Misplaced Pages

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76-553: It is located in the south of the republic on the right bank of the Lena River near the mouth of the Aldan River and borders with Khangalassky and Amginsky Districts in the north, Ust-Maysky District in the northeast, Khabarovsk Krai in the east, Neryungrinsky District in the south, and with Olyokminsky District in the west and southwest. The area of the district is 156,800 square kilometers (60,500 sq mi). Its area

152-528: A woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma , and bison and horses from Yukagir have been found. Remote Wrangel Island and the Taymyr Peninsula are believed to have been the last places on Earth to support woolly mammoths as isolated populations until their extinction around 2000 BC. At least three species of humans lived in southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago: H. sapiens , H. neanderthalensis , and

228-475: A century later, in the years 1620–1623 a party of Russian fur hunters under the leadership of Demid Pyanda sailed up Nizhnyaya Tunguska , discovered the Lena, and either carried their boats there or built new ones. In 1623 Pyanda explored some 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) of the river from its upper reaches to the central Yakutia . In 1628 Vasily Bugor and 10 men reached the Lena, collected ' yasak ' (tribute) from

304-513: A million years and some scientists consider it a possible cause of the " Great Dying " about 250 million years ago, – estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time. The region has paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch , preserved in ice or permafrost . Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs , Yuka the mammoth and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon ,

380-674: A region extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. By this definition, Siberia includes the federal subjects of the Siberian Federal District , and some of the Ural Federal District , as well as Sakha (Yakutia) Republic , which

456-731: Is a long and narrow island off the Lena delta's western shore. One of the Lena delta islands, Ostrov Amerika-Kuba-Aryta or Ostrov Kuba-Aryta, was named after the island of Cuba during Soviet times. It is on the northern edge of the delta. As Lena is located at remote and undeveloped regions of the Russian Far East, its fish resource is very well preserved. Some of the species found in the river include: Siberian taimen , Siberian sturgeon , Upper Yenisei grayling . Siberia Siberia ( / s aɪ ˈ b ɪər i ə / sy- BEER -ee-ə ; Russian : Сибирь , romanized :  Sibir' , IPA: [sʲɪˈbʲirʲ] )

532-493: Is a part of the Far Eastern Federal District . Geographically, this definition includes subdivisions of several other subjects of Urals and Far Eastern federal districts, but they are not included administratively. This definition excludes Sverdlovsk Oblast and Chelyabinsk Oblast , both of which are included in some wider definitions of Siberia. Other sources may use either a somewhat wider definition that states

608-424: Is about 0.5 °C (32.9 °F). January averages about −20 °C (−4 °F) and July about +19 °C (66 °F), while daytime temperatures in summer typically exceed 20 °C (68 °F). With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture , as was demonstrated in the early 20th century. By far

684-583: Is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia , from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states since the centuries-long conquest of Siberia , which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia

760-744: Is continuous. The Lena river originates at 1,640 meters (5,381 ft) of elevation in the Baikal Mountains , 7 kilometres (4 mi) west of Lake Baikal , south of the Central Siberian Plateau . The Lena river flows north-east and traverses the Lena-Angara Plateau , then is joined by three tributary rivers: (i) the Kirenga river, (ii) the Vitim river, and (iii) the Olyokma river. From Yakutsk ,

836-565: Is culturally and politically considered European, since it is a part of Russia. Major geographical zones within Siberia include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau . Eastern and central Sakha comprises numerous north–south mountain ranges of various ages. These mountains extend up to almost 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), but above a few hundred metres they are almost completely devoid of vegetation. The Verkhoyansk Range

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912-560: Is derived from a Mongolic word sibir , cognate with modern Buryat sheber 'dense forest'. Siberia in Paleozoic times formed the continent of Siberia/Angaraland , which fused to Euramerica during the Late Carboniferous , as part of the formation of Pangea . The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest-known volcanic events of the last 251 million years of Earth's geological history . Their activity continued for

