Magadan gulag camps. Kolyma (gulag)

Kolyma - a special island of the Gulag

Everything you, reader, read in this introductory article about Kolyma is true. The cruel and bitter truth. And don’t complain about me if I cite some facts, not speculation and legends, but facts about this long-suffering land and its inhabitants, which will seem unreal to you, since the word Gulag today means everything negative. And, logically, it seems that what I will talk about below should not happen. Nevertheless...

Kolyma was a special island in the Gulag system that existed in the Soviet Union in the 30-50s. By mid-1941, this “island” occupied the 10th part, and in 1951 – the 7th part of the territory of the USSR (2.3 and 3 million square kilometers, respectively). And it was located in the northeast of the country, including the territory of the present Magadan region, Chukotka, the northeastern part of Yakutia, part of the Khabarovsk and Primorsky territories. Until the early 30s, most of the territory of this region was uninhabited and unexplored. And in subsequent years, many high-mountain and taiga areas remained a blank spot on the map of the country. And even today there are places where no one has set foot yet...

Unfortunately, even today most Russians, not to mention foreigners, do not know much about the past of Kolyma. Therefore, apparently, for the most part, both domestic and foreign media journalists publish in periodicals a lot of implausible, fictitious, or heard from third or even fourth mouth fables. And the main one is the number of prisoners who passed through the Kolyma camps. The authors of the publications cite figures from 2.5 to 5, or even more, million people, of whom, allegedly, up to a million people were shot and died in the camps. All these figures are unreliable. However, they are perceived by many as the true truth.

Moreover, the majority of those writing on the camp topic, as well as Russian government officials speaking on the pages of newspapers and on television screens, argue that the USSR carried out the deliberate extermination of people in the camps. I do not entirely agree with these arguments, if only because it is possible to “purposefully” destroy a person (criminal) on the spot, without taking him 10 thousand kilometers to Kolyma to shoot him. This material will contain truthful archival information about the camp Kolyma, discovered in the State Archive of the Magadan Region, the Center for Storage of Modern Documentation of the Magadan Region, and some other archival sources by the Magadan historian Alexander Grigorievich Kozlov (unfortunately, deceased). His book, “Dalstroi and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. (1931-1941),” written together with work colleague I.D. Batsaev, and published in an edition of only 200 copies at the North-Eastern Complex Research Institute in Magadan, sheds the truth on the harsh and tragic reality of Kolyma’s past. Unfortunately, the book is simply unavailable to many due to its small circulation. I tried to select from this 380-page work, in my opinion, the main thing that will serve as a refutation of all the myths about Kolyma that have hitherto appeared in Russian and foreign media. And, of course, I will name more or less real figures, both the number of prisoners in the Kolyma camps and those who died and were executed in Kolyma in the period from 1932 to 1956.

It should be clarified that the entire territory to the west and south of the Magadan region is called the “mainland” by Kolyma residents. This is what the first prisoners called the “mainland,” because Kolyma in those years was really like an island, which could only be reached by sea. There was no other transport connection with the “mainland” in the 30-50s of the last century...

For many years, the territory, called by the capacious word Dalstroi, was, as it were, a state within a state, because in terms of the level of power Dalstroi was outside even the formal subordination and control of the authorities of the Far Eastern Territory and the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic bordering on it. All decisions on its activities were made at the level of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Council of People's Commissars, the Council of Labor and Defense, and the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs and were secret.

Dalstroy was formed as a huge, strictly centralized, industrial camp, the main workforce of which was made up of prisoners. At the head of this structure was the director of Dalstroy, who was the authorized representative of the party, executive and repressive bodies, who concentrated all power in Kolyma.

The trust had its own judicial and punitive bodies, it received the right to the monopoly use of all natural resources, to collect state taxes, fees, etc. North-Eastern ITL (Sevvostlag), organized by OGPU order No. 287s dated April 1, 1932, in administrative, economic and financial relations also reported to the director of Dalstroy...

Strict centralization of power, the merging of the party apparatus with repressive punitive bodies and the transfer of economic functions to the OGPU-NKVD with the total ideologization of society determined the forms and methods of economic development of the country in general and the North in particular.

The Commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on May 15, 1929 emphasized that “... we have enormous difficulties in sending workers to the north. The concentration of many thousands of prisoners there will help us advance the economic exploitation of the natural resources of the north..." and "... with a number of measures such as administrative and economic assistance to those released, we can encourage them to stay in the north, immediately populating our outskirts..." (Historical Magazine archive" 1997 No. 4. Page 145).

The decision to create Dalstroy was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the basis of prospective assessments made by geological exploration and geological prospecting expeditions working in Kolyma in the second half of the 20s - early 30s. “According to geological forecasts, gold reserves in the Indigirka and Kolyma river basins occupied one of the first places in the world, accounting for more than 20 percent of all known world reserves. Tin reserves are the largest in the Union”... (GAMO. F. r-23ss, op. 1, d. 48, l. 24).

The changes adopted by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the first half of 1929 regarding punitive policy and the state of places of detention allowed the formation of an entire system of forced labor camps, which became the basis of the Gulag, departmentally subordinate to the OGPU of the USSR. According to the regulation approved by the Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of April 7, 1930, those sentenced to imprisonment for a term of at least three years were now sent to forced labor camps.

