Indigirka - the heart of the Yakut tundra and Russian discoverers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It is believed that in 1638 from the East Siberian rivers Yana and Lena they came here by sea under the leadership of the Cossack Ivan Rebrov.

This year marks the 375th anniversary of the miraculous discovery of the mouth of the Indigirka by Russian explorers. It is believed that in 1638 from the East Siberian rivers Yana and Lena they came here by sea under the leadership of the Cossack Ivan Rebrov.

Seventy-first parallel. Eight time zones from Moscow and only eighty kilometers to the Arctic Ocean. The heart of the Yakut tundra, along which the mighty cold waters of the river with a mysterious non-Russian name - Indigirka, carry. But Russian people live here. They live for more than three centuries, far from civilization, continuing their incredible history. Who are they and where did they come to the harsh Yakut tundra, what did they like about the bare river bank? How did they hold out for several centuries, having managed to preserve the Russian appearance, language and culture among the foreign tribes?

Old people

The most intriguing, almost artistic and epic version (even shoot a movie) is associated with the massacre of Tsar Ivan the Terrible over the Novgorod freemen. It so happened in Russia: the fate of the exile is hard, many trials await him. But in overcoming them, giving rise to pride and self-respect, from ancient times the Russian soul was conceived and strengthened, filled with an incomprehensible secret.

The massacre in Novgorod happened in 1570, supposedly after him, fleeing from the tsar's persecution, the settlers got ready for the road, taking from fate a ticket only one way. According to this legend, the daredevils set off on 14 kochi, with belongings, with their wives and children. From kochi they will then make huts, a church and a tavern - some kind of, but the whole place of communication on a long polar night, almost a nightclub. A beautiful version, but they were going too thoroughly. Would the guardsmen of Tsar Ivan have waited for the flotilla to prepare for the voyage?

It is believed that only wealthy people - merchants and boyars - could equip such a voyage, and the names of the settlers - Kiselyovs, Shakhovsky, Chikhachevs - could well be of boyar origin. The famous Russian historian S. M. Solovyov in "History of Russia from Ancient Times" in the sixth volume describes the service of Mukha Chikhachev with Ivan the Terrible as a voivode, messenger and ambassador. The Kiselevs, Shakhovskys still live in the Russian Ustye, and the Chikachevs are one of the most common surnames. The descendants are the boyars Chikhachevs, who swam after the grief-misfortune, or others - who will say now? Reliable evidence of that period in the life of the settlers has not yet been found.

The first official mention of the settlement of Russians in the lower reaches of the Indigirka can be found in the reports of the great Northern Expedition of Vitus Bering. One of the participants in the voyage, Lieutenant Dmitry Laptev, in the summer of 1739 described the shores of the interfluve of Yana and Indigirka. Not far from its mouth, the boat was frozen into the ice, Laptev's detachment went ashore and went for the winter to the "Russian vein", that is, to the Russian Ustye.

The next century turned out to be much richer in terms of visits. Russian expeditions trampled the coast of the tundra up and down, leaving descriptions of strange, it is incomprehensible how they ended up here and survived, undoubtedly, Russian people.

The last house in the village of Stanchik. Izba Novgorodovs

How does flour grow?

The first detailed description of the Russian Ustye was left by a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party Vladimir Mikhailovich Zenzinov. Its appearance in the lower reaches of the Indigirka River in 1912 is no less surprising than the emergence of the settlement itself.

The tsars have long liked Yakutia as a place of exile for political troublemakers, but no one was honored to get into such a wilderness before Zenzinov. They were limited to Verkhoyansk, which is just a stone's throw from here - only four hundred kilometers across the interfluve. The poet Vikenty Puzhitsky, a participant in the Polish uprising, and the Decembrist S. G. Krasnokutsky, and a participant in the revolutionary movement of the 60s of the nineteenth century I. A. Khudyakov, and later revolutionaries - P. I. Voinoralsky, I. V. Babushkin, V. P. Nogin …

Probably, Zenzinov especially annoyed the tsarist regime with something. But, finding himself in a settlement in the lower reaches of the Indigirka, he felt not just at the end of the world, but also relocated two centuries ago. And thanks to Vladimir Mikhailovich, we can imagine the life-existence of the Russian Ustye at the beginning of the last century.

There was not a single literate person here. They lived completely cut off from the whole world, knowing nothing about the life of other people, except for the closest neighbors - the Yakuts and Yukagirs. A stick with notches served as a calendar. True, leap years interfered with the exact chronology - they simply did not know about them. Distances were measured by the days of the journey, when asked how much time had passed, they answered "the teapot should be ready" or "the meat should be cooked." Observing how Zenzinov was sorting out his things, the natives with native curiosity looked at unfamiliar objects - the effect of Aladdin's magic lamp was produced by an ordinary kerosene lamp - and tried to find out: "How does flour grow?" Later, after hearing enough stories about the incredibly changed life, once abandoned by their ancestors, they shook their heads, sighing: "Russia is wise!"

