Talk:Siberian River Routes

This promises to grow into a useful article, especially if provided with more sources and details. Some points the author may want to mention, if he can find sources:

• Settlement of the lower Indigirka (see Russkoye Ustye). Indigirka was not a very active route, though, as R.U. became very isolated
• Link from the Lena/Aldan/Amga basin to the Sea of Okhotsk ports, such as Okhotsk (this is how Okhotsk - now a very minor place - became Russia's first Pacific port in the 17th century)
• The Amur - the first wave of expansion in the 17th century (e.g. under Erofei Khabarov), abandonment of the first settlements after the Treaty of Nerchinsk later in the 17th century, and then Muraviev's expedition ca. 1860.
• The late-19th-century Ob-Yenisei Canal
• Construction of the Transsiberian Railroad ca. 1900 changing the role of the river transport
• Analogy with Canada: Russia's early (17th-century) Siberian towns - Tobolsk, Turukhansk, Yeniseisk, Bratsk, Yakutsk, Okhotsk - being located much further north than the modern major cities like Omsk or Novosibirsk or Khabarovsk, whose growth and importance was aided by the Transsiberian Railway. Something similar can be said about the parts of Canada originally explored by water: e.g., the first European settlement in Alberta was in Fort Chipewyan - as far from Calgary as you can go!

One good book translated into English that at least touches the topic - not an academic treatise, but a good piece of journalism - is Rasputin's Siberia, Siberia. Vmenkov (talk) 01:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)