Tobolsk

Tobolsk grew out of the Russian conquest of Siberia. In 1582 the Cossacks of Yermak Timofeyevich took Qashliq, the capital of the Khanate of Sibir, nearby; after years of fighting, a group of Cossacks under Daniil Chulkov founded Tobolsk in 1587 near its ruins, where the Irtysh turns north at its meeting with the Tobol. It was the second Russian town in Siberia after Tyumen, and it quickly became the base for the conquest of the lands beyond and a trading town on the river routes to China and Bukhara.

In 1708 Tobolsk became the capital of the vast Siberia Governorate, and Siberia's first school, theatre and newspaper were founded here. Swedish prisoners taken at Poltava in 1709 made up about a quarter of the population and helped build the kremlin, whose stone walls and buildings went up around 1700 under the cartographer and first historian of Siberia, Semyon Remezov. Through the 18th century the town's importance shrank as Siberia was divided, and the seat of the Governor-General of Western Siberia moved to Omsk in the 1820s or 1830s, but it remained a provincial capital until 1920.

Tobolsk became a place of exile: Decembrists settled here after 1825, and Dostoevsky passed through its prison. The decisive blow came in the 1890s, when the Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed it to the south. In August 1917 the Provisional Government sent the deposed Nicholas II and his family to the Governor's Mansion; they stayed until April 1918, when the Bolsheviks moved them to Yekaterinburg, where they were killed. The railway finally arrived in 1967, and oil refining and petrochemicals now drive the town's economy.

Tobolsk sees itself as the old capital of Siberia and the cradle of its church: it is the seat of the first Orthodox diocese in Siberia and an important centre of Orthodox education, and in 1994 the Holy Synod named it, with Moscow and St Petersburg, one of Russia's main spiritual centres. Its drama theatre, named after the writer Pyotr Yershov, traces its foundation to 1705.

The town is proud of its famous people: the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev was born in the village of Verkhnie Aremzyani near Tobolsk and studied at the town's gymnasium, and the composer Alexander Alyabyev, the painter Vasily Perov and the geographer Semyon Remezov are among the notable people linked with the town, which put up a monument to Alyabyev in 2017. Its exiles are just as much part of the story, from the Swedish prisoners and the Decembrists to the imperial family.

Siberian Tatars, descendants of the people of the Khanate of Sibir, make up about a sixth of the population, and the town has a Siberian Tatar cultural centre and a festival of their heritage. Bone-carving survives as a traditional craft, with its own factory museum, and a festival of historical re-enactment is held at Abalak.

About 100,000 people lived in Tobolsk at the 2021 census. The historic upper and lower towns hold the kremlin, a museum-reserve since 1961.

The economy rests on oil refining and petrochemicals. The Sibur petrochemical complex is the main employer of the town and of Tyumen Oblast, and in 2013 it opened Russia's largest polypropylene plant. The river port is a major transfer point for goods bound for the north, which arrive by rail and continue by water. Tourism has grown fast: about 335,000 visitors came in 2023, most from the oil regions of Khanty-Mansi and Yamal and from Yekaterinburg, Omsk and other cities, and the town counts 18 museums.

Winter is long and very cold, and life moves indoors and onto the buses; in summer the kremlin's events and the Irtysh embankments fill up. The opening of the airport in 2021 brought direct flights from Moscow and other big cities for the first time.

Muksun, a whitefish of the Siberian Arctic waters and major rivers, is valued locally as food, and with nelma it is one of the fish used for stroganina, a dish of the northern Russians and the Indigenous peoples of Arctic Siberia: raw fish frozen and cut into long, thin slices. Chir and omul, two more Siberian whitefish, are also used for it. Tobolsk was also known for its confectionery, made by companies run by Karelian immigrants.

Siberian Tatar cooking brings barley, noodles, kattama, boortsog and peremech, a fried pie, along with dairy foods such as kaymak and qurut. Pelmeni, the dumplings that became a Russian staple during the expansion into the Urals and Siberia, and other Russian staples — borsch and shchi, pirozhki, kasha and blini — are the everyday food, and zakuski of pickled cucumbers and mushrooms, herring and black bread open a proper meal. Tea drunk strong with jam and kvass are the traditional drinks.