On June 5, 1650, Erofey Khabarov completed his first campaign to the Amur, from which the annexation of the Far East to Russia began. We remember the main milestones in the life of the Russian explorer, who helped increase the Russian Land by almost a quarter.

Peasant son

Erofey Pavlovich Khabarov was born in the village of Dmitrievo, Kotlas district, Arkhangelsk region. The village was washed away by the flood of the Northern Dvina and the family of the future explorer was forced to move to the village of Svyatitsa. Based on the name of this village, Erofey received the nickname Svyatitsky. Growing up among the Pomors, Erofey saw that peasant origins did not interfere with achieving wealth and fame. Many Pomeranian families, thanks to their entrepreneurship and hard work, made a name for themselves and became trading families with decent incomes.

Fur business

Its long and hard way Erofey started together with his brother Nikifor. Together they moved across the Ural ridge and, settling on the Lena, began to engage in the fur trade, which provided a solid income. Khabarov believed in himself and organized a hunting artel, and at the same time mastered trade. Khabarov had all the business acumen he needed, but the enterprising peasant was not only interested in income. Even then, he made a great contribution to ethnography and obtained information about the life of local peoples.

Salt mill

Erofey Khabarov was not the type to sit still, get rich and be content with little. He took part in campaigns along the rivers of Siberia, and at one time lived in the upper reaches of the Lena, where he was engaged in buying furs. In 1639, at the mouth of the Kuta River, Khabarov discovered salt springs and built a salt mill. Today the city of Ust-Kut, Irkutsk region, is located in this place. Erofey Khabarov again went to the East and in 1641 opened a mill at the mouth of the Kirenga River. He gave a tithe of the harvest, but the then governor Pyotr Golovin wanted more and he and Khabarov had a conflict, as a result of which Khabarov found himself a prisoner of the Yakut prison.

"Drawing of the Amur River"

Imprisonment in prison determined the fate of Khabarov. The new governor, Dmitry Frantsbekov, frees the prisoner and responds to Khabarov’s request to send a detachment to Dauria, provides Khabarov’s people with equipment and weapons and gives money in interest. In 1649, Khabarov with a detachment of 70 people loyal to him set off up the Lena and Olekma on a campaign along the Amur from the confluence of the Urka River to the Daurian town of Albazino. In the spring of 1650, Khabarov returned and with renewed vigor went on a new campaign, as a result of which he took the city of Albazino and continued rafting along the Amur. During the campaign, he wins numerous victories over the Daur and Ducher princes, and captures many prisoners and livestock. The result of this campaign is the adoption of Russian citizenship by the indigenous Amur population. In the same campaign, Khabarov compiled “Drawing of the Amur River”, which became the first European map Far Eastern territories.

On August 1, 1652, a split occurred in Khabarov’s detachment. He refused to return to Yakutsk, wanting to continue his campaign along the Amur. As a result, a riot occurred and 136 people, led by Stenka Polyakov, swam back. Erofei Khabarov did not reconcile himself and caught up with the fugitives, who by that time had managed to rebuild a fort for the winter. Khabarov ordered to stand for the winter in the immediate vicinity of Polyakov’s fort, and then said to make rolls for the cannons and start shooting at Polyakov’s fort. They did not answer Khabarov, and after a short assault, Polyakov surrendered the prison, taking written assurance from Khabarov that the governor would not touch his people, but Erofey Khabarov “put Stenka in prison,” and ordered the rest to be beaten with batogs. Polyakov's prison was burned.

Petitions

In August 1653, the Moscow nobleman Zinoviev arrived on the Amur. Service people filed a petition against Khabarov, which indicated that the governor had sent incorrect reports to Yakutsk and embellished his stories about Dauria and Manchuria in order to encourage the royal people to conquer these territories. Also on royal ambassador Complaints poured in about Khabarov’s cruelty both towards his people and the local population. Final decision was adopted after the “Petition of Stenka Polyakov and his comrades.” The result of the investigation was the disbandment of the Khabarov detachment and its sending to Moscow for further investigation.

