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Baykal
Baykal or Baikal , lake, 12,160 sq mi (31,494 sq km), SE Siberian Russia. It is the largest freshwater lake of Eurasia, with a width up to 50 mi (80 km) and a length of c.395 mi (640 km), and it contains roughly a fifth of the world's fresh water. Its maximum depth is 5,714 ft (1,742 m), making ...
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Baykal-Amur Mainline
Baykal-Amur Mainline (BAM), railroad line linking central Siberian Russia with the Pacific. The BAM parallels the Trans-Siberian RR but passes north rather than south of Lake Baykal. It is 1,928 mi (3,102 km) long, with 1,987 bridges. Its eastern terminus is Sovetskaya Gavan on the Tatar Strait. ...
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Selenga
Selenga , river, 616 mi (992 km) long, rising in the Khangai Mts., NW Republic of Mongolia, and flowing east, then north, across the Mongolian-Russian border to Lake Baykal; the Orkhon River is its main tributary. The Selenga, navigable from May to October, is Mongolia's chief river; its role as a t...
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Angara
Angara , river, c.1,150 mi (1,850 km) long, SE Siberian Russia, the outlet of Lake Baykal . After leaving the southwestern end of Lake Baykal, it flows north past Irkutsk and Bratsk, then turns west after receiving the Ilim River and flows into the Yenisei River near Strelka. Below its junction...
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Irkutsk
Irkutsk , city (1989 pop. 626,000), capital of Irkutsk region, S Siberian Russia, at the confluence of the Angara and Irkut rivers. It is an industrial center, a port, the site of a hydroelectric dam, and a major stop on the Trans-Siberian RR. Manufactures include aircraft, automobiles, machine tool...
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Lena
Lena , river, easternmost of the great rivers of Siberia, c.2,670 mi (4,300 km) long, rising near Lake Baykal, SE Siberian Russia. It flows northeast, then north along the east side of the central Siberian uplands and parallels the Verkhoyansk Range, reaching a width of 8.5 mi (13.7 km). It empties ...
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Evenki Autonomous Area
Evenki Autonomous Area , former administrative division (1992 pop. 25,100), 287,645 sq mi (745,000 sq km), N central Siberian Russia, in the Central Siberian Uplands. It became a national area in 1930 and an autonomous area in 1977, but was merged into Krasnoyarsk Territory , of which it forms the ...
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Trans-Siberian Railroad
Trans-Siberian Railroad rail line, linking European Russia with the Pacific coast. Its construction began in 1891, on the initiative of Count S. Y. Witte , and was completed in 1905. The completion of the railroad greatly affected the history of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and modern Rus...
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Tunguska
Tunguska , name of three eastern tributaries of the Yenisei River, Siberian Russia. The rivers cut across the swampy forests of E central Siberia, draining the Tunguska Basin . Furthest north is the Lower Tunguska, Rus. Nizhnyaya Tunguska , c.1,590 mi (2,600 km) long. It rises in the Central S...
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Mongolian languages
Mongolian languages group of languages forming a subdivision of the Altaic subfamily of the Ural-Altaic family of languages (see Uralic and Altaic languages ). The Mongolian languages are spoken by about 6 million people, mainly in the Republic of Mongolia, in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Regi...
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