988-520: Is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons". The first mention of Siberia in chronicles is recorded in the year 1032. The city-state of Novgorod established two trade routes to the Ob River , and laid claim to the lands the Russians called Yugra . The Russians were attracted by its furs in particular. Novgorod launched military campaigns to extract tribute from

1064-775: Is frozen tundra for about seven months of the year, but in May the region is transformed into a lush wetland for a few months. Part of the area is protected as the Lena Delta Wildlife Reserve . The Lena delta divides into a multitude of flat islands. The most important are (from west to east): Chychas Aryta, Petrushka, Sagastyr, Samakh Ary Diyete, Turkan Bel'keydere, Sasyllakh Ary, Kolkhoztakh Bel'keydere, Grigoriy Diyelyakh Bel'kee (Grigoriy Islands), Nerpa Uolun Aryta, Misha Bel'keydere, Atakhtay Bel'kedere, Arangastakh, Urdiuk Pastakh Bel'key, Agys Past' Aryta, Dallalakh Island, Otto Ary, Ullakhan Ary and Orto Ues Aryta. Turukannakh-Kumaga

1140-425: Is high also in most of Primorye in the extreme south, where monsoonal influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall. Researchers, including Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University and Judith Marquand at Oxford University , warn that Western Siberia has begun to thaw as a result of global warming . The frozen peat bogs in this region may hold billions of tons of methane gas , which may be released into

1216-772: Is larger than the country of Bangladesh. Its administrative center is the town of Aldan . As of the 2010 Census , the total population of the district was 42,632, with the population of Aldan accounting for 49.9% of that number. The landscape of the district is mostly mountainous, dominated mainly by the Aldan Highlands . The northern end of the district is in the Lena Plateau . Average January temperature ranges from −36 °C (−33 °F) to −30 °C (−22 °F) and average July temperature ranges from +10 °C (50 °F) to +18 °C (64 °F). Average precipitation varies from 300 millimeters (12 in) in

1292-512: Is minimally present or absent, lasts about 70 days in the estuarine region and 125 days elsewhere. The area of the Lena river basin is calculated at 2,490,000 square kilometres (960,000 sq mi) and the mean annual discharge is 489 cubic kilometers per year. Gold is washed out of the sands of the Vitim and the Olyokma, and mammoth tusks have been dug out of the delta. There are numerous lakes in

1368-650: Is no longer visible. The Central Siberian Plateau is an ancient craton (sometimes named Angaraland ) that formed an independent continent before the Permian (see the Siberian continent ). It is exceptionally rich in minerals, containing large deposits of gold , diamonds , and ores of manganese , lead , zinc , nickel , cobalt , and molybdenum . Much of the area includes the Siberian Traps —a large igneous province . A massive eruptive period approximately coincided with

1444-595: Is several degrees warmer than in the East ( Irkutsk , or Chita ) where in the north an extreme winter subarctic climate (Köppen Dfd , Dwd , or Dsd ) prevails. But summer temperatures in other regions can reach +38 °C (100 °F). In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the basin of the Yana has the lowest temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching 1,493 metres (4,898 ft). Nevertheless, Imperial Russian plans of settlement never viewed cold as an impediment. In

1520-464: Is the active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka , on the Kamchatka Peninsula . Its peak reaches 4,750 metres (15,580 ft). The West Siberian Plain, consisting mostly of Cenozoic alluvial deposits, is somewhat flat. In the mid-Pleistocene, many deposits on this plain resulted from ice dams which produced a large glacial lake . This mid- to late- Pleistocene lake blocked the northward flow of

1596-614: Is the city of Novosibirsk . Present-day Novosibirsk is an important business, science, manufacturing and cultural center of the Asian part of Russia. Omsk played an important role in the Russian Civil War serving as a provisional Russian capital, as well in the expansion into and governing of Central Asia . In addition to its cultural status, it has become a major oil-refining, education, transport and agriculture hub. Other historic cities of Siberia include Tobolsk (the first capital and

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1672-431: Is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to roughly a quarter of Russia's population. Novosibirsk , Krasnoyarsk , and Omsk are the largest cities in the area. Because Siberia is a geographic and historic concept and not a political entity, there is no single precise definition of its territorial borders. Traditionally, Siberia spans

