Rola rodu Stroganowów w początkowym etapie podboju Syberii przez Państwo Moskiewskie w XVI w.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the role played by representatives of the Stroganov family, famous for salt-making and conducting a profitable trade (primarily in furs and hides), in the initial stage of the conquest of Siberia by the Moscow State, which fell in the second half of the 16th century. It was then that they received from Tsar Ivan IV the Grozny huge land grants on the eastern borders of the state on the Kama River with instructions to develop them. Settlements and manufacturing enterprises were quickly established there, mainly salt brewing plants, managed by the Stroganovs. On the other hand, the safety of the new colonists already living in and attracted to these lands from incursions by local peoples and Siberian Tartars was guarded by their private troops, armed with firearms, deployed in fortified spurs. Over the years, thanks to successive tsarist grants, the family’s domains grew to the point where they reached beyond the Ural Mountains. This, in turn, increasingly worried the ruler of the Siberian Khanate, Khan Kuchum, who also claimed sovereignty over these lands. In order to secure the lands they had received possession of from the destructive incursions of the Siberian Tatars and subordinate peoples, the Stroganovs decided to take advantage of the Volga Cossack troops, who were engaged in robbery, led by the ataman Yermak. In the late 1670s and early 1680s, the Cossacks, supplied with food, firearms and supported by the Stroganovs’ armed men, set off for Siberia, with the goal of the expedition being to reach Kashlyk, the capital of the Siberian Khanate. Although the seat of Khan Kuchum was finally occupied in 1582, the fact that the Stroganovs organized the entire expedition turned into a kind of beginning of the conquest of Siberia by the Muscovite state, for the state authorities soon joined in the development of the lands occupied by the Cossacks and Stroganov men beyond the Urals. However, this did not mean that the Stroganovs lost their decisive role in the entire Siberian epic. They were still responsible for all kinds of assistance (victualing in food and weapons, supplying ships and their own armed forces) to the tsarist troops moving to conquer the territory of the former Siberian Khanate. Naturally, they gained gratitude from the rulers for their actions, which translated into economic and legal concessions for their activities and subsequent large land grants on the eastern frontiers of the Muscovite state. Thus, the Stroganovs, seeking to ensure the security of their domains, which at the same time remained at all times under the supreme authority of the tsars, by sending Yermak’s Cossack troops to Siberia, began the process of dynamic Russian expansion to the east, which could no longer be stopped. Translated by Stefan Kubiak