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Siberia

Siberia is the vast region constituting almost all of Northern Asia and is currently the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation. The region was ruled by the Russian Empire from the early 17th century and remained under Soviet control.

It includes a large part of the Eurasian Steppe and extends eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. It makes up about 77% of Russia's territory, but contains only 25% of Russia's population.

Siberia in Crosstime Traffic[]

Siberia in Curious Notions[]

In the alternate designated as 3477 by Crosstime Traffic, Germany defeated Russia in the brief war of 1914. The German Feldgendarmerie took over former Russian facilities in Siberia and established "Penal Colonies" where prisoners had little chance of long survival. Prisoners could be taken out of their countries and shipped to Siberia at the Feldgendarmerie's discretion, after a perfunctory trial or without any trial. Similar "Penal Colonies" were also located in such places as New Guinea, Patagonia and the Mojave Desert.

Siberia in The Gladiator[]

In 2097, the Soviet Union was still using Siberia as a massive prison camp, and keeping it well populated.[1]

Siberia in In the Presence of Mine Enemies[]

The Greater German Reich stretched from England to deep into Siberia.[2]

Siberia in "The Last Article"[]

By the end of the Second World War, Japan and Germany had defeated the Soviet Union and Japan claimed Siberia as part of their empire. In 1947, the Japanese-dominated government of Siberia negotiated a trade deal with Japanese puppet states of China and Manchukuo.[3]

Siberia in "Liberating Alaska"[]

The United States among other countries, invaded Siberia to combat the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. While the Reds won and established the Soviet Union, their leader, Vladimir Lenin, was forced to cede a number of Russian territories. As the U.S. Marines withdrew from Siberia, they were able to seize Russia's North American province, Alaska.[4]

Veterans of the U.S. invasion of Siberia would later help liberate Siknazuak, Alaska in June 1929 after Joseph Stalin sent troops to take the city. Siknazuak's close proximity to Siberia made the initial invasion easy for the Soviets.[5]

Siberia in "Les Mortes d'Arthur"[]

Siberia was the eastern part of the former Soviet Union which rebelled and re-established czarist rule. It remained hostile to the communist rump state of Moscow to the west. The two fought several minor wars in the Ural Mountains borderlands subsequent to the revolt, until the Treaty of Sverdlovsk established a fragile peace between the two. Not all dealings were hostile, with the athletes of both countries being more or less amiable if not friendly during the Sixty-sixth Winter Games. The athletes' space suits were snowy white with the cross of Saint George on the left shoulder.

The Czar's government maintained the Soviet Union's old political prison camps, including Kolyma, into the 22nd century. This was a fact which both Muscovite and Siberian media attempted in vain to censor from the rest of the world.

Siberia in Southern Victory[]

Siberia was a Russian territory, and often considered a backwater due to its remoteness and lack of infrastructure. It was also a place where enemies of the Tsars were exiled to.

In the aftermath of Russia's defeat in the Great War, Siberia remained unaffected by the Russian Civil War that raged in the West.

In 1944, weakened from the superbombing of Petrograd, Russia sought an armistice with Germany, officially bringing its role in the Second Great War to an end. After this, Japan, hitherto an Entente ally of Russia, massed troops along the Siberian border. Tokyo demanded that the Russian government evacuate several Siberian provinces or lose them to an invasion.

Siberia in "Shtetl Days"[]

The hanging of partisans by the Greater German Reich was often televised from Siberia.

Siberia in The Two Georges[]

Siberia was full of prison camps of the Russian Empire. Thomas Bushell occasionally heard bluebloods of the North American Union wishing they had an equivalent of Siberia, and suspected that these were the same kind of people who thought the emancipation of Negro slaves had been a mistake.[6]

Siberia in The War That Came Early[]

Siberia was a territory of the Soviet Union. In the late 1930s, the Red Army and the Kwantung Army constantly clashed along its border.

In 1939, while the Red Army was bogged down in Poland, Japan launched an invasion of Siberia. Although this attack proceeded slowly in the face of stiff Soviet resistance, the Kwantung Army managed to seize several points along the Trans-Siberian railroad, isolating Vladivostok. By mid-1940, the city had surrendered.

After Vladivostok fell, the British and French switched sides to join Germany's war against the USSR. In response, Joseph Stalin sought a separate peace with Japan, surrendering Vladivostok and part of the Russian Far East to the Japanese Empire.

In 1941, Britain and France switched back to the side of the USSR. When Germany's new government ended the long war in 1944, the USSR entered into an alliance with the United States against Japan, seeking to recover its lost Siberian territories.

Siberia in Worldwar[]

Siberia was considered a remote, backwater area in the Soviet Union. Enemies of the state were usually banished to Siberia to various gulags. During the late 1930s, the border between Siberia and the Japanese Empire had been the site of many Soviet-Japanese border clashes.

When the Race invaded in mid-1942, parts of Siberia were overrun, and the region saw fighting between males of the Race and Soviet forces. Males of the Race who fought there suffered terribly from Siberia's cold environment; the weather demoralized infantrymales in particular, who were forced to fight outside of any heated compartments. This, among other factors, caused several Race soldiers to follow Ussmak into mutiny. The Soviet government convinced the mutineers to surrender with promises of rewards and good treatment, but all were gradually taken prisoner and later shipped to various prison camps in Siberia.

In 1944, the Race was forced to withdraw under the Peace of Cairo.

References[]

  1. The Gladiator, pg. 83, HC.
  2. In the Presence of Mine Enemies, pg. 25, HC.
  3. See, e.g., The Best Military Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century, pg. 252.
  4. Asimov's Science Fiction, July/August, 2018.
  5. Ibid.
  6. The Two Georges, p. 294, HC.
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