By the way, it is very likely that his friend from the Lyceum Fyodor Matyushkin, who took part in Wrangel's expedition, could tell Pushkin about the Russian Ustye. He met with the poet after returning from the North. And, of course, Vladimir Nabokov had heard enough of Zenzinov's stories about the unique settlement during their close acquaintance in exile.

The most incredible thing for Zenzinov was the strange language spoken around. He was certainly Russian, but poorly understood by a Russian person. It was difficult to realize that they spoke here in the ancient language of their ancestors, with its inherent grammatical features. At the same time, words and phrases from the vocabulary of the inhabitants of Russian Pomerania of the late 16th - early 17th centuries were used. Perhaps this gave rise to one of the versions about the appearance of Russians on Indigirka in the first half of the 17th century by sea "directly from Russia."

And then off we go. Andrei Lvovich Birkenhof, who was a member of the expedition of the People's Commissariat for Water Transport and who lived in the Russian Ustye for almost the entire 1931, suggested that the Russian "indigir people" were the descendants of Russian explorers. And they moved in the 17th century to Indigirka and Kolyma by land. And in search of hunting grounds for the extraction of precious furs - "soft junk" - were fed deeper and deeper into the tundra.

Precious fur means the white arctic fox, which is chic in these places. By the way, the extraction of "soft junk", and not at all escape from the wrath of the formidable Tsar Ivan, could have been the target of the "merchant-boyar" landing. Nevertheless, the sea to the lower reaches of the East Siberian rivers in favorable weather could be reached in one navigation, and not to break through the untouched taiga and mountain ranges. The development of the "fur vein" may provide an answer to why the aliens started life in such an uncomfortable, unsuitable place.

The rare appearance of guests from the "mainland" did not affect the "reserve" nature of the Russian Ustye. Centuries passed, just think about it, and people near the Arctic Ocean continued to live, hunt, dress, talk, like their distant ancestors. The rest of Russia, even native Siberia, was incomprehensible and infinitely far away, like the stars in the sky for us.

Wood urasa. The fin brought by Indigirka was carefully collected

Flight to the past

In the 80s I worked in Yakutia as a correspondent for a republican newspaper. He lived in the upper reaches of the Indigirka. Somehow in August, friends of the pilots whispered: a special flight will go to Polyarny - that was the name of the village then.

And now, having passed the Chersky ridge, we fly over the winding in the mountains, like a snake, hiding from the pursuit of Indigirka. Five hundred kilometers later, closer to the Arctic Circle, the mountains flatten out, the river no longer darts into any gorge, its flow calms down, and we admire the colorful autumn tundra, catching the rays of the still warm sun through the window, reflected by the brightened greenish water.

No sooner had the Mi-8 landed than the children ran to it, the adults reached out. And once it was the opposite. In the thirties, an airplane first appeared in the sky over the village for reconnaissance purposes. He circled over the houses … The pilots probably laughed in surprise as they watched people abandon their houses and fled to the tundra. But soon they began to use aviation as naturally as we do. Their entry into civilization was like an avalanche. She literally fell on the heads of people whose life was not much different from the life of their distant ancestors. Here, no one knew about factories and factories, railways and highways, trains and cars, multi-storey buildings, about a spike field, never heard a lark and a nightingale. For the first time, the Russians saw and heard the unknown, "local" life in the cinema.

Already during the war years, there was a resettlement from scattered settlements on the tundra for three or four smoke (they counted not at home, but by smoke) to a new settlement. It was necessary to teach children, supply people with goods, provide medical care. They were built, as in the old days, from a driftwood. Originating over 1700 kilometers in the mountains, sweeping through the taiga jungle, the Indigirka has been tearing trees from the shores with her insane power for thousands of years and carrying them to the ocean. People pulled heavy trunks out of the water, put them in cones resembling the shape of the Yakut urasa - to dry. This was done three hundred years ago. Houses were built from dried woods. The roofs were left without slopes, flat, insulated with turf, which made the houses seem unfinished, like boxes. For three centuries, in similar "boxes" from August to June there was an exhausting struggle with the cold. In winter, stoves (fires) were heated for days, like insatiable predators, devoured cubic meters of firewood from the river, and when there was not enough fuel, people fled under animal skins.

