The smallest town in Russia by area is Kurilsk, on Iturup Island, at roughly 3 km². Chekalin in Tula Oblast follows at 5.42 km², then Innopolis (12 km²), Verkhoyansk (25 km²) and Vysotsk (39.81 km²). Those figures come from a profile of Russia’s smallest cities published by ITMO University, the closest thing to a sourced ranking that exists.
One caveat before the list. “Area” here means the town’s own limits, not the surrounding municipal district. Russian districts are often hundreds or thousands of square kilometres of forest, tundra and farmland. Use the district figure and the ranking changes completely.
Table of contents
- The ranking at a glance
- Kurilsk
- Chekalin
- Innopolis
- Verkhoyansk
- Vysotsk
- Why area and population give different answers
- Why the sources disagree
- FAQ
The ranking at a glance
| Rank | Town | Region | Area (km²) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kurilsk | Sakhalin Oblast (Iturup Island) | about 3 |
| 2 | Chekalin | Tula Oblast | 5.42 |
| 3 | Innopolis | Republic of Tatarstan | 12 |
| 4 | Verkhoyansk | Sakha Republic (Yakutia) | 25 |
| 5 | Vysotsk | Leningrad Oblast | 39.81 |
Five towns is a short list, and that’s deliberate. Published sources only give clean area figures for these. Anything beyond them would be guesswork, and most “smallest towns” lists online fill the gap by quietly swapping in population rankings.
Kurilsk
Kurilsk sits on Iturup, the largest of the Kuril Islands, a chain Russia and Japan have argued over since 1945. At about 3 km² it’s the smallest on the list, and the reason is geography: the town is squeezed onto a strip of coastal land between the sea and volcanic hills. There’s nowhere to spread.
The figure is approximate in the source, so treat it as “around 3” rather than a surveyed number.
Chekalin
Chekalin, in Tula Oblast, covers 5.42 km² and has about 935 residents. It’s the town people usually mean when they say “smallest in Russia”, because it shows up at the top of population lists too. It’s an old settlement that was renamed in 1944 after a local-born Red Army soldier, Alexander Chekalin, and kept its town status despite shrinking to village size.
That’s the pattern behind most tiny Russian towns: status was granted when the place mattered, and nobody took it away when it stopped.
Innopolis
Innopolis is the odd one out. It isn’t old and it didn’t shrink. Tatarstan built it from scratch as a tech town near Kazan, with town status arriving in 2015, and it covers 12 km². It’s small because it was planned small: a university, an IT park and housing for the people who work in them.
Verkhoyansk
Verkhoyansk, in Yakutia, covers 25 km² and has about 745 residents. It’s better known for temperature than size. The town is one of the candidates for the Northern Hemisphere’s cold pole, and in June 2020 it recorded a reading of 38°C, a record for the Arctic Circle region. Few places swing that far.
Vysotsk
Vysotsk, in Leningrad Oblast, is the largest of the five at 39.81 km². It’s a port town on the Gulf of Finland, and its limits include a fair amount of coastline and industrial land around the oil terminal rather than dense housing.
Why area and population give different answers
Searching “smallest town in Russia” mostly returns population answers. Verkhoyansk (745 people) and Chekalin (935 people) lead those lists, but only Chekalin also makes the top two by area. Verkhoyansk has few people spread over 25 km², which is five times the land of Chekalin.
Small population says how many people live there. Small area says how much land the town legally owns. In Russia those two numbers are only loosely connected, because settlements in sparse regions can hold a lot of empty land inside their limits. For the same comparison across the continent, see the list of smallest cities in Europe by area, which gives each city’s country, land area and population.
Why the sources disagree
Three things move the numbers:
- Town limits versus district. Wikipedia-style pages and municipal sites often quote the whole municipal formation.
- Rounding. Kurilsk’s roughly 3 km² is one example of a figure reported loosely.
- Date. Boundaries change when towns annex land or merge, and sources don’t always update.
If you cite any of these numbers, name the source and the year.
FAQ
What is the smallest city in Russia by area? Kurilsk, at roughly 3 km². Chekalin (5.42 km²) is the smallest with a precisely reported figure.
What is the smallest city in Russia by population? Usually Verkhoyansk (about 745) or Chekalin (about 935), depending on the list and year.
Is Innopolis a real city? Yes. It received town status in 2015 and has about 12 km² of territory.
