Yakutia, not yet fully conquered
Author: Andrey Filimonov
The formal annexation of Yakutia to the Tsardom of Muscovy, which began with the founding of the Yakut fort in 1632, took several decades and was accompanied by dramatic military episodes. The Yakuts besieged and set fire to the fort several times, while the "pioneers" fought among themselves over furs, horses, mammoth tusks, and other valuables they managed to seize from the local population.
In the 17th century, the development of Yakutia and its riches was not solely a matter for the sovereign. Hunting and trading bands—“eager men”—were heading east, often evading state control. However, the distinction between state-owned and private property was as fluid as the borders of the ever-expanding Russian state.
Thus, "promyshlenniki" (from the word "to make a living") from distant Tomsk arrived on the banks of the Lena. They stole livestock from the Yakuts, driving it back to their homeland, selling the cows and horses at Siberian fairs along the way. The business was very profitable, but it irritated the governors in the Yakutsk prison, who believed that the newcomers from Tomsk were brazenly "mow[ing]" someone else's land.
Things escalated to a full-blown battle. One day, the Yakut voivode Khodyrev caught up with the "hunting party" and ordered the slaughter of about thirty Yakuts accompanying the Tomsk service men. He took the captured livestock for himself and his service men instead of returning it to their rightful owners.
Robbery was a common method of collecting tribute, used both by the national Yakut “authorities” and by the “brotherhood” that came from beyond the Urals.
Gerhard Miller, the author of the first "History of Siberia," writes that before the arrival of the Russians, Yakutia was controlled by "the princes of the Kangalas volost, the most distinguished of whom was Tynya... He and another Kangalas prince named Byuk resisted [Russian colonization] most strongly. They persecuted to death those who paid yasak to the Russians."
The Yakut princes (toyons) viewed the Russians as rivals who exacted yasak from a population already burdened with tribute. And since the Russians took hostages (amanats) everywhere as a guarantee that the yasak would be paid, the relatives of the captives were forced to send yasak secretly, fearing the vengeance of Tynya and his kinsmen.
Tynya (according to other sources, Tygyn) was the same warlike feudal lord as the West Siberian Khan Kuchum, who had caused so much trouble for Ermak’s squad half a century earlier.
The Cossacks complained to the Tsar about Tygyn that the Yakuts under his command “fought all day long and did not give us your sovereign’s yasak, and they did not want to let us, your serfs, leave their land.”
The first detailed military campaign by the Yakut voivode Pyotr Beketov against the "unpeaceful natives" occurred in 1633. The rebellious Yakuts gathered in one place and "secured themselves in their forts." The Russians were able to achieve victory by setting these forts ablaze, along with their defenders. The scorched earth tactic became one of the main methods of subjugating peoples who refused to peacefully join the Russian state.
The following year, the Yakuts again "did not pay yasak and beat the service people," while the "disobedient" (those unwilling to pay yasak) gathered and "attacked the Lena fort." In early 1635, a coalition of uluses formed under the leadership of toyon Mymak, who had amassed up to 700 fighters.
Upon learning of the impending attack, the Yakut voivode Osip Galkin decided to launch a preemptive strike. On January 5, his detachment (about 50 men) crossed the Lena River and attacked the Mymak ulus. The battle was fierce: the Yakuts, according to a source, attacked with "great horse charges"—riders armed with spears and palmas (a type of spear with a single-edged blade) charged. The Cossacks' horses were driven off, and many were wounded, including Galkin himself. The Russians were forced to retreat and lock themselves in the fort.
From January 9 to February 28, 1635, a "siege" took place: over 800 rebel Yakuts held the Lena fort under a brutal siege, attempting to set it ablaze with hay and birch bark, "attacking... with brutal assaults" from morning until evening, not allowing the defenders to leave for food or firewood. The besieged had virtually no chance of holding out until summer, when reinforcements from other forts could arrive. However, by the end of February, the Yakut army unexpectedly lifted the siege and departed.
Galkin's replacement, the new governor, Golovin, is attempting, for the first time in the region's history, to conduct a census of the population and livestock to calculate the yasak tax the Moscow government can count on. A sort of "food detachment" of 50 men is dispatched for this purpose, but their fate is tragic. The Yakuts ambushed and almost completely exterminated the "census takers."
