Tuva

Republic in the southern Russian Federation; area 170,500 sq km/65,830 sq mi; population (1996) 309,000 (49% urban) (64% Tyvans). The capital is Kyzyl. There are coal and mineral mining, woodworking, and food-processing industries; sheep, goats, and cattle are raised.

Tuva is situated in southern Siberia and bordering on Mongolia. The terrain consists of two mountain basins with mostly steppe vegetation, enclosed by the Western Sayan, Altai, and other mountain ranges. There is forest and tundra vegetation. The principal river is the Upper Yenisey. There are extensive gold, coal, asbestos, cobalt, and salt deposits.

The region, whose original inhabitants were Turkic-speaking nomads, was part of the Chinese Manchu empire (Mongolia) 1757–1912. It became a Russian protectorate in 1914, the ‘People's Republic’ of Tannu-Tuva in 1921, and was annexed by the USSR in 1944. Tuva was elevated from the status of autonomous oblast to autonomous republic in 1961. Economic development (especially mining) accelerated following the construction in 1959 of a road across the Western Sayan Mountains into the Minusinsk Basin. Tuva retained its autonomy in 1993 as a republic within the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union.