Amur passion

Upon arrival in Moscow, Khabarov writes petitions and petitions to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in which he talks a lot about his significant contribution to the development of the Siberian and Daurian lands. The Tsar frees Khabarov and even raises him to rank, naming Erofey the son of a boyar. Khabarov was sent to the Ust-Kut fort to manage the Ust-Kut volost, but he did not stay there for long, wanting to reassemble the detachment and continue the development of the Amur. Further fate the pioneer is not known, but his desire to finish the work he started can already evoke legitimate respect. A city and several streets in Russia are named after Erofei Khabarov.

In the biography of Erofey Pavlovich Khabarov (nickname Svyatitsky) there are still many unexplored points. Exist different versions and interpretations of his actions and decisions, which allow us to see in the person after whom the Far Eastern region is named a wider range of his life path. “The great son of Veliky Ustyug”, according to other sources - “the son of Solvychegodsk land”, as E.P. Khabarov is sometimes called by his biographers, was from that cohort of explorers who were the first to pave the way in the name of Russia to the riches of the Far East.

Erofey Pavlovich Khabarov was born into a peasant family, according to his biographers, between 1601-1607, and according to the compilers of the Great Soviet encyclopedia- around 1610. He was presumably born in the village of Dmitrievo, Votlozhensky camp, Ustyug district, which is 60 kilometers from Ustyug the Great, on the banks of the Sukhona River. It is also likely that teenage years Khabarov took place in Veliky Ustyug.

In the 17th century, Veliky Ustyug occupied an extremely advantageous geographical and economic situation between European part Russia and Siberian lands, the main trade routes"east-west". Therefore, Khabarov’s childhood and youth passed in an atmosphere of economic growth in the Ustyug land. Many peasants, abandoning the native corner inhabited by their ancestors, under the influence of stories about the untold riches of the Siberian land and inspired by the real success of willing people, either went to Siberia, beyond the Stone, to fish in the “Siberian auction”, or contracted with Moscow merchants, or to carry "own goods". The family of Pavel Khabarov also began to move. The eldest of the sons, Yarko, smart and agile, could not sit at home, engaged in traditional farming in poverty and eternal debt, when something more serious was happening before his eyes, and many people were able to escape from bondage, having been behind the Stone for only a year or two. According to S. Markov, Erofey Khabarov also tried to experience happiness, and already in 1623-1624 he “visited” the lands on the Lena River and returned with “success”. In the winter of 1626, the brothers Erofey and Nikifor were carried away on a journey by the “golden-boiling estate” of Mangazeya, and in the spring the brothers left home. The father did not want to let go of one Yarko because of the danger of the journey, and therefore he gave parting words for life to both sons at once. He ordered the brothers to help each other in everything, and Nikifor, as the younger and less experienced, to separately obey his older brother in everything. This became the old peasant’s last parting words “to life” for his sons. And this will of the father of the future explorer of Siberia and the Far East was carried out by the brothers throughout their entire life together.

By the time E.P. Khabarov left for Siberia, he was already married and had a daughter, Natasha. His wife, Vasilisa, lived during her husband’s odyssey either with her relatives in Sol Vychegda, or in Ustyug the Great.

The Khabarov brothers, Erofei and Nikifor, were attracted not only by the alluring distance. There was another, main reason for their Siberian odyssey. Only in the first third XVII century So many sable skins passed through the Mangazeya customs each year that their value was equal to the annual income of the royal court. As M.I. Belov notes, until the second half of the 30s of the 17th century, each ruble invested in Mangazeya, if successful, brought the hunter-trademan 32 rubles of net income.

Khabarov’s biographer Safronov describes that the brothers on this journey first ended up in Solikamsk, then in Verkhoturye and Tobolsk. In Tobolsk, they hired five conscripts and joined a large caravan of nomads, led by the Mangazeya governors G.I. Kokarev and A.F. Palitsyn. So, together with all the brothers, they crossed the Ob and Tadov bays, climbed the Toz River and stopped in Mangazeya: in the north, winter comes early.

