Kobyaysky Ulus
Encyclopedia
Kobyaysky Ulus is an ulus
(district
) of the Sakha Republic, Russia
. The ulus is administratively divided into twelve naslegs
and has jurisdiction over one settlement of urban type
(Sangar), which lies on the Vilyuy River, some 334 kilometres (207.5 mi) by road north of Yakutsk
.
, Evenk
, and Yakut
peoples. Silver-lead deposits were found in Endybalskoye as early as 1765. In 1913, the coal potential of the area was noted and coal mining began at Tsugaru in the late 1920s. The first elementary school opened in Kobyay in 1926. In 1928, as the coal mining operations got underway, the miners established the new village of Sangar. In 1931, the first collective farms began to appear, and the first medical dispensary in the area was opened at Tsugaru mine, with the first pharmacy opening a year later. In 1936, a fishing organization was established in the area to unite the small fishing enterprises that had begun to develop.
Kobyaysky District was formed on April 20, 1937 from the remote settlements of Namsky
, Gorny
, and Vilyuysky Districts
, with the district's administrative center located in Kobyay. In 1959, however, the administrative center was moved to Sangar. In 1938, thermal power stations operating on coal were built in Sangar, whilst the first library opened in Kobyay. By 1939 the two main villages were connected by radio and in 1946 with a telephone station. In September 1942, 2,482 were recorded as moving into the district. In 1944, the district newspaper Sana oloh (renamed Leninets in 1962 and Dabaan in 1993) was established, and in 1945 an airport was commissioned, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the village of Sangar. The first savings bank opened in 1946 and on April 16, 1947, Sangar commissioned a new steam turbine power plant.
In 1952, the oil and gas reserves of the area began to be exploited, and over the next few years there was extensive planning and drilling to find these reserves. In 1957, mass carp fishing began on Lake Nidzhili. In 1963, the construction of a 400-kilometer gas pipeline Taas-Tumus-Berge-Yakutsk-Mokhsogollokh began — the first in the world on permafrost and in a sub-polar climate. Several schools were established in the district in the 1960s and 1970s, with the folk theater opened in 1973 and Kobyay children's music school in 1974. The oil and gas industry developed extensively during the 1980s and 1990s.
On February 1, 2006, at a frequency of 102 FM, started broadcasting radio NEC "Sakha".
, which flows between the mouths of tributaries of the Aldan
and the Linde, and its tributary
river, the Vilyuy River in the lower reaches. On the plain of many lakes, the largest of them is Nidzhili Lake. Part of the Ust-Vilyuysky National Park is also located within the ulus' territory.
The bulk of the population (as of the 2002 Census
) are Yakuts
- 9,209 people (64.95%), Russians
- 3,425 people (24.16%), Evens
- 809 people (5.71%), Ukrainians
- 235 people (1.66%), Evenks
- 64 (0.45%), and other ethnicities - 436 people (3.07%). The median age is thirty years.
, silver
, lead
, zinc
, gas
, coal
, and building materials. In 1998, upon the decision of the Russian Ministry of Energy
, the Tsugaru coal mine was closed. In 2000, a fire broke out. In 2008, the Mastakhskoye gas-condensate field was in the final stages of development.
The ulus has a number of facilities such as printing houses, clubs, a theater in Kobyay, and vocational, educational, sports, and children's art schools.
Sangar Airport is the main airport in the district.
Raion
A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...
(district
Raion
A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...
) of the Sakha Republic, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. The ulus is administratively divided into twelve naslegs
Selsoviet
Selsoviet is a shortened name for a rural council. The full names for the term are, in , , . Selsoviets were the lowest level of administrative division in rural areas in the Soviet Union...
and has jurisdiction over one settlement of urban type
Urban-type settlement
Urban-type settlement ; , selyshche mis'koho typu ) is an official designation for a type of locality used in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union...
(Sangar), which lies on the Vilyuy River, some 334 kilometres (207.5 mi) by road north of Yakutsk
Yakutsk
With a subarctic climate , Yakutsk is the coldest city, though not the coldest inhabited place, on Earth. Average monthly temperatures range from in July to in January. The coldest temperatures ever recorded on the planet outside Antarctica occurred in the basin of the Yana River to the northeast...
.
History
The territory of what is now Kobyaysky Ulus has long been settled by the EvenEvens
The Evens or Eveny are a people in Siberia and the Russian Far East. They live in some of the regions of the Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai and northern parts of Sakha east of the Lena River. According to the 2002 census, there were 19,071 Evens in Russia...
, Evenk
Evenks
The Evenks are a Tungusic people of Northern Asia. In Russia, the Evenks are recognized as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, with a population of 35,527...
, and Yakut
Yakuts
Yakuts , are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha Republic.The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages....
peoples. Silver-lead deposits were found in Endybalskoye as early as 1765. In 1913, the coal potential of the area was noted and coal mining began at Tsugaru in the late 1920s. The first elementary school opened in Kobyay in 1926. In 1928, as the coal mining operations got underway, the miners established the new village of Sangar. In 1931, the first collective farms began to appear, and the first medical dispensary in the area was opened at Tsugaru mine, with the first pharmacy opening a year later. In 1936, a fishing organization was established in the area to unite the small fishing enterprises that had begun to develop.
