Tavdinsky Sloboda

Tavdinsky Sloboda stood on the Tavda, a tributary of the Tobol east of the Urals. The settlement was established in the early seventeenth century on land granted to the Tobolsk church. Its river setting offered fishing grounds and farmland, while villages grew in the surrounding district.

In 1622 Tsar Michael confirmed a grant of land to Archbishop Cyprian of Tobolsk, and by the 1625 survey Tavdinsky Sloboda was recorded among the church’s holdings. Peasants came from various parts of European Russia to settle along the river. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the sloboda and its dependent villages contained more than five hundred church peasants. The Tavda linked these communities with the Tobol and the wider river network of western Siberia.