Blood, tears and laurels. Historical miniatures. Crown Prince of Madagascar There is another version, more likely

Where is Belarus, and where are the filibuster seas? Meanwhile...

An adventurer and a pirate, some consider him a Russian pirate, others a Hungarian, others a Pole, some consider him an Austrian count, the natives of Madagascar believe that he is a descendant of local kings, Belarusians call him the Corsair of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and their countryman. His genealogy is vague: in some sources he is mentioned as a Hungarian, in others it is specified that his ancestor, a gentry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, simply emigrated to Hungary.

The personality is mysterious and overgrown with legends, but the truth is of course simpler.

August Benevsky, grandson of a Polish-Jewish emigrant who converted to Christianity and became related to the Hungarian gentry. Thus, Polish, Jewish, possibly Belarusian and Hungarian blood flowed in his veins. Moritz August Benevsky was born in 1741 in Slovakia, graduated from a military academy, and in his youth he entered the Austrian army. When Poland began to be in danger, Benevsky hurried to his homeland, received the title of count and the rank of colonel in Poland.

During the reign of Empress Catherine II, Poland finally lost its independence. The Poles repeatedly rebelled for independence. There were also many Jews among the rebels. The uprising, called the Bar Confederation, was a protest of the nobility of the Commonwealth against their king Stanislav August Poniatowski, the confederates declared the king deposed, and Catherine II, in response, sent troops to the lands of her western neighbor.

In one of the battles, the General of the Bar Confederation, which fought against Tsarist Russia, was already captured by the Russians. Maurycy-August Benevsky. He became a general for a reason, although he was from a poor Polish-Hungarian gentry. There was a time when every young gentry could become a hero. During the war, the desire of the Poles to become independent became more and more evident.

“German, Muscovites will not stand it when we draw broadswords. That slogan will raise all of us and our Fatherland.” I. Dombrovsky.

Benevsky was an ardent Polish patriot. According to the laws of that time, the captured general was returned edged weapons and awards and was allowed to return to his native estate. Benevsky was seriously wounded, and they did not take from him either a subscription or an honest word about non-participation in the war in the future. He even managed to remarry a beautiful woman in one of the Poltava estates while recovering from his wound (quite a lot of space is devoted to this in the comics dedicated to Benevsky published in Poland). Perhaps one of his descendants, the composer from Stavropol Vasily Benevsky, became known as the author of the music of the requiem song with the words "We did not bow the glorious St. Andrew's flag before the enemy, we ourselves blew up the Korean, we sunk the Varyag."

Rising to his feet, Maurice again embarked on the path of struggle with Russia.

In one of the battles, the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks “tangled the nose” of his horse and handed over the general to the Russians. For secondary disobedience, the general was exiled to Kazan. Sitting in a provincial town, when the whole world was thundering with events, Benevsky was clearly not to his liking. From the captured Swedes and Austrians, Maurycy created a group of fugitives. But - again a failure. Benevsky again tries to escape. For a three-time escape, he was awarded a long journey to Kamchatka.

His appearance here was like "a ray of light in a dark kingdom." The exiles, including nobles, officers, guards, who were forced to follow the exiles, who, it would seem, had nowhere to run from this “end of the earth” - everyone was happy with the extraordinary newcomer. And he was good to everyone - he played chess like a grandmaster, talked about cities and countries, spoke six languages, turned out to be an excellent teacher of all sciences ...

Now it is clear that he was also a great adventurer. So, judging by his memoirs, he also climbed Klyuchevskaya Sopka, fell into the crater, from where they pulled him out with hooks (the poor fellow did not even know what the volcano crater looked like), he supposedly traveled all over the Aleutian Islands (which, in fact, he had no there were no forces, no opportunities). However, the influence of Benevsky in Kamchatka was great, it especially increased during the smallpox epidemic that swept Kamchatka in 1768-1769. Bolsheretsky prison suffered less due to preventive measures taken under the leadership of Maurycy Benevsky.

Lieutenant Pyotr Khrushchev was close to Beniovsky, "with whom they drew up a plan for their salvation." Khrushchev sheltered Beniovsky, who arrived in 1770, in his apartment. Khrushchev himself spent nine years in exile. His guilt is indicated in the Code of Laws, 1762: “October 24. Manifesto. The Life Guards of the Izmailovsky regiment, Lieutenant Pyotr Khrushchev, was convicted and accused of vomiting insults to majesty ... "

The situation of the settlers became critical: “In the winter of 1768 - 1769, smallpox raged in Kamchatka, kidnapping 5767 foreigners and 315 people of Russian visiting people. Following this disaster, a widespread lack of fish was discovered, which replaces the local inhabitants with bread. “Meanwhile, the winter of 1769 and 1770 came, and with it the famine. It is difficult to describe all the disasters endured by the Kamchadals... Leather bags, riding dogs, carrion and, finally, the corpses of their relatives who died of starvation were used for food.

On April 27, 1771, in Kamchatka, in the Bolsheretsky prison, an uprising took place under the leadership of Benevsky. The exiles, united with the industrialists, killed the Kamchatka commander Captain Nilov, occupied the office, and disarmed the inhabitants. After that, the question of escape really became, which was possible only by sea. There was a need for a reliable and experienced team and, above all, sailors. At that time there were five of them in Bolsheretsk: the commander of the galliot "St. Peter" navigator Churin and navigator's students Bocharov, Izmailov, Zyablikov, Sof'in.

In order to give the rebellion the character of a political protest, Ippolit Stepanov and Beniovsky "composed an announcement to the Senate in which, having briefly mentioned that the legitimate sovereign Pavel Petrovich was wrongly deprived of the throne, they put out in black all the most important orders of the Empress" . Beniovsky also wrote his Manifestum, Anno 1771, April, in Latin. All participants in the uprising, except for Sof'in, and the Cossacks, who later became sailors, were sworn in to Tsarevich Pavel.

At that time, there were ninety exiles and seventy soldiers in the Bolsheretsky prison. The exiles enjoyed relative freedom: it was impossible to escape from Kamchatka. More precisely, it was impossible to run by land - but the sea remained. Benevsky and several other exiles - Baturin, Panov and Stepanov - managed to persuade their comrades to this adventure.

The rebels seized warehouses where furs, weapons and treasury were stored. They paid for the goods with Benevsky's receipts, who called himself in them "the Most Serene Republic of the Polish resident and Her Imperial Majesty the Roman chamberlain, military adviser and regementary." Having broken a small galliot "Saint Peter" out of the coastal ice, the fugitives went out to sea and went south along the Kuriles. The ship, loaded with valuable furs, moved south with the annual Kamchatka collection. There was no map and the rebels used descriptions from Lord Anson's book,

He himself sought to get to Europe, but the intentions of seventy other travelers were not so certain. Although Benevsky showed his companions a green envelope, assuring that it contained a letter from Tsarevich Paul to the Austrian emperor asking for the hand of his daughter, disagreements soon began on the galliot. A conspiracy ripened on the ship - about fifteen people who at one time joined Benevsky "free" agreed to cut off the anchor rope as soon as the exiles went ashore, and take the captured ship away. Upon learning of this, Benevsky landed the three main conspirators on a desert island, leaving them a supply of rye flour. A few months later they were removed from the island by a fishing vessel.
Nearly sinking during a severe storm, on May 28, "St. Peter" reached the island of Shikoku. Stocking up on provisions and water, he moved along the Japanese coast, unable to land on the shore - the Japanese pursued a policy of strict isolation. It was then that Benevsky sent several letters ashore, where he warned the Japanese against possible Russian expansion. These letters, in which there was not a word of truth, entered the history of Japan as "Von Bengoro's warnings."

On August 16, the galliot anchored in a bay off Taiwan. When Panov and several miners went ashore to fetch water the next day, they were attacked, killing Panov and two other people. Benevsky fired a cannon at the village and sank the boats passing by.
After burying the dead, the rebels went on and soon again fell into a storm. Benevsky lost his bearings, and only a Chinese junk he met showed him the right path. September 12, 1771 "Saint Peter" entered the bay of Macau.
Benevsky quickly sold the already unnecessary ship. The team grumbled, but he gave the dissatisfied their share and let them go to all four sides. All the rest were able to pay the way to Europe with the proceeds. In January 1772, the fugitives on Chinese junks reached Canton, where chartered French ships were already waiting. On March 16, 1772, they arrived at Ile-de-France, where the local governor told Benevsky about Madagascar. “With his stories about some of the features of this huge and beautiful island,” Benevsky later wrote, “he aroused in me a great desire to get to know him better.”
On the way, several more people died of illness, including Benevsky's old comrade, Ioasaf Baturin. On July 7, the fugitives reached France, being the first Russians to visit Macau, cross the equator and swim across the Indian Ocean. After negotiations with the French government, Benevsky was given the task of conquering Madagascar.

On March 23, 1773, the squadron with settlers and troops headed by Benevsky set off for Madagascar, where it arrived in early February 1774.

After a long search, he chose the territory to the north as a stronghold, at the mouth of the Antanambalana River on the shore of Antungila Bay. One part of the island was ruled by betsileo (king) Andriamanalimbetan (this luxurious name meant “Lord of 10,000 warriors and large lands”), the other - great king Andrianampuimerna. The new "wazaha" (in Malagash " a white man”), having learned the interests of various tribes, took them into account in his activities and everything ended successfully.

Overcoming the hostility of the Malagasy and the opposition of the colonial authorities from Ile-de-France, who saw the Pole as a dangerous competitor. Incredibly, a Kamchadal colony appears off the coast of Africa, in the Indian Ocean.

Despite the difficulties, success in Madagascar still accompanied Benevsky. As you know, he founded his village of Louisberg at the mouth of the Antanambalana River, in the Antongil Bay. He treated the little ones humanely. He considered the natives equal to himself and in every possible way proved to them his good relationship. This explains the fact that he quickly found a common language with them. “The views of Benevsky were ahead of his era, and the treatment of the Malagasy was fairer and better than the treatment of other Europeans arriving on this island,” wrote a connoisseur of history. Madagascar Englishman W. Ellis in his work "Three Journeys to Madagascar", published in 1859.
There were also armed skirmishes. Governors. on Hilde-France, the people of Madagascar were incited against Benevsky. In addition, the powerful Sakalava tribe living in the western part of the island saw Benevsky as an adversary who could interfere with their plans of conquest against other tribes. But Benevsky did not lack loyal allies, who sought protection from the Sakalav raids from him. Within two years, he conducted two defensive campaigns that ended in victory. The first took place in the region of the Valley of Health, on which the village of Ambinanitelo is now located, and repulsed the attack of the Safirobai, incited by the governors from Ile-de-France and the Sakalavs. The second campaign was carried on further, in the northwest, and was decisive in the formidable campaign of the Sakalavs against Benevsky. The winner did not pursue the vanquished, but sought, above all, to establish friendship and trade relations.
An outstanding date in the life of Benevsky was the day of October 10, 1776, when the Malagasy from the eastern and northern parts of the island recognized him as their great king - ampansakabe, and the western region of Madagascar recognized him as a "great ruler".
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The proclamation of Benevsky as the great king of Madagascar dealt a significant blow to French colonial policy.

Soon he was recalled to France, where he could not get a new expedition and moved to England. He lived there for eight years, during which time he wrote his fictional memoirs, which became a real bestseller after their publication in 1791.

Beniovsky became famous in Europe, Madame Genlis, a French writer, popular in Russia, described him as a man of small stature with a handsome face and good manners, very resourceful. Agile, energetic and courageous, he was one of those talented adventurers, of which there were many in Europe of the 18th century.
France is seething. The Great French Revolution is coming. Benevsky joins with his brothers in the Polish Confederation in a union, with Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Kazimierz, Pulaski, Jan Dombrowski. The French, however, tried to send the freedom-loving Poles away to their American colonies. Here formidable Polish generals showed their might in the struggle for the liberation of the United States from England.

Maurycy-August Benevsky is still considered one of the national heroes of the United States.

In October 1784, in Baltimore, he finds investors for his new Madagascar project. He wants to create there an independent democratic republic of Madagascar, modeled on American democracy.

It was an interesting time, a turning point in history. South Africa. The power of the Dutch East India Company was drastically weakened. The influence of recently so powerful Holland also tended to decline. At this time there was a war for the southern tip of Africa. In 1780, England declared war on Holland and sent a fleet with 3,000 sailors and soldiers to capture Kapstadt, but the French were ahead of the British and landed two months earlier. The French garrison stood on the Cape from 1781 to 1783. By that time, Kapstadt was already a large and diverse port. Although its permanent population consisted of only a few thousand people, ships of almost all flags entered there. On this piece of African land, inhabited by the Dutch Boers for 130 years of domination, people from all over the world met. Barras, the future head of the Directory and patron of the young Napoleon, served in the French garrison there. On Cape, he was a simple soldier. Benevsky and his comrades could see there the future duchess, Talleyrand's wife. With her, then seventeen-year-old Catherine Grand, who had just arrived from India, Barras met in Kapstadt. Returning with her to France, he gave her to Talleyrand, as the Creole Josephine Beauharnais, the future emperor of the French. There were also descendants of Russians, not only Kamchatka Benevsky, for example, such Russified Dutch as Jan Swellengrebel, father of Hendrik Swellengrebel, the Cape governor in 1737-1749, or runaway sailors, and indeed God knows how people got here. After all, after some 20 years, Golovnin met Seziomov’s son, who had already settled on the Cape, Ivan Stepanov, nicknamed Ganz-Rus, a native of not even the capital cities, but from Nizhny Novgorod.