Kobyaysky District was formed on April 20, 1937 from the remote settlements of Namsky
Namsky Ulus
Namsky Ulus is an ulus of the Sakha Republic, Russia. The ulus is administratively divided into eighteen naslegs....
, Gorny
Gorny Ulus
Gorny District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the thirty-four in the Sakha Republic, Russia. Its administrative center is the rural locality of Berdigestyakh. District's population: 11,422 ; Population of Berdigestyakh accounts for 53.8% of the district's population....
, and Vilyuysky Districts
Vilyuysky Ulus
Vilyuysky Ulus is an ulus of the Sakha Republic, Russia. The ulus is administratively divided into nineteen naslegs and has jurisdiction over one town and one settlement ....
, with the district's administrative center located in Kobyay. In 1959, however, the administrative center was moved to Sangar. In 1938, thermal power stations operating on coal were built in Sangar, whilst the first library opened in Kobyay. By 1939 the two main villages were connected by radio and in 1946 with a telephone station. In September 1942, 2,482 were recorded as moving into the district. In 1944, the district newspaper Sana oloh (renamed Leninets in 1962 and Dabaan in 1993) was established, and in 1945 an airport was commissioned, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the village of Sangar. The first savings bank opened in 1946 and on April 16, 1947, Sangar commissioned a new steam turbine power plant.
In 1952, the oil and gas reserves of the area began to be exploited, and over the next few years there was extensive planning and drilling to find these reserves. In 1957, mass carp fishing began on Lake Nidzhili. In 1963, the construction of a 400-kilometer gas pipeline Taas-Tumus-Berge-Yakutsk-Mokhsogollokh began — the first in the world on permafrost and in a sub-polar climate. Several schools were established in the district in the 1960s and 1970s, with the folk theater opened in 1973 and Kobyay children's music school in 1974. The oil and gas industry developed extensively during the 1980s and 1990s.
On February 1, 2006, at a frequency of 102 FM, started broadcasting radio NEC "Sakha".
Geography and climate
Kobyaysky Ulus covers an area of 107800 square kilometres (41,621.8 sq mi). Mountain plains are located in the north and northeast, notably the Verkhoyansk range, while the rest of the ulus is lowland. Due to the sub-polar location, it is bitterly cold in the winter months, with an average January temperature of -36 °C in the mountains and -40 °C in the valley, and in July over 10 °C (50 °F) in the mountains and over 18 °C (64.4 °F) in the valley. Annual precipitation ranges from 200–250 mm in the east to 500–600 mm in the mountains. Several rivers flow through the ulus. These include the Lena RiverLena River
The Lena is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean . It is the 11th longest river in the world and has the 9th largest watershed...
, which flows between the mouths of tributaries of the Aldan
Aldan River
The Aldan River is the second-longest tributary of the Lena River in the Sakha Republic in eastern Siberia. The river is 2,273 km long, of which around 1,600 km is navigable. It was part of the River Route to Okhotsk...
and the Linde, and its tributary
Tributary
A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean...
river, the Vilyuy River in the lower reaches. On the plain of many lakes, the largest of them is Nidzhili Lake. Part of the Ust-Vilyuysky National Park is also located within the ulus' territory.
Demography
There were people living in the district in 1989, but the population in 2005 fell by some 30% to 14,002 people. In 2005, there were 4,851 people living in urban areas and 9,151 people living in rural.The bulk of the population (as of the 2002 Census
Russian Census (2002)
Russian Census of 2002 was the first census of the Russian Federation carried out on October 9 through October 16, 2002. It was carried out by the Russian Federal Service of State Statistics .-Resident population:...
) are Yakuts
Yakuts
Yakuts , are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha Republic.The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages....
- 9,209 people (64.95%), Russians
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
- 3,425 people (24.16%), Evens
Evens
The Evens or Eveny are a people in Siberia and the Russian Far East. They live in some of the regions of the Magadan Oblast and Kamchatka Krai and northern parts of Sakha east of the Lena River. According to the 2002 census, there were 19,071 Evens in Russia...
- 809 people (5.71%), Ukrainians
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
- 235 people (1.66%), Evenks
Evenks
The Evenks are a Tungusic people of Northern Asia. In Russia, the Evenks are recognized as one of the Indigenous peoples of the Russian North, with a population of 35,527...
- 64 (0.45%), and other ethnicities - 436 people (3.07%). The median age is thirty years.
Economy
The leading industry is agriculture, with cattle, pig, horse breeding, reindeer husbandry, poultry farming, cellular farming, fisheries, mining and furs forming much of the main economic activity in the ulus. 59,200 hectares to arable land, with some 66.3% of this land being hayfields. Ulus has notable deposits of goldGold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
, silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
, lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
, zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
, gas
Gas
Gas is one of the three classical states of matter . Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point , boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons...
, coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
, and building materials. In 1998, upon the decision of the Russian Ministry of Energy
Ministry of Energy (Russia)
The Russian Ministry of Energy is, since 2008, the Russian federal ministry responsible for energy policy. The first and current minister is Sergei Shmatko....
, the Tsugaru coal mine was closed. In 2000, a fire broke out. In 2008, the Mastakhskoye gas-condensate field was in the final stages of development.
The ulus has a number of facilities such as printing houses, clubs, a theater in Kobyay, and vocational, educational, sports, and children's art schools.
Sangar Airport is the main airport in the district.