1748-609: The Ainu people ). Evidence from full genomic studies suggests that the first people in the Americas diverged from Ancient East Asians about 36,000 years ago and expanded northwards into Siberia, where they encountered and interacted with Ancient North Eurasians, giving rise to both Paleosiberian peoples and Ancient Native Americans , which later migrated towards the Beringian region, became isolated from other populations, and subsequently populated

1824-740: The Denisovans . In 2010, DNA evidence identified the last as a separate species. Late Paleolithic southern Siberians appear to be related to Paleolithic Europeans and the paleolithic Jōmon people of Japan. Ancient DNA analysis has revealed that the oldest fossil known to carry the derived KITLG allele, which is responsible for blond hair in modern Europeans, is a 17,000 year old Ancient North Eurasian specimen from Siberia. Ancient North Eurasian populations genetically similar to Mal'ta–Buret' culture and Afontova Gora were an important genetic contributor to Native Americans, Europeans, Ancient Central Asians, South Asians, and some East Asian groups (such as

1900-645: The Late Carboniferous through Jurassic Verkhoyansk foldbelt , on the northwest by the Paleozoic Taymr foldbelt, and on the southeast, south and southwest by the Middle Silurian to Middle Devonian Baykalian foldbelt. A regional geologic reconnaissance study begun in 1932 and followed by surface and subsurface mapping revealed the Markova-Angara Arch ( anticline ). This led to the discovery of

1976-614: The Ob and Yenisey rivers, resulting in a redirection southwest into the Caspian and Aral seas via the Turgai Valley . The area is very swampy, and soils are mostly peaty histosols and, in the treeless northern part, histels . In the south of the plain, where permafrost is largely absent, rich grasslands that are an extension of the Kazakh Steppe formed the original vegetation, most of which

2052-563: The Permian–Triassic extinction event . The volcanic event is one of the largest known volcanic eruptions in Earth's history . Only the extreme northwest was glaciated during the Quaternary , but almost all is under exceptionally deep permafrost, and the only tree that can thrive, despite the warm summers, is the deciduous Siberian Larch ( Larix sibirica ) with its very shallow roots. Outside

2128-665: The River Ob and the River Yenisey , which flow into the Arctic Ocean . The Lena river is 4,294 km (2,668 mi) long and has a capacious drainage basin of 2,490,000 km (960,000 sq mi); thus the Lena is the eleventh-longest river in the world and the longest river entirely within Russia . Geographically, permafrost is the type of soil that underlies most of the Lena river's catchment , twenty per cent (20%) of which

2204-610: The Siberian sub-ethnic group), and Eastern Slavic cultural influences predominate throughout the region. Nevertheless, there exist sizable ethnic minorities of Asian lineage, including various Turkic communities—many of which, such as the Yakuts , Tuvans , Altai , and Khakas , are Indigenous —along with the Mongolic Buryats , ethnic Koreans , and smaller groups of Samoyedic and Tungusic peoples (several of whom are classified as Indigenous small-numbered peoples by

2280-650: The Siberian Tatar word for 'sleeping land' ( Sib-ir ). A different hypothesis claims that the region was named after the Sibe people . The Polish historian Jan Chyliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the Proto-Slavic word for 'north' (cf. Russian север sever ), as in Severia . Anatole Baikaloff has dismissed this explanation. He said that the neighboring Chinese, Turks, and Mongolians, who have similar names for

2356-670: The Soviet Union (especially in the 1930s and 1940s), the government used the Gulag state agency to administer a system of penal labour camps , replacing the previous katorga system. According to semi-official Soviet estimates, which did not become public until after the fall of the Soviet government in 1991, from 1929 to 1953 more than 14 million people passed through these camps and prisons, many of them in Siberia. Another seven to eight million people were internally deported to remote areas of

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2432-487: The Yana River and its tributaries. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 kilometres (16,000 mi), of which 4,200 kilometres (2,600 mi) were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route. The Lena massacre was the name given to the 1912 shooting-down of striking goldminers and local citizens who protested at the working conditions in the mine near Bodaybo in northern Irkutsk. The incident

