Surgut

It is still not known where the first people came to the area of modern Surgut. The ancient inhabitants did not leave written messages to descendants: after all, writing among the aboriginal peoples appeared only in the 20 - 30 years of our century.

The Age of Discovery. While the envoys of Catholic and Protestant Europe, wave after wave, rushed to sunset and noon, paving the way to both Indies, looking at the Black continent, the two-headed Russian eagle aimed at the vast spaces that Western Europeans designated on their maps with mysterious names: Biarmia, Siberia, Tartary, Yugoria.

What pushed the talented Cossacks, smart industrial and commercial people, reasonable peasants to foreign lands, where they were waiting for cold, disease, and sometimes an arrow fired by the bowstring of the Ostyatsky bow.

Strived to Siberia for furs: foxes, squirrels, sables, beavers, otters, stoats, foxes ... Some foxes were then distinguished by several species: red, red-haired, white-haired, white-haired, black-burka. The demand for expensive furs in Russia did not dry up.

Only a century will pass and a variety of ores will be found here. The flow of exiles will increase. And in the twentieth century, oil and gas will change the face of the edge almost beyond recognition.

But before I turn to the story of the founding of Surgut, its formation during the four centuries of its existence, I will tell you where the name of the city came from.

There is no consensus among experts in explaining the origin of the word "surgut". It is known that the city was founded on the site of the settlement of the Khanty tribe and it has preserved the local name without translation into Russian. This tradition existed among explorers at the foundation of all cities of Siberia. The names of settlements, rivers, lakes, and other geographical objects have developed for a very long time and were preserved by Russians for convenience in communicating with the native inhabitants, with whom they entered into economic, diplomatic, military, cultural relations. Based on this, we can assume that the word "surgut" consists of two ancient Yugorsk "sora" and "kut", which have come down to us in a modified form. They still sound different in different dialects of the modern Khanty language. The word "sar" is translated as "water floodplain of the river", the word "kut" in the Surgut dialect means "fish". Therefore, in conjunction, the word "sorkut" in the ancient Yugorsk language could mean a whole concept associated with the way of life of the people: the annual spring nomadic tribes from the taiga rivers and hunting grounds in the Ob floodplain for catching grey fish. The abundance of fish for a long time determined the feature of Surgut. In its vicinity, the Obi floodplain is a giant pasture of fish, formed over hundreds of thousands of years. In the Khanty language there is no ringing "g", but there is a deaf "k", so Russian people gradually transformed "sorkut" into "surgut" for easy pronunciation.

The order for the construction of Surgut was given to the voivode Prince Fyodor Petrovich Boryatinsky and the written head of Vladimir Onychkov on February 19, 1594 by Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich (son of Ivan the Terrible). The very appearance of this order was caused by the following circumstances. The Russian "waiters" (the so-called service people heading to a year-long puddle in any city or prison) from the Ob or Mansurov town, built in 1585 on the right bank of the Ob at the confluence of the Irtysh and continuing its existence in the early 90s of the XVI century, moved further and higher along the Ob.

The "Waiters" were searching for new settlements of Ostyak hunters, in order to impose yasak duty on them. Soon they encountered the Narym Ostyaks, or Selkups - the so-called Pega Horda, headed by Prince Vonya. Of course, the "goaters" would not mind subjugating the prince, but his possessions were too far from the Ob town, and the army of Stony could put up an impressive 400 soldiers. Fortune, however, was on the side of the servicemen and they managed to capture the son of Prince Voni - Urunka. Urunk became a hostage, which ensured the payment of yasak by tribesmen and guaranteed their loyalty in relations with the aliens. Very often, the hostages converted to Orthodoxy and, returning a few years later to their native yurts, became the most active conductors of Russian policy among their fellow tribesmen, a reliable support of the Russian administration in the management of the peoples under its control.
Before the construction of Surgut, Urunk was kept in the Ob town, and in 1594 he was sent together with voivodes-builders to the site of the foundation of the new town, which was assigned an important role in the conquest of Pega Horde.

According to the royal order, it was prescribed to take Urunka to the new city, and then exchange him for Yasak, and if his father Prince Vonya refused, the voivodes had to gather people, "that Pegui Horde to fight" with the prince "yasak to take and bring under the sovereign hand." And the plan worked - the prince exchanged his son for yasak, but, in his opinion, he was now even with Moscow and when the next year the Yasats again came to Peguya Horde, he simply put them outside his fiefdom.

But all this will be later, and while Vladimir Onychkov, who received the order, had to go from Moscow to Siberia, was ordered to take weapons, gunpowder, lead, money, bread supply in the town of Lozven and, having loaded them on ships, in the spring, "like the ice of a riser", to sail accompanied by the Lozven voivode and his people in Pelym. From here, with a group of Pelyma Cossacks, he must make his way to Tobolsk, where Fedor Boryatinsky was waiting for him. After replenishing his detachment with Tobolsk servicemen Onichkov and Boryatinsky had to swim along the Irtysh to the Ob town. Having taken from the local voivode all the "warlords" - "military people, Lithuania and Cossacks", all the city reserves, strengthening the detachment by the Cossacks from Berezov and the Ostyaks of Prince Igichei Alachev, whose arrival was expected by Peter's Day, Boryatinsky and Onichkov were to burn the Ob town and go down the Ob, where in the area called Surgut they were to put the city.

