Before Russians crossed the Ural Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their colony in North Asia, they heard rumours about bountiful fur, of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra, endless forest and humming steppe between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean was a vast, strange and frightening paradise. It was Siberia. Tracing the historical contours of Siberia, A. J. Haywood offers a detailed account of the architectural and cultural landmarks of cities such as Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Barnaul and Novosibirsk. Before Russians crossed the Ural Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their colony in North Asia, they heard rumours about bountiful fur, of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold.

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