Boris Petrovich Polevoy
Encyclopedia
Boris Petrovich Polevoy was a Russian historian known for his work on the history of the Russian Far East
. He was honored in Kamchatka for his work on the study of the region's history,
and has been described in the West as "a leading Soviet specialist on the history of Russian cartography".
of 1917. Boris' parents - the geologist Petr Ignatyevich Polevoy (Петр Игнатьевич Полевой; 1873–1938) and Antonina Mikhailovna (Антонина Михайловна) Polevoy, née Golovachev, planned to reach Sakhalin
Islands, but ended up staying for a few months in Chita, in Russian Transbaikalia, where Antonina Polevoy's relatives lived, and where she gave birth to Boris. The family eventually reached Sakhalin in August 1918, but moved to Vladivostok
in early 1920, where Petr Polevoy joined the staff of the Geological Committee; by 1924, he became the Committee's director.
The Polevoys returned to Saint Petersburg in 1928. Boris entered Leningrad University in 1936. Even though his father was arrested in 1937 and died in prison the following year, Boris managed to graduate from the university with a history degree in 1941. His graduation day, June 22, happened to be the day when the Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. Although Boris' advisors recommended him for graduate school, the option was closed to him at the time, due to his father being labeled an "enemy of the people".
Boris received a health-based draft deferment, and spent a few months teaching school in Western Siberia and advising East Kazakhstan Provincial government, until he was finally drafted by the Army
in March 1942. Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant
(младший лейтенант) after short training in Andijan
, Uzbekistan
, he fought on the North Caucasian Front as a commander of a machine-gun platoon. Wounded in October, he spent a while in hospitals, worked for a while for a military office in Sverdlovsk
and eventually discharged from the Army in January 1944.
He started his teaching career in February 1944, teaching history first at Sverdlovsk
School of Music, and later at the History Department of Ural State University
.
In October 1945 Boris Polevoy was finally able to enter graduate school at the History Department of Leningrad University, working on a dissertation on the history of the US foreign policy in the mid-19 century, and teaching classes at his department. His advisor was the famous Russian historian Yevgeny Tarle
.
During the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan
s" in 1949 he was accused by the university ideologists of designing his US history course in a politically inappropriate way, and being influenced by "American capitalist literature", and fired from the department. He was sick and unemployed for a long time, re-entering gainful employment only in November 1952, when the Soviet Navy
's Office of Naval History (исторический отдел Главного штаба ВМС) hired him as a senior researcher. But he lost that job too, when the entire Navy Ministry was abolished in 1953.
It was then, in 1953, that the unemployed historian started conducting research of his own in Russian archives, studying the history of Russia's expansion into the Pacific Region - the provinces now commonly known as the Russian Far East
- during the 17 through 19th centuries. It remained the area of his interests for the rest of his research career. The next year (1954), he became affiliated with the Russian Geographical Society
- an affiliation which also continued to be important for him for the rest of his life.
B.P. Polevoy was able to defend his Cand. Hist. Sci. dissertation only many years later, after which (in 1970) he was invited to join the Leningrad Branch of N. N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The years of his work at the institute, which lasted until his retirement in 1997, were the most stable and productive period of his career. During this period (in 1986) he was awarded his Doctor of Science
degree for his dissertation on the topic of "Russian Geographical Discoveries in the Far East from the 1630s until the 1860s" («Русские географические открытия на Дальнем Востоке с 30-х годов XVII века до 60-х годов XIX в.»).
Over his career, B.P. Polevoy was the author of over 300 publications, including ten books. His publications concerned the history of Russian exploration in the Amur Valley, Sakhalin
Island, Kuril Islands
, Kamchatka, as well as the early contacts between Russia and Japan.
While comparatively little of Polevoy's work is available in English, he contributed (together with Elena Okladnikova) a section on "Historical Accounts of Mapmaking" in the "Traditional Cartography in Arctic and Subarctic Eurasia" chapter of The History of Cartography (in volume 2, book 3; edited by David Woodward
and G. Malcolm Lewis).
