The region history

Yar-Sale, the center of Yamalsky region, is a small transpolar township situated in the southern part of Yamal peninsula, on a bank of the Malaya Yumba, a tributary of the affluent Ob. You can find it on a sandy cape, which is the evidence of its Nenets name: 'Yar-Sale' - 'sandy cape'.
A small area of dry land where there is a regional center is reminiscent of a congealed amber drop in a silver setting of cold northern waters. This is the poetic description of the township by one of the authors of a verse about Yar-Sale.

The dry high place was suitable for people to settle here. Moreover, it was a significant historical center on the crossing of the routes laid by the indigenous population.

Since long ago the area where the township is located today has attracted attention of manufacturers, fish traders, and merchants, thanks to the abundance of 'soft stuff' - fish, furs, and deers. There was goods exchange between Russian manufacturers and locals; in exchange to their goods, locals got products from metal, textile, finery, and other necessary things.

At the end of the nineteenth century fish manufacturer Trofimov carried on his business here traveling around Yamal shores on his schooner and collecting furs from the Nenets for trifling sums. In his household the merchant kept a few cows, sheep, horses, fowls, and even managed to grow potatoes in this region and get good yield.

The echoes of the events of 1917 reached the vast Yamal expanses - Soviet power started its setting in tundra. Opening of trading stations made a link between the peninsula and the continent and put a start to radical changes in Yamal. Trading stations played a key part in not only providing the locals with basic consumer goods, but were also the means involving the region into economic and political life of the state. Here, where tundra inhabitants mainly gathered, raising public awareness agitation work took place.

The first trading station of the region - Yarsalinskaya - started its work in 1927. The name of one of the first station traders - Alexey Fyodorovich Fyodorov - is well-know to all the contemporary inhabitants of Yar-Sale: one of the township streets was named after him.

After the civil war and the final setting of Soviet power all over Russia, the government was faced with the problem of taking action to overcome the economic underdevelopment among the peoples of the North. In the 20s it started a dynamic search for some compromise forms of administrative arrangement in the northern regions, as well as control over the peoples of the North using the guidelines of the Soviet development. The centralized system of the Soviets went very well with the elements of traditional self-administration in so-called tribal and aboriginal Soviets.

At trading stations, which were united in a whole chain in Yamal by the time, representatives of regional authorities were fully engaged in work to get ready to carry on the elections. All the buyers at trading stations received special voting notifications.

From 14 to 22 December the first elections to tribal Soviets of South Yamal took place. To take part in the regional indigenous nomadic congress, representatives of tribes Khudi, Khorolya, Yaptic, Vanuyto, Yezyngi, Serotetto, Okotetto had been elected.

On December 29, 1927, at Yar-Sale trading station the second regional congress of indigenous tribal Soviets of Yamalian tundra took place. For the first time in the papers of the Soviet period, in the minutes to this congress in particular, Yar-Sale trading station was mentioned.

Some time later, tribal Soviets were changed to territorial subdivisions. In accordance with the Resolution of All-Russia General Executive Committee About Organization of National Unions in the Areas of Settlement of Indigenous Population of the North, d/d December 10, 1930, Yamalsky region was founded. Yamaslky regional executive committee took control over the territory sprawling from the island Bely in the north to Yamburg fisheries in the south, and from Baydaratskaya Bay in the west to the right bank of the Ob in the east, including the territory from Salemal to the township of Khe.

The 30s got to be a time of great changes for all the northern territories and for Yamal in particular - changes in cultural life, construction of schools, hospitals, medical centers, emergence of written language and printed matter in the native language.

In 1932 Yar-Sale opens a cultural and educational center. All the events arranged by its staff were targeted at carrying out the development of collectivization on the peninsula territory, as well as the arrangement and household development of the simplest production associations. Besides, one of the key tasks of Yar-Sale cultural and educational center was to increase cultural and political level of indigenous population, to improve education and health care on the peninsula. The first teachers, cultural workers, doctors, and other specialists coming to Yamal at the time become the guides to a new culture and another lifestyle.

Talking of the work of Yamal cultural and educational center, we can not help mentioning a few words about a person who put himself on good record in its history. It was Mikhail Mitrofanovich Brodnev - the head of the cultural and educational center from 1935 to 1937. He was arrested during repressions, ousted from the party, and was on trial till 1939. Then he was set free as the charge was dismissed. Later, he worked as a professor at Salekhard Deer Breeding Training College and culture-educative school, and from 1942 to the 1950s he was the Chair Assistant, and later - the Chair of the district executive committee.

The war of 1941-1945 came to be a furnace for all the peoples of our multinational state. To fight the fascists, all the strength was mustered. Men went up the line, leaving their wives, sisters, and younger brothers instead, but the main workforce in the region at the time got to be special in-migrants.

One of the most tragic moments in the country history was the time when the consequences of mass collectivization emerged. Many hundred thousand families were declared to be kulaki (rich peasants exploiting others), were deprived of everything they'd earned, and sent to backwoods of the far north.

They were brought to their destinations by barges. Exiled settlers had to build dugouts and barracks to live in; a lot of them settled in huts. These were mainly the Povolzhye Germans, the Ukrainians, the Byelorussians, and the Moldavians. In 1942 only, 1,675 people were exiled to the territory of Yamalsky region. The cheap workforce was used to build the townships of Puyko, Novy Port, Seyakha. The back-breaking labor of in-migrants helped the country economy develop.