These changes contributed to the faster filling of the Gulag and the expansion of the network of its departments to the most remote, resource-rich territories of the Soviet Union. Therefore, when, according to the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of November 11, 1931 and the Decree of the Council of Labor and Defense No. 516 of November 13, 1931, a state trust for industrial and road construction in the Upper Kolyma regions - “Dalstroi” was created, then with In the first days of his activity, he began to use prisoners...

The first group of prisoners to be sent to Kolyma (at least 100 people) was formed in Vladivostok at the end of 1931. And on February 4, 1932, they arrived in Nagaev Bay on the steamer "Sakhalin" along with other civilian employees of the state trust and riflemen of the paramilitary security

The prisoners were dispersed, mainly, as servants in the institutions and enterprises of Dalstroy in the positions of watchmen, janitors, grooms, etc. Among the first prisoners to arrive in Kolyma were about ten specialists and practitioners of the mining industry, convicted for political reasons, who During the spring of 1932, almost everyone was transported to the small mines “Srednekan” and “Utinka”, located in the remote taiga 500-600 kilometers from Nagaev Bay.

The remaining prisoners settled on the shore of the bay and built houses in Magadan, which was under construction, where a larger arrival of prisoners was expected. This contingent was guarded, so to speak, by paramilitary guards of 10 riflemen...

With the opening of navigation in 1932, new stages of prisoners began to arrive in Kolyma. They were transported from a specially organized Vladivostok transit point, and vessels of the Far Eastern merchant fleet were used for transportation.

In total, in 1932, more than 9,000 prisoners were brought to Kolyma, referred to in reporting documents as an “organized working group”, “organized force”, “labour force”. The labor and rationalization sector of Dalstroy was directly involved in the employment of prisoners. All requests for the labor force used were processed through the personnel section of this sector. Prisoners assigned to applications for the construction of any facility were, first of all, obliged to unquestioningly carry out the orders of the foreman responsible for it. The head of the trip had to actively assist him in this case. This situation was typical for the period of summer-autumn 1932 and, in the opinion of the Dalstroy management, corresponded to the implementation of the principle of unity of command and economically expedient use of labor.

By occupation, all working prisoners were unescorted, that is, unguarded, and the vast majority lived outside camp assignments. This situation was dictated not only by the small number of paramilitary guards, but also by the fact that most of the prisoners were sentenced to short terms for domestic crimes and were even called “socially close”, because they came from a working and peasant environment. Therefore, they were even allowed to be enlisted as riflemen of the paramilitary guard; they also became employees of the operational investigative bodies of Sevvostlag.

The “skilled labor force”, that is, specialists in their field, convicted under Article 58 and considered “political,” was also in the position of those unconvoyed. “Political” served and worked in all divisions of Dalstroy and Sevvostlag. They often occupied quite responsible, key positions that required certain knowledge and experience. So, at the end of 1932, the repressed Ts.M. Kron headed the planning and financial section of the planning and financial sector of Dalstroy, E.M. Rappoport was deputy head of Dalstroy's supply sector, and F.D. Mikheev – chief physician of the Central Hospital for Prisoner Services.

For imprisoned Sevvostlag specialists and service personnel, the same wages were established as for civilian Dalstroev workers. For example, the salary of a mining engineer was 650 rubles, a topographical technician - 400, a construction technician - 600, an accountant - 600, a clerk - 400, an accountant - 350, a clerk - 250, a watchman, stoker, courier - 145-150 rubles. But expenses “for maintenance in the camp” were deducted from the prisoner’s salary, which was not always expressed in a constant amount.

The development of standards was regulated by an 8-10 hour working day established for the summer and winter periods. A similar routine applied to all prisoners, regardless of their term and article. Weekends were also supposed, but they were usually postponed or not given at all, citing the prevailing circumstances.

Depending on the implementation of the plan, the food standard for prisoners was established. In 1932, 4 norms were introduced in the territory where Dalstroy operated: for drummers - 1200 grams of bread, production - 1000 g, basic - 800 g, penalty - 400 grams. Food standards for prisoners depended on the stability of supplies and, as a rule, were violated by the camp administration and the camp service, consisting of those convicted of domestic and criminal crimes.

The regime of detention of prisoners established during the organization of Sevvostlag is characterized as relatively “soft”, “sparing”. This was facilitated by the harsh climatic conditions of Kolyma, its undeveloped state, and its remoteness from the central regions of the country, which, it was believed, should exclude the possibility of escapes. Therefore, there were no clearly marked and equipped zones with barbed wire, towers, and guards with dogs at that time.

In order to intensify and stimulate the work of prisoners, a whole system of credits was also established, according to which the terms of imprisonment in Sevvostlag were reduced and early release was carried out. The decision on early release was made by the Central Attestation Commission of the Sevvostlag Administration.

The newspaper “The Right Way,” which began publication on January 22, 1933, the organ of the Sevvostlag Administration, in its first issue announced the colonization of prisoners, designed to serve their “reforging,” “re-education,” and the development of Kolyma. In this regard, the right of colonization was granted to all prisoners who had stayed in the camps for at least a year, and those who had especially distinguished themselves - for 6 months.

Those who went to colonization had to work at Dalstroy enterprises as civilian employees and receive full pay according to the type of work performed. They were given the right to resettle their families with travel expenses paid by Dalstroi, and were also given a non-repayable loan to acquire the necessary property. All family members of the colonists had the opportunity to receive priority work, and children had the opportunity to attend school. The subsequent colonization led to the formation of settlements of colonists, the first of which were organized on the Okhotsk coast.

