Ermak and seat of its death in national memory

The paper considers the people's memory at the beginning of the XXI century about Ermak and the place of his death, including the sacralization of space and the creation of shrines. The sources were the materials of the joint expedition of the Siberian ethnographic detachment of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Institute for Cultural Research, collected in 2010–2012 in the settlements along the river Vagai, Ermak's alleged death. According to the accepted classification, separating the types of places of worship in Russian Siberia on the principle of a natural or man-made origin, place of worship can be attributed to man-made form - buildings and structures. This is a man-made hill, located not far from the river, on which the cross and stones with dedications were installed. As a special place that is directly related to Ermak, it has long been known, the memory of it was accompanied by numerous stories, then lost. Objects of worship were also found relatively recently – in the last twenty years due to changes in the ideological, religious and moral attitudes of society which have assumed manifestation of religious symbols, denied by the Soviet ideology. The initiator of founding a place of worship was a special group of people. Cossacks felt themselves the heirs and successors of a heroic historic figure. Although the image of the chieftain is accompanied by miraculous phenomena, it has been given a halo of martyrdom -death at the hands of enemies, many of the local population treats Ermak as a very real man whose companions were their ancestors. On the one hand, image of Ermak became a symbol of the soldiers who gave their lives for their country, and on the other – «he got Siberia», which justifies, legitimizes stay of Russians in the Siberian land. Worship and veneration of Ermak performed according to the rites of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the memorial service, a procession and a memorial meal.