For almost ten years Benevsky has been trying to find new "sponsors" for his adventures, writing exciting books about adventures in the distant waters of the Indian Ocean, which become bestsellers in English, French and German, but all to no avail. Then, having waved his hand at the Old World, he "naturalizes" on the shores of the New World, on the shores of a young, dynamic, adventurous and greedy America. The proclamation of US independence finds him in Baltimore, where he is in the service of the wealthy commercial house Besson & Son as a financial administrator, and simply is engaged in extorting money from unscrupulous debtors.
In America, he made acquaintances with big businessmen. Moreover, he became a personal friend of B. Franklin. He convinced them all of the prospect of conquering Madagascar, and now General Benevsky, until recently the French governor of the island of Madagascar, is sailing to win it back from the French. After a ten-year absence of the amnasakeb, Benevsky reappears on the island, now at the head of an American expedition in a well-armed and equipped privateer, the brig Captain Pratt. In January 1785, "Captain Pratt" arrives in Madagascar and fires at the French fort from her powerful cannons. Landing forces land on the shore, but they fail to capture the fortifications. At the beginning of 1786, desperate to seize Madagascar impudently, Benevsky changes tactics and begins his frankly pirate epic. For those who may find it strange that the hero of our story slipped into sea robbery, I will say that privateering, sea robbery on ocean "highways", at that time was quite a "noble" craft, which was "protected" by both the British royal government, and the French government of Louis XVI, and later the government of revolutionary France. The freedom-loving United States did not remain aloof from this extremely profitable "business". Having made a deal with the American “partnership on the basis of shares”, Benevsky, under the Stars and Stripes flag, robs French and Dutch ships plying between India and the Dutch East Indies, Indochina and the Philippines. The French are sending a whole squadron to capture the newly minted corsair, but Benevsky is not so easy to fall into their hands. gold and diamonds for a truly fantastic amount - several billion francs ...
Until now, along with the legends about the treasures of Morgan and other pirates, there are legends about the countless treasures of Benevsky, hidden by him on Oak Island. However, most likely, these are only legends.

There is another version, more likely:

In June 1785, on the merchant ship Interpid, Benevsky arrived in Madagascar with a small detachment. Benevsky returned to Madagascar wounded and gray-haired. The colony was no longer the same - blackened. Russia declared an amnesty for the fugitives, and most of them returned. And those who felt guilty for themselves started families, married Malgasks, gave birth to black children and forgot what European clothes and shoes are ...

From the walls of Louisbourg, he was greeted with a gun salute - and the captain of the Interpid, not understanding what was happening, sets off from the island, leaving Benevsky and his comrades to their fate. After two months of starvation and disease, which decimated an already small detachment, Benevsky begins to gather the malgash around him.

Restoring friendly relations with the Malagasy after almost a decade of absence, Benevsky began to painstakingly create the foundations of his state. First of all, he built a fortified village above the sea near Angonza and the Gulf of Antongil. He sent an official message to the rulers of Île-de-France about his arrival, with the assurance that he was ready to cooperate with the French colony and gave it the right of priority to supply products to the island. The French did not want such a balance of power. They sent an armed detachment against Benevsky under the command of Captain Larscher. His trip was successful. If a state under the rule of Benevsky was not formed in Madagascar, then an unforeseen event is entirely to blame for this.

The French colonizers start a war against the first African democratic state in the world. The clashes were with varying success, but in the spring of 1786 Benevsky was forced to retreat to Louisbourg with the remnants of his army - two whites and thirty natives. On May 23, the French attacked the Republican fort. There was only one shot in this war. He was slain by the governor of the fort - an adventurer, but a great man Maurycy-August Benevsky.

He was then forty-five years old; in Madagascar, streets and squares named after him are still preserved; in today's independent Malagasy Republic, Beniovsky is even written in a short encyclopedia. And always with respect. They consider his activities a part of their history, in Poland and Hungary Beniovsky is considered their fellow countryman.

Despite the frenzied slanderous campaign waged against him for a century and a half by chauvinist circles in France, the good name and glory of Benevsky won. His diaries were of great service. At the end of the eighteenth century they were translated into many European languages and were very popular. Many poets, writers, playwrights of all countries took themes for their works from the life of Benevsky.

The poem "Benevsky" (1840-1846) by the great Polish romantic Juliusz Slowacki (1809-1849) is a recognized masterpiece of the Polish poetic classics, the pinnacle of artistic achievement of romanticism and by far the best and most famous of Slovak's poems.

In 1939, the drama of Vladislav Smolsky "The Song of Beniovsky" was staged at the Krakow Theater named after Julian Slovatsky. The story of Vatslav Seroshevsky "Beniovsky" was repeatedly published. In 1967, an interesting collection of documents about Beniovsky was published in Warsaw.
The opera "Exiles from Kamchatka" was written in France. Music by F. Boildieu, libretto by A. Duval. Rebellion at the end of the world. The Paris Comic Opera premiered on June 8, 1800, in Liege in 1802, in Brunswick and Brussels in 1803, and in 1824 the Comic Opera resumed production. This opera attracted such attention that parodies of it were immediately staged in the Parisian Theater of Vaudeville and the Theater of the Troubadours, in 1800.
Then, already in our century, books by Jean d'Esme and Prosper Cultru were published in Paris under the same title: "The Emperor of Madagascar." But in the large encyclopedia "Grand Larousse" it says only: "I kidnapped the daughter of the governor and fled to China, where he left the seduced girl, and arrived in Paris. He was assigned to Madagascar". In Germany in the XVIII-XX centuries, several novels and dramatic plays appeared, starting with Kotzebue's drama "Count Beniovsky or a conspiracy in Kamchatka". Beniovsky's Travels and Memoirs never French, English and other Western publications, of course, found their way to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and even the provinces, but it is quite possible that they did not make such a favorable impression.Many descriptions of Russia, the long journey to Kamchatka, life in exile, which were read in the West, looked like fiction to the Russians - starting with the "governor" Nilov and his daughter, who, according to Beniovsky, was madly in love with him and even helped in the conspiracy is against his father.
Every Russian reader understood that there were a lot of lies, or rather fantasy - Nilov's daughter, as they knew, was not in Kamchatka. Such and much more noticeable embellishments of one's person and insulting remarks about the frivolity of women and the stupidity of officers alarmed readers and affected, in general, their attitude to Travels and Memoirs and to Beniovsky's personality itself. In addition, statements discrediting the Russian nobles (and they were the readers of Beniovsky's memoirs) belittled the former admiration for his mind, talent and courage. And yet in Russia, various materials about Beniovsky were published more than once.

After 1917, Seroshevsky's story was translated in our country, and children's writer N. G. Smirnov wrote the historical novel "The State of the Sun" - it was published in 1928.
Concluding his novel, Smirnov wrote: “Everyone who reads Bespoisk’s notes must admit that he was an amazing person in terms of his ability to command people, convince them, inspire them to exploits. He was wrong most of his life, and despite this, people still followed him. In his notes written for sale, Bespoisk did not want to accurately indicate his true goals, plans and hopes.
Beniovsky attracts interest in our country even now. Smirnov's novel was republished in 1972. In 1969, an article by V. A. Balyazin "The Kamchatka Exile - the King of Madagascar" appeared in the journal "Questions of History". A well-known historian of navigation and navigation, Admiral of the Fleet Soviet Union I. S. Isakov collected a large bibliography of works on Beniovsky and, shortly before his death, gave it to the writer and naval historian Yu. V. Davydov.
If you ask yourself the question - who, after all, was seen in Beniovsky by his many admirers and critics in many countries of the world, then the answer turns out to be, it would seem, quite simple. This man was primarily seen as an adventurer. And in the Soviet "History of the Discovery and Exploration of Africa" just published in 1973, he is called: "the famous Polish-Hungarian adventurer." But here, we must remember that the word "adventurer" in different languages has a very different meaning. In English and French, it is devoid of that pejorative, contemptuous connotation that in Russian. In our country, if a share of romance is introduced into this word, then this is the vicious romance of a resourceful person, even gifted, but unprincipled, violating the moral norms of behavior accepted by society. "Adventure" in Ozhegov's dictionary is "a matter of dubious honesty, undertaken in the hope of an accidental success."
Beniovsky surpassed many of the adventurers in talent, enlightenment and sensitivity to social injustice. It contains a bizarre mixture of desperate adventurism with lofty intentions to help the enslaved, possible only in those centuries.
From Benevsky and his associates - Russians, Poles, French, Americans and Malagasy, who became one people, a tribe was preserved betsimizarakov- (If we trace the name in Hebrew: it is possible from, from Benevsky, and possibly Betsi - from bnei Zion, Mizrak - Mizrahi, can be translated as the Eastern Sons of Zion, or Sons (descendants, or followers, such as bnei Akiva, bnei Noah) Benevsky.The Malgashs do not know history in the European sense of the word, they perceive events within the framework of their own family or clan, and then in the form of a religious cult of ancestors.
His Malagasy friends spread a rumor that Benevsky was a descendant of the royal family of Ramini, influential in Madagascar. As if he was the grandson of the last king, whose daughter was once kidnapped and brought to Ile-de-France and gave birth to a son there. This son was allegedly Benevsky. Friendly tribes quickly picked up this news (of course, the hero himself did not really refute these rumors), and thus the ancestor cult was used to strengthen the friendship of the little ones with Benevsky.

he orders to set fire to the house of the Cossack Chernykh, the only one in all of Bolsheretsk who took up arms against the rebels, and then Panov defends the merchant Kazaritsov - he was in the Chernykh house and was almost killed by embittered industrialists and exiles.

Vasily Panov was one of those with whom Stepanov spoke "... about how to free the inhabitants of Kamchatka from the robbery and cruelty of the local authorities."

But fate decreed that he himself was killed as a pirate and buried in a foreign land.

MAXIM CHURIN

Even if there hadn't been that famous voyage on the "Petra" from Bolsheretsk to Macau, the name of the navigator Maxim Churin would have remained in history.

He appeared in Okhotek in 1761 - he was sent by the Admiralty Board to the disposal of the Siberian order - and took command of the St. Catherine galliot, which was supposed to carry out passenger and cargo flights along the Okhotsk - Bolyperetsk route.

In August 1768, the St. Catherine, on board of which was the head of a secret government expedition, Captain Pyotr Kuzmich Krenitsyn, was already in the Isanotsky Strait off the coast of Alaska. Nearby, the St. Paul hukor was swaying on the waves, on board of which was Lieutenant M. Levashev.

On August 11, 1768, these ships parted. The crew of the "Ekaterina" wintered on the island of Unimak, and the "Saint Pavel" went to Unalaska. The wintering of "Ekaterina" was difficult - a few years earlier on the Fox Islands - Umnak, Unimak, Unalash-ka - the rebellious Aleuts killed Russian hunters from four fishing boats, and therefore Krenitsyn developed the most tense relations with the indigenous population of Unimak. There was no fresh food - they ate corned beef. Thirty-six graves appeared that winter on Unimak near the Russian camp.

On June 6, 1769, the St. Paul galliot arrived at Unimak. On June 23, both ships put to sea and headed for Kamchatka. At the end of July, the crews of both ships rested in Nizhne-Kamchatsk, and in August of the following year they returned to Okhotsk.

Here Churin received under his command a new galliot "Saint Peter", built in Okhotsk and launched in 1768.

he could not go to Okhotsk, without shame and danger, on the occasion of his unpaid debts; He gave his consent under the impression of his dissatisfaction with his superiors, who brought him to trial for disobedience and depraved behavior. However, there is some doubt here. For example, where did such debts come from, if since 1765 Churin has been on constant voyages, now with Sindh, then with Krenitsyn? In the last Churin leaves with his wife Ulyana Zakharovna ...

And yet, without the navigator Churin, there would have been no escape, no long wanderings in the foreign land of the galliot "Saint Peter". The fact is that this experienced sailor remained the only person in the entire Russian fleet who by that time had made three trips from Kamchatka to America and China. It was he, navigator Maxim Churin, who led the galliot of the still unbeaten sea road and plotted it, together with his assistant, navigator's student Dmitry Bocharov, on a map that, to this day, perhaps not yet studied by anyone, lies in the Moscow archive, where Catherine ordered to hide all references to the Kamchatka rebels ...

But Churin did not live to see that day - broken, like many, by Beiposk's betrayal, he died in Macau on October 16, 1771.

