The story
In 1581 or 1582, a Cossack leader named Yermak Timofeyevich led several hundred armed men across the Ural Mountains into western Siberia. They were funded by the Stroganov family, wealthy merchants who held land on Russia's eastern frontier. Their target was Khan Kuchum, a Muslim Tatar ruler of the Khanate of Sibir. The Cossacks had firearms, and in October 1582 they defeated Kuchum's army and seized his capital Qashliq, near modern Tobolsk. Yermak offered the lands to Ivan IV, who sent troops, but Yermak was killed in an ambush in 1584 or 1585.
Muscovy had already conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556), opening the Volga, and the Golden Horde successors were weak and divided. Beyond the Urals lay a vast forest and river country with few people and many fur animals, above all sable, which brought Russia huge profits. Siberia's rivers run in long chains, so traders and soldiers could travel by boat and then drag their craft across short portages to the next river.
After Yermak, the Russians built wooden forts (ostrogs) as they moved: Tyumen in 1586, Tobolsk in 1587, Yakutsk in 1632. They collected a fur tribute called yasak from the Indigenous peoples by force, and in the process took hostages and brought in disease. Explorers reached the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk in 1639 and the Bering Strait in 1648. Within about 60 years of Yermak's victory, Russia stretched across northern Asia and became the largest country in the world, a status it has kept since. The sea otter hunt later drew it to Alaska.
Why it mattered
- Fur from Siberia became a major source of income for the tsars, funding the growth of the Russian state.
- The Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 set the first border with Qing China after the Russians reached the Amur.
- Russian expansion crossed the Pacific to Alaska in the 18th century.
- Indigenous peoples of Siberia lost land and autonomy and suffered epidemics, which transformed the region's population.
- Siberia later became the destination for exile and, under the Soviets, the Gulag.
Sources
- Yermak Timofeyevich Britannica
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