2508-492: The 'natives' and then founded Kirinsk in 1632. In 1631 the voyevoda of Yeniseysk sent Pyotr Beketov and 20 men to construct a fortress at Yakutsk (founded in 1632). From Yakutsk other expeditions spread out to the south and east. The Lena delta was reached in 1655. Two of the three groups of survivors of the ill-fated Jeannette expedition reached Lena Delta in September, 1881. The one led by engineer George W. Melville

2584-805: The Americas. During past millennia, different groups of nomads – such as the Enets , the Nenets , the Huns , the Xiongnu , the Scythians , and the Yugur – inhabited various parts of Siberia. The Afanasievo and Tashtyk cultures of the Yenisey valley and Altay Mountains are associated with the Indo-European migrations across Eurasia. The proto-Mongol Khitan people also occupied parts of

2660-562: The Lena north of Yakutsk. The Maya , a tributary of the Aldan, drains an area almost to the Sea of Okhotsk. The T-shaped Chona - Vilyuy system drains most of the area to the west. The main tributaries of the Lena are, from source to mouth: It is commonly believed that the Lena derives its name from the original Even-Evenk name Elyu-Ene , which means "the Large River". According to folktales related

2736-759: The Lena river enters the Central Yakutian Lowland and flows north until joined by the eastern tributary, the Aldan river , and the western tributary, the Vilyuy river . Afterwards, the Lena bends westwards and northwards, flowing between the mountains of the Kharaulakh Range to the east (part of the Verkhoyansk Range ) and the mountains of the Chekanovsky Ridge to the west. Travelling approximately due north,

2812-608: The Lena river widens into a great river delta that merges into the Laptev Sea , a marginal region of the Arctic Ocean, south-west of the New Siberian Islands . The Lena Delta is 30,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi) in area, being traversed by seven main branches, the most important being the Bykovsky channel, farthest east. The Lena is navigable over a length of 3540 kilometres. The annual navigation period, when ice

2888-1093: The Markovo Oil Field in 1962 with the Markovo—1 well, which produced from the Early Cambrian Osa Horizon bar - sandstone at a depth of 2,156 metres (7,073 ft). The Sredne-Botuobin Gas Field was discovered in 1970, producing from the Osa and the Proterozoic Parfenovo Horizon. The Yaraktin Oil Field was discovered in 1971, producing from the Vendian Yaraktin Horizon at depths of up to 1,750 metres (5,740 ft), which lies below Permian to Lower Jurassic basalt traps . The climate of Siberia varies dramatically, but it typically has warm but short summers and long, brutally cold winters. On

2964-640: The North-East Camps ) along the Kolyma and Norillag near Norilsk , where 69,000 prisoners lived in 1952. Major industrial cities of Northern Siberia, such as Norilsk and Magadan , developed from camps built by prisoners and run by former prisoners. Siberia spans an area of 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), covering the vast majority of Russia's total territory, and almost 9% of Earth's land surface (148,940,000 km , 57,510,000 sq mi). It geographically falls in Asia, but

3040-423: The Pacific coast, not the watershed, is the eastern boundary (thus including the whole Russian Far East), as well as all Northern Kazakhstan is its subregion in the south-west or a somewhat narrower one that limits Siberia to the Siberian Federal District (thus excluding all subjects of other districts). In Russian, 'Siberia' is commonly used as a substitute for the name of the federal district by those who live in

3116-444: The Russian Far East, and even Petropavlovsk in Kazakhstan and Harbin in China. Novosibirsk is the largest by population and the most important city for the Siberian economy; with an extra boost since 2000 when it was designated a regional center for the executive bureaucracy ( Siberian Federal District ). Omsk is a historic and currently the second largest city in the region, and since 1950s hosting Russia's largest oil refinery,

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3192-453: The Russian government), among many others. The origin of the name is uncertain. The Russian name Yugra was applied to the northern lands east of the Urals , which had been known of since the 11th century or earlier, while the name Siberia is first mentioned in Russian chronicles at the start of the 15th century in connection with the death of the khan Tokhtamysh , in "the Siberian land". Some sources say that "Siberia" originates from

