The glorification of Prince Ireniak as an example of the falsification of history
Historical Memory often differs from actual historical events. These discrepancies arise not only naturally, but also as a result of deliberate efforts by both government agencies and the intelligentsia. The creation of a historical memory that contradicts historical facts can be considered a falsification of history. Nowadays, the distortion of history occurs not only with global events but also with individuals, sometimes on a local or regional scale. A striking example of such a falsification of history is the attempt to glorify Irenyak, one of the rulers of the Yenisei Kyrgyz, which is currently taking place in some regions of Central Siberia.
The territory of the Kyrgyz Kaganate in the 9th century. Author of the map: A. A. Astaikin
The Yenisei Kyrgyz are a nomadic Turkic-speaking people who inhabited the upper reaches of the Yenisei River and the Sayan-Altai mountain region. The first mentions of this ethnic group date back to the 2nd century BC, but they actively emerged on the historical stage in the 7th century AD, establishing their own state, the Kyrgyz Khaganate. After the Mongol conquest of Genghis Khan and three unsuccessful uprisings, the unified Kyrgyz state disappeared, and in its place, four small uluses (regions) formed the Khongorai confederation. In the first half of the 17th century, Khongorai fell into vassalage to the Mongol Altyn Khans. In 1667, the Dzungars defeated the army of the Altyn Khans. From then on, Khongorai became a vassal of the Dzungar Khanate. The Yenisei Kyrgyz paid tribute to the Dzungars and were obligated to provide military assistance. At the same time, the Kyrgyz themselves collected tribute from the indigenous peoples of the upper and middle reaches of the Yenisei. This is why relations between the Kyrgyz and Russians were hostile from the very beginning. For the Kyrgyz, the Russian servicemen were competitors, collecting the tax—yasak—from the former Kyrgyz tributaries. This confrontation lasted for almost a century, but it reached its peak under the Kyrgyz prince Irenyak.
Dzungar Khanate in the 18th century
Irenyak or Irenek (in 17th-century Russian documents, Erenyachka Isheyev) was the ruler of the Altysar Ulus, one of the four principalities of the Yenisei Kyrgyz. Russians called him a prince or a princeling, but scholarly literature uses the Turkic term "bek." Irenyak was the third son of the bek of the Altysar Ulus and ruler of Khongorai, Ishenya Nomchiev, and the grandson of Prince Nomchi.
In 1658, Irenyak became the head of the Altasar district, and later the entire Kyrgyz confederation. He clearly possessed both outstanding political qualities and military prowess. In the summer of 1666, Irenyak and a detachment of 300 horsemen captured and burned the Udinsky fort (present-day Nizhneudinsk in the Irkutsk region), killing or capturing its inhabitants. On their return journey, the Kyrgyz were intercepted by Krasnoyarsk servicemen led by Yelisey Tyumentsev. The Cossacks, on foot, traveled by boat and routed the enemy on the Ishty-Yula River. The Kyrgyz, abandoning their loot and captives, retreated into the steppe.
Model of the Udinsky prison
In 1667, the Kyrgyz surrendered to the Dzungar Khanate from the Altyn Khans. In May of that year, they, along with the Dzungars, besieged the Krasnoyarsk fortress. The fortress held, but 199 people died in the defense: servicemen from the Krasnoyarsk garrison, volunteers, Cossacks from the Yenisei fortress, and Turkic foreigners allied with the Russians (suburban Tatars). In the autumn of that year, Irenyak again raided Krasnoyarsk, but again failed to take the fortress. Negotiations were held with him in 1668–1669, but peace with the Kyrgyz was unsuccessful.
Krasnoyarsk prison
In 1670, Ireniak planned to attack the Russians again to regain control of his former kyshtyms (tributaries) who had become Russian subjects. Since their forces were insufficient, the Kyrgyz turned to the Dzungars for help, but they were unable to provide assistance at that time. The following year, Ireniak, on behalf of the Dzungar ruler, Khuntaiji Galdan, demanded tribute from the Krasnoyarsk voivode (voivode), for the Kachins and Arins, who were Russian subjects.
Realizing that they did not have the strength to deal with the enemy on their own, the Krasnoyarsk people bowed to the sovereign and asked him to “subdue the Kirghiz and Tubans through war and build a fort on their land.”
