It was in the 17th century that the development of Siberia became widespread. Enterprising traders, travelers, adventurers, and Cossacks headed east. At this time, the oldest Russian Siberian cities were founded , some of them are now megacities.
Siberian fur trade
The first detachment of Cossacks appeared in Siberia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The army of the famous ataman Yermak fought with the Tatar Khanate in the Ob basin. It was then that Tobolsk was founded. At the turn of the XVI and XVII centuries. The Time of Troubles began in Russia. Due to the economic crisis, famine and military intervention of Poland, as well as peasant uprisings, the economic development of distant Siberia was suspended.
Only when the Romanov dynasty came to power, and the country was put in order, the active population again turned their eyes to the east, where vast spaces were empty. In the 17th century, the development of Siberia was carried out for the sake of fur. Fur was valued in European markets for its weight in gold. Those who wanted to profit from trade organized hunting expeditions.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Russian colonization affected mainly the taiga and tundra regions. Firstly, that was where the valuable furs were. Secondly, the steppes and forest-steppes of Western Siberia were too dangerous for the settlers because of the threat of invasions of local nomads. In this region, fragments of the Mongol empire and Kazakh khanates continued to exist, whose inhabitants considered the Russians their natural enemies.
Yenisei expeditions
On the northern route, the settlement of Siberia was more intense. At the end of the 16th century, the first expeditions reached the Yenisei. In 1607, the city of Turukhansk was built on its shore. For a long time it was the main transshipment point and bridgehead for the further advance of the Russian colonists to the east.
Industrialists were looking for sable fur here. Over time, the number of wild animals decreased significantly. This became an incentive to move on. The Yenisei tributaries of the Lower Tunguska and Podkamennaya Tunguska were the guiding arteries deep into Siberia. At that time, cities were just winter houses where industrialists stopped to sell their goods or wait out severe frosts. In the spring and summer, they left the parking lot and hunted furs almost all year round.
Panda Travel
In 1623, the legendary traveler Panda reached the banks of the Lena. Almost nothing is known about the personality of this person. A few information about his expedition was passed on by word of mouth by the industrialists. Their stories were recorded by the historian Gerard Miller already in the Petrine era. The exotic name of the traveler can be explained by the fact that he belonged to the Pomors by nationality.
In 1632, on the site of one of his wintering camps, the Cossacks founded a prison, which was soon renamed Yakutsk. The city has become the center of the newly created voivodship. The first Cossack garrisons faced the enemy attitude of the Yakuts, who even tried to besiege the settlement. In the 17th century, the development of Siberia and its farthest borders was controlled from this city, which became the north-eastern border of the country.
The nature of colonization
It is important to note that colonization at that time was spontaneous and popular in nature. At first, the state practically did not intervene in this process. People went east on their own initiative, taking all the risks upon themselves. As a rule, they were driven by the desire to earn money on trade. Peasants who fled from their native lands, fleeing serfdom, also sought east. The desire to get free will pushed thousands of people into unexplored open spaces, which made a huge contribution to the development of Siberia and the Far East. The 17th century enabled peasants to start a new life on a new land.
The villagers had to go on a real labor feat in order to start an economy in Siberia. The steppe was occupied by nomads, and the tundra was unsuitable for cultivating the land. Therefore, the peasants had to set up arable land with their own hands in the dense forests, conquering the land after land from nature. Only purposeful and energetic people could do such a job. The authorities sent detachments of service people after the colonists. They not only discovered the land, but engaged in the development of the already open, and were also responsible for security and tax collection. Just so, on the south side, on the banks of the Yenisei, a prison was built to protect civilians, which later became the rich city of Krasnoyarsk. This happened in 1628.
Dezhnev's activities
The history of the development of Siberia captures on its pages the names of many courageous travelers who spent years of their lives on risky enterprises. One of these pioneers was Semyon Dezhnev. This Cossack chieftain was from Veliky Ustyug, and went east to engage in furs and trade. He was a skilled navigator and spent most of his active life in northeast Siberia.
In 1638, Dezhnev moved to Yakutsk. His closest ally was Peter Beketov, who founded cities such as Chita and Nerchinsk. Semyon Dezhnev was engaged in collecting yasak from the indigenous peoples of Yakutia. This was a special type of tax assigned by the state to the natives. Payments were often disrupted, as local princes rebelled periodically, not wanting to recognize Russian power. It was for such a case that Cossack detachments were needed.
Ships in the Arctic seas
Dezhnev was one of the first travelers who visited the banks of rivers flowing into the Arctic seas. We are talking about such arteries as Yana, Indigirka, Alazeya, Anadyr, etc.
