Siberia’s name derives from the former Tatar khanate which rule Siberia until 1581 when a Cossack band overthrew the Khan. The name Siberia is from the Tartar ‘Sibir’, meaning ‘sleeping land’.
On coming to the region the Russians adopted the same name, calling it the Sibirskaia zemlitsa or ‘Siberia’ for short.
Siberia was visited by invading force from Central Asia before the Russians arrived to create their own Asian colony. The man at the head of this force was Genghis Khan.
Russian colonization of Siberia is dated from 1581-82 when a small band of Cossack soldiers of fortune under Ermak Timofeevich made the first incursions into Western Siberia.
In south-western Siberia, the Kazakh region came under Russian dominion in 1740, with the Altai following suit in 1756.
Russian administration of Siberia was directed by the Siberian office until 1763, first in Moscow and then in St Petersburg.
Stretching for five thousand miles from the Urals to the edge of the Bering Sea and encompassing five and a third million square miles of territory, the Russians’ Siberian conquest allowed them to build the modern world’s largest land empire.
History of Siberia
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