List of Russian explorers

The history of exploration by citizens or subjects of the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, the Tsardom of Russia and other Russian predecessor states forms a significant part of the history of Russia as well as the history of the world. At, Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of Earth's landmass. In the times of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, the country's share in the world's landmass reached 1/6. Most of these territories were first discovered by Russian explorers. Contiguous exploration in Eurasia and the building of overseas colonies in Russian America were some of the primary factors in Russian territorial expansion.
Apart from their discoveries in Alaska, Central Asia, Siberia, and the northern areas surrounding the North Pole, Russian explorers have made significant contributions to the exploration of the Antarctic, Arctic, and the Pacific islands, as well as deep-sea and space explorations.

Alphabetical list

;Areas primarily explored:

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Portrait	Person	Achievements	Image
	Mikhail Babushkin military and polar aviator, Hero of the Soviet Union	Babushkin took part in an expedition to rescue Umberto Nobile in 1928, and in the rescue of the crew in 1933. He performed the flights to the first drifting ice station North Pole-1 in 1937. In 1937–38 he participated in a search for Sigizmund Levanevsky. Named in honor: Babushkinsky District, Babushkinskaya.
	Konstantin Badygin Soviet Navy captain, writer, scientist, Hero of the USSR	In 1938 Badygin became the captain of the ice-captured icebreaker Sedov, turned into a kind of drifting ice station. Most of the crew was evacuated, but 15 sailors and scientists, including Vladimir Vize, stayed aboard and carried out valuable scientific research in the course of 812 days. After drifting from New Siberian Islands across the North Pole, they were finally freed between Greenland and Svalbard by icebreaker Joseph Stalin in 1940.
	Karl Ernst von Baer* naturalist, a founder of embryology	In 1830–40 Baer researched Arctic meteorology. He was interested in the northern part of Russia and explored Novaya Zemlya in 1837 collecting specimens. Other travels led him to the Caspian Sea, Lapland, and North Cape, Norway. After his explorations of the Volga River he formulated the geological Baer's law, stating that in the Northern Hemisphere erosion occurs mostly on the right banks of rivers, and in the Southern Hemisphere on the left banks. Baer was one of the founders of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845, and also a co-founder and the first President of the Russian Entomological Society.
	Georgiy Baidukov military and test pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union	Baidukov was involved in a number of Soviet ultralong flights. In 1936 Valery Chkalov, Baidukov and A.V.Belyakov on ANT-25 flew 9,374 km from Moscow through the North Pole to follow-up Chkalov Island in Okhotsk Sea, which took 56 h 20 min. In 1937, also on ANT-25, the same crew flew 8,504 km from Moscow through the North Pole to Vancouver, Washington, which was the first transpolar flight between Europe and North America by airplane, rather than dirigible. Named in honor: Baydukov Island.	File:Chkalov1w.png\|120px\|center\|thumb\|alt=Chkalov and Baydukov Islands\|Chkalov and Baydukov Islands
	Alexander Baranov^ merchant, colonial administrator	Baranov was hired to head the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, which in 1799 was transformed into the Russian-American Company. Thus Baranov became the first governor of Russian America and held this post in 1799–1818. He explored the coast areas of northwestern North America, helped Russian Orthodox missionaries and improved relations with Alaska natives. He established trade with China, Hawaii and also with California, where he founded Fort Ross. Named in honor: Baranof Island.	File:Fort Ross inside.jpg\|120px\|center\|thumb\|alt=Fort Ross\|Fort Ross in California
	Nikifor Begichev Russian Navy officer	Begichev was the bosun of the ship Zarya, carrying Eduard Toll's expedition in 1900–03. In 1922, at the request of Norway, Begichev led a Soviet expedition in search of the lost crew members of Roald Amundsen's 1918 expedition on the ship Maud, Peter Tessem and Paul Knutsen, but was unsuccessful. In 1923–24 Begichev explored the Taymyr Peninsula with Nikolay Urvantsev. Named in honor: Bolshoy Begichev Island, Maliy Begichev Island.
