Russians Reach the Pacific Ocean

In 1639, a small party of Cossacks led by Ivan Moskvitin reached the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the Pacific Ocean. They were the first Russians known to have arrived at the Pacific coast. Barely half a century after Russian forces first crossed the Urals, the journey showed how quickly the Russian state and its frontier adventurers had pushed across Siberia, and it opened the way to Russian expansion in the Far East and eventually the North Pacific.

The background lay in the collapse of the Khanate of Sibir in the 1580s and 1590s, after Cossacks under Yermak Timofeyevich broke its power. Russians then advanced eastward largely along the great Siberian rivers, building small wooden forts (ostrogs) at strategic points. The main motive was fur, especially sable, which was valuable on European and Asian markets and was collected from Indigenous peoples as tribute known as yasak. By the 1630s, Russians had reached the Lena River and founded Yakutsk in 1632, which became a base for further exploration.

From Yakutsk, the local governor sent out parties to investigate rumors of rich lands and a great sea to the east. Moskvitin's group, numbering a few dozen men, left in about 1638 and traveled up the Aldan River and its tributaries, then crossed the watershed toward the Ulya River. They reached the coast in 1639 and wintered there, building a winter camp near the river's mouth. Details of the route and exact dates are drawn from later reports and are not fully certain, so historians differ on some specifics.

While on the coast, the Cossacks gathered information from local peoples, including the Evenks and others, about the Amur River and lands to the south. They also sailed some distance along the shore in boats they built, and reports of their journey suggest they reached areas near the Shantar Islands and the mouth of the Amur region. Their accounts encouraged further expeditions, as Russian officials became keen to find fertile land and silver in the south.

The consequences were considerable. Russians soon established a port at Okhotsk, which for about two centuries served as the main Russian harbor on the Pacific. In the following decades, explorers such as Vasily Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov probed the Amur basin, leading to conflict with Qing China and eventually the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. Later voyages reached Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands, and Alaska. Moskvitin's journey thus marks the start of Russia's presence as a Pacific power, though it also began a long and often violent encounter with Indigenous Siberian peoples.