Western Siberia (Continued)

The southern part of Western Siberia has hilly but fairly good agricultural land used for farming with most of the region’s population (80%) living here. This is also where the famous Trans-Siberian railroad connects major cities of the region with the rest of Russia. The very tip of the southern part of Western Siberia, where Russian, Mongolian and Kazakhstan borders meet, is highlighted by the golden Altai Mountains, which provide the source of its greatest rivers - the Ob and the Irtysh. The Altai Mountains represent the most complete sequence of altitudinal vegetation zones in central Siberia: steppe, forest-steppe, mixed forest, sub-alpine and alpine vegetation.

The early development of Western Siberia, particularly the southern section, began in Central Asia with merchants from the ancient trade centers of Samarkand and Bukhara in the X-XIV centuries, who needed the massive Siberian rivers to transport their goods to the Northerners. With the appearance of the Mongolian Golden Horde Empire in the thirteenth century, the area was quickly occupied and controlled for an extensive period by several Mongolian Khans (Tatars). It became a Siberian khanate with the capital city called Sibir (near modern Tobolsk), which later gave its name to the entire region. In 1581, in response to frequent attacks of Khan Kuchum, the first military mission sponsored by Russian Tsar Ivan IV was led by Yermak, who siezed Sibir. The same year, control over Sibir city was lost and gained back only in 1598. Then the city of Tomsk was established in 1604 to became a "gate into Siberia" from where further Russian expansion and colonization continued for the next few centuries.

The most numerous group of settlers in the first wave consisted of Cossacks, peasants from the central and southern parts of Russia. Along with the voluntary settlers encouraged by the Russian government, the "new land" was flooded with Old Believers and political exiles in the 1800s and 1900s. This involuntary settlement continued in the Soviet GULAG, a system of prison camps scattered across Siberia. Western Siberia was hardly on the map of major events happening in the country; then oil and gas were discovered in the northern Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous districts. It was a real economic revolution for the region, and it initiated a new wave of development and exploration of this northern section. Currently Western Siberia produces 65 percent of Russia's oil and 87 percent of its gas.