In this lecture, I will discuss why Russia will split along the Ural Mountains. On 24 January 1736, Moscow’s henchman, Alexei Tevkelev, arrived in the village of Seyantus, seized several local residents, and tortured them into confessions. He then organised a massacre.
The Russian governor wrote: “In this village, dragoons shot or bayoneted nearly 1,000 people, along with their wives and children. In addition, 105 people were driven into a barn and burned alive… And so, the entire village of Seyantus and its inhabitants, along with their wives and children, from the smallest to the oldest, were destroyed in a single night by fire and sword.” According to an eyewitness to those events, P.I. Rychkov: “The Bashkirs, residents of the aforementioned village of Seyantus, having learned that their evil intentions had clearly been realised, immediately decided to act.” “They began to make a murderous attack on their people in the upper quarters, and several people were wounded with knives, while others grabbed guns and intended to flee into the forest to report to their thieves’ gathering that was at Aya; but then an alarm immediately arose among the entire command, and they were all besieged by the command, and after a brief resistance from them with arrows, they were captured and about a thousand people with their wives and children in that village were shot and bayoneted by dragoons, and stabbed with spears by loyal Bashkirs and Meshcheryaks; in addition, one hundred and five people were gathered in one barn and burned there by fire.”
Tevkelev wrote: “Seeing the obvious indignation of the villagers… to the fear of other rebellious thieves and to ensure that no greater harm would result from them, if they were further detained, their wives and children, except for those who had fled into the forests to escape the command, were slaughtered, and their village was ordered to be burned to the ground.” A little earlier, he had proposed famine against the Bashkirs: “And to continue to allow the Bashkirs to buy bread from Russian dwellings, as ordered, is recognised as unhelpful and unsafe, for now it seems hunger is driving them into greater submission, and thus further weakening them.” Although some of them will steal cattle from hunger, they will not thereby cause harm to the state, and when they have bought bread in abundance, and, as a free and unbridled people, have never seen fear over themselves, it is dangerous that they will again, in their flippant frivolity, not turn to unrest. Although it will be possible to pacify them at that time, it will only be more difficult to deal with them than when they were hungry and powerless.” The head of the Orenburg expedition, V.N. Tatishchev, believed that the Bashkirs were unlikely to be able to revolt again.
He reported to the government on the situation in the region: “The two most dangerous roads, the Kazan and Nogai roads, are so destroyed that barely half remains, and the others, the Osinskaya and Siberian roads, although not as many have disappeared, everyone’s horses and cattle have disappeared, villages have been burned, and without food, many have died of hunger…”
Олександр ПАЛІЙ
