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"Siberian" redirects here. For the federal district, see Siberian Federal District. For other uses, see Siberia (disambiguation) and Siberian (disambiguation).

Coordinates: 60°0′N 105°0′E﻿ / ﻿60.000°N 105.000°E﻿ / 60.000; 105.000

Russian: Сибирь (Sibir)
Geographical region
       Siberian Federal District

       Geographic Russian Siberia

       Siberia in its widest definition and historical use
Country Russia
Region North Asia
Borders on West: Ural Mountains
North: Arctic Ocean
East: Pacific Ocean
South: East Asia
Parts West Siberian Plain
Central Siberian Plateau
Highest point Klyuchevskaya Sopka
 - elevation 4,649 m (15,253 ft)
Area 13,100,000 km2 (5,057,938 sq mi)
Population 40,000,000 (2010)
Density 3 / km2 (8 / sq mi)

Siberia (/sˈbɪəriə/; Russian: Сиби́рь, tr. Sibir'; IPA: [sʲɪˈbʲirʲ]) is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has been historically part of Russia since the 17th century.

The territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. Siberia stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the national borders of Mongolia and China.[1] With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russia's land area, but it is home to just 40 million people – 27% of the country's population. This is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre (approximately equal to that of Australia), making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth.


Some sources say that "Siberia" originates from the Siberian Tatar word for "sleeping land" (Sib Ir).[2] Another version is that this name was the ancient tribal name of the Sipyrs, a mysterious people, later assimilated to Siberian Tatars. The modern usage of the name appeared in the Russian language after the conquest of the Siberian Khanate. A further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people.[3] The explanation that the name is derived from the proto-Slavic word for "north" (север, sever) has been put forward by the Polish historian Chycliczkowski,[4] but this explanation has been dismissed by Anatole Baikaloff[5] on the grounds that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians (whose name for the region is similar) could not have known Russian. His own suggestion is that the name is a combination of two words, "su" (water) and "bir" (wild land).


Painting of Chukchi by Louis Choris, 1816

The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history. These continued for a million years and are considered the likely cause of the "Great Dying" about 250 million years ago,[6] which is estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time.[7]

The tower of a 17th-century ostrog fort in Yakutsk

At least three species of humans lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago: H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, and the Denisova hominin (originally nicknamed "Woman X").[8] The last was determined in 2010 by DNA evidence to be a new species.

Siberia was inhabited by different groups of nomads such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians and the Uyghurs. The Khan of Sibir[citation needed] in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan in Avaria in 630. The Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Siberia Khanate was established in the late 15th century. Turkic-speaking Yakuts migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century.[9] Siberia remained a sparsely populated area. Historian John F. Richards wrote: "... it is doubtful that the total early modern Siberian population exceeded 300,000 persons."[10]

The growing power of Russia in the West began to undermine the Siberian Khanate in the 16th century. First, groups of traders and Cossacks began to enter the area, and then the Russian army began to set up forts farther and farther east. Towns such as Mangazeya, Tara, Yeniseysk and Tobolsk were developed, the last being declared the capital of Siberia. At this time, Sibir was the name of a fortress at Qashlik, near Tobolsk. Gerardus Mercator in a map published in 1595 marks Sibier both as the name of a settlement and of the surrounding territory along a left tributary of the Ob.[11] Other sources contend that the Xibe, an indigenous Tungusic people, offered fierce resistance to Russian expansion beyond the Urals, and that Siberia is a Russification of their ethnonym.

By the mid-17th century, areas controlled by Russia had been extended to the Pacific. There were some 230,000 Russians in Siberia by 1709.[12]

The first great modern change in Siberia was the Trans-Siberian Railway, constructed during 1891–1916. It linked Siberia more closely to the rapidly industrialising Russia of Nicholas II. Around seven million people moved to Siberia from European Russia between 1801 and 1914.[13] From 1859 to 1917, over half a million people migrated to the Russian Far East.[14] Siberia has extensive natural resources. During the 20th century, large-scale exploitation of these was developed, and industrial towns cropped up throughout the region.[15]

Siberian Cossack family in Novosibirsk

At 7:15 a.m. on 30 June 1908, millions of trees were felled near the Podkamennaya Tunguska (Stony Tunguska) River in central Siberia in the Tunguska Event, which most scientists believe to have been the air burst of a meteoroid or a comet. Even though no crater has ever been found, the landscape in the (uninhabited) area still bears the scars of this event.

