People of the Ob River

Politically, most of the Ob basin is within Russia, but its southern portion forms the northernmost part of Kazakhstan. Russians and other Slavs constitute the majority of the population, but there also are numerous non-Slavic peoples. These include the Kazakhs in the south, the Altay and Shor peoples of the mountains, the Tatars of the Irtysh basin, the Khanty (Ostyak) and the Mansi (Vogul)—whose autonomous district (Khanty-Mansi) occupies part of the taiga—and the Nenets, Nganasan, Enets, and Selkup peoples of the north. The valleys of the river are more densely populated than other parts of the basin.

Economy

The Ob, one of western Siberia’s principal means of transportation, is navigable for about 190 days of the year on its upper reaches and for 150 on its lower. Both imports and exports are shipped along the river. Most goods are transported to and from it along the northern sea route, which stretches across the Arctic. The Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the Irtysh at Omsk and the upper Ob at Novosibirsk. Railways to Kazakhstan from Novosibirsk and from the foothills of the mountains cross the upper Ob at Barnaul.

The Ob’s immense hydroelectric potential is estimated at some 250 billion kilowatts. Three main stations have been built: one on the Ob proper, at Novosibirsk, and the other two on the mountainous reaches of the Irtysh, at Bukhtarma and Öskemen.

Both industry and agriculture have been intensively developed in the Ob basin. Cities such as Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Barnaul are major industrial and manufacturing centres. The steppe zone, in the southern Ob basin, is the major producer of spring wheat in Russia. The west Siberian oil and gas fields, located in the taiga and tundra zones of the middle and lower Ob, are the most important in Russia, contributing about two-thirds of the country’s crude oil and natural gas output.

Study and exploration

Although paleo-Asiatic peoples have inhabited the Ob basin for millennia, Russian explorers and adventurers first penetrated the area only toward the end of the 16th century. During the reign of Ivan IV (the Terrible), the Cossack folk hero Yermak led an expedition into the Ob basin (1581–84/85) that claimed vast expanses for the tsar. Settlements and forts were established at Tyumen (1586), Tobolsk (1587), Obdorsk (now Salekhard; 1595), and Tomsk (1604). The lower Ob was explored in the first half of the 17th century, and a navigation chart of that section was published in 1667. Russian scientists investigated the lower Ob during the Great Northern Expedition (1733–42). For the next 150 years the river system was explored chiefly to foster the development of transportation. Detailed hydrologic observations and studies were initiated by the end of the 19th century and were pursued intensively during the 20th. During the 20th century Soviet scientists studied long-term climate change and the landscape evolution of this region and the adjacent Kara Sea.