In contrast to the “average general production norms for camp prisoners” of 1932, monthly norms in 1933 were approved in the amount of: 24 kg of bread, 2.7 kg of cereals, 6.5 kg of fish, 1.3 kg of meat, 800 g of sugar, 200 g of vegetable butter, 800 g of dried vegetables, 300 g of fruit, at least one can of canned meat. Volunteer Dalstroevites were to receive 24 kg of bread, 2 kg of cereal, 7 kg of fish, 1.4 kg of meat, 1.3 kg of sugar, 1.1 kg of vegetable oil, 600 g of dry vegetables, 900 g of fruit, at least four cans of canned food and 400 g pasta.

According to Dalstroy's report for 1932, all gold mining was carried out exclusively by the muscular labor of free miners. In 1933, prison labor was little used in gold mining. Their wider use was yet to come...

In 1932, only 500 kg of gold were mined from five mines that existed in Dalstroy.

In 1933, gold production increased slightly, but only to 800 kg.

By the end of 1933, in the Nagaevo-Magadan construction region there were 99 shock brigades of prisoners, which included 2,288 workers and engineers, as well as 454 “socialist competitors” from the organized forces, who were not members of any brigades. The total wages of prisoners remained at the level of 6 rubles for almost the entire year. 79 kopecks per day and rose in April to 8 rubles. 53 kopecks, in March - up to 9 rubles. 21 kopecks The average monthly earnings of the "organized forces" from the engineering and technical personnel was 475-650 rubles, and civilian employees - 711-886 rubles.

In total, by the end of 1933, there were 27,390 prisoners in Sevvostlag, and 2,989 civilian workers in Dalstroy. The total supply of camp inmates during the year amounted to 21,724 people. At the same time, 3,401 prisoners left Sevvostlag, 301 were transferred to other camps. Of all the liberated camp prisoners, a third (1,015 people) remained at work as civilian employees of Dalstroi.

In Dalstroi there was a chronic shortage of qualified personnel, so the units constantly created three-to-five-month training courses for drivers, road foremen, foremen, collectors, topographers, mountain rangers, bookkeepers, accountants, electricians, etc. Prisoner cadets studied in isolation from production, they were paid a stipend of 50-100 rubles. per month. In addition, in the camp units there were educational schools and schools for the illiterate, in which prisoners were educated...

The prisoners' clothing allowance included: underwear - two shifts, boots or boots - one pair, a tunic or padded jacket (according to the season), a hat or cap, a coat or peacoat, summer or quilted trousers, summer or winter foot wraps - one set each.

On July 28, 1934, the “Instruction on official business trips and movements of employees of the Dalstroy state trust” was approved. The instructions indicated that not only civilian employees, but also employees from the prison population, whose business trips were subject to mandatory registration through the accounting and distribution department (URD) ​​of Sevvostlag, could be business travelers. When on business trips to the territory of Dalstroy, prisoners were given daily allowances (according to their positions) in the amount of 3 to 5 rubles. per day, and for business trips outside Dalstroy - in the amount of 6 to 10 rubles.

The length of the working day largely depended on climatic conditions. For those working outdoors, that is, in mining, logging, and road construction, the working day from December 1933 to February 1934 was 8 hours without a break for lunch - from 8 o'clock. until 16 o'clock (providing prisoners with a hot breakfast before the start of work). From February 1934, it was prescribed that all types of work should be carried out from 8 o'clock. until 17:00, excluding lunch break. E.P.'s trip Berzin for the construction of the Kolyma highway led to a change in the existing schedule. From March 16, 1934, a 10-hour working day was introduced on all open-air work in Dalstroy, which remained in effect throughout the summer-autumn period and was reduced to 8 hours from November, and to 7 hours from December...

In 1934, a contingent of four thousand prisoners, together with a thousand civilian Dalstroev workers who worked in the mining industry, extracted 5.5 tons of chemically pure gold.

By the end of 1935, more than 44,600 people were kept in the Kolyma camps...

Among those transported to Kolyma was a group of Leningrad security officers convicted “of negligence” in the case of the murder of S.M. Kirov. After several moves and orders from above, they were appointed to fairly high positions. Thus, the former head of the Leningrad NKVD Philip Demyanovich Medved headed the Southern Mining Directorate of Dalstroy, formed on September 5, 1935, his former deputy, Ivan Vasilyevich Zaporozhets, was appointed head of the Road Construction Department. Another nine convicted security officers were also appointed to leadership positions in the mining industry, in camp units and the NKVD in Dalstroy...

Prisoners transported on ships often ended up in insufficiently prepared and equipped holds, suffering from stuffiness, cold, lack of food and water, and lack of medical care. There were cases when they were delivered to b. Nagaev were completely sick, disabled, and some died on the way. When replenishing camp assignments and keeping prisoners at the mines, cases of callous attitude and naked administration on the part of the camp administration and VOKhR riflemen were often observed.