IOASAF BATURIN

It is best to start a story about him with the words of Empress Catherine II after the death of Ioasaf Andreevich: “As for Baturin, the plans of his business are not at all joking. I did not read later and did not see his case, but I was probably told that he wanted to take the life of the empress, set fire to the palace and, taking advantage of the general embarrassment and confusion, elevate the Grand Duke to the throne. After torture, he was sentenced to eternal imprisonment in Shlisselburg, from where, during my reign, he tried to escape and was exiled to Kamchatka, and escaped from Kamchatka together with Benyevsky, robbed Formosa on the way and was killed in the Pacific Ocean.

It is strange that in the book of S. V. Maksimov “Siberia and penal servitude” there are only a few lines about Baturin: “In 1749, the lieutenant of the Butyrsky regiment, Ioasaf Baturin, was sent to Kamchatka for offering his services to Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich to enthrone him during my aunt's lifetime. Very incomplete and inaccurate.

But here are some details from a contemporary source: “... Baturin was a lieutenant of the Shirvan regiment. After being demoted and exiled to Siberia, he pulled a soldier's strap for a long time, again rose to the rank of second lieutenant, now the Shuvalov regiment, stationed near Moscow. And again the arrest: the “crazy nobleman” tried to involve artisans in the palace coup

people, 25 years before Pugachev raised a popular revolt. During the stay of Elizabeth in Moscow, in the summer of 1749, Baturin, an officer of the regiment called to pacify the working people of the Bolotin cloth factory, conceived with the help of soldiers and eight hundred striking artisans to imprison Elizabeth, kill Razumovsky and enthrone Peter Fedorovich - later Peter III. “His Highness could have protection for every poor against the strong,” said Baturin.

"Moscow agitator" - Baturin was called in one of the Russian magazines at the end of the 19th century. The “agitator” after being “strongly kept” in prison for another 16 years, from 1753 to 1769, spent time as a “nameless convict” in Shlisselburg. At night, in the prison window, Baturin was looking for the star of his emperor in order to talk to her. In 1768, Baturin wrote a letter to Catherine and for this, along the old path of convicts, through Siberia and the port of Okhotsk, he arrived in Bolyperetsk in 1770 ... - you can read all this in the book “The Image of a Distant Country” by A. B. Davidson and V A. Makru-shina.

Alas... Much of this story was completely different. At least, the materials of the Central State Archive of Ancient Acts, where the case “On Lieutenant Joasa-fe Baturin, who planned to deprive Empress Elizabeth of the throne in favor of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich” is stored, says something else.

Ioasaf Andreevich was the son of a lieutenant of the Moscow police chief office. In 1732 he entered the gentry cadet corps, and in 1740 he was released as an ensign in the Lutsk dragoon regiment and served here for seven years.

In February 1748, it so happened that the tenth company, in which Joasaph served, was left without a commander, and Baturin, on his own initiative, took command of the company, believing that he was quite worthy of this. But that was not the case - Colonel El-nin had already appointed a new company commander. Baturin took him with hostility and declared to his regimental commander something like the following: “In vain, Mr. Colonel, you deign to offend me. I am a good commander and I have never seen riots.” And, by the way, he added that if he was not appointed commander, then he would then be forced to ask the inspector general, when he arrived at the regiment, for an audience and show the inspector general all the disorders in the regiment, and also tell all dragoon grievances. The colonel yelled furiously: “Arrest! Forge! In "Tikhomirov-ku" him! "Tikhomirovka" - a regimental prison, where, in violation of the charter, Colonel Elnin had already once held Warrant Officer Tikhomirov.

I didn’t deserve this to be forged and put in jail, ”Baturin answered sharply and refused to hand over his sword to the colonel.

Vasily Alekseevich Panov, a lieutenant of the guard, and Ippolit Semenovich Stepanov were exiled to Kamchatka by one personal decree - for resisting Catherine's order to draw up the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire and for a sharp clash with Count Grigory Orlov.

We know almost nothing more about Panov, except that he was an active participant in the conspiracy - even from Okhotsk, when, saving Benevsky, he inflicted a mortal wound on the commander of Kamchatka, Grigory Nilov, and on Formosa, mistaken for sea pirate, killed by a native's arrow.

Vasily Nikolayevich Berkh, the first Russian researcher of the Bolsheretsk revolt, meeting with eyewitnesses of those events, wrote about Panov: for the first not very important crime in Kamchatka.

This phrase has misled many authors. The image of Vasily Alekseevich in historical literature has a certain shade of villainy - after all, he killed Nilov! Killed. But a few hours after this, Panov stops Winbland when he orders to set fire to the house of the Cossack Chernykh, the only one in all of Bolsheretsk who took up arms against the rebels, and then Panov defends the merchant Kazarinov - he was in the Chernykh house and was almost killed by embittered industrialists and exiles.

Vasily Panov was one of those with whom Stepanov spoke "... about how to free the inhabitants of Kamchatka from the robbery and cruelty of the local authorities."

But fate decreed that he himself was killed as a pirate and buried in a foreign land.

Maxim Churin

Even if there hadn't been that famous voyage on the "Petra" from Bolsheretsk to Macau, the name of the navigator Maxim Churin would have remained in history.

He appeared in Okhotsk in 1761 - was sent by the Admiralty Board to the disposal of the Siberian Order - and took command of the St. Catherine galliot, which was supposed to carry out passenger and cargo flights along the Okhotsk - Bolsheretsk route.

On August 11, 1768, these ships parted. The crew of the "Ekaterina" wintered on the island of Unimak, and the "Saint Pavel" went to Unalaska. The wintering of "Ekaterina" was difficult - a few years earlier on the Fox Islands - Umnak, Unimak, Unalashka - the rebellious Aleuts killed Russian hunters from four fishing boats, and therefore Krenitsyn had the most tense relations with the indigenous population of Unimak. There was no fresh food - they ate corned beef. Thirty-six graves appeared that winter on Unimak near the Russian camp.

On June 6, 1769, the St. Paul galliot arrived at Unimak. On June 23, both ships put to sea and headed for Kamchatka. At the end of July, the crews of both ships rested in Nizhnekamchatsk, and in August of the following year they returned to Okhotsk.

Here Churin received under his command a new galliot "Saint Peter", built in Okhotsk and launched in 1768.

But when Maxim Churin met with Benyevsky, Winbland, Stepanov and Panov, whom he was ordered to deliver to Kamchatka, everything turned out differently. Here is what S. V. Maksimov writes in the book “Siberia and Hard Labor”: “The consent of Turin (Churin to escape. - S. V.) is unconditional and reliable in the sense that he had no other way out; he could not go to Okhotsk, without shame and danger, on the occasion of his unpaid debts; He gave his consent under the impression of his dissatisfaction with his superiors, who brought him to trial for disobedience and depraved behavior. However, there is some doubt here. For example, where did such debts come from, if since 1765 Churin has been on constant voyages with Sindt, then with Krenitsyn? In the last Churin leaves with his wife Ulyana Zakharovna ...

But Churin did not live to see that day - broken, like many, by the betrayal of Beiposk, he died in Macau on October 16, 1771.

Ioasaf Baturin

But here are some details from a modern source: “... Baturin was a second lieutenant of the Shirvan regiment. After being demoted and exiled to Siberia, he pulled a soldier's strap for a long time, again rose to the rank of second lieutenant, now the Shuvalov regiment, stationed near Moscow. And again the arrest: the “crazy nobleman” tried to attract artisans to participate in the palace coup, 25 years before Pugachev raised a popular revolt. During the stay of Elizabeth in Moscow, in the summer of 1749, Baturin, an officer of the regiment called to pacify the working people of the Bolotin cloth factory, planned with the help of soldiers and eight hundred striking artisans to imprison Elizabeth, kill Razumovsky and enthrone Peter Fedorovich - later Peter III. “His Highness could have protection for every poor against the strong,” said Baturin.

"Moscow agitator" - Baturin was called in one of the Russian magazines at the end of the 19th century. The “agitator” after being “strongly kept” in prison for another 16 years, from 1753 to 1769, spent time as a “nameless convict” in Shlisselburg. At night, in the prison window, Baturin was looking for the star of his emperor in order to talk to her. In 1768, Baturin wrote a letter to Catherine and for this, along the old path of the convicts, through Siberia and the port of Okhotsk, he arrived in Bolsheretsk in 1770 ... - you can read all this in the book “The Image of a Distant Country” by A. B. Davidson and V A. Makrushina.

Alas... Much of this story was completely different. At least, the materials of the Central State Archive of Ancient Acts, where the file “On Lieutenant Ioasaph Baturin, who planned to deprive the throne of Empress Elizabeth in favor of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich” is stored, says something else.

In February 1748, it so happened that the tenth company, in which Joasaph served, was left without a commander, and Baturin, on his own initiative, took command of the company, believing that he was quite worthy of this. But that was not the case - Colonel Elnin had already appointed a new company commander. Baturin took him with hostility and declared to his regimental commander something like the following: “In vain, Mr. Colonel, you deign to offend me. I am a good commander and I have never seen riots.” And, by the way, he added that if he was not appointed commander, then he would then be forced to ask the inspector general, when he arrived at the regiment, for an audience and show the inspector general all the disorders in the regiment, and also tell all dragoon grievances. The colonel yelled furiously: “Arrest! Forge! In "Tikhomirovka" him! "Tikhomirovka" is a regimental prison, where, in violation of the charter, Colonel Elnin once held Ensign Tikhomirov.

“I didn’t deserve this to be forged and put in jail,” Baturin answered sharply and refused to hand over his sword to the colonel.
Then he was put, according to the military "regulations", under house arrest. Baturin at first resigned himself, but the next day he came to the regimental office and, in the presence of all the chief officers, accused Colonel Elnin of treason.

As the investigation found out, Baturin's denunciation turned out to be false - the only witness, ensign Fyodor Kozlovsky, refused to confirm Baturin's accusation that Elnin insulted the "blessed memory of the eternally worthy" late Empress Anna Ioannovna, who, for known reasons, did not spare anything for the Duke of Courland.

But ... "for those dishonorable deeds of his, Baturin was ordered to deprive him of his ensign rank and patent to be sent to state work for three years, and after the lapse, as before, to the regiment until the length of service in the dragoons." And here a fatal hitch occurred, probably in anticipation of the approval of the verdict at the highest level - and Baturin was even released from custody, having given him bail. Then the rank of second lieutenant came to him in accordance with the "regulation" for long service. And all this was like a ladle of cold well water, which was splashed out completely on the red-hot stones of the soul of a second lieutenant without a rank, a treasury prisoner, an ambitious person, which one can only look for in Russian history. But the order came to take Baturin under guard again.

This arrest was fatal for Ioasaf Andreevich - right there, the ensign of the Vyborg regiment Timofey Rzhevsky and the commander of the Perm dragoon regiment Alexander Urnezhevsky appeared in the secret office and reported that Baturin had incited them, with the support and financial help of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich, to raise the Moscow factory people and “the Preobrazhensky battalions located in Moscow to the life company”, and there, they say, “we will arrest the whole palace - ... where we will not find Alexei Grigorievich Razumovsky and his like-minded people - we will chop everyone into small pieces for something from him, Alexei Grigorievich , for a long time there is no coronation for his imperial highness, and the empress de empress will not be released from the palace until his highness is crowned.

What did Ensign Baturin of the Lutsk Dragoon Regiment have against Empress Elizabeth? Nothing. He agreed that “Her Imperial Majesty was in her full power as she is now, and His Highness, by the command of Her Imperial Majesty, would have only one government and would keep the army in the best order ...”. That is, Baturin needed a person on the throne who would move forward his, Baturin's, military career.

All Baturin's anger was directed only against Count Razumovsky. What irritated him so much? The fact that Razumovsky, the son of a simple Cossack, the singer of the imperial choir, turned out to be at the helm of power, a favorite of the Empress? Let's say. But what exactly - envy of the successes of a lucky lover or a just feeling of civic indignation about all these favorite sycophants close to the throne, a feeling that all the true sons of the Fatherland experienced, owned Baturin? Was he thinking about Russia, about the stagnation, spiritual and economic, that the country was going through?

And here is the answer of Baturin himself: “... he, Baturin, wanted to show his service to his excellency, but only he was not allowed to his excellency, and he was expelled from the chambers of his excellency as a court lackey with wickedness and he thought, Baturin, that it was so wicked of him his excellency ordered to send.

Like this, but caress, take a sip - and no bloody conspiracies for you.

For four years Baturin sat in the dungeon of the secret office under a strong guard, waiting for confirmation, but it did not follow - apparently, Elizabeth agreed with the verdict - and in 1753 Ioasaf Andreevich was transferred to the Shlisselburg fortress, in solitary confinement, for eternal maintenance ...

After 15 years spent in solitary confinement, he handed over a letter with a young soldier Fedor Sorokin, which the "colonel" asked to be delivered personally to the tsar or tsarina.

