The Urbanization of Western Siberia: A Historian’s View

Abstract

This article is devoted to studying the main trends in the historical process of urbanization of Western Siberia across several centuries, right up until the mid-twentieth century. We locate the emergence of the first settlements in the region now known as Western Siberia and present the process of their gradual transformation into urban settlements. We determine the most important socioeconomic prerequisites for urbanization in the region, as well as the starting point of urbanization. We identify the features of urbanization in the region and, at different stages of its historical development, reveal the specific qualities of formation of a network of cities in the region, the impact of the “Stolypin” settlements on the process of urban population growth, and the influence of Russian capital, particularly the construction of the Great Siberian Railway, in the development of that urban network. We illustrate the features of Siberian urbanization during the years of Civil War and New Economic Policy and direct considerable attention to the causes and factors of forced urban growth during the years of Stalinist modernization. We show that accelerated industrialization became the basis for a fundamentally new phenomenon in the history of Siberian urbanization, so-called “quasi-urbanization.”