In August 1935, during confinement on road trips, prisoners in some stages were noted to have a lack of shoes, tents, medicines, hot food, and a lack of bread. During stops for several days, they were given only flour, from which they had to bake cakes using ordinary shovels and kettles. This led to the fact that many people suffering from scurvy and dysentery appeared among those being transported. (“Dalstroi and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” P. 218. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

In September 1935, a very acute food situation developed at the Partizan mines, named after. Vodopyanov (where 1.5 thousand people worked) and “Sturmovaya” of the Northern Mining Directorate of Dalstroy. Here, in the literal sense of the word, they sat on nothing but flour, feeling the need for everything they needed. And what was available was stolen by criminals and household workers, and did not reach the majority of prisoners. (“Dalstroi and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” P. 215. I. D. Batsaev, A. G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

Systematic malnutrition, unsanitary living conditions and long working hours, when, for example, those working at the mine. Vodopyanov could quench their thirst only with random water, which led to the fact that an outbreak of typhoid fever began here in the first half of October 1935. As a result, 72 people were ill and survived, and 17 died. Among them were both civilians and prisoners. (“Dalstroi and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” Page 215. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

Speaking at the Second Interdistrict Party Conference of Dalstroy in January 1936, E.P. Berzin quite definitely said: “We decided: whoever works, eats... There will be four food standards: penalty, for those who produce up to 90%, from 90 to 100% - production, then - shock and Stakhanov standards, and neither one person in production should not eat differently. What is worked out is what you get... We are now developing a new scale for crediting working days. The biggest credit... will go to the workers who work on cutting in sections. If a worker completes 200% of the quota, he will be the only person who will receive full credit - 135 days for the quarter. You won’t get this credit at other jobs. Even on the road they won’t get 135 days, and maybe about 120 days...” (TsKhSD MO. F. 1, op. 2, d. 69, l. 55-56).

On January 28, 1936, on the closing day of the Second Inter-District Party Conference of Dalstroi, the First all-camp meeting of Kolyma Stakhanovites opened in Magadan, which took place for three days. It was noted that the number of the best production prisoners who systematically fulfill the norms by 150-200% is over 1,300 people. For the entire 1935, Sevvostlag prisoners made 424 proposals of a rationalization and inventive nature, of which at least one third were implemented. (“Dalstroy and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” Page 218. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

In the absence of normal mechanization, when the main tools of labor were a pick, a shovel, a crowbar, a wheelbarrow, improvements to prisoners that increased labor productivity were not only extremely necessary, but also very simple...

By the end of 1936, the number of prisoners of Sevvostlag increased to 62,703, and the number of civilian employees of Dalstroy - to 10,447. At the same time, during the year, the number of civilian employees of Dalstroy increased due to prisoners released from the camps by 2,397 people, and now their total the number was 4,072 people, i.e. 43.3% of all civilian employees. In addition, by the end of 1936 there were 1,047 colonists in Dalstroy. Most of them lived in the colony settlements of the Okhotsk coast: Veselaya, Temp and Udarnik and continued to engage in agriculture and fishing.

By the beginning of 1937, Sevvostlag included camp points: Northern Mining Directorate (SGPU), Southern Mining Directorate (YUGPU), Directorate of Mining Construction (UGPS), Directorate of Road Construction (UDS), Directorate of Road Transport (UAT), Kolyma River Directorate (KRU), Primorsky Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in Vladivostok (PUSiPH), Kolyma Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (KUSiPH). Under the existing unity of command, the heads of individual camp points (OLP) during this period were the heads of departments, although each of them had deputies along the camp line.

At the beginning of 1937, 48% of prisoners convicted on domestic charges were kept in the Sevvostlag camps.

After the opening of navigation in 1937 in B. Nagaev brought 41,577 prisoners and 1,955 civilians, and 18,360 former prisoners and 2,391 civilians were taken to Vladivostok.

Due to the intensification of repressions in the country, the contingent of prisoners brought to Kolyma began to change towards an increase in “counter-revolutionaries” and “bandit elements”. Based on the restrictions associated with the detention of these categories of prisoners, according to the instructions of the Gulag, the vast majority of them were sent outside the border zone to work on the construction of the Kolyma highway, in gold mines and tin mines.

The increase in the total number of Sevvostlag prisoners also helped Dalstroy in 1937 to fulfill its plans for its main production. At this time, the mining enterprises included 18 gold mines and the first 2 tin mines (“Dagger” and “Butugychag”). And if in 1936 a little more than 33 tons of chemically pure gold were mined in Kolyma, then in 1937 - 51.5 tons.

With the adoption on July 2, 1937 of the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On anti-Soviet elements,” a telegram was sent to the Central Committees of national communist parties, regional committees, and regional committees, ordering to register all kulaks and criminals who returned after the expiration period, so that the most the hostile ones were arrested and shot in order to carry out cases through troikas, and the rest, less active, but still hostile elements, would be sent to other areas on the instructions of the NKVD. In this regard, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks proposed to submit to the Central Committee within 5 days the composition of the troikas, as well as the number of those subject to execution and deportation.

The order, known as No. 00447, ordered the implementation of the operation “to repress former kulaks, anti-Soviet elements and criminals” depending on the region from August 5 to 15, 1937 and to be completed within a 4-month period. In the Far Eastern Territory, and therefore in Dalstroi, the operation was among the last to be carried out. All repressed people were divided into two categories: those subject to immediate arrest and execution, and those subject to imprisonment in camps and prisons for a term of 8 to 10 years.

Based on data on the number of “anti-Soviet elements” sent from the field, all republics, territories and regions were given limits for each category. In total, 259,450 people were ordered to be arrested. and 72,950 of them were to be shot, but these figures were inconclusive, because the information required by the NKVD of the USSR was not fully received from a number of regions of the country. At the same time, as expected, to decide the fate of those arrested locally, troikas were created, which were supposed to include the People's Commissar or the head of the NKVD, the secretary of the relevant party organization and the prosecutor of the republic, territory or region. On July 31, 1937, the order of the NKVD of the USSR was approved and became a guide to action.

