The development of the Urals in the xv - xvii centuries. Ural - the "stone belt" of Russia

The history of the development of the Urals by man is centuries-old. Since ancient times, few human tribes settled mainly along the banks of rivers, began to develop the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The main stage in the development of the Urals can be called the time of industrial growth in Russia. When, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Tsar Peter, caring for the glory and greatness of Russia, shrewdly determined the direction of development of Russia, then the Ural storerooms shone before the gaze of new Russian industrialists with unprecedented strength.

The industrialists Strogonovs are considered to be one of the first developers of the Ural wealth in history. In addition to factories and workshops, they left behind in their ordinary estate Usolye-na-Kame household buildings (house, chapel, Transfiguration Cathedral), which today are considered the cultural heritage of the industrial past of the Ural Territory.

The next stage of the development of the Urals belongs to the same old dynasty industrialists Demidovs. Among the remaining industrial monuments built on the territory of the Demidovs' estate are the remains of the blast furnaces of the famous Nevyanovsk plant, dams, the famous Nevyanovsk leaning tower, the manor house, Tsar Domna, the building of which has survived to this day.

In place of industrial development, cities began to appear in the Urals. One of the first in the 18th century to build the so-called "city - factories": Nevyansk, Nizhny Tagil, Barancha, Kushva, Zlatoust, Alapaevsk and others. These cities, as described by Russian writers of that time, were buried in countless branches of the Ural Mountains among dense forests. High mountains, clear water, impenetrable forest surround these human settlements, creating an atmosphere of freshness and solemnity, despite the constantly smoking chimneys of factory workers.

It is interesting that, being one of the oldest regions of metallurgical production on the planet, the Urals supplies non-ferrous and ferrous metals not only to Russia, but also to Asia Minor, and later contributed to the development of machine production in a number of European countries and even America. The Urals played an important role in the patriotic wars of the 18-20th centuries. During the First World War and especially the second, the Urals became a smithy military power Russia, the main arsenal of the Red Army. In the Urals, during the Second World War, the Soviet nuclear and missile industries began to be created. The first hail installations under the affectionate name "Katyusha" also come from the Urals. In the Urals, there was also a network of scientific laboratories for the development of new types of weapons.

This paper describes the features of the history of the development of the Urals by Russian people.

The history of the development of the Urals

Intensive development of the Urals began at a turning point historical era XVII – XVIII centuries, which opened the beginning of "imperial civilization" (A. Flier), or a new time in the history of the Russian state. The special place of the Urals in this period is determined by the fact that this border region became the historical zone of the first Russian experience in the formation of a new "Russianness" (P.N.Savitsky's term), as a synthesis of the efforts of two cultures: the new - state-Westernizing and the old - "soil" and "foreign" at the same time.

The 17th century in the history of the development of the Urals can be regarded as a period of mass "free" peasant colonization, associated mainly with the agrarian development of the region. Over the course of a century, an old-time Russian population has formed here, which reproduced in the new habitat the features of traditional culture in the version of the Russian North. During this period, the "grassroots" element was the leader of the colonization movement. The state barely had time to make its own administrative adjustments to this fleeting process.

In the XVIII century. The Urals, like no other region of the country, experienced all the innovations and costs of "Europeanization", as a result of which the type of a specific "Ural" subculture was determined. The mining industry became its basic element. The construction of more than 170 factories per century, the production of pig iron from 0.6 million poods at the beginning of the century to 7.8 million poods by the end of the century, the conquest of the international metal market - all this was the undoubted result of industrial progress. But the industrial phenomenon of Russian Europeanization became possible not only as a result of the active borrowing of Western technologies, but also the creation of a specific system for organizing the mining industry based on feudal-local principles and coercion. Free popular colonization is being replaced by the forced resettlement of tens of hundreds of serfs to the Urals, as well as the transformation of the descendants of free settlers from state peasants into "assigned" peasants who were forced to perform "factory" duties. By the end of the 18th century. there were more than 200 thousand of them. In the Perm province, by its nature the most "mining plant", the "assigned" at that time accounted for over 70% of the state peasants.

By the middle of the XIX century. from a heterogeneous mass of dependent people, a specific class group is formed - the "mining population". It was the social substrate that defined the cultural image of the mining Urals by its professional and everyday traditions.

The nature of this young Russian estate can be considered intermediate in relation to the classical social models - peasants and workers. The forcible separation of the mass of artisans from their usual peasant environment determined their marginal state and created a long-term explosive social atmosphere in the Ural region. The permanent manifestation of various forms of social protest has become characteristic feature"Ural" culture.

The economic and economic base of the Ural phenomenon was formed by the mining-district system of industry. The main element of this system - the mountainous district - was a diversified economy that functioned on the principle of self-sufficiency. The mining complex provided itself with raw materials, fuel, energy resources and all the necessary infrastructure, creating an uninterrupted closed production cycle. The "natural" character of the mining industry was based on the monopoly right of plant owners to all natural resources of the district, which eliminated competition for their production. "Naturalness", "isolation", "local system of industry" (VD Belov, VV Adamov), orientation of production to the state order, weak market relations were the natural features of this phenomenon. Organizational and administrative transformations of the first half of the XIX v. This system was “improved” by turning the mining Urals into a “state within a state” (VD Belov). From the modern point of view, the “original system” of the Ural industry must be associated with the transitional nature of the Russian economy during the New Age. This approach (for example, by T.K. Guskova) seems to be fruitful, since it interprets this system as an evolutionary stage from a traditional society to an industrial one.

