[[Image:Siberia-FederalSubjects.png|thumb|right|250px|
Siberian
Federal District Geographic
Russian Siberia Historical
Siberia (and present Siberia in some usages)]]
Siberia ( ), is the vast
region constituting almost all of Northern
Asia and for the most part currently serving as the massive
central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation
, having served in the same capacity previously for
the USSR
from its
beginning, and the Russian
Empire
beginning in the 16th century.
It
includes a large part of the Eurasian
Steppe and extends 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
. It makes up about 77% of Russia's territory
(13.1 million square kilometres), but only 25% of Russia's
population (36 million people).
Origin of the name
Some sources say that it originates from the
Turkic for "sleeping land." Another version
is that this name was the tribal name of the
Sibilla,
ancient
Turkic nomads later
assimilated to
Siberian Tatars. It
has also been asserted that the name Siberia is connected to the
Sabir people.
Shaman Akkanat, one of the
last shamans in western Siberia and a leading figure in the
indigenous society of the region, claims that Siberia got its name
from his nation, the
Sibirga people. The
modern usage of the name appeared in the Russian language after the
conquest of the
Siberia
Khanate.
Borders and administrative division
with clickable city names
(SVG).
.
The term
Siberia has a very long history, and its meaning
has gradually changed during ages.
Historically, Siberia was defined as the
whole part of Russia 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 Russian Central
Asia and the national borders of both Mongolia (which included
Tuva
) and China.
Soviet-era
sources (GSE and others)
and modern Russian ones usually define Siberia as 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. Correspondingly, Siberia includes the
federal subjects of the
Siberian Federal District,
and some of the
Urals Federal
District, as well as
Sakha
Republic, which is a part of the
Far Eastern Federal District.
This definition also includes geographically (but not
administratively) subdivisions of several other subjects of Urals
and Far Eastern federal districts. 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 the Pacific coast, not the watershed, is the eastern
boundary (thus including the whole Russian Far East) or a somewhat
narrower one that confines
Siberia to the Siberian Federal
District (thus excluding all subjects of other districts). However,
in Russian the word for
Siberia is never used to
substitute the name of the federal district.
Major cities include:
History
Siberia was occupied by differing groups of nomads such as the
Yenets, the
Nenets, the
Huns, the
Iranian Scythians,
and the
Turkic Uyghurs.
The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern
Tobolsk
was known as a prominent figure who endorsed
Kubrat as Khagan in Avar in 630. The area was conquered by
the
Mongols early in the 13th century. With
the break up of the
Golden Horde, the
autonomous Siberia Khanate was established in late 14th
century.
The
growing power of Russia
to the west
began to undermine the Siberian
Khanate in the 16th century. First, groups of traders
and
Cossacks began to enter the area, and
then the Russian army began to set up forts further and further
east.
Towns like Mangazeya
, Tara
, Yeniseysk
, and Tobolsk sprang up, the latter being declared the capital of
Siberia. By the mid-17th century, the
Russian-controlled areas had been extended to the Pacific
. The total
Russian
population of Siberia in 1709 was 230,000.
Siberia remained a mostly undocumented and sparsely populated area.
During the following few centuries, only a few exploratory missions
and traders entered Siberia.
The other group that was sent to Siberia
consisted of prisoners exiled from western Russia or Russian-held
territories like Poland
(see
katorga). In the 19th century, around
1.2 million prisoners were deported to Siberia.
The first great modern change to Siberia was the
Trans-Siberian railway, constructed
in 1891–1916. It linked Siberia more closely to the
rapidly-industrializing Russia of
Nicholas II. Between 1801 and 1914 an
estimated 7 million settlers moved from
European Russia to Siberia, 85% during the
quarter-century before
World War I.
Siberia is filled with natural resources and during the 20th
century large scale exploitation of these was developed, and
industrial towns cropped up throughout the region.
Katorga and Gulag
Russia, later the Soviet Union, operated a series of labor camps,
known as the
GULAG, which is an acronym for
Main Camp Administration. They became so common that "Siberia" came
to be used as a reference for exile and punishment, e.g., "a
bureaucratic Siberia." Soviet authorities deported millions of
people, including entire nationalities, from western areas of the
USSR to
Central Asia and Siberia. More
than 18 million people passed through the
Gulag from 1929
to 1953, with a further 6 million being
deported and exiled
to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
By
analogy, one working-class district of downtown Stockholm
, Sweden
, earned
the name Sibirien (Siberia) in the late 19th century,
referring to its low-cost tenement houses being built in outlying
areas.
Geography and geology
With an area of 13.1 million km² (5.1 million
square miles), Siberia makes up roughly 77% of
the total area of Russia.
Major geographical zones include the
West Siberian Plain and the
Central
Siberian Plateau
. Siberia covers almost 10% of Earth's land
surface (14,894,000 km²).
The West
Siberian Plain consists mostly of Cenozoic
alluvial deposits and is extraordinarily low-lying, so much so that
a sea level rise of fifty metres
would cause all land between the Arctic Ocean and Novosibirsk
to be inundated. Many of the deposits
on this plain result from ice dams; having
reversed the flow of the Ob and Yenisei Rivers, so redirecting them
into the Caspian
Sea
(perhaps the Aral
as
well). It 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
(almost all cleared now).
The Central Siberian Plateau is an extremely ancient
craton (sometimes named
Angaraland)
that formed an independent
continent
before the
Permian (see
Siberia ). 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 which is a
large
igneous province. The massive eruptive period was approximately
coincident with the
Permian–Triassic
extinction event. The volcanic event is said to be the largest
known
volcanic eruption 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 the extreme
northwest, the
taiga is dominant. Soils here
are mainly
Turbels, giving way to
Spodosols where the active layer becomes thicker
and the ice content lower.