(or Juchers) - the agriculturists whom the Cossacks of the 1650s encountered on the middle Amur and the lower Sungari, only to see them disappear from the region a few years later, when the Manchu government
evacuated them further south, out of the reach of Russian tribute-seekers. Based on his analysis of the Ducher personal names preserved in Russian records, B.P. Polevoy was arguing in a number of works since the 1960s until practically the end of his life that the Duchers were simply the Nanais, who still live in the region (but who, unlike the historical Duchers, have been always known primarily as fishermen, rather than farmers).
According to other participants of the discussion (who, both before and after Polevoy, usually thought the Duchers to have been an offshot of the Jurchens
), Polevoy's opinion has not been supported by other experts in the history or languages of the region.
and at a number of sites along the Amur and its tributaries, and the identification of various ostrogs whose names we know from the historical account with the 17th-century archaeological sites that have been discovered on the Amur since the 1850s. Particular attention is often paid to Fort Achansk, or Achansky Gorodok - a winter camp used by Khabarov's band in the land of the Achan people (a Nanai tribe) in 1651/52, which in March 1652 became the site of the first engagement between the Russian Cossacks and Manchu
troops, and which has traditionally been considered the predecessor of the later Khabarovsk
. Various scholars have proposed a number of sites for Achansk, on both sides of the river upstream and downstream of Khabarovsk, since Richard Maack
in 1859 identified it with the ruins on Cape Kyrma, which is located on the southern (Chinese) shore of the Amur, upstream of Khabarovsk. B.P. Polevoy, however, believed that Khabarov's Achansk was the village later known as Odzhal-Bolon
, located on the left bank of the Amur, closer to Amursk
than to Khabarovsk. One of his arguments was that both Khabarov's Achan (sometimes also spelled by the explorer as Otshchan, Отщан), and Wuzhala (乌扎拉) of the Chinese records of the 1652 engagement are based on the name of the Nanai clan "Odzhal" (Оджал), corresponding to the 20th-century name of the village as well. (Incidentally, the name of the clan was also written as "Uzala", as in the name of its best known member, Dersu Uzala
).
B.P. Polevoy's view appeared to gain wide support among the Russian georgrapher community; petitioned by the Amur Branch of the Russian Geographical Society
, the Russian Government
renamed the village of Odzhal to Achan in 1977, to celebrate its connection with Khabarov's raid. Polevoy himself considered the renaming somewhat pointless, however, since from his point of view Khabarov's "Achan" was simply a corruption of the clan name, which was already reflected in the name of the village.
As to the Cape Kyrma ruins, thought by Maack to be the remains of Achansk, B.P. Polevoy identified them as the remains of another ostrog - namely, Kosogorsky Ostrog, where Onufriy Stepanov
stayed a few years later.
in the Russian expansion of the Amur basin in the 1650s. Practically since the "discovery" of Khabarov for the Russian reader by Russian archivists and journalists in 1840, Khabarov was viewed by the Russian public mostly as a hero, early on becoming sort of a civil "patron saint" for the city of Khabarovsk
, named in his honor. When writing about the mutiny of one of Khabarov's lieutenants, yesaul
Stepan Vasilyevich Polyakov, who with over a hundred followers refused to obey Khabarov in 1652, Russian and Soviet historians traditionally viewed the mutineers as merely "more anxious to plunder the natives than to fight the Chinese" - the point of view accepted by some Western authors as well.
