History of Czarist Russia's Aggression and Expansion
History of Russian Aggression and Expansion
One of the dominant themes throughout the history of Russia has been that of frontiers, of the struggle for control of the natural resources of a spirited and uninhibited country; a country, which, by reason of the constant migratory Russian movement, by their conquests of other peoples and their mingling with them, has expanded into a continent.
B. H. Sumner, A Short History of Russia
At the same time that the Western Europeans were expanding overseas into all parts of the world, the Russians were expanding overland across Eurasia. The control of the vast expanse of land in Siberia was an epic saga comparable to the westward movement of the United States toward the Pacific coast. Indeed, the ever-advancing frontier has left as lasting a mark on the Russian character and the Russian system as it has on the American.
It is not to be supposed that among the peoples of Europe it was the Russians alone who were affected by a frontier. During the Middle Ages, much of Central and Eastern Europe was sparsely populated. For several centuries, the European peoples, especially the Germans, pushed their colonial boundaries eastward along the Baltic coast and down the Danube. With the end of the Middle Ages, however, this internal colonization ceased to be a dominant theme. It was replaced by overseas colonization, with the peoples of Western Europe concentrating their energies on opening up and exploring new and remote areas in the New World. Instead, the Russians continued to expand by land into the vast European plains that stretched outward from their doorsteps. This immense enterprise proceeded rapidly for several centuries until the last Muslim khanate in Central Asia was conquered in 1895. It is not surprising, therefore, that frontiers have been a major factor in the whole course of Russian history as they have been in the whole history of the United States.
I. THE GEOGRAPHY OF RUSSIAN EXPANSION
In order to understand the staggering expansion of the Russians across the Eurasian plains, it is necessary to understand the geography of those plains. The first thing you see when you open a map is their staggering size. Indeed, Russia is associated with immense - and infinite - space. There is a peasant proverb that says, "Russia is not a country; it is a world." This world comprises one-sixth of the earth's land surface and is larger than the United States, Canada, and Central America combined. As night falls on Leningrad on the Baltic coast, dawn is breaking in Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. The distance between these two cities is 5,000 miles, while the distance between New York and San Francisco is 3,000 miles. This contrast should be kept in mind when examining the expansion of Russia to the east and the United States to the west.
Another striking feature of the vast Russian land mass is its striking topographical uniformity. It is to a great extent a flat plain area. The Ural Mountains do stretch across these plains in a north-south direction; and it is commonly supposed that they divide Russia into two discrete and distinct parts - European Russia and Asiatic Russia. But the truth is that the Ural Mountains are only a long, narrow, eroded range of mountains averaging only 2,000 ft. in height, and that they curve southward as far as latitude 51o N. and then cease to extend, leaving a wide, flat desert area stretching to the Caspian Sea as a gap. In these circumstances the whole plains region must be regarded as a geographical unity-the subcontinent of Eurasia. This topographical unity helps to explain why the Russians were able to expand so rapidly into this entire region and why it remains under Moscow's control to this day. If there is to be a demarcation line across the Eurasian plain, it should not run vertically north-south along the Ural Mountains, but horizontally east-west, distinguishing Central Asia, with its desert and semi-desert environments to the southeast, from Siberia, with its forests and frozen primeval plains to the north.
The Eurasian plain, which encompasses half of contemporary Russia, is surrounded by a natural boundary stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean. This border consists of a continuous series of mountain ranges, deserts and inland seas - it starts from the Caucasus Mountains in the west, and continues eastward to the Caspian Sea, the Ustyurt Desert, the Aral Sea, the Kyzylkum Desert, the Hindu Kush, the Pamir Mountains, the Tien Shan Mountains, the Gobi Desert, and finally the Daxingan Mountains, which extend eastward to the Pacific Ocean. The ring of mountains surrounding the Eurasian Plain blocks the wet winds from the Pacific Ocean and the warm monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean; this explains the desert climate of Central Asia and the cold, dry climate of Siberia. The whole of Siberia, from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, has essentially the same continental climate: short hot summers and long cold winters. The uniformity of climate, like the uniformity of topography, facilitated the eastward expansion of Russia, for the frontier developers felt the same comfort throughout the plains, which stretched east and west for 5,00O miles. However, frontier developers found the desert regions of Central Asia to be unfamiliar and frightening. They also found that these deserts were occupied by militarily powerful Muslim khanates, very different from the weak tribes of Siberia. As a result, the Russians did not take control of the Central Asian deserts until 250 years after they reached the Pacific Ocean further north.