Formed in the XVIII - first half of the XIX century. the Ural mining culture retained its features even by the beginning of the 20th century. The Ural mining and plant settlement preserved the atmosphere of a peasant, by nature, social and family life, which was facilitated by the presence of craftsmen's houses, vegetable gardens, land plots, and livestock farming. The artisans have saved historical memory about the paternalistic foundations of the mining system, which was expressed in the vitality of the "commitment relationship". Their social requirements are characterized by an orientation toward trusteeship on the part of factories and the state. They were distinguished from other groups of Russian workers by their low professionalism and low value. wages... According to I.Kh. Ozerova, Ural worker of the early XX century. psychologically was aimed at the equalizing principle of remuneration. Accustomed to the prevailing level of factory earnings, if it increased, he wasted money irrationally, going on spree. He was not inclined to change his usual working profession for another, even if it was materially profitable. Cultural influences on the life of the mining environment were extremely scarce, due to the peculiarities of the social structure of the mining industry in the Urals, the remoteness of factory settlements from cultural centers. Irrational features of the social psychology of the Ural artisan and other characteristics of his social appearance confirm the version of his belonging to a transitional type of culture.

Thus, the "Ural mining and refinery" subculture typologically adjoins the transitional intercivilizational phenomena. The Urals most expressively demonstrated their features, which allows us to consider this region as a kind of "classic" of the transitional states of modernizing societies.

Conclusion

We can say that the Urals, especially those of the second and third generations, have lost their national identity. Most of them ceased to be Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians. They ceased to be both Tatars and Bashkirs, i.e. "Indigenous" inhabitants of the Urals. This loss, we believe, was the result of a spontaneously formed "strategy" of forming the population of the Urals from exiles. If in Soviet times there were numerous islands of the "Gulag Archipelago", and most importantly - the areas of permanent residence of released prisoners and exiled settlers, then the Urals was such a place even before the revolution. The Soviet gulag here was preceded by the tsarist protogulag, beginning with Anna Ioannovna, and perhaps even with Peter I.

Siberia was also settled by exiles and migrants. But they got there by villages and patriarchal families. The settlers did not break their fundamental ties with their relatives and neighbors - the community environment. Often the settlers were from areas affected by turmoil. So, the author's great-grandfather, as a youth, was sent to hard labor for screwing up his master to death. He plowed, and the master passing by, walking and burned with a whip. Great-grandfather could not stand it, pulled the offender from the horse, took the whip and ... And, having served his exile, he returned home, but only then to take his relatives and neighbors to Siberia. So the village of Ozhogino arose south of Tyumen, and existed until, in my memory, it became the southern outskirts of the city.

The generally accepted description of the development of the Urals begins with an assessment of Ermak's campaign. Who initiated the campaign? What was the purpose? What is the role of the government in organizing and conducting the campaign? Did the Ermakovtsy receive state support? During what time was the feat accomplished, which we, who live in 430 years, do not forget?

In the works of oral folk art - late XVIII and early XIX centuries A handwritten collection of folk songs, epics was published, including about Yermak, the collector of which is supposedly called the Russian folklorist of the 18th century Kirsha Danilov - the Cossacks - vigilantes are shown as the initiator of the campaign.

There are several chronicles about the conquest of Siberia by Yermak Timofeevich, including:

• - The most ancient and recognized by all the more truthful is Esipovskaya, written by the Don Cossack, an associate of Ermak, as he calls himself, Savva Efimov. This chronicle was completed in 1636, when its author was about 80 years old; The Cossack "spelling" - a short "skaska" of the participants of the campaign who still lived in Tobolsk in 1623 - formed the basis of the Synodik to the Yermak Cossacks - a special church service that glorified the Cossacks who died in the Siberian campaign. The Synodik later became one of the sources of the Esipov Chronicle, compiled in the 30s of the 17th century. clerk of the Tobolsk archbishop's house Savva Esipov. In it, the annexation of Siberia was presented as the embodiment of "divine providence" that met the state and tsarist interests.
• -Stroganov, written around 1600, to which Karamzin adhered most of all. In the Stroganov Chronicle, the role of the Stroganov industrialists in organizing Yermak's campaign was highlighted. “The Stroganovs procured for themselves a royal charter“ to act with a military hand ”not only with nearby enemies, but also with distant Siberian enemies, and they were complaining about land in the royal“ homeland ”beyond the Stone (Ural). In their townships, they had long ago formed a set of military men trained in urban and military affairs. For the Stroganovs, who dreamed of a "rise to Siberia", such a person was a godsend, and therefore the Stroganovs "threw a cry", to which Yermak responded (according to some sources - Tokmak) Cossacks and Ermak, the executors of the Stroganovs' will. A feature of this chronicle was the use of materials from the patrimonial archives of the Stroganovs, the Synodik to the Ermakov Cossacks and the story of the beginning of the 17th century "About Siberia" (3) as documentary evidence of this version.
• -In the Kungur Chronicle (found in 1703 by S.U. Remezov, a Tobolsk serviceman, historian, geographer, architect in Kungur) it is written that "the rumor of a thief has swept through" about "Zavoruy Yermak, who has" haste and courage smlada ", self-willed warriors bravely into the unity of heart and all-heartedly ", - fought the Persian beads on the Khvalynsk Sea, dawned on Russian merchants and even" sharpened the royal treasury on the Volga. " Based on the legends of the Cossacks of Ermak's squad, the authors of the Kungur Chronicle considered them the initiators of the campaign and wrote with admiration about the order in the Cossack squad. S.U. Remezov created his "History of Siberia", which is based on the chronicles of Esipovskaya, Kungurskaya, Russian and Tatar legends and documents. It contains information about the peoples of the Urals and Siberia. (4)
• - The Brief Siberian Chronicle of Spassky, published in 1820. He also carried out the publication "Cherdynsk juridical antiquities"
• - Latin, dating back to the end of the 17th century. This chronicle is kept in the Imperial Public Library and was translated into Russian by Nebolsin in 1849;
• - New chronicle, compiled at the end of the XVII or at the beginning of the XVIII century;
• - Polls in 1621 of the first Tobolsk Archbishop Cyprian of the surviving associates of Ermak about their conquest of Siberia and all the circumstances of the campaign;
• - The Buzunov chronicler ("Legends of the Siberian Land", found by A. Dmitriev) also based on oral legends about Ermak, contains a version of the Ural origin of Ermak - Vasily Timofeevich Alenin, who was born in one of the Stroganov estates on the Chusovaya River (5) , according to other information introduced into scientific circulation by E.K. Romodanovskaya, he was born in the Solvychegodskaya part of the Stroganov possessions in the village. Borok on the Dvina.)
• -The diplomatic documents of the end of the 16th century reflect the official view of the campaign - the Cossacks in them are also the executors of the royal will. There is no mention of either Ermak or the Stroganovs.

