Through the fear and daring of the pioneers: watch the new episode of the "8 Steps Across the Map of Russia" project

The educational video project "8 Steps Across the Map of Russia" has taken its second step: a new episode titled "The Exploration of Siberia" has been posted on the website of the National Centre RUSSIA. Viewers can continue discovering the history of the country through landscapes, routes, and the ways people across different eras perceived and understood the world around them. The second episode of the project is available to watch via the link.

The new episode features expert commentary from Vladimir Bulatov, Senior Researcher of the Written Sources Department at the State Historical Museum and Candidate of Geographical Sciences; Vladimir Kalutskov, Professor at the Department of Regional Studies of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Moscow State University and Doctor of Geographical Sciences; Yevgeny Gorbachevsky, Researcher at the Scientific and Exposition Department of the State Historical Museum; and Sergei Mukhametov, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University.

"The Exploration of Siberia" is a journey through fear, myths, ambition, and heroism. The episode is built around the contrast between the chilling legends of the past and the harsh reality faced by explorers who, without maps or state support, advanced thousands of kilometres across previously unknown lands in just a few decades. Viewers are immersed in the mythological image of Siberia that existed among Europeans and even some Russians before Yermak's campaign. On old maps, these territories were labelled as "Great Tartary" or a "hellish land", supposedly inhabited by fantastical peoples and creatures such as the "white-eyed Chud", basilisks, and hunchbacked serpents.

The episode explores in detail how private initiative gradually evolved into state policy. As the experts explain, Siberia was being explored long before any tsarist decree, and the pioneers were Pomors and free settlers from the Russian North. It was they who built the first Russian town beyond the Arctic Circle — the "gold-boiling" Mangazeya. Yet the true "gold" there was not precious metal, but fur — especially sable — and walrus ivory, which in Europe was valued even more highly than elephant ivory. Economic incentives became the driving force behind the expansion: as the experts note, Russia stretched far to the East in pursuit of sable.

The experts in the episode explain that the speed of Russian expansion across Northern Asia has no parallel in history. For example, Demid Safonov (Pyanda) travelled around 8,000 kilometres along the Lena River alone, opening vast new territories. As the speakers emphasise, no one in human history has ever achieved and could boast about such an extraordinarily rapid exploration of a territory so immense and so difficult in terms of terrain and climate. The episode culminates with the story of the self-taught Siberian cartographer Semyon Remezov, who was the first to "assemble" the entire enormous region into a single coherent map.

The "8 Steps Across the Map of Russia" project is a journey that viewers can return to again and again. Each new step brings fresh discoveries, presenting scientific facts from unexpected perspectives and through modern storytelling formats. "The Exploration of Siberia" does more than simply recount history — it allows viewers to feel how our ancestors crossed "beyond the Stone Belt" so that the blank space on the map would ultimately become what we now call "the great heart of Russia".