Pevek (; Chukchi: , Pèèkin / Pèèk) is an Arctic port town and the administrative center of Chaunsky District in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, located on Chaunskaya Bay (part of the East Siberian Sea) on a peninsula on the eastern side of the bay facing the Routan Islands, above the Arctic Circle, about northwest of Anadyr, the administrative center of the autonomous okrug. Population:
Pevek is a modern settlement established after World War I to provide a port for the export of minerals as part of the expanding Northern Sea Route. During the 1940s and 1950s, the area surrounding Pevek was the site of several gulags where prisoners mined uranium. In recent years, many of the mines became unprofitable and have closed, causing many residents to move to more central regions in Russia and the port infrastructure to decay.
Pevek is the present location of the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant, which carries two marine-type KLT-40S nuclear reactors generating 35 megawatts of electricity each.
Etymology
There are two theories for the origin of the town's name. The first is that it is derived from the Chukchi word for fat; it was originally named for the nearby hill Peekin'ey, meaning "swollen mountain". The more macabre theory is that the name is derived from the Chukchi word "Pagytkenay", meaning "smelly mountain". Legend has it that a battle was fought on the site of the modern town between the local Chukchi and Yukaghir peoples. At the time, there was no tradition of burying the dead among the indigenous people, so the odor of rotting flesh was present for a long time. This legend suggests a reason why when Russian explorers first discovered the bay, they did not find any settlement, as the Chukchi refused to settle in the region following the battle and only brought their animals to pasture in the summer.
History
18th and 19th centuries
The area around Pevek was already known to Russians by the mid-18th century, as the records of the Great Northern Expedition document the discovery of Cape Shelag. Further references to the cape were made in the records of the Billings expedition, with Russian explorers first describing Chaunskaya Bay in the 1760s.
20th century
The earliest records of the settlement of Pevek were made by the writer Tikhon Semushkin, who discovered a Chukchi hunting lodge and yaranga in 1926. By the mid-1930s, Pevek became an important port in the region, due to the natural harbor provided by Chaunskaya Bay, the expansion of the Northern Sea Route, and the discovery of tin at the Pyrkakay mine (which would later be renamed Krasnoarmeysky) away. The discovery of minerals throughout this region meant Pevek had an important part to play in importing the required plant and machinery and exporting the extracted minerals and by 1950, the settlement had nearly 1,500 permanent residents. On April 6, 1967, Pevek was granted town status.
During the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the town's population dropped by more than half as commercial navigation in the Arctic went into decline and people began to gravitate towards the central Russian regions. More or less regular shipping is presently to be found only from Murmansk to Dudinka in the west and between Vladivostok and Pevek in the east. Ports between Dudinka and Pevek have virtually no shipping.
21st century
It has been suggested that in 2023, the population has dropped to 25% from it's previous level and town is practically deserted. Though these claims are based on anecdotal evidence, it's in line with the Russian census from 2021 that verifies significant drop in population in Chukotka.
Gulag
The workforce for the mines that provided the Soviet Union with tin and uranium throughout the large parts of the 20th century were prisoners in the Gulag system. There was a network of camps in the region itself, through which an uncertain number of criminal and political prisoners passed. There are the remains of two large camps, "North" and "West", which continued to supply uranium during and after World War II. Barracks dot the landscape and have the appearance of being hastily abandoned. Large graveyards on the edge of the various encampments show that a large proportion of those sent to work in the mines did not survive.
Administrative and municipal status
Within the framework of administrative divisions, Pevek serves as the administrative center of Chaunsky District, to which it is directly subordinated. As a municipal division, the town of Pevek is, together with two rural localities (the selos of Apapelgino and Yanranay) incorporated within Chaunsky Municipal District as Pevek Urban Settlement.