Verkhoyansk

Verkhoyansk is a town in Verkhoyansky Uluus of the Sakha Republic, Russia, situated on the Yana River, near the Arctic Circle, 675 kilometers (419 mi) from Yakutsk.

Cossacks founded an ostrog in 1638, 90 kilometers (56 mi) southwest of the modern town. In 1775, it was moved to the left bank of the Yana River, to facilitate tax collection. It was granted town status in 1817. Between the 1860s and 1917, the town was a place of political exile, with some of the more prominent exiles including the Polish writer Wacław Sieroszewski, as well as Bolshevik revolutionaries Ivan Babushkin and Viktor Nogin.