WI: Earlier Russian crossing of the Urals

Early Rus settlement of northern Russia was via Viking style boats exploring the river banks for encampment sometime around the 8th century. These people settled down to become farmers and it wasn't until the 16th century before the Russians crossed the Urals, again using boats to explore rivers like the Ob.

What if the Rus, or a branch of them kept moving and started settlements east of the Urals earlier on, perhaps going around it via the arctic coastline, so that by the time of the Mongol conquests the Ob and Yenisei are dotted with Russian towns? Assuming the Mongols are not butterflied away what impact would this have on Eurasian history?
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the reason the Rus didn't cross the Urals was because in the south the Steppe Raiders burned any town they built and in the North the various native people were simply better adapted to the environment and it wasn't until gunpowder etc. came along that the Russians could beat them.
 
What if the Rus, or a branch of them kept moving and started settlements east of the Urals earlier on, perhaps going around it via the arctic coastline

OTL (look up "pomors"). But not quite 13th century (more like 14th and 15th; certainly by early 16th).
It's unclear how much was actually known/colonized by the 13th century (Novaya Zemlya was supposedly reached in the 11th, but it isn't exactly east of the Urals).

so that by the time of the Mongol conquests the Ob and Yenisei are dotted with Russian towns? Assuming the Mongols are not butterflied away what impact would this have on Eurasian history?

Pretty darn unlikely. And it won't be so much "Russian towns" as vaguely-Slavic villages de-jure subservient to Novgorod.
That said, even if this does somehow happen, assuming a butterfly net in terms of weather effects, it won't change the Mongol conquest in any meaningful way, and the Mongol conquest wouldn't really affect it either (other than possibly disturbing some of the European trade - I mean, even IOTL Novgorodian territory was largely ignored by the Mongols).
 
There was a Novgorodian expedition to the Iron Gates (so vaguely to the Urals?) in the early 11th c. and there are certainly recorded expeditions by princes of Galich and others from Muscovite domains in the 1310s, 1340s and 1380s iirc.

There wasn't much call for permanent settlement though until the population pressures caught up. Consider that even the Kama basin was still being settled well into late 16th c.

That's a lot of land to cover. That said, technologically? It's totally doable. It's that that the Pechora route is much worse than the Kama-Chusovaya route and Bulgar held that part before the Mongols.
 
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