Russia is today one of the world's largest producers of diamonds. In 2009, global sales of Russian diamonds reached the staggering total of $1.3 billion.
Mining of diamonds on Russian soil is actually quite a recent development. Although Russia has an abundant source of diamonds, the cold weather has meant that, until recently, it was not economically viable to mine them on a large scale.
However, this all changed in the 1950s, when diamonds became increasingly important to the Soviet Union's state controlled industries and military - their hardness means that they are particularly suitable for use in drills, and mining.
Geologist Yuri Kharbardin was the first man to find a large scale formation of kimberlite pipes (a formation that usually contains large numbers of diamonds) in Russia, in Mirny, Southern Yakutia. A mine was quickly developed to begin extracting diamonds from the Russian soil. The Mirny Mine was founded in 1957 and quickly went on to become the world's largest open cast diamond mine. By the time it closed in the early 21st century, it was more than 500 meters deep, and over a kilometer in diameter.
The Mirny mine produced not only the industrial quality diamonds that the Soviet Union needed, but a large number of gem quality diamonds, that were suitable for use in jewelry. The Soviet government quickly realised that Soviet diamonds could be sold on the world diamond market, bringing in desperately needed foreign currency. To that end, in the 1960s the Soviet Union agreed a secret deal to sell its diamonds through Dutch diamond company De Beers. The deal was so large in scale (this was the Soviet Union after all - 'go large' could have been their motto) that diamond exports became the Soviet Union's most profitable export, and De Beers had difficulty explaining where all of the diamonds were coming from!
Today, Russia is still a leading diamond exporter, as the sales of $1.3 billion in 2009 indicate. The open cast mine has closed and, although a smaller scale underground mine continues to operate there, diamond mining has spread to other parts of Yakutia (the Sakha Republic) and to other parts of Russia.
As well as the mining of diamonds, Russia has also become a world leader in the production of synthetic diamonds, more commonly known as man made diamonds or lab diamonds. Again, the creation of Russian man made diamonds can be traced back to the Soviet era - experiments to create synthetic diamonds began in the 1970s, in an effort to reduce the cost of their production, and also to produce diamonds to order to satisfy the needs of not only industry and the military, but the rapidly growing Soviet space program. Today, synthetic diamonds are dificult for non-experts to distinguish from real diamonds, and they are increasingly often used to create budget jewelry. There are several different brands of Russian lab diamonds on the market today, with Russian Brilliants diamonds being perhaps the most well known.