CHAPTER VIII
PRESENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF WEST-
ERN AND CENTRAL SIBERIA
I. GENERAL GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS
THE writer hopes in the following chapter to convey some impressions of the present economic state of that part of Siberia which is most closely in touch with European commercial influences, and to indicate the probable lines along which its economic development will proceed. He hopes that the following review will be of some academic interest to the economic student of these districts, as well as of some practical use to any readers who may purpose to engage in the commercial enterprises for which Western and Central Siberia offer in the near future so remunerative a field.
It is often said that geography is the basis of history, but it is not less true to say that the geographical conditions of a country form the framework, upon which the economic life of its inhabitants is built. Siberia, which forms but part of the great inheritance of the Russian people of to-day, is a vast territory, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the south by the outposts of the Chinese Empire along the Mongolian frontier, and stretching from west to east 6000 miles from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Within its borders the most 205
