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On 4 April 1558 the Tsar granted a petition from Grigorii Stroganov, whose family had already grown rich through exploiting the salt pans of Solvychegodsk in north-eastern Russia and trading with the native peoples of the Great Perm region. Grigorii had established himself there only a few years before, but now he was given the rights to exploit the deserted region along the river Kama some 50 miles and more beyond Perm. Stroganov’s vision was as bright as that of any Western merchant venturer in the first decades of the new colonizing age, eminently practical and surprisingly entrepreneurial. He wanted to fell the region’s dark forests, and exploit its fish-teeming lakes and streams. He wanted to prospect for salt and other minerals, to encourage trade, and to make large tracts of the territory agricultural by encouraging the settlement of homesteaders not already registered for tax elsewhere. The scheme appealed to the Tsar.

The population of the region was sparse, consisting of small communities of tribal hunters — Voguls and Ostiaks — though Tatars were beginning to penetrate the area from the south. Understanding that predators and traders tend to gather wherever wealth is generated, the Tsar authorized the Stroganovs to establish a fort at some appropriate point along the river, to equip it with cannon, and to man it with arquebusiers. In 1563 the concession was extended along both banks of the Kama and up its tributary, the Chusovaia. Furthermore, the regional government of Perm was warned not to interfere with any homesteaders in the region and to leave its defence to the Stroganovs. These grants of imperial property to a private individual, though rare in Russian law, were not unlike the charters granted by the kings of England or France to Western merchant venturers in that age. ¹⁵

From this one seed grew a great regional enterprise, the basis of the Stroganov family fortune, and the conquest of Siberia. Despite its immense extent, Siberia was very sparsely populated and the material culture of its natives was mostly stuck in the Stone Age. Only one of its peoples posed any serious opposition to Russian colonization — a group of Tatars descended from a branch of Baty Khan’s White Horde. However, their khan, Kuchum, offered spirited resistance until the Stroganovs’ private army of hired Cossacks finally overwhelmed him.

In 1579 a messenger was to be ushered into Ivan’s presence. He bore a trophy for the Tsar - a splendid fur robe. It had belonged to Kuchum Khan. Stroganov’s man Yermak had fought his way through to the Khan’s camp on the river Irtysh with 500 men, and had routed Kuchum’s army. ¹⁶Although Kuchum returned to get his revenge by killing Yermak and many of his band, he was eventually forced to flee, and from then on there was little to impede Russia from extending all the way to the Pacific — except vast distances, difficult terrain, and weather conditions which could be vicious. The immense economic and strategic implications of the Stroganov grant, however, could hardly have been foreseen by Russia’s government of the time. But nor did the kings of England and of France realize that the little overseas colonies they founded in that age would one day be recognized as the beginnings of great empires.

Flushed with his victories in the south, Tsar Ivan had immediately turned his attention westward to Livonia. Russia had long been probing westward, of course, but the scale and force of the 1558 campaign was new — as was its purpose: to secure Russia a base on the Baltic and direct access to the West. This was despite the fact that a Western country had just found a new route to Russia. It was while trying to find a north-east passage to China that an English expedition led by Richard Chancellor had landed on the White Sea coast at the mouth of the Northern Dvina river. As a result, direct diplomatic and commercial relations were established between England and Russia. Trade soon developed sufficiently to merit the establishment of a trading house for the English at Kholmogorii, on the way to Moscow, and in 1584 the port town of Archangel was founded to service the trade in the summer months when the ice receded sufficiently to allow ships to make the perilous voyage round North Cape. The significance of the link had early been noted by the Polish government, which became alarmed by the possibility that Russia might be able to obtain up-to-date military equipment from England and tried unsuccessfully to stop it. The link was also significant in providing the English with first-hand reports of Muscovy, and not least in giving Moscow up-to-date intelligence about England and developments in western Europe ¹⁷ — matters in which Ivan took a keen personal interest. All this strengthened his resolve to gain access to a more convenient sea route to the West from a warmer Baltic port.