From Scythian gold to the Lena massacre
The history of gold mining in Siberia: how the gold rush began in 1828, who were the "emperors of the taiga," and how the Lena massacre of 1912 ended
Author: Andrey Filimonov
The history of gold mining in Siberia began in 1809 with correspondence "regarding the examination of two gold grains extracted from killed black grouse by the Balagansky Commissioner Beighton." The Balagansky district was located in the Irkutsk province. From there, the "grains" were sent to the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, where the learned expert, Professor Vasily Severgin, immediately recalled Herodotus's story "of a certain kind of bird of prey that supposedly snatches gold from the mountains." The Siberian capercaillie evoked in the professor's mind the ancient legend of the Arimaspians, one-eyed men who steal gold from vultures and sell it to the Scythians.
The Scythians, in turn, resold the gold to the Greeks. Herodotus records that gold-bearing Scythian rivers flowed from the Riphean Mountains. But historians still don't know where these mountains are located. Is it the Urals or the Altai?
Thus, from the very moment of its appearance, Siberian gold was enclosed within the framework of myth.
On August 11, 1828, a document arrived at the Dmitrov Volost Administration in Tomsk Governorate. First-guild merchant Andrei Yakovlevich Popov, who had previously traded in wine, requested a plot of land on the Berikul River. He and his nephew Fedot had received permission to search for gold sands throughout Siberia the previous year and had spent large sums of money from the wine trade on geological exploration.
At first, the uncle and nephew searched for gold near Tobolsk, but without success. Then Popov, described by contemporaries as "a very intelligent man, though completely ignorant of any knowledge of the mountainous region," turned his attention to rumors circulating along the Siberian Highway. They said that somewhere in the taiga near Berikul lived a peasant named Yegor Lesnoy, who frequently ventured into the mountains, from where he brought back large grains of native gold. Or perhaps he wasn't a peasant, but an escaped convict, or even a wandering Tungus. In Siberia, people often lived "without papers," forgetting their past lives as unnecessary. The most famous example is the elder Feodor of Tomsk, who erased his identity so radically that historians still wonder if he was Emperor Alexander.
In any case, Popov's agents went to Berikul and obtained samples of the metal, the grains of which turned out to be much heavier than copper. Now there was virtually no doubt—the gold was there. By a strange coincidence, Yegor Lesnoy died that same year. Rumor has it that someone strangled the prospector, and it so happened that no one except Popov's agents knew the way to the taiga gold. However, Yegor's death is as much an unconfirmed myth as his life.
But the Popovs' application was duly approved and documented by the volost administration. That day can be considered the beginning of the gold rush in Siberia.
Golden Web
Our "Jack London," who painted a picture of life around a gold mine, was the writer Nikolai Naumov. His story "The Web" begins with a scene in which an old-timer explains to a visitor how the village of T..., which until recently consisted of six households, expanded to three hundred houses after the discovery of gold, each housing a pub, a store, a hotel, or a red-lantern establishment. The only thing missing in this cheerful Siberian wilderness was a roulette wheel, and only because the wheel of fortune would be invented in Monte Carlo a little later.
"The village is filled with groans from the wild revelry. Gray-bearded old housekeepers, fathers of families, speaking pious speeches, encourage all sorts of outrages, themselves inciting more modest workers to them, becoming their humiliated servants, selling everything for which the maddened reveler can pay money. The workers who have brought home larger sums of money gather around themselves a crowd of hangers-on, calling them 'princes,' and their occasional girlfriends 'princesses.' The 'princes,' accompanied by their retinue, rampage through the village. And all this continues until the townspeople have fleeced their dear guests literally blind..." Nikolai Naumov. "The Web"
It's no wonder the gold miners were looking for a night out after the hard, dreary life of the mines. From mid-spring, when work began at the mine, until mid-autumn, when the workers were paid, they lived in practically primitive conditions:
"The workers are housed in disgustingly damp, dirty, cramped, and cold barracks. The barracks are hastily built. They consist of log structures with a single door made of planks and a few small windows. The floor is usually earthen, bunks run around the walls, and the entire barracks is heated by an iron stove in the center. In such a building, the walls freeze solid in winter, the door bleeds, the windows are single-frame and always covered in ice, and the floor is cold, damp, and dirty," said doctor V. M. Krutovsky, describing the workers' quarters in the gold mines of Yenisei Province.
