Yakutsk

Yakutsk is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located about 450 km south of the Arctic Circle. Population: 269,601 (2010).

Yakutsk is a major port on the Lena River. It is served by the Yakutsk Airport as well as the smaller Magan Airport. It is a major supplier of diamonds. Its population is almost 300,000 and its average winter temperature is −34 °C (−30 °F). If the 3 million km2 Sakha Republic were a sovereign nation, rather than a federal subject of Russia, its capital, Yakutsk, would be the coldest national capital as well as the coldest major city in the world.

History

The Turkic Sakha people, also known as the Yakuts, migrated to the area in the 13th and 14th centuries from other parts of Siberia due to the rising military power of the Mongols. When they arrived they mixed with other indigenous Siberians in the area. Russian Yakutsk was founded in 1632 as an ostrog (fort) by Pyotr Beketov. In 1639, it became the center of a voyevodstvo. The Yakutsk Voyevoda 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.

Culture

There are several theaters in Yakutsk: the State Russian Drama Theater, named after A. S. Pushkin; the Sakha Theater, named after P. A. Oiyunsky; the Suorun Omoloon Young Spectator's Theater; and the State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, named after D. K. Sivtsev.

There are a number of museums as well: the National Fine Arts Museum of Sakha; the Museum of Local Lore and History, named after E. Yaroslavsky; and the only museums in the world dedicated to the khomus and permafrost.

The annual Ysyakh summer festival takes place the last weekend in June. The traditional Yakut summer solstice festivities include a celebration of the revival and renewal of the nature, fertility and beginning of a new year. It is accompanied by national Yakut rituals and ceremonies, folk dancing, horse racing, Yakut ethnic music and singing, national cuisine, and competitions in traditional Yakut sports.

Transportation

Yakutsk is a destination of the Lena Highway. The city's connection to the highway is only accessible by ferry in the summer, or in the dead of winter, directly over the frozen Lena River, as Yakutsk lies entirely on its western bank, and there is no bridge anywhere in the Sakha Republic that crosses the Lena. The river is impassable for long periods of the year when it contains loose ice, when the ice cover is not thick enough to support traffic, or when the water level is too high and the river turbulent with spring flooding. The highway ends on the eastern bank of Lena in Nizhny Bestyakh (Нижний Бестях), an urban-type settlement of some four thousand people. Yakutsk is connected with Magadan by the Kolyma Highway.

A road bridge over the Lena is scheduled to be built by 2020. The bridge had originally been planned to be a dual-use railroad and road bridge so the Amur Yakutsk Mainline, the North-South railroad being extended from the South, could connect the city with the East-West Baikal Amur Mainline. The railway reached the settlement of Nizhny Bestyakh, on the opposite bank of the Lena from Yakutsk, in November 2011.

The bridge will be over 3 km long and constructed 40 km upriver at Tabaga, where the river narrows and does not create a wide flooded area in spring. In the dead of winter, the frozen Lena makes for a passable highway for ice truckers using its channel to deliver provisions to far-flung outposts. Yakutsk is also connected to other parts of Russia by Yakutsk Airport.