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94-639: Nordvik Bay and most of its surrounding area belongs to the Sakha Republic administrative division of the Russian Federation . It is located Southeast of the mouth of the Khatanga Gulf , between two small peninsulas. The landspit in the west is the Uryung Tumus Peninsula , where there was formerly a village called Nordvik and an infamous penal colony that lies now deserted. The peninsula in

188-647: A stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sakha Republic Sakha , officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) , is the largest republic of Russia , 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 (1,190,555 sq mi). Yakutsk , which

282-659: A "tendency toward syncretism ", as evidenced by the locals sometimes first inviting a shaman, and then an Orthodox priest to carry out their rites in connection with some event in their life. According to the Information Center under the President of Sakha Republic (Информационный центр при Президенте РС(Я)), the religious demography of the republic was as follows: Orthodoxy: 44.9%, Shamanism: 26.2%, Non-religious: 23.0%, New religious movements: 2.4%, Islam: 1.2%, Buddhism: 1.0%, Protestantism: 0.9%, Catholicism: 0.4%. According to

376-467: A 2012 survey, 37.8% of the population of Sakha adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church , 13% to Tengrism or Sakha shamanism , 2% to Islam , 1% are unaffiliated Christians , 1% to forms of Protestantism , and 0.4% to Tibetan Buddhism . In addition, 26% of the population deems itself atheist , 17% is "spiritual but not religious", and 1.8% follows other religions or did not give an answer to

470-452: 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

564-723: A Sakha representative in the Duma, however, was granted. Sakha was home to the last stage of the Russian Civil War, the Yakut Revolt . On April 27, 1922, former Yakutsk Oblast was proclaimed the Yakut ASSR , although in fact the eastern part of the territory, including the city of Yakutsk, was controlled by the White Russians . The early Soviet period saw a flourishing of Sakha literature as men such as Platon Oyunsky wrote down in writing

658-734: A Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent 11 years at hard labour. After the Revolution, I was freed. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it. Kaplan referenced the Bolsheviks' growing authoritarianism, citing their forcible shutdown of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, the elections to which they had lost. When it became clear that Kaplan would not implicate any accomplices, she

752-598: A king of the Megino-Khangalassky Sakha, began a Sakha conspiracy by allowing the first stockade construction. In August 1638, the Moscow Government formed a new administrative unit with the administrative center of Lensky Ostrog (Fort Lensky), the future city of Yakutsk , which had been founded by Pyotr Beketov in 1632. The arrival of Russian settlers at the remote Russkoye Ustye in the Indigirka delta

846-681: A number of vacant seats in the Soviets and Central Executive for the Menshevik and Left Socialist Revolutionaries parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was also approved by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists , both groups were in favour of a more radical democracy . From mid-1917 onwards, the Russian Army ,

940-789: A result of the Polish–Soviet War ), Armenia , Azerbaijan and Georgia were occupied by the Red Army. By 1921, Soviet Russia had defeated the Ukrainian national movements and occupied the Caucasus , although anti-Bolshevik uprisings in Central Asia lasted until the late 1920s. The armies under Kolchak were eventually forced on a mass retreat eastward . Bolshevik forces advanced east, despite encountering resistance in Chita , Yakut and Mongolia . Soon

1034-482: A shaman temple in downtown Yakutsk in 2002. Currently, while Orthodox Christianity maintains a following (however, with very few priests willing to be stationed outside of Yakutsk), there is interest and activity toward renewing the traditional religions. As of 2008, Orthodox leaders described the worldview of the republic's indigenous population (or, rather, those among the population who are not completely indifferent to religion) as dvoyeverie (dual belief system), or

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1128-607: A strong imprint on the specifics of the Civil War. During the Russian Civil War, the White movement functioned as a big tent political movement representing an array of political opinions in Russia united in their opposition to the Bolsheviks—from the republican-minded liberals and Kerenskyite social-democrats on the left through monarchists and supporters of a united multinational Russia to

1222-669: A surge in support for the Bolsheviks , who took control of the soviets , which until then had been controlled by the Socialist Revolutionaries. Promising an end to the war and "all power to the Soviets", the Bolsheviks then ended dual power by overthrowing the Provisional Government in late October, on the eve of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies , in what would be

1316-415: Is 0.31 per km (2019), which is one of the lowest among Russian districts. Urban population: 65,45% (2018). Source: Russian Federal State Statistics Service According to the 2021 Census , the ethnic composition was: Historical population figures are shown below: The official languages are both Russian and Sakha , also known as Yakut, which is spoken by roughly half of the republic's population. In

