Tobol (2019)

The film is based on real historical events from the early 18th century. By order of the tsar, Ivan Demarin, a young officer in Peter’s Guards, is sent to Tobolsk, the capital of the Siberian Governorate. There, Ivan meets the love of his life, Masha Remezova, daughter of the renowned historian of Siberia, Semyon Remezov. The protagonists take part together in Colonel I. D. Bukhgolts’s 1714–1716 expedition in search of the trading city of Yarkand in Kashgaria and the gold deposits of the Raskemdarya River. The Yamyshevsk fortress, established by the expedition on the edge of the Kazakh steppes, where the army spends the winter, is besieged by invading hordes of Dzungars from Central Asia. The film version omits entirely His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Menshikov, the cartographer Strahlenberg, Ukrainian Colonel Novitsky, Siberian hunters, Old Believers, religious missionaries, and tax authorities. In the film, the Dzungar captivity lasts several days. In real life, the captives were released only several years later. The television series ends with a scene in which Peter fights Matvey Gagarin’s dead body. This scene is not in the film.