But by the mid-eighties, everything had changed. I saw good houses, apartments, "like everywhere else", a boiler room, an excellent school, radio and television broadcasts, imported clothes hung in stores. Life has changed, but work has not changed. The main thing was the hunting of the white fox. Here they say: the Arctic fox is “preyed upon”. Here are just hunters, in the local "industrialists", became less and less. Hunting “grew old”, the youth lived by other interests. By the mid-eighties, out of about five hundred inhabitants of the Russian Ustye, there were only two or three dozen regular hunters. Such an attitude to the trade (they still mined the mammoth bone, which is found in abundance in these parts) is easy to explain by imagining the work of a hunter.

Many generations of Russkoye Ustye residents lived in such sod-covered huts. Zaimka Labaznoe

Arctic fox hunting here has retained an amazing conservatism. There is no question of a gun. Like three hundred years ago, the main tackle is a trap, or just a fall. This is such a three-walled box, about a meter long, above which there is a log - oppression, four meters long above it. The mouth works on the principle of a mousetrap. The arctic fox climbs into a watchful box for profit, usually "sour", with a sharp smell of fish, grazes the guard horse hair, placed on top of the bait, connected to the "trigger", the oppression falls and kills the arctic fox with its weight.

Usually the hunter had 150–250 mouths. The distance between them is about a kilometer. In the summer, the place at the trap is lured, the animal is anchored. In winter, a hunter on a dog sled goes to the tundra. Here it is called the word "senduha", which is unusual for our ear. But for the Russkoye Ustye, the Sendukh is not just tundra, this name, as it were, encompasses the entire surrounding natural world. Just to check, to alert the mouth, it is necessary to make a circle of 200, or even 300 kilometers along the deserted tundra. And so on endlessly, until spring. All hunting grounds are distributed and assigned to a particular hunter, are inherited along with hunting tools, winter quarters where the hunter spends the night or rests in the tundra. Some mouths have stood since time immemorial. They were used by the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today's fishermen. The fashion for traps has not really caught on. They are used, but little. They say that the animal fights in them for a long time, the skin deteriorates from hunger, because the hunter will be able to check the trap in a week, or even more.

In the spring, they switched from the Arctic fox to the seal. For hunting, a “seal dog” was used - an Indigirskaya Laika with special hunting qualities. Such a dog must find seal rookeries and holes in the ice, in which the seal breathes. The hole is usually hidden by a thick layer of snow. Having found her, the dog gives a signal to the owner.

To dogs (here they will definitely say "dogs" and also add: "Dogs are our life"), the Russians in Ustye have an extremely serious attitude. And strict. No whispering or flirting. You will not see a dog in the house. They are a kind of part of the community, and, like everyone else around them, their life is strictly regulated. How could it be otherwise, if the existence of settlers depended on dogs for three centuries! They say that before the war, not a single dog, even a very thoroughbred one, but alien, not a husky could penetrate east of Tiksi: it was shot without any condescension. The northerners maintained the purity of their sled dogs. It was then that snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, aviation appeared, and the dog began to lose its status. And before, a good team was highly valued.

Walrus bone chess piece. Discovered in 2008

not far from the Russian Ustye

The Indigirskaya Laika was successfully sold on the neighboring rivers Yana and Kolyma. Going to the auction, the team was doubled. Approximately the same distance of seven hundred versts, both to one river and to another, under favorable weather conditions, the dogs covered in three days. Unlike horse and reindeer transport, the dog has a valuable feature - dogs usually walk as long as they have strength, and with good feeding they are able to work day after day for a long time. Therefore, the "dog question" was of great interest among the Russians of Ustye. In the evenings over a cup of tea, accompanied by the quiet crackling of a fire, endless conversations about dogs were started - an eternal, beloved, endless, never annoying topic: what did he feed, when he was ill, how he treated, how he gave birth, to whom he gave the puppies. Sometimes, transactions and exchanges were made right there. There were enthusiasts who knew "by sight" almost every dog on the lower Indigirka.

But reindeer husbandry did not take root, the attempt to start a reindeer herd ended in embarrassment. The men shot their own deer by mistake, mistaking them for wild ones, which they used to hunt since time immemorial.

Revived antiquity

Hunting and fishing fed people and dogs. One farm of four people, having a team of ten dogs, required up to 10,000 vendaces and 1,200 large fish - broads, muksun, nelma (about 3, 5–4 tons) for the winter. Up to thirty dishes were prepared from fish: from a simple fry - fried fish in a pan - to sausage, when a fish bladder is stuffed with blood, fat, pieces of the stomach, liver, caviar, then boiled and cut into slices.

Yukola - the "bread" of the Russians

Fish with a smell (sour) was in special demand. The hostess was asked: "Squas-ka omulka, fry the armor." She took fresh omul, wrapped it in green grass and hid it in a warm place. The next day, the fish was smelly, and a roast was made from it.

