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Lifted wholesale from Alex Milman on soc.history.what-if - why? Because it was an interesting idea:

What if Russian territory does not extend (too much) East of Ural at least until mid-XIX century?

In OTL, conquest of the Siberian Khanate was, at least initially, a private enterprise of Stroganov family, Russian richest merchants (for quite a while) with the estates along Kama and Chusovaya Rivers and business interests in farming, hunting, saltworks, fishing, and ore mining.

Until XVIII practically the only hard currency" Russia had were furs. Gold and silver had been bought abroad and used to make the local currency. Can't say what percentage of the furs had been coming from beyond the Ural but probably there were still enough prior to the Siberian adventure.

Most of OTL (safe guess, all the way to the XVIII century) interest in the areas East of Ural was limited to taking tribute (furs) from the local tribes and then keeping trade route to China. Siberia was not seriously populated until Stolypin's reforms and communication with the Pacific Coast was extremely difficult until construction of the Trans Siberian railroad (either year or two by land or by the sea across most of the world). However, the resources had been spent on maintaining the gradually expanding "infrastructure".

Gold in Siberia (including Altay) was found in the early XVIII but it does not look like it was solving any financial problems even being a state monopoly (total production between 1719 and 1800 made up 22,491.1 kg.). In 1812 the monopoly was cancelled and almost simultaneously the gold was discovered on Ural and in 1823 the private operations had been producing twice more than the state owned ones with the output growing all the way to 1913.

So, what if Stroganovs did not finance Yermak's expedition but just kept improving their existing businesses and perhaps do some exploration on Ural to discover, among many other useful things, gold
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In OTL "conquest" of Siberia (actually, incomplete conquest of the Siberian Khanate) was a political bonus for Ivan the Terrible who was at that time in a process of being beaten on his Western borders. In ATL the bonus did not happen and Ivan is too busy elsewhere. His successors (in ATL) are not showing any interest in the subject and have quite a few problems on their hands (like a terrible famine happening at the time of Boris Godunov), then comes the Time of Troubles and the wars with the Commonwealth and Sweden continued during the reigns of the first Romanovs. In other words, everybody is busy and few Cossack "entrepreneurs" are getting nowhere with their discoveries. Peter I is busy with his favorite projects: the Great Northern War, building St-Petersburg and causing a general havoc all over the place. If Ural gold is discovered he is not launching ill-fated expedition into the Central Asia and probably does not care too much about the Wild East (trade with China may still be a factor or perhaps not if his predecessors did not start it).

The 1st serious candidate for Drang Nach Osten is Catherine II but she may not have resources for doing anything serious: most of the available money are being spent on the wars with the Ottomans, favorites, and Novorossiya (Potemkin was quite good in not counting state money). Paul's reign is too short and Alexander is quite busy playing savior of Europe. So we arrived to the 1820's.

Nicholas I starts annexation of Siberia but this means that Russian penetration into the Central Asia happens much later than in OTL. By 1830 Russia is simply not in a position to oppose the British attempts to arrange for trade with Bukhara (chances are that they'd fail due to the "natural causes"), etc. OTOH, without "the Russians are coming" British hysteria the Great Game may not happen on OTL schedule or perhaps at all: the Brits are securing (ha-ha) Afghanistan and feel themselves reasonably safe well before the Russians are getting anywhere close. So perhaps the Russian-British relations in XIX century are generally better than in OTL.

Then, Russian move Eastward may or may not mean that they are getting all the way to the Pacific. Let's say that it is decided that Western Siberia and a chunk of the Central Asia is quite enough: after all nobody knows about the future discoveries (and there is not too much usage for the natural gas in mid-XIX, anyway). The rest is up for the gabs but I suspect that a big part of it could remain masterless simply because it does not worth an effort needed to get there.

Impact on Russian economy would be close to zero at least all the way to the end of the XIX century. There is still a lot of Siberia to conduct something similar to the OTL mass settlements. Communications with the eastern border are easier and there is no need to spend money on Pacific fleet.

Political impact: potentially better relations with Britain, no future conflict with Japan.
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