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Founding
Founding of Yakutsk
city in eastern Russia, capital of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
- 1632
- Europe
Founding
city in eastern Russia, capital of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Yakutsk is the capital and largest city of Sakha, Russia, located about 450 km (280 mi) south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of Russia's most rapidly growing regional cities, with a population of 355,443 at the 2021 census.
Yakutsk has an average annual temperature of −8.0 °C (17.6 °F), winter high temperatures consistently well below −20 °C (−4 °F), and a record low of −64.4 °C (−83.9 °F) has been recorded.
As a result, Yakutsk is the coldest city of over 200,000 people in the world (though a number of smaller towns in that region (and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut) are colder). Yakutsk is also the largest city located in continuous permafrost; the only other large city is Norilsk, also in Siberia. Yakutsk is in the Central Yakutian Lowland and is a major port on the Lena River. It is served by the Yakutsk Airport as well as the smaller Magan Airport.
The city was founded in 1632 by the Cossacks and was originally called either the Lensky fortress or the Yakutsk fortress. The first version of the toponym came from the hydronym "Lena"; the second, from "Yakutia", a synonym for Sakha, eventually became the main one in use. In 1708 it received city status as Yakutsk.
The territory upon which the city of Yakutsk now lies on was inhabited long before the founding of the Russian Lensky Fortress. According to archaeological data (more than 200 sites, settlements, burial sites, and other archaeological monuments have been explored within the city), the oldest of them, the Yubileinaya site, is estimated to be 20,500–10,000 years old. According to legend, the ancestors of the Yakuts, Elley Bootur and Omogoy Bai, settled on the territory of the modern city Archaeological evidence shows the Yakuts settled the Tuymaada Valley in the 13th–16th centuries, as can be seen in the old settlements of Zernovaya-II, Orbita-16, and Vladimirovka-IV, which belong to the Kulun-Atakh archaeological culture, associated with the ancestors of the Yakuts.
When the Yakuts, also known as the Sakha people, migrated to the area from other parts of Siberia, they mixed with other indigenous Siberians such as the Evenk and Yukagir.
On September 25 (October 5), 1632, a detachment of the Yenisei sotnik Pyotr Beketov, while exploring the banks of the Lena River, established the Lensky Ostrog (Lensky Fort) on the right bank of the river, 70 kilometers downstream from the location of modern-day Yakutsk, on the land of the Borogon Yakuts. From the very beginning, the fort had a rather small population, with its garrison numbering 30 Cossacks. In 1634, it survived a siege by the Yakuts. In 1635, the local Cossacks received the right to be called Yakut Cossacks. In 1638, the fort became the center of the newly formed Yakutsk Voivodeship. In 1642–1643, the fort was relocated to its current site in the Tuymaada Valley.
Following the relocation of the fort to the new site, the first churches were built in the town: the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity and the Church of Saint Michael Maleinos. The exact time of their construction is unknown, but the latter already existed by 1646. In 1641, the Holy Trinity Cathedral was built, which still stands today and awaits restoration. In 1663–1664, the Spassky (Holy Savior) Monastery for men was established near the Yakutsk Ostrog.
In 2024, a corpus of written documents was discovered in Yakutsk, including 14 birch bark letters written in ink in a 17th-century cursive script (with numbers written in letters). Archaeologists believe they belong to the archives of the voivode's chancery, lost in a fire in 1700. One fragment speaks of the collection of yasak. In 2025, a paper letter-appeal was found addressed to Archimandrite Feofan, who was the abbot of the Spassky Monastery in Yakutsk from 1714 to 1719.
The construction of the stone Trinity Cathedral was completed in 1728. In 1800, at the request of Ilya Shadrin, the Prince of the Khangalas Ulus, a theological seminary was opened.
In 1818, it was transformed into the Yakutsk Theological School. In 1870, an imperial decree established a separate Yakutsk-Vilyuysk (now Yakutsk and Lenska) Diocese with its see in Yakutsk. Following the revolution, the parishes were destroyed or abandoned, and the diocese was abolished, only to be restored in 1993.
In the 18th century, Yakutsk served as the starting point for the famous expeditions of brave Russian explorers and seafarers who earned fame through major geographical discoveries, including Mikhail Stadukhin, Semyon Dezhnev, Vladimir Atlasov, Ivan Moskvitin, Vasily Poyarkov, and Yerofey Khabarov.
Semyon Remezov's "Drawing Book of Siberia" features one of the oldest known depictions of Yakutsk, illustrated as follows: first, at the bottom of the drawing, there is an oval area enclosed by a stockade, with a bell tower on the left and several churches inside; second, in the middle of the drawing runs a wall with three towers, two at the ends and one in the center; third, at the top of the drawing, roughly parallel to the first wall, stands a second identical wall, but with five towers, including a tall central one topped with an eagle on a spire, and the remaining four positioned two at each end, with the outermost ones shown as log structures. Within this wall, a palisade forms an approximate octagon, which, judging by the nature of the buildings, encloses the main part of the city. The drawing was compiled solely based on testimonies from various individuals and therefore cannot be considered an exact representation of Yakutsk; it provides only an approximate idea of the city's appearance at that time.