3268-400: The Siberian Khanate in the 16th century. First, groups of traders and Cossacks began to enter the area. The Russian army was directed to establish forts farther and farther east to protect new Russian settlers who migrated from Europe. Towns such as Mangazeya , Tara , Yeniseysk , and Tobolsk developed, the last becoming the de facto capital of Siberia from 1590. At this time, Sibir was

3344-462: The Soviet Union (including entire nationalities or ethnicities in several cases). Half a million (516,841) prisoners died in camps from 1941 to 1943 during World War II . At other periods, mortality was comparatively lower. The size, scope, and scale of the Gulag slave-labour camps remain subjects of much research and debate. Many Gulag camps operated in extremely remote areas of northeastern Siberia. The best-known clusters included Sevvostlag (

3420-417: The Town of Tommot and the Settlement of Bezymyanny are incorporated into Tommot Urban Settlement , the Settlements of Lebediny and Leninsky are incorporated into Leninsky Urban Settlement , the Settlement of Nizhny Kuranakh is incorporated into Nizhny Kuranakh Urban Settlement, and the three rural okrugs are incorporated into three rural settlements. The town of Aldan serves as the administrative center of both

3496-410: The administrative and municipal district. *Administrative centers are shown in bold The economy of the district is based mostly on mining, although the production of building materials, wood processing, and food industry also have presence. There are deposits of gold, silver, platinum, molybdenum, granite, marble, and other minerals in the district. As of the 2021 Census , the ethnic composition

3572-419: The administrative centers in the urban-type settlements (inhabited localities) of Bezymyanny , Lebediny , Leninsky , and Nizhny Kuranakh ), and three rural okrugs ( naslegs ), all of which comprise thirteen rural localities . As a municipal division , the district is incorporated as Aldansky Municipal District . Within the municipal district, the Town of Aldan is incorporated into Aldan Urban Settlement,

3648-499: The ages. Historically, Siberia was defined as the whole part of Russia and North Kazakhstan to the east of Ural Mountains , including the Russian Far East . According to this definition, Siberia extended eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific coast, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the border of Central Asia and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. Soviet-era sources ( Great Soviet Encyclopedia and others) and modern Russian ones usually define Siberia as

3724-407: The area between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea . Since 1988, experimentation at Pleistocene Park has proposed to restore the grasslands of prehistoric times by conducting research on the effects of large herbivores on permafrost, suggesting that animals, rather than climate, maintained the past ecosystem. The nature reserve park also conducts climatic research on the changes expected from

3800-413: The atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide . In 2008 a research expedition for the American Geophysical Union detected levels of methane up to 100 times above normal in the atmosphere above the Siberian Arctic , likely the result of methane clathrates being released through holes in a frozen "lid" of seabed permafrost around the outfall of the Lena and

3876-458: The coldest inhabited point in the Northern hemisphere. Each town also frequently reaches 30 °C (86 °F) in the summer, giving them, and much of the rest of Russian Siberia, the world's greatest temperature variation between summer's highs and winter's lows, often well over 94–100+ °C (169–180+ °F) between the seasons. Southwesterly winds bring warm air from Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia (Omsk, or Novosibirsk)

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3952-415: The definition of the territory of Siberia a potentially controversial subject. In the eastern extent of Siberia there are territories which are not clearly defined as either Siberia or the Far East , making the question of "what is Siberia?" one with no clear answer, and what is a "Siberian", one of self-identification . The most populous city of Siberia, as well as the third most populous city of Russia,

4028-403: The district itself, but less commonly used to denote the federal district by people residing outside of it. Due to the different interpretations of Siberia, starting from Tyumen , to Chita , the territory generally defined as 'Siberia', some people will define themselves as 'Siberian', while others not. A number of factors in recent years, including the fomenting of Siberian separatism have made

4104-414: The entire expanse of land from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean , with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary, and includes most of the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean . It is further defined as stretching from the territories within the Arctic Circle in the north to the northern borders of Kazakhstan , Mongolia , and China in the south, although