	Pyotr Beketov* Siberian Cossack voevoda	Beketov, initially a strelets, was appointed Enisei voevoda in Siberia after 1627. He successfully carried out the voyage to collect taxes from Zabaykalye Buryats, becoming the first Russian to set foot in Buryatia. He founded the first Russian settlement there, Rybinsky ostrog. Beketov was sent to the Lena River in 1631, where in 1632 he founded Yakutsk, a startpoint of further Russian expeditions eastward, southward and northward. He sent his Cossacks to explore the Aldan and Kolyma rivers, to found new fortresses, and to collect taxes. In 1652 he launched another voyage to Buryatia, and in 1653 Beketov's Cossacks founded follow-up Chita and then future Nerchinsk in 1654.	File:Y-ostrog.jpg\|thumb\|center\|120px\|alt=A tower of Yakutsky ostrog\|A tower of Yakutsky ostrog.
	Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky! Russian Army officer	Bekovich-Cherkassky, a Circassian Muslim converted to Christianity, was made by Tsar Peter the Great the leader of the first Russian military expeditions into Central Asia in 1714–17, with the aim of conquering the Khanate of Khiva and the golden sands of the Oxus River. Bekovich received these orders in Astrakhan, where he was engaged in preparing the first Russian map of the Caspian Sea. He commanded a preliminary expedition to Turkmenistan and set up the forts in Krasnovodsk and Alexandrovsk. In 1717 he won the battle against Khivan Khan, but was tricked into separating his men, betrayed by the Khan, defeated and killed.	File:Caspianseamap.png\|120px\|center\|thumb\|alt=Caspian Sea\|The Caucasus, Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan
	Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen§ Russian admiral, circumnavigator, cartographer	Bellingshausen took part in the first Russian circumnavigation under Ivan Krusenstern on Nadezhda in 1803–06. He himself led another Russian circumnavigation in 1819–21 on the sloop Vostok, together with Mikhail Lazarev on Mirny – this expedition was the first to discover the continent of Antarctica on January 28, 1820. They also discovered and named Peter I Island, Zavodovski, Leskov and Visokoi Islands, Antarctic peninsula mainland and Alexander Island, and made discoveries in the tropical waters of the Pacific, including Vostok Island. Named in honor: Bellingshausen Island, Bellingshausen Sea, Bellingshausen Station, Bellinshausen Island, Faddey Islands, Bellingshausen Plate, Bellinsgauzen crater, 3659 Bellingshausen.	File:Platinum coin5318-0006R.gif\|120px\|center\|thumb\|alt=Antarctica\|Vostok and Mirny in Antarctica
	Lev Berg! geographer, biologist	Berg studied and determined the depth of the lakes of Central Asia, including Balkhash Lake and Issyk Kul. He researched the ichthyology of Central Asia and European Russia. He developed Dokuchaev's doctrine of biomes and climatology and was one of the founders of the Geographical Institute, now the Faculty of Geography of the Saint Petersburg University. In 1940–50 Berg was the President of the Soviet Geographical Society.
	Vitus Bering^ Russian Navy captain-commander	Returning from the East Indies, Bering joined the Russian Navy in 1703. He became the main organiser of the Great Northern Expedition to explore northern Asia. In 1725, Bering went overland to Okhotsk, crossed to Kamchatka, and aboard Sv. Gavriil mapped some 3500 km of the Bering Sea coast and passed the Bering Strait in 1728–29. Later, Ivan Fyodorov and Mikhail Gvozdev aboard the same Sv. Gavriil sighted the Alaskan shore in 1732. Having organised a major Second Kamchatka expedition, Bering and Aleksei Chirikov sailed from Okhotsk in 1740 aboard Sv. Piotr and Sv. Pavel, founded Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and headed together to North America in 1741, until separated by storm. Bering discovered the southern coast of Alaska, landed near Kayak Island and discovered the Aleutian Islands. Chirikov discovered the shores of America near Aleksander Archipelago and safely returned to Asia. Bering, however, became very ill and his ship was driven to an uninhabited follow-up Bering Island of the Commander group. Bering died there, along with part of his crew. The rest built a vessel out of the wreckage of Sv. Piotr and escaped to Petropavlovsk. Named in honor: Bering Strait, Bering Sea, Bering Island, Bering Glacier, Bering Land Bridge, Beringia.	File:1966 CPA 3446.jpg\|120px\|center\|thumb\|alt=Commander Islands and Alaska\|A postage stamp depicting the discovery of the Commander Islands and Alaska.
