Siberia
a great division of the Russian dominions; occupies all North Asia, stretching uninterruptedly E. from the Ural mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and S. from the Arctic Ocean to the Chinese dominions and Russian Central Asia; total area, 4,831,882 square miles; pop. about 10,378,000. It is divided into the governor-generalships of western Siberia, eastern Siberia, and the Amur region. A region of such vast extent has naturally a very diversified configuration; but generally speaking Siberia may be considered as a vast inclined plane sloping gradually from the Altai, Syan, and Yablonoi mountains on the S. to the Arctic Ocean on the N. In the E. it is traversed in different directions by several mountain ranges, but elsewhere it is almost unbroken by any greater heights than a few hills. It is drained chiefly by the Obi (2,120 miles), with its great tributary, the Irtish (2,520 miles), the Yenisei, and the Lena (3,000 miles), all of which pursue a N. course to the Arctic Ocean; and by the Amur (2,700 miles, 2,400 of which are navigable), which flows in an E. and N. E. direction to the Pacific. The principal lake is Lake Baikal in the S., 400 miles long, 20 to 53 broad, and 1,560 feet above sea-level. The chief islands are the New Siberia group in the Arctic Ocean, and the island of Sakhalin, off the mouth of the Amur, in the Sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the Pacific. The coast line is very SIBERIA extensive, but the Arctic Ocean is icebound at least 10 months out of the 12, and is almost valueless for commercial purposes, and the Sea of Okhotsk, on the Pacific, is infested with masses of floating masses of of floating ice and dense fogs. The principal ports are Vladivostock, on the Sea of Japan, the chief naval station of Russia on the Pacific; Okhotsk, on the Sea of Okhotsk; and Petropavlovsk, on the E. coast of Kamchatka.
Siberia has a warm summer, but the winter is exceedingly severe. South Sisevere. beria has, in many parts, a very fertile soil, which yields rich crops of wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes; but immense tracts of Siberia are utterly unfit for tillage, more particularly the tundras, or great stretches of boggy country along the Arctic Ocean. In the W. are extensive steppes.
Roughly speaking, the N. limits of agriculture are 60° N. latitude. Cattle breeding and bee keeping are largely pursued. Hunting and fishing are also sources of remuneration, ermines, sables, and other fur-bearing animals being numerous. The wild animals include the elk, reindeer, and other deer, bear, wolf, white and blue fox, lynx, etc. The forests are extensive and valuable. Even before the World War manufactures and mining were in a backward state, though Siberia has very considerable mineral wealth. Large quantities of gold are obtained, as well as silver, platinum, lead, iron, coal, etc. The trade was mainly with Russia, which took every year from Siberia about $
20,- 000,000 worth of raw products, chiefly tallow, hides, furs, and grain; and sent every year to Siberia about $60,000,000 worth of manufactured wares. The foreign trade was insignificant. The chief towns are Irkutsk, capital of eastern Siberia, a trading city; Tomsk, capital of Tomsk province, a trading city, with a university; and Tobolsk, capital of western Siberia. Yermak the Cossack entered western Siberia in 1580, and made a rapid conquest of the W. portion of the country, which he handed over to Ivan the Terrible of Russia. Bands of hunters and adventurers then poured across the Urals, attracted by the furs, and gradually penetrated to the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific. The latest acquisitions by Russia were the Amur territory and coast regions of Manchuria, ceded by China in 1858 and 1860. Exile to Siberia began soon after the conquest, and until the downfall of the Imperial Government in 1917, Siberia was a great penal colony. Hardened convicts and important political offenders were kept under close control, but the great majority of the exiles were simply placed in a particular district and allowed to shift for themselves. Valuable goldfields have been discovered in Yeniseisk, and in SIBERIAN DOG the basins of the Obi, Lena and Amur rivers. In recent years thousands of Russian peasants have emigrated hither, and nearly all the fertile soil free of forest land outside the steppes has been occupied. A new sea route through the Kara Sea to Siberia has been opened up lately.
The railway connection between Russia and Siberia forms the greatest railway scheme in the world. See RUSSIA: TRANS- SIBERIAN RAILWAY.
During, and especially after, the World War, War, radical political changes took place in Siberia, as in Russia proper. After the fall of the Imperial Government, in March, 1917, and after the fall of the March, 1917, an Provisional Government in the following November, and the rise into power of the Bolshevik Government, political chaos spread over the country, until gradually a provisional government was established by General Alexander Kolchak, with headquarters in Omsk. In January, 1920, the Kolchak Government went down before the assaults of the Red Bolshevist armies, made possible by the internal discontent of the population.
During the year ending with January, 1921, still further changes took place.
Transbaikalia was divided into two separate districts; the Chita District, where the Cossack leader, Seminov, had established a military dictatorship under the protection of the Japanese army of invasion; and the Verkhne -Undinsk District, where a form of government similar to that of the Bolsheviki was established.
The Amur Province remained unchanged, and Blagovieschensk became the headquarters of the rev revolutionary government of the Eastern Siberian Republic, recognized by the Bolsheviki as a concession to Japan, which desired a buffer state between its territory and Soviet Russia.
The Maritime Province, which now includes Kamchatka and the northern part of Sakhalin, is administered from Vladivostok by a government which, while strongly inclined toward Socialism, was under the influence of the Japanese army of occupation. In October, 1920, the Red Army, in co-operation with local revolutionary forces, succeeded in driving Seminov out of the Chita District, the Cossack chief himself seeking flight across the Chinese frontier.