He worked in the Far North for more than twenty years. And just in those places lay the route of the famous construction site No. 501\503 GULZhDS. Railway: Salekhard-Nadym-Igarka. Or, as the locals also called it in later times, “Stalinka” or “dead road.” Now in the tundra on the site of that road, there are almost completely destroyed camps, rails overgrown with bushes, collapsed bridges...
I wanted to summarize the available material and try to write a story about that construction site, about the people who worked there, about their life. About how construction began and how it ended. And about the future of this road.
Start of construction.
By the time construction began (1947), the entire north Western Siberia was a completely uninhabited area. With rare settlements, with a nomadic population of Khanty and Nenets. And complete off-road. It was possible to get there only during a period of short navigation along the rivers. In the summer, it was generally impossible to deliver any cargo deep into the mainland territory due to the conditions of the swampy tundra and forest-tundra. Only a rare message during the formation of winter roads. And it was necessary to develop these territories. And we thought about this even in the pre-war period. And the decision to build the road was made personally by Stalin. According to the memoirs of P.K. Tatarintsev, head of the Northern Expedition, “the question was: what did you do based on your research? But not so: is it necessary or not? To build a road to Igarka is Stalin’s personal order. He said: we need to take on the North, Siberia is not covered by anything from the North, and the political situation is very tense” (source: LAMIN V. Secret object 503 // “Science in Siberia”, 1990, No. 5, p. 6.)
Survey work was already carried out during the war. As Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Lamin writes, documents were found in the technical archive of the Northern Railway indicating research in 1943-44. in order to study the connection of the Norilsk-Dudinskaya line with the network of European Russia. The diaries of G. E. Elago, the equipment of the Yenisei expedition of the Zheldorproekt of the NKVD of the USSR indicate that in August 1944 the expedition members were in the Kureika area, where Stalin was exiled before the revolution.
It is difficult to say when exactly the Soviet leadership came to the idea of the need to build the Transpolar Highway. Most researchers are inclined to one conclusion: Stalin came up with this idea during the war. V. Lamin emphasizes that the materials of interrogations of German generals strengthened Stalin’s idea of building the Northern Railway. In particular, it became known that Hitler abandoned the idea of landing 3 landing corps on the Ob and Yenisei. (source: LAMIN V. Secret object 503 // “Science in Siberia”, 1990, No. 3, p. 5.) The very thought of the insecurity of the Arctic coast, the absence of a strategic railway could not leave Stalin alone.
During the war, the Norilsk deposits of metals, in particular manganese, which is essential for steel smelting, were extremely unreliably connected to the “mainland”, because the only route was by sea, but German submarines and the raider “Admiral Scheer” operated in the Kara Sea. They sank Soviet ships and even tried to shell the port of Dixon. In the summer of 1945, the United States acquired an atomic bomb, and this meant a revolution in military-strategic ideas. In particular, this required the creation of naval and air force bases where previously they were not needed, for example, in the central and eastern sections of the coast of the North Arctic Ocean. The successful creation and operation of military bases would be greatly facilitated by such a reliable method of transport as rail.
The next apparent reason was the state’s desire to industrialize the vast expanses of the Soviet North. The Great Northern was planned railway track, which was supposed to connect the northwestern regions Soviet Union with the Seas of Okhotsk and Bering.
A separate consideration could be, and perhaps was, that the oil and gas potential of Western Siberia was predicted by Academician I.M. Gubkin and officially raised the issue back in 1931. Construction began long before the feasibility study prepared by Arktikproekt was made in 1950 Main Northern Sea Route. The effect of constructing a port at the junction of sea and river routes with year-round railway connections was as follows:
1. The distance from the base for cargo departure to the Arctic and the northeast was reduced by 1,100 nautical miles, compared to the distance from the existing base in Arkhangelsk.2. It became possible to deliver goods to the northern Arctic regions using the shortest water and rail routes. For example, the route from Novosibirsk to Provideniya Bay via Igarka was shortened by 3,000 kilometers compared to the route through Vladivostok.
3. Under special circumstances, cargo could be sent to the Arctic and the northeast, bypassing the sea adjacent to the Arctic.
4. Naval and air force bases could be located in the construction area.
It was necessary not only to develop that rich region, but also to strengthen the defense of the northern coast of the country. And for this, a reliable connection with the central part was needed. At one of the meetings attended by Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Beria, Stalin, having heard Tatarintsev’s data summarized after research, made a decision: “we will build a road.
Initially, it was planned to create a seaport and at the same time a railway center of the North on the Ob (Cape Kamenny). But according to the technical conditions, Cape Kamenny was not suitable as a seaport.
To do this, it was necessary to build a railway there from the Pechora Mainline, but the construction of the seaport began simultaneously with the railway even before the development of the project itself. In general, the entire construction of 501, 502, 503 was carried out in the absence of a project due to the extremely short time allotted for the delivery of the road. The project was developed simultaneously with the construction of camps along the proposed road route and simultaneously with earthworks on the pouring of canvas by Gulag prisoners, as a result of which the project was adjusted after the fact. On April 22, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted Resolution No. 1255-331-ss, in which it obliged the Ministry of Internal Affairs to immediately begin construction of a large seaport on Cape Kamenny, a ship repair yard and a residential village, as well as to begin construction of a railway from the Pechora Mainline to the port.
By the end of 1947, the designers came to the conclusion that it was necessary to build, first of all, a railway to the mouth of the Ob, in the area of the village. Labytnangi and Salekhard, located on the opposite bank. This opened up unimpeded transport access to the northern part of the vast Ob-Irtysh basin. The construction of a seaport on Cape Kamenny was proposed to be carried out at the next stage, relying on the construction and technical base prepared in the Salekhard-Labytnangi region. For 1947-1949 In the area of the future port, 3 camps were built in the villages of Yar-Sale, Novy Port and Mys-Kamenny. The prisoners built a five-kilometer pier and storage facilities from larch. The development of the route in the area of the station took place in an island-like manner. Sandy Cape at 426 km (village Yar-Sale). At the beginning of 1949, it became clear that the waters of the Ob Bay were too shallow for ocean-going ships, and it became clear that it was impossible to artificially deepen the harbor.
The construction of a port on Cape Kamenny and the construction of a railway to it were finally abandoned in 1949.
In 1948-1949 the center of railway construction in Siberia was finally transferred to the construction of the Chum - Labytnangi line. However, the very idea of creating a polar port on the Northern Sea Route was not abandoned. A whole commission worked to find a new location for the construction of a port and ship repair yard. A proposal was put forward to move the construction of the port to the Igarka area, which required extending the Chum-Labytnangi line east to the village. Ermakovo on the left bank of the Yenisei. The Igarsky port on the right bank of the Yenisei and the future Ermakovsky on the opposite bank would be approximately equally accessible to river vessels and large sea transport. The entry of the railway to the junction of sea and river communications promised the possibility of creating a large transport hub in the Igarka-Ermakovo area. Economically, this project was more profitable than the previous (northern) one. The development of the line in the eastern direction created real preconditions for establishing reliable transport connections between the northeastern regions of Siberia and the industrial centers of the country, for the development of the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine. By Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 384-135-ss of January 29, 1949, the construction site of the port was moved to Igarka, which caused a new direction of the road: “Salekhard-Igarka”. Apparently, January 29, 1949 can be considered the beginning of the second stage of the construction of the Chum-Salekhard-Igarka railway, since the road took a different direction from the original plan. By a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated January 29, 1949, the survey and design of the seaport in Igarka and the complex of structures attached to it was entrusted to the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (GUSMP) under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
Communication between the builders and the departments was maintained first by radio and then by a pole telephone and telegraph line stretched from Salekhard to Igarka along the proposed route. On January 29, 1949, a Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was adopted, which spoke of the need to build the Salekhard railway -Igarka with a length of 1200 kilometers. It was planned to open working traffic in the fourth quarter of 1952, and to begin operating the road in 1955. Crossings across the Ob and Yenisei rivers would be carried out by self-propelled ferries. Under the Northern Administration, two constructions were formed - Obskoye No. 501 and Yeniseiskoye No. 503. They had to pave the way towards each other.
Construction work began without a project (it was completed only in 1952, when more than half of the highway was already ready). They planned to build 28 stations and 106 sidings on the new highway. By the start of construction, there were only 5-6 small settlements along the future highway line, with several houses in each. Very soon there were a lot of them: these were camps for prisoners, located every 5-10 km. From Igarka to Ermakovo there were 7 columns for prisoners - two in the city area, the rest along the Yenisei. From Ermakovo, the camps were located every 6 km; in order to avoid confusion and for clarity and clarity of the picture of the work being carried out, the camps were assigned the number of the kilometer on which they were located. According to A.S. Dobrovolsky, who conducted an expedition along the railway, about 40,000 prisoners worked on its construction. Local sand was used for the embankment, from the valleys of nearby rivers. The situation with the forest was worse: mostly small forest grew in the construction area. Therefore, timber for construction was delivered from more southern regions, where special camps were set up for its extraction. This forest was rafted to the route along the rivers. In general, supplying a construction site isolated many hundreds of kilometers from the populated areas of the country presented a difficult problem. In addition to the already built sections of the road and special aviation, there was only one way to the central areas of the route - through the Gulf of Ob along the Nadym, Pur and Taz rivers with their short northern navigation.
Quite a lot of construction equipment was brought onto the road, including trucks, tractors and even excavators. In addition to the scarce equipment, the labor of a large number of free people was used at the construction site.
Construction .
Camp points were placed along the sections of the route under construction every 5-10 km. They were small, 400-500 people each. A typical camp of this type was an area measuring 200 x 200 m, surrounded by barbed wire, with towers at the corners. It has 4-5 barracks, a dining room, a cultural and educational part, and a bathhouse. There could be a stall, a warehouse for personal belongings, a bakery, a water tank made in the form of a huge wooden barrel. Everything was built quite neatly, not even without architectural delights. Next to the camp there was a guard barracks, not much different from the barracks for prisoners, also about a hundred people, and houses for the authorities. The camp was certainly illuminated, especially the fence, with the help of a diesel-powered engine.
Most of the construction camps were classified as general regime, and the living conditions in them were not the harshest in the Gulag. Construction completely upended and subjugated the life of this almost deserted region. Local production was reoriented to meet construction needs. Masses of people unprecedented before appeared in these parts. Thus, the small village of Ermakovo, where the administration of the eastern construction site was located, turned into a city with a population of about 20 thousand people, not counting the prisoners in the surrounding camps. Everyone was involved in the construction, with its specific Gulag overtones. A mobile camp theater toured in Salekhard, Igarka and other settlements along the route.
Igarka pier.
Igarka. The end of the forties of the twentieth century.
501st construction site (western section).
Already in December 1947, just eight months after the relevant decree was issued, labor traffic opened on the 118-kilometer section Chum - Sob, and the road crossed the Polar Ural river valley - the Sob crossing was already on the territory of the Tyumen region.
A year later, by December 1948, the builders had advanced all the way to the Labytnangi station on the left bank of the Ob, opposite Salekhard. However, at the same time it suddenly became clear that it was simply impossible to create a new seaport on the Gulf of Ob, in the area of that same Cape Kamenny. So, from April 1947 to December 1948, the 196-kilometer Chum - Labytnangi highway was put into operation. It was assumed that the 1,300-kilometer highway would run parallel to the Arctic Circle, would be single-track with sidings every 9-14 km (a total of 106 sidings ) and stations every 40–60 km (28 stations). The average speed of the train with stops at sidings was assumed to be about 40 km/h, including acceleration and braking. Capacity - 6 pairs of trains per day. The main depots were set up at the stations Salekhard, Nadym, Pur, Taz, Ermakovo and Igarka, and the return depots were set up at the stations Yarudey, Pangody, Kataral, Turukhan. A winter road was laid along the entire highway by special tractor trains. The production columns of two GULZhDS departments were located along it. They were built mainly in the short summer season. To begin with, a relatively low two-meter embankment was built (mainly from imported stone-sand mixture), on which sleepers and rails were then laid. All work was carried out in a sharply continental climate with harsh, long winters (up to eight months) and short, cold and rainy summers and autumns.
The transpolar highway was built in extreme conditions permafrost. The technologies of the 1940s and the required speed of construction did not allow for the proper development of the railway.
After the onset of above-zero temperatures in Western Siberia, active melting of the top layer of soil and permafrost underneath began, which led to regular and widespread deformations of the road surface and its engineering structures. In fact, a significant part of the road, made over previous seasons, had to be reconstructed with the onset of the new one. Repairs to the embankment, strengthening of the roadbed, bridges and other infrastructure continued continuously, every year.