Historical records are early historical works. They consider the reasons, the course, the results of the development of the region by the Russians, assess the role of various social forces in this process. The development of the Urals and Siberia continued to be studied by Tatishchev V.N., statesman and a scientist, chief manager of the Ural factories (1720-1722, 1734-1737), who began a systematic study of the manuscript depositories of the Urals in Cherdyn and Solikamsk. Among other valuable chronicles he acquired in the Dalmatov Monastery "The Chronicle of Captain Stankevich", which contained information about the development of the Urals in the 16-17th centuries. In the works of Tatishchev, not only some chronicles, but also acts of official office work, legislative acts.

At the end of the 30-40s of the XVIII century. In the Urals, the second detachment of the Kamchatka expedition worked under the leadership of scientists - naturalist I.G. Gmelin and historian G.F. Miller. Miller examined the archives of Cherdyn, Verkhoturye, Turinsk and collected the most valuable documentary evidence of the Russian exploration of the Urals and Siberia, which he later used to create the History of Siberia. The annexation of the Urals and Siberia Miller considered a conquest, the use of natural resources- a state affair. And he considered the indigenous peoples to be peoples in a semi-wild state. He was the first to become interested in the ethnogenesis of the peoples of the Urals and the influence of Russian colonization on non-Russian peoples. He believed that only thanks to the Russian feudal lords, merchants and the church, the local peoples of the Urals joined Christianity and civilization.

The colonization of the Urals is mentioned in the works of S.M. Solovyov, V.O. Klyuchevsky, who called the nature of the development of Russia “colonizing”. A prominent researcher of the colonization of the Urals was the historian and archaeographer A.A. Dmitriev. Studying the data of the census books of the XVI-XVII centuries, rich material of documents, local chronicles, he believed that the economic development of the Urals in the XVI-XVII centuries depended on the development of the region, in which the main role it was not government, but peasant and posad colonization that was playing. He investigated the ways of penetration of the Russian population into the Urals, the origin of the first settlers, the evolution of local government in the course of land development, etc. He identified periods in the history of the Urals, which he associated with the stages of colonization: Novgorod, Moscow. Dictionaries I.Ya. Krivoshchekov, devoted to colonization, contained information about agriculture and the peasantry.

Trapeznikov V.N. considered the main reason for resettlement to the Urals to be the enslavement of the peasants and the class struggle, and the main driving force- the peasantry and the townspeople. He argued that the Russian people appeared in the Urals long before the Stroganovs, and considered the role of monasteries.

V soviet period cultural significance The colonization of the Middle Urals was carried out to varying degrees: P.S. Bogoslovsky, A.A. Savich, A.P. Pyankov, A.A. Vvedensky, V.I. Shunkov, A.A. Preobrazhensky, V.A. Oborin (settlement and development of the Middle Urals in the 11th-18th centuries) and others. V.A. Oborin researched, along with written sources, archaeological and ethnographic, which allowed him to conclude that arable farming of the indigenous people (Udmurts and Permian Komi) existed long before the arrival of the Russians. The closeness of the economic structure and social structure of the newcomer population and the indigenous population contributed to the settlement and development of the Middle Urals by representatives of more than 15 peoples of the Urals. Oborin considered three the most important forms colonization of the region: peasant, posad, monastery and church, and their interaction with the government. The works of P.S. Bogoslovsky (1927), N.N. Serebryannikova (about the Permian wooden sculpture), V.V. Danilevsky, V.S. Virginsky, V.A. Kamensky and others (6)

Currently, in the works of V.V. Pundani, V.V. Menshchikov, the topic of the colonization of the Urals is being developed.

The very first mention of the Urals known to us dates back to approx. 90 - 160 BC On the map of the ancient Greek scientist Ptolemy (under the name of the Roman (Riphean) mountains are shown Ural mountains... Allocate the Northern, Middle and Southern Urals. The Middle Ural does not differ in height; two big rivers- Chusovaya and Iset.