1410-571: Is also believed to date from the 17th century. The Siberian Governorate was established as part of the Russian Empire in 1708. Russian settlers began to form a community in the 18th century, which adopted certain Sakha customs and was often called Yakutyane (Якутя́не) or Lena Early Settlers (ленские старожилы). However, the influx of later settlers had assimilated themselves into the Russian mainstream by

1504-527: 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,

1598-618: 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 (second only to Summit Camp , Greenland ), and regular winter averages commonly dipping below −35 °C (−31 °F) in Yakutsk. The hypercontinental tendencies also result in warm summers for much of

1692-462: 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

1786-614: The Central Powers also intervened, rivaling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks initially consolidated control over most of the former empire. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was an emergency peace with the German Empire , who had captured vast swathes of the Russian territory during

1880-526: The Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) decided to liquidate criminal recklessness associated with anarchists and disarm all anarchist groups in the face of their militancy. From early 1918, the Bolsheviks started physical elimination of opposition, other socialist and revolutionary fractions. Anarchists were among the first: Of all the revolutionary elements in Russia it is the Anarchists who now suffer

1974-806: The Czechoslovak Legions overthrew Bolshevik rule in Siberia , the Urals and the Volga region in late May-early June 1918 and the center of SR activity shifted there. On June 8, 1918, five Constituent Assembly members formed the All-Russian Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly ( Komuch ) in Samara and declared it the new supreme authority in the country. The Social Revolutionary Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia came to power on 29 June 1918, after

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2068-603: The Evenk term Yako (also yoqo , ñoqa , or ñoka ), 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- ( Tundra Yukaghir ) or yaqal ~ yaqad- ~ yaqan- ( Kolyma Yukaghir ). The self-designation Sakha is probably of the same origin (* jaqa > Sakha following regular sound changes in

2162-477: The Russian Orthodox Church and required to take Orthodox Christian names, but in practice generally continued to follow traditional religions. During the Soviet era, most or all of the shamans died without successors. In the 1990s, a neopagan shamanist movement called aiyy yeurekhé was founded by the controversial journalist Ivan Ukhkhan and a philologist calling himself Téris. This group and others cooperated to build

2256-498: 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, 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 ; Doukhobors , conscientious objectors whose story

2350-661: The Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution , which was one of the key events of the 20th century . The Russian monarchy ended with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II during the February Revolution , and Russia was in a state of political flux. A tense summer culminated in the October Revolution , where the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government of

2444-711: The Ukrainian anarchists of the Makhnovshchina and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , were involved in conflict against the Bolsheviks. They, as well as non-ideological green armies , opposed the Bolsheviks, the Whites and the foreign interventionists. Thirteen foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied intervention , whose primary goal was re-establishing the Eastern Front of World War I . Three foreign nations of

2538-605: The 2021 census, 95% of Yakuts, 72% of Evenks and 60% of Evens declared Sakha as their native language. The Sakha language is a member of the Turkic language family, belonging to the Siberian branch. It is closely related to the Dolgan language of the former Taymyr Dolgano-Nenets Autonomous Okrug . The Sakha Republic is also home to many of the world's speakers of Tungusic languages , primarily of Evenki and Even . Additionally, Chukchi and

2632-477: The 20th century. 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,

2726-509: The Bolshevik Party who had peacefully stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the elections. As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each opposition party when it turned against the Soviet government. In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced under the Stalinist regime. In December 1917, Felix Dzerzhinsky

2820-644: The Bolshevik police. The Union of Regeneration was founded in Moscow in April 1918 as an underground agency organizing democratic resistance to the Bolshevik dictatorship, composed of the Popular Socialists, Right Socialist Revolutionaries, and Defensists, among others. They were tasked with propping up anti-Bolshevik forces and to create a Russian state system based on civil liberties, patriotism, and state-consciousness with

2914-628: The Bolsheviks: in the Voronezh Oblast, the Red Guards killed sixteen peasants during the pacification of the village, while another village was shelled with artillery in order to force the peasants to surrender and in the Novgorod Oblast the rebelling peasants were dispersed with machine-gun fire from a train sent by a detachment of Latvian Red Army soldiers. While the Bolsheviks immediately denounced

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3008-449: The Civil War (1917–1922), During interrogation by the Cheka , she made the following statement: My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I was exiled to Akatui for participating in an assassination attempt against