Documents show that this immediately affected Dalstroy. Already on August 1, a telegram from Moscow arrived in Magadan demanding the immediate execution of the sentence of the Far Eastern Regional Court branch of Sevvostlag from March 1-18 (approved by the Supreme Court of the RSFSR) over the leaders of the so-called counter-revolutionary center in Kolyma, and literally the next day the leaders of this " center" Yu.A. Baranovsky, I.M. Besidsky, S.O. Bolotnikov, M.D. Maidenberg, S.Ya. Krol... (“Dalstroi and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” Page 217. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002 ).

Subsequent events show that these important circumstances (first of all, uncertainty with the number and fulfillment of the limit, with the composition of the troika) and the fact that the leadership of Dalstroy at the end of the washing season opposed increasing the contingent of prisoners in Kolyma at the expense of almost only “Trotskyists, counter-revolutionaries and repeat offenders,” led to a very rapid change in this leadership. The head of Dalstroy, Eduard Berzin, was officially granted leave. To replace him and take over matters, senior state security major Karp Aleksandrovich Pavlov arrived in Magadan on December 1, 1937.

After the transfer of affairs, Eduard Berzin left Magadan for Vladivostok on December 4, 1937, and then to Moscow. Not far from the capital, on December 19, 1937, at the Aleksandrov station, Berzin was arrested. The indictment stated that he was a “spy,” “enemy of the people,” the organizer and leader of the “Kolyma anti-Soviet, espionage, rebel-terrorist, sabotage organization.”

A few days after Berzin’s departure from Kolyma, a special “Moscow” brigade of the NKVD of the USSR, consisting of four security officers: state security captain M.P. Kononovich, senior lieutenant of state security M.E. Katsenelenbogen (Bogen), state security lieutenants S.M. Bronstein and L.A. Vinitsky. The brigade was subordinate to the head of the NKVD for Dalstroy, V.I. Speransky (whose members in various leadership positions became part of this department), but its actual leader was the head of Dalstroy K.A. Pavlov.

Using methods of falsification, provocation, and direct physical influence, the “Moscow” brigade became the main core of those who fabricated the case of the “Kolyma anti-Soviet, espionage, rebel-terrorist, sabotage organization.” True, the first arrests on warrants signed by the head of the NKVD V.M. Speransky, began a little earlier than the arrival of security officers from Moscow in Magadan - December 4-5, 1937. However, after this, arrests became even more frequent.

In the subsequent report on the case of the “Kolyma anti-Soviet, espionage, rebel-terrorist, sabotage organization,” compiled by the beginning of the summer of 1938, it was noted that 3,302 prisoners of Sevvostlag had already been arrested and convicted. These included Trotskyists and rightists 60%, spies, terrorists, saboteurs and other “counter-revolutionaries” - 35%, bandits and thieves - 5%. Subsequent repressions increased the number of arrests. (“Dalstroy and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” Page 218. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

From a later archival document dating from the second half of 1939, it is clear that the new management of Dalstroy, headed by K.A. Pavlov, again appealed to the NKVD of the USSR on the issue regarding the limit emanating from order No. 00447. According to the request made, such a limit was given to Dalstroi - 10,000 people. were subject to arrest. In pursuance of this limit, a new troika was created under the NKVD (K.A. Pavlov, V.M. Speransky, L.P. Metelev or M.P. Kononovich), which began considering cases against arrested “counter-revolutionaries”, “conspirators” and “ saboteurs." (“Dalstroy and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” Page 218. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

In total, 10,000 cases were prepared for the NKVD troika for Dalstroy, of which more than 3,000 were considered under the 1st category (execution) and over 4,000 under the 2nd category (up to 10 years). The executions of prisoners took place in Magadan, on the so-called “Serpantinka”, not far from Khatynnakh, at the Maldyake mine of the Western GPU. Moreover, they were often massive, organized to intimidate right in front of the civilian workers of the mines.

One of them, the most famous and documented, as a result of which 159 people were shot (in two acts), was carried out at the Maldyak mine on August 13, 1938. The bodies of all those shot were then “buried in the ground in the area of ​​the 3rd mission "Maldyak" mine.

The terror associated with the implementation of the lowered limit continued almost until the end of 1938. But the limit was not fully implemented. The directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of November 15, 1938 prohibited the consideration of cases in troikas. Following this, the “Moscow” brigade of the NKVD of the USSR was recalled to Moscow. A subsequent inspection carried out by one of the departments of Sevvostlag revealed that the decisions of the NKVD troika on Dalstroy were communicated to the majority of convicts only orally, and some were not communicated at all. In this regard, it was established that out of more than 4,000 people convicted by her in 1938 under the 2nd category, the sentence to increase the term was announced to only 1,925 prisoners. (“Dalstroi and Sevvostlag of the OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents. Part 1. 1931-1941.” Page 219. I.D. Batsaev, A.G. Kozlov. Magadan. SVKNII. 2002).

Terror against “counter-revolutionaries”, “conspirators”, “saboteurs” and other “enemies of the people” in Kolyma was carried out along with the tightening of the entire camp regime. In pursuance of the orders of K.A. Pavlov, by mid-June 1938, the working day of prisoners was increased from 10 to 16 hours, and the lunch break was reduced to a minimum.

