The Russian Orthodox Church in the Khakass-Minusinsk region under the circumstances of its settling (the 18 c. - the 1860s)

Asochakova Valentina N.

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2008 1) 455-461

УДК 94(57)

The Russian Orthodox Church in the Khakass-Minusinsk Region under the Circumstances of its Settling (the 18 c. - the 1860s)

Valentina N. Asochakova*

Institute of History and Law N.F. Katanov State University of Khakassia,

11K. Marks st., Abakan, 655017 Khakassia 1

Received 27.11.2008, received in revised form 17.12.2008, accepted 24.12.2008

In the article there is a problem of the ethno-demographical conditions in the Khakass-Minusinsk region that influence the functioning of the Russian Orthodox Church. The use of the sources of the church demographical registration - confession information and the clergy register - allowed to define the demographical characteristics of the population, the ethnic correlation and the social structure more exactly. The parishes were the contact zones of the interethnic, civilizational, intercultural interaction of the people inhabited the Khakass-Minusinsk region.

Keywords: the Khakass people, population, parishes, old residents, ethnic contacts.

The institualization process of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Khakass-Minusinsk region was going on under the definite demographic-geographical, social-economical, political-ideological circumstances caused by the Russian Colonization in the 18th - 19th cc.

The incorporation of Khakassia into the Russian State was complete by the end of the 1720s. The subsequent settling of the region led to the changing of the ethno-demographical situation.

The Khakass-Minusinsk hollow is the Northeast section of the Eurasian steppe stretch. The natural physic-geographical circumstances of the Minusinsk hollow and the isolation from other Asian regions influenced the ethnical and historical processes. The Khakass-Minusinsk region is a rather small hollow on the Northern hillside of the Sayano-Altaisk plateau surrounded

* Corresponding author E-mail address: asocvn@mail.ru

with mountain masses that isolate it from the neighbour flat territories: in the first place, from dry table-lands and semi-desert steppes of the Central Asia. Its arrangement to the South along the Yenisei from the mouth of the Mana to the Sayan Mountains was the second conductive factor. The existence of fertile soils on the leftside of the Yenisei, hot summers, wet climate, forest rich in fur-bearers, economic minerals: gold, iron, copper, lead, coal, asbestos, etc -created favourable opportunities for a household settling of the region. In the 1730s the Moscow highway was going through the line Achinsk-Krasnoyarsk-Kansk-Nezhneudinsk.

The valley of the Middle Yenisei was settled by Yenisei Kyrgyzes, ancestors of the Khakass people of today. In Tsarist Russia they were called Minusinsk, Abakan, Achinsk, Chulym Tatars. Before the coming of Russians

they had comparatively independent political system that can be characterized as the state one with undeveloped form of social institutes. The political organization "The Kyrgyz Lands" united four principalities (uluses): Altysarsky, Isarsky, Altyrsky, Tubinsky. The weakening of "The Kyrgyz Lands", as a result of "driving away" the population to Dzungaria in 1703, precipitated the incorporation of the Khakass-Minusinsk region into Russia. The colonization was going on from the side of three centers: Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kuznetsk - that subsequently caused the administrative division of the territory among three uyezds (districts), later - regions (ruled by governor general), provinces.

During the 18th century the serious changes in the development of the Khakass people happened. The population increased more than 4,5 times. Even before the incorporation of Khakassia into the Russian State, the Khakass people had the process of disintegration of large Khakass seoks (clans) into family groups. In the 18th c. the surnames of heads of families were introduced for the registration of population that brought to a greater division of family groups into kin groups or "aimaks". One hundred years later, according to the reform of 1822, they were united into kins which became the members of Steppe Dumas and existed up to the end of the 19th c. (Kyzlasov, 1998 : 100-104). In religious beliefs the general mythical ancestor appeared. The common autoname of Khakass seoks came into use in the Khakass language - "tadars" which had the political sense and denoted "a yasak foreigner" (Butanaev, 1998 : 168-170). Thus, one may make a conclusion about the consolidation of the Khakass people, the beginning of the national self-identification and the formation of self-awareness.