According to written sources, in the 7th-5th centuries BC. the tribes of the Fassaget, Iirk, Issedon, Arimasp, Argippey lived in this territory, who possessed numerous herds of animals and were themselves excellent horsemen. Mythical griffins, winged animals guarding gold (Aristeus, Herodotus), flew over the mountains. In the Russian chronicles of the 11th-12th centuries. among the tribes living in this territory are called Perm, samoyad, ugra. In the chronicles of the XIII century. - the ancient Hungarians, later - the tribes of the Itkul culture (the most famous monument of this culture is near the city of Polevskoy on Mount Dumnaya, a metallurgical center, which probably supplied the products of its activity to the Scythian-Sarmatian tribes). In the future, in the Urals, ethnic processes proceeded in the same type, characteristic was the infusion of different in origin and number ethnic groups, especially during the Great Nations Migration. Currently, the Urals is a unique ethnic and sociocultural region, in which representatives of more than 100 nationalities live (indigenous and migrants of the era of the first wave of Russian colonization, Peter's settlement, Stolypin reforms, the period of revolutions and civil war, Stalinist collectivization, shock construction projects, repressions, etc.) (7)

Thus, the history of the settlement and development of the Urals goes back millennia. They talk about those times archaeological finds... It is true that, at the intersection of roads from Asia to Europe, on the border between the steppe and the forest, the region was the intersection of many migration flows. Over the millennia, hundreds of tribes and peoples have passed through these lands. By the X-XV centuries. the local population has partially mastered the territory of the Urals. In the surviving chronicle documents, there is no firm answer to the question of the initiative. Many historians have dealt with the topic of colonization of the Urals.

There are different points of view about the time of the first acquaintance of Russian people with the Middle Urals: the XIV, XV or XVI centuries. With the Northern Urals, the Urals Ugra - the first reliable evidence belongs to the wealthy Novgorodian Gyuryat Rogovich at the end of the 11th century (1092) who bought furs from the local, aboriginal population in exchange for Russian goods. On the routes of their movement, settlements arose - settlements, winter huts, towns. Christian missionaries also went to the East. " (nine)

The detachments sent by the Moscow grand dukes did not stay for a long time: having obtained precious furs (tribute from the local population), they went home to Russia. At the end of the XVI century. Russian peasants began to penetrate the lands of the Trans-Urals, into the upper reaches of the Iset River. “It is no coincidence that the Russian people began to leave for the Riphean mountains from their ancient habitats quite actively after the campaign of Ermak. In addition to the exacerbation of social contradictions between the "top" and "bottom" of Russian society, the split of the Russian Church, the growth of population density in European Russia, the beginning of "land oppression", the reason for the advancement of the Russian people beyond the Urals was the desire to find there a more favorable natural and social ecology.

A man who left for the Urals, looking for "land and freedom" there, found here "a wild wild and rich animal-feeding places, vast rivers, vast rivers, in their waters the sweetest and a variety of fish." These were natural resources, almost untouched by people. There was no serfdom.) (10)

There is a version that “the first settlers of the Ural River were people who fled from the bloody reign of Ivan the Terrible. Around 1559, the influx of those who fled to the Volga intensified: the gangs consisting of them lived by robberies and robberies. In 1577, a detachment of Ivan Murankin was sent to disperse these gangs, who, with his successful actions, forced them to flee, some to Siberia (Ermak), some to the Terek (Greben Cossacks), some to the Ural River. Dmitry Volodikhin, candidate of historical sciences, in his The article “A Thousand Miles in a Year and a Half” states that Russian military people have been to Siberia, “took yasak there, preached the faith of Christ. For some time the Siberian Tatars found themselves even in vassal dependence on Moscow, moreover, long before Yermak. But all these temporary achievements did not bring Russia any benefit, apart from the reputation of a strong and stubborn adversary ”(11).

It becomes obvious that the settlement and development of the Russian land, which is "meeting the sun", was unrealistic without the creation of a sufficiently effective military-administrative system.

