Word: yakutia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...lands east of the Urals--an area that covers more than 5 million sq. mi. Within these boundaries are nearly the entire lengths of four of the longest rivers on earth--the Yenisey, the Ob, the Lena and the Amur, which constitutes most of Siberia's border with China. Yakutia, now designated the Sakha Republic and the largest of Siberia's dozens of political divisions, is more than seven times the size of California. Magadan is three times; Krasnoyarsk is nearly six Californias. The entire region is frigid in winter. Oimyakon in Yakutia is often cited as the coldest inhabited...
...former Soviet Union, fourth in diamond production, smuggling is on the rise in part because of the breakdown of law and order that accompanied communism's collapse. For years it was an open secret that communist Party and KGB officials pilfered diamonds from mine operations in Yakutia. Now that the old communists have fallen on hard times, millions of dollars' worth of their ill-gotten diamonds appear to be making their way into Western salesrooms. According to Mikhail Gurtovoi, the head of a Russian government anticorruption unit, large batches of illegally acquired Russian diamonds are turning up in Belgium...
...issued an order to all government institutions and local authorities to stop hoarding goods and fulfill contracts for delivery. The order, however, looks unenforceable. Meanwhile, new problems keep piling up: a threat of another coal miners' strike and a declaration of economic sovereignty by the Far Eastern region of Yakutia, a part of the Russian Republic. No wonder rumormongering is so popular. Gossipy speculation can be a welcome relief from grim reality...