B.P. Polevoy, who devoted much of his work to the study of Khabarov's Amur raids, and published the "Denunciation Letter" (Izvetnaya gramota) written by the surviving Polyakov mutineers against Khabarov, viewed both Khabarov's role and the mutineers' motives differently. In his 1995 article with which he prefaced Polyakov's "Denunciation Letter", B.P. Polevoy analyzes the reasons for the mutineers' dissatisfaction with Khabarov's actions. Khabarov's wanton killing of the natives who had already submitted to the Russian Czar's authority, and his murder of the wife of the Daurian Prince Shilginey, who was kept as a hostage and would not sleep with him, were antagonizing the local population. His reselling of government supplies to the members of his own band at extortionate prices, often on credit and on usurious conditions, did not foster cohesion in his crew. In Polevoy's view, many of the future mutineers had come to the Amur in the hope to settle somewhere on the fertile lands along its banks as farmers, but Khabarov's abandoning of Albazin
, captured by him from the Daurs in 1650, and his strategy of moving quickly up and down the river, collecting "tribute" from the natives to maximize his immediate profit, frustrated the Cossacks' plans for settlement.
Based on his study of Polyakov's "Denunciation Letter", and a number of other documents related to Khabarov's expedition of 1650-1653 and its aftermath, Polevoy calls the traditional "veneration" (культ) of Khabarov "quite strange", and opines that if not for Khabarov's "mistakes" (which turned the Daurs and Duchers
against the Russians and toward the Manchus, and were not conducive to a sustainable colonization program), the entire course of later events
in the region could have been quite different.
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
. He was honored in Kamchatka for his work on the study of the region's history,
and has been described in the West as "a leading Soviet specialist on the history of Russian cartography".
Biography
Boris Polevoy was born in Chita, in the family of Saint Peterburgers who left Saint Petersburg in the spring of 1918, soon after the October RevolutionOctober Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
of 1917. Boris' parents - the geologist Petr Ignatyevich Polevoy (Петр Игнатьевич Полевой; 1873–1938) and Antonina Mikhailovna (Антонина Михайловна) Polevoy, née Golovachev, planned to reach Sakhalin
Sakhalin
Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...
Islands, but ended up staying for a few months in Chita, in Russian Transbaikalia, where Antonina Polevoy's relatives lived, and where she gave birth to Boris. The family eventually reached Sakhalin in August 1918, but moved to Vladivostok
Vladivostok
The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...
in early 1920, where Petr Polevoy joined the staff of the Geological Committee; by 1924, he became the Committee's director.
The Polevoys returned to Saint Petersburg in 1928. Boris entered Leningrad University in 1936. Even though his father was arrested in 1937 and died in prison the following year, Boris managed to graduate from the university with a history degree in 1941. His graduation day, June 22, happened to be the day when the Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. Although Boris' advisors recommended him for graduate school, the option was closed to him at the time, due to his father being labeled an "enemy of the people".
Boris received a health-based draft deferment, and spent a few months teaching school in Western Siberia and advising East Kazakhstan Provincial government, until he was finally drafted by the Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
in March 1942. Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
(младший лейтенант) after short training in Andijan
Andijan
Andijan or Andizhan is the fourth-largest city in Uzbekistan, and the capital of the Andijan Province. It is located in the east of the country, at , in the Fergana Valley, near the border with Kyrgyzstan on the Andijan-Say River...
, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
, he fought on the North Caucasian Front as a commander of a machine-gun platoon. Wounded in October, he spent a while in hospitals, worked for a while for a military office in Sverdlovsk
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
and eventually discharged from the Army in January 1944.
He started his teaching career in February 1944, teaching history first at Sverdlovsk
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
School of Music, and later at the History Department of Ural State University
Ural State University
The Ural State University is located in the city of Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russian Federation. Founded in 1920, it was an exclusive educational establishment made of several institutes which later became independent universities and schools.In 1936 the university was named after one of...
.
In October 1945 Boris Polevoy was finally able to enter graduate school at the History Department of Leningrad University, working on a dissertation on the history of the US foreign policy in the mid-19 century, and teaching classes at his department. His advisor was the famous Russian historian Yevgeny Tarle
Yevgeny Tarle
Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle was a Soviet historian and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is known for his books about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and on the Crimean War, and many other works...
.
