Why Is Russia So Huge? Most of It Is Empty

Russia is the biggest country on Earth, about one ninth of all the land on the planet. Yet three quarters of it, everything east of the Ural Mountains, holds only about a quarter of its people, and Moscow alone has more people than the whole Far East. So why is Russia so huge, and why is most of it empty? We answer it on one map: the Volga road, the low Urals, a few hundred Cossacks on Siberia's rivers, the fur tax that pulled Russia to the Pacific in 57 years, the treaty with China, then permafrost, frozen rivers and ports, and the 9,289 km Trans-Siberian. Then the scorecard: land, people, cold and distance. Every why has a where. Chapters 00:00 Big, and empty 01:03 A forest kingdom 01:18 The Volga road 01:43 Clue one: rivers 02:23 A chain of forts 02:56 Clue two: fur 03:40 A wall in the south 04:13 Why it is empty 04:28 Clue three: cold 05:38 Clue four: distance 06:26 The Soviet push 07:10 The scorecard 07:50 The map's answer Sources Rosstat (area, population, Moscow 2024, censuses 1989 and 2021); Wikipedia summaries of Rosstat data (Siberia, Far Eastern Federal District) CIA World Factbook (land area of the world, United States, Canada) History of the conquest of Siberia: forts and dates (Tobolsk 1587 to Okhotsk 1647), J. F. Richards on Siberia's early population Encyclopaedia Britannica (Trans-Siberian Railroad, Treaty of Nerchinsk, Ural Mountains) Permafrost share: Russian Ministry of Natural Resources (2021), via The Barents Observer Oymyakon record (6 Feb 1933) and Yakutsk climate normals Map data: Natural Earth (public domain) Full research notes with every number and source are kept by the channel.