Russian expansion was influenced not only by terrain and climate, but also by river systems. Because of the flatness of the terrain, Russia's rivers were generally long, wide, and unimpeded by turbulence. As such, they were invaluable as access and transportation for trade, colonization and conquest. In addition, they were suitable not only for small boat navigation in summer, but also for sledding in winter. To the west of the Ural Mountains, the famous rivers are the Western Dvina, which flows into the Baltic Sea, the Dniester, Dnieper, and Don, which flow southward into the Black Sea, and the Volga, which flows eastward and then southward into the Caspian Sea. East of the Urals, the four major rivers that irrigate the Siberian plains are the Ob in the west, the Yenisei in the center, the Lena in the northeast, and the Amur in the southeast. Since the whole of Siberia slopes downward from the immense Tibetan plateau, the first three of these rivers flow northward into the Arctic Ocean, while the fourth flows eastward into the Pacific Ocean. The fact that the outlets of the Ob, Yenisei, and Lena are in the Arctic Ocean largely nullifies their economic utility. The fact remains, however, that these rivers, with their many tributaries, provide a natural network of main lines of transportation all the way to the Pacific, and that the Russians, once over the Urals. Once the Russians crossed the Ural Mountains, it took very little portering to move from one waterway to another. In this way. They kept moving eastward in a zigzag pattern in pursuit of fur-bearing animals.
The last geographical factor that influenced the speed and course of Russian expansion was the combination of soils and vegetation that existed in all regions of Russia. There were four main soil-vegetation belts running parallel across Russia east and west. In the far north, along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, is the barren tundra, which remains frozen throughout the year, except for a growing period of six to eight weeks in summer. During the growing phase, the sun never sets, bestowing brief yet exuberant life on countless wildflowers - violets, daisies, forget-me-nots, yellow daffodils, and bluebells.
South of the glacial soil zone is the taiga, or forest zone. It is the largest of the four vegetation zones, ranging from 600 to 1,300 miles wide and 4,600 miles long, and accounts for one-fifth of the world's total forest area. In its northern region the dominant forest trees are conifers and birches; further south there is a mixture of elm, European aspen, aspen, and maple. In these forests the Russians felt so at home that they were able to traverse all of Eurasia without ever losing this familiar protective cover. Many Russian writers described the beauty of their forests and what they meant to their people. The following quotation from Gorky's novel "On Earth" is representative:
The forests came at us like a black army. The firs spread their wings like big birds, the birches like little girls, and the sour breath of the marshland blew in from the fields. The dog walked next to me with his red tongue out, stopping from time to time to sniff the ground and wagging his fox-like head inexplicably. Grandfather wore Grandmother's tunic and an old hat without a brim, squinting and smiling inexplicably, moving his skinny legs gently, as if he were sneaking around. Grandmother wore a blue blouse, black skirt, head covered with a white scarf, like rolling on the ground in general, it is difficult to keep up with her.
The closer he came to the forest, the higher his grandfather's excitement; he inhaled the air with his nose and coughed; at first he spoke in a broken, vague way, but later he became intoxicated and spoke happily and wonderfully:
"The forest is God's garden, it was not planted by anyone, it was the winds of God, the divine breath that blew it up! ...... When I was young I worked as a boatman and traveled to Niguri places ...... Alas. Lexe, I have experienced things that you will not see! There are great forests on the Oka, from Kasimovo all the way to Mulom, and from the other side of the Volga all the way up to the Urals as big as the Urals, and, yes, it is all endless and marvelous ......"