Where the city of Surgut was destined to arise, the possessions of Ostyak Prince Bardak extended. The "capital" of the principality, Bardakovo settlement, was located 30 versts from Surgut, in the place where the Ob flows into Trom-Agan. Prince Bardak was rich and so confident that he surrendered only when the Russians set up a gun against him.

In the royal order, the voivodes were written: "... and came to Prince Fyodor and Volodymyr in Surgut, in which the place is more convenient, looking for a strong place, to put the city with all military men and locals ..." Yes, to write the place in a mural and draw on a drawing, and to write all the fortresses where the city will become ... so that the Emperor would know everything. The order instructed the voivode in detail: "... to throw up the city to do everything, on Lithuania and on the Cossacks, on the Tobolsk and Berezov, and on the new appliances, and on the Tatars on Prince Igicheev, and on the nearby parishes on the Ostyaks, who will be brilliantly to the new city, and the forest on the city will be ordered to drop lightly, and soon the city will make breadbaskets on the sovereign stocks of the velet."

So, breaking the resistance of the Surgut Ostyaks, the arriving voivodes hastily began the construction of a new city. Haste in this case did not prevent, because the city as a whole had to rebuild before the onset of cold weather, so that its first inhabitants could protect themselves from frost and from a possible attack of the Ostyaks after the withdrawal of the main forces back to Tobolsk, Berezov and Koda. It was no longer necessary to count on the Ob town - it was burned by the order of the king. The retreat for the builders-first settlers of Surgut was tantamount to failure to fulfill the sovereign will or death.

So in late summer - early autumn of 1594 on the right bank of the Ob, one and a half versts from the confluence of the river Bardakivka and at the mouth of another small river Salma (now Saima) in a matter of weeks grew a wooden chopped city with two gates, four deaf and one carriage towers. The city housed the voivodeship court, powder cellar, prison, sovereign barns, Trinity Church, and later - Gostiny Dvor. Subsequently, this fortification was surrounded by a fort with two deaf and one carriageway towers.

All the buildings were wooden and very soon they came into disrepair - because the forest was taken for construction raw. But at first, this also suited, and only then, after the servicemen, peasants reached Surgut, who built thoroughly, for centuries, firmly growing into the Siberian land with the "roots" of their chopped huts. At first, the service people had to hurry. Loudly knocked axes in callosum streltsy hands - each streltsy was both a carpenter and a carpenter.

All power over the district was concentrated in the hands of the voivode (originally there were two of them in each city), who ruled on behalf of the sovereign and, according to those decrees, orders and memorials that were brought from Moscow to Surgut, who administered the court, subjugated and brought under the sovereign's high hand new tribes, collected Yasak - a duty that was imposed on the indigenous inhabitants - Ostyaks.
It is curious that the voivodes had just sailed to the place where Surgut was to be installed, and they were already ordered to remove yasak from all the peoples who inhabited the Ob basin to the mouth of the Irtysh.

Did the Surgut voivodes have sufficient forces to carry out the tasks assigned to them by the all-seeing and all-knowing metropolitan officials? At the disposal of Boryatinsky and Onychkov was a significant military garrison. From the very beginning of the city’s existence, its population was 155 servicemen who arrived in the voivodeship detachment together with their families, as well as from gunmen and betrothals – clergy, assistants, mobsters, guards and ... who would you think? Of course, executioner!

However, it soon became clear that these forces were not enough to conquer Pega Horde. Therefore, two years later, another 112 people were sent to Surgut. And in 1601, the Surgut garrison numbered already 280 people - Cossacks, Streltsov, Lithuania and Cherkas. Many of them were constantly traveling - someone collected yasak, someone searched for the last islands of Ostyak independence in the gloomy taiga, someone built the Narym and Ket forts with the subsequent wintering in these new outposts of Russian colonization as "waiters".

So let's take stock. The city of Surgut was founded in the summer "from the creation of the world" 7102, and "from the birth of Christ" - in 1594. The order to Prince Fyodor Boryatinsky and Vladimir Onychkov about its construction was given by the "Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Fyodor Ivanovich of All Russia" on February 19 (on the new style - March 1) of the same year. The then head of the order department, the thoughtful deacon Andrei Shchelkalov, fastened the order with his hand. It was the Tuesday of the second seventh of Great Lent after the Week of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Were on this day the celebration of the holy martyrs Panfila presbyter, Ualent deacon, Porphyry, Elijah, Daniel and those who suffered with them...