The battle which took place on August 30, 1598, was nothing more than an armed skirmish by modern-day standards, with 400 fighters on one side and slightly more than 500, on the other. In the history of Fatherland countless skirmishes of this sort have occurred!
Yet the aftermath of that battle on the banks of river Irmen, a tributary to Ob, was different in scope. That memorable event could be compared to the arrival of soldiers led by Spaniard Cortes in Latin America, the landing of Mayflower colonists on the shores of North America and the results of the First and Second World Wars.
On that distant August day a detachment of Russian warlord Andrei Voyeikov, mainly comprised of Cossacks, defeated the forces of Siberian Prince Kuchum (Kutsem khan) and Siberia was annexed by the Russian state – not a big deal you say?
Historically, we’ve been brought up in the tradition that all major Russia-related events were happening in her European part. Wars with Western European powers and southern neighbors, annexation and loss of land and population on the western and southern frontiers – with rare exceptions we have a wealth of historical evidence, textbooks and memoirs, theses and non-fiction hypotheses, films and folklore on this subject.
As regards the adventures of Russians related to annexation of such a “tiny” bit of land as Siberia, in this area we subsist on short rations. We’ve got used to hearing about a certain khan Kuchum who once lived in Western Siberia – ostensibly a wild and minor ruler of the wild land. One day tsar Ivan the Terrible all of a sudden sent a mission to that far-off land led by Cossack chief Yermak Timofeevich. The guys proved savvy and quick on the uptake due to their rich experience. They sorted out things with Kuchum very quickly and Siberia became part of Russia.
And if you ask us, Russian citizens, largely dependent on the riches of the amazing Siberian land, about the origin of the name Syberia, I’m afraid few in Muscovy and the rest of European Russia could answer this question.
As early as the IV century warriors of the old Turkish tribe “sybyr” inhabiting Western Siberia joined the Hunnish armada led by Attila, making a move toward Europe. Later on their lands were ruled by different nations. Mongols turned up here in the XIII century. Near-Irtysh lands were annexed by the ulus (nomad camp) of Juchi, the son of Ghengis Khan, and later became part of the Blue Horde.
The khans of the Blue Horde did not always manage to cope with the local population. In the XV century indigenous nobility was already governing this land. Its representative khan Mamet founded the city of Sybyr, better known as Isker or as Qashliq (in the Russian chronicles).
In the XVI century Ghengis khan’s descendants, namely khan Kuchum, regained power.
For some time Kuchum maintained official correspondence with Ivan IV who was well aware of the interest of Ivan III in trans-Ural domains. Not that Kuchum was too much afraid of his western neighbor, huge distances and the lack of roads being his sure protection. But he did not seek a conflict either, having agreed to the Russian suzerainty. He even paid a tribute in furs (yasak), albeit for a short time.
After a Russian envoy was murdered by Kuchum’s warlord, Ivan IV sent his troops beyond the Urals. Far from being a wild barbarian, Kuchum was a well-born Muslim and carried out the work in Western Siberia similar to the one performed by Prince Vladimir in ancient Rus. The only difference was that Kuchum converted his new subjects to Mohammedan faith.
The concluding process of conquering Western Siberia took almost 20 years. Initially Yermak was adequate for this mission. In 1582 he drove Kuchum eastward and occupied his capital Isker. Yet isolation from the mother country, limited forces and perseverance of Kuchum took their toll. In 1585 Yermak perished and the remnant of his detachment returned to Muscovy. A new surge of interest in Siberia took place in Muscovy already under Tsar Feodor Ioannovich. In 1597 junior warlord Andrey Voyeykov with 1,000 warriors was sent to Tara fortress on the river Irtysh. But it was Tsar Boris Godunov who ordered another expedition from Tara. Please note the consistent policy of different Russian sovereigns. Voyeykov’s march from Tara towards Irmen where Kuchum broke his camp took the entire summer of 1598. Voyeykov’s regimen had to cross 330 miles of virgin land and water bodies. Kuchum was waiting for the Russian warlord at the confluence of Irmen and Ob. Now the battle site lies on the bottom of Novosibirsk Reservoir;
close by is Verkh-Irmen settlement.
The battle lasted half a day. Kuchum lost 90% of his army and his family. He burst out of the trap with 50 warriors and moved eastward beyond the river Ob. He refused the proposal to become a subject of Moscow, got engaged in brigandage and was soon killed at the hands of the Nogay Horde.
More than 400 years have lapsed since those days. Following Western Siberia, Easter Siberia and Maritime Region, Kamchatka and Sakhalin were also annexed.
And the Pipe also came into being!
And what was the fate of Sibirs?
Strange though it might seem, they survived. The Russian Empire tried its best to preserve their originality: nobody encroached on their local governance, forensic law and dialect. Under the Bolsheviks, the Sibirs ended up in a black list.
Now they inhabit their indigenous lands in Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Sverdlovsk and Kemerovo provinces as well as in Kazakhstan – tentatively 200,000 of them are left, according to an official version.
One thing is not clear, though: if the Sibir tribe was already mentioned in a chronicle dating from the IV century A.D., why is this self-identification spread nowadays to Siberian Tatars as well – an ethnic group formed on this land by XVI century? The people began naming themselves “Siberian Tatars” only from the early XX century. Was it because only 9,500 natives designated themselves as Sibirs during the census of 2002?
This is another theme to be discussed, right?
It would be superfluous to debate whether August 30 could be a good date for a national holiday: Siberia Acquisition Day.
Mikhail Bykov