The South Urals, the current territory of the region, have long attracted various tribes and peoples with the diversity of their landscapes, the richness of the bowels.
Archaeologists have discovered numerous human sites dating back to the Stone Age (Neolithic). In the Bronze Age (XVII-XV centuries BC), the Indo-Aryans built their "proto-cities" in the south of the region. Among them are such complex architecture as Arkaim (now a museum-reserve) and Allandskoe. The main occupation of the Aryans was cattle breeding. But among them were the first miners and the first metallurgists who smelted both copper and bronze in their primitive smelting furnaces.
About three thousand years ago, in the early Iron Age, the Saks and Sarmatians roamed the steppes of the Southern Urals. To the north, along the banks of forest rivers and lakes, the Itkul people lived. This is how archaeologists named the tribes who built fortified settlements in high places. They were skilled metallurgists and blacksmiths.
Judging by the surviving burial mounds (more than 700 of them were found in the Kizil region alone) and in later times (VI-III centuries BC), the territory of the region was densely populated. The tribes living here were engaged in cattle breeding, hunting, fishing, as well as ore mining, smelting and metal processing.
In the IV-XIII centuries AD. NS. in the vast areas of the steppe and forest-steppe of the Southern Urals, various nomadic tribes... They were Huns and Avars, Khazars and Pechenegs, Ugrians and Magyars, Tatars and Mongols.
The most ancient, indigenous, inhabitants of the region in recent history are Bashkirs and Kazakhs. They roamed the steppe along the most large rivers, stood on the shores of freshwater lakes.
They were mainly engaged in cattle breeding, catching animals and poultry. In the 16th century, the peoples living on the territory of the Southern Urals began to master agriculture, but only with the arrival of Russian colonists (the second quarter of the 18th century) did this type of nature management gradually become dominant.
In 1734, the Orenburg expedition under the leadership of IK Kirilov began to work in the South Urals. She lays down the Orenburg fortified line to cover the southeastern borders Of the Russian state from the raids of the Kazakhs and Dzungarian Kalmyks. Strongholds - fortresses are placed along the Ural (Yaik) and Uy rivers. The first of the fortresses created at that time was the Verkhneyaitskaya pier, which later became the city of Verkhneuralsk.
On the Orenburg fortified line there were fortresses, redoubts, which turned much later into settlements and stanitsas on the territory Chelyabinsk region: Spassky, Uvelsky, Gryaznushensky, Kizilsky and others. The village of Magnitnaya has become one of the most famous cities in the country - Magnitogorsk. The continuation of the Verkhnyayaitskaya line in the east was the Uiskaya fortified line, the key fortress of which was Troitskaya. The first inhabitants of the newly built fortresses were soldiers and officers, as well as Cossacks. Most of them were Russians, later Ukrainians and Tatars, Mordovians, Germans and Poles, as well as representatives of other nationalities who served in the Russian army, appeared among them.
The Chelyabinsk, Chebarkul and Miass fortresses, built in 1736 north of the Uyskaya line, on the way from the settled Trans-Urals to Yaik-Ural, were settled by soldiers, as well as by free settlers who became Cossacks.
In the second quarter of the 19th century, the border of Russia, which ran through the modern territory of the Chelyabinsk Region, was shifted to the east by 100-150 km. The newly formed Novolineyny district was also bounded in the east by fortresses, two of which - Nikolaevskaya and Naslednitskaya - were located on the territory of the present region. Brick fences were erected around the fortresses, which have survived to this day.
Novo-linear Cossack villages received the names of the places where victories were won Russian troops... This is how the villages of Paris, Varna, Chesma, Berlin, Varshavka, Leipzig and many others appeared on the map of the Southern Urals. More than a dozen villages were named after the Orenburg governors and chieftains - Neplyuevsky, Obruchevsky, Sukhtelensky, Mogutovsky, Uglitsky and others.
The settlement of the western and northwestern mountainous parts of the region began somewhat later than the southern regions, only in the 50s of the 18th century. Then, in the South Urals, the richest iron and copper ores that often lie on the surface began to be mined, metallurgical plants were built. Such industrial settlements - now cities - were founded as Sim, Minyar, Katav-Ivanovsk, Ust-Katav, Yuryuzan, Satka, Zlatoust, Kusa, Kyshtym, Kasli, Verkhniy Ufaley and Nyazepetrovsk.
Land for factory dachas was bought from the Bashkirs. Serfs from different provinces of Russia moved to the purchased land, becoming the "working people" of the mining factories.
At that time, foreign specialists, mostly Germans, were invited to the Urals to build factories and fine-tune smelting technologies. Some of them did not want to return to their homeland. Places of their compact residence appeared - streets, settlements, later settlements, most of them remained in Zlatoust.
The settlement of the South Urals continued throughout the 18th-19th centuries. It was both a migration stream organized by the state, and free - "unorganized" settlers. This process especially intensified after the laying of the railway through Chelyabinsk and the Stolypin reforms at the turn of the last centuries.
The first World War and the revolution that followed. Large masses of people moved from east to west and in the opposite direction. Some of these people remained in the Urals. The economic difficulties associated with the war did not manifest themselves so strongly.

A Russian folk tale teaches us goodness, justice, honesty, Love for our Motherland.

From legends, legends (folklore stories), we learn about life that has become history. They can combine real information with fictional representations. Their content is always a real reality, but the story, passed from generation to generation, from century to century, often bears the stamp of a fairy tale.

In my work, I tried to rely on ancient legends, on famous historical monuments in the vicinity of Nizhny Tagil: Gorbunovsky peat bog, a parking lot near the Medved Kamen mountain, a parking lot ancient man to study the history of the formation of the peoples of the Middle Urals on the bank of the Chernoistochinsky pond.

1. Ural in ancient legends.

The stories of ancient antiquity about the northern lands - the Urals and Siberia - date back to that distant time when this area was very little known.

According to the testimony of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC), who widely uses myths and legends. at the foot of the high mountains live people from birth bald, flat-nosed, with oblong chins, and having their own special language. And what is above this people - no one knows. The path is cut off by high mountains, no one can cross them. The Pleshivites tell. as if people with goat legs live on the mountains, and behind them - others who sleep six months a year. There is reason to assume that the Ural lands were the object of this information.

Information from ancient legends mentions one-eyed and one-legged people living there. Quite interesting information is contained in a handwritten Russian article of the 15th century "On the unknown people on the eastern side and on the pink bystander", it continues ancient tradition legendary stories about little-known peoples and lands in the northern part of the world: up to the navel, people are furry to the bottom, and from the navel upwards - like other people. and if they eat, and they crumble meat and fish, they put it under caps or under a hat, and as soon as the food is dead, they move the shoulders up and down. live in the ground. walk through the dungeon. day and night with lights.

This is how the inhabitants of the Northern Urals and Trans-Urals appear in medieval legends. So, the story about people dying for the winter (that is, falling asleep) is connected with the fact that in winter northern peoples hid in yurts and communicated with passages dug under the snow. Excavations of modern times confirmed this at a depth of a meter, and were connected by tunnel-type transitions. The motive of the extraordinary, even monstrous appearance of people (shaggy, hairy) impression of the characteristic fur clothing of northern residents.