At the southern edge of the forest belt the forests thin out and the trees grow shorter
At the southern edge of the forest belt, the forests thin out and the trees get shorter, until they give way to open, treeless prairies. Here, fertile black soil formed by thousands of years of decaying grass can be found. Today it is the breadbasket of Russia, but for many centuries it has been a source of misery and disaster. The steppes were once home to the horseback-riding nomads of central Eurasia. When these nomads were strong enough, they struck along the routes that met the least resistance - often invading Central Europe to the west or China to the east. Their attacks on the vulnerable Russians of Eastern Europe were more frequent. An important theme in Russian history is this continuous conflict between the Slavic peasants of the forest areas and the Asian nomads of the steppes. At first, the nomads won, and the result was two centuries of Mongol rule over Russia. Eventually, however, the Slavic inhabitants of the forests grew strong and were able not only to win their own independence, but also to expand beyond the Eurasian plain.
The fourth region, the desert zone, is the smallest, beginning in China and stretching westward only to the Caspian Sea. As we already know, for a variety of reasons - lack of access, harsh climate, and the military prowess of indigenous peoples - the Desert Zone was not engulfed by the wave of Russian expansion until the late 19th century.
II Early Russian Expansion
About 1500 years ago, the Russians pushed eastward from their origins in the upper zones of the Dniester, Dnieper, Neman, and Dvina rivers. From their origins they spread out in a huge arc in the shape of a fan, beckoned by the vast plains, and moved on to the Arctic Ocean coast in the north, the Black Sea in the south, and the Ural Mountains and beyond in the east. The Russians who migrated to the east or northeast remained under the cover of the forests. They met with little resistance within the forest zone - there were only scattered and poorly organized Finnish tribes there; they either intermarried with them or easily drove them away.
These early Russian colonists combined agriculture and forestry. The ratio between agriculture and forestry depended on the location. In the northern forest zone, the coniferous zone, agriculture was secondary because of the cold climate, poor land and few open spaces. Consequently, colonists in this zone spent most of their time trapping animals, fishing, and collecting beeswax, honey, resin, potash, and other forest by-products. Going south, in the mixed forest belt, farming was the main activity. Colonists still relied on the forests to a great extent because of their varied resources, but more time was spent in farming. Rye was the main crop, although barley, oats, wheat, flax and hemp were also cultivated. The principal method of cultivation was temporary sowing on the ashes of forest or scrubland cleared of vegetation by fire, or in the occasional openings found in the barren prairies. After a few years of successive planting, these open spaces are either abandoned and returned to barren land, or kept as rough pasture until their productivity is restored. This practice, reminiscent of the remote regions of the Americas, is primitive and wasteful, but of little consequence, since the forests are endlessly continuous.
In these cases, dispersal of homes and small villages were the general rule - there were no centralized villages or cities. The few towns that did emerge were developed as trading centers along the main waterways. This was the case of Kiev, located along the Dnieper River, which carried north-south traffic, and Novgorod, located on the shores of Lake Ilmen, which controlled east-west trade. It was long-distance trade that provided the basis for the first Russian state that developed in the 9th century AD. Kiev was the center of the state, but it remained a loose confederation of principalities along the waterways. Kiev itself, being situated at the junction of the forest zone and the steppe, was extremely vulnerable to aggression. As a result, it had to fight a constant struggle for survival against the nomadic cavalry. From time to time, certain powerful Kievan rulers were able to assert their power over areas that reached as far south as the Black Sea and as far west as the Dolzi River. But this show of power was short-lived; the Russian colonists were unable to move more than 150 miles south and east of Kiev because the threat of nomadic aggression hung over their heads like the sword of Damocles.
In 1237, the sword came down; the Mongols swept through the Russian regions as they had swept through half of Eurasia. Before the Mongol invasion, Kiev was portrayed by travelers of the time as a magnificent metropolis with lavish palaces, eight markets, and 400 churches - including St. Sophie's Cathedral. However, eight years after the invasion, when the Franciscan friar Joannes di Plano Carpini passed through Kiev on his way to the Mongolian capital, he found that the former capital had only 2O0 dwellings, and that corpses littered the perimeter of the capitol.
