Pevek (Russian: Певе́к; Chukchi: Пээкин / Пээк, Pèèkin / Pèèk) is an Arctic port town and the administrative center of Chaunsky District in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, located on Chaunskaya Bay (part of the East Siberian Sea) on a peninsula on the eastern side of the bay facing the Routan Islands, above the Arctic Circle, about 640 kilometers (400 mi) northwest of Anadyr, the administrative center of the autonomous okrug.

[12]Pevek is a modern settlement established after World War I to provide a port for the export of minerals as part of the expanding Northern Sea Route.

In recent years, many of the mines became unprofitable and have closed, causing many residents to move to more central regions in Russia and the port infrastructure to decay.

[2] This legend suggests a reason why when Russian explorers first discovered the bay, they did not find any settlement, as the Chukchi refused to settle in the region following the battle and only brought their animals to pasture in the summer.

[2] The area around Pevek was already known to Russians by the mid-18th century, as the records of the Great Northern Expedition document the discovery of Cape Shelag.

[2] The earliest records of the settlement of Pevek were made by the writer Tikhon Semushkin, who discovered a Chukchi hunting lodge and yaranga in 1926.

[2] By the mid-1930s, Pevek became an important port in the region, due to the natural harbor provided by Chaunskaya Bay, the expansion of the Northern Sea Route, and the discovery of tin at the Pyrkakay mine (which would later be renamed Krasnoarmeysky) 60 kilometers (37 mi) away.

[3] During the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the town's population dropped by more than half as commercial navigation in the Arctic declined, and people began to gravitate towards the central Russian regions.

[citation needed] The workforce for the mines that provided the Soviet Union with tin and uranium throughout the large parts of the 20th century were prisoners in the Gulag system.

[19] The port is not a significant exporter of goods at all and is mainly responsible for dealing with the import of fuel (coal from Beringovsky and oil from Europe and the United States) for the region, though in the second half of the 1990s even this activity rarely exceeded a few thousand tons, and in 1997, Mys Shmidta, traditionally the second most important of the northern Chukotkan ports, was handling nearly four times as much cargo.

For example, winter fuel bound for Pevek did not arrive until the end of November in 1998;[21] this is for a port whose average sailing season lasts only until October 25.

There is approximately 150 kilometers (93 mi) of year-round, paved roads going to local destinations such as the now abandoned settlement of Valkumey and the mines at Komsomolsky and Krasnoarmeysky.

[17] Pevek is described as the place of death of Edith Abramovna in Varlam Shalamov's short story "Descendant of a Decembrist".