Having spent the winter in Mangazeya, in the spring of 1629 Erofei and Nikifor walked along the Yenisei portage to Turukhansk, from there along the Yenisei and further by sea to the mouth of the Pyasina, and then by portage in the summer they moved to the Kheta River to the Kheta winter quarters. Here, in the customs hut, in the summer of 1629, Erofey began to serve as a kisser to collect tithe duties from merchants and industrial people, and Nikifor and his captives went to the “untrodden” lands of the southern and middle part of the Taimyr Peninsula. In these lands, Nikifor Khabarov and his followers managed to get eight forty sables (320 pieces).

A year later, in the spring of 1630, the brothers returned to Mangazeya, and from there in the summer sea ​​route- to Tobolsk. It was here that the character of the young Erofey Khabarov clearly manifested itself: he was not only a participant, but, as his biographers believe, the organizer of the action of trade and industrial people against the arbitrariness of governor Kokarev and, as M. Belov emphasizes, he further acted on their behalf. The fact is that on the way back from Taimyr, where the Khabarov brothers were, Erofey witnessed a major quarrel between the Mangazeya governors. The verbal clash ended in the spring of 1631 with open military action on both sides. From the first steps, Khabarov was not afraid to enter into this conflict, joining the supporters of A.F. Politsyn, and eventually became the organizer of a protest against Kokarev’s arbitrariness. However, he personally no longer took part in the speech, since he did not consider bloodshed to be the correct solution to the issue and was generally opposed to a military conflict. Khabarov saw the resolution of this conflict somewhat differently and acted as his conscience told him. He understood that he could not prove anything by force, and in search of a fair solution to the issue, at the end of 1630 (according to other sources, in January 1631), Erofey Pavlovich went with his brother to the Siberian Prikaz in Moscow. Along the way, the brothers stopped in Veliky Ustyug (January 1631), Nikifor stayed at home, and Erofey immediately went further to Moscow. There he filed a petition against the Mangazeya governor Kokarev, in which he accused him not only of robbing merchants and industrial people, but also of the illegal sale of wine, beer and honey, of illegally maintaining taverns, of violent attacks on Palitsyn, who stood for the observance of the law, and also in the destruction of the Mangozeya “zemlya”. In this petition addressed to the tsar on behalf of the “Mangazeya world”, E.P. Khabarov, defending the “righteous cause”, asked the sovereign to take measures against arbitrariness so that... the Mangazeya land would not be completely deserted. And he won the argument. Thus, in the corridors of the royal court the name of the future great Amur explorer was heard for the first time.

Back in 1630, the Khabarov brothers attracted their nephew Artemy Petrilovsky with them, and being on the Yenisei, near the mouth of the Tisa River, they soon learned from the Mangazeya governor Palitsyn about the possibilities of developing “another Mangazeya” on the Lena River. A.F. Paditsyn expressed his thoughts to the Tsar at long term and proposed to “send Siberian people”, “to establish a city or forts” on the Lena and other rivers not far from it in order to bring “new lands of people” “under the great sovereign hand”, and “to collect yasak from them” to replenish the royal treasury.

In this case, E.P. Khabarov decided to try his luck and left. There are different opinions on the question of the time of the brothers' arrival on Lena. According to one version, Khabarov arrived on Lena no later than 1632, according to another version - in 1638. Nikifor and their nephew Artemy Petrilovsky arrived there together with Erofey. Most likely, according to G. A. Leontyeva, all this happened in 1632 upon the return of the brothers from Ustyug the Great, where they rested a little with their family and resolved the issues of selling the junk they had brought - sables.

Arriving in Siberia, E.P. Khabarov, after a trip to Moscow, filed a petition with a request to send him to Lena, hired 27 workers - pokruchennikov, made an advance payment with them, agreed with the treasury on the issuance of various products and waited for permission. From the Yenisei fort, after receiving permission for his petition, he set off on the road and spent the whole summer on the road: sailing along the Angara and its tributary Ilim to the Ust-Kut fort. There this small detachment settled for the winter, from where they walked along the Lena to Yakutsk.

