Abstract
This chapter discusses the Russian colonization of northeast Eurasia. The earlier migrations of Russians to Siberia is linked to the period of medieval climatic warming. The role of the Pomors in the land explorations is analyzed. It is argued that the Pomors built the most sophisticated ships of the time for river and sea ice navigation. A comparative, cross-cultural analysis of the Western European (Anglo-American) and Eastern European (Russian-Siberian) types of the frontier indicates their simultaneous emergence in world history. The prohibition of navigation for foreigners in the Arctic seas of Russia in 1620 marked the beginning of the English colonization of North America. The conquest of Siberia is seen as part of the continuing national liberation struggle of the Russian people against the Tatar-Mongol rule. However, no single Siberian ethnicity was lost in that war and the habitats of indigenous peoples in North Asia did not change for centuries. The successful conquest of such a vast territory with such a complex ethnic composition in such a short period (60 years) by such a small number of people as performed by the Russian Cossack explorers of Siberia reaching the Pacific Ocean remains something unique in the world history. For the Anglo-Europeans explorers it took about 350 years to conquer the territory of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. However, the Russian territorial expansion was not seen as a national triumph. Specific attention is paid to the role of the frontier in the self-representation of the respective nations.
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Abbreviations
- Waterway routes :
-
river routes with transitions through watersheds in convenient locations (walkways).
- Explorers :
-
small (sometimes in several people) groups of hardy and courageous “servicemen” (Cossacks, archers, gunners) and “eager” (free people), who connected the Moscow kingdom with Siberia. They often spent many years in campaigns.
- Colonizer :
-
a person who conducts or implements the policy of the development of a territory in order to join it to the metropolis.
- Koch :
-
a small one-mast vessel on which it was possible to go only downwind, with rounded contours, suitable for sailing among the ice on Grumant (Svalbard) and for other Arctic sea voyages.
- Metropolis :
-
from the Greek. metroupolis from meter “mother” and polis “town”. In ancient Greece, a city-state (polis) in relation to the settlements (colonies) it created.
- Pomors :
-
an ethnographic group of the Russian population (immigrants from Novgorod and Pskov) who settled permanently along the Arctic coast (from Murman to Kolguev Island) and the northern rivers of Eastern Europe.
- Ushkuy :
-
a flat-bottomed ship (up to 14 m in length), having a symmetrical shape of the bow and stern, which made it possible to sail along rivers in opposite directions without turning the ship.
- Frontier :
-
(from English, literally the border between civilization and wildness). In the history and literature of the United States indicates the era of the conquest of Indian lands in the western United States. In the image plan frontier corresponds to boldness, courage, “pathfinders”, the feat, the struggle against the treacherous aborigines.
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Golubchikov, Y.N., Sevastyanov, D.V. (2022). Russian Territorial Expansion into Siberia: The Initial Stage (XVI–XVII Centuries). In: Bocharnikov, V.N., Steblyanskaya, A.N. (eds) Humans in the Siberian Landscapes. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90061-8_5
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