In the early decades of the Soviet Union (especially the 1930s and 1940s), the earlier katorga system of penal labour camps was replaced by a new one that was controlled by the GULAG state agency.[16] According to semi-official Soviet estimates that were not made public in Soviet times, from 1929 to 1953 more than 14 million people passed through these camps and prisons, many of which were in Siberia. A further seven to eight million were internally deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including entire nationalities in several cases).[17] 516,841 prisoners died in camps from 1941 to 1943[18] due to food shortages caused by World War II. At other periods, mortality was comparatively lower.[19] The size, scope, and scale of the GULAG slave labour camps remains a subject of much research and debate. Many Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of northeastern Siberia. The best known clusters are Sevvostlag (The North-East Camps) along the Kolyma River and Norillag near Norilsk, where 69,000 prisoners were kept in 1952.[20] Major industrial cities of Northern Siberia, such as Norilsk and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.[21]


Physical map of Northern Asia.
Altai, Lake Kutsherla in the Altai Mountains
The peninsula of Svyatoy Nos, Lake Baikal
Siberian taiga

With an area of 13.1 million km² (5.1 million square miles), Siberia takes up roughly 77% of Russia's total territory. Major geographical zones include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau. Siberia covers almost 10% of Earth's land surface (148,940,000 km²). While Siberia falls entirely within Asia, many authorities such as the UN geoscheme will not subdivide countries and will place all of Russia as part of Europe and/or Eastern Europe.

Eastern and central Sakha comprise numerous north-south mountain ranges of various ages. These mountains extend up to almost 3,000 metres (9,800 ft), but above a few hundred meters they are almost completely devoid of vegetation. The Verkhoyansk Range was extensively glaciated in the Pleistocene, but the climate was too dry for glaciation to extend to low elevations. At these low elevations are numerous valleys, many of them deep and covered with larch forest, except in the extreme North where the tundra dominates. Soils are mainly turbels (a type of gelisol). The active layer tends to be less than one meter deep, except near rivers.

The highest point in Siberia is the active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Its peak is at 4,649 meters (15,253 ft).

Mountain ranges[edit]

Lakes and rivers[edit]

Main article: Rivers in Russia



The West Siberian Plain consists mostly of Cenozoic alluvial deposits and is somewhat flat. Many deposits on this plain result from ice dams which produced a large glacial lake. This mid- to late-Pleistocene lake blocked the northward flow of the Ob and Yenisei rivers, resulting in a redirection southwest into the Caspian and Aral seas via the Turgai Valley.[23] The area is very swampy, and soils are mostly peaty histosols and, in the treeless northern part, histels. In the south of the plain, where permafrost is largely absent, rich grasslands that are an extension of the Kazakh Steppe formed the original vegetation, most of which is not visible anymore.[why?]

The Central Siberian Plateau is an ancient craton (sometimes named Angaraland) that formed an independent continent before the Permian (see the Siberian continent). It is exceptionally rich in minerals, containing large deposits of gold, diamonds, and ores of manganese, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt and molybdenum. Much of the area includes the Siberian Traps—a large igneous province. This massive eruptive period was approximately coincident with the Permian–Triassic extinction event. The volcanic event is said to be the largest known volcanic eruption in Earth's history. Only the extreme northwest was glaciated during the Quaternary, but almost all is under exceptionally deep permafrost, and the only tree that can thrive, despite the warm summers, is the deciduous Siberian Larch (Larix sibirica) with its very shallow roots. Outside the extreme northwest, the taiga is dominant, covering a significant fraction of the entirety of Siberia.[24] Soils here are mainly turbels, giving way to spodosols where the active layer becomes thicker and the ice content lower.

Autumn forest in the eastern Sayan Mountains, Buryatia

The Lena-Tunguska petroleum province includes the Central Siberian platform (some authors refer to it as the Eastern Siberian platform), bounded on the northeast and east by the Late Carboniferous through Jurassic Verkhoyansk foldbelt, on the northwest by the Paleozoic Taymr foldbelt, and on the southeast, south and southwest by the Middle Silurian to Middle Devonian Baykalian foldbelt.[25]:228 A regional geologic reconnaissance study begun in 1932, followed by surface and subsurface mapping, revealed the Markova-Angara Arch (anticline in Russian), which led to the discovery of the Markovo Oil Field in 1962 with the Markovo 1 well, which produced from the Early Cambrian Osa Horizon bar-sandstone at a depth of 2,156 metres (7,073 ft).[25]:243 The Sredne-Botuobin Gas Field was discovered in 1970, producing from the Osa and the Proterozoic Parfenovo Horizon.[25]:244 The Yaraktin Oil Field was discovered in 1971, producing from the Vendian Yaraktin Horizon at depths of up to 1,750 metres (5,740 ft), which lies below Permian to Lower Jurassic basalt traps.[25]:244


Main article: Climate of Russia
Russia vegetation.png

     polar desert      tundra      alpine tundra      taiga      montane forest
     temperate broadleaf forest      temperate steppe      dry steppe

Vegetation in Siberia is mostly taiga, with a tundra belt on the northern fringe, and a temperate forest zone in the south.