At this time, the Yakut region was rather poorly populated by industrialists. Therefore, E.P. Khabarov and his artel hunted on the upper tributaries of the Lena: the Kuta, Kirenga, Chechuya, and Vilyue rivers. But this was short-lived due to the influx of industrial people, and Khabarov began to think about changing the direction of its activities. He decided to opt for the Ust-Kut salt deposit he discovered.

It should be noted that in the future this deposit, along with the Irkutsk Usolye, will supply the entire Eastern Siberia with salt. Here, at the Ust-Kut salt deposit, E.P. Khabarov founded salt mines, and by 1639 the Khabarovsk artel provided the salt needs not only for the nearby forts, but also for Yakutsk. Here, at the same time, he established sable and fishing, and started arable farming.

During these years, E.P. Khabarov was lucky in one more thing. His departure to the Lena in 1638 coincided with the dispatch there of the explorer Maxim Perfilyev with the aim of “visiting new lands” in the Vitim region, a tributary of the Lena. On this path, the explorers met personally and after the meeting tried not to lose connections. Soon E.P. Khabarov became one of the largest grain merchants in the Yakutsk district. His desire was to collect more than a thousand pounds of grain a year and capture the grain markets in Siberia.

In addition to salt mining and arable farming, fishing and fur farming, those recruited by E.P. Khabarova were also engaged in transportation through the Lena portage - from the Ilimsk to the Ust-Kutsk forts. However, E.P. Khabarov’s dreams were not destined to come true. If it were not for the “wishes” of the Yakut governors, perhaps E.P. Khabarov would not have moved to the Amur land, his fate would not have driven him to “meet the sun.” Everything did not turn out as planned by the industrialist Erofeyka, Pavlov’s son Khabarov. The first Yakut governors P. Golovin and M. Glebov “borrowed” 3,000 pounds of grain from him to the “sovereign treasury”, then they “signed off” his salt production to the treasury without any remuneration, which E.P. Khabarov handed over to the foreman Semyon Andreevich Shelkovnikov, the same one who in 1647 founded the first Russian port on the Pacific Ocean - the Okhotsk fort. Khabarov’s arable lands were also taken away. Thus, the crops of E.P. Khabarov taken into the treasury marked the beginning of state-owned arable land along the Lena River.

In addition to the “commercial vein” at this time, which E.P. Khabarov’s biographers call the Lena period, according to F. Safonov, Erofey Pavlovich, “looking for profit for the sovereigns” and “profit for himself,” collected information about the Lena basin, opportunities and travel times along the Lena under sail and rowing to the mouth, “what kind of people live on those rivers,” tried to obtain and double-check data about various peoples this pool.

After the loss of land in 1641, E.P. Khabarov settled near the mouth of the Kirenga River in the Nikolsky District. With the advent of a fearless and enterprising man, this earth began new story Nikolsky prison. Soon he founded a village there, later named Khabarovka. It should be noted that in these places the names of the village are still preserved: Khabarovka, Khabarovo Pole, Khabarova Roshcha, etc. E.P. Khabarov had his own village and mill. Energetic and active person, in a new place he started an extensive farm. For the Yakut governors, who in their “unsubscribes” to the tsar constantly mentioned the name of E. P. Khabarov (it sounded for the second time in the tsar’s corridors), he turned out to be “ an inconvenient person", a bone in the throat. And officials quickly found a reason to deal with the unyielding Khabarov. In 1643, for refusing to “lend money” to the voivodeship treasury, all his possessions were illegally taken away from him, and he was thrown into a Yakut prison, where he sat without any court decision for about two and a half years, that is, until the end of 1645. But this did not break the explorer.

Having been released from prison, he returned to Ust-Kirenga and, together with his brother and nephew, began to restore his farm. On the occasion of the arbitrary actions of the governor P.P. Golovin, E.P. Khabarov turned to the tsar with a petition for the oppression of the governor and a request “to allow him to travel to his homeland to free his family from law.” And he received such permission, but with the condition of “leaving his arable land to his brother Nikiforka Khabarov.” This was the third time when Khabarov’s name involuntarily appeared on the lips of officials in Moscow.

