Siberian Republic

The Siberian Republic (Siberian: Republika Sibirya), or just Siberia, is a country in Asia. It is relatively new as it gained independence from Russia in only 1994. At 13,100,000 km2 (5,100,000 sq mi), the Siberian Republic is still the largest country in the world by area (it was formerly the largest but as part of Russia), even though it excludes European Russia. The Siberian Republic is just 900,000 km2 (559,234 sq mi) smaller than Antarctica. Siberia has a wide range of environments and landforms.

Siberia's capital is Novosibirsk. Other major cities include Barnaul, Irkuʒk, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Novokuzneʒk, Omsk, Tomsk, Tyumen, Čelyabinsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and Yekaterinburg.

From northwest to southeast, the Siberian Republic shares land borders with Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan and the U.S. state of Alaska.

The Siberian Republic encompasses all of the land area of North Asia.

History
After the Soviet Union finally came to an end on December 26, 1991, the people of the region of Siberia started to want to secede from the Russian Federation like how other republics did. Protests occurred a lot in Asian Russia, and burning of Russian flags were common. Siberians wanted to govern themselves, and were fed up with the fact that most prosperity of Russia just went to Moscow and European Russia, ignoring eastern Russia.

The militaries in Siberia began training and recruiting more. Siberia had a plan to declare independence from Russia, and told the United States about the plan. The US did not give any information to Russia, but began secretly supplying them weapons.

The governments of the federal subjects in the Ural, Siberian, and Far Eastern Federal Districts declared independence from Russia on February 17, 1994, as the Siberian Republic. The Russian Federation declared war on the proclaimed nation two days later, and started the Russo-Siberian War. It is also called the Second Russian Civil War due to Siberia having been part of Russia itself, unlike the former Soviet republics.

Russian troops invaded the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in northern Siberia, and tried to capture troops in Khanty-Mansi. Siberian forces broke the Russian supply lines, and pushed Russia back out of Yamalo-Nenets.

Russia then tried invaded through the south instead of north, and quickly occupied Chelyabinsk. Russian troops invaded Kurgan, Tyumen, and Omsk. They eventually reached the capital of Siberia, Novosibirsk, and it went under siege.

Siberian reinforcements broke the supply line through the Chelyabinsk Oblast, and trapped all of the Russian military within Siberia. US forces landed in Novosibirsk, and together with Siberian forces, defeated the Russians, and won the siege. They pushed Russia out of the capital's oblast, and kept pushing Russian forces further and further back until the Tyumen oblast, where the troops finally surrendered.

Russia then tried one last attempt of invading the Siberian Republic through the Sverdlovsk Oblast in the middle of Siberia, but was quickly overwhelmed by Siberian and American troops that were waiting for them. The Russian troops were defeated, and Siberia launched a counterattack into the Perm Krai, which was getting close to the central oblasts of European Russia. Russia soon surrendered, and the Treaty of Novosibirsk was signed on May 5, 1995. The Russo-Siberan war ended after 1 year, 2 months, and 26 days of fighting.

Russia was forced to recognized Siberia's sovereignty throughout the Treaty of Novosibirsk, and became the first country to do so. The United States was the second. It was internationally recognized quickly, and became a member of the United Nations on September 9, 1996. Russia also had to pay Siberia war reparations.

Siberia was sparsely populated before independence, but the population rose after independence. It grew rapidly after 2000, and tourism in Siberia also grew. Siberia started to harvest natural resources, and its GDP grew. The country is called the Siberian Republic a lot to distinguish the country from the region of Siberia, but is still called Siberia most of the time for short. The Trans-Siberian railroad continued to be in use, however, made tighter restrictions of Russians coming into the country due to the Russo-Siberian War.

The Siberian Republic quickly made close allies with Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Japan after the war. Siberia apologized to Kazakhstan and Mongolia for things Russia did to them as the Soviet Union, such as Russification and putting people into gulags in Siberia. North Korea, however, was shocked by the fact that the Siberian Republic won the war against Russia, one of its only allies, and cut off trade and communication to the Siberian Republic, along with sending troops to the border with Siberia. Siberia did the same, for safety.

