Minusinsk is a historic town in Krasnoyarsk Krai

Krasnoyarsk Krai

Krasnoyarsk Krai is a federal subject of Russia . It is the second largest federal subject after the Sakha Republic, and Russia's largest krai, occupying an area of , which is 13% of the country's total territory. The administrative center of the krai is the city of Krasnoyarsk...

, 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...

. It serves as the administrative center of Minusinsky District, although it is not administratively a part of it. Population: 44,500 (1973).

Minusinsk marks the center of the Minusinsk Depression, probably the most important archaeological area north of Pazyryk

Pazyryk

The Pazyryk burials are a number of Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.The tombs are Scythian kurgans, that is...

. It is associated with the Afanasevo

Afanasevo culture

The Afanasevo culture, traditionally dated to 2500–2000 BC , is an archaeological culture of the late copper and early Bronze Age of southern Siberia....

, Tashtyk

Tashtyk culture

Tashtyk culture was an archaeological culture that flourished in the Yenisei valley from the first to the fourth century CE, perhaps equivalent to the Yenisei Kirghiz...

, and Tagar culture

Tagar culture

Tagar culture was a Bronze Age archeological culture which flourished between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC in South Siberia...

s—all of them named after settlements in the vicinity of Minusinsk.

The Russian settlement of Minyusinskoye was founded in 1739, at the confluence

Confluence

Confluence, in geography, describes the meeting of two or more bodies of water.Confluence may also refer to:* Confluence , a property of term rewriting systems...

 of the Minusa River with the Yenisei

Yenisei River

Yenisei , also written as Yenisey, is the largest river system flowing to the Arctic Ocean. It is the central of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean...

. The Turkic

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

 Min Usa means "my brook", or "thousand rivers". The name transformed to Minusinskoye in 1810.

By 1822, the settlement had emerged as a regional center of farming and transit

Transit

-Transportation:* Ford Transit, a van made by the Ford Motor Company* Mass transit, public transport systems in which passengers are carried in large numbers* Navigational transit, when a navigator observes two fixed reference points in line...

 trade

Trade

Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...

 and was incorporated as the town of Minusinsk. During the 19th century, it was a node of cultural activities for a very large area. The Martyanov Natural History Museum was opened there in 1877.

The town was also a place of political exile

Exile

Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

. Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

 used to visit Minusinsk on numerous occasions when he was in exile in the nearby village of Shushenskoye

Shushenskoye

Shushenskoye is an urban locality in the southern portion of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Yenisei and Big Shush. Population:...

 between 1897 and 1900. During the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

, Minusinsk was the setting of the Minusinsk Rebellion in 1918.