Ivan IV's death in 1584 brought about a complete reversal of the government attitude towards the Siberian campaign. Without further delay, Moscow declared an annexation of Siberia and promptly dispatched the troops to secure Ermak's success. In 1586 the Muscovite troops laid the foundation of Fort Tiu- men' and a year later of Tobol'sk. Both forts were built near the traditional and now ravaged residences of the Siberian khans: Tiumen' on the Tura River near Chimga Tura and Tobol'sk near the last residence of the khan, Sibir'.
In the following three decades, while the rival factions of the Chingisids and Toibugids continued to be at war with each other, the Muscovites consolidated their power in the region and expanded rapidly into central Siberia, reaching the western banks of the Enisei River. A sprawling network of the abundant Siberian rivers provided a perfect transportation. The mushrooming Muscovite towns and forts were witnesses to both the direction and the rapidity of the Muscovite advance. After the founding of Tobol'sk in 1587, the Muscovites sailed south-east erecting towns up the Irtysh River (Tara, 1594), up the Ob River (Surgut, 1594, Narym, 1596, Tomsk, 1604), and on the Enisei River (Eniseisk, 1619). Built on the edge where the Siberian forests receded into an open steppe, these forts became Russia's outposts in dealing with the various Turko-Mongol nomads of the steppe. In the north, the forts of Mangazeia, built on the Taz River in 1601, and of New Mangazeia on the Enisei in 1607, laid the ground for Muscovite dominance over the local Nenets.
In some sense, Siberia was conquered in spite ofthe Muscovite government, which preferred a slow and cautious pace of expansion. But when Kuchum's armies proved to be ineffective, Moscow quickly moved to build on the cossacks' bold actions. The colonisation of Siberia was no longer left in the hands of the Stroganovs but became a government enterprise similar to Muscovy's other frontiers. Another part ofthe former Golden Horde had been conquered and annexed by the Muscovite state. By the end of the sixteenth century, with the exception of the Crimea, the Muscovite rulers could claim control over the entire territory of the former Golden Horde.
The structure of the indigenous societies
Throughout its relentless expansion in the sixteenth century Moscow came across a variety of peoples, who spoke different languages, worshipped different gods and abided by different laws and customs. Yet along the entire expanse of the Muscovite frontiers in the north, east and south, the indigenous peoples had one undeniable feature in common: they were not organised into sovereign states but were instead traditional, kinship-based societies with non-existent or weak central authority. The degree of their social and political organisation varied from the perpetually fragmented kinship groups under the local chiefs of the reindeer-herding Nentsy of the arctic north, to the socially more complex agricultural societies of the Mordva, Chuvash, Mari and Udmurts of the Volga and Kama rivers, to the hunting and fishing societies of the Khanty and Mansi of western Siberia, and finally to the more socially stratified and centralised societies of the pastoral nomads of the Bashkirs or Nogais in the southern regions of the steppe.
The authority of the local chiefs was limited to their own iurt (an apanage; a territory controlled by a group of kin) or some other tribal unit. At times of war, one chief could become the supreme leader, but he was rarely able to sustain his authority after the military campaigns were over. One such Mansi chief of Pelym rose to power when he united local forces against the Muscovite forts and settlements after Ermak's departure in 1581 exposed the Muscovite rear. More centralised were the Nogais, whose society was a more cohesive confederation oftribes and clans with the established social and administrative hierarchy led by the supreme chief (beg).
The most complex and developed societies, socially and politically, were the Muslim khanates of Kazan', Astrakhan' and Siberia. The Turkic peoples, commonly known as Tatars, were the dominant element in these khanates ruled by the khans of a Chingisid lineage. Deprived of political power after the Muscovite conquests, the Turkic peoples and the Kazan' Tatars, in particular, remained an important part of the Islamic civilisation and the most sophisticated society among Muscovy's new and numerous subjects.
The terms of encounter
By the late sixteenth century the boundaries ofthe former Golden Horde in the east and south had largely become Muscovite boundaries and the ruling Turko- Mongol elites had been replaced by the Muscovite administrators. From the beginning, Moscow relied on the existing concepts and structures to rule over the vanquished population. The three basic concepts on which the relationship with the indigenous population was based were all of Turkic provenance: shert', amanat and iasak. The first one implied an oath of allegiance and vassalage to the tsar, the second intended to secure such an oath by delivering the native hostages into the Muscovite hands and the third emphasised economic subservience to Moscow through the payment of fur or some other sort of tribute. Such at least was Moscow's view, which was not always shared by the natives.
In 1483 a military band of Muscovites crossed the Iron Gates or the Rocky Belt, as the Ural Mountains were referred to at various times. It was not the first time that various adventurers, mostly from the city of Novgorod, had crossed the Urals in order to explore the riches of the unknown lands and to establish trade with the local peoples. However, when they did so again in 1483, they arrived as representatives of Ivan III, the ruler of the rapidly expanding and selfconsciously Orthodox Muscovite state. The Muscovite officials described one such encounter and the ceremony involved in striking a peace treaty between the chiefs of the Khanty and Mansi peoples and the Muscovites:
And their custom of making peace is as follows: they put a bear skin under a thick trunk of a cut pine tree, then they put two sabres with their sharp ends upwards and bread and fish on the bear skin. And we put a cross atop the pine tree and they put a wooden idol and tied it up below the cross; and they began to walk below their idol in the direction of the sun. And one of them standing nearby said: 'that who will break this peace, let him be punished by God of his faith'. And they walked about a tree three times, and we bowed to the cross, and they bowed to the sun. After all of this they drank water from the cup containing a golden nugget and they kept saying: 'you, gold, seek the one who betrays'.[125]
The same event was registered in the Russian chronicle, but described quite differently: 'and the local princes swore not to bear any ill-will, not to exhibit any violence, and to be loyal to the Grand Prince of Muscovy'.[126] Obviously, things did not look the same from the banks of the Siberian rivers and from Moscow. What the local chiefs considered a peace treaty struck with the newly arrived strangers, Moscow regarded as the chiefs' oath of allegiance to the grand prince, their submission to Moscow. The opening salvo of Russia's conquest of Siberia was made and continued to be based on mutual misconceptions. While Moscow attempted to perpetuate an image ofthe natives as the subjects of the tsar, the natives saw in Russians another military and trading partner.
It is likely that to some of the indigenous peoples, who were former subjects to the khans of the Golden Horde and later its splinter khanates, the terms of engagement were less ambiguous. Some simply continued the established practices, switching their allegiances and tribute from the old Turko-Mongol overlords to the new one in Moscow. This was typical of the peoples of the middle Volga region, or most of the Khanty and Mansi in western Siberia. Yet for many others Moscow's demands of unconditional vassalage, hostages and tribute were both incomprehensible and offensive.
125
S. V Bakhrushin, 'Ostiatskie i vogul'skie kniazhestva v XVI-XVII vv.', in his
126
Ibid.;