3102-628: 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 ( statoid ) in the world, with an area of 3,083,523 square kilometers (1,190,555 sq mi), slightly smaller than the territory of India (3.3 million km ), but still slightly larger than Argentina . Sakha can be divided into three great vegetation belts. About 40% of Sakha lies above

3196-730: The Red Army split the Don and Volunteer armies , forcing evacuations in Novorossiysk in March and Crimea in November 1920. After that, fighting was sporadic until the war ended with the capture of Vladivostok in October 1922, but anti-Bolshevik resistance continued with the Muslim Basmachi movement in Central Asia and Khabarovsk Krai until 1934. There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during

3290-431: The Republic: Great plan! Finish it with Dzerzhinsky. While pretending to be the "greens" (we will blame them later), we will advance by 10–20 miles (versts) and hang kulaks, priests, landowners. Prize: 100.000 rubles for each hanged man. Leonid Kannegisser , a young military cadet of the Imperial Russian Army , assassinated Moisey Uritsky on August 17, 1918, outside the Petrograd Cheka headquarters in retaliation for

3384-412: 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

3478-417: The SR Nikolai Avksentiev and some followers were arrested for organizing a conspiracy. This was the first time Bolsheviks used this kind of repression against a socialist party. Izvestia said the arrest was not related to his membership in the Constituent Assembly. On January 4, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee made a resolution saying the slogan "all power to the constituent assembly"

3572-412: The Sakha by the 17th century. The Tsardom of Russia began its conquest of the region in the 17th century, moving east after the defeat of the Khanate of Sibir . Tygyn , a king of the Khangalassky Sakha, granted territory for Russian settlement in return for a military pact that included war against indigenous rebels of all North Eastern Asia ( Magadan , Chukotka , Kamchatka and Sakhalin ). Kull,

3666-406: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and opposed Trotsky's insistence that no one try to attack German troops in Ukraine. According to historian Marcel Liebman , Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties either took up arms against the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , or participated in sabotage, collaboration with

3760-413: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: the United Baltic Duchy , Duchy of Courland and Semigallia , Kingdom of Lithuania , Kingdom of Poland , the Belarusian People's Republic , and the Ukrainian State . Following Germany's Armistice in World War I in November 1918, the states were abolished. Finland was the first republic that declared its independence from Russia in December 1917 and established itself in

3854-423: The White Guard (Бѣлая гвардія / Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya ) or White Guardsmen (Бѣлогвардейцы / Белогвардейцы, Belogvardeytsi ). When the White Army was created, the structure of the Russian Army of the Provisional Government period was used, while almost every individual formation had its own characteristics. The military art of the White Army was based on the experience of World War I, which, however, left

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3948-489: The area as early as the 9th century or as late as the 16th century, though most likely there were several migrations. They migrated up north from around Lake Baikal to the middle Lena due to pressure by the Buryats, a Mongolic group. The Sakha displaced earlier, much smaller populations who lived on hunting and reindeer herding, introducing the pastoralist economy of Central Asia. The indigenous populations of Paleosiberian and Tungusic stock were mostly assimilated to

4042-448: 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

4136-404: The bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Yours, Lenin. P.S. Find tougher people. In a mid-August 1920 letter, having received information that in Estonia and Latvia, with which Soviet Russia had concluded peace treaties, volunteers were being enrolled in anti-Bolshevik detachments, Lenin wrote to E. M. Sklyansky, deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of

4230-426: The chaos of the revolution. In May 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia revolted in Siberia. In reaction, the Allies began their North Russian and Siberian interventions . That, combined with the creation of the Provisional All-Russian Government , saw the reduction of Bolshevik-controlled territory to most of European Russia and parts of Central Asia . In 1919, the White Army launched several offensives from

4324-410: The country as a one-party state with all opposition parties outlawed. A simultaneous demonstration in favor of the Constituent Assembly was dispersed with force, but there was little protest afterwards. The first large Cheka repression involving the killing of libertarian socialists in Petrograd began in April 1918. On May 1, 1918, a pitched battle took place in Moscow between the anarchists and

4418-418: The country, leading to a situation of dual power . The Russian Republic was proclaimed in September of the same year. The Provisional Government, led by Socialist Revolutionary Party politician Alexander Kerensky , was unable to solve the most pressing issues of the country, most importantly to end the war with the Central Powers. A failed military coup by General Lavr Kornilov in September 1917 led to

4512-400: The course of development of the Yakut language) 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 . 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

