Tobolsk

Tobolsk is a city in the Russian Federation, the district center of the Tyumen region, located in the center of Western Siberia, on the Irtysh River, near the confluence of the Tobol River, 14 km from the railway station of the same name, 247 km northeast of Tyumen. The city has a river port and an airport.

Population 98,932 (2020). Modern Tobolsk is the industrial center of the Tyumen region.

Leading industrial enterprises of the city - petrochemical plant, shipyard, ship repair plant, wood processing plant, furniture and carpet weaving factory. Tobolsk is one of the centers of Russian bone carving, existing since the second half of the 19th century. There is an art bone carving factory in the city.

The city was founded in 1587 by a detachment of Cossacks Danila Chulkov near the Chuvash Cape, where the battle of the detachments of Yermak and Kuchum Khan took place.

From the late 16th to the 18th century, Tobolsk was the military-administrative and ecclesiastical center of Siberia (in 1620 the Siberian diocese was approved here).

In Tobolsk was located customs, the city was an important point of transit trade between Russia and Asia, the place of collection of yasak. In 1773-1778, Tobolsk was a stronghold for government troops during the suppression of the peasant war in the Urals and Trans-Urals under the leadership of Emelyan Pugachev.

From the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Tobolsk was the largest educational center of Siberia. The cultural significance of the city was largely determined by the activities of the exiles. In the 17th century, the Slavic publicist Yuri Krizhanich and Protopop Avvakum served a link here, at the end of the 18th century A. N. Radishchev and then P. A. Sumarokov were exiled here, in 1830-1850 the Decembrists lived in Tobolsk, since 1864 - Polish and Lithuanian rebels. From August 1917 to April 1918, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family were arrested in Tobolsk.

Tobolsk is an architectural pearl of Siberia, has a unique architectural and landscape ensemble, the crown of which is the Tobolsk Kremlin.

In the eastern part of the city (on the Sophia courtyard, the buildings of which form the first part of the stone Kremlin, erected in Tobolsk from the late 17th century to the end of the 19th century) is the oldest building of Siberia Sophia-Uspensky Cathedral (1681-1686), in the interior of which paintings of the 1720s, made, presumably, by St. Petersburg painters R. and N. Nikitin, are preserved.

Here is the cathedral sacristy (1796-1797), the cathedral bell tower (1794-1797), the baroque Pokrovsky Cathedral (1743-1746), the bishop’s house (1773-1775), the stone bell tower of the Uglich bell, exiled to Tobolsk in the reign of Boris Godunov.

In 1700-1717, according to the projects of the architect S. U. Remizov, the secular part of the Kremlin (the so-called Small or Ascension City) was rebuilt, which currently includes the Gostiny (Menovae) Yard (1703-1705), the Order Chamber (1700), Renteria or the Treasury Depository (1714-1716). In 1823-1831, Presence Places were erected in the Small Town.

Regular development of Tobolsk, approved in the late 18th century, is interspersed with the older free development. The panorama of the mountainous part of the city is determined by the Savior Church (1709-1713) and the Church of Peter and Paul (1768-1788). Beyond the old town is the church of the Seven Youths of Ephesus (1766) with rounded corners and rusty pilasters. In the sub-mountain, commercial, part of old Tobolsk there is the oldest in Siberia Znamensky monastery (founded in 1596), in the architectural ensemble of which the cell building (1734-1741) with the Kazan church (1768), from which the lower tier survived, the remains of the bell tower of 1768 near the western wall of the monastery, the seminary building (1870s). To the east of the monastery is the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin (1744-1761). On the southern outskirts of Tobolsk, in the former Cossack settlement, there are Baroque St. Andrew’s Church (1744-1759) and the Holy Cross Church (1754-1771), the interior of which is interesting with rich decorative stucco. One of the best Baroque monuments in Siberia is the Church of Zacharias and Elizabeth (1759-1776).

Among the most significant monuments of civil architecture of Tobolsk it is worth highlighting the stone house of Khudyakov (late 1750s), the Vladimirov house with elegant facades in the style of Petrovsky Baroque (late 1760s), the provincial gymnasium (built before 1788, rebuilt in 1824). The former house of Smorodinnikov-Dranishnikov (late 18th century) demonstrates the forms of transition from baroque to classicism.

Tobolsk is the birthplace of chemist D. I. Mendeleev, composer A. A. Alyabiev, artist V. G. Perov.

In the city there are memorial houses exiled to Tobolsk Decembrists A. N. Muravyov, P. N. Svistunov, M. A. Fonvizin.

The oldest in Siberia Tobolsk Museum was founded on April 8, 1870. In 1961, the Tobolsk Museum was transformed into a historical and architectural museum-reserve. It included the Tobolsk Kremlin, the most significant architectural and historical buildings of the second half of the 18th century, the city rampart, memorial buildings associated with the stay in Tobolsk of outstanding people, the graves of the Decembrists (A. M. Muravyov, F. B. Wolf, F. M. Bashmakov, F. Krasnokutsky, A. L. Baryatinsky and V. K. Kyuhelbeker), the grave of the poet-fairyer P. P. Ershov at the Zavalny cemetery.

Currently, a significant part of the monuments of the Kremlin and religious buildings has been transferred to the long-term gratuitous use of the Tobolsk-Tyumen diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The most valuable collections of the Tobolsk Museum-Reserve are collections of ethnography, archaeology, paleontology, handwritten and old printed books, a collection of objects belonging to the royal family.

The surroundings of Tobolsk are interesting for some archaeological sites. 8 km north of Tobolsk is the Suzgun hill with an ancient sacrificial place and the remains of a bronze molten workshop (about 18-10 centuries BC). On the Chuvash Cape south of Tobolsk are the settlement of Potchevash (the second half of the 1st millennium AD) and a burial mound of 17 mounds (14th century BC - 1st century AD).