The idea originated in the mid-19th century and reached a high tide with the White movement military activities of Aleksandr Kolchak (1874–1920) and Viktor Pepelyayev (1885–1920) during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922.

In the 19th century Siberian students in Saint Petersburg: Grigory Potanin (1835–1920), Nikolay Yadrintsev (1842–1894) and people with other backgrounds founded the movement.

[citation needed] Tsarist authorities arrested and imprisoned forty-four members of the group in May 1865, after watch-officers of the Siberian Cadet Corps searched cadet Arseny Samsonov, aged 16, for illicit items and found a proclamation entitled "To Patriots of Siberia", attributed to a collective authorship of Grigory Potanin, Nikolay Yadrintsev, Serafim Serafimovich Shashkov [ru] (1841–1882), et al.[4] The Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) supported the idea of an autonomous Siberia in the hope it would become a democratic state, prosperous within a union with United States and leading to the collapse of Imperial Russia.

[5] Local thinkers and settlers saw Siberia as means of escape from the oppression of the Russian Empire, and as the seed of a possible free and democratic country that would spread freedom across Asia.

After the February Revolution, the development of oblastnichestvo gained momentum, as on May 21, 1917, when the Oblastniks convened their first general meeting in Irkutsk, where they heard and discussed the report delivered by I.I.

In August, the Oblastniks convened the Conference of Public Organizations based on the decision of Tomsk Provincial People's Assembly as of May 18, 1917.

[8][9][10] On January 28, 1918, the Siberian Regional Duma was convened in Tomsk in secret, fearing suppression by the Bolsheviks, who occupied the city.

Grishin-Almazov, who undertook his best efforts to unite the officer resistance against the Bolsheviks, ordered a full scale uprising, which proved to be a total success, as the Whites managed to defeat the Reds and cleared many Siberian cities of their presence.

[11] The purpose of the protest was to "ridicule the Kremlin's claimed hypocrisy in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and to raise the issue of Siberia's delayed development".

[13][14] The Sibir Battalion, a unit in the Ukrainian International Legion, formed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and claims to be fighting for the independence of minorities in Siberia, namely Yakuts and Buryats.