Bolshaya Sibirskaya Street

Tobolsk played an important role in the development and management of Siberia. Since its foundation, it has been a major administrative, commercial and economic center of a vast territory.

Being a kind of gateway to Siberia, Tobolsk also becomes a place of exile. However, the first exile in the city was not a man, but a bell from Uglich, sent to Tobolsk by Boris Godunov for calling the Uglich people to outrage over the murder of the young Tsarevich Dmitry. The rebellious townspeople, as punishment, dragged a bell weighing 19 pounds 28 pounds, and, having reached Tobolsk, went further to the Pelymsky prison.

In the first half of the XVII century, the first Lithuanian forced laborers appeared in the city, participants of all kinds of demonstrations, robber gangs and detachments. In the Tobolsk Theotokos-Assumption Convent, special cells were arranged where criminals were kept. In the second half of the XVII century, the famous Slavic educator Yuri Krizhanich was in exile in Tobolsk. Participants of the peasant war led by Stepan Razin passed through Tobolsk. The leader of the Old Believers, Archpriest Avvakum (Petrov), was sent to the Tobolsk Church of the All-Merciful Savior. Participants and victims of palace coups were exiled to Siberia: A.D. Menshikov, Princes Dolgorukov, D.M. Golitsin, E.I. Biron, B.K. Minikh, G.I. Osterman.

Stage and convict prisons, which form the basis of prison policy, have existed almost at all times in the history of Tobolsk. At first, these were unsuitable premises, but in the second half of the XVIII century in the area of the Kurdyumovsky ravine, a wooden jail was laid for the detention of criminals and prisoners. At the same time, Ostrozhnaya Street appeared.
In Soviet times, the street was renamed Bolshaya Sibirskaya. Bolshaya Sibirskaya Street is unique in that it has preserved the historical contours formed before the fire of 1788.

The first wooden Peter and Paul Church was built in the second half of the XVII century, but did not survive two major fires. A wooden Forerunner church was moved to its place.

The stone Church of Peter and Paul was founded in 1768. The main altar was consecrated in the name of the supreme Apostles Peter and Paul, and two side chapels — in the name of Metropolitan Alexei of Moscow and St. Nil Stolbensky. There was also a parish cemetery attached to the church.

The fact of bringing to the city the miraculous icon of the Mother of God of Pochaev from the Ioanno-Vvedensky Monastery, which was brought to the Peter and Paul Church for several days, has been established. The staff of the church included a priest and a psalmist, and the parish included nine villages.

In August 1904, Peter Kuznetsov, a priest of the Peter and Paul Church, was sent to the front of the Russian-Japanese War as a regimental priest of the 9th Siberian Infantry Tobolsk Regiment. It was in the Peter and Paul Church, on August 5, 1912, that the Tobolsk merchant Alexander Adrianovich Syromyatnikov was buried.

In the 1930s, the church lost its crosses and fence, and a wooden ceiling was built inside the temple above the first tier.

The Tobolsk Theological Seminary was located in the temple from 1989 to 1992, when the first students began to restore the beautiful architecture under the guidance of mentors and teachers. As a result, during the first academic year, a huge amount of construction and repair work was carried out, the second floor was equipped, where the sacristy, administrative offices, educational and residential premises were equipped. Repair work was carried out until 2012. Currently, the church has been restored and services are held in it.

The residential building belongs to the end of the XIX — beginning of the XX century. The building is located on one of the old streets of Tobolsk, which starts from the square behind the Kremlin and leads along the ravine of the Kurdyumka River. The house was cut down with a seven-stalk and divided into several parts. The strict plastic of the log walls harmonizes with the decorative platbands. The famous writer, historian Vyacheslav Yurievich Sofronov lives in the house.

The government, by appropriating Siberia, understood what a vast and harsh prison it had received and tried in every possible way to populate this desolate region. Stage and convict prisons existed almost at all times in the history of Tobolsk. At first, these were premises unsuitable for these purposes, but in the second half of the XVIII century in the area of the Kurdyumovsky ravine, a wooden prison was laid for the detention of criminals and prisoners.

At the end of the XVIII century the prison was expanded — brick buildings were built in it, which existed along with wooden ones. But it could not accommodate all the criminals being sent to Siberia, so new buildings were needed. At the end of the XVIII century 5 prisons and two workhouses were built in Western Siberia — in Tobolsk and Tomsk. The prisons were small and could accommodate up to 30 people, and all the prisons in Western Siberia — about 150 people.
The further colonization of Siberia at the beginning of the XIX century and the growth in the number of exiles forces the government to make decisions on the construction of new prisons — "prison castles", or model prisons. By 1819, there were already 14 prisons in Western Siberia and three prisons in Eastern Siberia.

In the prison there was a special room of the guardhouse, where the executioner was housed. The executioners, as a rule, were chosen from among the prisoners. These were dangerous criminals who managed to earn the trust of the authorities and received an annual salary for their work.
A feature of the Tobolsk prison was the "secret numbers", which contained especially dangerous criminals chained to the wall. One of the known criminals was a certain Ivan Korenev, who, according to him, committed 18 murders. In Tobolsk, Korenev became very famous. The prisoners respected him, the officials were afraid and imagined him to be a wild beast, on the contrary, their bored wives took Korenev for a magician and went to him for advice. When in 1850 the convicted Petrashevites arrived at the prison, Korenev, to everyone’s surprise, treated them with understanding, even taught them some prison wisdom.

The famous counterfeiter, the master of clay miniatures Ignatius Caesik and the manufacturer of false documents Pyotr Vetvenitsky were kept in the "prison castle".
After the construction of a new prison in Tobolsk in 1855, the old prison was reconstructed and gradually renovated. In 1913, the complex included a prison building, barracks, offices, women’s cells and administrative buildings. In the 1930s, the prison was rebuilt and expanded. In Soviet times, the old prison complex was used for its intended purpose.

Currently, a women’s correctional colony is located here.