Map of Kemerovo

History

The oblast was established on January 26, 1943, but it has considerably older antecedents. Shors, Teleuts and Siberian Tatars are native peoples of the region. The oldest city in Kemerovo Oblast is Novokuznetsk, founded in 1618, soon after Cossack ataman Yermak's push into Siberia.

The territory of modern Kemerovo Oblast has been inhabited for several thousand years. In 1618, Kuznetsk fort was established in the south of the future oblast to protect the land from Russian and Mongolian Dzhungarian invaders. During the 19th century, the territory of the modern oblast was a part of Tomsk Governorate.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Kuzbass experienced significant strife as part of the Russian Civil War.

Geography

Kemerovo Oblast is located in southwestern Siberia, where the West Siberian Plain meets the South Siberian Mountains. The oblast, which covers an area of 95,500 square kilometers (36,900 sq mi), shares a border with Tomsk Oblast in the north, Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Republic of Khakassia in the east, the Altai Republic in the south, and with Novosibirsk Oblast and Altai Krai in the west.

Verkhny Zub peak, the highest point of the oblast, is located in the eastern border.

The climate of the oblast is continental: winters are cold and long, summers are warm, but short. The average January temperature ranges from −17 to −20 °C (1 to −4 °F), the average in July is 17 to 18 °C (63 to 64 °F).

Economy

The northern area of the region is more agricultural. The region has a dense railway network, including the Trans-Siberian Railway, which passes through the oblast. Novokuznetsk is the center of the engineering industry.

Kemerovo Oblast is one of Russia's most important industrial regions, with some of the world's largest deposits of coal. The south of the region is dominated by metallurgy and the mining industry, as well as mechanical engineering and chemical production.

The Evraz Group and an ore subsidiary Evrazruda operate iron ore mining and processing facilities along with the Raspadskaya, Yuzhkuzbassugol, the Siberian holding company SIBPLAZ. Coal and coking coal mines are located there. Prokopevsk, Kiselevsk, and Andzhero-Sudzhensk are coal-producing centers.

Demographics

Population: 2,600,923 (2021 census); 2,763,135 (2010 census); 2,899,142 (2002 census); 3,176,335 (1989 Soviet census).

55,899 people were registered from administrative databases, and could not declare an ethnicity. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group.