Omsk
Founded as a Siberian fortress in 1716, became the 'Chicago of Siberia' when the Trans-Siberian arrived. Dostoyevsky served 4 years in its prison. The 22M-ton Omsk Refinery—built for distance from danger—was hit by Ukrainian strikes in 2024.
Omsk was built where two rivers meet—and where empires have stashed things they'd rather keep hidden. Tsar Peter the Great sent Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Bukholts to find gold in 1716; Bukholts found the confluence of the Om and Irtysh rivers instead, and built a wooden fortress. That fortress became the administrative capital of Western Siberia in 1822, and from 1850 to 1854, Fyodor Dostoyevsky served his sentence in Omsk's katorga prison—the experience that produced 'The House of the Dead.' Omsk has always been a place where Russia sends things it doesn't want too close to Moscow: convicts, gold reserves, and eventually, entire factories.
The Trans-Siberian Railway transformed Omsk from a frontier garrison into Siberia's commercial hub in the 1890s. Foreign consulates opened. British and Dutch trading companies established offices. The World Fair exhibitions earned Omsk the nickname 'the Chicago of Siberia.' During the Russian Civil War (1918–1920), Admiral Kolchak made Omsk the capital of the anti-Bolshevik Russian State and stored the imperial gold reserves here—before the Red Army overran the city and seized both.
World War II repeated the pattern of strategic evacuation. Factories from the western front were relocated to Omsk's well-connected infrastructure, tripling the city's industrial capacity. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union chose Omsk for its largest Siberian oil refinery, built to process crude from the Volga-Urals and later West Siberian fields. The Omsk Refinery today processes 22 million tons of petroleum products annually, producing 300,000 tons of Jet A-1 fuel per year. Petrochemicals—synthetic rubber, tires—and agricultural machinery manufacturing round out an economy that has been industrial since the railway arrived.
Modern Omsk has 1.14 million residents—Russia's twelfth-largest city. In April 2024, a fire at the refinery (attributed to Ukrainian strikes) briefly disrupted operations, a reminder that the infrastructure Russia has always stashed in Siberia for safety is no longer beyond reach. The city that was chosen for its distance from danger now sits within drone range of a war.