Siberian River Routes - Southern Route

Southern Route

( distances are straight lines and only approximate. Siberian rivers can be very crooked. Dates are usually the date of first Russian settlement.)

Over the Urals: From the Volga River, up the Kama to Perm(1472), then up the Chusovaya River. The Urals here are only about 350 meters high, about 150 meters above the surrounding lowlands. Down either the Tavda River or Tura River and a short way up the Tobol River to its juncture with the Irtysh River at Tobolsk(1582). Tobolsk is about 700 km east of Perm and 1800 km east of Moscow. In 1598 Verkhoturye was founded in the Urals as the gateway to Siberia.

((This was the approximate route used by Yermak. The Siberian Route, a road begun in the 1730s, ran southeast from Perm to Kungur, then over another low pass to Yekaterinburg(1723) and Tobolsk. By 1885 there was a railway from Perm to Yekaterinburg. Another branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway(1891) goes south of the Urals through Chelyabinsk(1736), Omsk(1716) and Novosibirsk(1893).))

Ob Basin: Near Tobolsk was the capital of the Khanate of Sibir, which was conquered in 1582. North down the Irtysh to its juncture with the Ob River. 750km up the Ob to Narym (1594), up the Ket River(1602) about 300 km to its headwaters. Here a portage leads to the Yenisei River at Yeniseysk(1619). Yeniseysk is about 1400 km from Tobolsk and 3200 km from Moscow.

OR: from the Irtysh-Ob juncture 450 km up the Ob to the Vakh, 500 km up the Vakh, portage to the Sym, down it to the Yenesei, upstream to Yenisesk.

Yenisey and Lena Basins: Yeniseysk is on the Yenisei River just north of its juncture with the Angara River. From Yeniseysk east up the Angara to the Ilim River, upstream to Ilimsk (1630), portage to Kuta River, short trip downstream to Ust-Kut(1631) on the Lena River. From here northeast down the Lena about 1400 km to Yakutsk, which is 4900 km east of Moscow. Yakutsk is a major stopping point and administrative center. Then 125 km up the Lena to the Aldan, up the Aldan River to Ust-Maya, then up the Maya River or its right branch the Yudoma River.

Okhotsk: From either of the last two, it is about 150 km over 2000 ft mountains to the Pacific (Okhotsk Coast 1639, Okhotsk town, 1647). Pack horses were used here. Okhotsk is 800 km east southeast of Yakutsk and 5,600 km east of Moscow. After 1715 there were shipbuilding facilities at Okhotsk, allowing sea travel to the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.

To the Amur: From 1643 to 1689 the Russians attempted to penetrate from the Lena south to the Amur region but were driven back by the Manchus. See Russian-Manchu border conflicts. From 1689 to 1859 the Russo-Chinese border was the Argun River and the Stanovoy Mountains. In 1859 Russia annexed the Amur region. From the west, the Russians penetrated to Ulan-Ude (1666), Chita (1653) and Nerchinsk (1654) toward the Argun. From 1727 much Russo-Chinese trade shifted to Kyakhta near where the Selenge River crosses the current Russo-Mongol border.