This was in 1768, when Catherine II was already ruling.

After reading Baturin's letter, the empress became very angry. How dare she be reminded of the one who had been her husband for so many years and who was finished once and for all, whose bones had long since rotted, how the memory itself should have rotted, but someone’s false rumors creep and crawl that he alive and on you! - will appear in the judgment of God ...

On May 17, 1769, Chief Prosecutor Vyazemsky, fulfilling the monarch’s will, put before Catherine a decree on the fate of Baturin, which ordered “to send him to the Bolsheretsky prison forever and have food for him there with his work, and besides, keep a close watch on him so that he leaves from there could not; however, even there, none of his denunciations, and no less, and disclosures, do not believe anyone.

“To be according to this,” Catherine drew, but fate will not soon put an end to Baturin’s wanderings.

From Okhotsk to Kamchatka, Baturin was sent separately from everyone else on the St. Catherine galliot, so, most likely, he knew nothing about the intentions of Benyevsky, Vinbland, Stepanov and Panov to seize the St. Peter galliot and flee abroad on it.

But in the Bolsheretsk rebellion, Baturin took an active part, for which he eventually received the much-desired and long-awaited rank of colonel, in which he was listed on the register of the crew of the rebellious galliot, second on the list after his leader.

And one more inaccuracy in the notes of Catherine the Great - Baturin was not killed in the Pacific during the robbery of Formosa, but died on February 23, 1772, while crossing from Canton to France.

Alexander Turchaninov

Kamchatka was a place of political exile for many state criminals. During the reign of Elizabeth, the ensign of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment Peter Ivashkin, who belonged to a noble family, the godson of Peter the Great and the darling of Anna Ioannovna, went to Kamchatka; Sergeant of the Life Guards of the Izmailovsky Regiment Ivan Snovidov and the chamber footman of the ruler Anna Leopoldovna, mother of the young John VI, Alexander Dmitrievich Turchaninov.

The latter even dared to say aloud that Elizaveta Petrovna had no hereditary right to Russian throne, because he and his sister Anna are the illegitimate children of Peter from Marta Skavronskaya. And John VI is the legitimate great-grandson of Tsar John V Alekseevich and he was bequeathed to be crowned by Empress Anna Ioannovna ...

For these “important, obscene words uttered by him,” Turchaninov’s tongue was ordered to be torn out, and all three were ordered to inflict cruel public punishment on Red Square, tear out their nostrils and exile them to hell.
Alexander Turchaninov at first ended up in Okhotsk, Ivashkin in Yakutsk, Snovidov in Kamchatka.

But soon a document came from the commander of the port of Okhotsk stating “that Turchaninov, while in prison, ate all his money that he had, now he is dying of hunger, and he is not supposed to be fed, he is afraid to let him go around the world, so that the convict did not tell the people the words for which he was exiled.

They marveled at the logic of the Okhotsk commander in the Moscow Siberian order - he is afraid to let a man whose tongue was torn out ... And they took pity on Turchaninov - they realized that this zealous boss would freeze the unfortunate convict to death, and they drafted a new decree, according to which the place of exile and Turchaninov, and Ivashkin, Kamchatka was determined. Each of them made his own personal life how could. Snovidov joined the missionaries and, with their help, started a salt factory at the mouth of the Kamchatka River. So he went public. Ivashkin became close to the commander of Kamchatka, Vasily Cheredov, and during this period became the de facto ruler of Kamchatka. Then, as usual, Cheredov was put on trial, and Ivashkin was left without his high patron.

The finest hour of Alexander Dmitrievich Turchaninov has also come. Arrived in Kamchatka, appointed by the Senate, new commander lieutenant commander I. S. Izvekov. Kamchatka did not know such a monster either before or after: it came to the point that Izvekov’s personal secretary was afraid to enter the commander’s quarters to report, not having a loaded pistol or a naked saber in his belt - Izvekov’s actions and deeds were the most unexpected, so not a single the man in Bolsheretsk could not imagine how the meeting with the commander might end for him.

Every day in the Bolsheretsk office there was a drinking bout - those who were especially close drank. At the head of the table was Izvekov's best friend, the tongueless Alexander Turchaninov. During the five years of Izvekov's rule, about seventy thousand rubles were spent on vodka and snacks.

By evening, drunken companions went out to clear the air on the only street in Bolsheretsk, densely overgrown with meadow chamomile ... At that hour no one dared even look out into the yard - no one wanted to be beaten or maimed. Izvekov did not care who was in front of him - a child or a woman, a soldier or a Cossack, he immediately began to look for something to complain about. And he certainly found it - and the victim, on his orders and before his eyes, was flogged, as on a ship, with molts.

But the commander himself could grab a weapon in order to deal with it right there on the spot - Izvekov cut off the nose of one Cossack with his officer's dagger, another smashed his head with a saber. There was no government for the beast commander - Okhotsk, like all previous commanders, he did not obey, and the Senate did not intend to change its decree.

In 1768, smallpox was introduced to the peninsula. She claimed thousands of lives, and Izvekov drank and did not lift a finger to do at least something to save people. He only sent out his circulars to the Kamchatka villages that it was necessary to keep the sick in warm huts, feed them with fresh fish and not give cold water to drink ... But there was no one to catch fresh fish, heat stoves in the huts, give warm water to the sick - many villages were depopulated and uncleaned corpses lay in cold huts, and the survivors fled wherever their eyes looked.

It was then that the cup of people's patience overflowed in the Kamchatka capital Bolsheretsk, and on May 2, 1769, Cossacks and soldiers, Kamchadals and industrialists, officials of the Bolsheretsk office and sailors from the St. Paul galliot wintering in Chekavka raised a revolt against Izvekov. The commander of Kamchatka meekly surrendered power, but on May 19, at five o'clock in the morning, together with his armed drinking companions, he seized the Bolsheretsk office, released the prisoners from the treasury, and, having taken up all-round defense - exposing all the guns available in Bolsheretsk - threw a feast for the whole world.

The inhabitants of Bolsheretsk went on the attack and, breaking down the doors, burst into the office, ready for a mortal battle with the hated Izvekov and others like him. But they saw that Izvekov and all the other defenders were completely drunk.

On the same day, Izvekov, in shackles, was sent to Okhotsk on the St. Paul galliot, where he stood trial and was demoted to sailors.

Having lost his patron, the mute Turchaninov was forced to get food in humiliation so as not to starve to death in prison, where everyone, without exception, hated him for his friendship with the former commander and for all those mockeries of people, where he was not only a dumb witness, but also a voluntary participant, and even the initiator. And because a drowning man grabbed at a straw, Turchaninov grabbed the opportunity to serve his leader and run with him even to the ends of the world. So he was among the members of the crew of "St. Peter" and went with everyone to Macau, where he died on November 10, 1771.

Peter Khrushchev

This Pyotr Alekseevich Khrushchev was a mysterious figure in the camp of the Bolsheretsk conspirators. The only one who did not take the oath of allegiance to Tsarevich Pavel, who did not sign the "Announcement". In defiance of the social-utopian moods of many of the conspirators, he brought with him slaves to Europe - the Kamchadals Paranchins. Strange, but everything was forgiven him. Moreover, on the galliot, he acted as an auditor - a military investigator, a judge and a prosecutor. That is, he was entrusted with judging the members of the crew of the galliot on the basis of those laws that he did not recognize and despised, without hiding it from everyone. Why? Yes, because these same laws were not recognized and despised by the best friend of Peter Khrushchev, August Moritz Benievsky.

"A man of excellent mind ... with great knowledge," Vasily Berkh characterized Khrushchev, and those who remembered the exiled Khrushchev told him about this. Many historians even believe that the initiative of the conspiracy and escape came from Peter Alekseevich. I think that Benyevsky and Khrushchov should not be separated - they lived together, thought, looked for opportunities to seize power in Bolsheretsk and flee from Kamchatka.

Khrushchev was a cynic. When the rebels were cut off all the way back, he showed complete contempt for everything that only yesterday inspired the conspirators. He was also known as an ambitious man. For which he paid for the first time in 1762, being a lieutenant of the Life Guards of the Izmailovsky regiment, when he decided, not considering himself worse than the Orlov brothers, to organize a new palace coup. Who did he designate as Russian tsars? Peter III was killed by Alexei Orlov. Maybe Paul? But then why does Khrushchev refuse to swear allegiance to him? So someone else? Whom? All the same poor John Antonovich, because of whom Alexander Turchaninov lost his tongue and nostrils back in 1742.

The conspiracy was made by the Guryev brothers - Semyon, Ivan, Peter and the Khrushchev brothers - Peter and Alexei. They wanted to take advantage of the fact that in the ranks of the guard there was no consensus on the legality of the accession to the Russian throne of the German princess Sophia Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst ... But after all, John Antonovich, Prince of Brunswick-Luneburg, son of the Duke of Brunswick, grandson of the Duke of Mecklenburg and only a great-grandson Tsar Ivan V - what kind of Russian blood is there ...

Nevertheless, the Khrushchevs and the Guryevs set out to put John on the throne as the most worthy, not even suspecting that John VI had turned into an idiot over twenty years of solitary confinement in the secret cell of the Shlisselburg fortress.

It is curious that in the investigative case of the Guryevs-Khrushchevs there are a lot of things similar to the case of Ioasaf Baturin. Here and there, an attempt to wishful thinking is obvious: to increase the number of conspirators from five people to several thousand, to hint that among the conspirators are Prince Nikita Trubetskoy, Ivan Fedorovich Golitsyn, some of the dignitaries of the Guryevs and even Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov, and only 70 "big people".

The goal was simple - to confuse as much as possible more people, draw them into a conspiracy, make a coup and get from the new emperor everything that flattered the inflamed ambition. But only in Bolsheretsk did Khrushchev enjoy the fruits of the new conspiracy to the fullest and received the highest satisfaction in his understanding, openly opposing himself to the crowd of rebels and taking a special, privileged place with the person of the leader.

In Bolsheretsk, together with Khrushchev, Semyon Guryev was exiled. At first, he joined the conspiracy - after all, he had already spent eight years in exile in Kamchatka - but he categorically refused to participate in the rebellion. By that time, he was already married to the daughter of the exiled Ivan Kuzmich Sekirin and became a father. Once upon a time, it was Semyon Seliverstovich Guryev who organized the palace conspiracy. Pyotr Khrushchev was only on the sidelines. He also played a second role, if not a secondary one at all, in the Bolsheretsk conspiracy. All this hurt Khrushchov's morbid pride, but he never became a leader.

In France, he entered the service of the captain of the corps of volunteers and went with Benievsky to Madagascar. But in 1774 he returned to Russia, waiting for the forgiveness of Catherine II.

Ivan Ryumin

This is the only one of the Kamchatka Cossacks who took part in the rebellion. Although he was not a Cossack at all, but a degraded clerk, "a former kopeist", a "defamed Cossack", as they say about him in documents.

What attracted Benievsky in him? Apparently, the fact that Ivan Ryumin served in the Bolsheretsk office and had access to sea charts. It was not difficult to pick up the key to Ryumin: defamatory is the same as offended. It only remained to find out by whom. But even this was not so difficult - all the same Krenitsyn and Levashev, who pushed the commander of the galliots "St. Catherine" and "St. Paul" to flee from Kamchatka.

Why did Ivan Ryumin not please them? And it so happened that during the investigation in 1766, the investigators of the secret government expedition tried to find out from Ryumin everything that he had to write down from the words of the sailors Savin Ponomarev, Stepan Glotov, Ivan Solovyov about the Fox Islands - Umnak, Unalashka, Unimak. Ryumin, for no apparent reason, declared that he did not know anything about these "newly discovered" lands. The deception was revealed when the sailors Glotov and Solovyov themselves convicted Ryumin of writing a report on the "newly discovered islands" under their dictation in 1764. Naturally, all this could not pass Ryumin in vain, and he was defamed - publicly beaten with a whip - and demoted from clerk to Cossacks.

Something went wrong with Ivan in his relations with Benyevsky - already after he was equipped with a galliot and ready to go, the navigator Churin decides to load the ship with flour, and Benyevsky sends Ryumin to Bolsheretsk for flour "with an order for immediate delivery ... under fear of severe punishment for disobedience. Therefore, it is not entirely clear to me whether, of good will or under duress, Ivan Ryumin went on that voyage together with his wife, Lyubov Savvichna, a Koryak.

On the galliot, Ryumin played the role of vice secretary. Together with the ship's secretary Spiridon Sudeikin, they kept a travel journal, which became in fact the only true document about the voyage of St. Peter in the Sea of Okhotsk, the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. For the first time, "Notes of the clerk Ryumkaa", which could be called "Journey beyond three oceans", was published in the journal "Northern Archive" in 1822.

The Ryumins were fortunate enough to endure all the hardships of that journey and return to Russia in 1773. Together with Sudeikin, they settled in Tobolsk and, apparently, went into the civil service.

