The fact that Siberia is part of the territory Russian Federation(and most of it), everyone knows. And they heard about its countless riches, and about its beauty, and about its significance for the country - most likely, too. But where exactly Siberia is located, many find it difficult to answer. Even Russians will not always be able to show it on the map, not to mention foreigners. And all the more difficult will be the question of where is Western Siberia and where is its eastern part.
Siberia is a region that unites many administrative-territorial units of Russia - regions, republics, autonomous okrugs and territories. Its total area is approximately 13 million square kilometers, which is 77 percent of the entire territory of the country. A small part of Siberia belongs to Kazakhstan.
To understand where Siberia is, you need to take a map, find it on it and “walk” from there to the east all the way to Pacific Ocean(the route will be approximately 7 thousand km). And then find the Arctic Ocean and go down “from its shores” to the north of Kazakhstan and to the borders with Mongolia and China (3.5 thousand km).
It is within these limits that Siberia is located, occupying the northeastern part of the Eurasian continent. In the west it ends at the foot of the Ural Mountains, in the east it is limited by the Oceanic Ridges. The north of Mother Siberia “flows” into the Arctic Ocean, and the south abuts the rivers: Lena, Yenisei and Ob.
And all this space, rich in natural resources and untrodden paths, is usually divided into Western Siberia and Eastern Siberia.
The western part of Siberia extends from the Ural Mountains to the Yenisei River for 1500-1900 kilometers. Its length is a little more - 2500 km. And the total area is almost 2.5 million square kilometers (15% of the territory of the Russian Federation).
Most of it lies on the West Siberian Plain. It covers such regions of the Russian Federation as Kurgan, Tyumen, Omsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk (partially). It also includes the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Altai region, Altai Republic, Khakassia and the western part of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Most of Siberia is called Eastern. Its territory covers about seven million square kilometers. It stretches east from the Yenisei River to the mountain formations separating the Arctic and Pacific oceans.
The northernmost point of Eastern Siberia is considered to be the southern limit - the borders with China and Mongolia.
This part is located mainly on and covers the Taimyr Territory, Yakutia, Tungus, Irkutsk region, Buryatia, as well as Transbaikalia.
Thus, the answer to the question of where Siberia is located has been received, and finding it on the map will not be a problem. It remains to supplement theoretical knowledge with practical knowledge and find out what Siberia is like personal experience traveler
Siberia is a giant territory of Russia located beyond the Urals. The Ural ridge itself is the dividing line, cutting off Russian Europe from Siberia.
Siberia. Borders
During the time of the Mongols, this entire territory was captured by the great Mongolia. But, in essence, the territory was always very sparsely populated. This is not surprising - nomadic life in the steppes was harsh and dangerous. And in the forests it was not possible to feed themselves on a small patch, since hunters directly depended on animals and fish.
Other interesting maps of Russia can be found in our articles:
When Mongol Empire scattered into feudal territories, they were gradually taken over by the Russian tsars. First, the Cossack Ermak Timofeevich conquered for the king the capital of the Siberian Khanate, which was called Siberia. The Tsar took Siberia under his hand and appointed a tribute in furs. However, the spread began later. Russian weapons in Siberia were guaranteed protection against nomads, so local rulers willingly went under the arm of the Russian Tsar.
For protection, strong points were created - forts, in which a military contingent with weapons and supplies was stationed. They conducted patrol service in remote areas. Subsequently, many of them developed into large cities. Nowadays, Siberia is a rich and vast territory, however, for the most part, the wealth is seasoned with a harsh climate and poor lands. But, in reality, there are not many regions in Russia that are so lucky Krasnodar region, or Tatarstan.
Russian Cossacks began to penetrate beyond the Urals in the 15th century. And already in the 16th century, the Tatar Khanate, located at the confluence of the Irtysh and Tobol rivers, paid tribute to Ivan the Terrible. And the tsar in 1570, in a letter to the English queen, called himself “Sovereign of Pskov, and Grand Duke Smolensky, Tver, Chernigov... and all Siberian lands,” that is, they already knew about Siberia not only in Russia, but also beyond its borders.
