Yakutsk

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Yakutsk is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia. Yakutsk is a major port on the Lena River.

Location

Yakutsk is located about 450 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. History

Origin

History

The Turkic Sakha people, also known as the Yakuts, settled in the area in the 13th and 14th centuries, migrating north from the Lake Baikal area to the middle Lena. From their new center along the middle Lena they gradually expanded northeast and west beyond the Lena basin towards the Arctic Ocean.

Russian Yakutsk was founded in 1632[1] as an ostrog (fort) by Pyotr Beketov. In 1639, it became the center of a voyevodstvo. The Yakutsk Voyevodstvo quickly became the most important Russian official in the region and directed expansion to the east and south.

Yakutsk did not grow into a city until the discovery of large reserves of gold and other minerals in the 1880s and 1890s. These reserves were developed extensively during industrialization under Stalin. The rapid growth of forced labor camps in Siberia was also a major factor encouraging Yakutsk's development.

Yakut people

The identification of Hyrcan with Varkan has also been mentioned by Rawlinson in his History of Herodotus, he mentions that even in the thirteenth century, their country in Central Asian was mentioned as Urkanich in Yakut. According to Herodotus they fought in the battle of Thermopylae under their leader named Megapanus, who was afterwards Satrap of Babylonia. [2]

Administration

Yakutsk is the capital of the republic. As an inhabited locality, Yakutsk is classified as a city under republic jurisdiction. Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is, together with the settlement of Zhatay and eleven rural localities, incorporated as the city of republic significance of Yakutsk—an administrative unit with a status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, Yakutsk and the eleven rural localities are incorporated as Yakutsk Urban Okrug. The settlement of Zhatay is not a part of Yakutsk Urban Okrug and is independently incorporated as Zhatay Urban Okrug.

External links

Notable persons

References

  1. Yakutsk: The Coldest City on Earth
  2. ibid. bk. VII. ch . 62