Day 23:

I learned a bit more about the Russian Far East and Siberia today. I guess this is the final word on that:

So. Chinggis Khan (we call him "Gengis Khan") created the Mongolian empire in 1206 by uniting the various Mongolian clans under his leadership. This empire of his lasted until the death of his grandson Kublai Khan (we know him from the "pleasure dome" poem). At that point, the Mongolian empire was pretty big - the biggest empire in the history of man, actually, encompasing all of present day Russia, China, down into Viet Nam, most of the middle east, all of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Khazakstan... and west into Belarus and the Ukraine.

The point, though, is that Siberia and the Russian Far East were Mongolian.

But in 1294, the empire was divided up into four independant states. One of those was controlled by the "Golden Horde," and was made up mostly of what is today called Russia.

By 1445, the Golden Horde was in disarray, and it split once more, into eight parts this time. One of those eight parts was the "Siberian Khannate." Ove the next couple hundred years, the Russian empire emerged, and conquered the former lands of the Golden Horde. Most of Siberia was put under Russian control in the late 1500s, and the final Khan of Siberia died on the run from Russian forces in 1605. Meanwhile, the Yuan Dynasty (one of the 1294 creations) was in disarray at the same time... it's claims on the far east were diminished when the Russians reached the pacific ocean for the time in 1639.