Construction of the prison
In 1672, the governor A. I. Sumarokov proposed that the Kyrgyz become subjects of Russia, but Ireniak rejected the proposal to pay tribute to the Russians and, on the contrary, continued to demand tribute from the foreigners vassal to the Russians, threatening war in case of refusal.
In 1673, the combined Dzungar-Kyrgyz forces, splitting into two detachments, again launched a campaign against the Russians. One detachment marched against the Kuznetsk fort, while the second marched first to the Tomsk district and then to the Yenisei district, where it captured and burned the Achinsk fort. In the following years, Irenyak besieged the Abakan and Karaulny forts. In 1678, he negotiated with the Russians. According to the agreements reached, both sides renounced military campaigns and mutually agreed to surrender fugitives. However, the Kyrgyz refused to pay yasak and refused permission to build a fort in the Tubin land. Academician Bakhrushin called the 1678 agreement "a major diplomatic victory for the Kyrgyz princeling."
Sergei Vladimirovich Bakhrushin Russian and Soviet historian, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Moscow understood that the Kyrgyz could easily violate the terms of the treaty. Therefore, forts remained the best defense against raids. In 1679, the Russians began preparing for a major campaign to build a fortress in the Tubin lands. Detachments from several Siberian forts were to participate in this undertaking. However, Irenyak launched a preemptive strike and laid siege to Krasnoyarsk. Having failed to take the Krasnoyarsk fort, the enemy lifted the siege and departed with loot and captives. The Kyrgyz burned two villages near the city, killing the service people and farming peasants who lived there, and took the women and children captive. In addition to the Russians, the indigenous population, who paid yasak to the Russians, also suffered. The Kyrgyz took 171 "foreigners" captive.
In the autumn of that same year, 1679, Ireniak again waged war on Krasnoyarsk. The Kyrgyz burned 16 villages, 143 households in total, in the vicinity of the city. The fortress garrison chose as its commander the exiled Chernigov colonel Vasily Mnohohrishny (brother of the hetman of Left-Bank Ukraine, Demyan Mnohohrishny), who was imprisoned in Krasnoyarsk prison. Under the command of this experienced warrior, the service men drove the enemy back from the fortress walls. In that battle, Ireniak himself, unhorsed, nearly perished.
Demyan Ignatyevich Mnohohrishny, Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host in Left-Bank Ukraine, brother of Vasily Mnohohrishny[/ Center]
Following a retaliatory Cossack campaign in 1680, another peace was concluded between the Russians and the Kyrgyz. The Iyus River became the dividing line between the recent adversaries. However, Ireniak was in no hurry to fulfill the terms of the treaty: he did not return the captured cannons, delayed the payment of yasak, and gave away a distant relative, rather than his son, as an amanat (hostage).
In 1682, detachments of service men from Tobolsk, Tara, Tomsk, and Kuznetsk, totaling 1075 men under the command of Tobolsk voivode Ivan Suvorov, again moved south. Ireniak's forces, four times superior in numbers, defeated the Russian detachment and even captured the flag.
Russian service people. 17th century.
In 1684, an embassy from Ireniak arrived in Moscow and was received by the Siberian Prikaz. The ambassadors accused the Siberian voivodes of instigating the hostilities. Following negotiations, the Kyrgyz agreed to pay yasak to the Russians, but the Russians continued to collect taxes from non-Russians who had accepted Russian citizenship. Formally, having sworn an oath (sherti) to the Russians, the Yenisei Kyrgyz remained subordinate to the Dzungar Khanate. At the Dzungars' request, Ireniak arrived in 1687 with a detachment of 600 warriors for a joint campaign against the Mongols. In the Altai Mountains, not far from Lake Teletskoye, the Mongols routed the combined forces of the Dzungars and the Yenisei Kyrgyz. Ireniak died in battle along with a significant portion of his army.
Thus, historical evidence indicates that the Yenisei Kyrgyz were an implacable enemy of the Russian state. Although they occasionally made peace with Russia and even swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar, they continually violated these agreements. The Yenisei Kyrgyz continued to attack Russian lands even after Ireniak's death. Only their displacement by the Dzungars deep into Central Asia in 1703 put an end to this nearly century-long confrontation.