The main dish was scherba (fish soup). They usually ate it for dinner - first, fish, and then "slurp". Then they drank tea. The rest of the boiled fish was consumed in the morning as a cold dish. Only selected varieties - muksun, chir and nelma - went to the shcherba. For the Indigiri people, the ear was a universal product: it was used to solder the woman in labor to produce milk, the emaciated person was immediately given a "shcherbushka", they smeared the burnt place with it, it was used for colds, they moistened dry shoes with chuck.and some blacksmiths even tempered knives in it.

But the most exquisite delicacy was considered to be yukola - dried and smoked. The freshest fish just caught goes to the yukola. It is cleaned of scales. Two deep incisions are made along the back, after which the skeleton is removed along with the head, and two identical layers without bones, connected by a caudal fin, remain. Then the pulp is often incised at an angle with a sharp knife to the skin. Yukola was prepared exclusively by the hostesses, and each had its own unique "handwriting". After cutting, the yukola was smoked. Unsmoked yukola was called a wind drier, and smoked yukola was called a smoke drier. We took the account of the blanks. A beremo is a bunch of 50 yukols from big fish or 100 from vendace. They ate it for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea in small pieces with salt, dipped in fish oil. Yukola was taken at the end of the 19th century even to the fair in Anyuisk.

In the winter diet, fish enjoyed an advantage, and in the summer, meat appeared. Stewed venison was called a peasant, and meat of geese, ducks and loons fried in its own fat was a meat mess.

For centuries, they lived here by the sun, by the moon, by the stars, having developed a special trade and economic calendar, linked to church dates. It looked something like this:

Egoriev day (23.04) - arrival of geese.

Spring Nikola (09.05) - the sun does not set over the horizon.

Fedosin day (05/29) - catching "fresh", that is, the beginning of fishing in open water. There was a saying: "Egoriy with grass, Mikola with water, Fedosya with food."

Prokopiev day (8.07) - the beginning of the goose seeding and the mass movement of the chir.

Ilyin's day (07.20) - the sun sets over the horizon for the first time.

Assumption (15.08) - the beginning of the mass movement of vendace ("herring").

Michael's Day (8.09) - the beginning of the polar night.

Cover (01.10) - start of dog riding.

Dmitriev day (26.10) - jaws alert.

Epiphany (06.01) - the sun goes out, the end of the polar night.

Evdokia day (1.03) - it is forbidden to use lighting.

Alekseev day (17.03) - departure to fishing for seals.

This amazing calendar (dates are given according to the old style) was recorded by a native of the Russian Ustye Alexei Gavrilovich Chikachev, a descendant of the first settlers. It reflects and strictly, like the charter of the garrison service, regulates the way of life of the community. In it, the dual faith characteristic of ancestors is easily discernible: observing church rites and dates, preserving them from generation to generation, they were at the same time pagans, since they lived in complete dependence on nature, on their Sendukha, on Indigirka, on the polar day and night.

Here you can still hear, albeit smoothed by time, the Russian dialect of the distant past. In the language, incomprehensible words, unusual manners of people, as if a distant time comes to life, transferring from today to a seemingly irrevocable antiquity. And a chill will run over the skin when you hear:

From such lines it becomes uncomfortable. The song is about the conquest of the city of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. And the words in it sound the same as almost four centuries ago. But not only, not only because of this! Also from the understanding that these words could not get into the Yakut tundra except from the memory of a person who got here more than three centuries ago. And they have survived! How the old Russian vocabulary was preserved: alyrit - to mess around, to play the fool; arizorit - to jinx; achilinka - mistress, sweetheart; fabulist - gossip; vara - making tea; viskak - a small river; vrakun - a liar, a deceiver; squeeze out - stick out, try to be higher than others; gad - rubbish, impurities; gylyga - zamukhryshka, tramp; guess - guess; chimney - chimney; ducak - neighbor; udemy - edible; zabul - truth, truth; get excited - get angry; keela - hemorrhoids; kolovratny - uncommunicative, proud; letos - last summer; mekeshitsya - to be indecisive; on the dolls - squatting; to snarl - go into a rage; ochokoshit - stun; pertuzhny - hardy …

A long, very long wonderful dictionary of Old Russian words used by the author of "The Lay of Igor's Campaign", preserved by the Russians to this day, and with the language preserved a particle of the people's historical past.

Everything that happened in the 1990s, for the inhabitants of the Far North, including the Russian Ustye, can be described in one word - a catastrophe. The habitual, centuries-old scheme of life collapsed overnight. However, this is a topic for a completely different conversation …

… Almost at the same time as I, the wonderful Russian writer Valentin Rasputin visited the lower reaches of the Indigirka. Later, reflecting on the fate of Russia, he will write: “… Should it be in the future and how long it will be, where to find strength and spirit to overcome the crisis state - will the example and experience of a small colony in the Far North, which, by all indications, should not be? survived, but survived."