During the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan
Rootless cosmopolitan was a Soviet euphemism widely used during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1948–1953, which culminated in the "exposure" of the alleged Doctors' plot...
s" in 1949 he was accused by the university ideologists of designing his US history course in a politically inappropriate way, and being influenced by "American capitalist literature", and fired from the department. He was sick and unemployed for a long time, re-entering gainful employment only in November 1952, when the Soviet Navy
Soviet Navy
The Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy would have played an instrumental role in a Warsaw Pact war with NATO, where it would have attempted to prevent naval convoys from bringing reinforcements across the Atlantic Ocean...
's Office of Naval History (исторический отдел Главного штаба ВМС) hired him as a senior researcher. But he lost that job too, when the entire Navy Ministry was abolished in 1953.
It was then, in 1953, that the unemployed historian started conducting research of his own in Russian archives, studying the history of Russia's expansion into the Pacific Region - the provinces now commonly known as the Russian Far East
Russian Far East
Russian Far East is a term that refers to the Russian part of the Far East, i.e., extreme east parts of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean...
- during the 17 through 19th centuries. It remained the area of his interests for the rest of his research career. The next year (1954), he became affiliated with the Russian Geographical Society
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society is a learned society, founded on 6 August 1845 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.-Imperial Geographical Society:Prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, it was known as the Imperial Russian Geographical Society....
- an affiliation which also continued to be important for him for the rest of his life.
B.P. Polevoy was able to defend his Cand. Hist. Sci. dissertation only many years later, after which (in 1970) he was invited to join the Leningrad Branch of N. N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The years of his work at the institute, which lasted until his retirement in 1997, were the most stable and productive period of his career. During this period (in 1986) he was awarded his Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science
Doctor of Science , usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D. or Dr.Sc., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries Doctor of Science is the name used for the standard doctorate in the sciences, elsewhere the Sc.D...
degree for his dissertation on the topic of "Russian Geographical Discoveries in the Far East from the 1630s until the 1860s" («Русские географические открытия на Дальнем Востоке с 30-х годов XVII века до 60-х годов XIX в.»).
Over his career, B.P. Polevoy was the author of over 300 publications, including ten books. His publications concerned the history of Russian exploration in the Amur Valley, Sakhalin
Sakhalin
Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...
Island, Kuril Islands
Kuril Islands
The Kuril Islands , in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, form a volcanic archipelago that stretches approximately northeast from Hokkaidō, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands and many more minor rocks. It consists of Greater...
, Kamchatka, as well as the early contacts between Russia and Japan.
While comparatively little of Polevoy's work is available in English, he contributed (together with Elena Okladnikova) a section on "Historical Accounts of Mapmaking" in the "Traditional Cartography in Arctic and Subarctic Eurasia" chapter of The History of Cartography (in volume 2, book 3; edited by David Woodward
David Woodward
David Woodward was an English-born American historian of cartography and cartographer.- Biography :Woodward was born in Royal Leamington Spa, England. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Manchester, England, he came to the United States to study cartography under Arthur H....
and G. Malcolm Lewis).
The Amur Valley
One of major topics of B.P. Polevoy's research was the Russians' abortive expansion into the Amur Valley during the mid- to late 17th century. He expressed his, often controversial, but always erudite, opinions on a number of issues that have long been the topic of contention among the historians of the period.The Duchers
One of the issues B.P. Polevoy weighed in on was the identity of the somewhat enigmatic DuchersDuchers
The Duchers was the Russian name of the people populating the shores of the middle course of the Amur River, approximately from the mouth of the Zeya down to the mouth of the Ussury, and possibly even somewhat further downstream...
(or Juchers) - the agriculturists whom the Cossacks of the 1650s encountered on the middle Amur and the lower Sungari, only to see them disappear from the region a few years later, when the Manchu government
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
evacuated them further south, out of the reach of Russian tribute-seekers. Based on his analysis of the Ducher personal names preserved in Russian records, B.P. Polevoy was arguing in a number of works since the 1960s until practically the end of his life that the Duchers were simply the Nanais, who still live in the region (but who, unlike the historical Duchers, have been always known primarily as fishermen, rather than farmers).
