Siberia is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its various predecessor states since the centuries-long conquest of Siberia, which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to only one-fifth of Russia's population. Novosibirsk and Omsk are the largest cities in the area.
Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and formerly proposed language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share a common descent: the similarities among Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing. Just as Altaic, internal structure of the Uralic family also has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed higher-order Uralic branchings are becoming more common. The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone.
Novosibirsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia located in southwestern Siberia. Its administrative and economic center is the city of Novosibirsk. As of the 2021 Census, Novosibirsk Oblast had a population of 2,797,176.
Kemerovo Oblast — Kuzbass, also known simply as Kemerovo Oblast or Kuzbass (Кузба́сс), after the Kuznetsk Basin, is a federal subject of Russia. Kemerovo is the administrative center and largest city of the oblast. Kemerovo Oblast is one of Russia's most urbanized regions, with over 70% of the population living in its nine principal cities. Its ethnic composition is predominantly Russian, but Shors, Ukrainians, Tatars, and Chuvash also live in the oblast. The population recorded during the 2021 Census was 2,600,923.
The early history of Siberia was greatly influenced by the sophisticated nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) on the west of the Ural Mountains and Xiongnu (Noin-Ula) on the east of the Urals, both flourishing before the common era. The steppes of Siberia were occupied by a succession of nomadic peoples, including the Khitan people, various Turkic peoples, and the Mongol Empire. In the Late Middle Ages, Tibetan Buddhism spread into the areas south of Lake Baikal.
The Paleo-Siberian languages are several language isolates and small language families spoken in parts of Siberia. They are not known to have any genetic relationship to each other; their only common link is that they are held to have antedated the more dominant languages, particularly Tungusic and latterly Turkic languages, that have largely displaced them. Even more recently, Turkic and especially Tungusic have been displaced in their turn by Russian.
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan or Chukchi–Kamchatkan languages are a language family of extreme northeastern Siberia. Its speakers traditionally were indigenous hunter-gatherers and reindeer-herders. Chukotko-Kamchatkan is endangered. The Kamchatkan branch is moribund, represented only by Western Itelmen, with only 4 or 5 elderly speakers left. The Chukotkan branch had close to 7,000 speakers left, with a reported total ethnic population of 25,000.
Russia is divided into twelve economic regions —groups of federal subjects sharing the following characteristics:
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, and Eskaleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait. Some have attempted to include Nivkh in Uralo-Siberian. Until 2011, it also included Chukotko-Kamchatkan. However, after 2011 Fortescue only included Uralic, Yukaghir and Eskaleut in the theory, although he argued that Uralo-Siberian languages have influenced Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It is considered a fringe theory by linguists.
Kedrovy, Kedrovaya, or Kedrovoye is the name of several inhabited localities in Russia.
Uralic–Yukaghir, also known as Uralo-Yukaghir, is a proposed language family composed of Uralic and Yukaghir.
Education in Siberia expanded greatly after the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed in the 19th century. While Siberia became part of Russia in the 17th century it was not until the 20th century under the Soviet Union that education was transformed which in turn brought Siberia to economic importance. This was aimed at uniting people under the Soviet. For example, the Irkutsk State Linguistic University served as "a conduit between Russia and these native people by teaching languages" during the communist era. Imperial Russia began uniting Siberia to Russia by founding Siberia's first university, Tomsk State University, in 1878.
West Siberian economic region is one of twelve economic regions of Russia.
Russia, the largest country in the world, has international land borders with 14 sovereign states as well as 2 narrow maritime boundaries with the United States and Japan. There are also two breakaway states bordering Russia, namely Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The country has an internationally recognized land border running 22,407 kilometres (13,923 mi) in total, and has the second-longest land border of any country in the world, after China. The borders of the Russian Federation were mostly drawn since 1956, and have remained the same after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in a move that remains internationally unrecognized.
West Siberian Railway is a Rail operator of Russian Railways and part of the Great Trans-Siberian Railway crossing the Omsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Tomsk, and Altai regions of the Russian Federation as well as a portion of Kazakhstan.
Stenograffia is an international graffiti festival held annually in Yekaterinburg the first weekend in July. In the summer of 2010 graffiti on the theme "Europe and Asia: the clash of opposites" appeared in the subways, on quay slabs, yards, and on buildings in the Ural capital. The theme of Stenograffia 2011 was "Images of Happiness". In July 2012 artists from around the world presented their vision of Yekaterinburg using the theme "Global Intelligence".
