Place:Krasnoyarsk, Sibirsky, Russia

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Krasnoyarsk Krai is a federal subject of Russia (a krai), with its administrative center in the city of Krasnoyarsk, the third-largest city in Siberia (after Novosibirsk and Omsk). Comprising half of the Siberian Federal District, Krasnoyarsk Krai is the largest krai in the Russian Federation, the second largest federal subject (after neighboring Sakha) and the third largest subnational governing body by area in the world, after Sakha and the Australian state of Western Australia. The krai covers an area of , which is nearly one quarter the size of the entire country of Canada (the next-largest country in the world after Russia), constituting roughly 13% of the Russian Federation's total area and containing a population of 2,828,187, or just under 2% of its population, per the 2010 Census.

History

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According to archaeologists, the first people reached Siberia circa 40,000 BC. The Andronovo culture, a group of Bronze Age peoples, lived in the area around 2000–900 BC, the remains of which were discovered in 1914 near the village of Andronovo, Uzhursky District. The grave-mounds and monuments of the Scythian culture in Krasnoyarsk Krai belong to the 7th century BC and are some of the oldest in Eurasia. A prince's grave, the Kurgan Arshan, discovered in 2001, is also located in the krai.

Russian settlement of the area (mostly by Cossacks) began in the 17th century. After the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway the Russian colonization of the area strongly increased. In 1822, the Yeniseysk Governorate was created with Krasnoyarsk as its administrative center that covered territory very similar to that of the current krai.

During both the Tsarist and the Soviet times, the territory of Krasnoyarsk Krai was used as a place of exile of political enemies, actual or alleged. The first leaders of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, were exiled to what is now the krai in 1897–1900 and 1903, respectively. In Stalin's era, numerous Gulag camps were located in the region.

On June 30, 1908, in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, there occurred a powerful explosion most likely to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of above the Earth's surface. The force of the explosion is estimated to be about 10–15 megatons. It flattened more than of pine forest and killed thousands of reindeer.

Krasnoyarsk Krai was created in 1934 after disaggregation of the West Siberian and East Siberian Krais and later included Taymyr and Evenk Autonomous Okrugs and Khakas Autonomous Oblast. In 1991, Khakassia separated from the krai and became a republic within the Russian Federation. On January 1, 2007, following a referendum on the issue held on April 17, 2005, the territories of Evenk and Taymyr Autonomous Okrugs were merged into the krai.

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