The Mongols continued to push their devastating invasion into central Europe, reaching the gates of Italy and France. They then retreated of their own accord, retaining only the Russian part of Europe. Their vast empire stretching in all directions did not long survive as a unity. It split into regional parts, among which the so-called Golden Horde included the Russian region. The capital of the Golden Horde, the capital of Russia for the next two centuries, was Sarai, near present-day Stalingrad. Thus, the ancient struggle between the forest and the steppe was decisively resolved with the victory of the steppe and its nomads.
The Russians at this point surrendered some of their small enclaves on the steppe and withdrew into the depths of the forest. There they were able to live in their own way as long as they recognized the Khan's suzerainty and paid annual tribute to him. Gradually, the Russians regained their strength and developed a new national center - the Principality of Moscow, nestled deep in the forest zone away from the dangerous steppes. Moscow had other favorable conditions besides being less accessible to nomads. It was situated at the crossroads of two major transportation routes leading from the Dnieper to the northeast. Since many large rivers flowing in different directions were closest to each other as they passed through the Moscow region, Moscow could benefit from inland waterways. The duchy also enjoyed the favorable conditions of peace-loving, frugal, and calculating rulers. These rulers patiently and ruthlessly increased their territories until Moscow became the nucleus of a new nation; at the beginning of the 14th century the duchy's area was about 500 square miles, but by the middle of the 15th century it had grown to 15,000 square miles. A century later, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (reigned ID33-1584), all the Russian principalities had been brought under the rule of Moscow.
The "growth of the Russian lands" completely changed the balance of power between the Russians and the Mongols, then more commonly known as the Tatars. Originally, the Tatars won because, unlike the struggling Kievan state, they were internally united, and also had fast-moving cavalry units that were militarily more advanced. By the 16th century, however, the Russians were united under Moscow, and the Golden Horde, excluding the khanate of the Siberian Tatars east of the Ural Mountains, had split into three rival states, the Khanate of Kazan, the Khanate of Astrakhan, and the Khanate of Crimea. In addition, Russian military technology was moving forward, as they were able to benefit from the great advances made in Western Europe, especially in musketry and artillery. when Ivan attacked the Tatars in Kazan in 1552, his superiority in artillery combined with the help of a Danish technician who supervised the blowing up of the walls of the Kazan fortress with a landmine proved to be decisive. After the mines exploded, the Russians succeeded in quickly capturing the fortress and then the entire Kazan Khanate. They traveled down the Volga River, swept through the basin area, and easily captured Astrakhan in 1556. In order to consolidate their occupation, the Russians built a series of fortified positions along the banks of the Volga, all the way to the mouth of the Volga at Astrakhan. Thus, the Russians became the masters of the huge Volga basin, reaching the Caspian Sea in the south and the Urals in the east.