Yakov Kuznetsov

Among the industrialists who joined the conspiracy were several Kamchadals. What was Benievsky able to attract them to? Steller's land? It is unlikely that the Kamchadals went to the crafts at the behest of their foremen-toyons and the Kamchatka authorities, who received yasak in the treasury for each Kamchadal industrialist for several years in advance from merchants-employers. Moreover, in addition to the yasak, a hefty jackpot was in their own pocket, and the Kamchadals then worked for the merchant for everything, receiving half of what they earned, which was completely spent on food, shovel-clothing, shoes and family debts that had accumulated over the years of absence of the breadwinner. So, fairy tales about Steller's Land could hardly attract Kamchadals. But they could believe in something else - what Stepanov and Panov believed - in the existence of islands where people live freely and happily, ignoring punishment and fear, poverty and hunger.

Why am I so sure of this? Yes, because among the Kamchadal conspirators there was one who might have known something about the possibility of the existence of such islands. This is Yakov Kuznetsov, a Kamchadal from the Kamakovo prison on the Kamchatka River. Once this prison was called Peuchev or Shvanol, but later it was called Kamakov by the name of the leader Kamak, who joined the anti-Christian uprising of the Itelmens and Koryaks, which was raised in 1746 by the Kamchadal brothers Alexei and Ivan Lazukov. After baptism, Kamak received a new name - now everyone called him Stepan Kuznetsov.

Then bad rumors circulated about Alexei Lazukov, the leader of the uprising. He, with the Koryak leaders Umyevushka and Ivashka, killed the yasash collectors in the prison Yumtin, who later, after the massacre of the rebels, would become known as Dranka. He was going to attack the Nizhnekamchatsky jail, where the party of missionaries of Archimandrite Joasaph of Khotuntsevsky, who forcibly baptized Kamchadals and Koryaks, was located. The leaders agreed to set out on the same day in two detachments - one along the seashore, the other along the valley - and, united, take the prison by storm. But at the very last moment, the unexpected happened - Alexei and Ivan Lazukov came to Nizhnekamchatsk and voluntarily surrendered to the authorities. They were shot. But the Russians, Kamchadals and Koryaks spoke about Lazukov's betrayal for a long time. They all knew Alexei too well, a man of extraordinary courage, honest and just.

And all these islands were to blame. In 1741, Aleksey Lazukov went to sea on the state-owned packet boat "Saint Peter", visited the coast of America, landed on the Shumaginsky Islands and tried to talk - he was an interpreter on the ship - with the native Americans, who recognized him as their own and did not even want to let go . In December, the crew of the packet boat landed on a desert island. In order to survive, each of the crew, whether an officer or a simple interpreter, had to give up everything that separated them in ordinary life- from ranks, privileges, feelings of national superiority and class rights ... And they survived. They made a gookor from the remains of a packet boat and returned back to Kamchatka ... Lazukov must have recalled the months spent on Commander Island very often. This happy story was passed from mouth to mouth. The feeling of brotherhood experienced on the islands made Alexei Lazukov happy and ruined - he could not turn his weapon against those who revealed to him a new understanding of life, and therefore he preferred to surrender, knowing that he would not be forgiven either by the executioner of Khotuntsevsky, or by his brothers in arms and blood, whom he betrayed for the sake of his other brothers - in spirit...

Such is the story. And Yakov Kuznetsov should have known her. Maybe that's why he went to distant lands to find the same island and arrange on it the same happy life that appeared to Lazukov ...

Yakov Kuznetsov will find his island off the African coast - the sick Kamchadal will be left in a hospital in Mauritius. The same sick Kamchadals Sidor Krasilnikov and industrialists Kozma Oblupin, Andrey Oborin and Mikhail Chuloshnikov will stay with him. Only Oblupin will then reach France. What happened to the rest is unknown. But if you look into reference books and find out how happy life was in those days in Mauritius, it turns out that 10 percent of the island's population were white gentlemen, 6 percent were free people of various nationalities, and the remaining percentages were African slaves. It turns out that in none of the two oceans they crossed was that land on which one could live happily without suffering and without sadness ...

No such island was found in the third - the Atlantic Ocean. Kamchadian Efrem Trapeznikov remained forever at the cemetery of the Lurian hospital. And Prokopy Popov, having finally reached Europe, went on foot to Paris in order to obtain permission to return to his homeland ...

Dmitry Bocharov

Many historians wrote in their studies that the navigator's student Dmitry Bocharov was forcibly taken out of Kamchatka. No, only the navigator's students Gerasim Izmailov and Filipp Zyablikov were forcibly taken out, and Bocharov voluntarily joined the conspirators. He was the commander of the galliot "Saint Catherine". In the recent past, he was Maxim Churin's assistant, wintered with the navigator on the Unimak, where he probably supported his commander in his disputes with Pyotr Kuzmich Krenitsyn. Then Churin received "Saint Peter", and "Saint Peter" and "Saint Catherine" came to the Chekavin harbor for the winter.

It is known that Dmitry Bocharov was among those who decided the issue of escaping from Kamchatka on a state galliot. And he fled on it with his wife Praskovya Mikhailovna and lost her in Macau, as well as his commander, Maxim Churin.

Sailors from the galliot "St. Catherine" - Vasily Potolov, Pyotr Sofronov, Gerasim Beresnev, Timofey Semyachenkov - fled with him. Only Vasily Potolov, a sailor from the “expatriate prisoners”, followed with Benevsky, the rest remained with their commander, Dmitry Bocharov. Upon returning to Russia, Bocharov asked to be left in the naval service in Okhotsk, but received a resignation, and Irkutsk was assigned to him as a place of residence. However, Bocharov could not live without the sea and willingly gave his consent to the Kamchatka merchants Luka Alin and Pyotr Sidorov to lead the fishing boat "Peter and Pavel" east to the islands rich in fur-bearing animals. Among the companions of Alina and Sidorova, for the first time, the young Rylsk merchant Grigory Shelikhov also tried his luck - then he was just trying on where it would be more profitable to attach the capital of his wife, the widow of a wealthy Irkutsk merchant, as his wife's grandfather Nikifor Trapeznikov advised him. In 1783, Grigory Ivanovich invited Bocharov to his place and appointed him commander of the galliot "Saint Michael", who that same year, as part of an expedition, went to Kodiak to establish the first settlement of the future Russian America. On the flagship - the galliot "Three Saints" - went along with Shelikhov, the ship's commander, navigator Gerasim Izmailov, whom Benievsky left at the end of May 1771 on the uninhabited Kuril island of Simushir. And in the future, the seafaring fates of Izmailov and Bocharov will be inseparable from each other.

Gerasim Izmailov

He was the only one in the Bolsheretsky prison who tried to counteract the rebels. On the evening of April 26, 1771, quite by accident, Izmailov and Zyablikov learned that Benievsky and the exiles and industrialists were going to kill the commander of Kamchatka, Nilov, and flee from Bolsheretsk. They immediately went to the office, but they were not allowed to see Nilov. When the navigator's students tried to tell the guard about everything, he did not believe it, deciding that Izmailov and Zyablikov were drunk. An hour or two later they came again, but the guard would not let them in again. And suddenly, in the yard, someone shouted in fright, “Help!”, They hit the locked door hard and demanded to open it.

Zyablikov and Izmailov hid in the treasury behind the door. At the same moment, the door in the passage, broken down by the rebels, fell down. Pushing the guard aside, the conspirators went into Nilov's bedroom. Soon there came a noise, a strangled cry, swearing, blows ... Then Benievsky, Vinbland, Churin, Panov - Izmailov recognized them by their voices - left.

Izmailov and Zyablikov tried to slip away unnoticed, but the guard industrialists grabbed Philip Zyablikov, and Izmailov managed to quietly get out of the office, but near the house of the centurion Chernykh, where there was a shootout, he was fired upon.

Returning to his apartment, Izmailov immediately gathered people to go with them against the rebels, but they were indecisive. Then they turned to Nilov's secretary, Spiridon Sudeikin. He waved his hands in fright - only without blood! Others supported him. While they were rowing, arguing and talking, Vinbland came to Sudeikin's house with Khrushchev and industrialists, took away all the guns, powder potion, bullets and ordered Izmailov to be immediately on the square near the Bolsheretsk office, where Beiposk gathered the entire team of the galliot "Saint Catherine", on which Gerasim was an assistant to Dmitry Bocharov.

On the square they swore allegiance to Tsarevich Pavel. Izmailov and Zyablikov refused the oath, and both of them were put in the tower of the Bolsheretsk office, and then, together with other prisoners, including Spiridon Sudeikin, they were taken to the Chekavinskaya harbor and kept in the hold of the St. Catherine galliot under guard while they were preparing for sailing "Saint Peter".

It must be said that Benievsky nevertheless managed to break both of them - under the "Announcement" are the signatures of both. Perhaps, to divert eyes - both were going to escape from the galliot on the canoe of the sailor Lvov, who was promised to be released just before the Peter went to sea, but nothing happened. Lvov left alone, and it was too risky to swim after him - there was slush on the river.

Zyablikov left with Benyevsky and died in Macau, while Izmailov remained on a desert island with the Paranchins. It happened on May 29, 1771.

They were left with three sums of provisions, a “screw-driven” gun, in which the stock was broken; gunpowder and lead a pound and a half; an axe, ten pounds of strand, four flags, five shirts (one canvas, three made of wood), two towels, a blanket, a dog parka, a camley, a sweatshirt with trousers ...

On August 2, industrialists led by the merchant Nikonov came to Simushir on three canoes. Izmailov demanded that he be immediately taken to Bolsheretsk. Instead, Nikonov took the Paranchins and went with them and his people further - to the eighteenth island of Urup - to hunt for a sea animal.

“Eating seashells, cabbage and other things,” exchanging all the warm clothes that Benievsky had left him for food with Nikon’s St. John’s wort, Izmailov was left alone on the island, like Robinson Crusoe. Then, however, the industrialists of the merchant Protodyakonov arrived on the island - Izmailov lived with them that year, and in July 1772 Nikonov delivered him to Kamchatka. In Bolsheretsk, Izmailov and Paranchin were arrested and sent under guard to Irkutsk.

Dmitry Bocharov, having circled Asia and Europe, having lived for more than a year in France, was sent from St. Petersburg to his new place of residence - to Irkutsk on October 5, 1773.

Gerasim Izmailov, as a reward for his zeal in front of the mother queen, received the highest command about his release from custody on March 31, 1774. And two years later, he, like Bocharov, will lead the fishing boat of Ivan Savvich Lapin to the Aleutian Islands and on Unalaska in 1778 he will meet James Cook, who will later speak with great sympathy about this Russian navigator in his travel diary.

In 1781, Gerasim Alekseevich will return to Okhotsk, and here he will be invited to serve Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov and lead the galliot “Three Saints” to Kodiak. From April 30 to July 15, 1788, Gerasim Alekseevich Izmailov and Dmitry Ivanovich Bocharov will describe the coast of Russian America on it from the Kenai Peninsula to Ltua Bay, while opening the Yakutag and Nuchek bays. Where Russian explorers and sailors visited, they “buried copper boards with Russian coats of arms and the inscription: “Land of Russian possession” in the ground ...

With this, I want to end my story about the crew members of the St. Peter galliot. Not much is known about them. But even in these incomplete notes, one can see their difficult and at the same time consonant with the age of the fate of inconspicuous people, whose efforts made the history of the Russian Empire.

Crew of the rebel galliot

A lot has been written about the Bolsheretsky rebellion of 1771 and its leader, August Moritz (Mauricia) Benievsky. But to this day, neither in historical nor in fiction, in my opinion, no serious attempt has been made to tell not only about the leader of the rebellion and his inner circle, but also about those people who supported this rebellion in the Kamchatka capital, and then fled on the captured state galliot "Saint Peter" from the Chekavinskaya harbor of the Bolsheretsky mouth To China. The authors of these works, as it were, evade the answer to main question: what kind of people were they, why did they decide to break ties with their homeland and join the rebels? First of all, because at the disposal of the researchers there were no reliable materials telling about the rebellion. Although many used the memoirs of Benyevsky himself in their work, a detailed, I would even say, meticulous description of the Bolsheretsk events in the Notes of the Chancellor Ryumin, materials from the Irkutsk and Moscow archives.

Now it is difficult to list all the sources that made it possible to understand the reasons for the flight from Kamchatka of navigator Maxim Churin, navigational student Dmitry Bocharov, sailors Alexei Andreyanov, Grigory Volynkin, Vasily Lyapin from the galliot "Saint Peter", clerk Alexei Chuloshnikov with thirty-three St. fishing boat "Saint Michael" of the Totma merchant Fedos Kholodilov ... But I managed to find out, in my opinion, the main thing - that these reasons are, alas, not romantic, as is commonly believed in historical, and even more so in fiction, but dramatic and even tragic character - many of these rebels had enough reason to fight for justice, desecrated honor, broken hopes, trampled happiness, and Benievsky cleverly used these situations, bound people devoted to him with false hopes and an equally false oath, which the first one changed. And therefore, to begin with, we should understand the role of Benyevsky himself in the Bolsheretsk events of 1771.

