Peter's edict defined the governorate not by drawing borders on a map -- no adequate maps existed -- but by listing thirty cities and declaring that the lands adjacent to those cities belonged to Siberia Governorate. The territory bordered China to the south, Kazan Governorate to the southwest, and Archangelgorod Governorate to the northwest. To the north and east, it simply continued until it reached the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Much of this land was inhabited by indigenous peoples -- Khanty, Mansi, Yakut, Evenk, and dozens of other groups -- who had no particular interest in being administered from Tobolsk. The fur trade drove Russian interest in these territories, and the governorate's economy depended heavily on tribute extracted from native populations. Roads were few, distances were enormous, and communication with St. Petersburg could take months.

Siberia Governorate's first governor, Matvey Petrovich Gagarin, took office in 1708 and served until 1719. His tenure ended badly. Gagarin exploited the vast distance between Tobolsk and the capital to enrich himself on a spectacular scale, siphoning revenue, manipulating the fur trade, and conducting diplomacy with China as though he were an independent sovereign. When Peter the Great finally learned the extent of the corruption, Gagarin was arrested in 1719, tried, and hanged in 1721. He was not the last governor to abuse the position's isolation. Vasily Lukich Dolgorukov was appointed in 1730 but never even reached Tobolsk -- he was imprisoned before he could arrive and was eventually executed in 1739. The governorate's remoteness made oversight nearly impossible, and the list of its governors reads as a catalog of imperial ambition, corruption, and occasionally competent administration.

The governorate's sheer size made it ungovernable as a single unit, and it was progressively subdivided over the decades. In 1724, Tobolsk Province was split into three: Yeniseysk, Irkutsk, and Tobolsk. By 1727, the western provinces of Vyatka and Solikamsk had been transferred to Kazan Governorate. In 1736, the governorate was effectively cleaved in two, with Siberia Province under the governor in Tobolsk and Irkutsk Province operating independently. The following year, the South Urals were reorganized into Iset Province and transferred to Orenburg Governorate. In 1764, Irkutsk Governorate was formally established, taking the entire eastern portion. Each subdivision reflected both the growing Russian understanding of the territory and the impossibility of administering everything from a single seat. By the time Siberia Governorate was finally abolished in 1782, it had been whittled down to a fraction of its original extent.

Through all the subdivisions, Tobolsk remained the seat of power -- a city on the Irtysh River that served as Russia's gateway to the east. Founded in 1587, just a year after the fall of nearby Qashliq, Tobolsk inherited the strategic position of the Siberian Tatar capital and became the administrative hub for an area larger than any European country. Its kremlin, perched on a bluff above the Irtysh, housed the governor's offices and the bureaucratic machinery of an impossibly vast jurisdiction. The city processed furs, dispatched expeditions, and served as the starting point for exile -- the route to Siberian imprisonment and forced labor passed through Tobolsk for centuries. Denis Ivanovich Chicherin, the last significant governor, served from 1763 to 1780, presiding over the governorate's final years before the reforms of 1782 replaced it with smaller, more manageable divisions. The governorate was gone, but Tobolsk's role as the historic capital of Siberia endured in name and memory.