Описание (английский)
Russkoye Ustye is a rural locality (a selo), the only inhabited locality, and the administrative center of Russko-Ustinsky Rural Okrug of Allaikhovsky District in the Sakha Republic, Russia, located 120 kilometers (75 mi) from Chokurdakh, the administrative center of the district. Its population as of the 2010 Census was 157, down from 181 recorded during the 2002 Census. For several decades during the Soviet era, it was officially called Polyarnoye.
Russkoye Ustye was settled several centuries ago by ethnic Russians, who mixed to some extent with the indigenous Even people.
As no agriculture is possible at this Arctic location, they developed
an economy based on hunting, fishing, and trapping. Since the place is
north of the Arctic tree line, driftwood brought by the Indigirka was used for construction and for firewood.
Due to the remarkable geographic isolation of the settlement, its
residents preserved much of their ancestors' beliefs, customs, and
folklore into the 19th and 20th century, which made Russkoye Ustye a
favorite destination for Russian ethnographers and cultural
anthropologists. Linguists visited the place to study the local dialect of Russian, strongly influenced by the Even language.
It is speculated that the original settlers, possibly of Pomor origin, arrived to the delta
of the Indigirka as early as the first half of the 17th century. More
skeptical researchers believe that the second half of the 17th century
would be a more likely time for the initial settlement. According to a locally recorded legend, the villagers' ancestors originally left European Russia during Ivan the Terrible's
persecution campaigns in the late 16th century, although, as Rasputin
suggests, reaching the Indigirka may have taken them a long time.
The first known record of the community of Russkoye Ustye is in the reports of the explorer Dmitry Laptev, who had to spend a winter there in 1739 when his boat was stuck in the ice.
A Socialist Revolutionary Vladimir Zenzinov gave an account of his visit in the early 1900s during his Siberian exile.
It was only between 1928 (when a schoolhouse was built and a
schoolteacher arrived from the outside world) and the 1960s (the arrival
of helicopters) that Russkoye Ustye became reconnected, to an extent,
with the "mainland" culture and integrated into the national economy.
The pelts of Arctic fox became the principal product sold by the residents to the outside world.
Historically, the peoples of Russkoye Ustye were spread out over tens
of kilometers, living in solitary houses or tiny hamlets of three to
four houses (there were six houses in the hamlet where Zenzinov stayed).
Around 1940–1942, the authorities arranged for them to move into a
single localion, which was given the name Polyarnoye. However, the
inhabitants continued to refer to it colloquially as Russkoye Ustye, and this name was officially restored in 1988.
A Siberian writer, Valentin Rasputin, dedicated a chapter of his non-fiction book, "Siberia, Siberia"
(originally published in 1991) to the people of this isolated
traditional community. Even though the locals "seemed to be fashioned
entirely out of prejudice", he favorably compares their ability to pass moral judgments with the moral relativism of the modern people.