Benievsky

So much has been written about this man that it is completely impossible to understand what he really was. I mean not only a complex, adventurous and contradictory personality, but even his last name is not exactly known: Benievsky, Benevsky, Beniovsky, Beyposk. He signed his documents and letters in Bolsheretsk and later as Baron Moritz Anadar de Benev, and was born in the village of Verbovo in Austria-Hungary under the name of Beneikha. True, there was also a misfire about the year of birth. In his own words, this happened in 1741. But the biographers have already understood that in no case should one take Benievsky's word and that absolutely every statement of the baron must be checked. And when the English publisher of Benyevsky's memoirs, Gasfield Oliver, raised the parish registers of the Verbovsky parish, it turned out that Benyevsky was born in 1746. And this means that, due to his age, he could not take part in any of those battles. Seven Years' War, which he writes about in his autobiography - neither under Lobovice on October 8, 1756, nor near Prague on May 16, 1757, nor under Domshtat in 1758 ...

But that is not all. It turns out that from 1763 to 1768, Benievsky could not participate in any sea voyage, since at that time he was serving in Poland, in the Kalisz cavalry regiment. He was not a general either, but only a captain of the hussars. Nor did he receive the Order of the White Lion, as he describes in his memoirs. All this is the fruit of his really outstanding and bright, here we do not doubt one iota, fantasy in the spirit of another well-known liar baron.

To this day, they also argue about the nationality of Bejposk-Beneich-Benovsky - whether he is Hungarian, Pole, or maybe still Slovak ....

We know him in the history of Kamchatka as a Polish confederate, that is, a member of the Catholic-noble movement in Poland - the Confederation of Bars - against the protege of the Russian Empress, King Stanislav Poniatowski and Russian troops brought into Poland by order of Catherine. Benyevsky is captured twice. The first time he was released on parole that he would no longer draw his sword. He does not hold back his words and is captured a second time, ends up in Kazan, from where he flees with his comrade in the confederation and exile, the Swede Major Winbland, to St. Petersburg, so that from here on any passing boat to return through the Baltic back to Poland. However, he was caught and exiled together with Winbland, now to Kamchatka. But before getting there, he, with Vinbland and three other Russian exiles sent into eternal exile to the very edge of the Russian land - Stepanov, Panov, Baturin - find themselves in the port of Okhotsk. Here they were unescorted and released into the wild - until the galliot "Saint Peter" was equipped for the road, making constant official transitions from the port of Okhotsk to Bolsheretsky in Kamchatka. No one in Okhotsk paid absolutely no attention to the exiles - there were so many of them here, except for these five, that it is simply impossible to remember them all. On the galliot "Saint Peter", which was preparing to go to Kamchatka, there were three sailors from the "expatriate prisoners" - Alexei Andreyanov, Stepan Lvov, Vasily Lyapin.

The freedom of Okhotsk embarrassed the exiles, as, probably, anyone who knows that captivity awaits him ahead, and with each new mile that leads into the depths of Siberia, there are fewer and fewer hopes. Thousands of miles of taiga and tundra are already behind - try to overcome.

But there was another way that no one had yet used - by sea. To Japan, where Dutch merchants traded, or to China, the Portuguese port of Macao, or the port of Canton, where English and French ships called. And all you need is nothing - to seize a state-owned galliot, which will carry the exiles to Kamchatka, and take it to Japan ...

Soon, Benievsky and his comrades managed to get closer to some members of the crew of the "Peter". The conspirators, in addition to the exiled sailors Andreyanov and Lyapin, also joined the sailor Grigory Volynkin and, most importantly, the commander of the galliot, navigator Maxim Churin.

They found sympathizers on the shore. Sergeant Ivan Danilov and navigator Alexei Pushkarev helped with weapons - by the time the galliot went to sea on September 12, 1770, each of the conspirators had two or three pistols, gunpowder and bullets. The plan to capture the galliot was extremely simple: wait for the storm and, as soon as the passengers take refuge in the hold, batten down the hatch and go to the Kuril Islands, where they leave everyone who does not want to continue sailing to Japan or China, and go further with the rest, wherever possible ...

The storm broke out off the coast of Kamchatka. And such that the galliot came out of it without a mast, pretty rumpled. It was pointless to continue sailing on it, and Churin turned the galliot to the northeast, to the mouth of the Bolshaya River.

Needless to say, it was a disappointment. If Benievsky and the rest of the exiles, perhaps, did not understand the tragedy of their situation and naively believed somewhere in the depths of their souls that they would return to Bolsheretsk, repair the galliot and again go to sea on it, then Churin and the sailors knew for sure that this was already the end of all hopes: from the Chekavinskaya harbor at the mouth of the Bolshaya River, where the galliot will stand for the winter, to Bolsheretsk forty miles of impassable roads, swamps, tussocks, impassable thickets of alder ... You will not leave Bolsheretsk unnoticed - forty yards, every person in sight. And when you get to Chekavka - try to equip a ship for a voyage, it will take more than one week - and you need to stock up on provisions and set sails. It’s better not to be tormented by vain hopes and get out of your head any thought of a new capture of the galliot ...

In Bolsheretsk, the exiles met with their comrades in misfortune - state criminals who had lived in these places for more than one year, or even more than a dozen years - the chamber footman of the ruler Anna Leopoldovna, mother of the infant Emperor John VI, Alexander Turchaninov, a former lieutenant of the guard Pyotr Khrushchev, Admiralty physician Magnus Meider...

They met and agreed briefly, as they were all united by a common hatred for the current Empress Catherine II. Benievsky made friends with Khrushchev in general - they will live in the same house, open a school together and ... develop new plan flight of exiles from Kamchatka.

When Khrushchev was in exile here - and he had already spent eight years here - the Bolsheretsk Cossack centurion Ivan Chernykh went to the southern Kuril Islands on a multi-oared canoe and almost reached Japan, described everything he saw and heard, and also compiled detailed map the places he has visited. Copies were then made from this map, one of which should be kept in the Bolsheretskaya office. Copies were made by a former clerk, demoted to the Cossacks, Ivan Ryumin. Baidara, to this day, still lies on Cape Lopatka, useless to anyone, rotting, falling apart. If this canoe is repaired, then slowly, from island to island, it would be possible to reach Japan on it ...

Thus this plan was born. The first part of it - directly sailing to Japan - was the easiest to implement. It was much more difficult to find a reason for the commander of Kamchatka to release the exiles to Lopatka. Then they told the commander, Captain Grigory Nilov, that they would be engaged in arable farming on Lopatka, and he promised to help with everything that was needed, since, by the strictest order of the authorities from Irkutsk, he had to do everything in his power to promote the development of arable farming in Kamchatka.

It was much more difficult to get, and most importantly, to deliver to Lopatka everything necessary for the repair of canoes - you can’t overcome the leaky and first Kuril overflow, and, according to Chernykh, there are almost twenty of them. They decided that the canoe could be repaired without hiding and at public expense, allegedly so that the priest Ustyuzhaninov could go on it to the lands of the pagans - furry smokers - to introduce foreigners to the Orthodox faith.

The idea was good. Ustyuzhaninov himself supported her. Grigory Nilov did not resist either, but he was not in charge of Kamchatka church affairs, but Archpriest Nikiforov, who was with all the spiritual board in Nizhnekamchatsky prison. Then Ustyuzhaninov went to Nizhnekamchatsk to receive the blessing of the father of the archpriest.

As soon as Ustyuzhaninov left, the plans of the conspirators changed - in February 1771, thirty-three industrialists-St. sea animal. Kholodilov had been preparing his expedition for three years, waiting for something, guessing, and then it seemed that something had come over him - he was sent to the sea during the period of fierce winter storms. But greed let him down - in one of those storms that pursued "Mikhail" all the way to Kamchatka, the boat was thrown ashore at the mouth of the Yavina River (south of Bolsheretsk). The industrialists came to the Bolsheretsky prison for the winter, where they left their master a little earlier along the way, but Kholodilov ordered them to return to Mikhail, push him into the sea and go where he had previously ordered them.

Chuloshnikov objected to the owner. He removed the clerk from his post and put a new one in his place - Stepan Torgovkin. Then the industrialists murmured. Kholodilov turned for help to Grigory Nilov - to the authorities. Nilov had already given Fedos five thousand rubles - at interest on fishing - state money, and therefore did not even listen to any of the St. John's wolves.

It was then that Benievsky appeared among the industrialists. He undertook to settle all misunderstandings, talk with his superiors and, moreover, promised to help the industrialists get to the legendary Steller's Land in Kamchatka, the very one that Bering was looking for, and then other sailors. “It is there,” said pundit Georg Steller, “fur seals and sea beavers from the Commander Islands and other islands go for wintering.” For himself, Benievsky asked for a mere trifle - on the way back to bring him with his comrades to Japan - this is very close. "Hands?" - "Hands!" the industrialists responded in unison.

Alas, the navigator Maxim Churin, having specially gone and examined the boat, came to the deplorable conclusion - "Mikhail" is not suitable for long-distance navigation. So the new plan, unfortunately, fell through. However, like the old idea, about fifty people already participated in the conspiracy, and in which case one canoe was not enough. In addition, a serpentine rumor spread around Bolsheretsk that the exiles were plotting an escape from Kamchatka and that they had plotted against Nilov. But the commander of Kamchatka drank bitter and did not want to hear anything about any conspiracies and escapes there. This, of course, did not reassure Benyevsky and the company - after all, he might sober up sometime ?! Here, too, Archpriest Nikiforov, suspecting something was wrong, detained Ustyuzhaninov in Nizhnekamchatsk, and now Benievsky desperately needed father Alexei here in Bolsheretsk, because the conspirators were again returning to the old, until recently completely hopeless plan of capturing the state galliot, and a like-minded priest would have rendered and an invaluable service. It was necessary to raise the people to revolt against the government. And for this there must be a common political motive, hope, faith in which Father Alexei would strengthen the authority of the Orthodox Church. But Ustyuzhaninov was under house arrest far from Bolsheretsk. Therefore, Benievsky urgently needed to involve in a new conspiracy people capable of leading the ship to where their leader would indicate. First of all, the industrialists from the Mikhail, who are so far only concerned with their own troubles and are considering a voyage to Steller's Land, rich in sea animals, where each of them can enrich themselves in the fisheries.

One evening, Benievsky came to the industrialists with a green velvet envelope and opened them state secret. It turns out that he ended up in Kamchatka not because of Polish affairs, but because of one very sensitive mission - Tsarevich Pavel, forcibly deprived of his rights to the Russian throne by his mother Catherine, instructed Benievsky to take this letter in a green velvet envelope to the Roman emperor. Pavel asked for the hand of the emperor's daughter, but Catherine, somehow learning about this, put a guard on her own son, and exiled Benevsky and her comrades to Kamchatka. And if the industrialists help Beiposk-Benievsky to complete his noble mission to the Roman emperor, then "... you will receive special mercy, and at the same time you will get rid of the local oppression, although I try about you, but nothing is in time."

And rightly so - Kholodilov asked Nilov to flog the industrialists and force them to go to sea. The industrialists, in turn, filed a petition with a request to terminate their contract with the merchant, since the ship was shipwrecked and they are now free from all obligations to Kholodilov. The unlucky merchant had a stroke, after which, angry with the behavior of commander Nilov, the industrialists were ready to defeat Bolsheretsk and run wherever their eyes looked.

Benievsky immediately offered to go to the Spanish possessions, to the free islands, where it is always warm, people live richly and happily, not knowing the violence and arbitrariness of the authorities. They believed him. But when many of the conspirators got really drunk on excessive doses of socialist utopias, commander Nilov finally sobered up, and it dawned on his alcohol-seared brain that something dangerous for the authorities was being planned by the exiles in Bolsheretsk entrusted to him. He sent soldiers to arrest Benyevsky and the rest of the conspirators. But it turned out that the order remained unfulfilled - Benyevsky arrested the soldiers himself and ordered his people to prepare for the performance. However, this news did not reach Nilov. After sending soldiers, he calmed down and again drank himself insane. And on the night of April 26-27, 1771, a riot broke out in Bolsheretsk.

At three o'clock in the morning the rebels broke into the house of the commander of Kamchatka, while awake he grabbed Benyevsky by the neck scarf and nearly strangled him. Panov hurried to help Beiposk and mortally wounded Nilov in the head. The industrialists have committed murder. After that, the rebels occupied the Bolsheretskaya office - and Benievsky declared himself commander of Kamchatka.

Bolsheretsk was taken without a fight, except for a skirmish with the Cossack Chernykh, who had taken refuge in his house, as a result of which not a single person was injured. There is nothing surprising in this, if we imagine the prison not according to Benevsky's memoirs, where Bolsheretsk is described as a fortress, similar to European ones during the period of the romantic Middle Ages, but a miserable wooden village.

