- agrarian: society based on agriculture
- caravans: people who travel together for safety
- cold war: rivalry with the U.S and soviets between 1940 and 1990
- cossacks: nomadic horseman from Ukraine
- czar: emperor of russian empire
- habitation fog: fog caused by smoke that is trapped over siberian cities
- homogeneous: sharing characteristics and ethicality
- ice breakers: ships that break the ice on frozen waterways to let other ships go through
- landlocked: a place with no direct access to water, surrounded by land
- mosques: islamic houses of worship
- nomads: people who move from place to place
- oasis: a spring or well in the dessert
- serfs: people bond to the land to work for lords
- smelters: factories that produce metal ores
- soviet: a communist party that governed
- steppe: wide flat grassland, found in Ukraine and kazakhstan
- taiga: evergreen trees growing in southern russia
- tashkent and samarqand: silk road cities
- trans-siberian rail road: longest single line rail road in the world
- yurt: movable round houses of wool and felt mats over a wooden frame