Editing Omsk Oblast (section)

===Exploration of Siberia===
The Russian history of Omsk began with the 1584 arrival of a Cossack force under the command of ataman [[Yermak Timofeyevich]], who defeated local rulers and established nominal Russian control of the area. To support further expansion tsars [[Feodor I]] and [[Boris Godunov]] initiated the construction of fortified settlements and military outposts in the south of Siberia in order to defend their subjects from raiding nomadic tribesmen and to exert authority over local populations, specifically over the tribute-paying [[Siberian Tatars]] of The Baraba Lands. The first permanent Russian settlement in the region, the city of [[Tara, Omsk Oblast|Tara]], was founded in 1594, soon it began to play an important part in fur trade that connected Russia with Central Asia and China.

In 1716 a fortress was constructed at the confluence of the [[Om]] and [[Irtysh]] rivers on the orders of sublieutenant Ivan Bugholtz. The fortress would form the nucleus for the development of the future city of Omsk. By the second half of the 18th century, Omsk fortress was the largest building of any kind in the eastern part of Russia.

As Russian settlements continued to spread through the [[Yenisei]], [[Tobol River|Tobol]] and Irtysh watersheds in the course of the 18th century, so did the development of the Omsk and the surrounding region. In 1753 a customs post was established to tax goods brought into the city by the ever-increasing trade with Kazakh tribesmen. In 1764, when the Siberian provinces of Russia were organized into two governorates with centers in [[Irkutsk]] and [[Tobolsk]], the city of Tara and the fortress of Omsk were assigned to the latter. In 1780, on the orders of [[Catherine the Great]] the fortress was transferred to [[Kolyvan, Novosibirsk Oblast|Kolyvan Oblast]]. By this time Omsk had grown to the size of a small city, however, from 1797 to 1804 it did not possess its own [[uyezd]].