military autonomy, freedom from direct and from many indirect taxes, the right to
distill and sell alcohol, grants of land farmed collectively, freedom from enserfment,
the rights to distinctive dress, religion, or other cultural markers. Cossacks became
agents of the subjugation of the steppe and Siberian forest, but they also became
subjects of the state and constantly faced challenges to their prized independence.
Each group negotiated these challenges differently as, between the sixteenth and
eighteenth centuries, sedentary political authority began to tilt the balance of the
middle ground with superior gunpowder armies, bureaucratic record keeping, and
enhanced means of communication. By the end of the eighteenth century, much of
the world that supported Cossack communities had disappeared and traditional
Cossackdom had been transformed—their bands were integrated into Russian or
Polish armies and elites or destroyed altogether.
Perhaps thefirst“middle ground”forged in the lands of the future Russian
empire was the Novgorodian hinterland leading towards Siberia (Map 3). Novgor-
odian lands stretched from the primarily East Slavic north (the Northern Dvina
basin, called in contemporary sources Pomor’e) to the Perm’and Viatka lands
(settled by Turkic and Finno-Ugric speakers). As early as the eleventh century, East
Slavic hunters and trappers penetrated these lands in search of furs, approaching
from different directions: up the Sukhona and Vychegda Rivers; up the Kama and
Viatka Rivers; along the Ob and Irtysh; paralleling the White Sea. As noted,
Muscovy ventured into Perm and Viatka in the 1380s and hadfirmly established
control by a century later, about the time that it conquered Novgorod and won its
hinterland in the process. Still, conquest and Christianization did not displace local
animism, nature cults, and shamanism.
With the conquest of Kazan in 1552, Moscow was in a position to move more
aggressively beyond the Perm lands into the Urals and Siberia. With the Kazan
conquest, Nogai and Bashkir Hordes in the lower Volga and Urals declared loyalty
to Russia, as did Khan Ediger of Siberia in 1555. Its Muslim Tatar elites ruled over
native tribes including Ostiaks (Khanty) and Voguly (Mansi). In 1558 Russia
awarded Grigorii Stroganov (from a prosperous Novgorod merchant family) mon-
opolies to exploit fur, salt, and mineral resources in Perm lands in the upper Kama
and beyond, creating yet another intermediary in the middle ground. With their
own paramilitary forces, including Cossacks from the Volga and Urals who signed
on to profit from the fur trade, the Stroganovs constructed forts, subdued villages,
and asserted control. With tacit Muscovite approval in 1582 a Stroganov exped-
ition, led by the Cossack Ermak, defeated the forces of Siberian Khan Kuchum
(who had ousted Ediger and rejected subordination to Russia). Official Muscovite
troops quickly followed, deposed Kuchum, and proceeded—aided by Cossacks
who rushed to get in on the profits—to construct fortresses in western Siberia:
Tiumen and Tobolsk in 1586 and 1587. Challenged by Kirghiz and other nomads
on the southern frontier, Russians approached through the Arctic, founding forts in
1593 Berezov on the Northern Sosva, Obdorsk at the mouth of the Ob in 1595,
and Turukhansk in 1607 on the lower Yenesei. Grain shipments, trappers, and
Muscovite detachments traversed these tedious routes until the western Siberian
border was stabilized against nomads by the 1660s. After that, more direct routes
60 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801