Compared to other camps of the Gulag system, the construction of Transpolar was relatively good. Here, the extremely difficult working conditions of prisoners were somewhat compensated by a higher standard of nutrition. We will touch upon the living conditions of prisoners below.
The construction site even had its own mobile theater.
The road crossed small rivers on wooden bridges. Bridges across the large rivers Barabanikha and Makovskaya were built much more thoroughly: from metal on concrete supports 60 and 100 meters long, respectively. However, none of the structures built according to “lighter technical conditions” escaped deformation and destruction due to the melting and subsequent freezing of soils.
No bridges were built across the great Siberian rivers Ob and Yenisei. The locomotives first went to Labytnanog, then they were transported across the Ob by a railway ferry. Four railway ferries (“Nadym”, “Zapolyarny”, “Severny” and “Chulym”), built according to projects 723-bis and 723-u for crossing the river. Ob and R. Yenisei, after the closure of construction 501 and 503 worked for some time for the needs of the North. and then they were sent to the Black Sea to work on the Kerch ferry crossing. In winter, ice crossings were established.
Rails, of course, were also delivered from the mainland. In total, researchers discovered 16 different species of them on the route, including pre-revolutionary and trophy ones.
At the end of 1948, the road “approached” the Ob in the area of the station. Labytnangi. They began to build an ice crossing across the Ob. Its construction was supervised by an engineer, then captain of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Zailik Moiseevich Freidzon. According to him, the canvas was strengthened on top of logs laid across. This was enough to withstand cargo trains for five winter seasons until the 501st was closed. In 1952, a bridge was also built across the Nadym River. At its base there were wooden pile supports on which 11-meter metal bags were laid. In the spring, before the start of ice drift, the railway track and packages were removed, and after it ended, they were laid back.
In 1949, two construction departments No. 501 and 503 were organized as part of the Northern Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Construction Department No. 501, located in Salekhard, supervised the section from Chum station to Pur station, including the crossing of the Ob River. All construction was supervised by the head of the Northern Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vasily Arsenievich Barabanov. (It will be discussed in more detail below). According to many reviews, he was a remarkable person in his own way. It was on his initiative that at the construction site, in particular, a theater was created from prisoner actors, whose art was appreciated not only by numerous “citizen bosses”, but also by the prisoners of that time. Initially, V.V. Samodurov commanded the 501st construction site. 503 - A. I. Borovitsky. In the summer of 1952, both construction projects were united under the leadership of V.V. Samodurov.
The break in movement was about a month and a half. By the end of 1952, builders reached the Bolshaya Hetta River. In August 1952, as planned, work traffic was opened on the Salekhard-Nadym section, by March of the following year between settlements There was even a passenger train running. However, its speed (and the speed of the freight trains used to supply the construction) due to the extremely low quality of the railway track was low and averaged 15 km/h, not even close to reaching the standard values. The Salekhard-Nadym section since 1953 and was completely abandoned before the construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway began. But until the early 1990s, the railway was used by signalmen to service the Salekhard-Nadym communication line, until the communication line was abolished. Soon after the abolition of the communication line, 92 km of rails, starting from Salekhard, were collected and removed by some company that had coveted the valuable Demidov steel.
The next essay will continue on the construction of the eastern section - construction No. 503.
503-construction...
Construction 503 included the Pur-Igarka section. On the right bank of the Pur River is the old Urengoy, with which there is no railway connection. Between the rivers Pur and Turukhan the road was not completed. So, according to some data, the department in Dolgy managed to build about 15 kilometers of the highway towards Ermakovo, and a branch to Sedelnikovo. Two other construction departments of the 503 construction site, located in Yanov Stan and Ermakovo, by 1953 had built a 140-kilometer-long section and opened work traffic on it, moving further to the west. By 1953, about 65 km of track had been laid from Igarka to the south towards the Yeniseiskaya station (opposite Ermakovo).
materials were used from the book by V.N. Gritsenko “The History of the Dead Road”, the online magazine “UFO-World”
3D “tour” of the 501st construction site. Art. Yarudey http://nadymregion.ru/3d-3.html
3D “tour” of the 501st construction site. Camp site "Glukhariny" http://nadymregion.ru/3d-1.html
The next material will talk about the construction contingent, the management, the everyday life of prisoners and guards.
to be continued
Everyone remembers with what enthusiasm earlier in the 70s our country received the news about the construction of the BAM. Impact construction, the shortest access to the Pacific ports, the road to new fields... But few know that BAM had a kind of northern twin - the Transpolar Mainline, the Chum-Salekhard-Igarka railway, which was built at an accelerated pace in 1949-53 and just as quickly forgotten in subsequent years.
It is necessary to connect the deep-water seaport in the geographical center of the country, in Igarka, with the country's railway system! It is necessary to facilitate the export of nickel from Norilsk! Give work to the hundreds of thousands of prisoners who filled the camps and prisons after
the end of the war is also necessary! And in the deserted expanses of the tundra, from the Ob and from the Yenisei, columns of prisoners stretched towards each other. The western part is the 501st construction site of the Gulag. Eastern part - 503rd.
In 1949, the Soviet leadership decided to build the Igarka-Salekhard polar railway. The prisoners built the road. The total planned length of the road is 1263 km. The road runs 200 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.
Construction problems rested not only on climatic and geographical problems- permafrost and ten-month winter. The route had to cross many streams, rivers and large rivers. Wooden or concrete bridges were built across small rivers; crossing the Ob was carried out in the summer by heavy ferries, and in the winter by rails and sleepers laid directly on the ice. The ice was specially strengthened for this purpose.
The northern regions of Siberia are characterized by the existence of winter roads - temporary roads that are laid in winter, after snow falls, and numerous swamps and rivers are covered with ice. In order to make road crossings across rivers more reliable, crossing points are additionally frozen - water is poured over them, increasing the thickness of the ice. Railway ice crossings were not just watered, logs and sleepers were frozen in them. The construction of ice crossings for railway transport is a unique invention of Soviet engineers; this probably never happened either before or after the construction of the Igarka-Salekhard road.
Construction was carried out simultaneously on both sides, on the Ob side - 501 construction projects and on the Yenisei side - 503 construction sites.
The grand opening of one of the sections of the road. 1952
Camps were built along the single-track along the entire route at a distance of 5 - 10 km from each other. These camps still stand today. Many of them are perfectly preserved.
It was almost impossible to escape from the camps. The main road was controlled by security. The only path to freedom lay to the Yenisei, then up it 1700 km to Krasnoyarsk or north 700 km to the mouth of the Yenisei or to Dudinka and Norilsk, which were also built by prisoners and heavily guarded.
Camp near the river Penzeryakha.
The door of the punishment cell.
Cell bars.
Preserved cauldrons from the catering department.
Punishment cell.
Everything needed for construction, from bricks and nails to a steam locomotive, was imported from the mainland. For construction site 503, cargo was delivered first along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Krasnoyarsk, then down the Yenisei in the summer by river boats.
Also, barges brought rails, steam locomotives, wagons, and railcars, which still stand in the tundra.
In the post-war years, there were not enough rails in the USSR. Rails removed from existing lines were imported. The rails and spikes of the road have a wide variety of production dates - starting in 1879.
Timber also had to be imported. At the latitude of the road construction there is tundra and forest-tundra, there is no construction timber. It was specially harvested to the south and floated down the Yenisei in rafts. IN winter time, after the end of navigation, large supplies of goods from the mainland were impossible. Navigation on the Yenisei lasts 3-4 months.
Establishing an ice crossing.
The lack of sufficient material support forced a constant search for unconventional engineering and construction solutions. The roofs of the barracks in the camps are not covered with slate or tin. For roofs, wood blocks were specially split along the grain. They were splitting, not sawing. 40 years after construction, such roofs continued to perform their functions.
By 1953 - the year of Stalin's death - more than 900 kilometers of single-track railway were built by prisoners. After the death of the Leader, construction was hastily curtailed. Camps, locomotives, bridges, and other property were simply abandoned in the tundra. The great construction project, which took the lives of more than 100,000 people, ended in failure.
Over the next few years, a small part of the property was removed; in some areas adjacent to the Ob and Yenisei, the rails were removed.
42 billion rubles were invested in construction.
The transpolar highway today. The Salekhard-Nadym section.
Iron road to the very ends of the Earth
Was mercilessly laid down by the fate of people...
Inscription on the monument in Salekhard.
After another two hours of travel, Alexey reported that we were about to cross “three tundras” and the tent would be visible. He called “tundra” a treeless area, which is indeed “an elastic concept” - it could be three or twelve kilometers wide.
And then it seemed to me that I was going crazy. A locomotive with a tall chimney emerged from behind a hillock, followed by another, a third, a fourth...
- What is this? - I burst out.
“A long time,” answered Alexey.
- What kind of Long?
- City.
- They didn’t tell us about this.
- A dead city, actually. There's a railroad there. We don’t go there – we’re afraid.
- What are you afraid of?
Alexey did not answer this question.
From the notes of an ethnographic expedition to the Taz River in the spring of 1976.
Dead road... This eerie epithet appeared in everyday life relatively recently, when articles, books, and stories began to be written about this story. It just so happened that, unlike the Trans-Siberian Railway, BAM and even the Pechora Railway, the construction of the Salekhard-Igarka highway did not have its own established name. Polar, polar, transpolar road - as they called it. It went down in history by the numbers of construction departments - No. 501 and 503 GULZhDS NKVD of the USSR, and most often they remember the “five hundred and first”, spreading this number throughout its entire length. But what suits it best is the name “Dead Road,” which reflects the fate of both the highway itself and many of its builders.
After the Great Patriotic War, the country's leadership and I.V. Stalin clearly realized the vulnerability of the strategic route - the Northern Sea Route. Its main ports, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, were located too close to the western borders of the USSR, and in the event new war communication via the NSR could easily be paralyzed by the enemy. It was decided to create a new port in the Gulf of Ob, in the area of Cape Kamenny, and connect it by a 700-kilometer railway with the already existing Kotlas-Vorkuta line. The main provisions of the future construction were determined by Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 298-104ss of 02/04/1947, and by Resolution No. 1255-331ss of 04/22/1947 construction was entrusted to the GULZhDS (main department camp railway construction) NKVD-MVD USSR.
Construction of the line began simultaneously with the search for a site for the future port. After some time, it became clear that the Gulf of Ob is completely unsuitable for such construction - very shallow depths, large wind surges and water surges do not allow the construction of any large port on its shores. Already in January 1949, a fateful meeting between I.V. Stalin, L.P. Beria and N.A. Frenkel, the head of the GULZhDS, took place. It was decided to curtail work on the Yamal Peninsula, stop construction of the line to Cape Kamenny, and begin laying a 1,290 km long railway. to the lower reaches of the Yenisei, along the highway Chum - Labytnangi - Salekhard - Nadym - Yagelnaya - Pur - Taz - Yanov Stan - Ermakovo - Igarka, with the construction of a port in Igarka. This was enshrined in decree No. 384-135ss of January 29, 1949. In the future, it was planned to extend the line from Dudinka to Norilsk.
Construction Department No. 502, which was involved in laying a line from Chum station of the Pechora railway to Cape Kamenny with a branch to Labytnangi, was abolished, and two new departments were created - western No. 501 with a base in Salekhard, which was in charge of the section from Labytnangi to the river. Pur, and eastern department No. 503 with a base in Igarka (later moved to Ermakovo), which built the road from Pur to Igarka. The concentration of manpower and materials between these constructions was distributed approximately 2:1.
The technical conditions for laying the line were extremely easy; bridges across the Ob, Pur, Taz and Yenisei were not planned at the first stage - their function was to be performed by ferries in the summer, and ice crossings in the winter. Excavation work was carried out mainly by hand, long-distance transportation of soil was carried out using a few vehicles, and filling of the embankment was carried out using hand wheelbarrows. 100-140 km of the route were completed per year on the western section, much less on the eastern section: due to the lack of people and the difficulty of transporting materials.
At this construction site, the terrible phrase that was born during the construction of the Pechora Railway - about “a man under every sleeper” - acquired its literal meaning. Thus, I. Simonova from Tashkent, who worked as an engineer in the 1970s on the survey and completion of the Nadym-Urengoy section, personally saw piles of skeletons after the banks of the Hetta River were washed away, and corpses in the embankment 616-620 kilometers of the line.
