Tomsk Oblast

• 1. Introduction

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  Tomsk Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, contains the Vasyugan Swamp, the biggest swamp in the northern hemisphere. The oblast sprawls across 316,900 square kilometers, and parts of it cannot be reached at all because taiga woods and swamps cover the ground. Its administrative center is the city of Tomsk. What does a region this wet and this heavily wooded do to the people who live in it? And why is this corner of Siberia linked with scholarship as much as with wilderness?

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• 2. Forest and Water

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  Roughly 85 percent of Tomsk Oblast is forested, which makes it almost entirely taiga. Siberian pines, Scots pines, spruce, fir, and larch are among the common trees. The oblast lies in the southeastern West Siberian Plain, in the southwest of the Siberian Federal District. Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Kemerovo Oblasts all share a border with it.

  The Ob, Tom, Chulym, Chaya, Ket, Parabel, Vasyugan, and Tym are the major rivers that pass through the oblast. Together they thread the forest with water that complements the swamps.

  The average annual temperature in Tomsk Oblast is 1.75 degrees Celsius. July averages 19.4 degrees, while January sits at roughly minus 19 to minus 21. The frost-free season typically lasts 100-105 days. Mean annual precipitation is 435 millimeters. The oldest traces of people in this land, though, come from long before Russia reached it.

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• 3. Layers of History

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  The Kulayskoy civilization, a taiga people known for bronze artifacts, lived in this territory long before Siberia became part of Russia. Russian development of the region began at the end of the 16th century and in the early 17th century. The village of Narym, once a city, is the oldest settlement in the area, founded in 1596.

  In 1604, Tsar Boris Godunov issued a decree that founded Tomsk, the city that became the administrative center. The map around it then changed many times. From 1719 to 1804 the territory belonged to the province of Tobolsk. A Tomsk region was formed in 1782 within the Tobolsk namestnichestvo, which became Tobolskaya guberniya in 1796.

  The Tomsk Governorate was founded in 1804 and lasted until 1925. It then became part of the Siberian region, which was renamed the West Siberian region in 1930. Tomsk Oblast was re-established on the 13th of August 1944.

  The city of Tomsk grew through the mid-20th century. Many Soviet institutions relocated there during World War II, and nuclear facilities were developed in the region during the 1950s. Not every institution that shaped Tomsk arrived from elsewhere, though. The city had founded universities of its own decades earlier.

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• 4. Siberian Athens

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  Tomsk State University, founded in 1888, was the first university in Asian Russia. Twelve years later came Tomsk Polytechnic University, the first technological institute in Asian Russia. In 1902, Tomsk State Pedagogical University became the first normal university in the same part of the country.

  The city is often called the Siberian Athens because of its unique spirit. The oblast is home to six state higher education institutions and 47 research institutes.

  More than 100,000 people study in Tomsk universities and colleges. That is 20 percent of the city's population. Counted per 10,000 people, Tomsk ranks third in Russia for students, behind only Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. In research, Tomsk Region ranks first in Russia for the number of people engaged in research and development per capita. The figure is 160 researchers for every 10,000 citizens.

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• 5. Oil and Timber

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  Industry makes up about half of the regional GDP, while agriculture contributes 19 percent and construction 13 percent. The ground and forests supply much of this. Tomsk Oblast holds oil, natural gas, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, peat, and various types of waters. About 20 percent of the West Siberian forest resources are located here.

  Petroleum production began in the oblast during the 1960s and 1970s. Today the chemical and oil industries are the most developed in the region, followed by machine construction. Oil extraction and lumbering are the major business of the region's joint ventures.

  Oil accounts for 62.1 percent of the oblast's exports. Methanol follows with 30.2 percent, and machines and equipment make up 4.8 percent.

  Tomsk Airport is the main aviation center, and it was remodeled in April 2013 so that it could handle international flights. Six railway routes pass through the oblast, totaling 346 kilometers, and direct rail routes run from Adler to Vladivostok. As of 2015, the oblast had 4,204 kilometers of hard-surface road. The Russian government has outlined a plan to connect the oblast's disconnected road systems to the national network by 2030.

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• 6. Seats of Power

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  During the Soviet period, authority in the oblast was shared among three people. The first secretary of the Tomsk CPSU Committee held the most real power. The chairman of the oblast Soviet represented legislative power, and the chairman of the oblast Executive Committee represented executive power. In March 1990, Article 6 of the Constitution of the USSR was abolished, and the CPSU lost its monopoly on power. After that, the head of the oblast administration, and eventually a governor, was appointed or elected alongside an elected regional parliament.

  On the 26th of July 1995, the oblast adopted its charter, which is the fundamental law of the region. The Legislative Duma is the standing legislative body. It passes laws and resolutions and supervises how they are carried out. The highest executive body is the Oblast Government, which includes district administrations, committees, and commissions. The Governor is the highest official and guarantees that the charter is observed in accordance with the Constitution of Russia.

  The current Governor is Vladimir Mazur. The Legislative Duma has 42 deputies, and its chairman is Oksana Kozlovskaya. In the VI convocation of 2016-2021, the United Russia faction had 27 deputies. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia faction had 9, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction had 4, and A Just Russia had 2.

  The oblast is divided directly into four cities and sixteen districts. The four cities are Tomsk, Kedrovy, Strezhevoy, and Seversk. Seversk is classed as a closed city.

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• 7. People and Faith

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  The 2010 Census counted 1,047,394 people in Tomsk Oblast. Russians make up 92.1 percent of them. Volga-Ural-Siberian Tatars account for 1.7 percent, Ukrainian-Belarusian residents for 1.4 percent, and Volga Germans for 0.9 percent. Tatars, Chuvash, Armenians, and Khanty make up the remaining part of the population. Another 45,016 people were registered from administrative databases and could not declare an ethnicity.

  A 2012 survey found that 33.3 percent of the population adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church. Another 4 percent are unaffiliated generic Christians. Two percent are Eastern Orthodox believers who do not belong to any church or who belong to other Eastern Orthodox churches. One percent follows Rodnovery or local indigenous Siberian folk religions, and another 1 percent follows Islam. Tibetan Buddhism claims 0.62 percent, and the Catholic Church 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, 29 percent describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, and 15 percent are atheist. A further 13.68 percent follow other religions or did not answer.

  The 1990s left the oblast in a disastrous demographic situation, but the numbers have since begun to stabilize. In the first three months of 2009, there were 3,337 births, 2.4 percent more than in 2008. There were 3,339 deaths, 6.7 percent fewer than in 2008.

  In 2024 the oblast recorded 7,586 births, or 7.3 per 1,000 people, and 12,773 deaths, or 12.3 per 1,000. Life expectancy in 2021 was 69.70 years overall, with men at 65.03 and women at 74.36. The 2024 fertility rate of 1.16 children per woman sits beside those figures, a reminder that deaths outnumbered births that year.

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