Oryol-gorodok as a Starting Point of Ermak’s Campaign

Abstract

The article examines the issue of where the decision about the expedition to Siberia under the leadership of Ermak Timofeevich was made and where it began in the estates of the Stroganovs in the region of the Northern Kama. The discussion of this complex and important event in the history of Russia not only continues actively in the academic circles but it is also clearly expressed today in the city of Chusovaya and the village of Oryol-gorodok in the Perm krai (territory, in which monuments to Ermak are erected, with the assertion that it is from these settlements that a campaign to “conquer Siberia” began. The article also considers the attitude of Ivan IV the Terrible to the settlement and development of the eastern borders of his kingdom. The paper explores the personality of the legendary ataman Ermak and the result of his campaign, which raised a number of controversial theoretical and conceptual questions. The reason for this lies in the incompleteness of the factual material and in its inconsistency. Despite the lacunae in the history of this issue, the article argues that Ermak “did not conquer” Siberia, but only restored the status quo in the region beyond the Urals, which ultimately contributed to the trends of progressive development in the new lands of the Russian state expressed in rapprochement and mutual cultural enrichment between the Russian settlers and indigenous peoples of Siberia.

Keywords:

ataman, the Stroganov family, Ivan IV the Terrible, Verkhnekam’e, Oryol-gorodok, Nizhnii Chusovskoi gorodok, Siberian Chronicles, the meaning of Ermak’s campaign