On April 9, 2006, the Siberian Republic made a deal with Japan to sell them the southern Kuril Islands, which consisted of the Habomai Islands, Shikotan, Kunashir, and Iturup, which Japan previously claimed. Japan accepted this offer, and paid them an equivalent of 10 billion USD. They annexed the southern Kuril Islands into the Hokkaido Prefecture.

Siberia started to build up a good relationship with Japan, and they met again in May 2008. Siberia proposed the Sakhalin-Hokkaido Tunnel to link the Siberian island of Sakhalin with the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The tunnel would span about 40-45 km between Cape Crillon on Sakhalin to Cape Sōya on Hokkaido. The Siberian Republic would also construct the already proposed Sakhalin Tunnel to connect the island of Sakhalin to the Siberian mainland. Japan agreed to the deal, and it was made official.

Construction of the Sakhalin-Hokkaido Tunnel and Sakhalin Tunnel began in April, and eventually finished in 2011. The Sakhalin Tunnel connected to the rest of the Siberian rail network, eventually leading to Russia and Europe. The Sakhalin-Hokkaido Tunnel also linked Sakhalin to the rest of Japan through the Seikan Tunnel connecting Hokkaido and Honshu, the Kanmon Tunnel connecting Honshu and Kyushu, and the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Project connecting Honshu and Shikoku. The Sakhalin-Hokkaido Tunnel became nicknamed the "Sakkaido Tunnel". Trade increased even more between Siberia and Japan now, and tourism in the Siberian Republic, and also Japan, grew even more now that Europeans could visit Siberia easier, and could now visit Japan by land.

In 2014, the Siberian Republic and Japan made a project to revitalize the Ainu language and culture, of which were critically endangered. They both shared Ainu people living in their countries. Japan opened more Ainu teaching classes in Hokkaido, and new classes in Honshu. Siberia did the same in Sakhalin and Kamchatka provinces. The Ainu population started to grow, and the language reintroduced to Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, Honshu, and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Siberia is very eco-friendly, and preserves the Taiga forest well. The Taiga has actually expanded since independence, and animal population is growing too. More areas of Siberia are becoming habitable because of global warming, but Siberia works to prevent global warming.

Regions
The Siberian Republic is divided into three regions. Each region includes several provinces. The regions of Siberia were made from the federal districts of Russia. They do not serve an administrative purpose, but exist for statistical and regional purposes.

Provinces
The Siberian Republic is divided into 27 provinces. The provinces of Siberia were made from the mixture of oblasts, republics, krais, autonomous okrugs, and autonomous oblasts when the Siberian Republic was part of Russia.

After becoming independent, the Siberian Republic merged the former Altai Republic and Altai Krai into a new Altai province. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was merged into Khabarovsk, due to being sparsely populated and had almost no Jews, which was the original purpose of it by the Russians.

Languages
Full article: Siberian language

The two official languages of the Siberian Republic are Siberian and Russian. Siberian was created as a new language for greater unity between the diverse Siberian peoples against their former Russian overlords. Siberian uses elements from many Siberian languages, but uses Russian for much of its base. It has quite simple grammar and is easier to learn than Russian. Siberian became mandatory to be taught at schools, and classes all over the country were made to teach the newly created language.

Russian is still as an official language, and is still used quite a bit in the Siberian Republic. Most people, especially older generations, still know Russian.

Although Siberian and Russian are the only federally official languages of the Siberian Republic, there are several officially recognized regional languages within Siberia's provinces. Several of these languages are endangered or critically endangered. They include Ainu, Chukchi, Chulym, Enets, Ket, Mednyj Aleut, Nivkh, Northern Yukaghir, Orok, Southern Yukaghir, Tofa, and Udege.