Soon, more than a thousand Yakuts in combat armor (kuyaks) gathered in the Namskaya volost (approximately two kilometers from the Yakutsk fort) and spent three weeks "warring"—that is, conducting a show of force without active combat. In response, the Russians again assembled a punitive detachment, armed with arquebuses and muskets. Since the Yakuts had no firearms, this factor decided the outcome of the battle. The Cossack Vasily Poyarkov distinguished himself in the battle, "burning 300 Yakut men alive, along with their wives and children," plundering property, driving livestock into the city, and then distributing this livestock to the Cossacks "as a reward for their service."
Thirty years later, war breaks out again—this time on the Vilyuya River. The pretext is "dissension and murder" between the Yakuts and Russians in the sable trade. The Yakut Baltuga Timireyev gathers a detachment (about 50 men) and begins to act against the colonizers. In response, a punitive detachment of Russians and yasak-paying Yakuts attacks. They manage to capture Baltuga's brother, who is beheaded and impaled as a warning. Lesser participants in the uprising are simply burned, locked in a barn. The rebels' horses, mares, cows, and "in addition, cauldrons, clothes, and all kinds of clothing" are confiscated.
This marks the end of active military resistance in Yakutia. This vast territory peacefully reintegrates into the Russian state.
The voivode in shackles
In the 18th century, the Yakutsk fort ceased to be an outpost for pioneers and became the headquarters for the colonization of the empire's far northeast. Vitus Bering equipped expeditions to Kamchatka here and planned exploration of the American coast. From here, the war with the Chukchi, the most protracted colonial campaign in Russian history, was directed—it lasted, intermittently, for over half a century, beginning under Peter the Great and ending under Catherine the Great. The spoils of war flowed to Yakutsk, and the children of local princes who sent tribute to the tsar and "gifts" to the military commanders were held hostage here.
The city became a gold mine for officials, and it is not surprising that heated disputes between “economic entities” arose here from time to time.
Under Empress Anna Ioannovna, the Yakut voivode, Faddey Zhadovsky, clashed with Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev, the head of the Okhotsk port, who was responsible for the Second Kamchatka Expedition and all logistics for the "Pacific route." As was common in Rus', the dispute began with mutual denunciations, and Skornyakov-Pisarev initially prevailed, receiving a written order from Irkutsk to shackle the Yakut voivode right in his office and keep him under guard to prevent him from interfering with the expedition's equipment.
Faddey Zhadovsky spent six months in chains while his opponent controlled Yakutia's administrative and material resources. However, the fortunes of bureaucrats in Rus' are fickle—soon another order arrived from Irkutsk, dismissing Skornyakov-Pisarev, who "had shown little success in the task entrusted to him." Indeed, celebrating his victory over his defeated rival, Pisarev hosted lavish banquets, stopped paying salaries to his service personnel, and abandoned the construction of the port in Okhotsk, from where Bering intended to sail to America.
In general, I lost my vigilance and relaxed.
Now he himself was in irons. Zhadovsky's supporters freed the governor, and the city gates were locked and barred with logs so that Pisarev's men, who lived outside the city, could not intercede for their commander. The "Pisarevites" did indeed risk an assault on Yakutsk, but were driven back by cannon fire.
Throughout this months-long skirmish, its participants had no interest in the Yakuts or their plans to conquer America—each fought for their own interests, in full accordance with the spirit of the 18th century—an era of conspiracies, intrigues, palace coups, and revolutions.
The bosses amuse themselves with magic
While exporting material treasures from Yakutia, the metropolis simultaneously imported spiritual values into the colony. Peter the Great's 1706 decree (addressed to the Siberian Metropolitan Philotheus) listed the peoples who needed to be "brought to the Christian faith," including the Tungus and Yakuts. The royal decree ordered a radical "cleansing" of the indigenous people's sacred infrastructure: wherever "idols, idol-houses, and their wicked dwellings were found, everything was to be burned."