In October 1949, ice bound the Ob, and in early November sleepers and rails were already laid on it. A daredevil was needed who would be the first to experience the “ice”. This was not the case among civilian drivers. “Whoever overtakes the locomotive is free,” ordered the construction manager. A volunteer prisoner was found who took it upon himself to drive the locomotive. At first everything went well, but towards the middle of the river the ice began to crack and break. The driver looked out of the booth and was stunned - the Ob abyss, swallowing sleepers and rails, was menacingly approaching the locomotive. But the ice and rail lashes survived. The driver reached the shore and received the longed-for freedom. On the eve of November 7, the authorities reported to Stalin about a new labor victory in the 501st.
Traffic from Salekhard to Nadym was opened in August 1952, and a work-passenger train began running. By 1953, the embankment had been filled almost to Pura, and part of the rails had been laid. In the eastern sector, things were not going so well. A 65-kilometer section from Igarka to Ermakov, as well as about 100 km, was filled and laid. In a westerly direction to Janow Stan and beyond. Materials were brought to the Taz River area, and about 20 km were built here. main passage and depot with repair shops. The least developed was the 150-kilometer section between the Pur and Taz rivers, which was planned to be built by 1954.
A telegraph and telephone line was built along the entire route, which until the 70s connected Taimyr with the outside world. The operation of its section from Yagelnaya to Salekhard was stopped only in 1992.
After the death of I.V. Stalin, when more than 700 of the 1290 km had already been laid. roads, almost 1,100 were filled, about a year remained before commissioning, construction was stopped. Already on March 25, 1953, Decree No. 395-383ss was issued on the complete cessation of all work. Soon, 293 camps and construction departments were disbanded. An amnesty was declared for hundreds of thousands of prisoners, but they were able to go south only with the beginning of navigation - there were no other routes yet. According to some estimates, about 50 thousand prisoners were taken from construction sites 501 and 503, and about the same number of civilian personnel and members of their families. They took everything they could to the “Mainland,” but most of what was built was simply abandoned in the taiga and tundra.
Economists subsequently calculated that the decision to abandon construction at such a stage of readiness led to losses for the country’s budget much greater than if the road had been completed, not to mention its promising continuation to the Norilsk industrial region, where the richest deposits of iron and copper were already being developed , nickel, coal. The giant gas fields of Western Siberia have not yet been discovered - who knows, maybe then the fate of the road would have been completely different.
The fate of individual sections of the road varies greatly. The head section of Chum-Labytnangi was accepted into permanent operation by the Ministry of Railways in 1955. The fully completed Salekhard-Nadym line was abandoned and was not restored. Until the early 90s, signalmen servicing that same telegraph and telephone line rode along it on a semi-homemade handcar. The section from Pura (now Korotchaevo station) to Nadym was restored by the Ministry of Oil and Gas Industry in the 70s, and in the early 80s a new highway came to Korotchaevo from the south - from Tyumen. The condition of the route from Korotchaevo to Nadym was unimportant; in the mid-90s, passenger trains from the south were shortened to Korotchaevo station, and only in 2003 the Korotchaevo-Novy Urengoy (formerly Yagelnaya) section was put into permanent operation. The rails were removed from the eastern section of the road in 1964 for the needs of the Norilsk plant.
Only the “island” section in the area of the Taz River remained practically untouched - about 20 km from the Sedelnikovo pier on the right bank. towards Ermakovo, with a branch to the Dolgoe depot and the ballast quarry. It was on this site, the most inaccessible of all the others, that the track, buildings, depot and four Ov steam locomotives - the famous “sheep” of pre-revolutionary construction - remained almost untouched. On the tracks near the depot there are several dozen cars - mostly flat cars, but there are also a few covered ones. One of the cars came here from post-war Germany, after being converted to the domestic 1520 mm gauge. 15 km. from Dolgoye, the remains of a camp have been preserved, and not far from the depot, on the other bank of the stream, there are the remains of a settlement of civilian workers and the construction administration, consisting of almost two dozen buildings, as well as a wooden ferry lying on the shore. We visited this area.
The future fate of the Dead Road no longer looks so bleak. The continued development of hydrocarbon reserves in adjacent areas forces Gazprom and the administration of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug to look for new ways to supply and transport materials. The issue of restoring the Nadym-Salekhard section and building a line from Korotchaevo to the Yuzhno-Russkoye field, passing also along the 503rd construction route, are already being considered. Only Norilsk, with the current volumes of ore production, looks at all this calmly, content with year-round icebreaker navigation along the NSR. But the reserves of its deposits are very large, and the world needs nickel and base metals. Who knows…
Steam locomotive Ov-3821 near the ruins of the Dolgoe depot.
Platforms on a dead-end track near the depot.
The path towards Igarka.
Rails and rolling stock were brought from different places for construction. There are also Demidov rails from the 19th century.
Steam locomotive Ov-6154.
Loneliness.
These locomotives will never stop at any depot again...
Steam locomotive Ov-6698.
Arrow in the depot.
Wheelset with spokes. Now there are almost no such people.
There was no war here. The government just lost interest...
This platform was apparently used by railway workers.
The remains of freight cars are densely overgrown with young forest. Another 50-70 years will pass, and the taiga will absorb everything else.
Platform in the swamp.
A two-kilometer dead-end line to the north along the bank of the Taz River. Why it was built is unclear, there are no quarries there, the line simply ends in the open forest.
Such overlays were also on the main course. On the other side of them were attached wooden plates, now almost rotten.
Again a pre-revolutionary rail. Demidov plant, Nizhny Tagil.
The line is overgrown.
Diesel on the bank of the Taz River. Possibly from more recent times. Not a single flood can move him from his place...
View from the driver's booth.
Depot Long. A few more years and he too will be gone.
Rust and cobwebs.
Despite the beginning of the introduction of automatic coupling, the rolling stock of GULZhDS still had a screw harness.
There were workshops here.
Radiator from the Stalinets tractor.
Near the depot, the rails were removed from the branch leading to the main passage. Apparently they were taken out along the river.
Turnout details.
Arrow details again.
Trees grow along the rails - there is a different local microclimate there. A similar picture can be observed in old mountain trails.
The 1879 rail is the oldest found. Where did it lie before?...
Strange vandalism.
Contrary to some opinions, metal ties were also used on the Polar Highway. They helped maintain the gauge when the sleepers and fastenings were weak.
Young boletus.
Exit to the embankment.
Gulch.
Trains haven't run here for a long time.
Many small bridges and pipes ceased to exist. You have to cross such gullies. The boards below are not only sleepers - the embankment was poured on a wooden base, in the image of medieval ramparts.
All-terrain vehicles of gas workers do not spare the Dead Road. She is nothing to them, a hindrance.
Another confirmation of the presence of wooden cages at the base of the embankment.
And this is the youngest rail found - 1937. For some reason we expected to see only these there.
There are also normal fastenings. But there were still not enough materials for the upper structure of the track.
The subsidence of depot tracks gives such misalignment.
Boxcar. The quality of the boards is enviable.
And here is the solution - the carriage is German. Apparently the trophy was converted to our track and transferred to GULZDS.
Barbed wire. We didn’t reach the camp, but there was plenty of it in the vicinity of the depot.
Steam locomotive Ov-4171 and expedition members. In the middle is yours truly)
A number of factual materials from V. Glushko’s essay in the book “Polar Highway” were used.
Official historiography again talks only about victories. Svetlana Shmeleva talks about the places in the Arctic where in 1947-53 prisoners laid the Chum - Salekhard - Igarka railway: thousands of graves, barracks and ruins of the great construction site.
I mentally travel by rail... somewhere between the cities of Salekhard and Nadym.
You-breath-tych-tych - the train knocks on the rails. As if driving nails into graves, of which there are many here. Mentally - because there are no trains here, although there are rails... and graves too.
I only found out about this place a couple of months ago, and that’s what makes it creepy, not so much the fact that it exists.
A Pole I know once asked: “What I can’t understand is that if in almost every family in Soviet times someone was imprisoned or executed, why aren’t you interested in your ancestors, don’t demand to open the archives and punish those responsible for their deaths?” , ruined lives? He asks this question to every Russian he meets, but never gets an answer.
But I keep putting off my story, although it’s time to start. Now I’ll just wipe my wet palms and start.
A month ago, I was chatting with an acquaintance to pass the time on the road. She told how several years ago she and her friend went in search of Soviet-era camps. It is known that many of them are still not advertised by the state, so as not to increase the numbers already huge amount repression. She told how they were turned away from local hotels after learning about the purpose of their visit. How on their way they met a poetess from the city of Kharp, who sheltered them. And she introduced me to a certain Alexander, who said: “Hold out the night, and in the morning I will show you something.”
And he showed them a huge children's cemetery. My friend was in such shock that all the details of that trip faded and were eventually erased from memory. She remembered only hundreds of children's graves, which, judging by their abandonment and the absence of tablets and crosses on them, had never been mourned by anyone.
I would like to call everyone by name,
Yes, the list was taken away, and there is no place to find out.
(Anna Akhmatova)
I started looking for this place. I wrote to my friends at Memorial and called out on social networks to at least clarify something. As a result, through a network of reindeer herders, Memorial and a friend in the Komi Republic, I found several local historians, who, in turn, led me in different ways to local historian Alexander Safonov from the city of Labytnangi. As it turned out later, Alexander was my friend’s guide, who is looking after that cemetery alone.
And so I study what he found...
In particular, I have before me a study of seventy-five burials of infants and adolescents near the Obskaya station, made in 2008-2011. And in the same table, very close by, I see numbers that make my jaw ache. 80 mass graves near the same station. And 450 is nearby. Just a few kilometers from that place, the number of graves found: 7, 5, 16, 600, 1800. And further: 8000, 4000, 2800, 1050, 1500, 15, 450, 17, 1100, 200, 330, 120, 100, 60 and 11 marked “fraternal”. And all this on a segment no more than two hundred kilometers long!
I understand that in front of me is the Dead Road, as the locals call it.
Of course, more is known about the road itself than about the place that initially interested me. But also a little. At least not enough for everyone who lives in our country to know about it. Like, for example, about the battle of Stalingrad. Because here, unlike Volgograd, no monuments were erected to anyone.
And they say it began like this.
The road is going nowhere.
Was aimed at Stalin
Either somewhere in the North, or in God,
Or, let's say, in the devil's affairs.
(Peter Kozhevnikov)
“Once Joseph Vissarionovich called the head of the Main Directorate of Camp Railway Construction (GULZhDS) N. Frenkel and, puffing on his pipe, quietly asked: “Tell me, Comrade Frenkel, how are the surveys going on the northern railway route?” Catching his interlocutor with an unblinking gaze, he fully enjoyed the effect produced. Even such a seasoned catcher as Frenkel did not immediately find what to answer to the leader. The fact is that, apart from distant rumors about Stalin’s desire to strengthen the northern territories by building a road there, he knew nothing... Admitting that he does not control the situation is, perhaps, signing his own death warrant. The pause dragged on... “We are working, Comrade Stalin!” — the experienced schemer lied as cheerfully as possible, trying to gain time. “Okay,” the owner agreed unexpectedly easily. “Prepare an urgent report on the work done.”
Two hours later, the green twin-engine Douglas, sparkling with red stars that covered the signs of the American Air Force, pierced the twilight, moving to the northeast. On board are geophysicists, surveyors, carpenters and other specialists. But the key role was given to the photographer and the reliability of the three cameras. He had no room for error.
The plane landed on the ice of one of the many lakes near Salekhard. The crew immediately began to prepare the car for the return journey, and locals and passengers, in complete darkness, urgently began to cut down forest, set up tents and stoves, and put together structures similar to scenery. They worked in the cold until dawn. At daylight photography began with multiple duplication of frames, after which the command to take off was received. Deadly tired people watched the flying away Douglas...
Soon, a plump report on survey work on the Salekhard-Igarka highway, abundantly illustrated with photographs, landed on the Generalissimo’s desk. The leader was especially pleased with the tent city, filmed against the backdrop of a clearing stretching into the distance; even a sign flashed “Salekhard Station” ... "
This story was described by Galina Kasabova. I don’t know if everything was exactly like that, although I personally, who know the subsequent history of the construction of the Northern Highway, have no doubt that reporting to the ruler was more important than getting the job done.
But here are the facts.
On February 4, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on choosing a site for the construction of a port in the North and a railway to it. Less than two weeks later, the Northern Design and Survey Expedition was organized. A month later, without even waiting for the first results of the survey, the Council of Ministers ordered the Ministry of Internal Affairs to immediately begin construction of a large seaport on Cape Kamenny, a ship repair yard, and also to begin construction of the North Pechora Mainline to the port. In turn, the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR Kruglov created the Northern Directorate of the Main Directorate of Camp Railway Construction to carry out the work.