Currency
The Siberian dollar was announced as the official currency of the Siberian Republic on March 14, 1997, replacing the Russian ruble. It was introduced as legal tender in May. It was guaranteed that all Russian rubles in cash form can be exchanged into the Siberian ruble at banks.

Each Siberian dollar is equal to 0.283 USD. Its ISO 4217 code symbol is SBD, and its symbol is SI$, standing for "Siberian dollar", or just $.

The Siberian Republic frequently uses $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $200, $500, $1,000, and $2,000 Siberian dollar banknotes. The $2, $1, and $5,000 banknotes are rarely used. The Siberian Republic also uses $5, $2, $1, and $0.5 and dollar coins.

The Siberian dollar is the 10th most traded currency, having a 2.1% of daily trades, surpassing the Russian ruble all the way to the New Zealand dollar, but behind the Swedish Krona.

Ethnic groups
Classifying the diverse population of Siberia by language, it includes speakers of the following language families in Siberia: Simplified, the indigenous peoples of Siberia listed above can be put into four groups,
 * Uralic
 * Permic
 * Samoyedic
 * Ugric
 * Yukaghir
 * Turkic
 * Yakuts
 * Dolgans
 * Tuvans
 * Tofa
 * Khakas
 * Shors
 * Siberian Tatars
 * Chulyms
 * Altay
 * Mongolic
 * Tungusic
 * Ob-Yeniseian
 * Ket
 * Chukotko-Kamchatkan
 * Nivkh
 * Eskimo–Aleut
 * 1) Uralic
 * 2) Altaic
 * 3) Yeniseian
 * 4) Paleosiberian ("other")

Religion
There are a variety of beliefs throughout Siberia, including Orthodox Christianity, other denominations of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. The Siberian Region alone has an estimated 250,000 Muslims. An estimated 70,000 Jews live in Siberia, but very few lived in the former Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which was merged into Khabarovsk. The predominant religious group is the Russian Orthodox Church.

Shamanism, tengrism, and animism are also popular in the Siberian Republic. These native sacred practices are considered by the tribes to be very ancient. There are records of Siberian tribal healing practices dating back to the 13th century. The vast territory of Siberia has many different local traditions of gods. Olkhon, an island in Lake Baikal, is considered a sacred place in Siberia.

Flag
Before Siberian independence, various official republics within the Siberian region had adopted flags in the traditional Siberian colors of white over green. This color combination formed the basis of a distinctive “family” of flags, just as red, white, and blue stripes are associated with the Slavs and red, green, yellow, and/or black form the pan-African colors. In its “pure” form, the white over green flag was used by separatists.

The colors stand for the snow and forests of Siberia and are believed to date back to 1865. The Siberian Republic adopted the diagonal green and white flag after independence as its national flag.

Friends

 * Japan - My best friend. I love your country and culture, and it's good doing business with you.
 * USA - Helped me out in my war of independence and we are still great friends. We trade a lot too.
 * Mongolia - I have some of your people in my land, and we are good friends. We help each other develop and we share a lot of history and culture.
 * Kazakhstan
 * South Korea
 * Finland
 * Taiwan
 * Xinjiang
 * Tibet
 * Ukraine
 * Canada
 * Greenland

Enemies

 * Russia - I wanted independence from you, then you throw a fit and declare war on me! You never cared for me even though I contained 77% of your land! You polluted your own land and depleted all of your resources in Europe, then you finally look towards me but just for my resources. You had all of my resources going directly to Moscow and European Russia, and never cared for my region! Now I'm the one in charge of Siberia.
 * China - Communist, censors everything, and oppresses its people
 * North Korea - Even crazier dictatorship. What are you doing to do with your troops amassed at my border with you? I can't even express how insane you are...

Meta

 * RedLightningStrike originally created a whole new script for the Siberian language using small .png images to make it look text sized, but later scrapped the idea in favor of plain Latin letters for being too unnecessary difficult to write.