It includes the Arctic archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya, as well as the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea.

Including the NAO, Arkhangelsk Oblast has an area of 587,400 square kilometres (226,800 sq mi), it's the largest of first-level administrative divisions in Europe.

[17] The Arctic islands including Novaya Zemlya and Franz Joseph Land are mountainous with glaciers and eternally snow-covered.

A minor area in the west of the Oblast, most notably the basin of the Ileksa River, drains into Lake Onega and eventually to the Baltic Sea.

A very minor area in Kargopolsky District in the south-west of the Oblast drains into the Kema River which belongs to the basin of the Caspian Sea.

[citation needed] Almost all of the oblast is covered by taiga, the coniferous forest dominated by pine, spruce, and larch.

The troops advanced to the south, occupied the station of Obozerskaya in September 1918, and moving along the Northern Dvina and the Vaga Rivers.

Novaya Zemlya from the 1950s, when its population (mostly the Nenets) was strongly recommended to leave, became the military ground for nuclear bomb testing.

In 1932, the icebreaker Sibiryakov under the command of Vladimir Voronin, sailing from Arkhangelsk, crossed the Northern Sea Route in a single navigation.

Since 1991, CPSU lost all the power, and the head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor was appointed/elected alongside elected regional parliament.

Party factions formed:[22] The deputies of the State Duma of Russia, as representatives of the Arkhangelsk Oblast and members of the parties of Russia, in the present convocation are: The oblast is administratively divided into six cities and towns under the oblast's jurisdiction (Arkhangelsk, Koryazhma, Kotlas, Novodvinsk, Onega, and Severodvinsk), one city under the federal jurisdiction (Mirny), twenty-one districts (one of which is Novaya Zemlya), and two island territories (Franz Josef Land and Victoria Island).

In the valleys of the main rivers, there is some cattle breeding and crop and potato growing, which is, however, difficult due to the cold climate.

Only several all-season highways, in addition to M8, cross the oblast boundaries: the one (partially unpaved) connecting Kotlas with Syktyvkar; the one (paved) connecting Kotlas to Veliky Ustyug and eventually with Vologda and Nikolsk, the one (paved) from Konosha southwards, and two (unpaved) from Kargopol to Pudozh and to Solza and Belozersk.

The piece between Vologda and Arkhangelsk was constructed in 1890s and passed through previously uninhabited areas between the valleys of the Northern Dvina and the Onega.

A branch from Obozersky to the west, to Onega and further to Belomorsk, was built during World War II to secure the transport of goods from the harbour of Murmansk to central Russia.

There are two airports in Arkhangelsk, but regular local flights are only carried out to the destinations which do not have rail or road connections, such as Novaya Zemlya, Solovetsky Islands, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Onega Peninsula, and the north of the oblast.

[33]Vital statistics for 2022:[35][36] Total fertility rate (2022):[37] 1.49 children per woman Life expectancy (2021):[38] Total — 69.60 years (male — 64.33, female — 75.08) Fertility rates of the region 2000–2018[39] A notable subgroup of Russian population are the Pomors, who reside along the White Sea coast and in the valleys of major rivers, speak Pomor dialects and are in fact the descendants of the Novgorod population who colonized the Russian North in 12th–13th centuries.

The choice of wood as the construction material is natural for a region almost exclusively covered by taiga and still being one of the biggest timber producers.

Churches and chapels are considered particularly fine, and almost all of these constructed prior to 1920s have been declared the cultural heritage at the federal or local levels.

[42] An open-air ethnographic museum was open in the village of Malye Korely close to Arkhangelsk, with the purpose of preserving this heritage.

Not more than a dozen of these triple wooden ensembles survived, the best known being the one located in the Kizhi Pogost in the Republic of Karelia and is classified as World Heritage.

Other notable wooden churches are located in Kargopolsky (Oshevenskoye, Krasnaya Lyaga, Saunino and others), Verkhnetoyemsky (Soyezerskaya Pustyn), Onezhsky, Primorsky, and Plesetsky (Porzhensky Pogost) districts.

The ensemble of the Solovetsky Monastery (founded 1436, the earliest surviving buildings stem from the 16th century) has been designated as the World Heritage.

[47] The icon-painting techniques were transferred to the traditional wood painting known since the 17th century in the valleys of the Northern Dvina (Nizhnyaya Toyma, Borok, Puchuga, Permogorye), the Pinega, and the Mezen.

It was used to decorate various wooden surfaces such as, for example, spinning distaffs or chests, and employed geometrical figures as well as images of plants, animals, and humans.

[48] Despite the fact that several notable Russian artists including Vasily Vereshchagin traveled into the region in the 19th century, professional (non-icon) painting did not develop in Arkhangelsk until the 1890s.

The most notable ones are the Kholmogory bone carving, existing since the 17th century,[50] and Kargopol toys, moulded painted clay figures of people and animals.

However, these folkloric motives and fairy tales inspired the literary works of Stepan Pisakhov and Boris Shergin, who were both natives of Arkhangelsk.

[51] Mikhail Lomonosov, a polymath and poet who created the basis of the modern Russian literary language, was born in 1711 in the village of Denisovka, close to Kholmogory, though he left the area to pursue his studies at the age of 18 and spent most of his career in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.

In the 20th century, two of the authors of the Village prose movement in Soviet literature, which predominantly described rural life, were tightly connected with Arkhangelsk Region: Fyodor Abramov was born in the peasant family in the village of Verkola in Pinezhsky Uyezd, and Aleksander Yashin lived in Arkhangelsk for some time.