The described events related to defending one’s rights against illegal actions Yakut governor P.P. Golovin, coincided in time with the return of V.D. Poyarkov’s expedition from the Amur in 1646. Rumors about the riches of the Amur region captured Khabarov. He was aware of the expeditions of Perfilyev and Bakhteyarov and received information about the last one - Poyarkova, as well as about the routes by which the detachment got to the Amur. However, for the time being he himself did not dare to take such a step, since organizing a large expedition required a lot of money, and Khabarov did not have it at that moment. Three times he had to repair the farm ruined by Golovin. In addition, on this basis, Khabarov did not have a good relationship with the administration, so there was no need to think about a monetary loan or the possibility of receiving equipment from the treasury. Moreover, V.D. Poyarkov’s expedition, according to the administration, turned out to be ineffective. Therefore, in the current situation, any thought about an expedition to the Amur had to be postponed until a more opportune moment.

In 1646, instead of the governor P.P. Golovin, who was removed for abuses and arbitrariness, an Orthodox Livonian German by origin, Dmitry Andreevich Franzbekov (Fahrensbach), was sent from Moscow, who, according to S. Markov, “grabbed with both hands the sovereign’s treasury, which he considered to be your own." There was also no need to expect anything from Franzbekov, and E.P. Khabarov, realizing the profitability of the Amur expedition, offered to carry it out at his own expense. Frantsbekov agreed and gave the “wholesaler” an order to go to Dauria.

According to A. Alekseev, Khabarov failed to gather the required number of people. In his petition, he asked the governor to give him 150 people on the Amur, whom he would gather at his own expense. However, only about 70 volunteers volunteered to go on the long trek. But this did not delay E.P. Khabarov. Most importantly, he had in his hands the governor’s permission to carry out the Amur expedition. But when, during the preparation of the campaign, Khabarov needed money, the governor lent it to him at 50 percent.

At the end of March 1649, E.P. Khabarov’s detachment had already left the Ilimsk fort and in the spring of 1650 reached the Amur shores. On the way to the Amur, small groups of hunting and industrial people joined the detachment.

Having discovered the deserted towns of the local population of Prince Lavkai on the Amur, E. P. Khabarov decided not to go further, but returned with a small group to Yakutsk, reported the situation to D. A. Frantsbekov, replenished supplies of food and weapons, and with new people who joined him detachment, in the fall of 1650 he was again on the Amur. Here he had to rescue the expedition members he had left behind on Amur land from under siege.

In 1651, E.P. Khabarov founded the first Russian fortress Albazin, but he did not stay in it, he went further and went down to the mouth of the Ussuri River. Establishment Russian authorities on the Amur was accompanied by the construction of forts: Ust-Strelochny, Albazinsky, Kumarsky, Achansky.

Khabarovsk residents walked the Amur to the very mouth. Understanding the importance of colonizing lands in the east, back in 1651 the Russian government, at the request of E.P. Khabarov and D.A. Frantsbekov, was going to send a 3,000-strong army to the Amur under the command of Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, but this campaign was due to foreign policy situation did not take place in Russia.

For the purpose of preliminary reconnaissance on the Amur, the Moscow nobleman D.I. Zinoviev was sent to E.P. Khabarov by the Siberian Order. The meeting of the Khabarovsk detachment with a representative of Moscow took place only in 1653. Possessing voivodeship powers, D.I. Zinoviev officially confirmed the inclusion of the Amur region by E.P. Khabarov’s detachment in the Russian state, presented Khabarov and “his people” with royal awards and, exceeding all authority, arbitrarily and without justification for “insolence” (Khabarov demanded from Zinoviev a royal decree on his removal from affairs on the Amur after the “great” sovereign award) ordered the arrest of the explorer. He removed him from office and further work on the Amur and ordered the powers of an official to be transferred to esaul and gunner Onufriy Stepanov (Kuznets), who, with a detachment of Khabarovsk residents, traveled around the Amur until 1658 and collected yasak from the local population.