At this point, the way was open for unlimited expansion of the Russians to the other side of the Volga and the Urals. Some of the new areas were won by force, as was the case with Siberia. This type of expansion will be dealt with in the next two sections. Others were acquired by personal dealings with native chiefs in the same way that Europeans had purchased Manhattan Island and large tracts of land in the Ohio and other great river basins from the American Indians. The famous Russian writer Sergei Aksakov vividly describes this way of expansion in his memoirs, A Russian Gentleman:
...... You have only to invite the twelve native Bashkir chiefs of certain regions to accept your hospitality: offer them two or three fat goats, slaughter and fix them in their own way, and then Bring out a cask of whisky, a couple of casks of fermented, potent Bashkir mead, and a cask of your own homemade beer-which, by the way, proves that even in days gone by, the Bashkirs were not strict Muslims-and the rest is extremely simple. Indeed, such hospitality is said to have lasted perhaps a week or even two at a time: the Bashkirs could not have hurried their errands, and every day they had to be asked such a question as, "Hey, good friend, is this the time to discuss that thing of mine?" It is no exaggeration to say that the guests had been feasting and drinking all day and all night; but if they were not yet fully satisfied with the hospitality, if they had not yet enjoyed themselves very much by singing their monotonous songs, blowing their long hatchlings, and dancing their peculiar dances, which involved them standing up or squatting down in the same place, the highest-ranking chief of them would tut-tut, smack his lips, shake his head, and reply, with all the dignity of a man, and without a single glance toward the inquirer, "Is it time for me to talk about my business? "The time is not yet come; bring us another sheep!" Of course, sheep were readily available, and beer and spirits ready; so the drunken Bashkirs began to sing and dance again, and one by one they fell asleep wherever they felt fit. There is, however, an end to everything in the world; and such a day came at last: one day the great chief frankly looked squarely at his master, and said, "We thank you, thank you very much! Now, what is it that you want?" The remaining aspects of the transaction followed a fixed manner. The buyer began to speak with the natural shrewdness of a true Russian: he assured the Bashkirs that he did not need anything at all; he had heard, however, that the Bashkirs were very kind, and had come to Ufa to try to establish a friendship with them, and so on and so forth. Then, somehow, the conversation would turn to the vastness of the Bashkir territory; the unsatisfactory condition of the tenants, who would pay the rent for a year or two, and then cease to do so, and yet continue to live as if they were the rightful owners of the land; and that it would be rash to evict them, and that litigation had become unavoidable. These words were in accordance with the truth; and then the purchaser politely offered to help the benevolent Bashkirs to relieve themselves of a portion of the land which had become a burden to them. The result was that the sale of the whole tract was concluded at a very low price. The transaction was finalized by a legal document, though the amount of land was never specified on the document, nor could it be, for the land was never surveyed. As a rule, the boundaries are defined by such markers as the following: "From the mouth of such-and-such a creek to the Dead Fagus tree on the Wolf Trail, from the Dead Fagus tree to the Watershed, from the Watershed to the Fox's Den, from the Fox's Den to the Hollow Tree on the Soltamlatka," and so on. The boundary markers circling 10,000, 20,000, or even 30,000 Russian acres of land are very clear and lasting! And the cost of all this land was perhaps 100 rubles and a gift worth 100 rubles, the cost of hospitality not included.
III Crossing the Urals
The victory of the Russians made the Khanate of Kazan and the Khanate of Astrakhan cease to exist. However, the Tatars in the Crimea and on the other side of the Ural Mountains remained independent and continued to harass the Russian colonizers with constant raids. For a variety of reasons that will be discussed later in this chapter, the Russians had to suffer the depredations of the Crimean Tatars until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, they were able to easily destroy the Siberian Khanate and, in doing so, unwittingly began an epic march to the Pacific coast.
Overcoming the Ural Mountains and conquering Siberia were primarily the brash and capable frontier developers known as Cossacks. In many ways these people resembled the frontier developers of the American West. Most of them were former peasants who had fled Russia or Poland to escape the bondage of serfdom. Their refuge was the barren prairie region to the south, where they became hunters, fishermen, and stockmen. Just as the frontier developers of America became half-Indians, they became half-Tatars. They loved freedom and equality, yet were barbaric and capricious and fond of robbery; they were ready and glad to become bandits and robbers whenever it seemed profitable to do so. Gogol, the famous Russian novelist, vividly described the Cossacks' way of life as follows:
There is no trade which a Cossack does not know: wine-steaming, car-making, gunpowder-making, blacksmithing and pincer-work, and to this is added wandering about desperately, drinking and drinking like a Russian, and all this is something he can do with pleasure. was able to do all this with pleasure. In addition to the registered Cossacks, who consider a wartime call-up an obligation, a large body of volunteers can be collected at any time when the need is urgent, provided the adjutant walks through the markets and squares of all the villages and small towns, and, standing on the wagons, pulls out his noisemaker and shouts, "Hey, you, beer-brewers, honey-wine-brewers! Stop brewing beer and lying on your back burners, feeding flies with your fat bodies! Go and win the glory and honor of knighthood. Ye that plow, ye that make buckwheat, ye that shepherd sheep, ye that mess with women! Stop following the plow, trampling your yellow boots in the dirt, stop snuggling up to your wives; you're draining the knight's energy! It is time to go and gain the honor of the Cossacks!" So these words fell like sparks on dry wood. The ploughmen broke their plows, the honey- and beer-makers threw away their barrels and smashed their lute-barrels, the craftsmen and merchants sent their crafts and stores to the devil, cracked the jars and other paraphernalia of their houses, and mounted their horses with a long stride.
