History

Russia’s Expansion Towards the East: From the Urals to Siberia

In the West, Russian history is – unsurprisingly – almost exclusively focused on Russia in the west. For countries like Poland, Sweden, and Finland, living under the shadow of Moscow is an important part of both history and national identity. However, this focus neglects to explain how Russia managed to become the massive country it is today. Its eastward expansion is an important puzzle piece of this explanation. It is crucial to understand where Russia came from and where it is headed. So, how (and more importantly, why) did they push east?

Between the Urals and Siberia

Russia’s heartland is situated west of the Urals on the North European Plain. To the north, south, and west there are open spaces, endless steppe protected by the many forests of the north. To the east, Russia is protected by the Urals. However, these have a low elevation and many passes through them, tapering off to the south. On the north end, expansion reached the Arctic and Finland. There, Russia was protected by the vast emptiness of the tundra, with boreal forests continuing on seemingly forever. This forms the northern shield of the Russian heartland. With its sheer cold, size, and desolation it had prevented major armies from traversing the distance.

During the first half of the 19th century, Russia pressed south into the Caucasus, which forms a neck of land between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Long wars against the Turks and the Persians brought the Russians the control of this region at last. They pushed to the southeast of the mountains, establishing their boundary on the Araxes in 1828. In the southwest, the Russian border was planted at Akhaltsikhe in 1829 and pushed forward to Kars in 1878.

In the second half of that same century, Russia undertook the conquest of Turkestan. This was prompted by Turkic the recurring raids into southern Russia by the peoples of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva. They used to kidnap Russian subjects, primarily women to fill the harems of the Turkic elite. Tsars Alexander II and III had no intention of enduring this humiliation any further. Ultimately, they pushed south to capture the whole of Turkestan and released their enslaved people.

This forward advance brought Russia’s borders to the ranges of the Pamir Mountains, giving some protection toward India and the Tien Shan, which was part of the Silk Road. They nearly reached the Hindu Kush, occupied by Afghanistan. Westwards, they approached the Kopet Dag, forming the border between Turkmenistan and Persia, and the Caspian Sea.

Russia's Expansion 1953-1894
Russia’s Expansion 1953-1894 (Wiki Commons)

Expansion towards Siberia

The Russian conquest of Siberia, much like the American conquest of the West, was a formative moment in the making of a nation. Just as the spirit of America was in part defined by its pioneers in the West, so that of Russia was defined by its conquest of the East. Many of the basic features of the Russian state reached their perfection (or imperfection) in Siberia. This was not so much a place as it was a state of mind.

The first moves toward Siberia began when the first Russian Czar Ivan IV (the Terrible, r. 1533-1584), captured the city of Kazan in October 1552. Four years later, Astrakhan and the territory associated with that Khanate, were added to the burgeoning Russian Empire. Later, in 1563, Kuchum, the Khan of the Noghay Horde, had defeated and killed the Khan of Sibir, a successor state to the Golden Horde, located east of the Ural Mountains. The Khan of Sibir had nominally been the vassal of Ivan IV. Kuchum promptly assumed his Siberian predecessor’s position of Russian vassal and sent envoys to present tribute. This was to make sure that the Russian Czar did not protest the takeover. Instead, Ivan IV awarded the right to establish settlements east of the Urals to a private family, the Stroganovs,  and allowed them to hire Cossacks to defend themselves.

When the Stroganovs discovered silver and iron in western Siberia, they asked for permission to expand their landholdings. They then hired Cossacks under the command of Yerman Timofeyevich, who later launched an attack on Khan Kuchum and captured his capital, Sibir, in 1583. By 1587, the Russians had consolidated the territory of the former Khanate of Sibir and constructed the city of Tobolsk.

Tobolsk would become the nerve centre of the conquest. From there on out, Russia’s expansion consisted of subduing minor tribes and building forts and outposts to control the countryside. Before the end of the century, Kuchum had been defeated, killed by his own people, and Noghay was integrated.

Eastward expansion and colonization

With their main enemies crushed and annexed, there was now nothing standing in the way for Russian expansion and colonization eastward. Commerce, and particularly fur trade, was the driving force behind this expansion. By moving East along Central Eurasia, the Russians also managed to avoid the remaining, powerful steppe peoples. The highways used were the many rivers and their tributaries, allowing even further expansion to the east. Following the Lena River into the northeast, the Russians established Yakutsk in 1632 and reached the Pacific Ocean, building the first Russian settlement there, Okhotsk, in 1647.

The highway to Russia's expansion: the Lena river
The highway to Russia’s expansion: the Lena river (WikiCommons)

From Okhotsk, Russia moved toward Lake Baikal, reaching even further East to the Amur River basin. Where the upper Amur river turns south lay a town called Albazin. On this site, in 1651, the Russians invaded and began settling. The Manchus, however, did not take kindly to this. They had barely established their authority in China (the Qing Dynasty) when these upstart Russians began colonizing on their doorstep.

Though offended, the Manchus gave diplomacy a try. When this failed, they threw down the gauntlet and attacked Russia, capturing Albazin in 1685. In the Treaty of Nerchinks in 1689, Russia was forced to cede all territory south of the Stanovoy Mountains (or Range), but in return, they gained trade concessions and kept a presence in Okhotsk.

One hundred and sixty-nine years later, in 1858, part of that mass of land, the Primorskiy Kray (the “Maritime Province”), came under Russian control. It was here that, in 1860, the future port city of Vladivostok was constructed. After the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1903, Vladivostok became a large, prosperous city and Russia’s main Pacific port. The city would also play a key role in its economic expansion and defence in the East.

Conflicts along the way

Even though the Qing Dynasty and the Russian Empire seemed to have settled their relations, tensions were brewing. By the time of the Treaty of Nerchinks, modern Mongolia had been captured by the last nomadic empire in that area, the Dzungar Khanate. But over the decades, these nomads were slowly pushed westwards, toward Russia. At the time, the Qing feared that they would not be able to fully incorporate the Khanate. As the Chinese-Russian borders drew ever closer in that area, questions were raised. What if the Russians took advantage to push their expansion into Mongolia? Could the Dzungar people fleeing into Russia be given sanctuary?

Because of this, the 4th Qing Emperor began poking St Petersburg in the 1710s, pressuring Russia into signing an agreement. They did this largely by interfering with trade caravans in the area. The Russian fur traders were indeed the largest reason behind Russian expansion. Despite Peter the Great having his hands full with the ongoing Great Northern War, he decided to end the border conflict before his death. After much discussions and drawing up of maps, in 1728, the Treaty of Kyakhta was signed.

This treaty remedied most of the diplomatic and territorial issues between the two empires. It thus ensured that Russian trade could once again start in earnest. This trade was extremely valuable for the colonists and Russia’s expansion overall, helping cement Russia as a major economic power in Europe. From this moment on, until 1904, Russia kept its grip on the East and continued increasing its value, strategic and economic, and was even capable of extending their tentacles further down into Chinese territory.

This continued until the rising Japanese Empire, to the surprise and fear of the West, crushed the Russian Empire during the Russo-Japanese War. This led Russia to lose its possessions on the Liaodong Peninsula. But even today, the Russian East, from Vladivostok to the Urals, remains a growing, integrated part of Russia. It is fundamental to understand it in order to understand Russia.

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Tobias Lundqvist

CNC-Operator poring over maps and dusty books in his spare time. Loves writing about history, especially Antiquity and the World Wars.

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