ABSTRACT
The Altai Republic is situated in the Altai Mountains, in the basin of the Ob river. The Republic forms part of the Siberian Federal Okrug and theWestern Siberian Economic Area. It has international borders withKazakhstan in the south-west, and a short border with the People’s Republic of China to the south and with Mongolia to the south-east. KemerovoOblast lies to the north,Khakasiya andTyva to the north-east, andAltaiKrai to the north-west. The Republic includes the highest peak in Siberia, Belukha, at 4,506 m (14,783 feet), and about one-quarter of its territory is forested. It contains one of Russia’s major national parks, the Altai State National Park, covering an area of some 9,000 sq km (3,475 sq miles). The Republic occupies 92,903 sq km (35,870 sq miles). At January 2012 it had an estimated population of 208,425 and a population density of 2.2 per sq km. Only 28.7% of the population were living in urban areas-a lower proportion than in any other federal subject. The Republic’s administrative centre, Gorno-Altaisk, had an estimated population of 59,720. Of those resident in the Republic who stated their ethnicity at the 2010 census, 56.6% were Russian, 33.9% were Altai (including 1.8% who identified as Telengit, 0.9% as Tubalar and 0.5% as Chelkan) and 6.2% were Kazakh. The Altai people can be divided into two distinct groups: the Northern Altai, or Chernnevye Tatars, and the Southern Altai. The languages spoken by both groups are from the Turkish branch of the Uralo-Altaic family: that of theNorthernAltai is from theOldUigur group,while the language of the
group. Although the traditional religions of the Altai were animist or Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism), many were converted to Christianity, so the dominant religion in the Republic is Russian Orthodoxy. The Republic is in the time zone GMT+7.