4180-413: The extreme northwest, the taiga is dominant, covering a significant fraction of the entirety of Siberia. Soils here are mainly turbels , giving way to spodosols where the active layer becomes thicker and the ice-content lower. The Lena-Tunguska petroleum province includes the Central Siberian platform (some authors refer to it as the "Eastern Siberian platform"), bounded on the northeast and east by

4256-441: The floodplain of the river. Lakes Nedzheli and Ulakhan-Kyuel are the largest in the basin of the Lena. The Kirenga flows north between the upper Lena River and Lake Baikal. The Vitim drains the area northeast of Lake Baikal. The Olyokma flows north. The Amga makes a long curve southeast and parallel to the Lena and flows into the Aldan. The Aldan also curves roughly parallel to the Lena until it turns east and flows into

4332-406: The hills of north-central Kazakhstan are also commonly included. The Russian government divides the region into three federal districts (groupings of Russian federal subjects ), of which only the central one is officially referred to as " Siberian "; the other two are the Ural and Far Eastern federal districts, named for the Ural and Russian Far East regions that correspond respectively to

4408-474: The local population, but often met resistance, such as two campaigns in 1187 and 1193 mentioned in chronicles that were defeated. After Novgorod was annexed by Moscow , the newly emerging centralized Russian state also laid claim to the region, with Ivan III of Russia sending expeditionary forces to Siberia in 1483 and 1499–1500. The Russians received tribute, but contact with the tribes ceased after they left. The growing power of Russia began to undermine

4484-478: The mid-17th century, Russia had established areas of control that extended to the Pacific Ocean. Some 230,000 Russians had settled in Siberia by 1709. Siberia became one of the destinations for sending internal exiles . Exile was the main Russian punitive practice with more than 800,000 people exiled during the nineteenth century. The first great modern change in Siberia was the Trans-Siberian Railway , constructed during 1891–1916. It linked Siberia more closely to

4560-553: The most commonly occurring climate in Siberia is continental subarctic (Koppen Dfc , Dwc , or Dsc ), with the annual average temperature about −5 °C (23 °F) and an average for January of −25 °C (−13 °F) and an average for July of +17 °C (63 °F), although this varies considerably, with a July average about 10 °C (50 °F) in the taiga–tundra ecotone . The business -oriented website and blog Business Insider lists Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon , in Siberia's Sakha Republic , as being in competition for

4636-436: The name of a fortress at Qashliq , near Tobolsk. Gerardus Mercator , in a map published in 1595, marks Sibier both as the name of a settlement and of the surrounding territory along a left tributary of the Ob . Other sources contend that the Sibe , an Indigenous Tungusic people , offered fierce resistance to Russian expansion beyond the Urals. Some suggest that the term "Siberia" is a russification of their ethnonym. By

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4712-400: The north coast, north of the Arctic Circle , there is a very short (about one month long) summer. Almost all the population lives in the south, along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway . The climate in this southernmost part is humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa/Dfb or Dwa/Dwb ) with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least four months. The annual average temperature

4788-427: The north to 600 millimeters (24 in) in the south. The district was established on May 5, 1930. Within the framework of administrative divisions , Aldansky District is one of the thirty-four in the republic. It is divided into two towns (administrative divisions with the administrative centers in the towns (inhabited localities) of Aldan and Tommot ), four settlements (administrative divisions with

4864-407: The only kremlin in Siberia), Tomsk (formerly a wealthy merchant's town) and Irkutsk (former seat of Eastern Siberia's governor general, near lake Baikal). Other major cities include: Barnaul , Kemerovo , Krasnoyarsk , Novokuznetsk , Tyumen . Wider definitions of geographic Siberia also include the cities of: Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg in the Urals, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok in

4940-406: The rapidly industrialising Russia of Nicholas II ( r.  1894–1917 ). Around seven million Russians moved to Siberia from Europe between 1801 and 1914. Between 1859 and 1917, more than half a million people migrated to the Russian Far East. Siberia has extensive natural resources: during the 20th century, large-scale exploitation of these took place, and industrial towns cropped up throughout

