garrison withdrew and went to Turukhansk. Soon the last people left Mangazeya. One of the last petitions indicates that only 14 men and a certain number of women and children remained in the once bursting with wealth. At the same time, the Mangazei churches were closed.
A traveler from the middle of the 19th century once noticed a coffin sticking out from the bank of the Taz River. The river washed away the remains of the city, and fragments of various objects and structures were visible from under the ground. Back in the early 20th century, where Mangazeya stood, the remains of fortifications were visible, and in the late 40s, professional archaeologists began to study the ghost town. The real breakthrough occurred at the turn of the 60-70s of the last century. An archaeological expedition from Leningrad has been excavating the Gold-boiling one for four years.
Excavation site of Mangazeya
The polar permafrost created enormous difficulties, but as a result, the ruins of the Kremlin and 70 various buildings, buried under a layer of soil and a grove of dwarf birches, were brought to light. Coins, leather goods, skis, wreckage of kochey, sledges, compasses, children's toys, weapons, tools. There were found charming figures that look like a carved winged horse. The northern city revealed its secrets.
In general, the value of Mangazeya for archeology turned out to be great: thanks to the permafrost, many finds that would otherwise have crumbled into dust have been perfectly preserved. There was also a foundry yard with a master's house, and in it - rich household utensils, including even Chinese porcelain cups. The stamps turned out to be no less interesting. Many of them were found in the city, and among others - the Amsterdam Trade House. The Dutch went to Arkhangelsk, maybe someone got across Yamal, or perhaps this is just evidence of the export of some of the furs to Holland. Finds of this genus also include a half-taler from the middle of the 16th century.
One of the finds is filled with dark grandeur. The burial of an entire family was found under the floor of the church. Based on archival data, there is an assumption that this is the grave of the governor Grigory Teryaev, his wife and children. They died during the famine of the 1640s while trying to reach Mangazeya with a grain caravan.
The disappeared city of the Far North is not just another settlement. At first, Mangazeya became a springboard for the movement of Russians into the depths of Siberia, and then presented a real treasure to archaeologists and an impressive history to descendants.
Used materials from the article by Evgeny Norin