You may be surprised why the Ministry of Internal Affairs was involved in the construction? This is explained, in particular, by a note sent to Stalin in 1935 by Kruglov’s predecessor, USSR Minister of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda. Where he promised that the NKVD would build roads for an average of 50 thousand rubles. per kilometer cheaper than what civilian departments had built before. Yagoda explained this by the lower cost of maintaining the administrative apparatus and also by the higher production standards established by the NKVD.
However, in a note from Kruglov in 1950 addressed to Beria, it was already stated that the cost of maintaining a prisoner is higher than the average earnings of a civilian worker.
But it was a long way from realizing this and amnesty after Stalin’s death in 1953. In the meantime, millions of hands were needed to carry out the plan.
On June 4, 1947, when construction of the road began, the Decree “On Combating the Theft of Socialist Property” appeared, making the famous “for ears of corn” decree, adopted back in 1932, one and a half times stricter. If earlier the maximum term for it was 10 years, now it has become 25. Moreover, it could be obtained for disproportionately small actions. For example, Galina Ostapovna Prikhodko was sentenced to 10 years for bringing home a bag of beets when there was a terrible famine in the Poltava region. And at home she had her father, a war invalid, seven brothers and sisters, and a pregnant mother. At the same time, her mother was given two years probation for not reporting her daughter. And Galina Ostapovna went to the camp to build the Dead Road.
In general, prisoners “for ears of corn” were the most profitable, since they did not need to be guarded (including officially according to the rules, such as, for example, “political” ones, to whom they were required to assign a guard). Therefore, they tried to send those who “weaken the defense capability of the Soviet Motherland” - “for strings,” “for beets,” “for being 15 minutes late.” A woman worked on the construction of the Dead Road and was imprisoned for 5 years for being 15 minutes late for work.
For what?
When, after captivity, the Japanese
Sent to their shores,
The father commanders said:
- It's time for you to go too,
Soldiers free from service.
No, no, not to my native land.
Where mothers are waiting for you,
There is sadness in my heart,
And in the Arctic, where there are blizzards
And in the summer snowstorms sweep,
Where bears approach the huts.
Great things await you.
The soldiers were sullenly silent:
What to do, an order is an order
And their objection is hardly
Their fate will change now.
They only learned on the way:
To the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, battalion,
Eighteen-year-old boys
Was transferred by Beria.
And they are not going with Bendery
To fight in the north,
And the hard working prisoners
Guard with a rifle in your hands.
I didn’t hear any songs in the carriages,
And it was a long way to get there.
No one joked, no one laughed,
And everyone felt terrible.
Of course, who should we protect?
Japanese - wherever you go,
But Russians, ours, Soviets,
Those who have committed trifling evil.
About this in civilian life
We heard on the radio:
For a stolen potato bush
They gave me two years in prison.
Suddenly there was a clang of buffers along the train.
The command sounds: “Come out!”
All the doors of the hot-vehicles have opened
A new life ahead.
(August 1947, Vladimir Pentyukhov,
camp guard at Dead road)
“Repeaters” also appeared.
Zoya Dmitrievna Marchenko described how she went to the construction site: “I was brought from Ukraine, from the Kharkov transfer, where I had already met former prisoners who had served the camp and were then collected again. This is where I first learned that there are REPEATES.
We drove through Siberia in the heat. It was very difficult, the unsanitary conditions were appalling. The convoy rarely brought a bucket of water for the entire carriage. They slept close together, turned around on command, on their bunks. A.A. Federolf slept next to her, and next was Ariadna Ephron.”
Marina Tsvetaeva's daughter was arrested for the first time in 1939 for espionage. While she was translating Mayakovsky and other poets into French. And vice versa, with poetic translations from French of Victor Hugo and other classics of world literature. She also wrote her own poems.
Released at the end of 1948, greatly impressed by the novel Doctor Zhivago, which Boris Pasternak sent her chapter by chapter, she writes to the author:
“I have a dream, which, due to my circumstances, is not very quickly fulfilled - I would like to illustrate it, not exactly in the way books are usually “designed” according to all the rules, i.e. cover, flyleaf, etc., but to make several drawings with a pen, try to easily attach images to paper as they appear, catch them, you know...”
But already at the beginning of 1949, Ariadne was arrested again and sentenced, as previously convicted, to lifelong exile.
But I digress.
For the most part, during the war and post-war times, the prisoners were the plunderers of socialist property (peasants, workers), repeaters (intelligentsia) and those who went through the war (one million eight hundred thousand military prisoners, and three and a half million civilians).
A guard at one of the Dead Road camps, Pavel Mikhailovich Rogov, says in particular: “We, the guards, were jerks compared to most of the prisoners... there are such pilots and warriors there.” From the archives and memoirs it is clear that there were also teenagers at that construction site “for illegal possession of weapons by minors.” And who didn’t have it in the post-war period? They imprisoned 17-year-olds. There were many who survived the German camps and ended up in the Soviet camps.
“Our soldiers, when the Germans shouted to them: Hyundai Hoch, rarely raised their hands above their heads, but tens, hundreds of thousands of them were surrendered by senior commanders, who allowed their troops to be surrounded in the first days of the war, and then near Kiev, Smolensk, Moscow and under other cities. We all had to shoot ourselves to stay true to our oath. If they had done this, the Soviet Union would have lost about five million of its fellow citizens. And now, although in prison, we are working for the benefit of our country. And, if necessary, we are ready to fight for her again,” said platoon officer Mudrov, who served time on the Dead Road.
There were also people on that road like Leonid Leonidovich Obolensky, who himself spoke about his arrest like this: “They imprisoned me because I had been in captivity. And I was captured because of the movie. I was in the infantry from the very beginning of the war. In the militia, like many VGIK teachers. I was entrusted with heavy, expensive filming equipment, accompanied by a driver and a cart, and was told to “film our victory.” This was in 1941... With this valuable cargo, I first came under mortar fire, my driver escaped with the cart, then into captivity, from where he escaped twice... However, the NKVD was not interested in the details: if he was there, that means he’s an enemy, imprisoned,” - recalls Sergei Eisenstein’s colleague.
Or Lieutenant Colonel Gribanov, who defended Voronezh with his regiment in 1943, recalled how in one of the battles he was surrounded. When all the soldiers of his platoon were killed, Gribanov took the banner from the pole, wrapped himself in a cloth, buttoned his overcoat tightly and, with three staff officers, went for a breakthrough. A burst of machine gun fire felled him, and the Nazis, having taken him prisoner, found the regiment’s banner on him. Gribanov survived and was later liberated by Soviet troops. But so that in the future he would be discouraged from surrendering red banners to the enemy, he was hidden in a camp for five years.
Or the example of Pavel Sergeevich Khachaturyan is very clear: “The Great Patriotic War. At Stalingrad he was captured shell-shocked and kept in camps near Riga. I was sick with typhus, and my doctors, some of the prisoners, helped me.
A group of seven people led by Major Belov organized an escape from the camp. They fled to Poland because it was easier to move to the West. I even had to visit Geneva. We learned about the Resistance detachment, and by the end of 1941 we ended up in the French forests near Lyon, in the Resistance detachment. Until the end of the war we fought in this detachment.
Became a French major. He was awarded English, American, French orders and medals. Joined the French Communist Party.
After the war we were sent home by an English ship. With us, 800 prisoners of war returned to their homeland. We were received with music and flowers. We passed two streets - we were hit with a machine gun on the back: “Traitors to the Motherland!” Belov told me: “Well, Pavel Sergeevich, I told you, let’s go to America.” But the trip to America did not attract me. I was drawn to my homeland.
Every night they took us for three hours for interrogation. They extracted confessions. The year was 1946. In the second half of this year I was given eight years of exile to the North.”
He also built that road.
Rainy morning.
Sad, dejected,
The columns passed by the commandant's office.
Infantry companies one after another,
Then the prisoners are led to work by a convoy.
In the ranks - officers, sergeants, soldiers...
In that not-so-distant year '45,
Because others fought in the war,
For remaining alive in captivity,
They didn’t have time to burn in the ovens of Auschwitz,
They didn’t eat each other in their hungry helplessness,
In veal wagons from German soil
They brought me here under Soviet escort.
In their forms: “traitor”, “traitor”,
The convoy may bring them to their knees
Or, a fan of bullets passed over our foreheads,
Throw the sick and those with colds into the mud.
The convoy can do anything: shoot in the restricted zone,
The one who is inclined to end the torment,
But I was ready to answer myself:
There are former prisoners here, there are no enemies here.
Or this dialogue with a prisoner is described by camp guard Vladimir Pentyukhov:
“There is still a young man sitting in front of the table in the EHF, but his hair, cut in a crew cut, is silver with gray, his cheeks are sunken, and there is no lively sparkle in his eyes. He speaks with difficulty and is short of breath.
— My last name is Taranov, my name is Alexander. Originally from the Irkutsk region. He was captured near Leningrad at the end of forty-one. It was wildly cold. We soldiers froze in the trenches in our greatcoats and died of hunger. Food - one pot of thin soup for two people once a day...
— And they accused you of surrendering voluntarily?
- Like that. But I did not surrender. The Germans pulled me out of the trench with frostbitten toes of both feet, brought me to their infirmary, amputated these toes to half of my feet, and when they were healed, they sent me to work for one owner as a laborer to look after livestock and tend vegetable gardens. The security officers asked me: why didn’t he escape from captivity? I took off my shoes and showed that I was crippled, but they still sent me to a camp for five years.”
A traitor to the Motherland who surrendered to the enemy.
He is worthy of the people's contempt,
And who didn’t give up, didn’t betray the country,
And he was condemned as an ardent enemy for years.
For what? There were not a million of them in captivity,
And several million at that time,
Who was surrounded in that forty-first
Near Kiev, Smolensk, near Moscow.
God did not allow all the Germans to be destroyed,
The rest were returned in '45
In the USSR, so that he would support them
In their concentration camps they are sworn enemies.
And the Motherland accepted them, by all means!
She loved them, dear,
And resettled in camp areas
Along the coast of the northern region:
Norilsk, Yakutsk, Kamchatka, Magadan...
For another five years, to the torments of hell,
So that the rascals remember: they have been given time
For staying alive. Like a reward.
(Camp guard Vladimir Pentyukhov)
And another prisoner once asked the guard Pentyukhov the following question: “That’s why I was driven to the north a second time after serving ten years, I can’t find an answer. The first time they condemned me as an “enemy of the people” because I did not give up my new house to the village council and did not move to the dilapidated hut where this village council was located, and the second time, when I returned to my village, after ten years of imprisonment, I began to demand that my house be returned to me. . For what, you ask? True, this arrest was under a different article. 58th.
The list would be incomplete if I didn’t talk about political prisoners, “enemies of the people,” who made up a quarter of the Dead Road.
Like, for example, foreman Khokhlov, who found himself at a construction site because in one company he said about German diesel that it was better than ours. Under Article 58 he was given 10 years.
Or like Valentina Grigorievna Pavlenko-Ievleva, who, on instructions from the Komsomol, carried out propaganda work with foreign sailors in the port of Arkhangelsk, and on this basis was accused of espionage in favor of three foreign intelligence services. For this, she spent her youth behind barbed wire on the Dead Road.
Those who lived in the western regions of the USSR were condemned, whose fault was mainly that the village where they lived was at some point occupied. All those who were captured, as well as citizens of bourgeois states, even if they fought against the Nazis. And the partisans who fought against the Nazis (they aroused special suspicion in Stalin).
This is if you don’t equate those who stole a bag of potatoes with political ones. But why not make the same difference if the decree on the theft of socialist property - for taking nails from a factory or a bag of flour from a warehouse, for selling a spool of thread from a factory - implied 25 years in the camps?
On the same road were the Starostin brothers, imprisoned for 10 years under Article 58. There was a trial where they, in particular, were accused of facilitating the release of Spartak football players from the army.
In a word, the state regarded such labor force as profitable. Of course, this position was not official, and in order for no one to think about the benefits, seniority The years spent in the camp were not counted. Like, they are sitting there on our necks!
Meanwhile, the speed and volume of work was truly impressive. Already by December 5, 1948 (i.e., almost a year and a half after the order to build the railway), the Chum-Labytnangi branch with a length of 196 kilometers was completed. This was construction site number 501. And for the port, at construction site 502, the prisoners managed to build storage facilities and a five-kilometer pier.