According to other participants of the discussion (who, both before and after Polevoy, usually thought the Duchers to have been an offshot of the Jurchens
Jurchens
The Jurchens were a Tungusic people who inhabited the region of Manchuria until the 17th century, when they adopted the name Manchu...
), Polevoy's opinion has not been supported by other experts in the history or languages of the region.
Location of the 17th century Cossack sites on the Amur
Another problem often discussed in the Russian literature on the history of the Amur valley region is the location of various ostrogs (forts, or sometimes just slightly fortified winter camps) built by the raiders of Yerofey KhabarovYerofey Khabarov
Yerofey Pavlovich Khabarov or Svyatitsky Erofej Pavlovič Chabarov , was a Russian entrepreneur and adventurer, best known for his exploring the Amur river region and his attempts to colonize the area for Russia...
and at a number of sites along the Amur and its tributaries, and the identification of various ostrogs whose names we know from the historical account with the 17th-century archaeological sites that have been discovered on the Amur since the 1850s. Particular attention is often paid to Fort Achansk, or Achansky Gorodok - a winter camp used by Khabarov's band in the land of the Achan people (a Nanai tribe) in 1651/52, which in March 1652 became the site of the first engagement between the Russian Cossacks and Manchu
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
troops, and which has traditionally been considered the predecessor of the later Khabarovsk
Khabarovsk
Khabarovsk is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It is located some from the Chinese border. It is the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Vladivostok. The city became the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia...
. Various scholars have proposed a number of sites for Achansk, on both sides of the river upstream and downstream of Khabarovsk, since Richard Maack
Richard Maack
Richard Otto Maack was a 19th century Russian naturalist, geographer, and anthropologist. He is most known for his exploration of the Russian Far East and Siberia, particularly the Ussuri and Amur River valleys...
in 1859 identified it with the ruins on Cape Kyrma, which is located on the southern (Chinese) shore of the Amur, upstream of Khabarovsk. B.P. Polevoy, however, believed that Khabarov's Achansk was the village later known as Odzhal-Bolon
Lake Bolon
Lake Bolon is a large freshwater lake in the Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It has an area of 338 km², it is 70 km long and 20 km wide. Maximum depth is about 4 m. It is located on the broad west-bank flood plain of the Amur River about 80 km south of Komsomolsk and drains into the...
, located on the left bank of the Amur, closer to Amursk
Amursk
Amursk is a town in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the left bank of the Amur River some south of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Population: -History:...
than to Khabarovsk. One of his arguments was that both Khabarov's Achan (sometimes also spelled by the explorer as Otshchan, Отщан), and Wuzhala (乌扎拉) of the Chinese records of the 1652 engagement are based on the name of the Nanai clan "Odzhal" (Оджал), corresponding to the 20th-century name of the village as well. (Incidentally, the name of the clan was also written as "Uzala", as in the name of its best known member, Dersu Uzala
Dersu Uzala
Dersu Uzala is the title of a 1923 book by the Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev.-Plot:Arsenyev's book tells of his travels in the Ussuri basin in the Russian Far East. Dersu was the name of a Nanai hunter who acted as a guide for Arsenyev's surveying crew from 1902 to 1907, and saved them from...
).
B.P. Polevoy's view appeared to gain wide support among the Russian georgrapher community; petitioned by the Amur Branch of the Russian Geographical Society
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society is a learned society, founded on 6 August 1845 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.-Imperial Geographical Society:Prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, it was known as the Imperial Russian Geographical Society....
, the Russian Government
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
renamed the village of Odzhal to Achan in 1977, to celebrate its connection with Khabarov's raid. Polevoy himself considered the renaming somewhat pointless, however, since from his point of view Khabarov's "Achan" was simply a corruption of the clan name, which was already reflected in the name of the village.
