Zashiversk

Zashiversk (Russian: Зашиверск; Yakut: Зашиверскай, romanized: Zaşiverskay) was a town north of the Arctic circle in what is now the Sakha Republic (formerly Yakutia), Russia.

Spaso-Zashiverskaya church (built 1700) was moved to Novosibirsk by Alexey Okladnikov, and now it exhibited at the Museum of the Archeological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science.

From the end of the Time of Troubles small groups of Russians penetrated and colonized the Far Eastern Arctic, in two distinct waves originating from White Sea area and from the Ural Mountains.

[1] Postnik reported abundance of valuable sable and fish, significant population of native settlers and nomads as well as silver possessed by the Yukagirs; the voyevoda of Yakutsk responded with establishment of a permanent colony to exploit the opportunity.

In 1786 its organic growth was boosted by establishment of uezd administration; influx of government bureaucrats and their servants temporarily made it a proper town with a city hall, prison, police force of thirty cossacks and a tavern.

[7] This prosperity was recorded in detail by explorers Gavril Sarychev and Joseph Billings who also noted hospitality of local ispravnik Ivan Banner,[7] an ethnic Dane in Russian service.

[6] He preached in the Arctic for sixty years, converted around 15 thousand natives, and was still able to cross his enormous parish on horseback and hunt wild game in the mountains.

"[11] He recorded seven single-person households: two clergymen, a widow, two non-commissioned officers, a postmaster and a trader: "I have seen a merchant ship with sixteen guns and only fifteen men, but I never before saw a town with only seven inhabitants".

[16] According to George Kennan, in 1879 the bureaucracy believed that the deserted town still existed, and dispatched Hermann Schiller, a political exile from Poltava, on a 3,700 mile march on foot to Zashiversk.

[15] A second expedition, in 1971, carefully disassembled the log structure (recruiting curious helicopter pilots to pull up the whole tented roof assembly) and shipped the parts to Akademgorodok.

[15] Okladnikov and his colleagues Gogolev and Ashchepkov authored the definitive academic book on the subject, Ancient Zashiversk (Древний Зашиверск), printed by Nauka in 1977.