KHANTY-MANSI

autonomous okrug (district), in Tyumen oblast (province), central Russia. The Khanty-Mansi national okrug was established in 1930 for the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) peoples, although the majority of the present population are Russian settlers; the national okrug became an autonomous okrug in 1977. The okrug covers a vast, level, swampy area in the West Siberian Plain, rising in the far northwest to the Urals crestline, culminating in Mount Narodnaya (6,217 feet ). The surface is either peat bog and grass marsh or dense swampy forest. From the 1960s the area was transformed economically, and its population increased rapidly as a result of the discovery and exploitation of huge petroleum and natural-gas deposits along the Ob River, especially near Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk. Khanty-Mansiysk is the administrative centre. Area 202,000 square miles (523,100 square km). Pop. (1995 est.) 1,326,200.