As a result of building stockaded towns and signing the Kjakhtinsky Armistice in 1727, the official assignation of the Khakass territory to

Russia happened. And after the fall of the Dzungar khanate in 1740-50s the frontier Kuznetsk and Krasnoyarsk lines were set up. The creation of comparatively peaceful conditions contributed to the migration of some Khakass kins to the Khakass-Minusinsk region. Thus, the previous isolation of its representatives was broken. In the second half of the 18th c. the settlement of the Khakass people comes to an end, the process of ethnic consolidation that was broken because of taking away the greater part of population to Dzungaria in 1703, activates. One of the characteristic features of the process of ethnic consolidation was the fact that it was going on in conditions of the incorporation of Khakassia into Russia and the subsequent settling by Russians.

The process of settlement of the territory of the Khakass-Minusinsk region by Russians slightly differed from the common Siberian one in temps and forms. The colonization of the region had "a mixed" character. The governmental colonization in the 1st quarter of the 18th c., conducted with military-defense and fiscal aims, transformed into the legal and unauthorized one with economical purposes. The lands were settled by free settlers in the conditions of a frontier position and the attempts of the state to organize the mining of non-ferrous and ferrous ores. The discovered copper and iron ores activated the policy of fixing the South. By that time the otioseness of the attempts of a penetration to Tuva became obvious (Bykonya, 1981). The settling the region in the 1720-40s was connected with building and work of the metallurgical plants: the Irbinsk iron and the Lukazsk copper-smelting plants. The governmental "obligation by turn" for service the plants, charged to the tax-pay population, did not come true. And in 1741 the government began the forced settling of convicts. Thus, the government villages, united the Irbinsk plant with mines, Lukazsk plant and Abakan stockaded town, appeared (Kartsov, 1970). In 1747 the plants were

temporarily closed because of "the curbing ores", and the inhabitants were put in plough lands with giving out bread as loans. The percentage of sent people to work in plants made up 15 % of the regular population or 8 % of taxpayers (Bykonya, 1981 : 75-91). Nevertheless, the establishment of plants favoured an unauthorized settling in the South.

In the second quarter of the 18th c. people who belonged to the service class lost their leading role in the settling of the region. In time of peace the natural population increase intensified, an intra-uyezd migration of peasants and commons became the main source of it. The number of Russians between the censuses increased 4 times, and later on up to the end of the 18th c. the population had been formed mainly at the expense of migrations from the nearby Siberian uyezds, the intensive settling of old residents and the high natural increase. The consolidation of the state in the Eastern outlying districts created the conditions for a trade-economical activity - the industrials and merchants rushed to Siberia. The motion of Russians into Khakassia went mainly along the Yenisei, their settlements edged their way on the right bank to the properties of the former Tuba region, separating the right riverside Kyshtyms from them. In that conditions the groups belong to different tribes began their movement to the left riverside of the Yenisei.

By the 1720s above Krasnoyarsk with the Yenisei stream 13 villages appeared, 8 of them

were situated up to the Guard stockaded town, the rest - on the way to Abakan stockaded town. For the second quarter of the 18th c. about 20 villages more appeared: between 1740-1746 - the village Shushenskaya, (Bykonya, 1972) from Achinsk side - Chernorechenskaya, Nazarova, the small settlement Kopiova. The village Balakhtinskaya became the rural settlement. Almost all appeared villages (11 of 15) were in the Yenisei-Chulym hollow on the Yenisei under the protection of the Guard stockaded town. They were covered by Abakan stockaded town in the South, near which four villages appeared, and only one village Bir (Kozlova) was to the South from the fortification itself. In the Northern Prisayanye a constant population was not formed yet.

At the same time the contact zones appeared in the places of settlement by Russians. The process of assimilation was going on more intensively, especially among the settled and newly-baptized. The via-zone settlement of Russians was influenced by the presence of great number of the Khakass people up to the middle of the 18th c. In the 1st half of the 19th c. the specific growth of the Russian population in relation to the Yasak inhabitants had been increasing (see Table). The still growing presence of Russians, a slight natural increase connected with the extensive type of the economics, the mongrelation (crossbreeding) - all these factors were the reason of the lessening of the rate of growth of the Khakass population.

