Pelym, Garinsky District, Sverdlovsk Oblast

59°39′11″N 63°06′11″E / 59.653°N 63.103°E / 59.653; 63.103

Pelym (Пелым) is a former

Pelym River. It is part of Gari District, northeastern Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia

. In 2010, the village had 78 inhabitants.

Once considered "the gate to Siberia", Pelym owes its origin to a moving camp of Ablegirim, or Abdul Kerim, the last chieftain of the Vogul people.^[1] The Russians defeated him in an effort to pacify the Cherdyn Route, whereupon Ablegirim and his family were taken to Moscow as hostages. The fort of Pelym was built in 1592 on the site of his former residence by Prince Pyotr Gorchakov, a voivode from Cherdyn.

Pelym was one of the first Russian settlements east of the

Cherdyn Road from Europe. A makeshift timber fort was brought down the river from Upper Lozva to Pelym in 1597. The builders took with them the family of Ignaty Khripunov—the first Russians to be exiled to Siberia.^[2]

After the discovery of the much shorter

Michael I, Ernst Johann von Biron, and Burkhard Christoph von Münnich.^[3]

Modern Pelym still has a penal colony.