Coat of arms of Tsardom of Siberia (part of the Russian Imperial Coat of Arms)
Siberia Governorate (Russian: Сибирская губерния, romanized: Sibirskaya guberniya) was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, which existed from 1708 until 1782. Its seat was in Tobolsk (initially spelt as Tobolesk). The governorate was located in the east of Russian Empire and bordered China in the south, Kazan Governorate in the southwest, and Archangelgorod Governorate in the northwest. In the north and the east, the governorate was limited by the seas of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. In terms of area, Siberia Governorate was by far the biggest of all the governorates, as it included areas in the Urals, Siberia, and the Russian Far East some of which were not yet even settled by Russians at the time.
Establishment
Siberia Governorate, together with seven other governorates, was established on December 29 [O.S. December 18], 1708, by TsarPeter the Great's edict.[1] As with the rest of the governorates, neither the borders nor internal subdivisions of Siberia Governorate were defined; instead, the territory was defined as a set of cities and the lands adjacent to those cities.[2]
At the time of establishment, the following thirty cities were included in Siberia Governorate:[1]
In 1724, Tobolsk Province was split into Yeniseysk, Irkutsk, and Tobolsk Provinces. In 1727, Vyatka and Solikamsk Provinces were transferred to Kazan Governorate.[4]
In 1736, Okhotsky Uyezd was split off from Yakutsky Uyezd. In the same year, Siberia Governorate was split into two independent areas: Siberia Province, which consisted of the former Tobolsk and Yeniseysk Provinces, under the authority of the governor (posted in Tobolsk), and Irkutsk Province. In 1737, the areas in the South Urals were organized into Iset Province with the center in the town of Shadrinsk, and the province was transferred into Orenburg Governorate. In 1764, Irkutsk Governorate was established in place of the former Irkutsk Province.[4]
^Лукошников, В. А. (March 22, 2006). Яренский уезд. Маяк (in Russian) (22).
^ abcСофронов, Вячеслав Юрьевич; Сладкова, Любовь Николаевна (2007). Культурное наследие Западной Сибири(PDF) (in Russian). Yekaterinburg: Уральский государственный университет. pp. 75–76.
^ТОБОЛЬСКИЙ РАЙОН (in Russian). narod.ru. Archived from the original on December 5, 2009. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
¹ Italics indicates renamed or abolished governorates, oblasts, etc on 1 January 1914. ² An asterisk (+) indicates governorates formed or created with renaming after 1 January 1914. ³ Ostsee or Baltic general-governorship was abolished in 1876.
