Ural (region)

Ural (Урал) is a geographical region located around the Ural Mountains, between the East European and West Siberian plains. It is considered a part of Eurasian Steppe, extending approximately from the North to the South; from the Arctic Ocean to the end of the Ural River near Orsk city. The border between Europe and Asia runs along the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains. Ural mostly lies within Russia but also includes a small part of Northwestern Kazakhstan. This is historical, not an official entity, with borders overlapping its Western Volga and Eastern Siberia neighboring regions. At some point in the past, parts of the currently existing Ural region were considered a gateway to Siberia, or even Siberia itself, and were combined with the Volga administrative the divisions. Today, there are two official namesake entities: the Ural Federal District and the Ural economic region. While the latter follows the historical borders, the former is a political product; the District omits Western Ural and includes Western Siberia instead. The historical center of the Ural is Cherdyn, which is now a small town in Perm Krai. Perm was an administrative center of the gubernia with the same name by 1797. Most of the territory of historical and modern Ural was included in Perm Gubernia. The administrative center of Urals was moved to Sverdlovsk (nowadays Yekaterinburg) after the Russian Revolution and Civil War. In the present, the Ural economic region does not have an administrative and informal capital, whereas Yekaterinburg is the administrative center of the Ural Federal District. Ural-batyr From the 11th century, the region of the Ural Mountains was called Kamyen' (Камень, "the Stone") by Russians. In the mid-16th – early 17th century, the southern parts became known as Ural, which later spread to the entire area. The name probably originated from Turkic "aral". This word literally means "island" and was used for any territory different from the surrounding terrain. In Bashkortostan there is a 13th-century legend about a hero named Ural.