In the 15th century, according to the drawings of the Siberian Tartary of the Italian cardinal Stefan Borgia, Siberia was located on the eastern bank of the Volga. On the map of the Venetian monk Fra Mauro in 1459, the “Province of Siberia” occupied a place in the upper reaches of the Kama and Vyatka. Of course, the Italian maps looked like fantastic illustrations, they did not have any details, but from them one can judge the Europeans’ idea of a large, distant and wild country.
On Russian maps of the 15th century, Siberia is depicted on the lands of the Tatar Khanate, which includes northern Kazakhstan and the lands of modern Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Omsk regions.
The first Russian map, “Drawing of the Siberian Land,” was compiled in 1667 by the governor of Tobolsk, Pyotr Godunov. The north on the “Drawing” was at the bottom, the south at the top, the rivers were depicted schematically, and distances were measured in “days of horse riding.” The Ob basin was shown in detail, and the Lena flowed into the “sea” in the east. Five years later, an improved version appeared - “Drawing of all Siberia to the Chinese Kingdom,” that is, the territory of Siberia now extended to China.
More detailed map compiled by cartographer Semyon Remizov in 1697; on it, Siberia began beyond the Volga and ended in the east with Kamchatka, in the north it was washed by the Mangazeya and Arctic seas, and in the south it bordered on the Aral Sea, the “Kalmyk nomads” and the Kingdom of China. The eastern coast and the north were drawn on the map in detail - the mouths of the Lena and Kolyma rivers, the lands of the Tungus, the possessions of the “shamans”, Amur and Korea were indicated. This means that at the end of the 17th century, Siberia extended from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean and from the Arctic Ocean to the Aral Sea.
Over time, the idea changed: in the west, the border of Siberia moved to the Urals, and at the end of the 18th century, when the Perm province was created, geographers limited Siberia to the eastern borders of the Perm and Tobolsk provinces.
In 1822, on the initiative of Governor Mikhail Speransky, Siberia was divided into two governorates - West Siberian and East Siberian, and this forever divided Siberia into two parts. Western Siberia of the 19th century included the Tobolsk and Tomsk provinces, the Omsk region and part of Kazakhstan, and Eastern Siberia extended to the ocean and consisted of the territories of the Yenisei basin, the Angara region, Transbaikalia, Buryatia, Chukotka, Kamchatka and Yakutia.
After the Amur region and Ussuria were annexed, a new region appeared in people’s minds - the Far East, and Siberia began to shrink: at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Siberian lands began to be classified as the Far East. According to the works of ethnographer Nikolai Yadrintsev, in the 19th century, Siberia included the lands of the modern Kurgan and Tyumen regions with the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the west and the lands of Transbaikalia, the Amur region and Yakutia in the east. Its area occupied more than 12,000,000 square meters. km or 73% of the country's territory.
In the 20th century, in the era Soviet Union, Siberia included administrative units from Omsk to Baikal, and in the south it was limited in 1936 by the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Geographers of the late USSR considered the Sverdlovsk and Kurgan regions to be the Urals, and the remaining territories up to Lake Baikal as Siberia, which was still divided into Western and Eastern, while Yakutia was identified as a separate entity. Buryatia, the Chita region (Transbaikalia) and the republics also became separate entities.
Ten years after the collapse of the USSR, the government divided the country into administrative districts, which again influenced the perception of Russian residents about Siberia: now the Tyumen region is also included in the Urals - it is called the Ural region, and Siberia is limited to the Siberian federal district, including 12 regions of Russia: from the Omsk region to Transbaikalia. Now the area of Siberia is 5,144,953 square meters. km. 19,326,196 people live there, or 13.16% of the country's population. However, despite the fact that there are 132 large cities in Siberia, and three of them are million-plus cities (Omsk, Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk), the population density is four people per square meter. km.
Russian science has not yet decided on a single designation for Siberia. IN school curriculum, for example, it is something between traditional ideas and modern administrative divisions.