Under Soviet rule, such barracks would become the model for Gulag barracks—the same bunks, a stove in the middle, and a latrine in the corner. But that would come later, when gold began to be mined in Kolyma. In the first half of the 19th century, gold mining, like the Russian pioneers a couple of centuries earlier, marched across Siberia from west to east.
Legalization of private mines
In 1812, three years after gold grains were discovered in the stomachs of Irkutsk black grouse, the Russian government issued a decree authorizing private gold mining. Previously, this industry had been a state-run, dull affair, lacking any scope for imagination, with state-owned peasant slaves lacking the opportunity to indulge in luxury after work. Before Popov staked his claim on the Berikul, the government decree lay virtually untouched. But from 1828 onward, it began to flourish. In just ten years, private gold mining in Siberia reached 102 poods (1.5 kg) per year (10% of all state production). A decade later, in 1850, private miners were producing 1010 poods (1.5 kg)—almost 90% of all Russian gold.
The Popov company was doing so well that by the mid-1830s, it owned more than 120 mines in the Tomsk and Yenisei provinces, producing over 100 poods of gold annually. Andrei Yakovlevich himself did not live to see the heyday of his gold-mining empire: he died in 1833 in St. Petersburg and is buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. His nephew, Fedot, died a year earlier in Tomsk.
According to Popov's will, part of his capital was used to establish Siberia's first public bank. The businessman ordered the purchase of gold church vessels for the city's cathedral, a replica of the Christ the Savior Cathedral, which was being built in Tomsk at the time.
As we know, Christ commanded to share.
The False "Duke," the Taiga Napoleon, and a Person Close to the Emperor
Among the donors to the Tomsk Cathedral in the mid-19th century is the provincial prosecutor Filosof Gorokhov, who had his own reasons for sharing his wealth with God. The son of a poor nobleman from Narym, Filosof Alexandrovich became rich by marrying Olimpiada Evgrafovna Filimonova, the daughter of a gold miner. Olimpiada became his gold mine, his philosopher's stone. Within a few years, the former prosecutor amassed a million-dollar fortune and resigned without hesitation when Emperor Nicholas I condemned the combination of government office and gold mining. Gorokhov donated 1576 rubles and five and a half kopecks for the construction of the cathedral. Historians are at a loss to explain such precision, especially the five-kopeck and half-kopeck donation.
In Tomsk, the former prosecutor earned the nickname "the Duke." He partied lavishly, standing out even among other gold rush celebrities, and ordered decorations for his feasts from Europe. Not only the furniture, but even the parquet flooring in his house was from Parisian masters.
Decades later, memories of this man shimmer with a golden glow. The Siberian Herald wrote at the end of the 19th century: "Gorokhov lived such a luxurious life that no one in Tomsk, either before or after him, lived like this. His companions showered him with gold by the handful, but it flowed to them like a river. Rich and poor alike brought him their savings, and he paid incredible interest: from 50 to 100 percent a year."
Judging by this article, the former prosecutor organized something in the province like the MMM of his time, a "cornucopia" corporation that fooled simpletons with the prospect of crazy profits.
For nearly 10 years, Philosopher Gorokhov cultivated his reputation as a multimillionaire. He built a mansion with a luxurious garden in the city center and dazzled visitors with his library of hundreds of gold-embossed volumes.
When Gorokhov finally went bankrupt and the bailiffs seized his property, it turned out that the “library” was a pure illusion—book spines glued to wooden boards.
In Tomsk province, no one could surpass Gorokhov in the breadth of his imagination. But in the east, he had worthy rivals. One of them, Gavriil Masharov, a Yenisei gold miner, called himself the "Emperor of the Taiga" and, to commemorate this title, commissioned the casting of a gold medal weighing either 5 or 10 kilograms—historians disagree. In his residence, Masharov built not only a palace but also a greenhouse with pineapples. It is said that the emperor's trousers were sent to Paris for laundering. Gavriil presented one of his favorites with golden bast shoes. In short, he had everything, like the finest houses in Europe. And, of course, such a generous man could not help but end his life in debt, where the Emperor of the Taiga caught a chill in his kidneys and died, to the disappointment of his creditors.