Table. The evolution of settlement tha Khakass-Minusinsk region in the 18th c. - 1861

Ethnos 1720 1730s 1760 s 1795 1823 1851 1861

Khakasses 3 565 4 175 6 112 16 376 21 182 23602 36179

Increase in % - 17,1 46,3 167,9 29,3 11 53

Russians 476 1 915 7149 19 084 23 003 39 516 54 187

Increase in % - 302 273 166 20 41,7 37

Total 4 041 6 090 13 261 35 460 44 185 63 118 90 366

% of Khakasses of the total population 88,2 68,5 46 46,1 47,9 37,3 40

The including different groups of the Khakas ethnos begun since 1727 into the Russian Empire and the formation of the local administrative-territorial division influenced the appearance of the contact zones. The alien regions and volosts were attached to the Russian stockaded towns performed the administrative-fiscal functions. These regions were the formations not territorial but tribal, in what a tolerant attitude of the Russian administration to the local peculiarities of direction became apparent. The traditional requirement of the administration not to occupy the Yasak lands assumed a special importance for the Khakass-Minusinsk region, because the frontier location demanded from the authorities a special flexibility in following the Yasak policy.

In the second half of the 18th c. the change of the colonization of the Khakass-Minusinsk region happened. It was caused by the aspiration of the government to adjust the frontier service, to resume and activate the work of metallurgical plants (the private Ezagash plant was built). The free settling brought to the emergence of settlements of different types: the remote guards or outposts, villages, stanitsas, small settlements, khakass uluses. So, five frontier outposts (Tashtypsky, Abakansky, Shadatsky, Kebezhsky, Karatuzsky) and stanitsas and villages connected with them appeared. The village Minusinskaya was settled by the migrants of Yeniseisky uyezd (Vatin, 1913). The Russian villages appeared on the left riverside of the Yenisei at Khakass territories. In the 1780s two brothers Soldatov by surname from Kaptyrev village settled on the river Khaly and formed the village of the same name. In 1780-90s a peasant I.Y.Baikalov founded Beya village near the khakass jurts (Butanaev, 1990).

At the turn of the 18-19th c. the government developed the great programme of settling Transbaikalje. The great mass of migrants was moved from Russian provinces, but so long as the local administration was not ready to receive

them, thousands of migrants were left without money and homeless. When it came to the capital, the Senate ordered to put the migrants at different places and to allocate funds to their establishment. In 1803-1804 several hundreds of peasants, sent from the Northern Caucasus to Siberia, were settled in the Minusinsk commissariat where the large village Kavkazskoye was formed.

In the beginning of the 19th c. the migrant policy had been formed as a system. The subsequent settling was assigned by the policy of tsar's government directed at the agricultural, commercial and industrial development of the lands. Thus, in 1829 six government settlements were formed in the region where the exile serfs were settled. Legal migrations of peasants of the European part of Russia, migrations within Siberia, penalty colonization - all these were the sources of forming the population. Since 1830s, by the order of government, the special settlements for exiles had been founded. Sobinka was one of them. By the end of the 1st quarter of the 19th c. the formation of the Russian population in the Khakass-Minusinsk region was complete.

The discovery and development of goldfields in the 1830s was the important factor of the demographical growth. Here, it should be noted that in whole the gold industry of the Khakass-Minusinsk region in the 1830-1850s did not play a special role in the development of neither its own economics, nor in that of Yeniseiskaya province (RSHA, F. 1265, Inv. 2. File 35. List 210-211; SATO, F. 433. Inv. 1. File 74. List 30).

The intensification of the role of Moscow-Siberian highway also influences the settlement the region. In 1833 village Obetovannaya (the Promised) was founded by the migrants of Voronezh province. Later it was renamed as village Iudino, because the Sabbatarians and the Molokans lived there. P.D.Kiselev's reform of the state village in 1830-50s contributed to the emergence of 36 new settlements, in which

above 11 thousand peasants from Permskaya, Vyatskaya, Orlovskaya, Orenburgskaya provinces settled. The so-called "kiselev" settlements arose in the taiga part of the eastern part of the region: Grigorjevka, Knyshi, Kuzhebari, Shirishtyk, Verhny Kebezh. Different fortunes brought the Lett people to the banks of Yenisei - in 1857 the first group from Valmiersky uyezd of Latvia (that time - Liphljandskaya province) convicted for different crimes against high society. They were sent to 80 km to the southeast from Minusinsk to fertile valleys of the rivers Suetuka and Kebezha. The colony was growing gradually and in 1864 it numbered 975 inhabitants.