This is all not counting the camps that the prisoners themselves built for themselves. Camps were set up every 5-10 kilometers along the road construction route. The pioneer prisoners were thrown forward, to where there were no rails yet. To storm the taiga. Where they themselves had to build barracks, punishment cells, surround them in three rows with barbed wire, put towers in the corners and build houses for the camp guards and administration. And only then - start laying the rails.
Before the tree was brought in, we had to live in primitive conditions - in dugouts and summer tents. The polar cold and dampness made their way into such dwellings, no matter how you plugged the cracks with moss and swamp peat. The bunks were made of poles, which were cut in the tundra thickets. The prisoners were kept on wooden bunks, as usual in the Gulag, without mattresses or mattresses.
Although it is impossible to build dugouts in the tundra and forest-tundra, since in the summer they fill with water, the first detachments of prisoners did not know about this, and therefore we are reminded that people lived in dugouts in which there was groundwater up to the very bunks.
The enchanted man stands among the naked hills
Work camp.
Towers in the corners.
There are no houses in it, but there are dugout holes,
Covered with moss on the sides.
There is little light in them.
It's freezing cold.
There is dampness and stench in them.
Around snow, snow.
The road between the embankment and the zone
Trampled. Visible from afar.
It is used to take a prisoner to work,
Using a cast iron “woman” to compact the gravel,
To put rails on top of the sleepers,
Steel links twenty-five meters long.
(Vladimir Pentyukhov, camp guard)
Lyudmila Fedorovna Lipatova, one of the oldest employees of the district museum in Salekhard, when walking along the Dead Road, counted 50 such camps: “The barracks for prisoners were standard, there were 5-6 of them in the camp territory, from 80 to 120 people lived in them , measuring about ten meters in width and twenty in length, are divided, as a rule, into two parts, each of which had a brick oven and a separate entrance. Wooden bunks were placed in two tiers, most often in blocks of four, like shelves in a reserved seat railway carriage. Their standard length is 1.5 meters. It also happened that poles were laid instead of boards.”
The builders were often on site before the researchers, so the work had to be adjusted on the fly. From a speech at one party meeting it is clear that there was no idea about the volume of work, although it was already 1949.
And since research papers went parallel with the construction, only then (i.e. two years later) it became clear that the place where the railway led was not suitable for a port. Due to the shallow waters of the Ob Bay, large ships simply cannot enter there.
How much human labor has been poured into the mound!
And there will be a lot more to come.
Eh, road, where are you leading us, where?
The golden road cursed by God?
(1950, Vladimir Pentyukhov)
However, a special commission headed by Stalin does not abandon the idea of building a giant port. And just as quickly as with the previous decision, he puts forward a proposal to build a new road through the Ob and Yenisei. Also, without preliminary studies of the bottom and other details, the order of the country’s leadership again demanded that the road be opened as soon as possible, this time with a length of 1,260 kilometers.
No one dared to contradict: the resolution of the Council of Ministers on the construction of the route was signed by Comrade Stalin himself.
At this point, the secret construction of port 502 was stopped. Construction of 503 began. And again, without survey work, without a new road project (it was completed only in 1952, when more than half of the highway was already ready).
A boring landscape... An embankment, people in pea coats.
The bare tundra is freezing under the windy howl.
At the corners of the fires there is a cordon of squares,
The convoy doesn't sleep there in short sheepskin coats.
Rail clanging is heard. In the cold it is thin.
The swing of hammers on steel crutches is rare.
Salekhard - Ermakovo - the path is both difficult and long,
And it will pass over someone’s innocent bones.
But link by link, growing every day,
The route lengthens and the embankment grows,
What will they carry along it from the wild land,
Kingdoms of dead quagmire and ruinous swamps?
And the road will hardly be completed,
But don’t you dare doubt and speak out loud.
Well, the tundra, it’s untouchable in the spring,
Why should she swallow human labor?
The filling will dissolve, only the rails on the sleepers
They will swing like a flexible bridge to nowhere.
This means: prisoner, start all over again,
Is people's money your problem?
(Vladimir Pentyukhov)
Why was this road built? Where for hundreds of kilometers there is nothing but swamps. Where there was nothing to transport and where no one lived, when there were not enough roads in the populated regions of the country. Where the temperature often drops to minus 50. Where snow lies from October to May. Where is the permafrost in the soil, which began to “float” along with the objects built on it. Where there are many streams and large rivers over which bridges had to be built. Which, in turn, also shifted, and had to be made collapsible - for each passing train. Where the peat bogs did not freeze even after a month of persistent 40-degree frosts. Where there is nothing for construction: no people, not even forest, which rarely grows in the tundra.
Where, please tell me, can I find a more inappropriate place? - to the question of the strategist and effective manager Comrade Stalin.
But this is the perfect place for complete despair. From where I wanted to run as fast as I could, although there was nowhere to run. and for attempting to escape in that place in the summer they put naked people to be devoured by midges. From the report of the Yeniseevsky camp it is clear that 60 prisoners attempted to escape in 1949 alone. 54 of them were liquidated.
Guard, turn away
Pretend you don't see.
I'll grab the bushes
Yes, from the cliff into the river.
I will breathe in everything with my soul
The air is clean and free
And goodbye to you
I’ll shout: “Ku-ku!”
And then you shoot
Raise the alarm.
No platoon
Won't catch me.
I will pray to God
To send you happiness,
Until the end of your life
Until the last day.
(Vladimir Pentyukhov)
“Stone and gravel had to be transported from the Northern Urals. Construction timber was floated many kilometers from the taiga along the Yenisei and Ob. Coal was delivered from Vorkuta. And there were no rails at all. The post-war industry had not yet had time to launch their production. They collected rails twisted into knots along the destroyed front-line roads, transported them to Salekhard and Igarka, where in special rail-welding trains they cut out straight pieces of 60-120 centimeters, from which they then welded ten-meter-long rails suitable for laying, writes Dobrovolsky, who learned about the construction in the 80s and equipped an expedition to those places. - Thousands of people built and thousands more supported - tried to support! - built in good condition. Whole loads of soil sank into the swamp abyss without a trace. Suddenly the finished embankment washed away, and the rail track gave a dangerous deflection. Thawing permafrost filled ditches and culverts with liquid mud. People in gray pea coats had to fumble around on the highway day and night.”
They say that under every sleeper of the Stalinist regime's blue dream - as the Northern Trans-Siberian Railway is called - lies a prisoner. At the height of construction, about one hundred thousand prisoners worked on the highway, not counting freemen.
The Arctic is covered with snow,
The blizzard sweeps like a new broom,
Blowing pedestrians off the road,
How they brush crumbs off the table.
Here the mountains are cracking from the frost,
And the birds freeze in flight.
To the deer - even if he is the fastest -
It's hard to cope with the snowstorm.
And we, newcomers from the West and South,
In the North we don’t put down our hands.
The line of the vicious circle
The Arctic Circle cannot become for us.
The convoy squeezes the boxes of the three-line guns,
The bread has been eaten and the water has been drunk,
And the quilted armor of padded jackets
The knights of labor are putting on,
Rising not from pillows and mattresses,
And from the bare bunks, where the poles are moving...
Nekrasov did not describe this
In his poems almost a hundred years ago.
It’s as if we don’t exist - and yet we are everywhere:
And in embankments, and in rails, and in bridges.
A construction miracle rises
On bones swallowed up by the tundra.
Countless streams of people flow,
The gate is bolted...
O Twentieth Century, my cruel century!
Where is the mercy for the fallen? Where is the call of freedom?
(1949. Construction No. 501
Lazar Veniaminovich Shereshevsky)
When listing those who filled these camps, I did not mention ordinary criminals, who made up about a third of the prisoners. It is their abuse that many prisoners remember as the most difficult part of their camp life. The camp administration, in turn, allowed them to do this, since the terror to which criminals subjected political prisoners was considered an important part of measures to maintain internal camp and labor discipline.
Ivan Konstantinovich Kromov was convicted because the department at the plant in which he worked made a mistake in the calculations (“They forgot to put a zero,” says Ivan Konstantinovich). For this he was sentenced to 13 years in prison with complete confiscation of property. He recalls the terror of criminals in his barracks like this: “Young guys had to stay awake at night, because night was the favorite time of day for prisoners. Every now and then they picked on the weak. I remember that they first raped even one puny little boy in front of everyone, and then hung him naked from the ceiling and left him there all night. In the morning the guy was found dead.”
That barrack was at Labytnangi station in 1948. And later Ivan Konstantinovich was transferred to a colony at Obskaya station, where I began my story. To the special brigade for burying prisoners, created in 1949: “We served all the colonies, starting from Kharp and ending with Labytnangi (a little more than 30 km. - Note S. Sh.). Let me tell you right away, there was a lot of work. per day in different places we buried ten corpses each. Sometimes it was necessary to make common burials. There was a large cemetery in the Obskaya area, also in Kharp, and there were about five large cemeteries around Labytnanog. Usually they were buried one kilometer from the zones.
In the area of Obskaya station there were about 400 graves, not counting 250 children's graves. Dead children from all the districts and zonovsky orphanages were brought to the children's cemetery. There are also about 20 common graves. Sometimes it was necessary to bury five corpses in one pit. And once we buried 10 babies in one grave. There was not enough space, and they were not allowed to expand the burials. I’ll tell you a secret, there was a separate cemetery, this is where the “cleaning plants” are now, probably 2-3 kilometers away. Allegedly, children born with physiological abnormalities. But other people were doing them. I remember we dug about 10 graves in that area. We didn’t see any corpses, so I can’t say for sure. According to rumors, the doctors themselves killed the especially ugly ones and buried them immediately, sometimes themselves. It happened that they had to be buried under a tree in one of the colony buildings. What a time it was! The Soviet government tried to protect its citizens from mental turmoil. Under no circumstances were we supposed to tell anyone; we even signed a non-disclosure document. They were afraid that they would add a few more years to our deadline. I’m telling you this now, although I’m afraid myself. Well, you never know...
The fact that we ended up in this brigade can be said to be lucky in a sense.
Our routine began at seven o'clock. We lived in a separate hut with bars on the windows. There wasn't much security, just two guards. They fed me well, they even gave me 50 grams in the evening.
We were on a separate account. At seven - we got up, at 7.30 we went for breakfast, then divorce, at 13.00 - lunch, then work again and dinner at 22.00. Sometimes, however, there were days when we went to bed at 2 am.
After the liquidation of our colony in 1952, the entire brigade was sent to Salekhard. That's where we had to work. There were colonies on almost every kilometer, and people there died in whole brigades. In general, there was a lot of work. What is most interesting is that we were forced to bury political prisoners separately from other prisoners. Most often, in many cemeteries we did not put any burial signs. They just buried it and that’s it.”
We died both in the rain and in the cold
Over the Ob, Kolyma, Indigirka,
And on our graves there is no star,
And the stake is aspen with a plywood tag.
I would smash Stalin's statues
He broke it - and, melting the scrap in open-hearth furnaces,
An obelisk made from this used metal
Erected for the glory of our infamy!
(Lazar Veniaminovich Shereshevsky)
Another former prisoner, Alexey Pavlovich Salangin, claims: “Not everyone was buried. It used to be that we would go into the forest, knock together a beam and carry it on ourselves. When you walk in the forest: either dead or shot (lying). The self-guards were so-called, from among the prisoners, they were “six”, they shot other unwanted ones, tied them to a tree.”
Fyodor Mikhailovich Revdev (a combat officer who went through the entire war was condemned for admiring foreign technology - for saying: “Studebakers are beautiful and strong cars, they have a better engine than our Zisov one”) about self-guards at the 501st construction site: “Free soldiers are people like people, and when there is a self-guard, he is a beast, worse than a beast, worse than a fascist. They treated people like animals. Sadists, truly criminals, went into self-defense. An honest person will never go there. In Salekhard I have people who guarded me. I won't say anything bad about them. Self-guards are a different matter.
The most phenomenal achievement of our state was that the people not only identified themselves in the camp through a system of denunciation, but also protected themselves and subjected them to bullying. A kind of “full self-service.”
