Taltsy Museum Irkutsk Ostrog Tower 200007280018

Ilimsk () was a small town in Siberia, within today's

Irkutsk Oblast Irkutsk Oblast (; ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of the Angara River, Angara, Lena River, Lena, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska Rivers. The administrative center is ...

of Russia. The town was flooded by the Ust-Ilimsk Reservoir in the mid-1970s. Kitchen-21-Russia-Angara-2815

Ilimsk was founded in 1630 on the Ilim River, a tributary of the Angara River, as Ilimsky Ostrog (i.e., "Fort Ilim"). From here a portage ran east to the Kuta River which joins the

Lena River The Lena is a river in the Russian Far East and is the easternmost river of the three great rivers of Siberia which flow into the Arctic Ocean, the others being Ob (river), Ob and Yenisey. The Lena River is long and has a capacious drainage basi ...

at Ust-Kut, thereby allowing travel from the

Yenisei River The Yenisey or Yenisei ( ; , ) is the list of rivers by length, fifth-longest river system in the world, and the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mungaragiyn-gol in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course through Lake Baikal a ...

basin to that of the

. In early times the Ilimsk Uyezd was one of the few grain-producing areas in Siberia. Around 1700 there were 280 settlements, including seven ostrogs. In 1745 there were 7,605 peasants. Much of the grain was shipped down the Lena to feed the Okhotsk Coast and other areas in eastern Siberia. Grain production shifted south as the area around Irkutsk became more settled. From 1764 to 1775 the town was the administrative center of a district (''okrug'') and had population of around 700 by the end of the 19th century. Alexander Radishchev was exiled to Ilimsk between 1792 and 1796. His wife had died, and her sister joined Radishchev in Ilimsk, bringing his younger children with her. Radishchev later married her, while still in Ilimsk. After the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

of 1917, Ilimsk became a village (''selo''). In the mid 1970s, after the construction of the Ust-Ilimsk Dam () on the Angara at Ust-Ilimsk (below the fall of the Ilim into the Angara), the site of the village was flooded by the Ust-Ilimsk Reservoir. Before the site was flooded, archaeological excavations were carried out in the village during 1967–75; the Spasskaya Tower and the Church of Our Lady of Kazan from the old ''ostrog'' (wooden fort) were taken apart and moved to the Taltsy Museum (), an open-air museum of traditional architecture near

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and , ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 587,891 Irkutsk is the List of cities and towns in Russ ...

. In the early 2000s, an exact copy of another tower of the former Ilimsk ''ostrog'' and the southern wall of the fortress were built at the Taltsy site next to the buildings moved from Ilimsk, thus recreating a large portion of the historic fortified town within easy reach from Irkutsk.В "Тальцах" завершается реконструкция южной стены Илимского острога
(Re-creation of the southern wall of the Ilimsk ''ostrog'' in the Taltsy Museum is approaching its completion)

References

(Ilimsky Ostrog) {{Authority control Defunct towns in Russia Geography of Irkutsk Oblast Submerged places Former populated places in Russia Irkutsk Governorate