Yamalia, is administered by an elected governor and an elected okrug legislature. It has three seats in the Russian Federal Assembly: two in the Council of the Federation (upper house) and one in the State Duma (lower house). Yamalia's two representatives to the Council of the Federation are the governor of the okrug and the leader of the okrug legislature. The seat in the State Duma corresponds to an electoral district from which a representative is selected.
Russian trappers and merchants came to the region that is now Yamalia in the 11th century, and it was incorporated into the Russian state in 1595 when a fort, called Obdorsk (today Salekhard), was built at the mouth of the Ob' River to house a military garrison. The local people paid tribute to the Russian tsars and occasionally rebelled against their authority. During the Soviet period (1917-1991), Yamalia was the site of forced-labor camps. The area that is now Yamalia was established as the Yamal-Nenets National Okrug of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) in 1930, and later was made an autonomous okrug. In 1991, with the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Yamalia became part of independent Russia.
The Komi (Zyrian) Autonomous Oblast was formed in August 1921, after the Soviets came to power. In 1936 the district grew in stature, becoming the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR). One of the largest administrative units in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Komi ASSR was sparsely populated, with only three persons per sq km (eight per sq mi). Its harsh climate made it a natural place for the Soviet government to set up labor camps for criminals and political prisoners. During the 1980s and early 1990s, miners at Vorkuta repeatedly staged strikes to improve their conditions. In 1991 the Komi Republic became part of newly independent Russia.
Under both the Russian tsars and the Soviet government that came to power after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Sakha functioned as a place of exile for political prisoners. The Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was founded in 1922, and after ten years the government had settled much of the native nomadic population on the land and organized them to work on collective farms. In 1990 the republic of Yakut-Sakha was proclaimed. With the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, Sakha emerged as an autonomous republic within independent Russia.
In the 1660s the Russian government under Tsar Alexis I had begun the practice of punishing common criminals and political offenders by exiling them to Siberia. Among those exiled during the 17th and 18th centuries were the archpriest Avvakum, who had defied the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church; Aleksandr Menshikov, the favorite of Peter the Great, who succumbed to court intrigue after the emperor's death; and progressive writer and critic of serfdom Aleksandr Radishchev. By the 1870s the number of exiles had grown to more than 10,000 per year. Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky all served terms of exile in Siberia in the 1890s and 1900s for revolutionary Marxist activities.
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