From the speech of Professor Bogdanov, chief surgeon of the prison infirmary in the village of Abez, at the meeting active on February 12, 1948: “Us, medical workers 503rd construction site of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, some accuse us of allowing a high mortality rate among prisoners at the construction site, and that in all working areas there are never free hospital beds. That there is not a day when we do not take away the corpses of the deceased for burial. To this I must answer this way: do you know, comrade activist members, what contingent we accepted into our camps in 1945, after their liberation from fascist captivity? Yes, they were entirely dystrophic, entirely sick people. And we cannot list all their illnesses. And we are not able to cure everyone overnight or in one year, especially since we constantly feel a shortage of necessary medicines and medical equipment. Main enemy our patients are the north, which spares no one. And neither enhanced additional rations nor pine decoctions will help us with this. It’s time for us to assign a disability group to at least every third person. That is why pegs with plywood boards and numbers of the dead grow every day in churchyards; in fact, the Nazis handed over to us prisoners, people physically and morally exhausted from hard work. We are not yet able to stop mortality or at least reduce it.”
And here is what Konstantin Khodzevich, former prisoner 503, says: “The man is seriously ill, he cannot get up and go to work. He was treated like this: from the bunk to the drill. Not everyone came out of there alive. Or the patient would be pulled off the bunk, tied by the legs with a rope, and dragged on horseback to work outside the area where the prisoners worked.” And he’s talking about nutrition: “The next year, in the summer, they didn’t stock up on food. In winter, the rivers sank, famine began, people became weak, could not go to work, many could not stand on their feet, and died in the barracks. The living did not immediately report the dead: the dead fed the living with the meager, fat-free gruel that was still due to the dead. The corpses were thrown into trenches that were dug for barracks in the summer, or even buried in the snow. There was no one to dig the graves.”
Professor Bogdanov, mentioned above (about whom, by the way, the security guard Vladimir Pentyukhov wrote this: “Bogdanov was a professor-surgeon. There is a rumor: in the Kremlin he treated Stalin, and for some cheesy anecdote he ended up at the 503rd construction site), said about the hardships of pre-camp life, which even before construction undermined the health of prisoners. And at this point I cannot help but dwell on the transfer of people to the construction site.
Former prisoner Boris Tachkov: “Hunger accompanied every minute of our stay in the carriage. Then - cold. And the further we drove north, the more this cold took us in a vice. I remember the feeling when you wake up and find yourself frozen to the bunk. You tear yourself away from these bunks... Then illnesses began little by little, diarrhea began, which turned into bloody diarrhea, dysentery began in the middle of the stage. People started dying. When we arrived at the place, there were already five stiff corpses lying in our vestibule...”
Former prisoner Georgy Biankin: “...There were no toilets in these cars. At the level of 60-70 centimeters, two windows were cut down so that a person could not crawl through. More than one hundred people were traveling. When they went to urinate, the steam above the hole became frost, fine snow. People scraped this frozen urine with their nails and drank..."
Ruge Walter recalls: “After the expulsion of the fascist occupiers from the Soviet Union, the country energetically began to eliminate the post-war devastation.
At that time, there was a shortage of everything, and especially of labor due to the multimillion-dollar loss of life during the war. In such a situation, we prisoners turned out to be a real valuable reserve. By this time I had served 8 years of my ten-year sentence in the Omsk camps under Art. 58 paragraph 10. The year was 1949.
After thorough commissioning, the “live cargo” was sent to new post-war construction sites.
It was not announced to us, and it was not indicated on the carriages where we were being sent, there was no inscription “Enemies of the People”, as in 1941, but we could guess in which direction... by the sun!
It is difficult for a civilized person to understand what forwarding is. It is a huge boiling cauldron where a sea of people moves from one end to the other. We, the political ones, were simply called “frayers” here, sat on our bundles with things, trembling, afraid, looking around. During the first three hours, a pack of criminals stole literally everything from me: a change of shoes, a duffel bag with linen, a modest medical literature“for a smoke,” the entire supply of crackers, a small pillow that the medical staff gave me in Omsk as a farewell gift. Large-scale clothing robbery was carried out in the bathhouse. All the clothes in the bathhouse had to be turned in for “cooking,” and when you left the steam room, it turned out that your clothes were “disappeared.” You remained naked. In exchange, they gave you some rags (for the third term), and from now on you were considered a “squanderer” of state property.
When we were unloaded, we noticed that it was not getting dark, which meant we were far to the north. It was as if they had lost the night - eternal day above the Arctic Circle. But it’s one thing to read about this from Fridtjof Nansen, and another to get used to it on the banks of the Yenisei, accompanied by the singing of mosquitoes and under escort. At first we were simply “placed” in the forest, fencing off a piece of forest with barbed wire. Very unusual, because until now, whether it was a prison, a camp or a barge, we still had a roof over our heads. Luckily it didn't rain. There was a bump to rest my tired head on. There were also some clothes to cover up. But very soon we realized that mosquitoes and midges would not let us sleep.
But where the hell are we, what are we going to do here? Through contact with civilian technical and medical personnel something was leaking out. It turned out that from here a railway was to be built at the level of the Arctic Circle to the west towards Salekhard on the Gulf of Ob, approximately 1000 kilometers long.”
The story of Zoya Dmitrievna, who recalled her arrival in Igarka (a fun construction site for five hundred), is also remarkable: “They brought us, still under escort, to the square. And here they left us alone, announcing that tomorrow morning, at 10 o’clock, we would gather again at this place. And we were already left on our own...
We are standing in a crowd. We see kiosks, outside the windows of which there are still remnants of American aid: cans of canned food, etc. We stand, discussing what to do. Several of us have gathered and are looking around...
And then we tangibly felt what the NATIONAL QUESTION means, it touched us closely.
It was getting dark... We stood in a crowd in the middle of the square of an unfamiliar city. For the first time in many months we were left to ourselves. The convoy left. We were offered to settle in as best we could for the night.
It was necessary to take the initiative, try to find a roof, housing.
The streets of the city converged into the square. And on these already darkening streets figures appeared that were moving towards us. Come over.
“Are there any Armenians?” “Our crowd moved and became animated. - "Yes, I have!" “They took me with them, took me somewhere to “their environment.”
“Are there any Jews?” - "Yes, I have". “They took them away again, took away their “friends.”
“Are there any Latvians?” - "Yes, I have". - They also took away... “Our own!”
AND NO ONE ASKED THE RUSSIANS OR UKRAINIANS!!!
And it is clear: for some - small nationalities - we were oppressors. For others - and for us, brought up in an orthodox international spirit - the question of nationality sounded almost blasphemous. After all, we were building a world society without distinction of nationalities, because in the first years after the revolution, the slightest emphasis, any mention of “Russian” was considered chauvinism, nationalism, unacceptable among such an advanced society as the Soviet one, which was building a non-class, non-national world community of people.”
But let's return to the daily life of both prisoners and guards. From the act of checking orders and instructions dated February 18, 1949 about the life of the latter: “Soldiers sleep on two-tier solid bunks, without bedding. The self-guard is placed together with the soldiers, since there are only 40 places in this dugout for 70 people. The soldiers sleep alternately on the same beds.”
But as for the first ones: “The dugouts are cramped. Damp and heavy stale air. The average provision of living space for a prisoner is 1.1 square meters. m" (the 1951 plan was 1.25 sq. m per person. - Note S. Sh.). I note that in such cramped conditions people lived in a place where the population is one person per 20 square kilometers.
From the climate certificate of Northern Construction it is clear that officially work (external) stopped only when it was below 45 degrees. At 44 degrees they worked as usual.
The evening was tedious and hot.
The sky was gilded by sunset,
On a wide street in Igarka,
A young soldier shot himself
At the age of seventeen he said goodbye to home,
Served for almost seven years,
Dear dear Fatherland,
And there is no end to that service.
Youth flew by,
The bird of happiness is wounded in the wing,
Yenisei dark wave
Both love and joy were taken away.
He walked from his post, barely moving his legs,
He unbuttoned his worn uniform,
Ahead, like a pillar in the middle of the road,
His platoon commander grew up.
The platoon commander shouted: “What is this?!”
Buckle up, tighten your belt!
How are you standing, you impudent one, in front of me?
Why did you put your cap on on one side?
The lieutenant found fault a lot,
I didn’t spare time for morality,
As he wanted, he mocked.
Finally the soldier could not resist.
He exclaimed: “How tired of you!”
He tore the pistol out of his pocket,
Shot himself in the temple. Smoldered
Hair, and now the soldier is gone.
A day later he was buried
Behind the steep cemetery mountain,
The mother was told:
The son died in service as a Hero.
(In memory of Private Viktor Kharin, May 1951,
Igarka, Vladimir Pentyukhov)
Maria Vasilievna Eremeeva, one of the civilians - those who served short sentences - recalls: “You go in the morning, the prisoners are sawing logs with their hands, the next day you go - the house is already ready at this place. And we always wondered: when did they sleep?”
He says he doesn't believe what they say about hunger or malnutrition. However, he immediately notes: “But we, of course, did not see those prisoners who had long sentences.”
How prisoners who served long sentences lived is described by the former prisoner Aleksey Salangin, mentioned above: “At first the food in the tents was poor, they even gave little porridge, but later the food became good. There were stalls, at first they gave us 100% of our salaries, then 50%..."
The lack of fresh vegetables for three to four years had an effect, there were not enough vitamins, and people died from scurvy.
During the construction of Dead Road No. 501, approximately every fourth or fifth camp was for women. The women's areas were no different from the men's. The same structure and, as a rule, the same work.
According to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, half a million women were detained annually in camps and colonies from 1946 to 1950.
Nikita Petrov’s study “GULAG” provides data on women in places of detention in the USSR during the period we are considering. From January 1, 1948 to March 1, 1949, the number of convicted women with children increased by 138% and pregnant women by 98%. As of January 1, 1947, there were 6,779 pregnant women prisoners.
Ministry of Internal Affairs documents dating from 1952 and 1953 shed some light on the situation of women and children in the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps at the end of the Stalin era.
From the report of the commission addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Comrade S.N. Kruglov, dated December 4, 1952, No. 50/2257, it followed that the cost of keeping prisoners in the northern and Far Eastern camps of the GULZhDS was approximately twice as expensive as their maintenance in other camps. And based on this, the conclusion was made about the need to accommodate, in particular, mothers with children in camps located in more favorable climatic conditions. But without any argumentation this proposal was refused.
As a result of difficult living conditions, 1,486 cases were registered in just 10 months of 1952 primary diseases for an average monthly number of 408 children. Considering that during the same period 33 children died (or 8.1 percent of the total), it turns out that on average during this period each child suffered from various diseases four times. Among the causes of death, the leading causes were dysentery and dyspepsia - 45.5 percent, as well as pneumonia - 30.2 percent.
That is, children died 16 times more often than adult prisoners.
On August 28, 1950, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR prescribed the release from punishment of convicted pregnant women and women with young children. A certificate signed by the deputy head of the 2nd Directorate of the Gulag of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Colonel Nikulochkin, stated that on April 24, 1951, in pursuance of this decree, 100% of pregnant women and women with children in prison were released from places of detention, as well as 94 .5% of women who have children outside the colony camp. A total of 119,041 women were released out of 122,738 who fell into the listed categories. That is, over one hundred thousand children were in one way or another imprisoned before 1951.
For women, the work was the same as for men: pouring gravel and sand, digging frozen ground, loading and unloading vehicles.
Women loaded 30-40 cars a day by hand, recalls Galina Ostapovna Prikhodko, who was imprisoned for 10 years for a bag of beets. A woman from another camp talks about the norm: “11 cars per shift for each person.”
From the reports of the manager of the Yamalo-Nenets branch of the Industrial Bank of the USSR N.I. Pitirimov, through whose hands many certificates and financial documents characterizing the conduct of construction on the territory of the national district passed, it is clear how heavy manual labor was exploited: “A large overexpenditure of labor is allowed... Labor-intensive earthworks the work is carried out exclusively by hand in the complete absence of shovels...”; “Many sites lack the most primitive lifting mechanisms.”
In Salekhard, in the area of the Angal Cape on Ufan, a detachment was set up, the so-called “Column of the Mother and Child Home”. There was also maternity hospital. Here’s what Margarita Mikhailovna Kuznetsova, who carried mail and organized concerts and lectures in a women’s logging colony on the Nadym River, said: “The sentences there were 10 years, or even 15. There were no tests, they sat from bell to bell. Of course, we were hungry. Spruce dried tomatoes. She felled wood all day, and felling wood is not a woman’s job. Try to pull out this forest on horseback. There were no tractors, there was nothing. Horses and women. They will harness this horse to a drag and then push it on. They go there on horseback, and follow the horse back.”
A prisoner who delivered babies recalls that “the children were born small, like kittens, without a sucking reflex.”