Because of the active migration within uyezds, the settling was mixed and heterogeneous that brought to the consequences of two kinds: on the one hand, the process of consolidation and self-identification of the Khakass people was bringing to a stop; on the other hand, the process of cultural exchange was going on more intensive and organic in the contact zones, the intra-ethnic distinctions were becoming obliterated, the processes of assimilation went faster on the other cultural basis. During the last quarter of the 18th c. the Khakass people lived together with Russians - in Yakusheva, Iltekova, Chernokomskaya, Byskarskaya, Beskishenskaya, Shushenskaya, Kaptyreva, Sinyavina, Sydina, Bellytskaya, Kurganchikova, Beyskaya, Antonova villages, in Anakan stockaded town, in Balakhtinskoye, Kuraginskoye settlements and others. By the 1850s the following villages were added to the mixed settlements: Saragashskaya, Kachulka, Kamenka, Teletskaya, Shunerskaya, Ochurskaya, Beloyarskaya villages, Karatuzskaya and Tashtypskaya stanitsas, Uzhurskoye, Sharypovskoye, Kurbatovskoye settlements and others (SATO, F. 170. Inv. 1. File 98, 83, 204; SAKK, F. 674. Inv. 1. File 237, 240; Inv. 2. File 274. List 1-10 vers). The former isolation of Khakass klans and seoks was broken. In 1854

466 the Sagai people lived among Russians in the following settlements: Beyskoye, Shushenskoye, Ochuri settlements, Kaptyreva, Shuneri, Tes, Usina, Ust-Sida, Krapivina, Oznachennaya, Batenei, Baikalova, Ust-Yerba, Suhaya Yerba, Borodina, Tolcheye, Bicha, Kolskaya villages, Sayan stockaded town and others - altogether in 29 places. In these centers of population the representatives of Kivinsky, Karachersky and other uluses were noticed. In Beysky, Askizsky, Gradominusinsky, Shushensky, Baraitsky, Novoselovsky, Abakansky comings the Beltyr, Kachinsk, Koybali surnames were reckoned simultaneously (MSMA, F. 17. Inv. 1. File 73. List 15-60, 61-69, 76-87, 11-131, 132-171).

Thus, the frontier location up to the 1760s, a "mixed" character of settling the Khakass-Munusinsk region brought to a cohabitation of autochtonic and newly come population in the contact zones. Here the cultural exchange was going faster, a peculiar syncretism of Khakass traditional beliefs and the orthodoxy was forming. The townships organized the contact zones and brought to an interethnic cooperation. The stages of formation the lower structure of the Russian Orthodox Church concur with the processes of settlement the Khakass-Minusinsk region. In the first quarter of the 18th c. the parishes were formed in the Guard and Abakan stockaded towns - the main home bases of settling the South of the Yenisei region by Russians. In the second quarter of the 18th c. three parishes appeared: the village one - Novoselovsky, two factory ones - Irbinsky and Lukazsky. By the end of the 18th c. the last two were liquidated. During the second part of the 18th c. twelve parishes arose: one of them - Ezagashsky - under the plant (was shut down in 1799) and two-of the newly-baptized Khakass people (Askizsky and Uzhursky parishes). In the first quarter of the 19th c. - 4 more parishes arose. In all the parishes the newly-baptized Christians were reckoned most of all in the Uzhursky (91 %), Askizsky

(73,3 %), Baraitsky (55 %), Minusinsky (60 %), Abakansky parishes. The Karaulno-Ostrozhsky (1,8 %), Kuraginsky (0,4 %), Kurbatovsky (3,7 %) parishes were populated chiefly by Russians with small number of Yasak people (SAKK. F. 592. Inv. 1. File 40; File 131 (1,2); File 26). The Russian population grouped mainly on the right riverside of the Yenisei, the native population - on the left one and on the Abakan river.

By 1861 in 24 of 40 lower units of the church-territorial organization the baptized

Khakass people lived. The presence of newly-baptized Christians was not noticed in the Shelabolinsky, Motorsky, Verhnekuzhebarsky, Sobinsky parishes, the so-called "kiselev" and "government" settlements, for which the absence of any other ethnic component in culture and way of life was typical. The old-residents, migrated in the 18th up to the middle of the 19th c., on the contrary, had the high level of adaptation to the natural and ethnic peculiarities of the region.

References

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V.Y. Butanaev, The ethnic culture of the Khakass people (Abakan, 1998).

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S.L. Chudnovsky, The Yenisei province to the three-centenary of Siberia, The statistic-publicistic sketches (Tomsk, 1885).

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