No, by all means not. Majority of the smaller settlements, whether of rural or urban character, predates the October revolution, having been created during the process of Siberian conquest and colonization between early 16th and late 17th century. Muscovy, having extended up to Ural Mountains in the northern part of what is now European part of Russian Federation, in 1581 sent the first expedition into Transuralic lands led by Yermak that reached Ob River. Subsequent expeditions managed to reach Yenisey in 1619, Angara and Lena in 1631, Lake Baikal in 1639 and the Pacific shore in 1640. These advances were accompanied by quick colonization of these largely uninhabited areas. For example, Irkutsk, located closely to Lake Baikal was founded in 1652, while Okhotsk, on the shore of Okhotsk Sea (connected with the Pacific via Kuril Straits) was founded in 1647. Erection of various forts and trading stations, complete with the associated villages providing sustenance for the inhabitants of other settlements hastened after the treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 that ended territorial conflict between Russian and China in the Amur region and allowed for the trade between the two countries to flourish, requiring necessary infrastructure along the overland trading routes through Siberia. A lot of modern Siberian towns started as local forts guarding the area and villages existing to support them economically, not unlike the first settlements created during European colonization of the Americas.

Although administration of the Siberian territories were initially carried out in Moscow, although the proliferation and development of settlements in late 17th century called for creation of Siberian administrative centres, resulting in the formation of Siberian Governorate with capital in Tobolsk in 1708 that in 1764 was divided into Tobolsk and Irkutsk Governorates with the capitals in the respective cities. In 1897 Siberian territories they were subsequently divided into four governorates, with eponymous capitals located in Tobolsk, Tomsk, Yeniseysk and Irkutsk, not including several separate regions.

Printed atlas of Siberia published by Semyon Ulyanovich Ryemezov in 1701 (one of the last official Russian maps not reflecting actual distances) already contains dozens of marked settlements. Almost three centuries later, according to the General Census conducted in the Russian Empire in 1897, Siberia was inhabited by 5.76 mln people, including 860.000 native Siberians, what constituted 4.2% of all the inhabitants of the Russian Empire at the time.

Political dissent, especially in the recently acquired areas and the Russian policies of banishment significantly contributed to the population of the Siberia, as dissenters, rebels and prisoners of war were commonly being banished to Siberia, either as settlers in regular villages and cities or, in case of more serious offences, also as forced labourers (katorga). The numbers of people sent east of Ural could have been substantial, as e.g. the Bar Confederacy (1768-1772), November Uprising and resulting Polish-Russian War of 1830-1831 or January Uprising of 1863-1864 resulted in 14.000-20.000 people sent to Siberia in each of the cases. In 1822, in the wake of the reforms of the penitentiary systems introduced by an Imperial statesman Mikhail Spyeranski, banishment process began to be supervised by a special penitentiary administration centered in Tobolsk. On a less serious note, it appears that at least some people tend to believe in an anecdote that the name of Omsk located in Siberia is an acronym meaning 'Отдельное Место Сибирских Каторжников' (Secluded Place of Siberian Forced Labourers), although this is a popular joke, with the city being located around 1713 as a fort protecting a trade route to China and named after nearby Om river, not unlike many other Siberian settlements (Tomsk, Lensk, Angarsk, Yeniseysk).

Although Siberia is usually associated with severe winters, the colonized part primarily stretched along the southern border of the Empire, close to the Mongolian and Chinese border, what also included the territories of what is now Kazakhstan and then was the constituent part of the Empire. These areas, although still experiencing very cold winters, are located in the moderate continental climate zone, meaning that the summers, although still colder than those in Europe due to the influence on the Gulf Stream on the latter, are quite conducive to agriculture and animal herding. According to censuses made in the mid-19th century it appears that the number of horses, cows and sheep per capita were twice as high in the Western Siberia in comparison with European part of the Russian Empire, suggesting significantly larger individual homesteads.

Rising population of Siberia stimulated the development of transport throughout 19th century. In the late 19th century, cities located closed to rivers were serviced by over 170 steamships and few hundred barges, while 1890 marks the beginning of the construction of the Siberian Railroad, now known as Trans-Siberian Mainline that in 1904 allowed travel to China and to the cities of the eastern Russian seaboard, including Dalny, site of the Port Arthur naval base. Construction of Siberian railways and the necessity of the infrastructure in situ allowed some smaller settlements to develop further, as was the case of Novosibirsk that, having been founded as a village in 1696, it evolved into a local technological hub supplying the railroad construction.

Substantial number of the urban settlements in Siberia has been created long after the dissolution of the GULag system after the death of Stalin and subsequent condemnation of his 'cult of personality' on the seminal 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. Such cities were usually a result of the industry and infrastructure development and were built in the vicinity of the newly prospected resources or in places suitable to locate various facilities, such as hydroelectric power plants. This especially applies to the Khanty-Mansy Region in western Siberia. Although colonized to a small extent in 17th century and later developed to a limited extent, with e.g. Khanty-Mansyisk being founded in 1582 as a settlement Samarovo and remained rural until 1930s, when in the wake of the industrialization of the Soviet Union, an urban settlement of Ostyako-Vogulsk has been founded, focusing on forestry and canned fish production. Then the area experienced a rapid development when the prospecting expeditions found large oil and natural gas reserves, leading to the creation of industrial cities such as Nefteyugansk, Nyagan (both 1967) or Kogalym (1975). Additionally, between 1950s and 1970s, large investments in the infrastructure development included construction of hydro-electric power plants on large Siberian rivers, and the Baikal-Amur Mainline, what also facilitated construction of towns for the people working in these new facilities. To attract people to generally less than hospitable areas of Siberia, especially in the Far East, authorities used various economic incentives, such as better wages or quickly-assigned housing, although after the collapse of USSR a substantial people of residents moved away from the area to the regions with better climate.

Industry and food production notwithstanding, in the second half of the 20th century and proliferation of the nuclear armament, many airbases and rocket divisions have been dislocated throughout Siberia, leading to the formation of military towns, largely existing to service the enlisted men serving in the area. These cities often bearing generic adjectival names, such as Gorny (1965), Zvyozdny (1960), Sibirski (1979), Solnechny (1965) or Vulkanny (1955) and usually have a population of 8.000-15.000 inhabitants.

So, to sum it up, plenty of the Siberian settlements are a result of continuous colonization of the region hailing back to 16th century, while a substantial part of newer ones have been reated to support industrial development of the country both before and after the operation of the penal camp system.

Nebolsin, P.I., Покорение Сибири [Conquest of Siberia], Veche, Moscow 2014.

Etkind, A., Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience, John Wiley & Sons, 2013.