Although the mortality rate at the “five hundred cheerful” construction site, as the prisoners called it, was lower than in other Gulag camps (for example, A. Antonov-Ovseenko, who went through the GULZhDS camps on the neighboring Kotlas-Vorkuta highway, indicates that the prisoner endured the general work on average for no more than three months in a row), millions of Soviet prisoners were horrified by it. Because even a slave is not indifferent to what his life is spent on.
And isn’t this dead road the same road to a bright future?
Once upon a time it occurred to me,
what if they wanted to completely crush,
destroy a person
punish him with the most terrible punishment,
then it would only be worthwhile to give the work character
utter, utter uselessness
and meaninglessness.
(Dostoevsky. Notes from a Dead House)
At least, Barabanov, one of the construction managers, said, standing on the locomotive, like this: “My friends! We are all here - willingly or unwillingly - building access roads to communism! Go ahead, my friends!
The labor journey for thousands of prisoners began from the Salekhard pier, where they were greeted by a huge poster: “Long live the great Stalin, the leader of the peace camp!”
It’s worth saying separately about Barabanov, “Uncle Vasya,” as the prisoners called him, since life under him was very different.
“Before him (Barabanov. - Note S. Sh.) there was a construction manager who said: “I don’t need you to work, I need you to suffer!” says artist Leonid Leonidovich Obolensky.
“He was an extraordinary person who managed to go through the old KGB school and in the depths of his soul understood how many innocently suffering people were among his charges,” assesses Barabanov, a former political prisoner of construction site No. 501, Lazar Veniaminovich Shereshevsky.
Few people, even those around the construction manager, knew then that Vasily Arsenievich himself spent 6 months in solitary confinement. After which he was sent to work in the North, together with his family.
Barabanov was known for his credit system: “Whoever fulfills the daily production quota by 115% counts the day as two, and whoever completes 125% counts as three.”
Special efforts were required for the early delivery of objects in honor of public holidays, and then Barabanov used the carrot method: “Suppose we need to lay 100 meters of track before the holiday in order to report to the top about the early joining of the next section of the route, but people are exhausted, there is not enough equipment and tools, there is no time at all. Then, at the point where the work was completed, a huge table was set up, laid out in a free manner. An abundance of alcoholic beverages, including expensive cognacs, pickles and delicacies - all this was waiting without deception for the team that met the deadline. Where did the strength come from..." - former prisoners recall.
But those who did not fulfill the quota were given only one crust of bread.
In order to comply with the standards
Monthly assignments, sometimes
At the target kilometer
Put in alcohol. Yes, a box or two.
Announce: if the rails fall
By this point, the drinks are all yours.
And the brigade will be smashed into pieces,
Will complete the task for a hundred grams.
(Vladimir Pentyukhov)
The prisoners respected “Uncle Vasya”. “Soon the Trotskyists were brought to the zone,” recalls Barabanov’s daughter Elena, who followed her dad to the North when she was 7 years old and her sister Nadezhda was 12. “Trotsky’s son, his secretary, in general, his entire entourage was expelled there. They arrived there with such bulky suitcases - they had a lot of things. The next day they were robbed. Dad calls Moscow (the prisoner's nickname. - Note S. Sh.): “Guys, what are you doing? Are you disgracing me!? Can you imagine what could happen to me? You robbed them!” The next day there was a huge sack in our hallway with a note attached: “Everything has been returned! We ate the canned food.”
This was the daughters' first acquaintance with prisoners. In the following years they would become acquainted with political prisoners and exiles who came to their home very often. According to Elena Vasilievna, it was there, behind the barbed wire, that she met a lot of interesting and wonderful people.
Colonel Barabanov understood that he would better fulfill the tasks set by the state if he tried to improve the lives of prisoners. It was he who initiated the creation of the camp theater. Serf, as the actors themselves called him.
Them, the artists, for the construction theater
Barabanov personally selected.
They even say I drove along the highway,
Wherever I was, I recognized everywhere:
Are there talented people?
Obolensky was here Leonid.
Yes Yes Yes. Descendant of the Decembrist,
Film director, actor, writer.
Bolkhovskoy, actor from Leningrad,
The prince's son, a wonderful master reader.
As soon as he goes on stage, the hall is frozen,
All you can hear is the beating of hearts.
Odessa musician - Chernyatinsky,
Also a prince, or rather, he was a prince.
There is an orchestra director at the theater. Bandmaster.
He was reputed to be very important.
There was Krainov, a professor-archaeologist.
Bass. Paul Robeson, cut from sinew.
In my youth I knew Mayakovsky,
And Sergei Yesenin was friends with him.
Ostroukhov is the count, the soul of the actors.
He is a virtuoso, an accordionist.
You can't stage a concert without it.
“Turkish March” was an encore.
You can't help but admire their performance.
Inspiration, the spirit soars high,
But they suffer in silence, without showing.
Sitting for ten years is a long time.
They were kept in the camp so that they could live,
They didn’t lose their appearance, not even their weight.
Construction officers, Barabanov,
They had their own interest in this.
(Vladimir Pentyukhov, 1947)
Vanda Antonovna Savnor recalls how she ended up in the serf theater. Her prison journey began back in February 1938. When she and her husband Alexander Yakovlevich Yakubovich, a process engineer by profession, celebrated their second anniversary of marriage: “We were happy, but we were separated! The next day I was arrested on an obviously fabricated case - 58-6, and over the next 10 months I learned all the “delights” of Moscow prisons. That same night my husband was arrested (the pretext for the accusation: a business trip to Italy in 1932), received 5 years in the camps under Art. 58-6.
After my release, I continued to work - singing in the opera and drama studio of K. S. Stanislavsky, and sought a review of my husband’s case, helped him with parcels and letters. Only in May 1944, tired, exhausted, but happy, he returned to Moscow. In 1945 our son was born. We had to arrange our lives again. My husband was sent as the chief engineer of the Bryansk slate plant.
I prepared the role of Elena in V. A. Kryukov’s opera “Dmitry Donskoy” for the 800th anniversary of Moscow. In September 1947, I sang the premiere, and Alexander Yakovlevich rejoiced with me at the success of the opera. It seemed that everything was behind...
But 1949 came - a new wave of repression. One late night I returned home from a concert and... oh, horror! The room is sealed! “Alexander Yakovlevich was arrested,” said the neighbor. Arrested again? Will he be able to withstand all the tests? All the time I had free from rehearsals, I was at Kuznetsky, in the reception room, trying to find out about the fate of Alexander Yakovlevich and asking for a date. In April it took place in Butyrka prison and was difficult. He was depressed... Everything we had strived for was collapsing again...
Then I found out that Alexander Yakovlevich was sentenced to “eternal settlement,” but where is still unknown... And then, finally, the news came: he was in Igarka... I burst into tears.”
And Vanda Antonovna went after him.
“It’s difficult for me to describe our meeting with Alexander Yakovlevich. Anyone who has experienced such moments will understand me!
The news of the arrival of an artist from the Moscow Theater apparently spread throughout Igarka, and the next day a delegation came asking me to take part in a concert after some conference. I happily agreed. I was in good vocal shape then.
Alexander Yakovlevich and I went to see the local theater - a two-story wooden building, with a fairly large auditorium, stage and foyer. I heard the sounds of a piano. A young pianist unfamiliar to me was sitting on the stage at the piano. I asked him to accompany me on several romances by S. V. Rachmaninov. He readily agreed. Only a highly professional musician could play S. V. Rachmaninov’s difficult-to-play piano romances from sight so inspiredly. As it turned out, it was Vsevolod Topilin, a conservative who was captured by the Germans during the war and is now serving time in our camp.
The theater had an orchestra led by N. N. Chernyatinsky (former conductor of the Odessa Opera). Among the orchestra members was the leading violinist Folya (Efraim) Tolensky. I [later] met him in Moscow in 1989, he played at the Stanislavsky Theater. There was a lot at the Igarsky Theater talented actors. Among them: operetta artists Dora Petrova from Nikolaev, Irkutsk operetta artist V. Aksenov, Maly Theater artist B. Nicheukhin, tenor I. Chigrinov, director L. Obolensky, artists D. Krainov, L. I. Yukhin, choreographer B. E. Skvortsov, ballet group, artist of the Kirov Theater D. Zelenkov. Among the civilian employees was the director A. Alekseev, a rude man by nature who had no idea about directorial ethics...
At the end of the year we moved to Ermakovo (to construction site 503. - Note S. Sh.), settled in a barracks where six other families lived. They lived without doors, behind curtains. The barracks were heated with an iron stove, which was heated day and night by the orderly. And yet at night the hair froze to the wall.
At the club, I became acquainted with the creative ideas and works of the artist of the Kirov Theater (who came from the Finnish camps to ours) Dmitry Zelenkov, from the Lanseret-Benois family. Having spread the canvas on the floor of the auditorium, he worked with a brush with inspiration, and by evening the required stage design was ready. And the audience invariably appreciated this with applause.
Once during a concert, D. Zelenkov hanged himself backstage. But they managed to save him and bring him back to life. But not for long. After a while he will try again, and he will no longer be saved. The beautiful, spiritual artist often played on the piano a fragment of Delilah’s aria from Saint-Saëns’ opera (“Ah, I have no strength to bear the separation!”), and it sounded like a cry from the soul! “Dima, be patient,” I cried. “After all, you have 9 months left, it will all be over soon!” - “What awaits me? Eternal settlement here, in this region?” - he answered sadly.”
But Yu. A. Askarov recalls an interesting episode of theatrical camp life: “The newly appointed head of the political department Shtanko was present at this performance, who forbade the “enemies of the people” to clap. All the actors were shocked. L. S. Morozova said: if there is no applause after the first act, she will not go on stage. Now it’s hard to even imagine the tension we were in. The first act ends, the hall is silent for a split minute, Lyudmila Sergeevna turns pale. And suddenly a collapse! There was a frenzy in the hall, there was no such applause... It turned out that Chief V.A. Barabanov, sitting in the first row, raised his hands above his head and applauded, defusing the situation in the hall.”
Of course, such episodes could not go unnoticed. Indeed, in addition to this, Barabanov punished guards for violence against prisoners and even released the latter when they risked their lives for the sake of a common cause. Barabanov was transferred, and the theater was closed with the wording: “So as not to raise the authority of the prisoners.”
Former prisoner Leonid Ivanovich Yukhin: “It was by chance that I ended up in the theater, and the food there was good... I don’t want to lie, it was actually decent. It was so good for the camp. But it could have been different: people couldn’t stand it for six months and died. I saw how they were swollen from hunger. I saw people eating shoe polish and Vaseline. Not only did they not feel taste... It was in Knyazh-Pogost, where there was a puppet theater. We traveled, served the campers, and I saw a lot in the camp... It was terrible, especially for women. Scary! This is scary…
When Barabanov was fired from work, the operetta was written off, the drama 58 was written off. I was sent to a special stage. Everyone was dispersed into columns. The theater was closed. It was 1950.
Stalin died. And then Nikita Sergeevich “gave” us freedom. That is, he debunked the cult of personality, and due to the lack of corpus delicti, I was released “on a clean basis.” It turns out that I spent 8 years in prison for no reason and spent 4 years in exile.
April 6, 1944, when I was arrested. I say: “For what? What's the matter? Why?" - “We’ll find out!” And they attributed 58-10 to me - anti-Soviet agitation. For what? My father and mother suffered for five years. Once a friend asked me: why? I said: “They’re going to jail for nothing! My father suffered for five years!” And my friend wrote that I expressed such a thought. It was like this then... My brother was also imprisoned with me, on the same case. The NKVD contacted the plant, sent some engineer there, he eavesdropped on everything and wrote it down! Probably my brother also expressed some idea. Well, in general, we were rehabilitated together. Both he and I.
In general, I lived my life - and there was a lot of grief, but there was also joy. I played so much while in prison, played so many roles... And what’s remarkable is that our prisoners’ theater “survived” professional theaters. So, we arrived in Igarka - the theater was closed. Somewhere else was closed. Several theaters were closed because we seemed to be crossing their path. The level was very high. Very very! They often told us: “All you have to do in Moscow is to perform.” Indeed, there was a well-coordinated team. There were no newspaper articles about us, no reviews, nothing. It's as if there is no theater. But it thundered."
As camp guard Vladimir Pentyukhov wrote: “And there was no limit to surprise. Artists - who? Their life is sadness, misfortune. The term is ten years. But such skill is something you don’t always see among free people.”
And he also wrote about that theater like this:
Those concerts were good!
How can I forget about them?
We walked from the zone and to the zone,
To encourage colleagues,
In the bitter cold with the winds,
Ice will rust on your eyebrows,
By the time you get to the barracks,
It won't hit tooth on tooth.
