Siberia
Asian region of Russia, extending from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean; area 12,050,000 sq km/4,650,000 sq mi. Hydroelectric power is generated from the rivers Lena, Ob, and Yenisey; forestry and agriculture are practised. There are vast mineral resources, including coal (in the Kuznetsk Basin), gold, diamonds, oil, natural gas, iron, copper, nickel, and cobalt.
History
Overrun by Russia in the 17th century, Siberia was used from the 18th century to exile political prisoners and criminals and many forced labour camps were established here. The first
Trans-Siberian Railway 1892–1905 from St Petersburg (via Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, and Khabarovsk) to Vladivostok, approximately 8,700 km/5,400 mi, began to open up the region.
| The region has a continental climate, bringing long and extremely cold winters. It contains the world's largest remaining native forests (taiga), covering about 5,000,000 sq km/1,930,000 sq mi; Lake Baikal; volcanoes (on the Kamchatka Peninsula); and Ussuriland, domain of the world's largest cat, the Siberian tiger. Towns include Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and Tomsk. |
| Exploitation of Siberia's abundant natural resources began with Russian conquest of the region from the 1580s onwards. Initially, fur-trapping was the main economic activity; mineral prospecting grew in the 18th and 19th centuries. Full-scale industrialization began during World War I, and increased greatly from the 1930s onwards. Agricultural colonization was greatly facilitated by the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and early agrarian reforms. The absence of a tradition of serfdom meant that a highly prosperous farming community quickly developed, which at the beginning of the 20th century specialized in dairy products. However, World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the collectivization of farming under Stalin successively devastated Siberian agriculture. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a political trend developed known as ‘Siberian Regionalism’, which advocated a form of dominion status for the region within Russia. An autonomous Siberian government was established in 1918, but was short-lived. Preempting the collapse of the Soviet Union, a Siberian popular front was formed in 1988, which campaigned for ecological and political reform. Although the majority of the population are Russian, over 30 indigenous minorities are found throughout Siberia. The most populous of these is the Turkic-speaking group, which includes the Tatars in the west and the Yakuts in the northeast. The Buryats of the southeast belong to the Mongol group, while speakers of Finno-Ugric and Tungusic languages live in the northwest and the east respectively. |
Siberia
| Opera by Umberto Giordano (libretto by Luigi Illica), produced at La Scala, Milan, on 19 December 1903. It was revised in 1921 and produced again in Milan on 5 December 1927. In the story, Vassili is exiled to Siberia for wounding his rival Prince Alexis in a duel. He is joined there by Stephana, and they are both killed trying to escape. |