However, already in Soviet times, attempts to rehabilitate and glorify Irenyak began. For example, in Mikhail Kilchichakov's 1980 drama "Living Stones," dedicated to the friendship between Russians and Khakass people, the prototype for Prince Irenyak was apparently the real Prince Irenyak. However, unlike the real historical figure, the fictional hero did not fight against the Russians; instead, he appealed to Emperor Peter I with a request to accept the Khakass people as Russian subjects. The positive image of the fictional Irenyak could have contributed to the "rehabilitation" of the historical Irenyak, who, with weapons in his hands he actively fought against the Russians.
Another example of Irenyak's glorification is the heroic and romantic tale "Khan-bek Irenak. For Freedom!" by the Khakass poet Sergei Yegorovich Karachakov (1955–2019). In this work, Irenyak is portrayed as a national Khakass hero, a defender of his native land. "The thirst for profit for Russians / Is more precious than treaties." These are the lines he used to describe Russian pioneers. Therefore, the reader might get the impression that the Russians were the ones to blame for the Russian-Kyrgyz conflict.
Monument to Kezer-tash Irenyak, erected in the Ala-Kayin tract in 2013.
Such works distort the true historical image and glorify the Kyrgyz prince as a national hero of the Khakass people. In 2013, a monument in the form of an anthropomorphic stone statue, Kezer-Tash, was even erected to Irenyak at the confluence of the Bashkaus and Chulyshman rivers, where, according to legend, he was buried. The monument was erected by representatives of nine Ulagan seok clans with the assistance of the Department of Culture of the Ulagan District Administration of the Altai Republic.
Memorial complex on Mount Samokhval
Ireniak's popularity among modern Khakass people is evidenced by the fact that one of the elements of the Memorial Complex on Mount Samokhval in the city of Abakan, "Monument to the Ancient Warrior," is associated by many with Ireniak, although officially this sculpture is a collective image.
Monument to an ancient warrior
Today, Ireniak is portrayed as a ruler who fought for the independence of his people. However, the facts indicate that the underlying conflicts between Russia and Kyrgyzstan were the right to collect tribute from the Siberian peoples. Despite the image of a "freedom fighter," the real historical Ireniak was a vassal of the Dzungar khans and died fighting for the Dzungars' interests.
Furthermore, the very origin of the modern Khakass from the Yenisei Kyrgyz is questionable. Academician S.V. Bakhrushin, describing the "Kyrgyz land" on the Yenisei, wrote: "Despite its name, the Kyrgyz constituted only a small portion of its population." Since most of the Kyrgyz were deported to Central Asia by the Dzungars in 1703, it is likely that the modern Khakass ethnic group was formed from Turkic-speaking peoples who were former Kyshtyms, i.e., tributaries of the Kyrgyz, albeit with a small infusion of Kyrgyz. Thus, Irenyak was most likely an enslaver of the ancestors of the modern Khakass.
Minusinsk Tatar. Engraving
In any case, regardless of Ireniak's nationality, the glorification of this ruler, who spent his entire life fighting the Russians and robbing and killing representatives of the indigenous peoples of Siberia who became part of the Russian state, is a direct falsification of history and could contribute to the growth of interethnic tensions.
True heroes should be those representatives of the Siberian peoples who, united with Russians, shoulder to shoulder defended common interests. Such as the Arin princes Tatush and Abytai, and the sons of the Khakass people: Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Yegorovich Domozhakov, Hero of the Russian Federation Aimir Evgenievich Miyagashev, and many others.
Mikhail Yegorovich Domozhakov - Hero of the Soviet Union, participant in the Great Patriotic War
Aimir Evgenievich Miyagashev - Hero of the Russian Federation (posthumously), participant of the SVO
Sources:
Tarasov M.G. Novoselov M.Yu. The Image of the Kyrgyz Prince Irenyak in Modern Historical Memory // Krasnoyarsk Military-Historical Readings: Proc. of the III All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conf. Krasnoyarsk, December 9, 2025 / Ed. E.N. Garin. – Electronic data (7,4 MB). – Krasnoyarsk: Siberian Federal University, 2026 Access mode
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