The climate of Siberia varies dramatically, but all of it basically has short summers and long winters of very cold climate. On the north coast, north of the Arctic Circle, there is a very short (about one-month-long) summer.

Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate in this southernmost part is Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least four months. The annual average is about 0.5 °C (32.9 °F). January averages about −20 °C (−4 °F) and July about +19 °C (66 °F) while daytime temperatures in summer typically are above 20 °C.[26][27] With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture, as was proven in the early twentieth century.

By far the most commonly occurring climate in Siberia is continental subarctic (Koppen Dfc or Dwc), with the annual average temperature about −5 °C (23 °F) and an average for January of −25 °C (−13 °F) and an average for July of +17 °C (63 °F),[28] although this varies considerably, with a July average about 10 °C in the taiga–tundra ecotone. The Business oriented website and blog Business Insider lists Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, Republic of Sakha, both of which towns are in Russian Siberia, as being in competition for the title of being the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold. Oymyakon is a village with a population of 500 which recorded a temperature of −67.7 °C (−89.9 °F) on 6 February 1933. Verkhoyansk is a relatively nearby neighboring town of just over 1,000 people that recorded a temperature of −69.8 °C (−93.6 °F) for 3 consecutive nights, February 5, 6 and 7. Each town is alternately considered the Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold, meaning the coldest inhabited point in the Northern hemisphere. Each town also frequently reaches 86 °F (30 °C) in the summer, giving them, and the majority of the rest of Russian Siberia, the world's greatest temperature variation, between Summer's highs and Winter's lows, often being well over 170-180+ degrees between the seasons.[29]

Southwesterly winds bring warm air from Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia (Omsk, Novosibirsk) is several degrees warmer than in the East (Irkutsk, Chita) where in the north an extreme winter subarctic climate (Köppen Dfd or Dwd) prevails. But summer temperatures in other regions can reach +38 °C (100 °F). In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the basin of the Yana River has the lowest temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching 1,493 metres (4,898 ft). Nevertheless, as far as Imperial Russian plans of settlement were concerned, cold was never viewed as an issue. In the winter, southern Siberia sits near the center of the semi-permanent Siberian High, so winds are usually light in the winter.

Precipitation in Siberia is generally low, exceeding 500 millimeters (20 in) only in Kamchatka where moist winds flow from the Sea of Okhotsk onto high mountains – producing the region's only major glaciers, though volcanic eruptions and low summer temperatures allow limited forests to grow. Precipitation is high also in most of Primorye in the extreme south where monsoonal influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall.

Climate data for Novosibirsk, Siberia's largest city
Average high °C (°F) −12.2
Daily mean °C (°F) −16.2
Average low °C (°F) −20.1
Average precipitation mm (inches) 19
Source: [30]

Researchers, including Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University and Judith Marquand at Oxford University, warn that Western Siberia has begun to thaw as a result of global warming. The frozen peat bogs in this region may hold billions of tons of methane gas, which may be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.[31] In 2008, a research expedition for the American Geophysical Union detected levels of methane up to 100 times above normal in the Siberian Arctic, likely the result of methane clathrates being released through holes in a frozen 'lid' of seabed permafrost, around the outfall of the Lena River and the area between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea.[32][33]


Main article: Siberian regionalism

Borders and administrative division[edit]

Map of the most populated area of Siberia with clickable city names (SVG)


Soviet-era sources (Great Soviet Encyclopedia and others)[35] and modern Russian ones[36] usually define Siberia as a region extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. By this definition, Siberia includes the federal subjects of the Siberian Federal District, and some of the Ural Federal District, as well as Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, which is a part of the Far Eastern Federal District. Geographically, this definition includes subdivisions of several other subjects of Urals and Far Eastern federal districts, but they are not included administratively. This definition excludes Sverdlovsk Oblast and Chelyabinsk Oblast, both of which are included in some wider definitions of Siberia.