However, the wild whims of these eccentrics consumed only a fraction of a percent of Siberian gold production. Most of the money was spent on business. Gorokhov's partner in the gold business was Ivan Astashev, a man of the opposite disposition, who saw no reason to cast pearls before local society. Instead, he made useful connections in St. Petersburg. Astashev's origins were unclear; he attained nobility only in adulthood—through merit, self-made, without the support of Gorokhov's family.
Astashev knew how to convert gold into proximity to power. In 1840, he was granted an audience with Nicholas I, who presented Astashev with a diamond ring bearing the imperial monogram—"as an example to other Siberian gold miners for his socially beneficial work." The extent of his influence at court is reflected in a proverb that circulated in Tomsk: "If Astashev wants it, he'll get a miter." That is, the ecclesiastical rank of archbishop.
The next generation of Tomsk's gold coins found a home in education. Gold miner Zakhary Tsibulsky made history and received the title of "Honorary Citizen of Tomsk" for contributing 140 rubles to the construction fund for the first Siberian University in 1876. Tsibulsky effectively "bought" the university for Tomsk. His contribution proved decisive in choosing the location.
Two revolutionaries in one family
The history of the Siberian gold industry was not only marked by the fame of mine owners. In the mid-19th century, the family of Polish exile Ksawery Kwiatkowski lived in Tomsk. According to the memoirs of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, "Ksawery served in the gold industry"—that is, he was the mid-level administrator of the mines, without whom no Gorokhovsky or Astashevsky capital would have gotten off the ground. Kwiatkowski and his family lived quietly, in the old-world style, in their own house outside the city.
Bakunin, who was serving his exile in Tomsk after four years of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul and Shlisselburg fortresses, became a frequent guest at this house. He took on the job of teaching French to the owner's two daughters and fell in love with the eldest, Antonina. They married in 1858. A year later, they embarked on a romantic trip around the world, each departing Siberia in opposite directions—Antonina westward, Mikhail eastward—to happily reunite a year later in London. For Bakunin, this was an escape, since Nicholas I personally decreed his exile to Siberia to be "indefinite."
The Kvyatkovskys also had another offspring, also born in Tomsk, who did not escape the family's penchant for anti-government activity. Alexander Kvyatkovsky became one of the organizers of the "Land and Freedom" movement, then "People's Will," and participated in plotting assassination attempts on Alexander II. When he was arrested in 1880, he was found in possession of bundles of illegal newspapers and counterfeit passports, nitroglycerin, and plans of the Winter Palace with the royal rooms marked with crosses. This gentlemanly revolutionary kit led Alexander to the scaffold in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
The gold on which Potanin slept
Tomsk residents were perplexed when they heard about Bakunin’s escape from Siberia.
What did he miss? After marriage, the anarchist's exile was first-class: a private mansion with a winter garden and a Chinese pavilion, receptions, visits, Manila cigars, and French champagne.
One day, a wild-looking, bearded young man named Grigory Potanin arrived at this mansion, straight from the taiga. He brought a letter of recommendation from a relative who had been mining gold in the taiga, without much success. At least, young Potanin had no money. Only the letter.
Bakunin graciously received his guest, introduced him to his (real!) library, purchased from the Decembrist Batenkov, and secured permission for Potanin to travel west with a caravan of gold. Otherwise, Grigory Nikolaevich planned to walk to St. Petersburg, like a new Lomonosov. But he didn't have to. Thanks to Bakunin's patronage, he literally slept on gold on the way to the capital.
"The caravan consisted of 17-20 wagons, commanded by some official and escorted by several soldiers. A sturdy box containing gold bars was chained to the bottom of each wagon, with room for passengers on top. Therefore, to increase the size of the caravan, officials, officers, and students who needed to travel to the Urals, Perm, Kazan, Moscow, or St. Petersburg but lacked the means to pay for the long journey were readily accepted. In other caravans, each wagon was occupied by one or two free passengers." V. Obruchev. "Grigory Nikolaevich Potanin: Life and Work."
