Koryak Okrug (; Koryak: , ''Cav’cәvaokrug''), or Koryakia (), was an administrative division with a special status within

Kamchatka Krai Kamchatka Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (a krai), situated in the Russian Far East. It is administratively part of the Far Eastern Federal District. Its administrative center and largest types of inhabited l ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. (Federal Constitutional Law #2-FKZ of July 12, 2006 ''On Creation of a New Federal Subject Within the Russian Federation as a Result of the Merger of Kamchatka Oblast and Koryak Autonomous Okrug''. Article 5) It was a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject
of

(an autonomous okrug of Kamchatka Oblast) from 1931Chaussonnet, p. 29 until July 1, 2007, when it merged with Kamchatka Oblast. Prior to the merger, it was called Koryak Autonomous Okrug (). Its

administrative center An administrative centre is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the central administration of a commune, is located. In countries with French as the administrative language, such as Belgiu ...

is the urban locality (an

urban-type settlement Urban-type settlement, abbreviated: ; , abbreviated: ; ; ; ; . is an official designation for lesser urbanized settlements, used in several Central and Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern European countries. The term was primarily used in the So ...

) of Palana. Population:

Demographics

As of the 2002 census,

Koryaks Koryaks () are an Indigenous people#North Asia, Indigenous people of the Russian Far East who live immediately north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Kamchatka Krai and inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea. The cultural borders of the Koryaks i ...

constituted about a quarter of the population. At the time, it had the smallest population of all the

federal subjects The federal subjects of Russia, also referred to as the subjects of the Russian Federation () or simply as the subjects of the federation (), are the constituent entities of Russia, its top-level political divisions. According to the Cons ...

, despite being ranked seventeenth in size, at , encompassing part of the northern half of

Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

Vital statistics

Ethnic groups

About 50.5% of the total population is indigenous, the

being the largest such group. They are, however, outnumbered by the ethnic

Russians Russians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian language, Russian, the most spoken Slavic languages, Slavic language. The majority of Russians adhere to Eastern Orthodox Church ...

Districts

Karaginsky District Karaginsky District () is an administrativeLaw #46 and municipalLaw #336-oz district (raion) of Koryak Okrug of Kamchatka Krai, Russia, one of the eleven in the krai. It is located in the northern central part of the krai. The area of the distric ...

* Olyutorsky District * Penzhinsky District *

Tigilsky District Tigilsky District () is an administrative district (raion) of Koryak Okrug of Kamchatka Krai, Russia, one of the eleven in the krai.Law #46 It is located in the west of the krai. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the rur ...

2006 earthquake

On April 20, 2006, Kamchatka Peninsula was struck by a major

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

. The 7.7-magnitude tremor had its epicenter near the village of Tilichiki. The Koryakia branch of the Ministry of Emergency Situations said some area residents were injured but there were no fatalities. The quake occurred at about noon local time Friday, so residents were awake and not caught in their beds. The

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

reported a series of at least fifty smaller aftershocks in the area and immediately offshore. They ranged from 4.1 to 6.5 magnitudes on the

Richter scale The Richter scale (), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and pr ...

. Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S.G.S. in

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

, said the quake was relatively shallow. He estimated that about 2,000 people live close enough to the epicenter to have felt its full force.

References

Notes

Sources

*Chaussonnet, Valerie (1995) ''Native Cultures of Alaska and Siberia. Arctic Studies Center''. Washington, D.C. 112p. {{Use mdy dates, date=March 2013 Former federal subjects of Russia Politics of the Koryak Autonomous Okrug Geography of Kamchatka Krai History of the Kamchatka Peninsula Kamchatka Krai States and territories established in 1931 Countries and territories where Russian is an official language