The haste in sending Zinoviev to the capital with his “retinue” for the report is explained by his fear of a possible hungry winter on the Amur. Together with him, Zinoviev took Khabarov, who was “under supervision,” for an “explanation” in Moscow. In fact, having reached the Tugir portage in October 1653, the Moscow nobleman suddenly forgot about haste and remained to spend the winter until the coming spring. Fearing that E.P. Khabarov might leave and return to the Amur, and he, Zinoviev, would be exposed in arbitrariness and failure to fulfill the instructions of the Siberian order in preparing the arrival of a 6,000-strong army, Zinoviev gave the order to isolate Khabarov in the most accessible areas for possible escape Place shackles (bows) on the explorer in places.

E.P. Khabarov's trip to Moscow was difficult and exhausting. Zinoviev extorted from the explorer a sable fur coat, a hat, and sable plates. The Moscow nobleman also robbed other willing and industrial people: both those he met on the road, and those Khabarovsk residents taken from the detachment as accusers of an official who threatened to speak out in Moscow. Then they bitterly repented of what they had done and, together with Khabarov, wrote and delivered petitions to the governor Pashkov in the Yenisei prison against Zinoviev about his arbitrariness, robberies and extortion, as well as blackmail.

Based on these petitions and at the insistence of E.P. Khabarov, Pashkov was forced to conduct an investigation and confiscated the property he had taken from Zinoviev service people, and also, together with a courier, sent everything confiscated to the Siberian order. Thus, thanks to the integrity and perseverance of E.P. Khabarov, the loot of Zinoviev was saved.

On the way, E.P. Khabarov saw how a stream of serving and willing people along the paths trodden by his detachment was moving towards the Amur, despite all sorts of prohibitions and obstacles from the authorities.

E.P. Khabarov did some part of the journey to the capital without Zinoviev, since the latter was afraid of accusations and was making up time on the road. In December 1654, D.I. Zinoviev was already at the Siberian Prikaz in Moscow, where he immediately reported on the work carried out on the Amur. He confirmed the fact and significance of Khabarov’s annexation of the Amur region to Russia, but characterized the explorer himself extremely negatively.

As for E.P. Khabarov, he was in no hurry to get to the Siberian Prikaz. The explorer understood perfectly well that no one would listen to him right away, and therefore he expected to arrive at a high reception after the report, the delivery of the confiscated looted property and the investigation documents into the case of arbitrariness and blackmail, sent by courier from Voivode Pashkov. During this time, Khabarov visited Veliky Ustyug and only in mid-February 1655 was questioned at the Siberian Prikaz in Moscow by its leader, Prince A. N. Trubetskoy, and then by his assistant clerk G. Protopopov.

Having won the main issue, E.P. Khabarov filed a complaint against Zinoviev, to which he attached documents for 1,500 rubles, that is, the amount for which the nobleman robbed him. Khabarov’s complaint and Zinoviev’s guilt were so obvious that the court soon figured it all out and on June 13, 1655, issued a verdict. First: in the actions of the nobleman D.I. Zinoviev in relation to Khabarov, see abuse of official position and the intention to rob and slander the explorer. But given that this was the first time something like this had happened to Zinoviev, the court issued a warning to the “Moscow representative on the Amur”. Second: the nobleman D.I. Zinoviev should have returned to Khabarov the illegally taken property worth 1,500 rubles.

However, E.P. Khabarov managed to obtain only a part. With this, he was able to pay off Sokovkin, whose debtor was the explorer. Regarding the second part of the debt, due to Zinoviev’s dishonesty and red tape if continued trial, Khabarov did not insist on returning the money. On July 5, 1655, on the advice of clerk Protopopov, he wrote a petition addressed to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich about his official enrollment in the service “in the rank in which he will be useful.”

The Siberian order satisfied Khabarov’s petition, but only partially. He recognized the explorer’s merits, converted him into “children of the boyars,” setting a salary of 10 rubles in money, 10 quarters of rye, 10 quarters of oats and one and a half pounds of salt per year. This is how Moscow appreciated the explorer’s merits.