A typical product of this frontier environment was Yermak Zimofeyevich; the son of a Don Cossack and a Danish slave girl, born with blue eyes and a red beard. When he was twenty-four, he was sentenced to death for stealing horses, so he fled to the Volga and became the leader of a band of bandits on the river. He plundered Russian ships and Persian caravans indiscriminately until government troops came to round them up. So he led his gang back up the Volga to the upper tributary, the Kama River. In the Kama Valley, a wealthy merchant named Grigori Stroganov had been granted a large land concession before that time. Stroganov's efforts to develop his territory were repeatedly thwarted by attacks by nomads from the other side of the Ural Mountains. These attacks were organized by the blind Guchukhan, the Muslim military leader of the Siberian Tatars. Faced with this predicament, Stroganov welcomed Yermak and his men, hiring them to defend the topos.
Yermak the bandit then shows that he has the qualities of a huge empire builder. What Pizarro and Cortes had previously done for Spain in America, he did for Russia in Siberia. With the boldness of a conquistador, Yermak decided that the best defense was an attack, and on September 1, 1581, he set out at the head of 840 men to attack Gutkhan in his homeland. Yermak, like the Spanish conquistadors, enjoyed the great advantage of good arms. He was fully equipped with muskets and artillery which terrorized the natives. Though informed that the invaders were able to command thunder and lightning to pierce the strongest chinkin armor, Kuchu fought desperately to save his capital, Sibir. He gathered 30 times the strength of Yermak's army and sent his son Mametkul to command the defense. The Tatars fought doggedly behind felled trees, fending off the advancing Russians with a shower of arrows, and seemed to be gaining the upper hand. However, at a critical juncture, Mametkul was wounded and the Tatars were left leaderless. The blind Guchu fled southward in despair, and Yermak took possession of his capital. The Russians then gave the name of this capital to the whole region east of the Ural Mountains, which came to be known as Sibir or Siberia in English.
Yermak reported the results of his expedition to Stroganov and wrote directly to Tsar Ivan the Terrible asking for forgiveness for his past crimes. The Tsar was so pleased to learn of Yermak's achievements that he canceled all sentences against him and his men, and also showed special favor by giving him a costly fur taken from his own shoulders, two sets of richly decorated armor, a goblet, and a large amount of money as gifts. Yermak showed at this time the foresight of an empire-builder in trying to establish commercial relations with Central Asia. He sent missions as far as the ancient city of Bukhara. But Yermak was not destined to live to fulfill his ambitious plans. Old Guchu in the south had been stirring up fierce nomads against the Russians, and on the night of August 6, 1584, one of his raiding forces attacked Yermak and his companions while they slept on the banks of the Irtysh. Yermak fought to the death to save his life and tried to swim across the river to escape. According to legend, he drowned because of the excessive weight of the armor given to him by the Tsar.
Despite this victory, the Tatars were fighting an impossible battle. Their enemy was too strong and they could not push it backward to the west of the Urals. Even Guchu eventually realized that further resistance would be futile and offered to surrender. With his surrender, the first stage of the Russian advance into Siberia came to an end. The way to the Pacific coast is open.
The popular impression of Yermak's exploits is reflected in a folk song describing his adventures. The following two stanzas recount Yermak's admonition to the Cossacks before the expedition and also indicate his relationship with the Tsar:
"Ha, brothers, my brave chiefs!
Prepare boats for yourselves,
prepare the cedar pulp racks,
prepare the pine pulp!
By God's help we'll be on our way, brothers;
Let's go over the steep mountains,
Let's reach the kingdoms of the pagans,
Let's conquer the kingdom of Siberia,
That will please our tsar, our master.