All in all, during the Great Patriotic War years 1,222 Yamal inhabitants were conscripted to the front. Contemporaries do keep the memories of those who, at the cost of their lives, defended their native land during the war years. On the granite monument set in the green park near the school building there is a record of the names of Yamal soldiers who never returned from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. On celebration days and memorable dates the eternal light is set at its foot; it's a place to visit for Yar-Sale inhabitants and its guests, where they place bouquets and pay tribute to the memory of those who died fighting for out prosperity.

The war had a bad effect on all the spheres of life. A lot of Yamalians able to work left for the front and never came back. The population welfare went down significantly. Many years were needed to regulate the region economy afterwards.

Until the middle of the 30s the key activity of all collective unions was fishing. With time, cooperation took roots in other fields. Combined production crews were created.

After functioning for three decades, diversified crews evolved into kolkhozes. In 1959 Lenin kolkhoz counted 163 deer farms; 43 families lived a settled life in houses.

Yamal agriculture of the 60s was noted with emergence of Soviet households. It was a time when deer farming of Yar-Sale tundra was concentrated in sovkhoz Yarsalinsky. The reinstated household counted 27,200 deer units, 338 animal units, and 43 cattle units. Dmitry Nikolayevich Kugayevsky was appointed as the sovkhoz head. The household successfully functioned under his command for 28 years. Nikolay Dmitrievich is a holder of The Red Order of Labor and The Order of Honor.

20 years later, at the beginning of the 80s, the household counted 28,500 deers, 550 animal units of the foundation stock of the blue and silver fox. Up to 7,300 centners of meat and 3,500 kilos of cow milk was delivered to the state. The fur farm brought the net profit of 30,000 rubles per year. The sovkhoz workers, as well as its subdivisions, were awarded with red challenge banners, certificates and diplomas of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and the Cabinet Council of the USSR.

Today on the territory of the regional center there is municipal unitary deer farming enterprise Yarsalinskoye, which unites 20 deer farming teams. Deer livestock, altogether with private farms, counts about 100,000. The enterprise employs 380 reindeer-breeders, hunters, and fishermen. In the nearest future a new modularized slaughter and venison processing center will be launched, its capacity allowing to process up to 20 tons of meat per season.

The period of active geological survey expeditions on the peninsula territory fell upon the 70s. In Yamal region worked Yamalskaya expedition of deep oil-and-gas exploration drilling, Karskaya expedition of deep exploration drilling, Tambeyskaya expedition of deep exploration drilling, Zapolyarnaya geophysical expedition.

On the territory of Yamalsky region municipality large deposits of oil, gas, and gas condensate have been discovered. According to initial estimations, gas reserves count 13 trillion cubic meters. Kharasaveyskoye and Bovanenkovskoye gas-condensate and Novoportovskoye oil-and-gas-condensate deposits stand for the strategic importance of the territory for the autonomous district economy, which opens wide industrial development prospects for Yamalsky region.

The far polar township has changed greatly in seven and a half decades of its existence. Today Yar-Sale carries on growing and developing. As evidence to this fact, there are concrete roads, new housing buildings, and stores. The building of the region recreation center, the buildings of the polyclinic and the common department of Yar-Sale central regional hospital came to look modern now. Squares and parks have been laid out around the institutions of culture and education. Waste water treatment plants have been launched. This all is the result of active work of the program by the Governor of Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District Renaissance of Regional Centers.

The questions of constriction, road facilities, transport, connection, and agriculture in the municipality are under charge of the region administration. Under its competence there is also providing of social protection of the population, organizing health care and education systems, as well as supporting the population living traditional lifestyle. The region administration is responsible for municipal property; it sets and allocates the local budget. Yamalsky region land and local nature resources are also under its supervision. The region administration is consistent of 27 departments.

In 2001 Andrey Nikolayevich Kugayevsky was elected as the head of the municipality of Yamalsky region. He is the person to set the key policies of the region administration through his deputies, the heads of administrations of village Soviets.

Heading a big agricultural region is not easy. Andrey Nikolayevich has a habit of corresponding with high standards of glorious labor traditions of the elderly generation of the Kugayevskiye. That means not to spare himself, to take weighted and thoroughly thought over decisions, to see and be aware of the region development prospects. In his work, Andrey Nikolayevich follows the motto: 'You should work the way to be able to deserve respect of the people who elected you and to live up to their expectations'.

In 2001 Yamalsky regional museum of local lore, history and economy was 10 years old. It was founded on August 27, 1991, by Gennady Stepanovich Zaytsev on the basis of a school museum of Yamal boarding school.

The main stock of the regional museum of local lore, history and economy consists of seven thousand objects. These are archaeological evidence, archives, and ethnographic materials. The museum is active arranging tens of exhibitions, publishing hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines and scientific journals, organizing archaeological and ethnographic expeditions. It is annually visited by about a thousand people; over 50 percent of them are schoolchildren. In ten years of work, the museum became famous not only in Yamal; it has contacts with researchers from Moscow, Tomsk, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Tobolsk, the USA, Finland, and Germany.

Yar-Sale is a heart of the public life of the region. It was the place where, at the beginning of the 90s, started the revival and setting up of the Cossacks in Yamal. The district and regional communities are headed by a Cossack colonel, a chieftain of Obsko-Polyarnaya Cossack line, Gennady Stepanovich Zaytsev. Yamalsky Cossack region counts about 70 Cossacks, and Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District - about 7,000. Coming to life in new economic conditions, the Cossack community is united with the common goal - serving their homeland.