It should be noted that the fact that E.P. Khabarov was enrolled in the “children of the boyars”, bypassing the Cossack or Streltsy service, was very rare for Siberia. However, the Siberian Order ignored compensation to E.P. Khabarov for material losses caused by Zinoviev.

E.P. Khabarov stayed in Moscow until the fall of 1655, that is, until the organization of the Amur Voivodeship on August 20 and the appointment of Afanasy Pashkov as its first governor. Probably because, from the point of view of the Siberian order, E.P. Khabarov had already completed his mission on the Amur and his presence there could have put the governor in an uncomfortable position, he was not allowed there, but was sent to the Ilimsk garrison “according to the register”: explorer was appointed manager of the Lena villages from Ust-Kut to the Chechuysky portage. Khabarov returned to Lena in 1658 and settled in Kirenga, his village, which local residents called Khabarovka.

Back in 1650, leaving for the Amur region, E.P. Khabarov, by agreement, transferred this village with a mill, arable land and hayfields to Panfil Yakovlev for the period of expeditionary work. Panfil Yakovlev supported everything he was responsible for as best he could, and even managed to organize the plowing of part of the new land. Back in native village, the explorer began to improve his life. He built a new courtyard, “mansions” and various outbuildings, plowed 18 acres of land for arable land in the Kirensky meadow, Baidanovskaya and Rusovskaya zaimkas, expanded his holdings in the meadow, installed two mills: one on the Chechuevsky portage, the other opposite the Ust-Kirensky Nikolsky churchyard behind Lena. For all this, Erofey Pavlovich regularly paid the rent.

Khabarov's economy in Siberia was set on a grand scale and was of a diversified nature. He sowed grain, raised livestock, and engaged in flour-grinding, furriery and leatherworking. Khabarov was able to organize and use the labor of both several dependents, working for part of the harvest of ladles, and hired workers, whom he invited to work at the time of the harvest. From these same people, Khabarov recruited stragglers, whom he sent to sable hunting in places he knew well: Olekma, Tugir, Tugirsky portage and its environs. Khabarov himself did not go to the taiga, since he could not be away for a long time due to his work. He was considered the direct representative of the voivodeship power over the peasants, and his powers, determined by the voivodeship mandate, were very broad. As an orderly person, he not only controlled the work and observed state economy, which included tithe arable land and the peasants cultivating it, and also, if necessary, intervened in personal peasant farm, if the situation required it, he was responsible for the moral foundations of his “wards” and their public trustworthiness.

However, having a wide range of responsibilities, he sought to return to “his” Amur. And the opportunity to go to the Tugirsky portage presented itself to him again, but at the behest of the Yakut governor Mikhail Lodyzhensky, who, on the basis of a letter from the Siberian order, ordered to take Khabarov into custody and take him to the Tugirsky portage “to search” for equipment hidden there during Khabarov’s departure from Amur to the nobleman Zinoviev for explanations in Moscow. It was about gunpowder and lead, which should have been sent to governor Afanasy Pashkov to Nerchinsk. Khabarov was accompanied by 30 Cossacks led by the boyar's son Fyodor Pushchin, whose official memory ordered that the explorer be released if the treasury was discovered, and otherwise be escorted to Yakutsk for explanations.

The trip did not produce any results; on the portage, E.P. Khabarov, after so many years, did not find anything, and it would have been impossible to find it because of large gap time and a significant flow of people moving to the Amur through the Tugirsky portage. There was no treasury (lead and gunpowder), no sickles, no scythes, no ploughshares that he had once hidden. Therefore, Khabarov was taken to Yakutsk and presented with a debt in the amount of 4,550 rubles, which, naturally, the explorer did not have at that time. After long negotiations with the governor, the parties agreed to pay the debt to the treasury in installments: E.P. Khabarov undertook to send 1,600 pounds of grain to Yakutsk annually. The explorer kept his word.

From official documents correspondence it is known that by 1660 E.P. Khabarov already had a grandson and two sons - Andrei and Maxim. Khabarov really was loving husband and a caring father. Finding himself even in the most difficult conditions, and having no news from home about his family for a long time, he used every opportune moment to visit his homeland. Today, documents have been found that suggest that in 1651 his family lived in Siberia: either in Yakutsk or Ilim.