Legends about the dying and resurrecting nature "attached" to the Urals and the Trans-Urals. The period of falling asleep is also definitely indicated: from November 27 to April 24 (i.e. winter period).

In the legend about the silent barter trade, furs and furs are the product of exchange. These realities give the story a Ural-Siberian flavor, which is also felt in another legendary story - about “young squirrels” and “little deer” falling out of a cloud to the ground.

Novgorodians, visiting the Northern Urals and the Trans-Urals and leaving there with rich furs, willingly told the legend of squirrels falling from the sky, traditional for northern peoples. There were many stories about the golden wealth of a little-known land, in which “the gods are made of pure gold.

In folk ideas, the image of the Ural land was formed, amazingly rich, but it is difficult to reach it because of natural barriers. In the story of Yugra to Novgorodians (XI century): there are mountains, leaning against the bow of the sea, as high as the sky. The path to those mountains is impassable because of abysses, snow and forests, therefore we never reach them.

Legends are firmly and faithfully tied to our area, to specific hills, rivers, caves. The indigenous inhabitants could not imagine themselves without unity with the mountains, a formidable natural reality. The description of the indigenous inhabitants of the Urals is connected with this.

Having studied the description of ancient people, I found out that we could live: Khanty, Mansi, Fino-Ugors, Bashkirs, Tatars.

This created a picture of the initial settlement of the territory of the Middle Urals using legends.

2. The first person in the Urals.

The first area covered by the massive resettlement of the Russian people to the East was the Urals, stretching as a stone belt from the freezing Arctic Ocean. The Urals, with a stone belt, intercepts present-day Russia in the middle, but in ancient times it was new territory Of the Russian state. Impenetrable and gloomy forests filled everything around. Finger-like branches of firs and firs do not allow light to penetrate to the ground, and at the very bottom a person cannot cut through a windbreak with an ax, and it is almost impossible to get to the Ural fabulous riches. But here people have an ally - the blue ribbons of numerous rivers and their tributaries. The resettlement to the Urals began with the development of the vast Kama River and its tributaries.

In deep, hoary antiquity, when man had just escaped from the bosom of nature and began to actively colonize our planet, the first Neanderthals came to the Urals. It happened about 75,000 years ago. They came mainly from Central Asia and the Caucasus and settled in the territories of the Middle and South Urals. These territories were free from a glacier that reached the present Solikamsk. These first people left us burial grounds, tools.

Neanderthal man is a fossil species of late people who lived 300 - 24 thousand years ago.

Neanderthals had an average height (about 165 cm) and a massive physique. In terms of the volume of the cranium, they even surpassed modern people. They were distinguished by powerful brow ridges, a protruding wide nose and a very small chin. There are suggestions that they could be red and pale-faced.

The Neanderthal was undoubtedly human. At first, he was portrayed as half-bent, silly in appearance, hairy and like a monkey. It is now known that this faulty reconstruction was based on a fossil skeleton that had been severely deformed by disease. Many Neanderthal fossils have been found, confirming that they were not very different from modern humans. The structure of the vocal apparatus and the brain of Neanderthals suggests that they could speak.

Nevertheless, over the course of many thousands of years, the Neanderthals gradually became extinct, and their place was taken Homo sapiens(Homo sapiens). The most distinct traces of them were found by archaeologists in the Mesolithic layer 15 - 6 thousand years ago (sites Berezovskaya, Kama-Zhulanovskaya, Ogurdinskaya, etc.).

Currently, tens of thousands of monuments are known in the Urals that tell about the distant past of our region. One of these monuments is the Gorbunovsky peat bog, a peat bog near the settlement of Gorbunovo, near Nizhny Tagil, where the remains of 8 settlements of the Neolithic and Bronze Age (3 thousand BC - 10 - 9 centuries BC) were discovered and investigated. .).

Archaeologists have discovered a swamp settlement: these are the remains of wooden houses with an adobe floor with a light birch bark roof. Parts of residential buildings in the form of wooden flooring have survived, on which many household items have been found: fragments of earthenware, tools made of wood and stone, floats and sinkers for nets, flint arrowheads, bone harpoons, hoe tips made of horns, wonderful wood products - vessels in the form of figures of an elk and a waterfowl, idols, oars, boomerangs, etc. These are dishes made of wood that existed in the III millennium BC. Dishes used in the Bronze Age. Her handles are made in the form of heads waterfowl... In addition to wooden items, many items made of birch bark and clay were also found. The finds indicate that the main occupations of the population were fishing, hunting and, possibly, agriculture.

Probably, it was this first population of people of the modern anthropological type that became the ancestor of many tribes, and then peoples, of the local population.

The location of natural waterways - rivers and determined the places of settlement of the first inhabitants of the Ural Territory. By the 8th - 9th centuries. n. NS. its indigenous population was the Khanty and Mansi, as well as the Permian Komi, Udmurts and Bashkirs, the first and legitimate owners of the Ural lands, their natural resources, which were not immediately revealed to people.

The Middle Urals were settled from the north. The southeastern part of the Trans-Urals - places located along the course of the Lozva, Vyya, Tagil, Mugai, Neiva, Rezha, Pyshma rivers, as a result of complex migration processes, were gradually settled by the Mansi, or Voguls, descendants of the ancient Finno-Ugric tribes. To the south-west of them, in the upper reaches of the Chusovaya and its tributary, the Sylva, Ugrians, related to the Voguls, settled. Russians began to call them Ostyaks Until the 17th century, the indigenous population of the Tagil region was a people who called themselves Mansi (Russians called them Voguls). His language is part of the Finno-Yugorsk group of the Uralic language family... Mansi are semi-sedentary hunters, fishermen, reindeer herders. The main dwellings for them were the yurt and the chum.

