[6] Most of the oblast is spread over the eastern slopes of the Middle and North Urals and the Western Siberian Plain.

The Middle Urals is mostly hilly country with no discernible peaks; the mean elevation is closer to 300 to 500 metres (980 to 1,640 ft) above sea level.

Rich in natural resources, the oblast is especially famous for metals (iron, copper, gold, platinum), minerals (asbestos, gemstones, talcum), marble and coal.

The area has continental climate patterns, with long cold winters (average temperatures reaching −15 °C (5 °F) to −25 °C (−13 °F) on the Western Siberian Plain) and short warm summers.

In the Kalmatsky Brod burial ground, the skeletal skulls were strongly deformed by tight bandaging in early childhood, which indicates the penetration of steppe ethnic elements to the north.

The Russian conquest of the Khanate of Kazan in the 1550s paved the way further east, which was now free from Tatar depredations (see Yermak Timofeyevich).

The first surviving Russian settlements in the area date back to the late 16th – early 17th centuries (Verkhoturye, 1598; Turinsk, 1600; Irbit, 1633; Alapayevsk, 1639).

During the 18th century, rich resources of iron and coal made Ural an industrial heartland of Russia.

After getting control over Ural mines, the Demidov family put the region in the forefront of Russian industrialization.

Throughout the 18th and 19th century those newly founded factory towns enjoyed a status of special mining-metallurgical districts allowed to have a certain rate of financial and proprietary autonomy.

Entrepreneurs of the Perm Governorate also started the gold rush in West Siberia, soon Yekaterinburgers began to dominate the Russian market of precious metals and gemstones.

Local Bolsheviks decided autonomously to execute the royal family on July 17, 1918, to prevent its rescue by the approaching White Army forces.

[17] Local industry received another impetus during World War II, when important producing facilities were relocated here from the European part of Russia to safeguard them from the advancing Germans (for example, IMZ-Ural, Kamensk-Uralsky Metallurgical Works).

It was over Sverdlovsk that the American U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, 1960, while on a reconnaissance mission.

[citation needed] In 1993, Governor Eduard Rossel responded to perceived economic inequality by attempting to create a "Ural Republic."

Then Russian President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Urals Republic and the Sverdlovsk Parliament 10 days later (on November 9).

In the 1990s, the Oblast's population was distinguished by relatively high support for parties and candidates of the right and democratic persuasion.

In the 1996 presidential election, Boris Yeltsin, a native of the region who lived in Sverdlovsk until the 1980s, won over 70% of the vote.

Malév Hungarian Airlines used to be among those carriers but they had to drop their flights to SVX (IATA airport code for Sverdlovsk) after a few months.