4606-433: The deposed Tsarists, or made assassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders. Liebman noted that opposition parties such as the Cadets and Mensheviks who were democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, then proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist and foreign capitalist military forces . In one incident in Baku , the British military, once invited in, proceeded to execute members of

4700-477: The disarray to push for national independence. In March 1921, during a related war against Poland , the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia sought to re-conquer all newly independent nations of the former empire, although their success was limited. Estonia , Finland , Latvia , and Lithuania all repelled Soviet invasions, while Ukraine , Belarus (as

4794-470: The east in March, the south in July, and west in October. The advances were later checked by the Eastern Front counteroffensive , the Southern Front counteroffensive , and the defeat of the Northwestern Army . By 1919, the White armies were in retreat and by the start of 1920 were defeated on all three fronts. Although the Bolsheviks were victorious, the territorial extent of the Russian state had been reduced, for many non-Russian ethnic groups had used

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4888-412: The east is called Nordvik Peninsula , with Cape Paksa at its northern end, and on its eastern side lies the Anabar Bay . Nordvik Bay is 39 km wide and it has a regular semicircular shape. It is quite shallow, its average depth being around 6 m. It is circled by lowlands and, since the climate in the area is exceptionally severe, with prolonged, bitter winters, Nordvik Bay is covered by ice most of

4982-422: The elections with the majority of the seats, after which Lenin's Theses on the Constituent Assembly argued in Pravda that formal democracy was impossible because of class conflicts, conflicts with Ukraine and the Kadet-Kaledin uprising. He argued the Constituent Assembly must unconditionally accept sovereignty of the soviet government or it would be dealt with "by revolutionary means". On December 30, 1917,

5076-420: The ensuing Finnish Civil War between pro-independence White Guards and pro-Russian Bolshevik Red Guards from January–May 1918. The Second Polish Republic , Lithuania , Latvia and Estonia formed their own armies immediately after the abolition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the start of the Soviet westward offensive and subsequent Polish-Soviet War in November 1918. In the European part of Russia

5170-593: The events that would officially catalyze the Red Terror , Vladimir Lenin had sent telegrams "to introduce mass terror" in Nizhny Novgorod in response to a suspected civilian uprising there, and to "crush" landowners in Penza who resisted, sometimes violently, the requisitioning of their grain by military detachments: Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity ... You must make example of these people. Do all this so that for miles (versts) around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing

5264-458: The execution of his friend and other officers. On August 30, the SR Fanny Kaplan unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Lenin, who sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power. As a result of the failed attempt on Lenin's life, he began to crack down on his political enemies in an event known as the Red Terror . More broadly, the term is usually applied to Bolshevik political repression throughout

5358-453: The goal to liberate the country from the "Germano-Bolshevik" yoke. On May 7, 1918, the Eighth Party Council of the Socialist Revolutionary Party commenced in Moscow and recognized the Union's leading role, putting aside political ideology and class for the purpose of Russia's salvation. They decided to start an uprising against the Bolsheviks with the goal of reconvening the Russian Constituent Assembly. While preparations were under way,

5452-399: The government to heed Dzerzhinsky's lobbying for greater terror against opposition. The campaign of mass repressions would officially begin thereafter. The Red Terror is considered to have officially begun between 17 and 30 August 1918. Protests against grain requisitioning of the peasantry were a major component of the Tambov Rebellion and similar uprisings; Lenin's New Economic Policy

5546-441: 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 (Yakutia). The exonym Yakut comes from

5640-410: The lects of the Yukaghir language family are spoken in the northeast. Before the arrival of the Russian Empire, the majority of the local population was Tengrist , similar to the other Turkic people of Central Asia, or in Paleoasian indigenous shamanism with both 'light' (community leading) and 'dark' (healing through spirit journey) shamans. Under the Russians, the local population was converted to

5734-511: The most ruthless and systematic persecution. Their suppression by the Bolsheviki began already in 1918, when — in the month of April of that year — the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow and by the use of machine guns and artillery "liquidated" the whole organisation. It was the beginning of Anarchist hounding, but it was sporadic in character, breaking out now and then, quite planless, and frequently self-contradictory. On 11 August 1918, prior to

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5828-479: The new Russian Republic . Bolshevik seizure of power was not universally accepted, and the country descended into civil war. The two largest combatants were the Red Army , fighting for the establishment of a Bolshevik-led socialist state headed by Vladimir Lenin , and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army , which functioned as a political big tent for right - and left-wing opposition to Bolshevik rule. In addition, rival militant socialists, notably