At dawn on April 27, the rebels walked through the houses of the Bolsheretsky inhabitants and collected all the weapons - they handed it over without resistance. Then, surrounding the office building with six cannons loaded with cannonballs, they celebrated their victory.

On April 28, they buried Nilov, who, according to them, died of natural causes, probably from abuse of state-owned vodka. Nobody risked arguing with this now official statement of the new Kamchatka authorities, although everyone knew what really happened - the rumor about the murder of Nilov spread around the prison during the night. The soldier Samoilov, who had refused to make a coffin on the order of the murderers, was now sitting in a treasury and receiving dentition from every guard.

Immediately after the funeral, Beyposk ordered the priest to open the royal doors in the church and take out the cross and the gospel from the altar - each of the rebels was now obliged to swear allegiance to Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich in front of everyone. Everyone swore allegiance, except for one, the closest person to Benievsky - Khrushchev. But this did not seem to be noticed, intoxicated with a common victory. And although the rebels, having sobered up, suspected something was wrong, it was already too late - the oath to Paul cut off the path to retreat.

On April 29, eleven large ferries were built on the Bolshoi River, loaded with cannons, weapons, ammunition, axes, iron, carpentry, metalwork, blacksmith tools, various fabrics and canvas, money from the Bolsheretskaya office in silver and copper coins, furs, flour, wine and so on - a complete two-year staffing of the galliot. On the same day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the ferries left the shore and went downstream to the Chekavin harbor to prepare for the voyage of the galliot "Saint Peter". The night is on the river. They waited for dawn right on the shore near the Kamchadal Katanovsky prison, and in the morning they arrived at the place. There was a sentry hut and two barns for storing ship supplies. They pitched tents and began to prepare for the voyage "St. Peter".

On May 2, the ship was taken out of the harbor to the mouth, but it was necessary to weight it. Navigator Churin decided that instead of ballast, it would be enough to load the galliot with flour. On May 3, the Cossack Ivan Ryumin was sent to Bolsheretsk. For Kamchatka, flour has always been of great value, but nevertheless, on May 7, Ryumin already returned to Chekavka by ferry with the necessary amount of flour.

The galliot was ready to sail. But for another four days they did not set off on the road - Ippolit Stepanov, on behalf of all the conspirators, wrote the “Announcement”, which openly spoke about the evil that Empress Catherine, her court and her favorites had brought to Russia. It was a political accusation of the queen on behalf of the nobility and the common people, and it was more terrible than the oath to Tsarevich Pavel.

On May 11, the “Announcement” was read out to everyone and signed by the literate for themselves and their comrades. Only Khrushchov's signature is missing from this document. But this was not his last privilege on the Kamchatka coast: claiming that the galliot is sent to look for free lands for the inhabitants of Kamchatka for a happy life, Benyevsky allows his friend, allegedly for debts, to take with him the husband and wife of the Paranchins, Kamchadals, former "yasash payers" ", and now serfs ...

May 12 "Announcement" sent to Ekaterina. I think that at the moment when she read this document, her hand would not tremble to sign the decree - despite her official maternal mercy - to quarter everyone who signed under it.

She was blamed for the death of her husband Peter; excommunication from the throne of the legitimate heir Paul; devastating war in Poland; the tsarist monopoly of trade in wine and salt; the fact that for the upbringing of illegitimate children of nobles, villages are granted, while legitimate children are left without charity; that people's deputies, gathered from all over the country to amend the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, were deprived by the tsar's order of the right to propose their projects ...

On the same day in the morning, the galliot "Saint Peter" went to sea and headed for the Kuril Islands. There were exactly seventy people on board. Of these, five were forcibly taken out - the Paranchin family and three hostages: Izmailov, Zyablikov, Sudeikin.

And so, when the fugitives approached the sixteenth Kuril Island Simushir and stopped here to bake bread, four of these five formed a conspiracy against Benyevsky. The conspirators, taking advantage of the fact that the entire crew of the galliot was on the island and no one was actually guarding the ship, decided to secretly approach the galliot from the sea on a yalboat - fortunately, Izmailov and Zyablikov were instructed to describe the harbor in which St. map, - climb on the ship, cut off the anchor ropes and return to Bolsheretsk for the Cossacks. Yakov Rudakov, to the common misfortune, decided to involve the sailor Alexei Andreyanov in the conspiracy. He reported everything to Benievsky. Beyposk ordered the conspirators to be shot, but then changed his mind and arranged for them to be publicly punished with cats.

On May 29, at 9 pm, the galliot "Saint Peter" left the island, on the shore of which remained the navigator's student from the galliot "Saint Catherine" Gerasim Izmailov and Kamchadals from Katanovskiy prison Alexei and Lukerya Paranchin. Having safely crossed the Sea of Japan, the fugitives ended up in Japan, but, not meeting a special greeting there, they hurried away from sin to Formosa, the island of Taiwan.

Formosa was one of those paradises that the crew of a galliot could not even dream of. But the corner of paradise also had its wrong side - sea pirates constantly raided coastal villages, captured the inhabitants and sold them into slavery in the very Spanish possessions that many dreamed of on St. Peter.

The inhabitants of the island met the Russians very well. It was August 16, 1771. They helped to bring the ship into a convenient harbor for parking. It turned out that the name of the island, translated from Portuguese, is “Beautiful”. The next morning, the natives brought pineapples, chickens, pigs, some kind of drink like milk made from millet to the galliot. Trade has begun. For needles, silk, rags of silk fabrics, ribbons, Russians exchanged products, marveling at their cheapness. “This is where to live,” thought, probably, each of them.

But on the same day, in the afternoon, disaster struck. Benievsky ordered to send a yalbot ashore and stock up on drinking water. First, they sent one batch of people ashore, then returned for the second. The natives took all this as preparation for an attack on the village. And so the first attacked, killing and wounding several people. That's when the character of the leader of the fugitives was revealed in all its glory. And each of the crew members showed what he is capable of under the command of Beyposk.

At that unkind hour, a boat with natives passed by the galliot. "Fire!" Beyposk ordered, and a friendly volley drowned out the singing of birds of paradise, and the gunpowder fumes mixed with the aroma of wonderful flowers and outlandish plants. Five of the seven natives were killed, two seriously wounded somehow rowed to the shore. "Forward!" - the next cry of the leader was heard, and the overloaded yalbot slowly, like a turtle, crawled from the galliot to the shore. "Blood for blood! Death for death!” - yelled industrialists and Cossacks, sailors and former palace conspirators, finishing off the wounded, breaking the sea boats of the natives on the shore. But they did not venture into the depths of the island. On August 20, Beyposk ordered the burning of the native village. As the flames that devoured the dwellings of the natives, covered with dry grass, shot up to the sky, the ship's cannons struck. And the next day, the galliot left the beautiful island and went beyond the horizon. Only Benievsky was satisfied, and no one yet suspected what plan he was hatching in secret from everyone. Even from his friend Khrushchev.

On September 12, 1771, the galliot "Saint Peter" entered the Portuguese port of Macau in China and announced this with a salvo from all cannons. Three guns from the shore saluted in response according to the rank of the galliot, and Benievsky went on a yalbot to pay a visit to the Portuguese governor of Macau. The Russians remained to wait for their leader. Apparently, after all, they connected a lot in their lives with the galliot. But Beyposk sold the galliot to the Portuguese governor and chartered two French ships from nearby Canton to sail to Europe. The phlegmatic old Swede Winbland seethed with rage. It was suddenly revealed that no Benievsky was a general, that he had never even seen Tsarevich Pavel.

"Riot on the ship! Beyposk turned to the governor for help. “These people are notorious thugs and can do big trouble here. They need to be isolated urgently...” The governor sympathized with Benievsky, a Polish baron in the thirteenth generation, without even assuming that there had never been barons in Poland, and ordered all Russians to be imprisoned. “Until they come to their senses,” Benievsky set a term for them and went about his business, which was supposed to be successfully completed in France.

And the Russians thought. They changed their minds about many things here, having escaped from one prison and ended up in another. Not everyone was able to survive it. On October 16, 1771, Maxim Churin died, and fourteen more people died within a month and a half. The rest admitted their defeat and agreed to follow Benievsky to Europe. Everyone, except for Ippolit Stepanov - Beyposk left him in Macau, as Izmailova had left in Simushir ...

But why didn't Beiposk leave Macau and all the others after all? Was there a reason for disobedience? I would put him in jail and be like that. But no. Why? But because they were supposed to help him implement a new, even more daring plan. He intended to propose to the King of France, Louis XV, a project for the colonization of the island ... Formosa. And the colonizers, according to Benievsky's plan, were to become the now former members of the crew of the galliot "Saint Peter", who again unconditionally recognized the authority of their leader Beyposk. But in order to offer his project to Louis, he still had to get to France. And they arrived there on the French frigates Dauphine and Delaverdy on July 7, 1772. However, by that time only half of the former crew remained. Five more people have died in France. The survivors settled in the city of Port Louis in the south of Brittany - here they lived for eight months and nineteen days in anticipation of any change in their fate.

Finally, Benievsky said that the king accepted his project, but with a slight change - he replaced the island of Formosa with the island of Madagascar - this is closer! — so now get ready to become volunteers French army and go to the shores of Africa to conquer new free lands for the French crown. The Russians were divided. Some refused to serve, others agreed - where, they say, now to go, not to return to Russia, so that you could be sent back to Siberia or Kamchatka. Khrushchev and Kuznetsov, Benievsky's adjutant, received respectively the rank of captain and lieutenant of the French army upon entering the service. Twelve more people signed up with them, and the rest went on foot from Port Louis to Paris - 550 miles - to the Russian resident in the French capital, N.K. Khotinsky, with a request to return to their homeland.

On March 27, 1773, they left Port Louis, and on April 15 they arrived in Paris and on the same day came to the resident. Nikolai Konstantinovich received them cordially, assigned them to an apartment, allocated money for provisions, clothes and shoes for those in need.

On September 30, 1773, seventeen people arrived in St. Petersburg, and on October 3, having taken an oath of allegiance to Catherine II and swearing at the same time not to disclose state secrets about the Bolsheretsky rebellion under pain of death, they went to the places prescribed for them to live, "... so that they are all inside Russia, such as to Moscow and St. Petersburg, never to be released for anything, ”as the tsarina recommended to the prosecutor general, Prince Vyazemsky. Although for the sake of decency they asked everyone who would like to go where.

All these events were not known in Russia for another half century, although Benovsky's book, published in England, Germany, France, was a bestseller for a long time.

Now, at last, the reader can find out how the life paths those on whose shoulders rose the glory of the "skillful navigator" and freedom lover August Moritz Benievsky.

Ippolit Stepanov

Thanks to Benievsky, Ippolit Semyonovich Stepanov is presented in historical and fiction literature as an absurd drunkard, a disputer and a brawler, an envious and ambitious man. Such is he with N. Smirnov in "The State of the Sun", such is he with L. Pasenkzh in "The Adventures of Baron Benevsky".

But, as it turns out, he was right hand Beyposka in the Bolsheretsky conspiracy is the ideologue of the rebellion, the commissar, if we define his role in the language of another era. It was he who was believed in Bolsheretsk like no one else.

Who is he?

Retired captain. Landowner. Moscow province of Vereisky district. In 1767, Empress Catherine II gathered people's deputies and created a Commission on the drafting of a new code of laws of the Russian Empire. But the tsarina hurried up with the idea of a nationwide discussion of future legislation - it could not even enter her head that one of her subjects would encroach on absolutism. One of these was Ippolit Stepanov. In memory of himself, he left a document of unusual frankness - a political accusation of Catherine - written by him in early May 1771 in the Chekavinskaya harbor in Kamchatka. Man liberal views, he seemed attractive to many. He was trusted and listened to. And he betrayed this trust by presenting Beyposk as close to Tsarevich Pavel. Although he did this, in all likelihood, only out of good intentions, believing that he was drawing people into a conspiracy only so that they could find for themselves even in a foreign land - free and happy lands. This idea was discussed constantly. Witnesses reported it during the investigation, and it was recorded in the interrogation protocols that Stepanov and Winbland openly discussed the issue of returning the galliot back to Kamchatka along with some large frigate that would stop in the Peter and Paul Harbor and take away everyone who wished to leave Kamchatka and settle in those parts that the members of the crew of the St. Peter will find for them. Even many years after the Bolsheretsk rebellion, this record in the investigation files will disturb the government, the Irkutsk and Kamchatka authorities - everyone was afraid: suddenly this frigate will appear ...

That is why Stepanov - the only one of all - could not come to terms with the loss of the galliot and preferred to be in prison rather than go to peace with Benyevsky. His calls to Macau are also understandable, in no case go to French service and return back to the fatherland. And he even gave his comrades a letter addressed to Catherine, in which he took all the blame for the Bolsheretsky rebellion, the flight from Kamchatka.

He considered himself personally responsible for the fate of each of the ordinary members of the crew of the galliot. For all this, Benievsky despised Stepanov and in his memoirs he blackened him as best he could.