Even earlier, wages for prisoners were abolished. Instead, on December 27, 1937, the provision for the payment of the so-called premium reward was approved. Now it was paid according to the division of all workers into ten production categories. The highest bonus remuneration was awarded in the tenth category. For “piecework workers” it was 2 rubles. 88 kop. per day plus 75 rub. per month, for “temporary workers” – 2 rubles. 15 kopecks per day plus 56 rub.

On February 1, 1938, Sevvostlag introduced new standards for camp food and stall allowances. Depending on the fulfillment of production standards, 6 categories of food for prisoners were established: special - from 116% and above, increased - from 131 to 160%, improved - from 111 to 130%, industrial - from 100 to 110%, general - from 75 to 99 % and penalty – up to 74%. The list of products for camp food (for the “single pot”) for prisoners included only bread, tea and sugar. The remaining products were to be included in breakfast and a two-course lunch, which was ordered to be served hot.

The approved position also affected the Dalstroy colonists, the issue of which was reconsidered by K.A. Pavlov. A specially created commission decolonized 288 people. (including 19 women), convicted “for counter-revolutionary crimes, banditry, armed robberies,” who were immediately placed in a camp, and their families were sent to the “mainland.” The tightening of the camp regime especially affected the position of the “counter-revolutionary element” of Sevvostlag, which consisted of middle-aged and elderly prisoners and representatives of the intelligentsia. They could not get used to the harsh climatic conditions of Kolyma, could not cope with heavy physical work and fulfilling established production standards, which led to enrollment in a penalty ration, which led to exhaustion of the body, an increase in morbidity, disability, and mortality.

In the “Conclusion on the exploitation of gold placers of Dalstroy”, compiled by members of the NKVD commission of the USSR, mining engineers A.P. Bakhvalov and F.I. Kondratov noted that “the sharp decline in labor productivity in 1938 in comparison with 1937, along with the clearly unsatisfactory organization of labor, is explained by a sharp increase in the number of counter-revolutionaries... The latter include those 40% who fulfill the technical norm within 5- 20%". (GAMO. F. r-23sch, op. 1, d. 654, l. 50).

At the same time, the total number of prisoners who did not comply with the norms in Sevvostlag was even significantly higher. By the end of 1938 it was more than 70%, and for individual mines over 90%. At the same time, the number of deaths increased. In this regard, one of the contemporaries of the events noted: “...Diseases spread, the camp was depleted, people began to die like flies. If we look at the mortality figures of 1938, it turns out that during all the years of Dalstroy’s existence, so many people did not die. They died mainly from exhaustion and general frostbite. On other days, 10-15 people died in each mine...” (GAMO. F. r-23sch, op. 1, d. 35, l. 33).

Documents stored in the Center for Storage of Modern Documentation of the Magadan Region indicate that 10,251 prisoners of Sevvostlag died in 1938. Despite all the imperfections of camp statistics, one can agree with these figures.

The number of workers in the main production - gold mining, road construction, logging - was reduced due to the death of prisoners. However, new stages of convicts arrived in their place. In total, during the navigation of 1938 in b. Nagaev, more than 70 thousand prisoners were brought from Vladivostok, and their total number in Sevvostlag was 93,976 people.

Arriving prisoners were immediately sent to the gold and tin mines. Thus, in October 1938, the transit zone in Magadan was provided with 455 vehicles, in which 10,308 prisoners left, and in November - 188 vehicles with 4,271 prisoners.

K.A. Pavlov sought to fulfill the gold mining plan mainly by attracting as much muscle power as possible. Therefore, only in the third quarter of 1938, 16,906 people were sent to gold mines. more than provided for by the plan, which (according to camp documentation) worked (at the rate of 90 work shifts per quarter per person) 1,521,180 people/days...

Further reorganization carried out according to the orders of K.A. Pavlova on September 1 and October 1, 1938, led to the formation of two more mining departments of Dalstroy, Western with a center in Susuman and South-Western with a center in Ust-Utina. In accordance with this, OLPs ZGPU and Yu-ZGPU were created, and at the mines and mines that were part of them, sub-posts and missions were created.

In 1939, Sevvostlag included 8 camps: Sevlag, Zaplag, Yu-Zlag, Translag, Yuglag, Dorlag, Stroylag, Vladlag...

As of January 1, 1939, there were 607 prisoners on the wanted list in Kolyma. During the first quarter of 1939, 504 people fled from Sevvostlag, in the second quarter - 629 people, in the third - 669 people. During the same period, 498 prisoners were detained in the first quarter, 769 in the second quarter, and 535 prisoners in the third quarter. As of September 10, 1939, the total number of undetained fugitives from Sevvostlag was 746 people...

Convoying prisoners, according to the instructions of the Gulag, was one of the unresolved problems of the Sevvostlag Military Guard. By the fall of 1939, the paramilitary guards consisted of 7 separate divisions with a number of paramilitary guards of 6,087 people, who guarded 147,502 prisoners of Sevvostlag.

In total, 66.3 tons of chemically pure gold and 507.4 tons of tin were mined in 1939...

In September 1939, the head of Dalstroy, Karp Aleksandrovich Pavlov, became seriously ill and urgently left for Moscow.

On November 19, 1939, Commissar, Senior State Security Major of the 3rd Rank Ivan Fedorovich Nikishov took over the post of head of Dalstroy. In January 1940, he approved the new structure and staff of Sevvostlag...