5922-404: The population dropping from 240,500 in 1926 down to 236,700 at the 1959 census. Sakha's demographics shifted wildly during the Soviet period as ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, among other groups, settled the area en masse, primarily in Yakutsk and the industrial south. Previously, even Yakutsk had been primarily Sakha and Sakha-speaking. With the end of korenizatsiya , usage of the Sakha language

6016-416: The possibility that Communist revolutionary ideas would spread (a concern shared by many Central Powers). Hence, many of the countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". The British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials. After

6110-440: The question. Russian Civil War [REDACTED] White movement The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the liberal-democratic Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution , as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later

6204-409: The rebellion as orchestrated by the SRs, there is actually no evidence that they were involved into peasant violence, which they deemed as counterproductive. The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks . They were worried about a possible Russo-German alliance, the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good on their threats to default on Imperial Russia's massive foreign debts and

6298-461: The region during the late Pleistocene  – early Holocene period. 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 . The largest river is the navigable Lena River (4,400 km). As it moves northward, it includes hundreds of small tributaries located in the Verkhoyansk Range . There are over 800,000 lakes in

6392-411: The reorganization of the Red Guards into a Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in order to create a more effective fighting force. The Bolsheviks appointed political commissars to each unit of the Red Army to maintain morale and to ensure loyalty. In June 1918, when it had become apparent that a revolutionary army composed solely of workers would not suffice, Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of

6486-460: 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 along the middle Lena river sometime between the 9th and 16th centuries, likely in several waves, bringing the pastoral economic system of Central Asia with them. The Russians colonised and incorporated

6580-466: 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 (3,003 m). The second highest peak is Peak Mus-Khaya reaching 2,959 m. The Stanovoy Range borders Sakha in

6674-439: 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

6768-546: The rural peasantry into the Red Army. The Bolsheviks overcame opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in order to force compliance. The forced conscription drive had mixed results, successfully creating a larger army than the Whites, but with members indifferent towards communist ideology . The Red Army also utilized former Tsarist officers as "military specialists" ( voenspetsy ); sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty. At

6862-545: The second Revolution of 1917. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties . Despite the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, they lost to the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election , and the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the Bolsheviks in retaliation. The Bolsheviks soon lost

6956-612: 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 ( c.  2200 –1300 BC) 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. The Turkic Sakha people or Yakuts may have settled

7050-419: The south. The Republic's extensive coastline contains a number of peninsulas; from west to east the most prominent are: 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

7144-475: The start of the civil war, former Tsarist officers formed three-quarters of the Red Army officer-corps. By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers. The White movement (Russian: pre–1918 Бѣлое движеніе / post–1918 Белое движение , romanized : Beloye dvizheniye , IPA: [ˈbʲɛləɪ dvʲɪˈʐenʲɪɪ] ) also known as the Whites ( Белые , Beliye ),

7238-424: The successor-organisation of the old Imperial Russian Army , started to disintegrate; the Bolsheviks used the volunteer-based Red Guards as their main military force, augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka (the Bolshevik state secret police ). In January 1918, after significant Bolshevik reverses in combat, the future Russian People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs Leon Trotsky headed

7332-789: The support of other far-left allies, such as the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , after their acceptance of the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk presented by the German Empire. Conversely, a number of prominent members of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had assumed positions in Lenin's government and led commissariats in several areas. This included agriculture ( Kolegaev ), property ( Karelin ), justice ( Steinberg ), post offices and telegraphs ( Proshian ) and local government (Trutovsky). The Bolsheviks also reserved

7426-454: The traditionally oral and improvised olonkho , in addition to composing their own works. Many early Sakha leaders, including Oyunsky, died in the Great Purge . Sakha experienced significant collectivization between 1929 and 1934 , with the number of households experiencing collectivization rising from 3.6% in 1929 to 41.7% in 1932. Policies by which the Sakha were harshly affected resulted in

7520-574: The treaty, it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans. To meet that danger, the Allies intervened with Great Britain and France sending troops into Russian ports. There were violent clashes with the Bolsheviks. Britain intervened in support of the White forces to defeat the Bolsheviks and prevent the spread of communism across Europe. The German Empire created several short-lived buffer states within its sphere of influence after

7614-482: The ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds on the right. The Russian Constituent Assembly had been a demand of the Bolsheviks against the Provisional Government, which kept delaying it. After the October Revolution the elections were run by the body appointed by the previous Provisional Government. It was based on universal suffrage but used party lists from before the Left-Right SR split. The anti-Bolshevik Right SRs won

