Russia is the largest country in the world, covering over 17,125,192 km2 (6,612,074 sq mi), and encompassing more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabited land area. Russia extends across eleven time zones, and has the most borders of any country in the world, with sixteen sovereign nations.
The Ob is a major river in Russia. It is in western Siberia; and together with Irtysh forms the world's seventh-longest river system, at 5,410 kilometres (3,360 mi). It forms at the confluence of the Biya and Katun which have their origins in the Altai Mountains. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean. Its flow is north-westward, then northward.
The Trans-Siberian Railway, historically known as the Great Siberian Route and often shortened to Transsib, is a large railway system that connects European Russia to the Russian Far East. Spanning a length of over 9,289 kilometers, it is the longest railway line in the world. It runs from the city of Moscow in the west to the city of Vladivostok in the east.
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 Lena is a river in the Russian Far East, and is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean. The Lena is the eleventh-longest river in the world, and the longest river entirely within Russia, with a length of 4,294 km (2,668 mi) and a drainage basin of 2,490,000 km2 (960,000 sq mi). Permafrost underlies most of the catchment, 77% of which is continuous.
Mangazeya was a Northwest Siberian trans-Ural trade colony and later city in the 17th century. Founded in 1600 by Cossacks from Tobolsk, it was situated on the Taz River, between the lower courses of the Ob and Yenisei Rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean. The name derives from a Nenets ethnonym Monkansi or Mongandi.
The West Siberian Plain is a large plain that occupies the western portion of Siberia, between the Ural Mountains in the west and the Yenisei River in the east, and the Altai Mountains on the southeast. Much of the plain is poorly drained and consists of some of the world's largest swamps and floodplains. Important cities include Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Tomsk, as well as Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk.
Yermak Timofeyevich was a Cossack ataman and is today a hero in Russian folklore and myths. During the reign of the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible, Yermak started the Russian conquest of Siberia.
Vassili Danilovich Poyarkov was the first Russian explorer of the Amur region.
Yerofey Pavlovich Khabarov or Svyatitsky, was a Russian entrepreneur and adventurer, best known for his exploring the Amur river region and his attempts to colonize the area for Russia. For background see Russian–Manchu border conflicts.
Siberian natural resources refers to resources found in Russian Siberia, in the North Asian Mainland. The Siberian region is rich in resources, including coal, oil and metal ores.
The Ket (Кеть), also known in its upper reaches as the Bolshaya Ket is a west-flowing river in the Krasnoyarsk Krai and Tomsk Oblast in Russia, a right tributary of the Ob. The Ket has a length of 1,621 kilometres (1,007 mi) and a drainage basin of 94,200 square kilometres (36,400 sq mi). It freezes up in late October or early November and stays under the ice until late April or early May. Its main tributaries are the Sochur, Orlovka and Lisitsa from the right, Malaya Ket, Mendel, Yelovaya, and Chachamga from the left.
The Russian conquest of Siberia took place during 1580–1778, when the Khanate of Sibir became a loose political structure of vassalages that were being undermined by the activities of Russian explorers. Although outnumbered, the Russians pressured the various family-based tribes into changing their loyalties and establishing distant forts from which they conducted raids. It is traditionally considered that Yermak Timofeyevich's campaign against the Siberian Khanate began in 1580. The annexation of Siberia and the Far East to Russia was resisted by local residents and took place against the backdrop of fierce battles between the Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Cossacks, who often committed atrocities against Indigenous Siberians.
The Siberian Route, also known as the Moscow Highway and Great Highway, was a historic route that connected European Russia to Siberia and China.
Yeniseysk Governorate was a governorate (guberniya) of the Russian Empire and later of the Russian Republic, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in 1822-1925.
Demid Sofonovich Pyanda or, according to some sources, Panteley Demidovich Pyanda, also spelled Penda (Пенда) was among the first and most important Russian explorers of Siberia. According to few historical documents and later reconstructions based on them, Pyanda, in 1620–1623, while leading a party which was hunting for Siberian furs and buying them from the locals, became the first known Russian to ascend the Lower Tunguska River and reach the proximity of the Lena, one of the world's greatest rivers. According to later legendary accounts, collected a century after his journey, Pyanda allegedly discovered the Lena River, explored much of its length, and via the Angara River returned to the Yenisey, whence he came.
The Khanate of Sibir was a Muslim state located just east of the middle Ural Mountains. Its conquest by Yermak Timofeyevich in 1582 was the first event in the Russian conquest of Siberia.
The history of fur trade by Sea of Okhotsk is an important part of the history of the Siberian fur trade by northwest coast of the Sea of Okhotsk.
