Yakutiia [Якутия]. An autonomous republic in northeastern Siberia and the largest member of the Russian Federation. Until 1991 it was known as the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (est 1922). Its territory covers 3,083,523 sq km, and its population in 2025 was 1,006,561. The capital is Yakutsk.

In 1989 Ukrainians accounted for 7 percent of Yakutiia’s population. They were predominantly highly skilled specialists who worked there on a temporary basis. There are also exiles or descendants of exiles deported there by the Soviet or the tsarist regime as far back as the 17th century. In 1990 the Ukrainian community in Yakutiia set up the Shevchenko Social and Cultural Association in Yakutsk. Its president was V. Taniuk, Yakutiia’s deputy minister of culture.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]