On the eve of the new mining season, from April 1, 1940, modified categories of food for prisoners were introduced in Sevvostlag. Still commensurate with the fulfillment of production standards, they were now divided into a special one (for those working using Stakhanov’s labor methods) - from 130% and above, 1st - from 100 to 129%, 2nd - from 71 to 99%, 3rd yu – up to 70%. When production reached 70%, the rate of bread distribution was 600 g per day, from 70 to 90% - 800 g, from 100 to 130% - 1200 g, and from 130% and above - another 200 g of bread was added. The daily ration of a penal prisoner included 400 g of bread, 400 g of potatoes, 75 g of fish, 35 g of cereal, 5 g of flour, 4 g of tea.

To stimulate the work of Dalstroev workers, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, by Resolution No. 647 of May 4, 1940, allowed the People's Commissariat of the NKVD to establish a badge (badge) “Excellent Dalstroi Worker,” which was carried out by order of the People's Commissariat No. 378 of May 23, 1940. A little later, for prisoners of Sevvostlag, systematically showing examples of high labor productivity and discipline, they were allowed to re-apply such benefits (slightly previously abolished) as reduction of prison terms and early release from the camp.

In this regard, at the request of the leadership of Dalstroy, by the decision of the People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR on August 13, 1940, 72 prisoners convicted under various domestic articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR were released early from further serving in the camp. For their active participation in the implementation of the 1940 plan, 25 former prisoners working at mining enterprises were awarded the “Excellent Dalstroevets” badge.

1940 . was truly successful in fulfilling Dalstroy's production plans. This year, mining enterprises produced a record amount of chemically pure gold in the entire history of Kolyma - 80 tons and increased tin production compared to the previous year from 507.4 to 1945.7 tons.

By the end of 1939, 163,475 prisoners worked in Dalstroy, and by the beginning of 1941, the number of prisoners increased to 176,685 people...

Dalstroy's management continued to pay minimal attention to issues related to general camp problems of housing construction, improvement of living conditions, nutrition, medical care, etc., which contributed to the continued increase in morbidity, mortality, and group escapes. For example, in the first half of January 1941, in the Duskanya camp in Tenlag, the tents of prisoners were in an unsanitary condition. 85 people did not work mainly due to complete exhaustion, and 140 underwent surgery after frostbite on their hands and feet. Due to the meager food supply (the mine warehouses only had oatmeal, pink salmon and onions), out of 14 working teams, only 4 carried out the plan.

In order No. 028 dated March 29. 1941 I.F. Nikishov noted that in Chai-Urlag the non-working part of prisoners reached 18.6% of the payroll. According to the head of the Sevlag Department V.E. Vashchenko, in all his units as of March 1941, 16.5% of people were released from work due to illness. and 361 people died. For April - 10.2% and 100 people, respectively...

In conclusion, I would like to return to the beginning of this material, which discussed the number of prisoners who passed through the Kolyma camps, as well as those who died and were executed. The data I use to motivate this is the most reliable today, in contrast to all those previously presented in various publications. They were obtained by the Magadan historian Alexander Grigorievich Kozlov, already mentioned above, who had access to the Magadan archives and worked with the original documents for 15-20 years - until his death in May 2006. So, he found documents in the archives that contained information about the flights of passages that came to Kolyma in the period from 1931 to the mid-50s, indicating the number of prisoners transported. Summarizing this information, Alexander Grigorievich determined that over a quarter of a century, about 870 thousand prisoners passed through the Kolyma camps. Of this number, over the years, 127 thousand people died from disease, hunger, cold, overwork, etc. Finally, he counted a little more than 11 thousand who were officially shot...

The material was prepared by Ivan Panikarov,

Chairman of the Yagodninsky Society

“Search for those illegally repressed”

according to the archives of Magadan historian A.G. KOZLOVA,

and also based on the book “Dalstroi and Sevvostlag

OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in figures and documents",

his colleague, an employee of the North-Eastern complex

Research Institute I.D. Batsaev.

let those who visited this site be calm and restrained in their assessments of what they read and saw - what happened, happened... Even today we do not know everything that is going on in secret from us and, perhaps, years later we will also be horrified and remember (or our grandchildren will remember the past our affairs), as many of us tirelessly sang songs of praise not only to the “rulers” of the state, but also to the “princelings” locally, that is, heads of administrations at all levels, heads of all kinds of institutions and institutions, party leaders, etc. To our children, and especially our grandchildren will not understand us, who were born in the 40-70s, that is, in the era of “developed” socialism. Our descendants today have completely different material and moral values. Unfortunately, no matter how sad, most of them have their own hopeless, almost slave life ahead of them. It's a pity that we are all so cleverly fooled. By whom? Yes, many who also proudly call themselves “Russians.” And we ourselves are to blame for this terrible misfortune of the entire nation. That is why we beggar, groan under the yoke of evil, and foolishly continue to believe those who deceive us. And this will continue until some other nation conquers our country and makes us uncomplaining slaves. This is quite possible if... However, I hope that this will not happen, that’s why I devoted myself to history, human destinies and people’s relationships, which I tell in simple language to all those who do GOOD and EVIL...

Article by historian Alexander DUGIN

If not by lies

"Memory of Kolyma" Website of Ivan Panikarova. These pages are dedicated...

And no one else... Ivan Panikarov. Kolyma is a special island of the Gulag. Everything you, reader, read in this introductory article about Kolyma is true. ... Food standards for prisoners depended on the stability of supplies and, as a rule, were violated by the camp...

