Softwood evergreens

Wood is a mundane, item, it is commonplace everywhere and used to some degree in just about everything. It is this dull ubiquity that gives it it's value. Thus making it the primary industry of Russia's largest, and most sparsely populated region. For centuries the leaders of Russian society have tried to encourage people to move to Siberia, to populate the region, thus affirming Russia's claim to it should anyone else care to try (no one ever did) and to find the vast wealth that surely must lie in such a vast area. However, since the onset of industrialisation. The main product of Siberia has not been ores, oil, finished goods, or even grain, but wood. 
When one thinks for a moment this makes sense. A region with so many trees one could spend a lifetime just to count them. As the tsars so often did send people to Siberia for such a purpose, it was joked. Though many simply walked out of the "prison camps" back to civilisation. A problem that has never been properly addressed. Now though, the application of industrial techniques to logging has given the humble evergreen tree, in all its forms of pine and fur, a new use as the lifeblood of settlements the length and breadth of Siberia. Such is the extent of this, rather new industry, that the trans-Siberian railway struggles to accommodate the traffic created. The exports are also a very welcome source of taxes and excise duties for a government paralysed by indecision and bureaucracy. When they can agree on what to spend it on.
The vast majority of such industry takes place in small settlements in and near the vast forests while cites such as Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk and Vladivostok act as hubs of transportation and trade for these smaller, rather isolated settlements. Their inhabitants would be happy to be left alone. Interacting with the outside world as they need and being left to get on with their lives; and the world is content do so. For the most part.

Type

Wood