Other sources may use either a somewhat wider definition that states the Pacific coast, not the watershed, is the eastern boundary (thus including the whole Russian Far East)[37] or a somewhat narrower one that limits Siberia to the Siberian Federal District (thus excluding all subjects of other districts).[38] In Russian, the word for Siberia is used as a substitute for the name of the federal district by those who live in the district itself and less commonly used to denote the federal district by people residing outside of it.

Federal subjects of Siberia (GSE)
subject administrative center
Ural Federal District
Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug Khanty-Mansiysk
Kurgan Oblast Kurgan
Tyumen Oblast Tyumen
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Salekhard
Siberian Federal District
Altai Krai Barnaul
Altai Republic Gorno-Altaysk
Buryat Republic Ulan-Ude
Irkutsk Oblast Irkutsk
Republic of Khakassia Abakan
Kemerovo Oblast Kemerovo
Krasnoyarsk Krai Krasnoyarsk
Novosibirsk Oblast Novosibirsk
Omsk Oblast Omsk
Tomsk Oblast Tomsk
Tuva Republic Kyzyl
Zabaykalsky Krai Chita
Far Eastern Federal District
Sakha (Yakutia) Republic Yakutsk
Amur waterfront in Khabarovsk
Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai
Federal subjects of Siberia (in wide sense)
subject administrative center
Far Eastern Federal District
Amur Oblast Blagoveshchensk
Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Anadyr
Jewish Autonomous Oblast Birobidzhan
Kamchatka Krai Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
Khabarovsk Krai Khabarovsk
Magadan Oblast Magadan
Primorsky Krai Vladivostok
Sakhalin Oblast Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Ural Federal District
Chelyabinsk Oblast Chelyabinsk
Sverdlovsk Oblast Yekaterinburg

Major cities[edit]

City Day celebrations in Omsk
Krasny prospect, Novosibirsk

The most populous city of Siberia, as well as the third most populous city of Russia, is the city of Novosibirsk. Other major cities include:

Wider definitions of Siberia also include:



Siberia is extraordinarily rich in minerals, containing ores of almost all economically valuable metals. It has some of the world's largest deposits of nickel, gold, lead, coal, molybdenum, gypsum, diamonds, diopside, silver and zinc, as well as extensive unexploited resources of oil and natural gas.[39] Around 70% of Russia's developed oil fields are in the Khanty-Mansiysk region.[40] Russia contains about 40% of the world's known resources of nickel at the Norilsk deposit in Siberia. Norilsk Nickel is the world's biggest nickel and palladium producer.[41]

Siberian agriculture is severely restricted by the short growing season of most of the region. However, in the southwest where soils are exceedingly fertile black earths and the climate is a little more moderate, there is extensive cropping of wheat, barley, rye and potatoes, along with the grazing of large numbers of sheep and cattle. Elsewhere food production, owing to the poor fertility of the podzolic soils and the extremely short growing seasons, is restricted to the herding of reindeer in the tundra—which has been practiced by natives for over 10,000 years. Siberia has the world's largest forests. Timber remains an important source of revenue, even though many forests in the east have been logged much more rapidly than they are able to recover. The Sea of Okhotsk is one of the two or three richest fisheries in the world owing to its cold currents and very large tidal ranges, and thus Siberia produces over 10% of the world's annual fish catch, although fishing has declined somewhat since the collapse of the USSR.[42]


Professional football teams include FC Tom Tomsk, FC Sibir Novosibirsk and FK Yenisey Krasnoyarsk.

The Yenisey Krasnoyarsk basketball team has played in the VTB United League since 2011.


Tomsk, one of the oldest Siberian cities, was founded in 1604.

According to the Russian Census of 2010, the Siberian and Far Eastern Federal Districts, located entirely east of the Ural mountains, together have a population of about 25.6 million. Tyumen and Kurgan Oblasts, which are geographically in Siberia but administratively part of the Urals Federal District, together have a population of about 4.3 million. Thus, the whole region of Asian Russia (or Siberia in the broadest usage of the term) is home to approximately 30 million people.[43] It has a population density of about three people per square kilometer.