5016-411: The region, would not have known Russian. He suggested that the name might be a combination of two words with Turkic origin, su 'water' and bir 'wild land'. Another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sihirtia or Sirtya (also Syopyr [sʲɵpᵻr])), a hypothetical Paleo-Asiatic ethnic group assimilated by the Nenets . Mongolist György Kara posits that the toponym Siberia

5092-414: The region. At 7:15 a.m. on 30 June 1908, the Tunguska Event felled millions of trees near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Stony Tunguska River) in central Siberia. Most scientists believe this resulted from the air burst of a meteor or a comet. Even though no crater has ever been found, the landscape in the (sparsely inhabited) area still bears the scars of this event. In the early decades of

5168-462: The region. In the 13th century, during the period of the Mongol Empire , the Mongols conquered a large part of this area. With the breakup of the Golden Horde , the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was formed in the late-15th century. Turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes from the 13th to 15th centuries. Siberia remained a sparsely populated area. Historian John F. Richards wrote: "it

5244-494: The reintroduction of grazing animals or large herbivores, hypothesizing that a transition from tundra to grassland would lead to a net change in energy emission to absorption ratios. According to Vasily Kryuchkov, approximately 31,000 square kilometers of the Russian Arctic has subjected to severe environmental disturbance. The term "Siberia" has both a long history and wide significance, and association. The understanding, and association of "Siberia" have gradually changed during

5320-407: The title of the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold . Oymyakon is a village which recorded a temperature of −67.7 °C (−89.9 °F) on 6 February 1933. Verkhoyansk , a town further north and further inland, recorded a temperature of −69.8 °C (−93.6 °F) for three consecutive nights: 5, 6 and 7 February 1933. Each town is alternately considered the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold –

5396-425: The western and eastern thirds of Siberia in the broader sense. Siberia is known for its long, harsh winters, with a January average of −25 °C (−13 °F). Although it is geographically in Asia, Russian sovereignty and colonization since the 16th century has led to perceptions of the region as culturally and ethnically European. Over 85% of its population are of European descent , chiefly Russian (comprising

5472-559: The winter, southern Siberia sits near the center of the semi-permanent Siberian High , so winds are usually light in the winter. Precipitation in Siberia is generally low, exceeding 500 millimetres (20 in) only in Kamchatka , where moist winds flow from the Sea of Okhotsk onto high mountains – producing the region's only major glaciers , though volcanic eruptions and low summer temperatures allow only limited forests to grow. Precipitation

5548-484: Was as follows: Lena River (Period of data: 1970-1999)17,067 m /s (602,700 cu ft/s) Lena Delta , Laptev Sea , Russia (Period of data: 1984-2018)577 km /a (18,300 m /s) Tabaga , Yakutsk (Basin size: 987,000 km (381,000 sq mi) The Lena is a river in the Russian Far East and is the easternmost river of the three, great rivers of Siberia , including

5624-480: Was extensively glaciated in the Pleistocene, but the climate was too dry for glaciation to extend to low elevations. At these low elevations are numerous valleys, many of them deep and covered with larch forest, except in the extreme north where the tundra dominates. Soils are mainly turbels (a type of gelisol ). The active layer tends to be less than one metre deep, except near rivers. The highest point in Siberia

5700-629: Was reported in the Duma (parliament) by Kerensky and is credited with stimulating revolutionary feeling in Russia. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov may have taken his alias, Lenin , from the river Lena, when he was exiled to the Central Siberian Plateau . At the end of the Lena River there is a large delta that extends 100 kilometres (62 mi) into the Laptev Sea and is about 400 km (250 mi) wide. The delta

5776-595: Was rescued by native Tungus huntsmen. Of the group led by Captain George W. De Long , only two of the men survived; the others died of starvation . Baron Eduard Von Toll , accompanied by Alexander von Bunge , led an expedition that explored the Lena delta and the islands of New Siberia on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1885. In 1886 they investigated the New Siberian Islands and

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