Viliuisk

a city; administrative center of Viliuisk Raion, Yakut ASSR. Harbor on the right bank of the Viliui River (a tributary of the Lena); 610 km northwest of Yakutsk. Population, 6,700 (1969). Viliuisk has a pedagogical school and a museum of local lore. The city was founded in 1634. From 1872 to 1883, N. G. Chernyshevskii lived in exile in Viliuisk. There is livestock breeding as well as the fur trade in the raion. Deposits of natural gas have been discovered here.