7708-725: The uprising in Vladivostok . At the Fifth All–Russian Congress of Soviets of July 4, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had 352 delegates compared to 745 Bolsheviks out of 1132 total. The Left SRs raised disagreements on the suppression of rival parties, the death penalty, and mainly, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks excluded the Right SRs and Mensheviks from the government on 14 June for associating with counterrevolutionaries and seeking to "organize armed attacks against

7802-474: The war was fought across three main fronts: the eastern, the southern and the northwestern. It can also be roughly split into the following periods. The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice, or roughly March 1917 to November 1918. Already on the date of the Revolution, Cossack General Alexey Kaledin refused to recognize it and assumed full governmental authority in the Don region, where

7896-596: The war, mostly civilians. The Russian Empire fought in World War I from 1914 alongside France and the United Kingdom ( Triple Entente ) against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire ( Central Powers ). The February Revolution of 1917 resulted in the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia . As a result, the social-democratic Russian Provisional Government was established, and soviets , elected councils of workers, soldiers, and peasants, were organized throughout

7990-494: The workers and peasants" (though Mensheviks had not supported them), while the Left SRs advocated forming a government of all socialist parties. The Left SRs agreed with extrajudicial execution of political opponents to stop the counterrevolution, but opposed having the government legally pronouncing death sentences, an unusual position that is best understood within the context of the group's terrorist past. The Left SRs strongly opposed

8084-724: The world. 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 −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) in 1892 and 1885, and at Oymyakon , where the temperatures reached as low as −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) in February 1934. Average annual precipitation : 200 mm (central parts) to 700 mm (mountains of Eastern Sakha). Siberia , and particularly Sakha,

8178-588: The year. The name literally means "North Bay" in Norwegian. It was discovered and named by the Russian Great Northern Expedition in 1739. During the 1930s this area experienced a limited boom owing to the first icebreaker convoys plying the Northern Sea Route . Tiksi Bay and Mys Schmidta had become airports and Nordvik was "a growing town." This Sakha Republic location article is

8272-531: Was a loose confederation of anti-communist forces that fought the communist Bolsheviks , also known as the Reds , in the Russian Civil War and that to a lesser extent continued operating as militarized associations of rebels both outside and within Russian borders in Siberia until roughly World War II (1939–1945). The movement's military arm was the White Army (Бѣлая армія / Белая армия, Belaya armiya ), also known as

8366-575: Was appointed to the duty of rooting out counter-revolutionary threats to the Soviet government . He was the director of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (aka Cheka ), a predecessor of the KGB that served as the secret police for the Soviets. The Bolsheviks had begun to see the anarchists as a legitimate threat and associate criminality such as robberies , expropriations and murders with anarchist associations. Subsequently,

8460-512: Was counterrevolutionary and equivalent to "down with the soviets". The Constituent Assembly met on January 18, 1918. The Right SR Chernov was elected president defeating the Bolshevik supported candidate, the Left SR Maria Spiridonova (she would later break with the Bolsheviks and after the decades of gulag , she was shot on Stalin's orders in 1941). The Bolsheviks subsequently disbanded the Constituent Assembly and proceeded to rule

8554-585: Was executed in Alexander Garden . The order was carried out by the commander of the Kremlin, the former Baltic sailor P. D. Malkov and a group of Latvian Bolsheviks on September 3, 1918, with a bullet to the back of the head. Her corpse was bundled into a barrel and set alight. The order came from Yakov Sverdlov , who only six weeks earlier had ordered the murder of the Tsar and his family. These events persuaded

8648-577: Was introduced as a concession. The policies of "food dictatorship" proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in May 1918 sparked violent resistance in numerous districts of European Russia : revolts and clashes between the peasants and the Red Army were reported in Voronezh , Tambov , Penza , Saratov and in the districts of Kostroma , Moscow , Novgorod , Petrograd , Pskov and Smolensk . The revolts were bloodily crushed by

8742-786: Was restricted in urban areas such as Yakutsk, which became primarily Russian-speaking. In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union , Sakha was recognized in Moscow as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. Sakha is historically part of Russian Siberia, but since the formation of the Far Eastern Federal District in 2000, it is administratively part of the Russian Far East . Population: 995,686 ( 2021 Census ) ; 958,528 ( 2010 Census ) ; 949,280 ( 2002 Census ) ; 1,081,408 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . Population density

8836-476: Was told to Leo Tolstoy by Vasily Pozdnyakov ; the Socialist Revolutionary Party member and writer Vladimir Zenzinov , who left an 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

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