As to the Cape Kyrma ruins, thought by Maack to be the remains of Achansk, B.P. Polevoy identified them as the remains of another ostrog - namely, Kosogorsky Ostrog, where Onufriy Stepanov
Onufriy Stepanov
Onufriy Stepanov was a Siberian Cossack and explorer of the Amur River. For background see Russian–Manchu border conflicts....
stayed a few years later.
Polyakov's Mutiny
A more important issue on which Polevoy made a contribution was that of the role of Yerofey KhabarovYerofey Khabarov
Yerofey Pavlovich Khabarov or Svyatitsky Erofej Pavlovič Chabarov , was a Russian entrepreneur and adventurer, best known for his exploring the Amur river region and his attempts to colonize the area for Russia...
in the Russian expansion of the Amur basin in the 1650s. Practically since the "discovery" of Khabarov for the Russian reader by Russian archivists and journalists in 1840, Khabarov was viewed by the Russian public mostly as a hero, early on becoming sort of a civil "patron saint" for the city of Khabarovsk
Khabarovsk
Khabarovsk is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It is located some from the Chinese border. It is the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Vladivostok. The city became the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia...
, named in his honor. When writing about the mutiny of one of Khabarov's lieutenants, yesaul
Yesaul
Yesaul, or Osaul , , a post and a rank in the Ukrainian and Russian Cossack units.The first records of the rank imply that it was introduced by Stefan Batory, King of Poland in 1576.-Cossacks in Russia:...
Stepan Vasilyevich Polyakov, who with over a hundred followers refused to obey Khabarov in 1652, Russian and Soviet historians traditionally viewed the mutineers as merely "more anxious to plunder the natives than to fight the Chinese" - the point of view accepted by some Western authors as well.
B.P. Polevoy, who devoted much of his work to the study of Khabarov's Amur raids, and published the "Denunciation Letter" (Izvetnaya gramota) written by the surviving Polyakov mutineers against Khabarov, viewed both Khabarov's role and the mutineers' motives differently. In his 1995 article with which he prefaced Polyakov's "Denunciation Letter", B.P. Polevoy analyzes the reasons for the mutineers' dissatisfaction with Khabarov's actions. Khabarov's wanton killing of the natives who had already submitted to the Russian Czar's authority, and his murder of the wife of the Daurian Prince Shilginey, who was kept as a hostage and would not sleep with him, were antagonizing the local population. His reselling of government supplies to the members of his own band at extortionate prices, often on credit and on usurious conditions, did not foster cohesion in his crew. In Polevoy's view, many of the future mutineers had come to the Amur in the hope to settle somewhere on the fertile lands along its banks as farmers, but Khabarov's abandoning of Albazin
Albazin
Albazino is a village in Skovorodinsky District of Amur Oblast, Russia, noted as the site of Albazin , the first Russian settlement on the Amur River....
, captured by him from the Daurs in 1650, and his strategy of moving quickly up and down the river, collecting "tribute" from the natives to maximize his immediate profit, frustrated the Cossacks' plans for settlement.
Based on his study of Polyakov's "Denunciation Letter", and a number of other documents related to Khabarov's expedition of 1650-1653 and its aftermath, Polevoy calls the traditional "veneration" (культ) of Khabarov "quite strange", and opines that if not for Khabarov's "mistakes" (which turned the Daurs and Duchers
Duchers
The Duchers was the Russian name of the people populating the shores of the middle course of the Amur River, approximately from the mouth of the Zeya down to the mouth of the Ussury, and possibly even somewhat further downstream...
against the Russians and toward the Manchus, and were not conducive to a sustainable colonization program), the entire course of later events
Russian-Manchu border conflicts
The Russian–Manchu border conflicts were a series of intermittent skirmishes between the Manchus and the Cossacks in which the Cossacks tried and failed to gain the land north of the Amur River...
in the region could have been quite different.