Yermak Timofeyevich
Yermak Timofeyevich was a Cossack ataman who started the Russian conquest of Siberia during the reign of the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible. He is today a hero in Russian folklore and myths.
Russian interests in the fur trade fueled their desire to expand east into Siberia. The Tatar Khanate of Kazan established by Ulugh Muhammad was the best entryway into Siberia. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible's modernized army toppled the khanate. After the takeover of Kazan, the tsar looked to the powerful and affluent Stroganov merchant family to spearhead the eastward expansion. In the late 1570s, the Stroganovs recruited Cossack fighters to invade Asia on behalf of the tsar. These Cossacks elected Yermak as the leader of their armed forces, and in 1582 Yermak set out with an army of 840 to attack the Khanate of Sibir.
On October 26, 1582, Yermak and his soldiers overthrew Kuchum Khan's Tatar empire at Qashliq in a battle that marked the "conquest of Siberia". Yermak remained in Siberia and continued his struggle against the Tatars until 1584, when a raid organized by Kuchum Khan ambushed and killed him and his party.
The specifics of Yermak's life, such as his appearance, background, and dates of events, remain points of controversy for historians, because the texts that document his life are not reliable. However, his life and conquests had a profound influence on Siberian relations, sparking Russian interest in the region and establishing the Tsardom of Russia as an imperial power east of the Urals.
Authenticity
There is less information about Yermak than most other notable explorers and historical figures. Much of what we know about Yermak is derived from folklore and legend. There are no contemporary descriptions of Yermak and all portraits are merely estimations. One of the Siberian chronicles, the Remezov Chronicle, written more than one hundred years after Yermak's death describes him as "flat-faced, black of beard with curly hair, of medium stature and thick-set and broad-shouldered," but even this detailed account is not reliable because the narrator had never seen Yermak.In addition to his physical features' being unknown, the details of Yermak's life and the circumstances leading up to his excursion into Siberia are obscure. Russian writer Valentin Rasputin laments the lack of information that we have about Yermak considering the vast scope of his contributions to Russian society.
Knowledge of Yermak's upbringing and voyages pales in comparison to that of other explorers. Historians encounter serious difficulties when attempting to piece together the specifics of Yermak's life and exploits because the two key, primary sources about Yermak may be biased or inaccurate. These sources are the Stroganov Chronicle and the Sinodnik. The Stroganov Chronicle was commissioned by the Stroganov family itself, therefore it exaggerates the family's involvement in the conquest of Siberia. The Sinodnik is an account of Yermak's campaign written forty years after his death by the archbishop of Tobolsk, Cyprian. The text was formed based on oral tradition and memories of his expedition but almost certainly was affected by the archbishop's desire to canonize Yermak. The combination of forgotten details over time and the embellishment or omission of facts in order for Yermak to be accepted as a saint suggests that the Sinodik could be erroneous. Though Cyprian failed to canonize Yermak, he made an effort to immortalize the warrior, who he considered being the "Grand Inquisitor" of Siberia.
These documents, along with the various others that chronicle Yermak's expeditions, are filled with contradictions that make the truth about Yermak's life difficult to discern. While the sources that exist on Yermak are fallible, those accounts, along with folklore and legend, are all that historians have to base their knowledge on; therefore, they are widely accepted and considered to reflect the truth.
Early life
Ancestry
The Don Cossack warrior Yermak Timofeyevich was born by the Chusovaya River on the eastern fringes of the Muscovite lands. The only information about Yermak's upbringing comes from a source called the Cherepanov Chronicle. This chronicle, compiled by a Tobolsk coachman in 1760 – long after Yermak's death – was never published in full, but, in 1894, historian Aleksandr Alekseyevich Dmitriyev concluded it probably represents a copy or paraphrase of an authentic 17th-century document. According to the section of the chronicle entitled "On Yermak, and where he was born", it is stated that Yermak's grandfather, Afonasiy Grigoryevich Alenin, came from Suzdal, north-east of Moscow.To escape poverty, he moved south to Vladimir where he became a coachman in the Murom forests. In the Murom forests, the voyevoda arrested him for driving unscrupulous passengers – robbers who had hired him. Afonasiy's son Timofey relocated to the Stroganov lands on the Chusovaya in order to make money.
