Siberia remains a mostly unexplored area, inhabited during the past few centuries only by a few exploratory missions and traders.

The Russians that migrate into Siberia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are hunters, and those who have escaped from the Central Russia: fugitive peasants in search for life free of serfdom, fugitive convicts, and Old Believers.

The new settlements of Russians and the existing local peoples require defense from nomads, for which forts are established, such as Tomsk and Berdsk.

The nomads' threat weakens in the beginning of the eighteenth century; thus the region becomes increasingly populated; normal civic life is established in the cities.