According to the false baron, Stepanov was given 4,000 piastres, with which he went to the Dutch campaign, the director of which, Löreux, helped him sail to Java. Perhaps this was the case, it is only known that later - until November 20, 1772 - Ippolit Semenovich lived in England.

On November 20, Catherine II signed a decree on the pardon of her subject and allowed him to return to his homeland. But Ippolit Stepanov did not return to Russia. On the decree, which is kept in the funds of the TsGADA, it is marked: "Returned from London from the Plenipotentiary Minister Musin-Pushkin."

In one of the first translations of the memoirs of August Moritz Benievsky in German there are excerpts from the diary of Ippolit Stepanov. Or maybe the original is stored somewhere, from which someday we will learn new details about the life of this man, his thoughts and views, honest enough to respect them.

Vasily Panov

Vasily Nikolayevich Berkh, the first Russian researcher of the Bolsheretsk revolt, meeting with eyewitnesses of those events, wrote about Panov: for the first not very important crime in Kamchatka.

Vasily Panov was one of those with whom Stepanov spoke "... about how to free the inhabitants of Kamchatka from the robbery and cruelty of the local authorities."

But fate decreed that he himself was killed as a pirate and buried in a foreign land.

Maxim Churin

Even if there hadn't been that famous voyage on the "Petra" from Bolsheretsk to Macau, the name of the navigator Maxim Churin would have remained in history.

He appeared in Okhotsk in 1761 - was sent by the Admiralty Board to the disposal of the Siberian order - and took command of the St. Catherine galliot, which was supposed to carry out passenger and cargo flights along the Okhotsk - Bolsheretsk route.

On August 11, 1768, these ships parted. The crew of the "Ekaterina" wintered on the island of Unimak, and the "Saint Pavel" went to Unalaska. The wintering of "Ekaterina" was difficult - a few years earlier on the Fox Islands - Umnak, Unimak, Unalashka - the rebellious Aleuts killed Russian hunters from four fishing boats, and therefore Krenitsyn had the most tense relations with the indigenous population of Unimak. There was no fresh food - they ate corned beef. Thirty-six graves appeared that winter on Unimak near the Russian camp.

Here Churin received under his command a new galliot "Saint Peter", built in Okhotsk and launched in 1768.

But Churin did not live to see that day - broken, like many, by the betrayal of Beiposk, he died in Macau on October 16, 1771.

Ioasaf Baturin

But here are some details from a modern source: “... Baturin was a second lieutenant of the Shirvan regiment. After being demoted and exiled to Siberia, he pulled a soldier's strap for a long time, again rose to the rank of second lieutenant, now the Shuvalov regiment, stationed near Moscow. And again the arrest: the “crazy nobleman” tried to attract artisans to participate in the palace coup, 25 years before Pugachev raised a popular revolt. During the stay of Elizabeth in Moscow, in the summer of 1749, Baturin, an officer of the regiment called to pacify the working people of the Bolotin cloth factory, conceived with the help of soldiers and eight hundred striking artisans to imprison Elizabeth, kill Razumovsky and enthrone Peter Fedorovich - later Peter III. “His Highness could have protection for every poor against the strong,” said Baturin.

"Moscow agitator" - Baturin was called in one of the Russian magazines at the end of the 19th century. The “agitator” after being “strongly kept” in prison for another 16 years, from 1753 to 1769, spent time as a “nameless convict” in Shlisselburg. At night, in the prison window, Baturin was looking for the star of his emperor in order to talk to her. In 1768, Baturin wrote a letter to Catherine and for this, along the old path of the convicts, through Siberia and the port of Okhotsk, he arrived in Bolsheretsk in 1770 ... - you can read all this in the book “The Image of a Distant Country” by A. B. Davidson and V A. Makrushina.

In February 1748, it so happened that the tenth company, in which Joasaph served, was left without a commander, and Baturin, on his own initiative, took command of the company, believing that he was quite worthy of this. But that was not the case - Colonel Elnin had already appointed a new company commander. Baturin took him with hostility and declared to his regimental commander something like the following: “In vain, Mr. Colonel, you deign to offend me. I am a good commander and I have never seen riots.” And, by the way, he added that if he was not appointed commander, then he would then be forced to ask the inspector general, when he arrived at the regiment, for an audience and show the inspector general all the disorders in the regiment, and also tell all dragoon grievances. The colonel yelled furiously: “Arrest! Forge! In "Tikhomirovka" him! "Tikhomirovka" is a regimental prison, where, in violation of the charter, Colonel Elnin once held Ensign Tikhomirov.

“I didn’t deserve this to be forged and put in jail,” Baturin answered sharply and refused to hand over his sword to the colonel.

Then he was put, according to the military "regulations", under house arrest. Baturin at first resigned himself, but the next day he came to the regimental office and, in the presence of all the chief officers, accused Colonel Elnin of treason.

But ... "for those dishonorable deeds of his, Baturin was ordered to deprive him of his ensign rank and patent to be sent to state work for three years, and after the lapse, as before, to the regiment until the length of service in the dragoons." And it was here that a fatal hitch occurred, probably in anticipation of the approval of the verdict at the highest level - and Baturin was even released from custody, having given him bail. Then the rank of second lieutenant came to him in accordance with the "regulation" for long service. And all this was like a ladle of cold well water, which was splashed out completely on the red-hot stones of the soul of a second lieutenant without a rank, a treasury prisoner, an ambitious person, which one can only look for in Russian history. But the order came to take Baturin under guard again.

Like this, but caress, take a sip - and no bloody conspiracies for you.

For four years Baturin sat in the dungeon of the secret office under a strong guard, waiting for confirmation, but it did not follow - apparently, Elizabeth agreed with the verdict - and in 1753 Ioasaf Andreevich was transferred to the Shlisselburg fortress, to solitary confinement, for eternal maintenance ...

After 15 years spent in solitary confinement, he handed over a letter with a young soldier Fedor Sorokin, which the "colonel" asked to be delivered personally to the tsar or tsarina.

This was in 1768, when Catherine II was already ruling.

“To be according to this,” Catherine drew, but fate will not put an end to Baturin’s wanderings soon.

And one more inaccuracy in the notes of Catherine the Great - Baturin was not killed in the Pacific during the robbery of Formosa, but died on February 23, 1772, while crossing from Canton to France.

Alexander Turchaninov

The latter even dared to say aloud that Elizaveta Petrovna did not have a hereditary right to the Russian throne, because she and her sister Anna were Peter's illegitimate children from Marta Skavronskaya. And John VI is the legitimate great-grandson of Tsar John V Alekseevich and he was bequeathed to be crowned by Empress Anna Ioannovna ...

For these "great, obscene words he uttered," Turchaninov's tongue was ordered to be torn out, and all three were ordered to inflict cruel public punishment on Red Square, tear out their nostrils and exile them to hell.

Alexander Turchaninov at first ended up in Okhotsk, Ivashkin in Yakutsk, Snovidov in Kamchatka.

They marveled at the logic of the Okhotsk commander in the Moscow Siberian order - he is afraid to let a man whose tongue was torn out ... And they took pity on Turchaninov - they realized that this zealous boss would freeze the unfortunate convict to death, and they drafted a new decree, according to which the place of exile and Turchaninov, and Ivashkin, Kamchatka was determined. Each of them arranged his personal life as best he could. Snovidov joined the missionaries and, with their help, started a salt factory at the mouth of the Kamchatka River. So he went public. Ivashkin became close to the commander of Kamchatka, Vasily Cheredov, and during this period became the de facto ruler of Kamchatka. Then, as usual, Cheredov was put on trial, and Ivashkin was left without his high patron.

The finest hour of Alexander Dmitrievich Turchaninov has also come. A new commander, Captain-Lieutenant I. S. Izvekov, appointed by the Senate, arrived in Kamchatka. Kamchatka did not know such a monster either before or after: it came to the point that Izvekov’s personal secretary was afraid to enter the commander’s quarters to report, not having a loaded pistol or a naked saber in his belt - Izvekov’s actions and deeds were the most unexpected, so not a single the man in Bolsheretsk could not imagine how the meeting with the commander might end for him.

By evening, drunken companions went out to clear the air on the only street in Bolsheretsk, densely overgrown with meadow daisies ... At that hour no one dared even look out into the yard - no one wanted to be beaten or maimed. Izvekov did not care who was in front of him - a child or a woman, a soldier or a Cossack, he immediately began to look for something to complain about. And he certainly found it - and the victim, on his orders and before his eyes, was flogged, as on a ship, with molts.

But the commander himself could grab a weapon to deal with it right there on the spot - Izvekov cut off the nose of one Cossack with his officer's dagger, another smashed his head with a saber. There was no government for the beast commander - Okhotsk, like all previous commanders, he did not obey, and the Senate did not intend to change its decree.

On the same day, Izvekov, in shackles, was sent to Okhotsk on the St. Paul galliot, where he stood trial and was demoted to sailors.

Peter Khrushchev

The goal was simple - to confuse as many people as possible, draw them into a conspiracy, make a coup and get from the new emperor everything that flattered inflamed ambition. But only in Bolsheretsk did Khrushchev enjoy the fruits of the new conspiracy to the fullest and received the highest satisfaction in his understanding, openly opposing himself to the crowd of rebels and taking a special, privileged place with the person of the leader.

In France, he entered the service of the captain of the corps of volunteers and went with Benievsky to Madagascar. But in 1774 he returned to Russia, waiting for the forgiveness of Catherine II.

Ivan Ryumin

What attracted Benievsky in him? Apparently, the fact that Ivan Ryumin served in the Bolsheretsk office and had access to sea charts. It was not difficult to pick up the key to Ryumin: defamatory is the same as offended. It only remained to find out by whom. But even this was not so difficult - all the same Krenitsyn and Levashev, who pushed the commander of the galliots "Saint Catherine" and "Saint Paul" to flee from Kamchatka.

Yakov Kuznetsov

And all these islands were to blame. In 1741, Aleksey Lazukov went to sea on the state-owned packet boat "Saint Peter", visited the coast of America, landed on the Shumaginsky Islands and tried to talk - he was an interpreter on the ship - with the native Americans, who recognized him as their own and did not even want to let go . In December, the crew of the packet boat landed on a desert island. In order to survive, each of the crew, whether an officer or a simple interpreter, had to give up everything that separated them in ordinary life - from ranks, privileges, feelings of national superiority and class rights ... And they survived. They made a gookor from the remains of a packet boat and returned back to Kamchatka ... Lazukov must have recalled the months spent on Commander Island very often. This happy story was passed from mouth to mouth. The feeling of brotherhood experienced on the islands made Alexei Lazukov happy and ruined - he could not turn his weapon against those who revealed to him a new understanding of life, and therefore he preferred to surrender, knowing that he would not be forgiven either by the executioner of Khotuntsevsky, or by his brothers in arms and blood, whom he betrayed for the sake of his other brothers - in spirit...

Such is the story. And Yakov Kuznetsov should have known her. Maybe that's why he went to distant lands to find the same island and arrange on it the same happy life that appeared to Lazukov ...

Dmitry Bocharov

Sailors from the galliot "St. Catherine" - Vasily Potolov, Pyotr Sofronov, Gerasim Beresnev, Timofey Semyachenkov - fled with him. Only Vasily Potolov, a sailor from the “expatriate prisoners”, followed with Benevsky, the rest remained with their commander, Dmitry Bocharov. Upon returning to Russia, Bocharov asked to be left in the naval service in Okhotsk, but received a resignation, and Irkutsk was assigned to him as a place of residence. However, Bocharov could not live without the sea and willingly gave his consent to the Kamchatka merchants Luka Alin and Pyotr Sidorov to lead the fishing boat "Peter and Pavel" east to the islands rich in fur-bearing animals. Among the companions of Alina and Sidorova, for the first time, the young Rylsk merchant Grigory Shelikhov also tried his luck - then he was just trying on where it would be more profitable to attach the capital of his wife, the widow of a wealthy Irkutsk merchant, as his wife's grandfather Nikifor Trapeznikov advised him. In 1783, Grigory Ivanovich invited Bocharov to his place and appointed him commander of the galliot "Saint Michael", who that same year, as part of an expedition, went to Kodiak to establish the first settlement of the future Russian America. On the flagship - the galliot "Three Saints" - went along with Shelikhov, the ship's commander, navigator Gerasim Izmailov, whom at the end of May 1771 Benievsky left on the uninhabited Kuril island of Simushir. And in the future, the seafaring fates of Izmailov and Bocharov will be inseparable from each other.

Gerasim Izmailov

Zyablikov left with Benyevsky and died in Macau, while Izmailov remained on a desert island with the Paranchins. It happened on May 29, 1771.

Dmitry Bocharov, having circled Asia and Europe, having lived for more than a year in France, was sent from St. Petersburg to his new place of residence - to Irkutsk on October 5, 1773.

Sergei Vakhrin