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The Oka (, ; ) is a river in central Russia, the largest right tributary of the Volga. It flows through the regions of Oryol Oblast, Tula Oblast, Kaluga Oblast, Moscow Oblast, Ryazan Oblast, Vladimir Oblast and Nizhny Novgorod and is navigable over a large part of its total length, as far upstream as the town of Kaluga. Its length is and its catchment area . «Река Ока», Russian State Water Registry The Russian capital Moscow sits on one of the Oka's tributaries—the Moskva, from which the capital's name is thought to be derived.
From the Mongol conquest until about 1633, the Oka was the last line of defense against steppe raiders. Later Zasechnaya cherta, a chain of fortification lines, was created to protect Grand Duchy of Moscow and later the Tsardom of Russia from the Crimean-Nogai Raids. It was south of the original line along the Oka.
The river gave its name to the Upper Oka Principalities, situated upstream from Tarusa. In 1221 Grand Duke Yuri II of Vladimir founded Nizhny Novgorod, later to become one of largest Russian cities, to protect the Oka's confluence with the Volga. The Qasim Khanate, a Muslim polity, occupied the middle reaches of the Oka (around the city of Kasimov) in the 15th and 16th centuries. Before the construction of the railways in the mid-19th century and the building of the Moscow Canal in the 1930s, the Oka, along with its tributary Moskva, served as an important transportation route connecting Moscow with the Volga. Due to the Oka's and Moskva's meandering courses, travel was not particularly fast: for example, it took Cornelis de Bruijn around 10 days to sail from Moscow down these two rivers to Nizhny Novgorod in 1703. Traveling upstream may have been even slower, as the boats had to be pulled by burlaks.
The Prioksko-Terrasny Biosphere Reserve lies along the left bank of the river opposite the town of Pushchino and is known for its wisent breeding nursery.
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