North Asia

North Asia or Northern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the Asian portion of Russia. The Phillips Illustrated Atlas of the World 1988 defines it as being most of the former USSR, the part that is to the east of the Ural Mountains. A definition pre-dating the USSR is an 1882 one by Keane and Temple, who defined it as "the two great administrative divisions of West and East Siberia, whose capitals are Omsk and Irkutsk respectively". It was, according to them "one vast political system, comprising nearly one-third of the whole continent, and, with a few trifling exceptions, directly administered by Russia".

Demographics

In 1875, Chambers reported the population of Northern Asia to be 8 million. Between 1801 and 1914 an estimated 7 million settlers moved from European Russia to Siberia, 85% during the quarter-century before World War I.

Most estimates nowadays are that there are around 40 million Russians and Russified Ukrainians east of the Urals. The Buryats number 445,175, which makes them the largest ethnic minority group in Siberia. There are 443,852 Yakuts (Russian Census of 2002) and about 400,000 ethnic Germans living in Siberia. According to the 2002 census there are 500,000 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization.

Geography

There are no mountain chains in Northern Asia to prevent air currents from the Arctic flowing down over the plains of Siberia and Turkestan.

The plateau and plains of Northern Asia comprise the West Siberian lowlands; the Angara Shield, with the Taimyr Peninsula, the coastal lowlands, the Putorana Plateau, the Anabar Plateau, the Tunguska Plateau, and the Angara Plateau; and the Lena-Vilyuy Basin.