I will go up to the just tsar,
I will put on a black cloak,
and I will submit to the just tsar."
"Ah! Wise tsar, you are our hope;
Do not order me to be put to death, but tell me to speak what I have to say,
for I am Yermak, the son of Zimmerfiye!
I am the leader of the bandits of the Don;
it is I who have crossed the blue sea,
crossed the blue sea, the Caspian Sea;
and it is I who have destroyed many ships;
and now, our hope, our wise Tsar,
I bring you my rebellious head,
and together with it the Empire of Siberia."
The wise Tsar spoke;
he-a fearsome Ivan Vasilevik-said:
"Ha! You are Yermak, the son of Zimofeye,
and you are the chief of the warriors of the Don.
I forgive thee and thy band,
I forgive thee because of thy faithful service,
and I give thee the magnificent, silent river Don as an eternal possession."
IV Conquest of Siberia
The Russian conquest of Siberia was an extraordinary achievement. The Russians of Siberia, like the Spaniards of America, won a vast empire in a few years with a surprisingly small force. The khanate of Guchu's Irtysh River valley proved to be merely a weak shell with no solid entity inside. Once the shell was punctured. The Russians were able to march thousands of miles without serious confrontation. The speed of their advance was astonishing. Yermak marched between 1581 and 1584. At that time, Sir Walter Raleigh also landed on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, in 1584. By 1637, within half a century, the Russians had reached the Sea of Okhotsk in the Pacific, spanning more than half the distance between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the United States, and the English colonists had not yet crossed to the other side of the Allegheny Mountains in the meantime.
The reasons for the rapidity of the Russian advance may be accounted for by various factors. As we already know, the climate, terrain, vegetation and river systems favored the invaders. The indigenous peoples were at a disadvantage because of their small numbers, poor weaponry, and lack of unity and organization. Consideration should also be given to the perseverance and courage of the Cossacks; they, like the illegal fur hunters of French Canada, endured great hardship and danger in the wilderness. Their reason for doing so may be summed up in one word-"furs." The sable skins lured them from one river through overland portages onward to new rivers, and so on ever eastward.
As they advanced, the Cossacks built fortified positions or strongholds, like the fortresses of the remote regions of America, to protect the communications between them. The first fortress in Siberia was built at Tobolsk, near Sibir, at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh rivers. After discovering that these two rivers were tributaries of the Ob, the Russians rowed down the Ob, and, as a result, found that they could access the next great waterway, the Yenisei, by moving their boats some distance on land. By 1610, they had reached the Yenisei River basin in large numbers and established the fortress of Krasnoyarsk. Here they encountered the Buryats, a warlike people who had been the first to vigorously resist them since the conquest of Guchu. Avoiding the Buryats, the Russians turned to the northeast and discovered the Lena River, where in 1632 they built the Yakutsk Fortress and engaged in lucrative trade with the indigenous, moderate Yakuts. However, the Buryats kept attacking their lines of communication, so the Russians launched a savage war of extermination. In the end, the Russians won and pushed on to Lake Baikal; there, in 1651, they established the fortress of Irkutsk.
In the meantime, expeditions were already heading in all directions from Yakutsk, and in 1645 a group of Russians reached the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Two years later, another group traveled to the Pacific coast and built the fortress of Okhotsk. The following year, 1648, the Cossack explorer Simeono Jezhnyov set out from Yakutsk on a remarkable journey. He sailed downstream along the Lena River. He found that certain sections of the river were so wide that he could not see both sides; there were deltas the size of continents filled with the rubble of a watershed. Having passed the delta, Jerzynegoff sailed eastward along the Arctic coast until he reached the true summit of Asia. He then descended a waterway that came to be known as the Bering Strait. After losing two ships in a storm, he sailed to the Anadyr River; there the fortress of Anadyr was established, no less than 7,000 miles from Moscow! Jezhnyov sent a report of his travels to the governor, who sat at Yakutsk; the governor sent the report