Occupation
Yermak worked in the Stroganovs' river fleet as a porter and a sailor transporting salt along the Kama and the Volga rivers. Growing tired of his work, he assembled a gang, left his employment, and moved to the Don region to become a river pirate. Among his fellow Cossack bandits, he acquired the nickname Yermak.Prior to his conquest of Siberia, Yermak's combat experience consisted of leading a Cossack detachment for the tsar in the Livonian War of 1558–83 and plundering merchant ships. Based on legends and folk songs, for years, Yermak had been involved in robbing and plundering on the Volga with the hetman Ivan Kolzo and four other Cossack leaders. Historian Valerie Kivelson refers to Yermak's group as "his gang of thugs." Like many other Cossacks, Yermak's gang was involved in the "thieves" trade. It was typical of Cossacks to engage in piracy on the Sea of Azov or the Caspian Sea and to rob various envoys and Russian or Persian merchants. Though a bandit, Yermak earned a reputation as an eminent and loyal Russian fighter. Through his experience fighting in the Livonian War, he learned war tactics and excelled beyond the other hetmans in skill.
Conquest background
In the late 1500s, prior to Yermak's expeditions, the Russians attempted to push eastward into Siberia in search of furs. Under Ivan the Great, the Russians entered northwest Siberia but "to approach Siberia from that direction proved too arduous and difficult, even in the best of times." The Russians decided that taking a southern route through the Tatar khanate of Kazan would allow them to penetrate Siberia more easily, but Kazan would need to be overthrown first. Ivan the Terrible's first foreign objective upon rising to power was to take Kazan. Ivan the Terrible's modernized army proved successful at the beginning of October 1552 and Ivan proceeded to open up the east to enterprising Russian individuals, such as the Stroganovs. Anika Stroganov used the former khanate of Kazan as an entryway into Siberia and established a private empire on the southwest corner of Siberia.Following the Russian conquest under Ivan the Terrible, the Tatar khanate of Kazan became the Russian province of Perm. Ivan the Terrible had tremendous trust in the entrepreneurial prowess of the Stroganov family and granted them the province of Perm as a financial investment which would be sure to benefit Russia in the future. The tsar also gave the Stroganovs permission to expand into the territory along the Tobol and Irtysh Rivers which belonged to the Muslim leader Kuchum Khan. The Stroganovs proceeded to launch expeditions eastward into non-Russian territories. They pushed into the khanate of Sibir, the sister state of the former khanate of Kazan, because it maintained control over Siberia's fur in the west.
During the time of the Russian conquest of Kazan in the 1540s and 1550s, Sibir had been undergoing conflicts of its own with rival clans. The khanate was on the precarious ground until the rise of Kuchum Khan, a descendant of the famed Chingis Khan, in the 1560s. Kuchum Khan built up allies among his neighbors and the Crimean Tatars in order to thwart the Stroganovs' expansion across the Urals. In July 1572, Kuchum launched his first raid on Stroganov settlements, which resulted in almost one hundred deaths. In 1573, the Tatar army expanded and changed leadership. Kuchum's nephew, Mahmet-kul, assumed control of the Tatar army. The Stroganovs realized that they could no longer expect their settlers to remain in the lands around Perm if they only fought a defensive battle. The tsar granted the Stroganov family permission to invade Asia. However, the tsar soon changed his mind and told the Stroganovs to retract from Siberia, fearing that Russia did not have the resources or manpower to topple Kuchum Khan's empire.
The Stroganovs decided to ignore the tsar's orders and, in the late 1570s, Anika Stroganov's grandsons Nikita and Maksim recruited Cossack fighters to wage war on their behalf. They elected the Cossack chieftain Yermak Timofeyevich as the leader of the Cossack brigades. According to the Stroganov Chronicle, on April 6, 1579, after hearing of Yermak's and his comrades' "daring and bravery," the Stroganovs sent a letter to the men asking them to come to their ancestral estates in Chusovaya and summoning them to fight against the Tatars in the name of the tsar. Since Yermak had been the most illustrious of the recruits, he became the captain of the "conquest of Siberia." However, there remains the question as to whether Yermak, in fact, decided to fight the war of his own accord without being pursued by the Stroganovs. This question arose due to the discrepancy between the narratives of the Stroganov Chronicle and a different Siberian chronicle, the Yespiov Chronicle. The Stroganov Chronicle portrays the family as the motivating force behind Yermak's campaign while the Yesipov Chronicle fails even to mention the family. Perhaps the Stroganovs told the story in a way that would inspire the Russian people to feel just as indebted to them as to Yermak for the conquest of Siberia. Siberian historians are divided on the matter, some believing that the Stroganovs were behind Yermak's campaign and others believing that they played no part in it.