Most Siberians are Russians and russified Ukrainians.[44] There are approximately 400,000 russified ethnic Germans living in Siberia.[45] Mongol and Turkic groups such as Buryats, Tuvinians, Yakuts, and Siberian Tatars[46] lived in Siberia originally, and descendants of these peoples still live there.[47] The Buryats, numbering approximately 500,000, are the largest indigenous group in Siberia, and are mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic.[48] According to the 2002 census there were 443,852 Yakuts.[49] Other ethnic groups include Kets, Evenks, Chukchis, Koryaks, Yupiks, and Yukaghirs. The Slavic Russians outnumber all of the native peoples in Siberia and its cities except in the Republic of Tuva, with the Slavic Russians making up the majority in the Buryat, Sakha, and Altai Republics, outnumbering the Buryats, Sakha, and Altai natives. The Buryat make up only 25% of their own republic, and the Sakha and Altai each are only one-third, and the Chukchi, Evenk, Khanti, Mansi, and Nenets are outnumbered by non-natives by 90% of the population.[50]

About seventy percent of Siberia's people live in cities, mainly in apartments. Many people also live in rural areas, in simple, spacious, log houses. Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia, with a population of about 1.5 million. Tobolsk, Tomsk, Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Omsk are the older, historical centers.


There are a variety of beliefs throughout Siberia,[51][need quotation to verify] including Orthodox Christianity, other denominations of Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism and Islam.[52] An estimated 70,000 Jews live in Siberia,[53] some in the Jewish Autonomous Region.[54] The predominant religious group is the Russian Orthodox Church.

Tradition regards Siberia the archetypal home of shamanism, and polytheism is popular.[55] These native religions date back hundreds of years.[citation needed] The vast territory of Siberia has many different local traditions of gods. These include: Ak Ana, Anapel, Bugady Musun, Kara Khan, Khaltesh-Anki, Kini'je, Ku'urkil, Nga, Nu'tenut, Numi-Torem, Numi-Turum, Pon, Pugu, Todote, Toko'yoto, Tomam, Xaya Iccita, Zonget. Places with sacred areas include Olkhon, an island in Lake Baikal.


Many cities in northern Siberia, such as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, cannot be reached by road, as there are virtually none connecting from other major cities in Russia or Asia. The best way to tour Siberia is through the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Trans-Siberian Railway operates from Moscow in the west to Vladivostok in the east. Cities not near the railway are best reached by air or by the separate Baikal-Amur-Railway (BAM).

See also[edit]


