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Eastern Siberia strikes us with natural beauty. This land is home to the world's deepest and oldest oflakes, Lake Baikal, nestled between the Sayan and Baikal Mountains and holds approximately one-fifth ofallfresh, liquid water on Earth. Untouched evergreen forests and several waterfalls cause many to refer to the area as"Siberian Switzerland." There are over 200 caves with underground rivers, exotic stalactites and stalagmites, and stolby (pillars of mostly pink-brown, crystalline rock). Over the course of millions of years of rains and winters, frost and sunshine have carved fantastic figures out of the stones, somereaching 100 meters in height. In the contours of the pillars, we often see a strong resemblance to birds, animals, and people.
Eastern Siberiais also home to endless grassy steppes, deserts (with camels!), ancient archaeological monuments, and thousand-year-old burial sites. It is an area of great geographic diversity. To the north, Eastern Siberia extends to the Tajmyr Peninsula on the Arctic Ocean; to the east, the mighty Lena River; to the south, Mongolia and China; and to the west, the Yenisei River. The Region spans several climatic zones, from arctic to continental, including arctic deserts, tundra, and tundra forest in the north; the taiga forests in the central part; and the steppe and forest-steppe in the south with hot summers and productive agricultural soils.
Over 120 nationalities inhabit the region. Unique and not fully documented nations, such as Keto (700 people), Ngasany (800 people), Entsy (200 people) and many others inhabit the northern part of the region. The Keto people are one of the exotic nations. Their ancestry is still enigmatic: the language of these peoples sounds similar to some languages of the Basque, North American Indians, and those nations inhabiting the Caucasus.
Recent findings made in the late 1990s indicate that nomadic groups, such as the Huns,Mongols and Manchu, who conquered and then lost immense empires, inhabited southern parts of the region as early as 300,000 years ago. Russia's conquest of the Tatar khanate of Sibir in 1581 was the beginning of the new Russian Empire. At the end of the 16th century, Russia officially added new lands of Western and Eastern Siberia to its territory and settlement was initiated by groups of zemleprokhodtsy (literally, "crossers of land"), who came mostly from European Russia to pioneer new forts and trading communities. Silver, lead, and copper mining began around 1700, followed later by intensive gold mining.
From the early 17th century, Eastern Siberia was used as a penal colony and a place of exile for political prisoners. Among the Old Believers and the GULAG archipelago exiles, there was one event that deserves special attention – the Decembrist Conspiracy of 1825. After Napoleon was defeated in 1812, during the reign of Alexander I, secret societies sprang up throughout the country calling for the abolition of serfdom. One of these movements, a group of dissatisfied nobles known as the Decembrists, also petitioned for the end of autocracy. On 14 December, 1825, they marched into Senate Square in St. Petersburg with soldiers who had refused to swear allegiance to the new Tsar, Nicholas I. The uprising was crushed within a few hours and the conspirators immediately hanged or sent to Siberia. The spouses who decided to follow had to give up social ranks and thier nobility privileges in exchange for permission to accompany their husbands.
The large-scalesettlement of Eastern Siberia on a large scale began only with the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad (1892-1905). In the late sixties through the seventies of the last century, it was expanded by the Baikal-Amur Magistrate (BAM) railroad, later including the Severo-Myisky tunnel - the longest ever built in Russia and second in the world. It was finally completed in 2001 after more than 15 years of struggle with the Baikal Mountains.
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