The ecological ruin of Siberia began with 840 Cossacks

The trade in salt made the Stroganovs in Perm one of the wealthiest families in Russia in the 16th century. But the coveted mineral, which thousands of workers extracted from the salt pans and springs in the east of the empire, aroused the desires of those in power who had their centers of power beyond the Urals, in Siberia. In order to resist their raids, the family of Tsar Ivan IV asked for the right to raise their own troops and erect border fortresses.

But Ivan IV did not bear his nickname “the Terrible” for nothing. Those who ignored his restriction not to advance east across the Ural Mountains were gambling with their lives. The Stroganovs were ready for this. Their calculus: A victory over the Sibir Khanate would earn them so much fame and booty that the tsar would forgive them for their arbitrary powers. And they also found the right man for the expedition: Yermak Timofeevich (1525/40–1585).

There are more legends than news about his career. Yermak is said to have fought for the tsar against Poland and hunted the tsar's ships as a river pirate. Apparently he did this so successfully that he reached the highest rank of ataman in the Cossack hierarchy. To escape government stalkers, he came to Perm in the early 1580s.

The Stroganovs invested the then gigantic sum of 20,000 rubles to equip Yermak's expedition with everything they needed. These were mainly modern weapons - muskets, sabers, cannons -, ammunition, food, 300 more or less volunteers and even four clergymen. Together with Yermak's 540 followers, this resulted in an expedition on a scale comparable to the armies of the Spanish conquistadors who had previously conquered the Aztec and Inca empires in America.

On September 1, 1582, Yermak and his men set out from a Stroganov outpost. The men's most important tools were high-sided boats, which they towed across the crest of the Urals. Arriving on the east side, these vessels proved to be ideal means of transport for penetrating the river systems of Siberia. The troops are said to have covered up to 40 kilometers per day.

At the end of October she reached Qashliq or Sibir, the capital of Küchüm Khan near present-day Tobolsk. Between October 24 and 26, battle broke out on the banks of the Irtysh River. Mahmet Kul, the Khan's nephew, led the Siberian warriors armed only with bows and arrows. One musket salvo of the Cossacks was enough to wound their leader and break their courage because they could not put down a single enemy, writes the American historian W. Bruce Lincoln ("The Conquest of Siberia"):

"That evening, Yermak and his men occupied Qashliq and celebrated their success, traditionally referred to as the 'conquest of Siberia,' by dividing among themselves, in true Cossack fashion, the pelts of sables and silver foxes that filled Kurshum's treasury." Then they prepared for their first wintering in Siberia.

In order to redeem himself against the tsar, in early 1583 Yermak sent Ivan IV 2400 pelts of sables, 800 of silver foxes and 2000 of beavers. At that time, a sable pelt was ten times the annual income of a Russian peasant family. "Such a tribute was easily worth five times the sum with which the Stroganovs had furnished Yermak's expedition, but it represented only a tiny fraction of the treasures which the Russians were to wrest from Siberia in the years to come," writes Lincoln.

Ivan was delighted, promptly added the title "Tsar of Siberia" to his collection and sent Yermak a coat of mail with a gold-plated double-headed eagle and 300 stretches (guardsmen) for reinforcements. But they took their time, so Ermak and his people had to survive two more Siberian winters. When the Tsarist soldiers finally arrived at Yermak's camp in November 1584, it turned out that they had lost most of the supplies they had brought with them. "Many people died," reports one chronicler: "The men were forced to eat the corpses of their starved companions."

Siberian raids further decimated Yermak's small force. In early August 1585 he was ambushed. The ataman tried to save himself by jumping into the water of the Irtysh. But his mail is said to have pulled him down so he drowned. In the years that followed, Cossacks and regular Tsarist troops crushed local resistance between the Urals and Ob. The exploitation of the animal stocks, whose pelts have a special quality because of the winter cold, began immediately.

In Russian folklore, Yermak himself transformed himself from a greedy death by blow into a noble hero and avenger of the disinherited. The fact that he gave the impetus to transform Siberia "into one of the greatest ecological disaster areas in history" (W. Bruce Lincoln) is overlooked.

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