Sakha Republic


Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha , is a republic of Russia, and the largest federal subject of Russia by area. It is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far Eastern Federal District, and is the world's largest country subdivision, covering over 3,083,523 square kilometers. Yakutsk, which is the world's coldest major city, is its capital and largest city.
The republic has a reputation for an extreme and severe climate, with the second lowest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere being recorded in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, and regular winter averages commonly dipping below in Yakutsk. The hypercontinental tendencies also result in warm summers for much of the republic.
Sakha was first home to hunting-gathering and reindeer herding Tungusic and Paleosiberian peoples such as the Evenks and Yukaghir. Migrating from the area around Lake Baikal, the Turkic Sakha people first migrated to the middle Lena River sometime between the 9th and 16th centuries, likely in several waves, bringing the pastoral economic system of Inner Asia with them.
The Russians colonised and incorporated the area as the Yakutsk Oblast into the Tsardom of Russia in the early-mid 17th century, obliging the indigenous peoples of the area to pay fur tribute. While the initial period following the Russian conquest saw the Sakha population drop by 70%, the Imperial period also saw the expansion of the native Yakuts from the middle Lena along the Vilyuy River to the north and the east displacing other indigenous groups. Yakutia saw some of the last battles of the Russian Civil War, and the Bolshevik authorities re-organized Yakutsk Oblast into the autonomous Yakut ASSR in 1922. The Soviet era saw the migration of many Slavs, specifically Russians and Ukrainians, into the area.
On 27 September 1990, the area became the Yakutskaya-Sakha Soviet Socialist Republic, and on 27 December 1991, it became the Republic of Sakha.

Etymology

The exonym Yakut comes from the Evenk term Yako, which was the term the Evenks used to describe the Sakha. This was in turn picked up by the Russians. The Yukaghirs, another neighboring people in Siberia, use the exonym yoqol ~ yoqod- ~ yoqon- or yaqal ~ yaqad- ~ yaqan-.
The self-designation Sakha may be of the same origin as the Evenk and Yukaghir exonyms for the Yakuts. It is pronounced as Haka by the Dolgans, whose language is a close relative of the Yakut language.

Geography

Sakha stretches to the Henrietta Island in the far north and is washed by the Laptev and Eastern Siberian Seas of the Arctic Ocean. These waters, the coldest and iciest of all seas in the Northern Hemisphere, are covered by ice for 9–10 months of the year. New Siberian Islands are a part of the republic's territory. After Nunavut was separated from Canada's Northwest Territories in 1999, Sakha became the largest subnational entity in the world, with an area of, slightly smaller than the territory of India, but still slightly larger than Argentina.
Sakha can be divided into three great vegetation belts. About 40% of Sakha lies above the Arctic Circle and all of it is covered by permafrost which greatly influences the region's ecology and limits forests in the southern region. Arctic and subarctic tundra define the middle region, where lichen and moss grow as great green carpets and are favorite pastures for reindeer. In the southern part of the tundra belt, scattered stands of dwarf Siberian pine and larch grow along the rivers. Below the tundra is the vast taiga forest region. Larch trees dominate in the north and stands of fir and pine begin to appear in the south. Taiga forests cover about 47% of Sakha and almost 90% of the cover is larch.
The Sakha Republic is the site of Pleistocene Park, a project directed at recreating Pleistocene tundra grasslands by stimulating the growth of grass with the introduction of animals which thrived in the region during the late Pleistocene – early Holocene period.

Time zones

Sakha is the only federal subject of Russia which uses more than one time zone. Sakha spans three time zones. Like the rest of Russia, it does not use daylight saving time.
MapTime zoneAbbr.Areas
Yakutsk TimeYAKTUTC+09:00Most of the republic's territory
VLATUTC+10:00Districts of Oymyakonsky, Ust-Yansky and Verkhoyansky
Magadan TimeMAGTUTC+11:00Districts of Abyysky, Allaikhovsky, Momsky, Nizhnekolymsky, Srednekolymsky and Verkhnekolymsky

Rivers

The largest river is the navigable Lena River. As it moves northward, it includes hundreds of small tributaries located in the Verkhoyansk Range.
There are over 800,000 lakes in the republic. Major lakes and reservoirs include:
Sakha's greatest mountain range, the Verkhoyansk Range, runs parallel and east of the Lena River, forming a great arc that begins in the Sea of Okhotsk and ends in the Laptev Sea.
The Chersky Range runs east of the Verkhoyansk Range and has the highest peak in Sakha, Peak Pobeda. The second highest peak is Peak Mus-Khaya reaching 2,959 m.
The Stanovoy Range borders Sakha in the south.
File:Cliffs Ulakhan-Sis Range Sakha Yakutia Siberia Russia.jpg|thumb|Ulakhan-Sis Range famous for its unusual kigilyakh rock formations

Peninsulas

The Republic's extensive coastline contains a number of peninsulas; from west to east the most prominent are:
  • Uryung-Tumus Peninsula
  • Nordvik Peninsula
  • Terpyay-Tumsa Peninsula
  • Bykovsky Peninsula
  • Buor-Khaya Peninsula
  • Manyko Peninsula
  • Shirokostan Peninsula
  • Merkushina Strelka Peninsula
  • Lopatka Peninsula
  • Dogukan Peninsula

    Islands

From west to east, the main islands of Sakha are:
Sakha is well endowed with raw materials. The soil contains large reserves of oil, gas, coal, diamonds, gold, silver, tin, tungsten and many others. Sakha produces 99% of all Russian diamonds and over 25% of the diamonds mined in the world.

Climate

Sakha is known for its climate extremes, with the Verkhoyansk Range being the coldest area in the Northern Hemisphere. Some of the lowest natural temperatures ever recorded have been here. The Northern Hemisphere's Pole of Cold is at Verkhoyansk, where the temperatures reached as low as in 1892 and 1885, and at Oymyakon, where the temperatures reached as low as in February 1934.
CityJuly July January January
Aldan23.0/11.173.4/52.0−21.3/−30.1−6.3/−22.2
Neryungri22.3/11.272.1/52.2−26.2/−33.2−15.2/−27.8
Olyokminsk25.1/12.277.2/54.0−26.0/−33.9−14.8/−29.0
Oymyakon23.0/6.973.4/44.4−42.1/−49.3−43.8/−56.7
Verkhoyansk23.4/10.074.1/50.0−41.6/−47.7−42.9/−53.9
Yakutsk25.8/13.178.4/55.6−34.0/−39.8−29.2/−39.6
Saskylakh16.8/7.562.2/45.5−30.1/−37.5−22.2/−35.5
Tiksi12.7/4.754.9/40.5−25.9/−33.1−14.6/−27.6

Average annual precipitation: 200 mm to 700 mm.

Administrative divisions

History

Pre-history

, and particularly Sakha, is of paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch, preserved in ice or permafrost. In 2015, the frozen bodies of Dina and Uyan the cave lion cubs were found. Bodies of Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma River, and bison and horses from Yukagir have also been found. In June 2019, the severed yet preserved head of a large wolf from the Pleistocene, dated to over 40,000 years ago, was found close to the Tirekhtyakh River.
Ymyakhtakh culture was a Late Neolithic culture of Siberia, with a very large archaeological horizon. Its origins were in Sakha, in the Lena River basin. From there it spread both to the east and to the west.