The building of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s and Omsk's position as a trans-shipment point on the lrtysh led to rapid commercial growth. Industrial growth was given great impetus during the Second World War, since when its population has more than trebled. Pipelines from the Volga-Urals and West Siberian oilfields supply the refinery and petrochemical industry, which makes synthetic rubber and tyres.
Engineering, especially the production of agricultural machinery, also dominates a wide range of industry. Other industries include the manufacture of cotton and woollen textiles, cord, footwear, and leather goods, and food processing, Timber working is also carried out. Among the cultural and educational facilities of Omsk are agricultural, engineering, medical, and veterinary institutes and other research and higher educational establishments. The city's population today reaches just over 1 million,
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is today the largest city in Siberia (with a population of nearly 1.5 million), and a major manufacturing and industrial centre as well as a communications hub. It is the chief city of western Siberia.
The city developed when the village of Krivoshchekovo on the left bank of the River Ob was chosen as the crossing point for the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1893. The settlement was then known variously as Gusevka or Aleksandrovsky, but in 1895 it was renamed Novonikolayevsk in honour of the accession of Nicholas II; in 1925 it was renamed again, this time as Novosibirsk, meaning "New Siberia". Its expansion was due partly to its strategic importance for communications and partly to its proximity to Siberia's vast natural resources, in particular the Kuznetsk coalfield to the east.
As the region's principal cultural and educational centre, Novosibirsk has an opera and ballet theatre, botanical gardens, an art gallery, and museums, as well as a symphony orchestra. There are also some two dozen institutions of higher learning, including the Novosibirsk State University, founded in 1959. With the large number of educational institutions, the proportion of students enrolled in higher education in the city is among the highest in Russia. The university and a number of these institutes are located in the satellite town of Akadem- gorodok, which since the 1960s has comprised Russia's largest cluster of basic science research institutes and personnel outside Moscow and St Petersburg. Most of these institutes belong to the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. During the 1990s many scientists left the area and relocated outside Russia, though some of these researchers remained affiliated with their home institutions.
Irkutsk
The city of Irkutsk is the administrative centre of the Irkutsk region and an important cultural centre for eastern Siberia, in the Russian far east. Irkutsk lies along the Angara River at its confluence with the Irkut River. It was founded as a wintering camp in 1652, during the first Russian colonization of the area; a fort was built in 1661, and Irkutsk rapidly became the main centre of the region and of the Russian trade route to China and Mongolia. It acquired town status in 1686. Its importance grew after the coming of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1898.
Modern Irkutsk, with a population of just over half a million, is one of the major industrial cities of Siberia and is especially noted for a wide range of engineering products. There are railway, aircraft, ship, and vehicle repair yards. Other industries include mica processing and consumer-goods manufacture. The Irkutsk hydroelectric station on the Angara River is within the city; its reservoir extends back to include Lake Baikal.
The city's attractions include its pleasing embankments along the river and many surviving wooden houses on its tree-lined streets, as well as its proximity to Lake Baikal, now a popular tourist destination. The Irkutsk State University (1918) and the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences are among the city's many teaching and research institutes.
Ulan-Ude
The capital of the Buryatiya republic, east-central Russia, Ulan-Ude lies in a deep valley between the Khamar-Daban and Tsagan-Daban mountain ranges. The wintering camp of Udinskoye, established there in 1666, became the town of Verkhne-Udinsk in 1783; it was renamed Ulan-Ude in 1934.
The city's development was greatly stimulated when the Trans-Siberian Railway reached it in 1900 and later by the construction of the branch line to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia in 1949 - a branch extended to Beijing in 1956. Ulan-Ude's role as a major rail junction led to the establishment of large locomotive and carriage repair works.
Khabarovsk
The city of Khabarovsk is the administrative centre of the Khabarovsk territory, in far eastern Russia. It lies along the Amur River just below its confluence with the Ussuri. The town was named after the Russian explorer Yerofey Khabar- ov, who made several expeditions to the Amur River basin in the mid-seventeenth century. The modern city was founded in 1858 as a military outpost. Its nodal position at the point at which the Trans-Siberian Railway crosses the Amur made it an important focus of the Russian far east, and at one time it administered the entire area to the Bering Strait.
Modern Khabarovsk, with a population of about 600,000, spreads across a series of small valleys and ridges perpendicular to the Amur, The city has an attractive waterfront park and esplanade and a mixture of modern apartment blocks, factories, and old, one-storey wooden houses. It is a major industrial centre, with most enterprises located in the upstream district: they include a wide range of engineering and machine-building industries, oil refining, timber working, and furniture making, and many light industries. There are polytechnic, agricultural, medical, teacher-training, and railway- engineering institutes, and several scientific-research establishments. The city also boasts a number of theatres (including a puppet theatre), museums, picture galleries, and parks, and the Bolshekhekhtsirsky State Nature Reserve is nearby.
Vladivostok
Vladivostok is a seaport and the administrative centre of the Primorsky territory, in extreme south-eastern Russia. It is located around Zolotoy Rog ("Golden Horn Bay") on the western side of a peninsula that separates the Amur and Ussuri bays on the Sea of Japan, The town was founded in 1860 as a Russian military outpost and was named Vladivostok (variously interpreted as "Rule the East", "Lord of the East", or "Conqueror of the East"). Its forward position in the extreme south of the Russian far east inevitably led to a major role as a port and naval base. In 1872 the main Russian naval base on the Pacific was transferred there, and thereafter Vladivostok began to grow. In 1880 city status was conferred on it. The city also grew in importance after the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria to Chita (completed in 1903), which gave Vladivostok a more direct rail connection to the rest of the Russian Empire. Today traces of this nineteenth-century heritage can still be found in the wooden architecture of that period, the old and the modern juxtaposed in many of the city's streets.
During the First World War, Vladivostok was the chief Pacific entry port for military supplies and railway equipment sent to Russia from the United States. After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the city was occupied in 1918 by foreign, mostly Japanese, troops, the last of whom were not withdrawn until 1922. The anti-revolutionary forces in Vladivostok promptly collapsed, and Soviet power was established in the region.
During the Soviet period Vladivostok remained the home of the Pacific Fleet, which was greatly enlarged in the decades after the Second World War. Vladivostok's military importance was such that it was closed to foreign shipping and other contacts from the late 1950s until the waning days of Soviet power in 1990. Its chief role as a commercial port subsequently re-emerged, both as a link to other Russian ports of the far east and as a port of entry for consumer goods from China, Japan, and other countries. The port is the eastern terminus of the Northern Sea Route along Russia's Arctic seaboard from Murmansk, and is the principal supply base for the Arctic ports cast of Cape Chelyuskin.