Yermak Timofeyevich - Conquest Background

Conquest Background

In the late 1500s, prior to Ermac’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 in 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 precarious ground until the rise of Kuchum Khan, a descendent of the famed Chingis Khan, in the 1560s. Kuchum Khan built up allies among its neighbors and the Crimean Tatars in order to thwart the Stroganovs’ expansion across the Urals. In July 1572, Kuchum launched his first raid of 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 Ermac Timofeevich as the leader of the Cossack brigades. According to the Stroganov Chronicle, on April 6, 1579, after hearing of Ermac 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 Ermac had been the most illustrious of the recruits, he became the captain (ataman) of the “conquest of Siberia.” However, there remains the question as to whether Ermac 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 Ermac’s campaign while the Yesipov Chronicle fails to even 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 Ermac for the conquest of Siberia. Siberian historians are divided on the matter, some believing that the Stroganovs were behind Ermac’s campaign and others believing that they played no part in it.