https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik1Y88n1Uog [1] does give the impression of the sort of place where one wishes to avoid the snowmelt line in spring. And that's down in the populated region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Highway says it was first fully paved in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfbbd-8hbWM

Also in the populated part, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family detached from their society and went foraging in the wild, but lost most of their tech tree in doing so.

A former soviet colleague told me during perestroika that they planned their taiga field work for winter, because dealing with snow was much easier than dealing with mud.

[1] This clip has "women, horses, and wide open spaces." For "steam-baths, vodka, accordion, and lox" you'll have to do your own searching.

Nice summary of the above indeed

"The boreal forest, or taiga, supports a relatively small range of animals due to the harshness of the climate. Canada's boreal forest includes 85 species of mammals, 130 species of fish, and an estimated 32,000 species of insects."