Ayano-Maysky District

Ayano-Maisky District (Аяно-Майский in Russian), one of the distant corners of the Russian Far North is located between 55 26’ and 59 32’ N. latitude and 130 56’ and 140 32’ E. longitude.

History

In the 17th century shortly after Yakutsk was made a gubernatorial administrative unit, the exploration of the Ayano Maisky District had a twofold goal. Yakutsk gubernatorial officials through eastward expansion sought to come up with new sources of tribute for the Tsar’s treasury while at the same time to find a shorter, more convenient passage to the Okhotsk Sea, in order to continue to care for the needs of rich Russian colonies in the Far East and North America.

In 1639 under the leadership of Ivan Moskvitin, a group of Russian explorers through Ayano-Mayskiy district for the first time reached the Sea of Okhotsk.

In the first half of the 19th century the Russian-American Company became the first trading company in the region with its merchant office located in the port of Okhotsk.

In 1842 the Company decided to find a better, more advantageous spot for a sea port. Consequently, in 1845 the Russian American Company’s merchant office was moved to Ayan.

In 1850 the government decided to move the entire port of Okhotsk to Ayan as well, as it considered it to be the best seaport in all of the Sea of Okhotsk.

                                        
                                                      Port Ayan in the early 20th century

The following years Ayan was frequently visited by many people of science, teaching and medical profession.

After the sale of the Russian North American territories however, life here was virtually brought to a standstill. By 1867 the Russian-American Company was no longer in business. Many leading experts of diverse profession joined the exodus of merchants that had discontinued commercial traffic resulting from the trade in the region.

In the last decades of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century care and support of this district amounted to a few steamships a year dispatched from Vladivostok that brought flour, sugar and household supplies.

Sakha(Yakutia) officially did not seek to develop trade partnership with the district, though privately, by rare random visits, obtained timber, fur, gold etc.

When the soviet government arrived here in 1923 it found its indigenous inhabitants at what they had been experts in for centuries,in order to survive - reindeer herding, hunting and fishing. Some of the Evenki people had even formed big family clans that owned herds, numbering thousands of reindeer heads,and vast hunting grounds. Overall though, the district had remained a wild frontier with poor and uneducated populace.

In 1923 at the port of Ayan the Red Army defeated a small pocket of resistance from the White Army.

The last shots aimed at ridding the region of the old imperial rule of Tsarist Russia were fired in 1927 during the liberation of Nelkan settlement.

By decree of the soviet government the Ayano-Maisky District was formed in 1930 by combining two areas - Ayan and Nelkan.Ayan was assigned a role of being the administrative center.

In the 1930-s the soviet government began forming state and collective farms, opened local schools and hospitals, amateur musical clubs and otherwise encouraged the Evenks to switch from their nomadic lifestyle to a settled way of life.

In 1936, for example a local farmers’ market was opened with a view of bringing locals together. State farm workers and private small farm owners sold their meat, wild game, fish, berries, mushrooms etc.