Osinsky

Osa takes its name from the river that joins the Angara west of Lake Baikal. The district was home to Buryat communities before Russian forts and settlements appeared in the seventeenth century. The river mouth became the site of an early Russian stockade, while a later settlement grew farther along the Osa.

During the first years of Russian expansion, the Osinsky stockade became a focus of conflict. Buryat forces besieged it in 1647 and took and burned it by the following spring. Later in the century, Buryats of the Ust-Kakha area sold land on the left bank of the Osa to two brothers who had come from the Ilim stockade with their families. A settlement grew from the house built by one of them, Khariton, giving rise to the Osinskaya sloboda.