As the military-administrative and commercial center of the entire Lena region, Yakutsk was subordinated to the established Siberia Governorate starting from 1708, and to the East Siberian General-Government from 1822. In 1822, Yakutsk became a regional city, and in 1851, Yakutia received the status of an independent oblast with the rights of a governorate, centered in Yakutsk.
During the Civil War, numerous battles took place in the Yakutsk Oblast. In the course of the October Revolution, Soviet power was not established in Yakutia, and control remained in the hands of the provisional government's supporters. On June 30, 1918, the first clash occurred in Yakutsk between the Whites and an arriving detachment of the Reds under the command of Rydzinsky, resulting in the partial establishment of Soviet power in Yakutia. However, a month and a half later, on August 5, 1918, the Soviet authorities were dissolved. The regional and zemstvo administrations were restored, and all decrees of the Soviet power were annulled. During a Bolshevik uprising on the night of December 14–15, 1919, the Kolchak government was overthrown, and Soviet power was proclaimed once again.
In 1922, the White general Anatoly Pepelyayev launched an offensive on Yakutsk with the goal of a further advance into Siberia to proclaim a Siberian Republic there, which became the final episode of the Russian Civil War. However, on February 14, 1923, Pepelyayev's squad was stopped by Ivan Strod's Red detachment in the Sasyl-Sysyy tract near the village of Amga. In Soviet historiography, this battle became known as the "Ice Siege": under conditions of the harshest Yakutian frosts, a battle was fought between the Red soldiers defending the approaches to Yakutsk under the command of Ivan Strod and the raiding squad of the White Siberian general Anatoly Pepelyayev. As a result of the battles near Amga, the last major military formation of the Whites on the territory of the RSFSR was defeated; the general himself retreated to the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk and was captured.
As a result of the Civil War, Soviet power was established in the Yakutsk Oblast. By October 1921, Platon Oyunsky, the deputy chairman of the Yakutsk Regional Revolutionary Committee (who became the leader of Yakutia and chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Yakut ASSR from 1922), had developed drafts for the "Declaration of Rights and Duties of the Working People of the Yakut ASSR" and the "Regulation on the Autonomy of the Yakut Republic." By the beginning of 1922, the work to create the republic was completed, and based on these documents, the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed on April 27, 1922, marking the first statehood in the history of the Yakut people. Yakutsk became the capital of the republic.
In the 1930s, a research institute was established in Yakutsk for the first time, and the republic reached a new level of public education and science.
During the Great Patriotic War, the headquarters of an aviation division and the administration of the Alsib air route were located in Yakutsk. Through this route, about 8,000 fighters and bombers received under Lend-Lease were delivered from the United States to the front. In the city, the neighborhood where the Alsib headquarters was located during the war still retains the name Aviagruppa.
Following the Great Patriotic War, the accelerated industrial development of the region's mineral resources led to an influx of a large number of specialists and workers from other regions of the country. Additionally, population growth was driven by a post-war compensatory baby boom and the gradual stabilization of the population structure, which had been distorted during the war. Over a 20-year period (1939–1959), the city's population increased 1.4 times.
During these years, Yakutsk became the main hub for the concentration of the urban population in the republic. A construction complex was created in the city and its suburban settlements, and enterprises in the wood processing, coal, light, and food industries expanded. Yakutsk became a major hub for water, road, and air transport.
In March 1986, a clash occurred at Lake Tyoploye, which reports indicated was on inter-ethnic grounds and later escalated into a more serious conflict that engulfed Yakutsk and lasted for three days. It began due to a fight between Russians and Yakut students from Yakutsk State University, which initially had a mundane nature. Members of the regional and city committees of the CPSU failed to see an inter-ethnic undertone in the conflict, underestimating the danger of it escalating into nationalist demonstrations. Only when a crowd moved through the city with the slogan "Yakutia for Yakuts, down with Russians!" did the authorities begin to take measures. Around 100 people were detained, and three individuals from each side stood trial, receiving sentences of up to 4 years.
In 2012, the reconstruction of Yakutsk Airport was completed, transforming it into a modern international airport complex. In the 2010s, the Amur–Yakutsk Mainline was extended directly to the vicinity of the city (terminating at Nizhny Bestyakh station on the opposite bank of the Lena River), which qualitatively transformed the logistics of cargo delivery. In 2010, the M. K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) was established on the basis of Yakutsk State University. This attracted thousands of students from across the Far East and from abroad, turning Yakutsk into one of the region's major student cities. By the 2020s, Yakutsk had become one of the fastest-growing cities in Siberia and the Russian Far East in terms of population. While the population stood at approximately 190,000 in the 1990s, by 2026 it significantly exceeded 360,000 people (including subordinate rural settlements). This growth was driven both by migration from rural areas of the republic and by natural population increase.
With an intensely continental subarctic climate (Köppen climate classification Dfc, bordering on Dfd, Trewartha Ecbd), Yakutsk has the coldest winter temperatures for any city its size or larger on Earth. Average monthly temperatures in Yakutsk range from −36.9 °C (−34.4 °F) in January to +19.9 °C (67.8 °F) in July. Yakutsk is the largest city built on continuous permafrost, and many houses there are built on concrete piles.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Yakutsk”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.