Siberian River Routes

Siberian River Routes were the main ways of communication in Russian Siberia before the 1730s, when roads began to be built.

The rivers were also of primary importance in the process of Russian conquest and exploration of vast Siberian territories eastwards.

Since the three great Siberian rivers, the Ob, the Yenisey, and the Lena all flow into the Arctic Ocean, the aim was to find parts or branches of these rivers that flow approximately east-west and find short portages between them.

Despite resistance from the Siberian tribes, Russian Cossacks were able to expand from the Urals to the Pacific in only 57 years (1582-1639).

The rivers connected the major fur gathering centers and provided for relatively quick transport between them.

The Siberian Route, a road begun in the 1730s, ran southeast from Perm to Kungur, then over another low pass to Yekaterinburg (1723) and Tobolsk.

From 1727 much Russo-Chinese trade shifted to Kyakhta near where the Selenge River crosses the current Russo-Mongol border.

After about 1700 most trade shifted south and the route west of Turukhansk was largely abandoned.

After the conquest of Astrakhan in 1566, Russia expanded southeast around the southern base of the Urals.

This involved increasing political control over the Nogai Horde, the Kalmyks and the northern Kazakhs, followed by varying degrees of peasant colonization.

By the beginning of the 18th century the number of fur-bearing animals had declined sharply across Siberia as trappers and traders collected furs without any thought for sustainable population control, and in 1913 a ban was put on sable hunting in order to keep this animal from extinction.

In the twentieth century the Trans-Siberian Highway was built, and the stretch north of the Amur was completed in 2013.

The result is a pattern in which the Russians form a long narrow belt along the southern border with some extensions northward, mainly to where minerals can be found.