Russian exploration and conquest of Siberia matched European expansion in the New World, both chronologically (the Russians crossed the Urals from Europe into Asia in 1483) and politically, for expanding Muscovite Russia was a “new” monarchy. This Russian movement across the land was remarkably rapid—some five thou¬sand miles in about forty years.
Thus the Russian advance left vast unabsorbed areas behind the line of formal settlement. The enormous flatlands of the Siberian river basins made movement relatively easy and the tribal population of Siberia appears on the whole to have cooperated with the Russians.
