The XVII centery. Russia was looking lor new lands, new riches. Now it turned to the North-East. Detachments of daring people ventured to its far reaches along unbeaten tracks. Waterways presented the most convenient means of transport. It is from the upper reaches of the great Siberian river Lena, that the Yenisei sotnik (lieutenant of cossacks) Peter Beketov set out for his expedition. With a thirty person strong detachment he intended to thoroughly explore these places. One site appealed to him so much that he ordered his people to found an ostrog (a fortress) there. He named it Lensky. In Ills petition the sotnik wrote: "That very year, September, 25, according to His Majesty the Tsar and GRAND Duke of ALL Russia Mikhail Fyodorovich's UKAS (decree) 1 with my solders put up an ostrog on the Lena for Tsar to reign over the outlying lands and collect yasak (tax) and Yakut people to come and stay. Before that, there were no Tsar's ostrogs on the Lena or anywhere else in the land of Yakuts. Yet, the site turned out to be inconvenient: the river undermined the banks threatening to ovcrGow the ostrog. That is why the cossacks started constructing another settlement in 1643. Tills time a flat floodplain with green meadows was chosen for the site. The local people Yakuts (Sakha)' legend has it that long ago they came there from the South and settled there and their forefathers were Omogoi Bahai and AUai Bohotur. From that place Yakuts began to explore the spacious northern territory. The new ostrog was called Yakutsk. As fak back as 1638 Moscow Government was concerned about organizing the region "both welcome and large", so they established a self-dependent administrative unit - Yakut District. Thus the ostrog was no longer a small provincial town in Yenisei District, but the centre of the great territory covering all the Lena Basin. Inplacc of the ostrog there sprang up the town of Yakuts, which developed as a typical strategic, administrative and commercial center. The Yakut historian Professor F. G. Sofronov writes, "...by the middle of the XIX century, when the Amur Waterway exploration began and Primorye Territory with Nikolaycvsk as its center was formed, there was hardly any other town in. the Siberian North-East that could compete with Yakutsk. And, indeed, for over two centuries since it appeared on the map of Russia the town had been the starting point for a whole galaxy of daring explorers. Scmyon Dczhncv, Vladimir Atlasov, Vassily Poyarkov and Ycrofcy Khabarov started out for the unknown from here. Their expeditions discovered the strait between Asia and America, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Amur, tlic Arctic, and the Pacific Shores. All this enabled Russia to start communications with Asia's North-East, the Pacific Coast and islands and America. The North territory centre attractc< merchants. Russian merchants bartcrc manufactured goods for furs and marr and walrus tusks. To the town people Yakuts were selling meat, butter, gam furs which they had bartered or had b from Evcnk hunters. In the XVIII and early XIX ccntur Yakutsk was the place of regular fairs. Merchants and their agents brought t manufactured goods and foodstutfs ai them to fairs over the whole of Asia's North-East, including the Arctic and Pacific coasts. F. Wrangel, who headed a geographic expedition, wrote in 1820: "Yakutsk, as is well known, is a concentration of a major part of North Siberia trade. From Anabar to the Bering Strait, from the Arctic coastline to the Aldan Mountain Range near Olyokma, from Udsky Ostrog, even from Okhotsk and Kamchatka, the territory of several thousand vests (3500 feet) in circumference, there are taken to this town valuable and various simple goods as well as walrus teeth and the enigmatic mammoth tusks." The fact tliat Yakutia became part of Russia had great historic importance, Yakuts as well as other nations in the northern land followed the path of political, economic, and cultural rapproachement with the peoples of Russia. The local people began to cultivate the land. The Russians helped then to master carpentry, as a result of which four-walled, flat-roofed huts were built instead of yourtas (nomad's tent). Yasak, which was collected by the state, in turn gave impetus to trade. Yakuts sold animal products and bought manufactured goods and bread. Extremely hard climatic conditions and the remoteness made Yakutia and its capital play the role of a "prison without bars"

При составлении данной странички использовались материалы фотоальбомов: "Город на Лене", редактор А.А.Егоров, 1982; "Город Якутск", составители А.Д.Сыроватский и С.Е.Мостахов, 1982; "Якутск". Редактор В.Осадчий, 1993; "Якутск приветствует гостей",составитель Н.С.Толбонова, 1999; фотографии А.Фаламова, В.Яковлева, Е.Порядина, В.Назимова, фотографии друзей и сослуживцев, фотографии из личного семейного фотоальбома.