Russian colonists penetrated into the basins of these rivers as follows. First, ships descended the Lena. Having reached the sea, ships went east along the continental coast. So they got to the mouths of other rivers, climbing along which the Cossacks found themselves in the most uninhabited and outlandish places of Siberia.
Discovery of Chukotka
The main achievements of Dezhnev were his expeditions to Kolyma and Chukotka. In 1648, he went to the North to find places where valuable walrus bone could be obtained. His expedition was the first to reach the Bering Strait. Here Eurasia ended and America began. The strait separating Alaska from Chukotka was not known to the colonialists. Already 80 years after Dezhnev, the Bering scientific expedition organized by Peter I visited here
The journey of desperate Cossacks lasted 16 years. Another 4 years it took to return to Moscow. There Semyon Dezhnev received all the money owed to him from the king himself. But the importance of its geographical discovery became clear after the death of a brave traveler.
Khabarov on the banks of the Amur
If Dezhnev conquered new frontiers in the north-east direction, then in the south was his hero. It was Erofei Khabarov. This discoverer became famous after in 1639 he discovered salt mines on the banks of the Kuta River. Erofei Khabarov was not only an outstanding traveler, but also a good organizer. The former peasant laid salt production in the modern Irkutsk region.
In 1649, the Yakut governor made Khabarov the commander of a Cossack detachment sent to Dauria. It was a distant and poorly studied region on the borders with the Chinese Empire. In Dauria lived the natives who could not provide serious resistance to Russian expansion. Local princes voluntarily transferred to the king’s citizenship after a detachment of Erofei Khabarov appeared on their lands.
However, the Cossacks had to turn back when the Manchus came into conflict with them. They lived on the banks of the Amur. Khabarov made several attempts to gain a foothold in this region through the construction of fortified fortifications. Due to the confusion in the documents of that era, it is still unclear when and where the illustrious pioneer died. But, despite this, the memory of him was alive among the people, and much later, in the 19th century, one of the Russian cities based on the Amur was called Khabarovsk.
Disputes with China
The South Siberian tribes, which became citizens of Russia, did this in order to save themselves from the expansion of the wild Mongol hordes, who lived only by war and the ruin of their neighbors. Duchers and daurs suffered especially. In the second half of the 17th century, the foreign policy situation in the region became even more complicated after the restless Manchus captured China.
The emperors of the new Qing dynasty began aggressive campaigns against the peoples living nearby. The Russian government tried to avoid conflicts with China, which could have affected the development of Siberia. In short, diplomatic uncertainty in the Far East persisted throughout the 17th century. Only in the next century did states conclude a treaty that officially stipulated the borders of countries.
Vladimir Atlasov
In the middle of the XVII century, Russian colonists learned about the existence of Kamchatka. This territory of Siberia was shrouded in secrets and rumors, which over time only multiplied due to the fact that this region remained inaccessible even to the most daring and enterprising Cossack detachments.
"Kamchatka Ermak" (as Pushkin put it) was the explorer Vladimir Atlasov. In his youth, he was a collector of yasak. Public service was easy for him, and in 1695 the Yakut Cossack became a clerk in the distant Anadyr prison.
Kamchatka was his dream ... Having found out about it, Atlasov began to prepare an expedition to a distant peninsula. Without this enterprise, the development of Siberia would be incomplete. The year of preparation and collection of necessary things was not in vain, and in 1697 the prepared detachment of Atlasov hit the road.
Kamchatka exploration
Cossacks crossed the Koryak mountains and, reaching Kamchatka, divided into two parts. One detachment went along the west coast, another explored the east coast. Having reached the southern tip of the peninsula, Atlasov from afar saw islands previously unknown to Russian explorers. It was the Kuril archipelago. There, at the Kamchadals in captivity, a Japanese named Denbey was discovered. This merchant was shipwrecked and fell into the hands of the natives. The liberated Denbey went to Moscow and even met with Peter I. He was the first Japanese ever to be met by the Russians. His stories about his native country were popular objects of conversation and gossip in the capital.
Atlasov, returning to Yakutsk, prepared the first written description of Kamchatka in Russian. This material was called "fairy tales." They were accompanied by maps compiled during the expedition. For a successful trip in Moscow, he was awarded a hundred rubles promotion. Atlasov also became a Cossack head. A few years later he again returned to Kamchatka. The famous pioneer died in 1711 during the Cossack riot.
Thanks to such people, the development of Siberia in the 17th century became a profitable and useful enterprise for the whole country. It was in this century that the distant land was finally annexed to Russia.