Mansi has a special attitude towards the owner of the forest - the bear. Since ancient times, they have carried out a special ceremony of worshiping this beast - a bear holiday. A dead bear was skinned with its head and paws and taken home. In the evening, accompanied by the sounds of the sangyltap instrument, the holiday began, which lasted five nights if a bear was killed, four if a bear was caught, two or three if a bear cub. People sang sacred "bear" songs, told tales, danced, participated in dramatic performances, and then proceeded to the ritual eating of bear meat.

The Permian Komi and Udmurts were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding. Their dwellings, made of wooden log cabins with adobe floors, resembled Russian huts. On economic activity, the material and spiritual culture of these peoples was significantly influenced by communication with neighbors - Russian peasants in the west and Tatar settlers in the southeast.

The Bashkirs, owning a rather large territory, did not, however, become farmers. The settlements of the ancient Bashkirs consisted of light yurt-type dwellings and were scattered over a vast territory. Continuing their nomadic way of life, they leased the vacant land to Russian peasants, who, already in the 16th century, began to settle in the South Urals.

3. Penetration of Russians into the Urals.

The first stage in the development of the Ural lands by the Russians begins in the 1st millennium AD. NS. campaigns of Russian troops in the Urals and spontaneous peasant resettlements, and ends with the entry of the peoples of the Western Urals (Komi-Permians and most of the Udmurts) into the Russian state.

The interest of Russians in the Urals was caused by the natural resources of the region, mainly furs. In addition, the imagination of people was fueled by myths and legends that reached them about the untold natural resources of the eastern lands, about "squirrels falling straight from the clouds", about "vultures guarding gold".

First, the Novgorodians decided to try their luck. They were the first of the Europeans back in the XII century to penetrate the Urals: they organized a military campaign to the north - in order to get expensive furs - "junk" and collect tribute from the "Ugra" - the Finno-Ugric tribes. Several times the Novgorodians undertook campaigns "for the Stone" and later - in the XII, XIV centuries.

As a result of these campaigns, the northern Ural lands fell into tributary dependence on Novgorod and began to be called its volosts.

The struggle of the Moscow principality for the Novgorod volosts was part of the struggle for the creation of a centralized Russian state. The Ural lands were needed as a springboard for the fight against the Cossacks and the Siberian Khanate and for replenishing the treasury by collecting tribute.

The Moscow principality strengthened its influence in the northeastern lands through the introduction of the Christian church. Church colonization began under Bishop Stephen, who in 1383 was appointed Metropolitan of Moscow to Perm Vychegodskaya. Thanks to Stephen's missionary activity, the richest land of the Vychegda Komi lands was annexed to Moscow at the end of the 14th century.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the first Russian settlements, founded by Moscow henchmen, appeared in the region.

In 1462, the Moscow army made a campaign from Ustyug to the Vyatka land and to Great Perm in order to strengthen the Moscow positions in the Vyatka land by annexing the Upper Kama region.

In the second half of the 15th century, there was a struggle between the Russian state and the Kazan Khanate. In 1468, the Tatar army suffered damage.

At the end of the 15th century, the lands of the Udmurts were joined to the Russian state.

In the spring of 1500, the difficult and victorious campaign of joining the Moscow possessions of the land from the Pechora to the Ob was completed.

Thus, by the beginning of the 16th century, the entire Great Perm became part of the Russian state. The first Russian settlements - the towns of Anfalovsky, Pokcha, Cherdyn, Usolye Kamskoye - became centers of management and economic development by Russians of the Western Urals and defense fortresses.

The Ural tribes, even in the era of primitiveness, began to create their own unique culture. The culture of the peoples of the Urals, closely related to the harsh and beautiful Ural nature, reflected their perception of the world around them, spirituality and religious beliefs, served as a support for morality, love and deep respect for their native land.

Over time, the Russian people themselves mastered the difficult craft of hunting. The settlers, having settled in the Ural spurs, hunted beavers and sables. People went to the taiga to deserted and empty lands with one single purpose - to stay here to live, seriously and for a long time. The settlers made their way to the northern Cis-Urals along the waterways. Another path to new uninhabited lands went along the Northern Dvina, Vychegda, Izhma, but again came to the upper reaches of the Kama River.

The natural resources of the Urals and their dispersal determined not only the population, but also the occupation of the settlers. The main factors were climate and soil. In the north of the Urals, many small settlements appeared, and in the south, in the Cis-Urals and Trans-Urals, large settlements appeared, the income of which was Agriculture... Centuries passed, the settlements grew stronger and developed.

People who were settlers centuries ago became the indigenous inhabitants of these places. The development of technology has reached the development of the untold treasures that lie in the Urals. From artisanal and disorganized mining precious stones, people went to mining iron ore... In those distant years, ore was also mined by artisanal methods, but this was enough to smoke steel plants in the Ural taiga. In addition to ore, there was a myriad of forest and water at hand. That is exactly how, many centuries ago, the middle Urals turned into a mining and industrial center.

The indigenous Ural peoples developed special, unparalleled relationships with Russian pioneers. Ordinary people came to the Urals not to conquer, not to subjugate someone, but to live side by side in harmony and peace, manage, raise children, improve their lot. From the very beginning of the appearance of Russian settlers in the Urals, they entered into the closest interactions with the natives: economic, household, cultural. There was a rapprochement and interpenetration different cultures and civilizations. Peasants, merchants, artisans, merchants, entrepreneurs were ready to invest their energy, smartness and just strength in a new business.

