The Term “Central Siberia” in Russian Historiography

The article analyzes the use of the term “Central Siberia” in Russian scientific literature. The author has reviewed historical, geographical, and economic scientific literature for about the past century and a half. He believes that the term “Central Siberia” was introduced by geologists and geographers of the late 19th - early 20th centuries when describing the interfluve of the Yenisei and the Lena - the Central Siberian Plateau, first explored and delineated by Alexander Lavrentievich Chekanovsky and Innokenty Alexandrovich Lopatin in the 1870s. Then and now, Geographers understand Central Siberia as a certain region, including Yenisei Province (Krasnoyarsk Krai), Yakut Oblast (Sakha Republic) and Irkutsk Province (Irkutsk Oblast), and Tuva. The Great Russian Encyclopedia gives the following content of the term “Central Siberia”: “one of the largest natural regions in Russia. It is located in the central part of Siberia, between the valley of the Yenisei River and the western foot of the Verkhoyansk Range. In the south, it borders the Altai Mountains, the Sayan Mountains, the Baikal Region and the Trans-Baikal Region. In the north it is washed by the Kara and Laptev Seas. Its area is about 4 million km². The length from north to south is 2,800 km, from west to east 2,500 km.” In the historical literature, however, there is no concreteness in the use of the term “Central Siberia”. The analysis of the literature showed its arbitrary interpretation by archaeologists, ethnographers, and historians. The historian I.I. Tyzhnov understood Central Siberia as Tomsk and Yenisei Provinces or the Mangazeya, Yenisei, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Kuznetsk, and Narym Ket uezds that were part of the Yenisei Province of Siberia Governorate in 1724. Ethnographers and archaeologists usually identify Central Siberia with the territory of Yenisei Province or the Soviet Krasnoyarsk Krai. The historian Yu.V. Ivanov stated Central Siberia was Tomsk, Yenisei, and Irkutsk Provinces of the period of the 1917 Revolution. The author of the article notes that the term “Central Siberia” has disappeared from the modern economic and administrative lexicon. He makes a conclusion about the stable use of the term “Central Siberia” in geological, geographical, historical scientific literature with significant differences in the understanding of the content of the term itself by specialists of different sciences. He also notes the destruction of the former structure of the economic and administrative zoning of North Asia during the implementation of projects for its economic development, the change in the territories of the federal districts, and the following withdrawal from the administrative use of the concepts “Western Siberia” and “Eastern Siberia”, along with the concept “Central Siberia”.

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