Erofei Pavlovich's wife Vasilisa died before 1667. It was this year that Khabarov ordered the elders of the Ust-Kirensky monastery to remember her. At this time, Khabarov’s children no longer lived with him and were “separated”, since he did not want to make them hereditary debtors to the treasury. After the funeral of his wife, the explorer began to visit his village less and less often; his acreage, which had already been repeatedly protected from outside encroachment, was reduced.

In 1663, in his village of Khabarovka, Elder Hermogenes founded the Ust-Kirensky Monastery, with which there were also land disputes.

It is also known from documents that on October 28, 1666, E.P. Khabarov asked to be released again to the Amur to the Ilimsk governor S.O. Anichkov (Onichkov) for service or so as to build a “city” there and have arable land. But the governor did not resolve this issue and advised him to make a similar request to the Tobolsk governor Peter Godunov, who was considered the senior (chief) in service among the governors of Siberia, or to the Siberian Prikaz.

Before being sent to Tobolsk, being already in old age (56-60 years old), E.P. Khabarov donated a mill to the monastery, and then donated the property of his village to him, for which the elders promised to remember him, Vasilisa and their parents in the event of the explorer’s death . And Khabarov sold the sowed grain, valuables (copper utensils, iron products) and livestock.

In the fall of 1667, E.P. Khabarov arrived in Tobolsk with yasak treasury and documentation and on October 15 submitted a petition asking to be released to the Amur. In it, the explorer indicated that he would “raise a hundred people on his roads and on his ships and grain reserves,” and on the Amur he would build a city (fortress) and engage in arable farming.

The governor did not dare to give permission for this petition to E.P. Khabarov, who was not allowed to go to the Amur by the Siberian Order, and recommended that the explorer go to the Siberian Order himself. He hoped that Khabarov, due to his age, would no longer take this step and would simply not go so far, and would stop disturbing the “boss.” E.P. Khabarov was very “famous” in Siberia, and people could follow him to the Amur lands a large number of people, which was undesirable for the authorities: Siberia, compared to the Amur, was less populated at that time. This turned out to be the second reason for the refusal of the explorer. In the Siberian Prikaz, as one might expect, no one bothered to bother the Tsar for Khabarov. They simply didn't need him. They limited themselves to only increasing his salary for impeccable service before the Tsar and the Fatherland, and left other issues, including the request for permission to leave for the Amur, without attention.

Having achieved nothing, E.P. Khabarov again returned to his native Kirenga, to his Khabarovka, since, according to the terms of the will written by the explorer before leaving, it became the property of the monastery only after his death.

Old age, hard work and the life of an explorer took their toll. According to A. Alekseev’s assumption, Erofey Pavlovich Khabarov his last years spent in the Ilimsk fort or in his village near Ust-Kirenga. When and how the explorer died and where he was buried remains a mystery to historians.

According to B.P. Polevoy, E.P. Khabarov died in early February 1671 at the age of 64-66 years. According to Siberian local historians, he is buried in the fence of the Ust-Kirensky Trinity Monastery. However, on December 1, 1981, the newspaper Pacific Star reported that in the village of Kalinino (former name - Monastyrshchina) on the Amur, a slab with the clearly visible words “Erofey Pavlovich ...” was discovered, in connection with which a version arose that the explorer nevertheless returned to the Amur precisely in the village of Kalinino, where he lived out his last days, died and was buried there. And after a while, grateful descendants erected this tombstone with his name carved on the stone [Pacific Star, 1981. December 1]. The house of E.P. Khabarov has not survived, but this place is still called Khabarovsk in Kirenga.

This is very short story according to what historians have available archival documents about the fate of the Amur explorer Erofey Pavlovich Khabarov - a Ustyuzhanite, a peasant son.

*In selected literary sources you can find the data “300 pounds of bread”. This may be a typo. — Approx. V. Pavlik.

Russian pioneers of Siberia in the 17th century