Tobolsk

Tobolsk, a town of Asiatic Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the right bank of the Irtysh, near its confluence with the Tobol. Pop. (1900), 21,401. It is 305 m. E.N.E. from Ekaterinburg, and is no longer the capital of West Siberia nor even an administrative centre for exiles. The kreml, or citadel, built in the reign of Peter the Great, by Swedish prisoners, in imitation of the kreml of Moscow, contains the cathedral, erected towards the end of the 17th century. Some 12 m. south-east are the ruins of the "fort of Kuchum," the site of the capital of Siberia, Isker, before the Russian conquest. Tobolsk was founded in 1587 by Cossacks, and forms the see of the bishop of Tobolsk and Siberia.