In reality, the "fight against paganism" was a fickle policy of not always clear prohibitions, targeted repressions, and show trials. A decree forbade Russians from "engaging in shamanism." According to Siberian sources, the authorities "amused themselves with magic." Moreover, one Yakut voivode was accused of hiring shamans to "cast a spell" on his opponents in an administrative court case: "...And the shaman Nyacha performed shamanism in his, Andreyka's, room, and in their land, shamans torment and corrupt people with demonic invocations and magic."
By order from St. Petersburg, a list of the most authoritative shamans of the Yakut land was compiled. Among those with indigenous names (Kuchunyak, Sydybyl, Iktey, and others), two Russian names were found: Fyodor Turbin and Semyon Rubachev. These Orthodox young men from the banks of the Lena River didn't just come to gawk at a native with a drum; they themselves took up a drum and peered beyond the realm of the real and the otherworldly (or skillfully feigned such a vision). Moreover, they managed to rise to the very top of the shamanic hierarchy, earning the honor of being included in the "royal register."
Rural priests, who interacted closely with the "natives" due to their duties, often fell into "pagan heresy" themselves. For example, on the first day of Maslenitsa, a priest from Olyokminsk paraded down the street of a Yakut town "singing the Virgin Mary," accompanied by two shamans. The priest even carried a shaman's drum on his head.
Yakut Robin Hoods of the 19th century
During the reign of Nicholas I, the "noble robber" Vasily Manchaary became famous in the Yakut uluses. He robbed the estates of wealthy landowners and cattle owners, and generously distributed the stolen goods to the poor, who, in gratitude, composed songs and legends about him:
Having frightened the rich with his raised sword, he gave away everything he could find: furs with shiny wool, coins—everything to all the people. He gave generously to all the poor folk...
It's worth noting, however, that much of the "Yakut folklore" dedicated to Manchaary was created under Soviet rule, when Stalin ordered that all "oppressed peoples" create akyns (poet singers) who would extol the exploits of their national "Robin Hoods." The akyns' work was an elegant literary adulation of the "leader of the peoples" himself, who in his youth had made a living by expropriating others' property.
In fact, the romantic cult of the Yakut bandit arose long before the advent of Soviet power. The first Yakut-language drama was dedicated to Manchaary's exploits. The poem "Yakut Manchaary" was published in Tiflis in 1897—just during Stalin's youth, who may have read it.
The real Manchaary was imprisoned at least five times. His main "exploits" were horse theft, arson, and beatings. After several "trips," he was sent to hard labor, chained. But, as the saying goes, "they don't send you further than Siberia." And the Yakut lands were referred to as "remote places" in the Criminal Code of the Russian Empire. By comparison, the Narym region, according to the same code, was considered "places not so remote."
So Manchaary served his sentence almost "at home"—in Okhotsk and the Vilyuysk district. For Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who would be exiled to Vilyuysk a couple of decades later, this was the end of the world and the depths of the wilderness. But for the Yakut Robin Hood, it was his homeland.
In 1841, freed from his shackles, Manchaary escaped from penal servitude (legends say he was a tireless runner, capable of covering tens of kilometers at the speed of a deer) and "wandered" with his comrades in the outskirts of Yakutsk, terrifying the townspeople and the administration:
Here and there there are simple Yakuts
Manchara is awaited as a dear guest
And we are ready to go with him to Yakutsk...
And the Russians say that it is a prison
The soldiers decided to open it themselves
And release the prisoners,
They want to set Yakutsk on fire from all sides
And at that time to plunder the inn,
And you and your squad will enter the Duma
And you will take the Yakut leaders captive...
The poet Aleksandrov, exiled to Yakutsk, wrote, and did not become famous for anything other than singing the exploits of Manchaara.
There were other famous criminals with resounding names in 19th-century Yakutia, but they all pale in comparison to the radiant image of Manchaary. Eventually, the gendarmes caught the "noble robber," and after another stint in prison, he settled down and lived peacefully to a ripe old age. But the mythological image had already separated from its bearer and long outlived the real man. In the early 1920s, a literary and political magazine, "Manchaary," was published in Yakutsk. A street in the Yakut capital is named after him. Monuments to him stand in several cities. The republic also hosts a Spartakiad of national sports (including running), the "Manchaary Games."
It feels like the Russians were never able to completely conquer Yakutia.
