To ensure that yasak was paid, native women and children were taken hostage, enslaved and raped.

ECONOMIST: The Amur River

Piotr Golovin, the Cossack governor of Yakutsk, hung men on meat hooks when yasak quotas went unfulfilled.

ECONOMIST: The Amur River

In the name of the tsar, they demanded pelts as yasak (tribute) from reindeer herders, steppes nomads and hunter-gatherers.

ECONOMIST: The Amur River