The Evens of Yakutia in the Twentieth Century: Population Dynamics and Changes in Settlement

The article examines the dynamics of the number and change of settlement of the Evens of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the twentieth century. The study was based on published and unpublished sources. The unpublished sources, primary archival materials of population censuses at the local level, were extracted from the funds of the National Archive of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the Russian State Archive of Economics. The published sources were collections of statistics on censuses' results from the official website of state statistics institutions. Changes in the administrative-territorial borders of Yakutia in the twentieth century led to changes in the number and ethnic composition of the population, in both absolute and relative terms. The main aim of the study was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the number of the Evens population in the twentieth century in the areas of their settlements in Yakutia. It is revealed that most of the Evens live in the territory of 21 districts in 36 settlements today. The scientific novelty of the article is the map of the Evens' settlement in Yakutia made by the author of the article using ArcGIS. Due to the fact that ethnographic maps of different parts of the territory only show the majority of one nationality, the current ethnic maps of the settlement of the peoples of Yakutia do not give a complete picture of the national composition of the population, in particular, of the Evens. In the ethnic maps of the peoples of Yakutia, the Evens' settlement areas are not indicated in the areas where the Russian or Yakut population are predominant. The author made the map including 14 local areas of the Evens settlement, which were not previously displayed in the ethnic maps of Yakutia. Areas of the Evens' local settlement were grouped on the basis of the classification of the Even language developed by the researchers of the Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The comparison of the Evens' settlements with the areas of the Even language dialects in the map showed that they explored the territory along the basins of large rivers. In general, the study suggests that the current settlement of the Evens in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is geographically dispersed areas of their local groups. These local areas were mainly formed in the early twentieth century and are located in the northeastern districts of the Republic.

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