Sometimes my artists cried,
Frostbitten ears, cheeks, nose,
But they took the stage cheerfully.
God himself, apparently, carried us on them
Show the soldiers what we can do
To ease their fate at least a little,
Even today. Tomorrow prisoners
They should be taken out onto the track again.
(Vladimir Pentyukhov)
By 1953, almost a thousand kilometers of railway had been built through the suffering described. In addition to the road near Obskaya station, prisoners built an entire airfield. It was used only once by an aircraft of a special commission checking the readiness of meeting the first locomotive.
On March 5, Stalin died, and already on the 21st, Beria sent a note to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on revising the previously adopted plan for the construction of facilities for 1953. He explained this by saying that a number of objects “are not caused by the urgent needs of the national economy,” and listed 20 objects, including the Chum-Salekhard-Igarka railway. Later, in 1956, the new Minister of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs N.P. Dudarov called the subpolar tundra a “natural prison,” “which makes it possible to ensure complete isolation of prisoners.” In the area of the mothballed railway construction, he proposed organizing two forced labor prisons with a strict regime.
But this will happen later, and in June 1953 a radiogram arrives with government instructions: “Immediately stop all work at the Northern Railway facility. d. construction".
For some reason, the deadline for the liquidation of the camps will also be strictly limited to September 1, 1953. Eyewitnesses say that most of all it looked like an escape. With the destruction of all property before this. Because, according to the laws of Soviet times, you had to either take it out, or destroy what was impossible or unprofitable to take away. Otherwise, if you simply abandoned it, it would be considered a waste of state property. But it was unprofitable to transport almost everything from there.
They burned mountains of sheepskin coats and pillows, and pierced bowls. Almost everything that was made there or imported over the past six years was destroyed.
11 steam locomotives, several dozen carriages, several tractors and a lot of other equipment were abandoned. In 2005, two steam locomotives were taken by the administration of the Turukhansky district to Kureika, the place of Stalin’s exile: the idea arose to restore the once majestic pantheon on the banks of the Yenisei, re-erect the monument to the “leader and father of all nations” and add steam locomotives from the prisoners’ construction site to this complex. It was still not possible to combine the executioner and his victims in one memorial...
Later, when people in that area think about a road again, all past construction will turn out to be unsuitable, given that it was not even mothballed. The roads parted, the sleepers rotted. Only small sections fell into the new road and these were re-paved. The remaining sections made turns so often (since they were done without a construction plan), that it was easier to build a new road, but a straight one.
Did the participants in that construction understand its meaninglessness then? Krasnoyarsk local historian Rostislav Gorchakov answers this question: “And don’t let anyone object to me that at the time of construction, they say, no one could have foreseen anything like this, but, on the contrary, he was overwhelmed with enthusiasm, feeling his own involvement in the great construction projects of communism. Memoirs and public speeches of the surviving martyrs of the Dead Road indicate that they were well aware of the absurdity of work for the sake of “showing off” when, in the name of an early report to the Moscow authorities, they were forced to lay sand mixed with clay instead of crushed stone, or to build bridges without ice protection (this is in Siberian rivers!). You didn't have to be an extraordinary specialist to see the pitiful fragility of all this humiliating fussy display. Less than six months had passed since the road was mothballed, and literally before our eyes it began to fall apart at the seams: bridges were collapsing, rails were hanging in the void above washed-out embankments, traffic lights and telegraph poles, torn off by permafrost, were tilting.”
The madness of this construction is also confirmed economically. 42 billion rubles were spent on the Dead Road. This unimaginable amount for the USSR arose because Stalin made an unprecedented decision: “To pay funds from the state budget without a plan, but according to the actual costs of building the highway.”
And how it was in fact, we see from the memoirs of Maria Dmitrievna Ostrikova: “We lived from hand to mouth, they mocked us terribly, food was prepared from spoiled products... Almost all the authorities stole. They said that they supported themselves on this construction site for the rest of their lives.”
And here is what the survey engineer, participant in the construction of the 501st construction site A. Pobozhiy says in his essay “Dead Road”, published in the magazine “ New world” in 1964: “When the head of the Northern design and survey expedition, Pyotr Konstantinovich Tatarintsev, which included the Nadym railway. The expedition, led by Pobozhi, asked him how things were going, the engineer replied:
- Everything seems to be fine. The parties are working hard, they have already covered more than half of the route
“Sort of,” you say... But you don’t carry out the plan,” he interrupted.
- How so? - I objected. — In all areas, the work is proceeding exactly according to the schedule you approved and there are no delays...
“They don’t do it, Pyotr Konstantinovich,” answered the planner, unfolding a sheet covered in numbers.
“But he objects,” the boss nodded at me.
- I'll report now. It was planned, if we take the second quarter as a whole, to be four million rubles, but they spent less than three. So the plan was only 62% fulfilled.
- But this is good! — I was delighted, not yet understanding what was the matter. “And they got the job done and saved money.”
And in the memoirs of one of the builders of the Dead Road, former front-line officer B. A. Frantsuzov, it is well illustrated what inflated standards led to:
“They sent our team to the quarry to load gravel into trucks with shovels. The work is already hard, so how can we exceed the norm? So we used to stand by the cars, waving shovels, knocking on the sides, supposedly loading them. Then “go” to the driver. What does he care, he’ll go half empty, what’s the difference. And the “dot keeper” - a prisoner record-keeper who notes the number of vehicle trips - is already putting one more dot in his notebook: the truck was loaded and sent ... "
When the prisoners were exhausted, they put nails under the wheels to give themselves some rest. But they were driven to exceed the daily norm.
The effectiveness of forced labor is also evidenced by another construction veteran who worked on filling the linen: “The prisoners dumped tree trunks and branches into the body of the embankment and covered it all with soil. This gave the brigade a large volume of excavation work performed per shift. Of course, after some time such an embankment sank. Another brigade of prisoners came and got to work again.”
The first information about the Dead Road leaked during the Khrushchev Thaw.
The newspapers were silent about the construction (though the local newspaper did write about the exploits of Komsomol members at the Northern construction site). The rules for prisoners prohibited the disclosure of information about that time.
“For a traveler who finds himself today in the area of the Dead Road Salekhard - Igarka, the opening landscapes make a surreal impression. In the dense small forest that has grown along the road over the past almost 40 years, the eye now and then encounters the most unexpected objects for these deserted places, from dishes and tabletop sewing machines to huge corroded steam locomotives. Dilapidated camps, dead villages, and the fantastic outlines of the deserted city of Ermakovo appear through the foliage, surrounded by barbed wire. An embankment overgrown with bushes with crooked rusty rails and collapsed bridges stretches forward to the very horizon. Moving along this road day after day, kilometer after kilometer, you realize more and more clearly how great was the destructive power of crazy Bolshevik ideas,” writes a participant in one of the expeditions in modern times.
In one of the camps, a stack of letters from prisoners was found, which the censorship did not even read, but immediately cut into pieces. The address of the USSR Prosecutor General, which was especially often repeated on scraps of envelopes, indicated that even here people still continued to believe in the restoration of justice, insist on their own innocence, and hope for the return of the title of honest citizens.
For example, there was this piece:
"knowledge Art. Lieutenant Rudley,
with our tricks, physical
beating until loss of consciousness
torture, illegal detention
rm, deprivation of full-time
witnesses, deprivation"
There were also personal letters, which no one sent either: “A family without inheritance is some kind of meaningless, difficult union, torture imposed on a person by providence... This is the curse that lies on you and me, Petrus.” (The last phrase is underlined twice.)
“But a hundred times worse is that, not understanding my son, I will never be his friend, I will never be worthy of his sympathy, his only being related to me by blood. And nothing else will happen in this lousy life, except for one remarkable incident: death.”
The same expedition found Form Number One in the camps - the original, fundamental document of camp human studies. The ratio is more than eloquent: if only half a line is devoted to the “beginning of the term”, then as many as ten lines are devoted to the “end of the term”. How can one not recall Dante’s “abandon hope, all who enter here...”
But what’s surprising is that people today are not averse to repeating that monstrous experiment. So, under one article about the Dead Road, I found the following comments from fellow citizens: “There are now 2 million prisoners in Russia, they need to be sent to reconstruct the road,” and following it:
"Agree! Let them bring at least some benefit to their people. And at the same time we’ll see whether the mortality rate was so high and whether it could have been somehow reduced. It seems to me that if bureaucrats now took on such a “construction project of the century,” the mortality rate would be much higher.”
There are also supporters of this idea among local residents who believe that forced labor, of course, should no longer be used, but it would be nice if the road “healed.”
For example, a former communications electrician living 70 kilometers from Nizhny Nadym along the Dead Road to the west. It served part of the Salekhard-Nadym communication line until 1992. After losing my job, I decided to stay in my usual places and develop subsistence farming. Now he mainly lives by hunting and fishing, has a working railcar at his disposal and, most importantly, all these years he has been maintaining more than 14 kilometers of railway tracks in working order.
A fragment of a piece of paper on the door of the camp louse-breaker:
to implement
regulated by the constitution
newspapers and books, radio stations
enny and so on.
not words, not phrases. This
Soviet citizens in practice
freedoms assigned to them
anyone from capitalist countries.
and freedoms. But these are empty, deprived
material necessary for this
are in the hands of the bourgeoisie
ocracy actually means
and profit from
starve
Soviet
universal
Why am I remembering all this?
Because I don’t find an answer to that Pole’s question: “What I can’t understand is, if in almost every family in Soviet times someone was sent to prison or shot, why aren’t you interested in your ancestors, don’t demand to open the archives, punish those responsible for their deaths, ruined lives?
The eternal argument of the Gulag is that there were not hundreds of thousands of them - those who were repressed - but only dozens. Not tens of millions, but just a few.
But only when we stop perceiving this as “just think, that’s all” and fully realize what happened to us, only then will we finally be rehabilitated.
And the people who stayed there forever will be able to say that that journey was not in vain.
If at least their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are freed.
It's a rare case that the Russian BBC service published something decent. "Of course, it was wrong to build a road using slave labor. But after the construction took so many lives, it was also a crime to stop it." These words of a former political prisoner who remained in prison are worth remembering. Many prisoners remained to live in the cities of the Russian North that they built. But the labor of prisoners in any country and at all times can be called slave labor. It is also worth remembering that people subconsciously include in their memories both the justification of their own actions and the condemnation of the regime. Hence the wild stories, like rats getting into the safe and eating the money. Hence the fairy tales and horror stories from some lips and dry numbers from others.
First a few quotes:
For those who worked on the bridge, in the swamp (and these were the most difficult areas) they were given a “Barabanovsky” ration: bread, sausage, cheese. Alcohol was brought into the tank - everyone was given 50 grams. A wagon with shag also arrived; it was called the “Barabanovsky” wagon (shag was given to prisoners who worked hard labor).
If everything was relatively good with people’s nutrition, then the rest of the conditions were definitely terrible - the lack of basic living conditions, terrible cold (including in semi-dugouts/dugouts and tents that were heated with an iron stove, and even in barracks, most of which also heated with iron stoves), swamp dampness, vileness. These problems, as in the case of nutritional problems, also affected everyone. Housing problems could be solved by improving supplies, which would require extending the construction period. The housing situation was very different in different construction sites, for different categories people and in different time, but most importantly, it improved every year.
As sad as it may be for the exposers of Stalin, there were no hundreds of thousands of deaths or mass mistreatment. The Gulag was an economic and very efficient system. The task was not to destroy the workers, but to build. And ZK designed and built everything - from airplanes and atomic bombs to this construction site.
It is worth remembering the tears of the former ZKs who saw the ruined road. And another question is who they condemn more - Stalin, under whom they really often innocently went along the stage of building the road of life, or Khrushchev, thanks to whom it turned into a “road to nowhere.”
GULAG. Construction No. 501.
The filming took place during a local history expedition. Authors of the photo: I.G.Kuznetsov I.Yu.Sharovatov.
Railway construction site No. 501. (1948 - 1953)The railway from Nadym to Salekhard was abandoned in 1953. It was then, in connection with the death of I.V. Stalin's construction was stopped. From 1948 to 1953, hundreds of kilometers of rails were laid by prisoners... The purpose of our expedition was to search for abandoned camps of former prisoners in this area. The 110-kilometer route passes through forests, hills, swamps, tundra... Of course, over the 55 years of ownerless existence, the railway has undergone significant changes: the fill has sagged greatly, the sleepers have rotted, the rails have bent over time...
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