Siberia
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Siberia (Şablon:IPAc-en; Şablon:Lang-rus) is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century.
The territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the national borders of Mongolia and China.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> With an area of Şablon:Convert, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russia's land area, but it is home to just 40 million people – 27% of the country's population. This is equivalent to an average population density of about Şablon:Convert (approximately equal to that of Australia), making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, but in population it would be the world's 35th largest and Asia's 14th largest.
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Etymology
The origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that "Siberia" originates from the Siberian Tatar word for "sleeping land" (Sib Ir).<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> Another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Şablon:Interlanguage link multi (also "Syopyr" (sʲɵpᵻr)), a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was later assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people.
The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empire's conquest of the Siberian Khanate. A further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people.<ref name=manchus213>Şablon:Cite book</ref> The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the proto-Slavic word for "north" (север, sever),<ref>Şablon:Cite book</ref> but Anatole Baikaloff has dismissed this explanation.<ref>Şablon:Cite journal</ref> He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians (who have similar names for the region) would not have known Russian. He suggests that the name is a combination of two words, "su" (water) and "bir" (wild land).
Prehistory
The region is of 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 (mammoth) and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma River, and bison and horses from Yukagir, were found here.<ref name=Thesiberiantimes2015>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a possible cause of the "Great Dying" about 250 million years ago,<ref>Şablon:Webarchive. Discovery Channel.</ref> which is estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time.<ref>Şablon:Cite book</ref>
At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago: H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, and the Denisovans.<ref name="Woman X">"DNA identifies new ancient human dubbed 'X-woman'," BBC News. 25 March 2010.</ref> The last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species.
History
Siberia was inhabited by different groups of nomads such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians and the Uyghurs. The Khan of SibirŞablon:Citation needed in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630. The Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century.
With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century. Turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century.<ref>Şablon:Cite journalŞablon:PD-notice</ref> Siberia remained a sparsely populated area. Historian John F. Richards wrote: "... it is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons."<ref>Richards, 2003 p. 538.</ref>
The growing power of Russia in the West began to undermine 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 settlers from European Russia. Towns such as Mangazeya, Tara, Yeniseysk and Tobolsk were developed, the last being declared the capital of Siberia. At this time, Sibir was the name of a fortress at Qashlik, 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.<ref>Asia ex magna Orbis terrae descriptione Gerardi Mercatoris desumpta, studio & industria G.M. Iunioris</ref> Other sources contend that the Xibe, 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 the mid-17th century, Russia had established areas of control that extended to the Pacific. Some 230,000 Russians had settled in Siberia by 1709.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> Siberia was a destination for sending exiles.<ref>http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21705305-prison-without-roof?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/prisonwithoutaroof https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/768263225708257284</ref>
The first great modern change in Siberia was the Trans-Siberian Railway, constructed during 1891–1916. It linked Siberia more closely to the rapidly industrialising Russia of Nicholas II. Around seven million people moved to Siberia from European Russia between 1801 and 1914.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> From 1859 to 1917, more than half a million people migrated to the Russian Far East.<ref>The Russian Far East: A History. John J. Stephan (1996). Stanford University Press. p.62. ISBN 0-8047-2701-5</ref> Siberia has extensive natural resources. During the 20th century, large-scale exploitation of these was developed, and industrial towns cropped up throughout the region.<ref>Fiona Hill, Russia — Coming In From the Cold?, The Globalist, 23 February 2004</ref>
At 7:15 a.m. on 30 June 1908, millions of trees were felled near the Podkamennaya Tunguska (Stony Tunguska) River in central Siberia in the Tunguska Event. 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 (uninhabited) area still bears the scars of this event.
In the early decades of the Soviet Union (especially the 1930s and 1940s), the government established the GULAG state agency to administer a system of penal labour camps, replacing the previous katorga system.<ref>The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements. Lynne Viola (2007). Oxford University Press US. p.3. ISBN 0-19-518769-5</ref> According to semi-official Soviet estimates, which were not made public until after the fall of the Soviet government, from 1929 to 1953 more than 14 million people passed through these camps and prisons, many of which were in Siberia. Another 7 to 8 million people were internally deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including entire nationalities or ethnicities in several cases).<ref>Robert Conquest in "Victims of Stalinism: A Comment," Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 49, No. 7 (Nov. 1997), pp. 1317–1319 states: "We are all inclined to accept the Zemskov totals (even if not as complete) with their 14 million intake to Gulag 'camps' alone, to which must be added 4–5 million going to Gulag 'colonies', to say nothing of the 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labour settlements'. However taken, these are surely 'high' figures."</ref>
516,841 prisoners died in camps from 1941 to 1943<ref>Zemskov, "Gulag," Sociologičeskije issledovanija, 1991, No. 6, pp. 14–15.</ref> due to food shortages caused by World War II. At other periods, mortality was comparatively lower.<ref>Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer. Livre noir du Communisme: crimes, terreur, répression. Harvard University Press, 1999. p. 206. ISBN 0-674-07608-7</ref> The size, scope, and scale of the GULAG slave labour camps remains a subject of much research and debate. Many Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of northeastern Siberia. The best known clusters are Sevvostlag (The North-East Camps) along the Kolyma River and Norillag near Norilsk, where 69,000 prisoners were kept in 1952.<ref>Courtois and Kramer (1999), Livre noir du Communisme, p.239. </ref> Major industrial cities of Northern Siberia, such as Norilsk and Magadan, developed from camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
Geography
Şablon:Further2 Şablon:Physical map of Siberia
With an area of Şablon:Convert, Siberia makes up roughly 77% of Russia's total territory and almost 10% of Earth's land surface (Şablon:Convert). While Siberia falls entirely within Asia, many authorities such as the UN geoscheme will not subdivide countries and will place all of Russia as part of Europe and/or Eastern Europe. Major geographical zones 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 Şablon:Convert, 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 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 is the active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Its peak is at Şablon:Convert.
Mountain ranges
- Altai Mountains
- Anadyr Range
- Baikal Mountains
- Chamar-Daban
- Chersky Range
- Dzhugdzhur Mountains
- Gydan Mountains
- Koryak Mountains
- Sayan Mountains
- Tannu-Ola Mountains
- Ural Mountains
- Verkhoyansk Mountains
- Yablonoi Mountains
Lakes and rivers
- Anabar River
- Angara River
- Indigirka River
- Irtysh River
- Kolyma River
- Lake Baikal
- Lena River
- Lower Tunguska River
- Novosibirsk Reservoir
- Ob River
- Popigay River
- Stony Tunguska River
- Upper Angara River
- Uvs Nuur
- Yana River
- Yenisei River
Grasslands
- Ukok Plateau — part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
Geology
The West Siberian Plain consists mostly of Cenozoic alluvial deposits and is somewhat flat. Many deposits on this plain result from ice dams which produced a large glacial lake. This mid- to late-Pleistocene lake blocked the northward flow of the Ob and Yenisei rivers, resulting in a redirection southwest into the Caspian and Aral seas via the Turgai Valley.<ref>Lioubimtseva E.U., Gorshkov S.P. & Adams J.M.; A Giant Siberian Lake During the Last Glacial: Evidence and Implications; Oak Ridge National Laboratory</ref> 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 is not visible anymore.Şablon:Why?
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. This 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, covering a significant fraction of the entirety of Siberia.<ref>C. Michael Hogan. 2011. Taiga. eds. M.McGinley & C.Cleveland. Encyclopedia of Earth. National Council for Science and the Environment. Washington DC</ref> 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 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.<ref name=Meyerhof>Meyerhof, A. A., 1980, "Geology and Petroleum Fields in Proterozoic and Lower Cambrian Strata, Lena-Tunguska Petroleum Province, Eastern Siberia, USSR", in Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade: 1968–1978, AAPG Memoir 30, Halbouty, M. T., editor, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, ISBN 0891813063</ref>Şablon:Rp A regional geologic reconnaissance study begun in 1932, followed by surface and subsurface mapping, revealed the Markova-Angara Arch (anticline). This led to the discovery of 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 Şablon:Convert.<ref name=Meyerhof/>Şablon:Rp The Sredne-Botuobin Gas Field was discovered in 1970, producing from the Osa and the Proterozoic Parfenovo Horizon.<ref name=Meyerhof/>Şablon:Rp The Yaraktin Oil Field was discovered in 1971, producing from the Vendian Yaraktin Horizon at depths of up to Şablon:Convert, which lies below Permian to Lower Jurassic basalt traps.<ref name=Meyerhof/>Şablon:Rp
Climate
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| Vegetation in Siberia is mostly taiga, with a tundra belt on the northern fringe, and a temperate forest zone in the south. |
The climate of Siberia varies dramatically, but all of it basically has short summers and long and extremely cold winters. On 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 Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate in this southernmost part is Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least four months. The annual average is about Şablon:Convert. January averages about Şablon:Convert and July about Şablon:Convert while daytime temperatures in summer typically are above Şablon:Convert.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> 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 20th century.
By far the most commonly occurring climate in Siberia is continental subarctic (Koppen Dfc or Dwc), with the annual average temperature about Şablon:Convert and an average for January of Şablon:Convert and an average for July of Şablon:Convert,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> although this varies considerably, with a July average about Şablon:Convert 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 the title of the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold. Oymyakon is a village which recorded a temperature of Şablon:Convert on 6 February 1933. Verkhoyansk, a town further north and further inland, recorded a temperature of Şablon:Convert for 3 consecutive nights: 5, 6 and 7 February 1933. Each town is alternately considered the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold, meaning the coldest inhabited point in the Northern hemisphere. Each town also frequently reaches Şablon:Convert 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 being well over Şablon:Convert between the seasons.<ref>Business Insider, February 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com/verkhoyansk-russia-most-miserable-place-2014-2</ref>Şablon:Failed verification
Southwesterly winds 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) where in the north an extreme winter subarctic climate (Köppen Dfd or Dwd) prevails. But summer temperatures in other regions can reach Şablon:Convert. In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the basin of the Yana River has the lowest temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching Şablon:Convert. Nevertheless, as far as Imperial Russian plans of settlement were concerned, cold was never viewed as an impediment. 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 Şablon:Convert 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 limited forests to grow. Precipitation is high also in most of Primorye in the extreme south where monsoonal influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall. Şablon:Weather box
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 the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.<ref>Ian Sample, "Warming hits 'tipping point'". The Guardian, 11 August 2005</ref> 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 River and the area between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea.<ref>Şablon:Cite news</ref><ref>N. Shakhova, I. Semiletov, A. Salyuk, D. Kosmach, and N. Bel'cheva (2007), Methane release on the Arctic East Siberian shelf, Geophysical Research Abstracts, 9, 01071</ref>
Fauna
Order Artiodactyla
- Manchurian wapiti<ref name=Geist>Şablon:Cite book</ref>
- Siberian musk deer<ref name=iucn2008Nyambayar>Şablon:IUCN2008 Database entry includes a brief justification of why this species is of vulnerable.</ref>
Order Carnivora
Family Felidae
- Amur leopard<ref name=Uphyrkina2002>Şablon:Cite journal</ref>
- Amur tiger<ref name=iucn2011Miquelle>Şablon:IUCN</ref>
Family Ursidae
- Asian black bear<ref name=iucn2008Garshelis>Şablon:IUCN</ref>
- Brown bear<ref name=iucn2008McLellan>Şablon:IUCN2008</ref>
- Polar bear
Flora
- Picea obovata<ref name=iucn2013>Şablon:IUCN</ref>
- Pinus pumila<ref name=iucn2011Farjon>Şablon:IUCN</ref>
Politics
Borders and administrative division
The term "Siberia" has a long history. 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 and China.<ref>Малый энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, in Russian)</ref>
Soviet-era sources (Great Soviet Encyclopedia and others)<ref>Сибирь—Большая советская энциклопедия (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, in Russian)</ref> and modern Russian ones<ref>Сибирь- Словарь современных географических названий (in Russian)</ref> 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. 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 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 the Pacific coast, not the watershed, is the eastern boundary (thus including the whole Russian Far East)<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> or a somewhat narrower one that limits Siberia to the Siberian Federal District (thus excluding all subjects of other districts).<ref>Şablon:Webarchive, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition</ref> In Russian, the word for Siberia is used as a substitute for the name of the federal district by those who live in the district itself and less commonly used to denote the federal district by people residing outside of it.
Major cities
The most populous city of Siberia, as well as the third most populous city of Russia, is the city of Novosibirsk. Other major cities include:
Wider definitions of Siberia also include:
- Chelyabinsk
- Khabarovsk
- Vladivostok
- Yekaterinburg - Some sources such as Encyclopædia Britannica include this city as it lies in the Ural Mountains. Inhabitants have distanced themselves though saying that there is a difference between Siberian and Urals culture.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
Economy
Siberia is extraordinarily rich in minerals, containing ores of almost all economically valuable metals. It has some of the world's largest deposits of nickel, gold, lead, coal, molybdenum, gypsum, diamonds, diopside, silver and zinc, as well as extensive unexploited resources of oil and natural gas.<ref>Statistics on the Development of Gas Fields in Western Siberia, Daily Questions on Energy and Economy</ref> Around 70% of Russia's developed oil fields are in the Khanty-Mansiysk region.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> Russia contains about 40% of the world's known resources of nickel at the Norilsk deposit in Siberia. Norilsk Nickel is the world's biggest nickel and palladium producer.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
Siberian 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 practiced by natives for over 10,000 years. Siberia has the world's largest forests. Timber remains an important source of revenue, even though 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 very large tidal ranges, and thus Siberia produces over 10% of the world's annual fish catch, although fishing has declined somewhat since the collapse of the USSR.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
Sport
Professional football teams include FC Tom Tomsk, FC Sibir Novosibirsk and FK Yenisey Krasnoyarsk.
The Yenisey Krasnoyarsk basketball team has played in the VTB United League since 2011–12.
Russia's third most popular sport, bandy,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> is important in Siberia. In the 2015–16 Russian Bandy Super League season Yenisey from Krasnoyarsk became champions for the third year in a row by beating Baykal-Energiya from Irkutsk in the final.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref><ref>https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_Y0lhvnE7pU/hqdefault.jpg</ref> Two or three more teams (depending on the definition of Siberia) play in the Super League, the bronze medalists SKA-Neftyanik from Khabarovsk, the quarter-finalists Kuzbass from Kemerovo and the 11th placed Sibselmash from Novosibirsk. In 2007 Kemerovo got Russia's first indoor arena specifically built for bandy.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> Now Khabarovsk has the world's biggest indoor arena specifically built for bandy, Arena Yerofey.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
The 2019 Winter Universiade will be hosted by Krasnoyarsk.
Demographics
According to the Russian Census of 2010, the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts, located entirely east of the Ural mountains, together have a population of about 25.6 million. Tyumen and Kurgan Oblasts, which are geographically in Siberia but administratively part of the Urals Federal District, together have a population of about 4.3 million. Thus, the whole region of Asian Russia (or Siberia in the broadest usage of the term) is home to approximately 30 million people.<ref>"Census 2010 official results (Russian)"</ref> It has a population density of about three people per square kilometer.
Most Siberians are Russians.<ref>"Ukrainians in Russia's Far East try to maintain community life". The Ukrainian Weekly. May 4, 2003.</ref> There are approximately 400,000 ethnic Germans living in Siberia.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> Mongol and Turkic groups such as Buryats, Tuvinians, Yakuts, and Siberian Tatars<ref>According to the 2002 census there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization. Şablon:Webarchive</ref> lived in Siberia originally, and descendants of these peoples still live there.Şablon:Citation needed The Buryats, numbering approximately 500,000, are the largest indigenous group in Siberia, and are mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic.<ref>World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples – Russian Federation: Buryats.</ref> According to the 2002 census there were 443,852 Yakuts.<ref>World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples – Russian Federation: Yakuts.</ref> Other ethnic groups include Kets, Evenks, Chukchis, Koryaks, Yupiks, and Yukaghirs. The Slavic Russians outnumber all of the native peoples in Siberia and its cities except in the Republic of Tuva, with the Slavic Russians making up the majority in the Buryat, Sakha, and Altai Republics, outnumbering the Buryats, Sakha, and Altai natives. The Buryat make up only 25% of their own republic, and the Sakha and Altai each are only one-third, and the Chukchi, Evenk, Khanti, Mansi, and Nenets are outnumbered by non-natives by 90% of the population.<ref>Batalden 1997, p. 37.</ref>
About seventy percent of Siberia's people live in cities, mainly in apartments. Many people also live in rural areas, in simple, spacious, log houses. Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia, with a population of about 1.5 million. Tobolsk, Tomsk, Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Omsk are the older, historical centers.
Religion
Şablon:See also There are a variety of beliefs throughout Siberia,<ref>Şablon:Webarchive</ref>Şablon:Qn including Orthodox Christianity, other denominations of Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism and Islam.<ref> Şablon:Cite book </ref> An estimated 70,000 Jews live in Siberia,<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> some in the Jewish Autonomous Region.<ref>"Why some Jews would rather live in Siberia than Israel", The Christian Science Monitor. 7 June 2010</ref> The predominant religious group is the Russian Orthodox Church.
Tradition regards Siberia the archetypal home of shamanism, and polytheism is popular.<ref name=locclass>Hoppál 2005:13</ref> These native sacred practices are considered by the tribes to be very ancient. There are records of Siberian tribal healing practices dating back to the 13th century.<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref> The vast territory 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 northern Siberia, such as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, cannot be reached by road, as there are virtually none connecting 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. Cities not near the railway are best reached by air or by the separate Baikal-Amur-Railway (BAM).
Culture
Cuisine
Stroganina is a raw fish dish of the indigenous people of northern Arctic Siberia made from raw, thin, long-sliced frozen fish.<ref>Şablon:Cite book</ref> It is a popular dish with native Siberians.<ref>Şablon:Cite book</ref>
Notable residents
- Dmitry Kroyter (born 1993), Israeli Olympic high jumper<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
- Lev Psakhis (born 1958), Israeli chess grandmaster<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
- Tatyana Usova (born 1987), model<ref>Şablon:Cite web</ref>
See also
References
Bibliography
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
- Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader and Willard Sunderland (eds), Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian history (London, Routledge, 2007).
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
- James Forsyth, A History of the Peoples of Siberia: Russia's North Asian Colony, 1581–1990 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994).
- Şablon:Cite book
- Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917 (London, I.B. Tauris, 1991).
- Şablon:Cite book
- Igor V. Naumov, The History of Siberia. Edited by David Collins (London, Routledge, 2009) (Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe).
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
- Alan Wood (ed.), The History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest to Revolution (London, Routledge, 1991).
- Şablon:Cite book
- Şablon:Cite book
External links
Şablon:Regions of the world Şablon:Russia topics Şablon:Soviet Union topics Şablon:Subject bar Şablon:Authority control
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