page_title: Sakha
section_title: Russian Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Sakha / History / Russian Empire
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Члены Сибирской областной Думы от Якутии. Фото 1917. Сидят (слева направо): М. Н. Тимофеев-Терешкин, П. А. Куликовский, И. Н. Эверстов, Г. В. Ксенофонтов; стоят: И. С. Бланков, М. В. Сабунаев, неизвестный, Н. Желобцов
context_page_description: Sakha, also known as Yakutia or Yakutiya, and officially known as the Republic of Sakha, is a federal Russian republic.
  It had a population of 958,528 at the 2010 Census, mainly ethnic Sakha and Russians.
  Comprising half the Far Eastern Federal District, it is the largest subnational governing body by area in the world at 3,083,523 square kilometers. Its capital is the city of Yakutsk. It is also known for its extreme and severe climate, with the lowest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere being recorded in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, and regular winter averages commonly being below −35 °C in Yakutsk. The hypercontinental tendencies also result in very 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 settled the middle Lena sometime between the 9th and 16th centuries, likely in several waves, bringing the pastoral economy of Central Asia with them.
context_section_description: In an administrative reform of 1782, Irkutsk Governorate was created. In 1805, Yakutsk Oblast was split from Irkutsk Governorate.
  Yakutsk Oblast in the early 19th century marked the easternmost territory of the Russian Empire, including such Far Eastern (Pacific) territories as were acquired, known as Okhotsk Okrug within Yakutsk Oblast. With the formation of Primorskaya Oblast in 1856, the Russian territories of the Pacific were detached from Sakha.
  The Russians established agriculture in the Lena River basin. The members of religious groups who were exiled to Sakha in the second half of the 19th century began to grow wheat, oats, and potatoes. The fur trade established a cash economy. Industry and transport began to develop at the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the Soviet period. This was also the beginning of geological prospecting, mining, and local lead production. The first steam-powered ships and barges arrived.
  Sakha's remoteness, even compared to the rest of Siberia, made it a place of exile of choice for both Tsarist and Communist governments of Russia. Among the famous Tsarist-era exiles were the democratic writer Nikolay Chernyshevsky; Doukhobor conscientious objectors, whose story was told to Leo Tolstoy by Vasily Pozdnyakov; the Socialist Revolutionary and writer Vladimir Zenzinov, who left an interesting account of his Arctic experiences; and Polish socialist activist Wacław Sieroszewski, who pioneered in ethnographic research on the Sakha people.
  A Sakha national movement first emerged during the 1905 Revolution. A Yakut Union was formed under the leadership of a Sakha lawyer and city councilor by the name of Vasily Nikiforov, which criticized the policies and effects of Russian colonialism, and demanded representation in the State Duma. The Yakut Union acted to make the city council of Yakutsk stand down and was joined by thousands of Sakha from the countryside, but the leaders were arrested and the movement fizzled out by April 1906. Their demand for a Sakha repsentative in the Duma, however, was granted.
caption: Members of the Siberian Regional Duma from Yakutsk, 1917.
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