Yakuts

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Yakuts, self-designation: Sakha, are a Turkic people associated with the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.

The Yakut or Sakha language belongs to the Northern branch of the Turkic family of languages. There are about 444,000 speakers mainly in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taimyr and Evenki Autonomous Districts. Yakuts makes up about 45% of population in Yakutia; their share lowered due to policies during the Soviet rule. Yakut language is considered to be somewhat less endangered than most other regional languages of Russian Federation however.

Most scholars believe the Yakuts originally migrated from the region of Lake Baikal to the basins of the Middle Lena, the Aldan and Vilyuy rivers, where they mixed with other northern indigenous peoples of Russia such as the Evens and Evenks.

The northern Yakuts were largely hunters, fishermen and reindeer herders, while the southern Yakut raised cattle and horses. Both groups lived in yurts and led a semi-nomadic life moving from winter to summer camps each year.

In the 1620s Russians began to move into their territory, annexed Yakutia, imposed a fur tax, and managed to suppress several Yakut rebellions between 1634 and 1642. The discovery of gold and, later, the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, brought ever-increasing numbers of Russians into the region. By the 1820s almost all the Yakuts had been converted to the Russian Orthodox church although they retained, and still retain, a number of shamanistic practices.

In 1919 the new Soviet government named the area the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

Stalin's policy of collectivisation, which began in 1928, was responsible for many thousands of deaths, from which Yakut society did not really begin to recover until the 1960s.

An independent Yakut Republic was declared by the Supreme Soviet of Yakutia on 15 August, 1991 but, as the Russians greatly outnumbered the Yakuts in the region, this never became a reality.

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