Afanassi Fedotowitsch Shestakov

Afanassi Fedotowitsch Schestakow ( Russian Афанасий Федотович Шестаков , * 1677 in Yakutia , Russian Empire ; † March 14, 1730 on Egach , Penschinabusen , Russian Far East ) was a Russian-Yakut Cossack and explorer. From 1727 to 1730 he led an expedition to subdue the Chukchi and conquer new territories in north-eastern Siberia and was killed by the Chukchi in the Battle of Egach.

Life

Shestakov came from a Cossack family, began his military career as a commoner and rose to major by 1725. In 1724 he drew up a map of northeast Siberia and the Kuril archipelago . With this he traveled to Saint Petersburg in 1725 to submit the proposal to the government of the Russian Empire to entrust him with the management of a military expedition. Their aim should be on the one hand to subdue the Chukchi who refused to pay Yassak to the Russian tsar , on the other hand to make new geographical discoveries beyond Eastern Siberia and to take possession of the already known islands. On March 23, 1827 a ukase was issued, which laid down the goals of the expedition in detail and gave Shestakov precise instructions. He was assigned 400 soldiers from the Yakutsk garrison , under the command of Major Dmitri Pavluzki . He was also authorized to recruit volunteers from among the Cossacks and the Siberian peoples. Military instructors should train the troops in the use of cannons and mortars . His expedition team also included a mining expert and the cartographer Michail Gwosdew .

In 1728, Shestakov sent two expeditions north from Yakutsk , the first under the direction of Ivan Kosyrewski (1680–1734) to the Lena Estuary and the second led by Vasily Schipitsyn to the Kolyma Estuary . He himself arrived in Okhotsk in 1729, built two ships and took over two more. Two of the ships were to sail along the north coast of the Sea of Okhotsk and in the next season sail around the southern tip of Kamchatka to the mouth of the Anadyr , one through Bolsheretsk in southern Kamchatka to the Kuriles and the fourth to the Shantar Islands in the south of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Shestakov himself drove on the Vostochny Gavriil . He went ashore in Talak and marched to the Ostrog of Tauisk . He commissioned the construction of more ships and moved on with a squad of 143 men in 1730 to subdue the rebellious Koryaks . He got to the Egach River without any problems, where he met a Chukchi force. Shestakov decided to attack, but was beaten and fatally wounded himself. Pavluzki led cruel punitive expeditions against the Chukchi in 1731/32, but could not subdue them. Gwosdew sailed the Bering Strait in 1732 and was the first Russian to go ashore in Alaska .

Today the river is called Egach Shestakovka. Furthermore, a bay and a cape in the Tauisk Bay and an island in the Penschinabusen are named after Afanassi Shestakov.

Web links

• А. С. Зуев: Павлуцкий, Шестаков, Афанасий Федотович in the history dictionary of Siberia (2009, Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Lydia T. Black: Russians in Alaska, 1732-1867 . University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks 2004, ISBN 1-889963-04-6 , pp. 23 ff . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
2. ↑ Зуев: Павлуцкий, Шестаков, Афанасий Федотович in the history dictionary of Siberia , 2009 (Russian).