Yenisei River

The Yenisei is thought of as the greatest river system that flows in the Arctic Ocean and at 3,445 miles (5,539 km), is the fifth longest river in the world. It is in Russia and is mainly in the Siberian region. This river includes several hydro-electric dams that fuel a significant part of Russia’s primary industry.

The upper reaches, subject to rapids and flooding, pass through sparsely populated areas. The middle section is controlled by a series of massive hydroelectric dams fuelling significant Russian primary industry. Partly built by gulag labor in Soviet times, industrial contamination remains a serious problem in an area hard to police. Moving on through sparsely-populated taiga, the Yenisei swells with numerous tributaries and finally reaches the Kara Sea in desolate tundra where it is icebound for more than half the year.

The maximum depth of the Yenisei River is 80 feet (24 m) and the average depth is 45 feet (14 m). The depth of river outflow is 106 feet (32 m) and inflow is 101 feet (31 m).

Ancient nomadic tribes such as the Ket people and the Yugh people lived along its banks. The Ket, numbering about 1000, are the only survivors today of those who originally lived throughout central southern Siberia near the river banks. Their extinct relatives included the Kotts, Assans, Arins, Baikots, and Pumpokols who lived further upriver to the south. The modern Ket lived in the eastern middle areas of the river before being assimilated politically into Russia during the 17th through 19th centuries.

Russians first reached the upper Yenisei in 1605, travelling from the Ob River, up the Ket River, portaging and then down the Yenisei as far as the Sym River. In 1607 they went east up the Angara River and in 1608 south towards Krasnoyarsk. Yeniseisk at the Ket-Angara junction was founded in 1619 and Krasnoyarsk upriver in 1628. In 1607 the lower Yenisei was reached from Mangazeya, with the founding Turukhansk at the mouth of the Lower Tunguska. The mouth of the Yenisey was reached in 1610 and the Stony Tunguska some time before 1626.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire agreed to divide Asia along a line that followed the Yenisei River to the border of China, and then along the border of China and the Soviet Union, the northern and western borders of Afghanistan, and the border between Iran and India (what is now Pakistan was then part of India).