Eastern and central Sakha comprise numerous north-south mountain
ranges of various ages. These mountains extend up to almost three
thousand metres in elevation, but above a few hundred metres they
are almost completely devoid of vegetation.
The Verkhoyansk
Range
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
tundra dominates. Soils
are mainly Turbels and the active layer tends to be less than one
metre deep except near rivers.
The
highest point in Siberia is the active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka
, in the Kamchatka
peninsula. Its peak is at .
Russian researchers 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 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 Siberian Arctic, likely being released by
methane clathrates being released by holes in a frozen 'lid' of
seabed permafrost, around the outfall of
the Lena
River
and the area between the Laptev Sea
and East Siberian Sea
.
Climate
Almost all the population lives in the south, along the
Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate
here is
subarctic (Koppen
Dfc or
Dwc), with the annual average temperature
about and roughly average in January and in July. With a reliable
growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile
chernozem soils, Southern Siberia is good
enough for profitable agriculture, as was proven in the early
twentieth century.
The southwesterly winds of Southern Siberia bring warm air from
Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia
(Omsk, Novosibirsk) is several degrees warmer than in the East
(Irkutsk, Chita).
With a lowest record temperature of ,
Oymyakon
(Sakha Republic) has
the distinction of being the coldest town on Earth. But summer temperatures in other regions
reach . In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the
basin of the
Yana River has the lowest
temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching . Nevertheless, as
far as Imperial Russian plans of settlement were concerned, cold
was never viewed as an issue. In 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 only in Kamchatka where moist winds flow from the Sea of
Okhotsk
onto high mountains – producing the region's only
major glaciers – and in most of Primorye in the extreme south where monsoonal
influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall. Despite
the region's notorious cold winters, snowfall is generally quite
light, especially in the eastern interior of the region.
Lakes and rivers
Mountain ranges
Grasslands
Economy
Siberia is extraordinarily rich in minerals, containing ores of
almost all economically valuable
metals—largely because of the absence of Quaternary
glaciation outside highland areas. It has some of the world's
largest deposits of
nickel,
gold,
lead,
coal,
molybdenum,
gypsum,
diamonds,
silver and
zinc, as well as
extensive unexploited resources of
oil and
natural gas. Most of these are in the
cold and remote eastern part of the region, with the result that
extraction has proven difficult and expensive.
Agriculture is severely restricted by the short growing season of
most of the region. However, in the southwest where soils are
exceedingly fertile black earths and the climate is a little more
moderate, there is extensive cropping of
wheat,
barley,
rye and
potatoes, along with the
grazing of large numbers of
sheep and
cattle. Elsewhere food production, owing to the poor
fertility of the
podzolic soils and the
extremely short growing seasons, is restricted to the herding of
reindeer in the tundra — which has
been practised by natives for over ten thousand years. Siberia has
the world's largest
forests. Timber remains
an important source of revenue despite the fact that many forests
in the east have been logged much more rapidly than they are able
to recover.
The Sea of Okhotsk is one of the two or three richest fisheries in the
world owing to its cold currents and extremely large tidal ranges, and thus Siberia produces over 10 percent
of the world's annual fish catch, though fishing has declined
somewhat since the collapse of the USSR.
Demographics
Siberia has a population density of about three people per square
kilometer. Most Siberians are
Russians and
Russified
Ukrainians. There are
approximately 400,000 ethnic
Germans
living in Siberia. Such
Mongol and
Turkic groups as
Buryats,
Tuvinians,
Yakuts, and
Siberian Tatars lived in Siberia originally,
and descendants of these peoples still live there. The
Buryats number 445,175, which makes them the largest
ethnic minority group in Siberia. According to the
2002 census there are
443,852
Yakuts. Other
ethnic groups include
Kets,
Evenks,
Chukchis,
Koryaks, and
Yukaghirs. See the
Northern indigenous
peoples of Russia article for more. Officially, 40,000 Chinese
live in the
Russian Far East, but
the actual figure is believed to be much higher.
About 70% of Siberia's people live in cities. Most city people live
in apartments. Many people in rural areas live in simple, but more
spacious, log houses.
Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia, with a population
of about 1.5 million. Tobolsk, Tomsk
, Krasnoyarsk
, Irkutsk
and Omsk
are the
older, historical centers.
Religion
There are a variety of beliefs throughout Siberia including
Orthodox Christianity,
Islam,
Tibetan
Buddhism, and other denominations of Christianity. An estimated
70,000
Jews live
in Siberia. The predominant group is the
Russian Orthodox Church. However,
native religion dates back hundreds of years. The vast terrority of
Siberia has many different local traditions of gods. These include:
Ak Ana,
Anapel,
Bugady Musun,
Kara
Khan,
Khaltesh-Anki,
Kini'je,
Ku'urkil,
Nga,
Nu'tenut,
Numi-Torem,
Numi-Turum,
Pon,
Pugu,
Todote,
Toko'yoto,
Tomam,
Xaya Iccita,
Zonget.
Places with sacred areas include Olkhon
, an
island in Lake
Baikal
.
Transport
Many
cities in Siberia, such as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
, cannot be reached by road from other major cities
in Russia or Asia. The best way to tour Siberia is through
the
Trans-Siberian Railway.
The
Trans-Siberian Railway operates from Moscow in the West to Vladivostok
in the East. The train has 2nd class 4-berth
compartments, 1st class 2-berth compartments, and a restaurant car.
Cities not nearby the Railway are best reached by air.
See also
References
External links
.jpg/150px-BaikalForest_(pixinn.net).jpg)
— part of a UNESCO
World Heritage Site
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