The History of the Yenisey Province Foundation

In far 1822 on the decree of the Emperor Alexander I the Yenisey Province was founded. It includes almost the whole psent days territory of the Krasnoyarsk region and Khakassia, and its centre was Krasnoyarsk. Already later, in 1914 Tyva under the name of the Uryankhayskiy region became a part of the Province as well.

All this happened thanks to one of the outstanding state officials of Russia, the Siberian general-governor and the Tsar’s secret councillor Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranskiy. He conducted an audit of Siberian lands and found out that due to the distance from the capital bribery, extortion, corruption of authorities and power holders flourished here. As it is said, it’s too high to God and too far to the Tsar. That is why it was decided to hold a large administrative reform, which divided Siberia into the Western and Eastern Governorates. The mighty law system, which minded the fact that there were a lot of foreigners and exiles on this land, was developed in the framework of the reform.

The foundation of the Yenisey Province lasted for almost a year: from the decree dated January, 26, 1822 to the opening of the province on December, 12 in 1822. During this period the province’s borders were defined, territorial questions with neighbour provinces were solved, government and management bodies were formed.  The researchers find the reform held by Speranskiy to be very important for the formation of the Russian state unity.

Why are we telling this? Because the 200^th anniversary of the Yenisey Province foundation will be celebrated all around the Krasnoyarsk region both in 2021 and 2022. We, for our part, are going to tell you regularly not boring stories about the Province during these two years. So, read us!:)

The Land of Freedom

It’s interesting that the abolition of serfdom in 1861 affected just the minor par of Siberian population. The land ownership, despite numerous government’s attempts of imposing it, didn’t gain a foothold here. There were just 36 land owners and 3700 serfs all around Siberia. In the Yenisey Province the number of serfs equaled 1069 people. These were mainly peasants and workers, assigned to public plants. According to the decree by March, 8, 1861, they were obliged to pay a three-years quitrent with the following liberation.

A lot of peasants, who’d come from Russia to pay quitrent or were “contracted” by their lords, worked on the gold mines.  Very often such serfs “disappeared” for their land owners thanks to smart volost’ scriveners and large bribes. They were just included into the list of the exiles, were named some Ivans without family names, and their land owner was informed that his serf named so or so, died by the will of God. For example, one land owner “lost” over a half of his 80 serfs, recruited for working at the gold mines :)

On the photo: the peasants of the Yenisey Province.
Based on the materials by krasplace.ru and krskstate.ru