What do we know about the legendary conqueror of Siberia? Ivan Rostislavovich Sokolovsky, a researcher at the Institute of History of the SB RAS, Candidate of Historical Sciences, spoke about how Yermak's personality was perceived in different centuries, and what questions it raises among modern researchers.
The only source of information about Ermak is the chronicles, which were folded 40, 50 and more years after his death according to the surviving oral stories. The specialist emphasized that these chronicles were not created as a historical document, and researchers need to pay special attention to the facts set out in them.
According to Ivan Sokolovsky, now scientists are the most realistic about the figure of Ermak. For many years, historians have looked at his personality as another proof that Russia also has its own colonial history.
- In the 17th century, the task was simply to include Yermak in history - they wrote about the campaign of the Cossack ataman as about the life of a saint. Then some biographical features were not important. For the 18th century, the personality of the conqueror of Siberia was rather pagan; he played the role of a mythical hero. In the 19th century, Ermak became an iconic character - he was even called the Russian Cortes. And only in the 20th century, historians began to take an interest in all aspects of the campaign - what was the route in detail, how long it took to cover this distance.
The first historian of Siberia and collector of Siberian chronicles was the Russian historiographer of German origin Gerhard Friedrich Miller, who worked in Russia in 1725-1783. In the twentieth century, his works were prepared for reprinting by Sergei Vladimirovich Bakhrushin and Alexander Ignatievich Andreev. The greatest contribution to the study of the history of Siberia was made by scientists of Akademgorodok - in particular, the head of the department of ancient literature and literary source study of the Faculty of Humanities of NSU, Doctor of Philology Elena Ivanovna Dergacheva-Skop. In the 1960s, she studied the surviving Siberian chronicles - Esipovskaya, Remizovskaya, Stroganovskaya, built connections between their authors, and also published all the documents of Semyon Remizov that have come down to us. Elena Konstantinovna Romodanovskaya, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, found a unique document - the synodikon "Ermakov Cossacks"which was created to commemorate Ermak and his associates.
There are several versions about when exactly Siberia officially became part of Russia. Yasak from local tribes Yermak collected back in 1582. In 1583, his envoys reported to Ivan the Terrible about the success of the campaign, and after that the tsar had to immediately accept the conquered lands under his scepter. Many consider 1586 to be the date of accession: then the first Russian city in Siberia, Tyumen, was founded. At the same time, the final defeat of the troops of Khan Kuchum took place on August 20, 1598, during the Battle of Irmen. It took place on the territory of the modern Novosibirsk region, and now the battlefield is at the bottom of the Novosibirsk reservoir. The latest research shows that the sovereign title did not contain a line that he was the Tsar of Siberia until Kuchum's death in 1601. We conclude: the conquest of Siberia by 1582 was not final.
It is known that Yermak moved along the rivers, but there is no exact information on which ships he did this. According to historians, plows were used, similar to the ships of the Zaporozhye Cossacks, called seagulls. French engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan was in Polish service from the early 1630s to 1648 - mainly in the territory of modern Ukraine - and left detailed descriptions of Cossack gulls, which they sailed even across the Black Sea. But according to his descriptions, the size of these ships was too large to pass on them along the Siberian rivers. However, it is possible that the waterways, now impassable, could have been safely crossed in the 16th century.
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The question of nutrition for the Cossacks is also interesting. How much provisions did they take with them before starting the hike and how much did they hunt along the way? According to estimates, for a month-long expedition, a warrior had to carry about 40 kilograms of weight, of which 32 kg went for provisions, and the rest for weapons and equipment. However, the Cossacks traveled much longer, and Ivan Sokolovsky suggests that they were regularly hungry.
In addition, historians do not have accurate data on how the conquerors of Siberia were dressed, and about their appearance. There are only images in the annals of Semyon Remezov, but can they be considered reliable, because he was born 60 years later than the Siberian campaign? The conclusion of Ivan Sokolovsky is that it is almost impossible to reconstruct Yermak's path and his personality in detail.
Pavel Krasin