  1. ^ "Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian)". Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  2. ^
  3. ^ Crossley, Pamela Kyle (2002). The Manchus. Peoples of Asia 14 (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 213. ISBN 0-631-23591-4. Retrieved 28 December 2013. 
  4. ^ Czaplicka, M.C. (1915). Aboriginal Siberia. 
  5. ^ Baikaloff, Anatole (Dec 1950). "Notes on the origin of the name "Siberia"". Slavonic and East European Review 29 (72): 288. 
  6. ^ "Yellowstone's Super Sister" at the Wayback Machine (archived March 14, 2005). Discovery Channel.
  7. ^ Benton, M. J. (2005). When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28573-2. 
  8. ^ "DNA identifies new ancient human dubbed 'X-woman'," BBC News. 25 March 2010.
  9. ^ Pakendorf, B.; Novgorodov, I. N.; Osakovskij, V. L.; Danilova, A. B. P.; Protod'Jakonov, A. P.; Stoneking, M. (2006). "Investigating the effects of prehistoric migrations in Siberia: Genetic variation and the origins of Yakuts". Human Genetics 120 (3): 334–353. doi:10.1007/s00439-006-0213-2. PMID 16845541.  This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  10. ^ Richards, 2003 p. 538.
  11. ^ Asia ex magna Orbis terrae descriptione Gerardi Mercatoris desumpta, studio & industria G.M. Iunioris
  12. ^ Sean C. Goodlett. "Russia’s Expansionist Policies I. The Conquest of Siberia". Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  13. ^ The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War
  14. ^ "The Russian Far East: A History". John J. Stephan (1996). Stanford University Press. p.62. ISBN 0-8047-2701-5
  15. ^ Fiona Hill, Russia — Coming In From the Cold?, The Globalist, 23 February 2004
  16. ^ The unknown gulag: the lost world of Stalin's special settlements. Lynne Viola (2007). Oxford University Press US. p.3. ISBN 0-19-518769-5
  17. ^ Robert Conquest in Victims of Stalinism: A Comment. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 49, No. 7 (Nov. 1997), pp. 1317-1319 states: "We are all inclined to accept the Zemskov totals (even if not as complete) with their 14 million intake to Gulag 'camps' alone, to which must be added 4-5 million going to Gulag 'colonies', to say nothing of the 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labour settlements'. However taken, these are surely 'high' figures."
  18. ^ Zemskov, Gulag, Sociologičeskije issledovanija, 1991, No. 6, pp. 14-15.
  20. ^ Stéphane Courtois, Mark Kramer. Livre noir du Communisme: crimes, terreur, répression. Harvard University Press, 1999. p.239. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  21. ^ "Gulag: a History of the Soviet Camps". Retrieved 6 January 2009. 
  22. ^ "Altai: Saving the Pearl of Siberia". Archived from the original on March 21, 2007. Retrieved 30 November 2006. 
  23. ^ Lioubimtseva E.U., Gorshkov S.P. & Adams J.M.; A Giant Siberian Lake During the Last Glacial: Evidence and Implications; Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  24. ^ C. Michael Hogan. 2011. Taiga. eds. M.McGinley & C.Cleveland. Encyclopedia of Earth. National Council for Science and the Environment. Washington DC
  25. ^ a b c d Meyerhof, A. A., 1980, "Geology and Petroleum Fields in Proterozoic and Lower Cambrian Strata, Lena-Tunguska Petroleum Province, Eastern Siberia, USSR", in Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade: 1968-1978, AAPG Memoir 30, Halbouty, M. T., editor, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, ISBN 0891813063
  26. ^ "Novosibirsk climate". 4 February 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  27. ^ "Omsk climate". 4 February 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  28. ^ "Kazachengoye climate". 4 February 2007. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  29. ^ Business Insider, February 2014,
  30. ^ Гидрометцентр России (in Russian). Archived from the original on 27 June 2008. Retrieved 8 January 2009. 
  31. ^ Ian Sample, "Warming hits 'tipping point'". The Guardian, 11 August 2005
  32. ^ Connor, Steve (23 September 2008). "Exclusive: The methane time bomb". The Independent. Retrieved 3 October 2008. 
  33. ^ N. Shakhova, I. Semiletov, A. Salyuk, D. Kosmach, and N. Bel'cheva (2007), Methane release on the Arctic East Siberian shelf, Geophysical Research Abstracts, 9, 01071
  34. ^ Малый энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона (The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, in Russian)
  35. ^ Сибирь—Большая советская энциклопедия (The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, in Russian)
  36. ^ Сибирь- Словарь современных географических названий (in Russian)
  37. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica. "Siberia-Britannica online encyclopedia". Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  38. ^ "Siberia" at the Wayback Machine (archived August 24, 2000), The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
  39. ^ Statistics on the Development of Gas Fields in Western Siberia, Daily Questions on Energy and Economy
  40. ^ Schlindwein, Simone (August 26, 2008). "The City Built on Oil: EU-Russia Summit Visits Siberia's Boomtown". Spiegel. Retrieved 8 August 2014. 
  41. ^ "Norilsk raises 2010 nickel output forecast". Reuters. 29 January 2010. Retrieved 8 August 2014. 
  42. ^ FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture - National Aquaculture Sector Overview - Russian Federation
  43. ^ "Census 2010 official results (Russian)"
  44. ^ "Ukrainians in Russia's Far East try to maintain community life". The Ukrainian Weekly. May 4, 2003.
  45. ^ "Siberian Germans". Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  46. ^ According to the 2002 census there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization. Archived February 27, 2002 at the Wayback Machine
  47. ^ "Ethnographic map of Siberia". Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  48. ^ World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Russian Federation: Buryats.
  49. ^ World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Russian Federation: Yakuts.
  50. ^ Batalden 1997, p. 37.
  51. ^ Russian Embassy website — Religion in Russia at the Wayback Machine (archived September 26, 2000)
  52. ^ Arnold, Thomas Walker (1896). The Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith. Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company. pp. 206–207. Retrieved 2015-10-11. Of the spread of Islam among the Tatars of Siberia, we have a few particulars. It was not until the latter half of the sixteenth century that it gained a footing in this country, but even before this period Muhammadan missionaries had from time to time made their way into Siberia with the hope of winning the heathen population over to the acceptance of their faith, but the majority of them met with a martyr's death. When Siberia came under Muhammadan rule, in the reign of Kuchum Khan, the graves of seven of these missioanries were discovered [...]. [...] Kuchum Khan [...] made every effort for the conversion of his subjects, and sent to Bukhara asking for missionaries to assist him in this pious undertaking. 
  53. ^ "Planting Jewish roots in Siberia". 24 May 2004. Retrieved 15 May 2010. 
  54. ^ "Why some Jews would rather live in Siberia than Israel", The Christian Science Monitor. 7 June 2010
  55. ^ Hoppál 2005:13


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