The Ural land was raised to life by their physical and spiritual energy, watered with sweat, built up with their hands. It was they who uprooted the impenetrable taiga wilds, built mines, factories, mines, cities and settlements, laid roads. The settlement and development of the Urals by Russians is a great labor feat of the masses of Russia.

The Urals did not become a colony, but turned into an integral part of the Russian state, its economy and culture. Favorable conditions have been created for the use of the vast natural resources of this region, which has become a "stronghold of the power", one of its main industrial regions.

From 1904 to 1926, the population more than doubled. Moreover, the list of nationalities living in the territory has expanded significantly Ural region... According to the 1926 census, representatives of more than 70 peoples were taken into account, including the Tatars made up 2.85% of the total population, the Bashkirs - 0.87%, the Mari - 0.28%, the Udmurts - 0.2%, etc. In comparison with 1908, the number of Tatars increased significantly and, on the contrary, the number of Bashkirs decreased.

In 1998, during the population census, there were 120 nationalities in the Sverdlovsk region, in 2002 the census already showed 140 nationalities.

The largest diaspora in the Sverdlovsk region is Russians (4 million people), followed by Tatars (about 150 thousand people), Ukrainians (55 thousand people), Mari, Udmurts (from 15 to 30 thousand people), and other

We see a wide variety of indigenous peoples of the Urals. All of them left their traces in the history of the development and reclamation of the Ural lands.

Today our city of Nizhniy Tagil, like any other, is multinational. All nationalities and nationalities living in it live in a big united friendly family. We, Tagil residents, are Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Mari, Tatars, Udmurts, Bashkirs, and other nationalities - part of a great family called Russia.

Most of the settlers go beyond the Ural Mountains - to the eastern slope of the Urals and to Siberia. In the first half of the 17th century. on the eastern slope, the fertile lands of the southern part of the Verkhotursky district to the Pyshma river were most rapidly developed. About fifteen large settlements and graveyards were founded here. Most of them were fortified by prison and inhabited by Cossacks who carried military service allotted land, received a salary and exempt from tax. Sloboda arose on the initiative of prosperous peasants - suburbanites, who called on "willing people" to develop arable land. The locals themselves became representatives of the local administration. The peasant population grew rapidly in the settlements, some of them numbered 200-300 households. In the second half of the 17th century. southern border Russian lands advanced to the Iset and Miass rivers. More than 20 new settlements appeared here (Kataysk, Shadrinsk, Kamyshlov, etc.). Russian villages are growing rapidly in their vicinity.

For 56 years (1624-1680), the number of households in the vast Verkhoturye Uyezd increased more than 7 times. Migrants from the northern districts of Pomorie prevailed, and by the end of the 17th century. about a third of them were the peasants of the Urals. The population density was significantly less than in the Urals. The Pelymsky district with its infertile soils was slowly settled.

At the end of the 17th century. the total number of the peasant population in the Urals was at least 200 thousand people. The population density is increasing in the previously developed counties. The peasants of the Stroganovs' estates move to the lower Kama and the eastern slope of the Urals. In the Verkhotursky district, they move from the settlements with the "sovereign's tithe arable land" to the settlements where natural and especially monetary dues prevailed (Krasnopolskaya, Ayatskaya, Chusovskaya, etc.). The peasants moved in whole groups of 25-50 people in the settlement. Communities are formed on a national basis. In the Aramashevskaya and Nitsinskaya settlements, the Komi-Zyryans settle, in the Chusovskaya - the Komi-Permians, in the vicinity of the Ayatskaya settlement, a Mari village - Cheremisskaya appears.

In the XVII century. The Urals became the base for the spontaneous peasant colonization of Siberia. In 1678, 34.5% of all peasants who left the Stroganovs' estates went to Siberia, 12.2% - from Kaigorodsky, 3.6% - from Cherdyn district. Rivers remain the main routes of resettlement. In the XVII century. small rivers and tributaries of the large rivers of the Urals are quickly being mastered. The old Kazan road from Ufa and Sylva to the upper reaches of the Iset is being revived, which passed to Sarapul, Okhansk and through Kungur to the Aramil settlement. The direct road from Tura to the middle reaches of the Neiva and Nitsa rivers is widely used.

In the XVII century. the settlement colonization of the Urals became noticeable. The reasons for the resettlement of the townspeople were the intensification of feudal exploitation in the estates, the growth of property stratification into social stratification, which manifested itself more sharply in the cities than in the countryside, and created an excess of labor. Increasing competition pushed to new lands not only the urban poor, but also the middle strata of the townspeople. The bulk of the settlers came from the townships of northern Pomerania.

Increase of the Posad tax in 1649-1652 caused an outflow of population from cities to the outskirts. The resettlement was also influenced by the repression of the government during the suppression of urban uprisings, hunger years, which in the city manifested themselves more strongly than in the countryside. The reasons for the internal displacement of the townspeople within the Urals were the depletion of natural resources (for example, salt brines near Cherdyn), a decrease in trade due to a change in transport routes and the administrative status of some cities (for example, the transfer of the center of Perm Velikaya from Cherdyn to Solikamsk, a decrease in Solikamsk's trade in connection with the rise of Kungur on a new route to Siberia), the relative overpopulation of old cities. The dense building of cities with wooden buildings often led to their burnout during large fires and to the outflow of the population.