Potanin himself also addressed the theme of the gold rush—in his unfinished novel, "Taizhans," he described the atmosphere of Tomsk in the mid-19th century:
"Then the lackeys became rich, and their masters went down the drain; there was a general reshuffling of social status. Merchants large and small, if they hadn't themselves indulged in the scam, rushed to invest their money in the schemes of the lucky man; some amassed enormous sums; the public partitions disappeared; the deputy governor left his post and became a clerk for a bearded prospector; a convict became a wealthy gold miner..." G. Potanin. "Taizhans."
Lena Massacre
The Siberian gold rush lasted for a couple of decades. Then the Napoleonic era wore off, and specialists entered the historical scene. In the second half of the 19th century, the government authorized the creation of joint-stock gold mining companies. One of these was Lena Goldfields, registered in London. Famous people owned the company's shares—Count Witte, Empress Maria Feodorovna, and many others had a stake in this gold mining enterprise.
The Lena Goldfields mines were located in the Lena, Vitim, and Olyokma river basins. In 1912, 6258 people worked there. The Lena Gold Mining Partnership effectively controlled the entire Bodaibo district.
The Lena goldfields were among the most advanced mining enterprises in the country, largely thanks to mining engineer Leopold Graumann, managing director of Lenzoto from 1891 to 1901. Under his leadership, gold mining in the remote taiga became a testing ground for technical experiments. In 1896, on the Nygri River, near the Pavlovsky goldfields, the partnership built a 300-kW hydroelectric power station. It became the first in Siberia and the first in Russia to transmit high-voltage electricity—up to 10 volts—over a significant distance. Power was supplied via overhead lines 9 and 14 kilometers long. In 1899, an electric hoist for hauling rock from the mine was installed, and around the same time, the country's first electric locomotive began operating at the Nadezhdinsky goldfields.
However, in what was a cutting-edge production facility for its time, the workers lived and worked as in the days of Gorokhov and Popov. The workday was 11,5 hours. Wages were often paid in coupons, which were accepted only at the mine stores. When calculating wages, workers complained about under-measurement and under-weighting of the mined rock. Consumption and scurvy were rampant in the damp barracks. And the mine hospital had very high competition—up to 50 patients per bed.
In late February 1912, at the Andreevsky mine, a worker was given rotten meat, and a woman bought a meat by-product at a store that "resembled a horse's genitals." This sparked a strike that quickly spread to other mines. The workers demanded improved food and housing conditions, a 30 percent wage increase, and an eight-hour workday. The administration refused to negotiate and sent daily telegrams to the Irkutsk governor's office. Eventually, a response arrived from the Police Department: the strike committee must be liquidated without fail.
On April 3, the strike leaders were arrested. The next day, about three thousand workers marched to the Nadezhdinsky mine demanding the release of their comrades. They were met by a detachment of soldiers. On orders from Captain Nikolai Treshchenkov, the soldiers opened fire.
According to the commission, headed by the then-little-known lawyer A. F. Kerensky, 170 people died and over two hundred were injured on April 4. As it turned out, the advanced Lena goldfields went down in history not for their electric locomotives and high-voltage power lines, but for the massacre.
A significant Soviet myth is associated with the Lena gold mine. Allegedly, Vladimir Ulyanov adopted the pseudonym "Lenin" after learning of the 1912 execution. It doesn't matter that historians have long since discovered his 1901 article, signed "N. Lenin." The myth is stronger because it's more interesting than the facts, just as the one-eyed Arimaspians are more interesting than the archaeological details of ancient metallurgy.
Two hundred years later - the same shore
The Tisulsky District of the Kemerovo Region is the current name of the area where Popov staked his first claim on the Berikul in 1828. The gold there hasn't run out, and life is thriving. The state is trying to control everything, and people, as usual, are looking for ways to circumvent it. The prosecutor's office is shutting down gold mining companies that illegally cut down trees and dump waste into the water. Throughout Siberia, the FSB is diligently hunting down illegal prospectors. In May 2026, a local resident in Transbaikalia had the misfortune of confiscating 31 grams of gold worth 246 rubles. Because there were no documents for the gold.
Meanwhile, legislators are attempting to legalize solo prospectors. The bill "On Prospecting Activity," known as the "free entry" law, was passed by the State Duma in its first reading back in July 2023. It was intended to allow individual entrepreneurs to mine placer gold in designated areas. However, the bill never got past the first reading.
Yegor Lesnoy's successors still work illegally, just like in the nineteenth century.