	Yuri Bilibin geologist	Bilibin led the First Kolyma Expedition in 1928 and in 1931–1932 he organized the Second Kolyma Expedition. The result of the explorations was the discovery of gold deposits in Northeast Siberia. In 1934, together with mining engineer Evgeny Bobin, Bilibin surveyed and charted the last unmapped areas of the continental USSR, the Yudoma-Maya and the Aldan highlands, as well as the Sette-Daban, in the course of an expedition sent by the Soviet government. Named in honor: Bilibino Town, Bilibino District, Bilibinskite.
	Joseph Billings^ Royal Navy and Russian Navy officer	In 1785–95 Billings, previously an English officer who had sailed with Captain Cook, led a Russian expedition in search of the Northeast Passage, with Gavril Sarychev as his deputy. They made accurate maps of the Chukchi Peninsula, the west coast of Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands. They landed on Kodiak Island, examined the area of Prince William Sound and compiled a census of the native population of the Aleutians. Billings crossed Chukotka on reindeer and made the first elaborate description of the Chukchi people. Named in honor: Cape Billings, Billings.
	Georgy Brusilov^ Russian Navy captain	In 1910–11, Brusilov took part in a hydrographic expedition on the icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach to the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas. In 1912–14 he led an expedition on the brig St.Anna, which aimed to travel by the Northern Sea Route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. St.Anna became icebound west of Yamal Peninsula and drifted to the North Pole in 1913. Brusilov became ill and many of the crew succumbed to scurvy. In 1914 a group led by lieutenant Valerian Albanov abandoned the ship and walked south over the drifting ice. Only Albanov and Alexander Konrad managed to reach Franz Joseph Land, where they were rescued by Georgy Sedov's St. Foka. The efforts to find the St. Anna were unsuccessful. Brusilov and his ship are among the prototypes for the novel The Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin, where the fictional St. Maria repeats the drift of St. Anna.
	Alexander Bulatovich Russian Army officer, writer, hieromonk, imiaslavie leader, hero of World War I	In 1897 Bulatovich was a member of the Russian mission of the Red Cross in Africa, where he became a confidant of Negus Menelek II of Ethiopia and his military aide in the war with Italy and the southern tribes. He became the first European to provide a description of the Kaffa province and among the first to reach the mouth of the Omo River. Among the places named by Bulatovich was the Nicholas II Mountain range. The prototype for grotesque Schema-Hussar Alexei Bulanovich in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs; the hero of Valentin Pikul's The Hussar on a Camel and Richard Seltzer's The Name of Hero.
	Fabian Bellingshausen Russian officer of Baltic German descent in the Imperial Russian Navy, cartographer and explorer	The discoverer of the Antarctica. In 1819 the authorities selected Bellingshausen to lead the First Russian Antarctic Expedition which was intended to explore the Southern Ocean and to find land in the proximity of the South Pole. With two ships, sloop-of-war Vostok and support vessel Mirny were led by Mikhail Lazarev, the journey started from Kronstadt on 4 June 1819. Bellingshausen and Lazarev managed to twice circumnavigate the continent. Thus they disproved Captain Cook's assertion that it was impossible to find land in the southern ice fields. The expedition also made discoveries and observations in the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean.