Omsk

Capital city, economic and cultural centre of Omsk oblast (region), Russian Federation; population (2002) 1,156,800. Omsk is located at the junction of the Om and Irtysh rivers and lies on the Trans-Siberian Railway, 900 km/559 mi east of Yekaterinburg. The city is a major industrial and commercial centre of west Siberia. It contains engineering works, oil refineries (linked with Tuimazy in Bashkortostan by a 1,600-km/1,000-mi pipeline), wood-processing plants, and various food and other light industrial factories.

Omsk was founded in 1716 as a Cossack fortress guarding Russia's southern boundary. It became a town in 1782, provincial capital in 1822, and administrative centre of the Steppe territory in 1882. After the Trans-Siberian Railway reached Omsk in the mid-1890s, it grew into the commercial centre of west Siberia and the largest Siberian city at that time. It experienced rapid industrial development following World War II.

In the 19th century, Omsk was a place of internal exile; the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was imprisoned here 1849–53. The Bolsheviks were overthrown here in 1918, and for over a year it was the centre of anti-Bolshevik struggles in Siberia and the seat of Admiral Alexander Kolchak's White government. It then became, until 1922, the headquarters of the Bolshevik Siberian Revolutionary Committee.

Omsk

Oblast (region) of the Russian Federation, in western Siberia; area 139,700 sq km/53,938 sq mi; population (1996) 2,176,000 (67% urban). Grain is grown, and there is dairy farming and sheep breeding. There are lumbering, engineering, woodworking, food, and light industries.

Geography The region is in the south of the west Siberian lowland. The main river is the Irtysh. There are peat bogs and coniferous and mixed forests in the north; salt lakes, wooded steppe, and steppe in the south. Cities include Omsk and Nazyvayevsk.

History The Omsk region was gradually annexed by Russia from the 16th to early 18th centuries; between the 1890s and World War I it developed extensive dairy farming and butter production. The area under cultivation increased massively between 1954 and 1960 as a result of the ‘Virgin Land’ campaign, a programme to irrigate the steppes and increase arable yield.