No. 2, 2008

The early history of Siberia goes back to the highly-developed nomadic civilizations of the Scythians (Pazyryk) and the Huns (Syunnu), which thrived there in the pre-Christian epoch. The steppes in the south of Siberia were dominated by nomadic empires, including the Turkic Kaganate and the Mongol empire. In the Middle Ages, Lamaist Buddhism took root in the lands south of Lake Baikal.

Russian contacts with the region which later came to be known as Siberia are rooted in antiquity. In 1032, the people of Novgorod reached “the Iron Gates” (the Ural Mountains), and there they were defeated by the Yugrians. In Russian chronicles, the name “Siberia” was first mentioned in 1407 (the chronicler, writing about the killing of Khan Tokhtamysh, notes that this took place in the land called Siberia).

According to the Novgorod “Karamzin’s” annals, in 1364, the people of Novgorod conducted a major military campaign in the river Ob area. “Advancing from the territory of Yugra,” says the chronicler, “they fought their way along the Ob down to the sea.”

In 1472, the Perm land was colonized following a successful campaign led by Moscow’s military commanders, Fyodor Pyostry and Gavrila Nelidov.

An important historical event was the coming of the Russians to Siberia in the 16th and 17th centuries, which happened even before the Europeans opened up the continental parts of the New World. In 1483, a major military campaign, ordered by Czar Ivan III, was started in Western Siberia against the Vogul prince Asyka. Russian troops were led by the military commanders Fyodor Kurbsky-Cherny and Ivan Saltyk-Travin. Routing the Voguls at Pelym, Moscow’s troops advanced along the rivers Tavda and Tura, and later along the Irtysh down to its confluence with the Ob.

In September 1581, a Cossack detachment led by Yermak crossed the Stone Belt (the Urals), starting the colonization of Siberia by the Russian state.

Within the Russian empire Siberia was an agrarian province and a place of exile for many prominent personalities, including Archpriest Avvakum, participants in the 1825 uprising, and the well-known Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Constructed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was the Trans-Siberian main railroad, which gave a powerful impetus to the development of Siberia and made it possible to resettle over three million people there.

Siberia has always been Russia’s reliable mainstay: during the hard times it offered shelter and food to the needy; in the stormy year of 1941, the Siberian regiments fought valiantly defending Moscow.

Native Siberians are easily recognized and respected everywhere: they are substantial, hard-working and enduring, practical-minded and dependable people.

All that is true of them to this day, despite the fact that, like all of Russia, Siberia is living through a difficult period of sociopolitical transformations and that some of the country’s problems are particularly acute there.

That vast territory contains nearly all of the elements of the periodic table. In fact, Siberia has Russia’s largest fields of oil and gas condensate.

The people of Siberia believe that the natural wealth of their land has always been and remains essential to the prosperity of Russia.