Before 1581, Tsarist Russia had nothing to do with Siberia and the Far East. At that time they were only a purely Eastern European country and did not cross the Ural Mountains.
Sensei said that the Far East, even Siberia they have not touched. At that time, their main battlefield had been in Europe, mainly with the Ottoman Turks, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Kingdom of Poland.
So what did they provoke? Did they have to start invading Siberia after 1581? Was Siberia really terra nullius at that time, and why did the Far East become their colony?
1. A cup of tribute to the Mongolians and Tatars
The predecessor of Tsarist Russia was Muscovy, which was originally part of Kievan Rus', one of the Rus' states. Compared to the core region of Kiev, Muscovy is a remote area.
Therefore, when the Mongol army came in the 13th century, a large number of powerful Rus' states were cleaned up, but the small little bit of Muscovy survived.
In order to grow stronger, the Grand Duke of Moscow decisively betrayed his compatriots in exchange for the trust of the Mongol Golden Horde, and became a very loyal horse boy under them.
But after all, one is a Mongol and the other is an Eastern Slav, and sooner or later they will break up.
After Muscovy received the right to collect taxes, it slowly became bigger and stronger, and in the late 15th century, it became open to the decaying Golden Horde.
After all, after being slaves for more than 200 years, they were very unhappy, so after the fall of the Golden Horde, they began to frantically attack the princely groups established by the Mongols and Tatars.
From 1547 to 1580, under the leadership of Tsar Ivan IV, Tsarist Russia annexed the Kazan Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, and defeated the Crimean Khanate. Most of the Mongol khanates in Eastern Europe were trampled under the feet of Tsarist Russia.
In 1581, they crossed the Ural Mountains, because in Siberia, there was also a Siberian Khanate, also a Mongol khanate, and they naturally did not let go.
2. Siberia is not a terra nullius, but the master was eaten by them
The Siberian Khanate, founded in 1460, was a khanate of the Mongol Golden Horde. The capital of the Khanate was near present-day Tyumen, Russia, and its main habitat was in the middle reaches of the Ob River.
They herd horses and sheep in Siberia all year round, and live a well-to-do herd life, without interference from any other power.
However, in 1581, Ivan IV, realizing that there was also a Mongol khanate, decisively sent Yermak with 840 well-equipped men.
This Yermak was originally a robber, and after being captured by the Tsars, he was sentenced to death. Yermak was also a capable man, and took his men to hide under a large Russian nobleman.
The great nobleman saw the potential of this group of robbers, so he applied to the Tsar to organize a group of people to attack Siberia and capture all the locals to pay taxes to Russia.
Naturally, Ivan IV was pleased, and approved the matter. No one thought that the army formed by this great nobleman was basically robbers who robbed houses.
Since the establishment of the Siberian Khanate, there has been basically no war, and more than 100 years have passed, and suddenly a group of well-equipped and powerful Rakshasas have come, and they really can't bear it.
In 1582, Kuchum Khan was defeated and fled. However, the struggle between the Siberian Khanate and Tsarist Russia was far from over, and after Kuchum Khan fled to the south, he organized a group of clansmen and continued to fight against Tsarist Russia for 17 years.
During this period, in 1584, Kuchum Khan led his troops to attack the Russian army, so frightened that Yermassa ran away, and fell into the river and drowned alive. Even so, the enraged Tatars hung up Yermak and shot him as an arrow target for a full month.
Ivan IV (died 1584) failed to see the Siberian Khanate fall at the feet of the Russians, and it was not until 1598, after the murder of Kuchum Khan, that the Khanate was truly conquered by the Russians.
This also marked the end of the 16th century, when Tsarist Russia officially began to colonize parts of Siberia.
Ironically, Yermak, the former bandit and condemned prisoner, was called the greatest hero by the Russians for helping them conquer parts of Siberia, and there are still many statues of Yermak erected in Russia.
Third, the conquest of the Far East depends on rebellion
At the beginning of the 17th century, Tsarist Russia began to set foot in the Far East, when it was in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and Tsarist Russia took this opportunity to conquer the local tribes in the Far East and occupy a lot of territory in the Far East.
But when they came to the Heilongjiang Valley, they were hit by various blows from the Qing army.
Fighting those tribal armies, Tsarist Russia is a dimensionality reduction attack, but competing with a regular army like the Qing army, Tsarist Russia is a little powerless.
- First, at that time, the gap in equipment between the two sides was not very large, and the combat effectiveness was comparable.
- Second, the Russian labor division expedition was insufficient.
- Thirdly, Tsarist Russia thought that the Far East was as easy to conquer as the vast Siberia, so it did not send many people either.
As a result, here they suffered one after another, and the tsar's side realized that the Far East was different from the rest of the East. In 1689, taking advantage of the Qing Dynasty's desire to deal with the Dzungar Khanate in the northwest, Tsarist Russia and the Qing Dynasty forcibly signed the Treaty of Nebuchu, in which the two sides agreed that the Outer Khingan Mountains would be the eastern boundary between each other.
Although the Qing Dynasty suffered a little loss in this matter, Kangxi still felt that it was quite cost-effective to be able to exchange space for time and concentrate on dealing with the Dzungar Khanate.
In 1728, Tsarist Russia signed the Treaty of Kyakhta with the Qing Dynasty, marking the border between the two sides in the central region. It's a very bad treaty, why do you say that?
Originally, there were no treaty restrictions on the ownership of the Baikal region, so whoever is strong can get it. However, after the signing of the "Kyakhta Treaty", although the vast area of Outer Mongolia was retained, the ownership of the Baikal region was virtually ceded to Tsarist Russia. Tsarist Russia was naturally overjoyed.
As a result, from 1858 to 1860, Tsarist Russia found that the Qing Dynasty was in decline, so it asked the Governor of Eastern Siberia, Muravyov, to force the Qing Dynasty to sign the "Aihui Treaty" and the "Sino-Russian Beijing Treaty" by means of coercion and blackmail, and cut off more than 1 million square kilometers of land in the Outer Northeast.
The two sides had already demarcated the eastern border, but they wanted to go back on their word and treat the treaty as a child's play, which is a bit too much to say, after all, it is something signed in black and white. They thought that the Qing Dynasty was weakened, so they could break the contract and bully them at will. So does it mean that one day Russia weakens, those treaties can be ignored and torn up casually, and Russia can be bullied casually?
It is worth mentioning that this Muravyov is still a great hero in the hearts of the Russians, and in 2006 Russia printed it on a paper ruble with a face value of 5,000. Peter the Great was printed on 500 rubles, which shows how much the Russians adore this Muravyov.
Since the vast regions of Siberia and the Far East have been under the control of Tsarist Russia. Moreover, it is incorporated into the territory in the form of a treaty, and unless there is a big man who does not recognize any unequal treaties, it is indeed difficult to solve this problem.
Can colonial rule last?
Yermak used to be a robber and did the job of robbing houses. He conquered the Siberian Khanate, which had nothing to do with Russian culture, by force, which allowed Tsarist Russia to possess part of Siberia.
Although Muravyov was from an aristocratic background, he did not snatch the territory from the Qing Dynasty with real swords and guns, but relied on threats and blackmail to deceive more than 1 million square kilometers of land, and the two sides did not take action. If a treaty can be amended or even abrogated, then subsequent treaties can logically be amended or even abrogated.
Therefore, the occupation of Siberia and the Far East by Tsarist Russia was no different from the colonies occupied by Britain and France. They belonged to different ethnic, historical, and cultural circles, and had never crossed paths before 1581. After World War II, Britain and France spit out large swaths of colonies, which should serve as an example for those colonists of yesteryear in the new era.