The second quarter of the 20th century became one of the most difficult periods in the history of our country. This time was marked not only by the Great Patriotic War, but also by mass repressions. During the existence of the Gulag (1930-1956), according to various sources, from 6 to 30 million people were in forced labor camps dispersed throughout all the republics.

After Stalin's death, the camps began to be abolished, people tried to leave these places as quickly as possible, many projects on which thousands of lives were thrown fell into disrepair. However, evidence of that dark era is still alive.

"Perm-36"

A maximum security labor colony in the village of Kuchino, Perm Region, existed until 1988. During the Gulag, convicted law enforcement officers were sent here, and after that, the so-called political ones. The unofficial name “Perm-36” appeared in the 70s, when the institution was given the designation BC-389/36.

Six years after its closure, the Perm-36 Memorial Museum of the History of Political Repression was opened on the site of the former colony. The collapsing barracks were restored and museum exhibits were placed in them. Lost fences, towers, signal and warning structures, and utility lines were recreated. In 2004, the World Monuments Fund included Perm-36 in the list of 100 specially protected monuments of world culture. However, now the museum is on the verge of closure - due to insufficient funding and protests from communist forces.

Dneprovsky mine

On the Kolyma River, 300 kilometers from Magadan, quite a lot of wooden buildings have been preserved. This is the former convict camp "Dneprovsky". In the 1920s, a large tin deposit was discovered here, and especially dangerous criminals began to be sent to work. In addition to Soviet citizens, Finns, Japanese, Greeks, Hungarians and Serbs atoned for their guilt at the mine. You can imagine the conditions under which they had to work: in the summer it gets up to 40 degrees Celsius, and in the winter - down to minus 60.

From the memoirs of prisoner Pepelyaev: “We worked in two shifts, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Lunch was brought to work. Lunch is 0.5 liters of soup (water with black cabbage), 200 grams of oatmeal and 300 grams of bread. It is, of course, easier to work during the day. From the night shift, you get to the zone by the time you have breakfast, and as soon as you fall asleep, it’s already lunch, when you go to bed, there’s a check, and then there’s dinner, and then it’s off to work.”

Road of bones

The infamous abandoned highway, 1,600 kilometers long, leading from Magadan to Yakutsk. Construction of the road began in 1932. Tens of thousands of people who participated in laying the route and died there were buried right under the road surface. At least 25 people died every day during construction. For this reason, the tract was nicknamed the road with bones.

The camps along the route were named after kilometer marks. In total, about 800 thousand people passed through the “road of bones”. With the construction of the Kolyma federal highway, the old Kolyma highway fell into disrepair. To this day, human remains are found along it.

Karlag

The Karaganda forced labor camp in Kazakhstan, which operated from 1930 to 1959, occupied a huge area: about 300 kilometers from north to south and 200 from east to west. All local residents were deported in advance and allowed onto the lands uncultivated by the state farm only in the early 50s. According to reports, they actively assisted in the search and arrest of fugitives.

On the territory of the camp there were seven separate villages, in which a total of over 20 thousand prisoners lived. The camp administration was based in the village of Dolinka. A museum in memory of the victims of political repression was opened in that building several years ago, and a monument was erected in front of it.

Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp

The monastery prison on the territory of the Solovetsky Islands appeared at the beginning of the 18th century. Here priests, heretics and sectarians who disobeyed the will of the sovereign were kept in isolation. In 1923, when the State Political Administration under the NKVD decided to expand the network of northern special purpose camps (SLON), one of the largest correctional institutions in the USSR appeared on Solovki.

The number of prisoners (mostly those convicted of serious crimes) increased significantly every year. From 2.5 thousand in 1923 to more than 71 thousand by 1930. All property of the Solovetsky Monastery was transferred for the use of the camp. But already in 1933 it was disbanded. Today there is only a restored monastery here.

October 13th, 2014 , 07:10 pm

So, friends, the other day our company returned from a short but incredibly bright trip to Kolyma. There are so many impressions from the trip that you can’t put it into words. It was like being on another planet, almost without exaggeration. So, I will gradually tell you in photo reports, while all this is just getting into my head.

And today I will tell you about one of the most brutal and gloomy places of that very “Ghost Kolyma” - about the Dneprovsky mine and processing plant, which at one time was subordinated to the Coastal Camp of the Directorate of ITL Dalstroy and the Gulag. It was founded in the summer of 1941, worked until 1955 and mined tin. The main workforce of Dneprovsky were those convicted under various articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and other republics of the Soviet Union.

Even today, many remains of residential and industrial buildings can be found here. In particular, in the nearby village there were mostly houses like Russian huts, and in the working and camp zones there was part of a crushing factory with large ore dumps, camp towers, barbed wire and various other fragments of a difficult past.

1. Early in the morning we gathered and occupied the so-called “shift station” - a special bus based on an all-terrain KAMAZ, designed to take us over 300 km and not always on roads. Here's Sasha alexcheban .

2. But Dima is still sleepy, but has already reached his laptop dimabalakirev .

3. The leading and guiding role in this mini-expedition belongs, of course, to Alexander from Magadan alkrylov .

4. And this is the same super watch. Dima Balakirev was very pleased when he learned that its body was produced in his native Chelyabinsk.

5. The cross-country ability and power of this monster are simply amazing. The truck is capable of moving almost by swimming, storming steep mountains, snow piles and other obstacles. Sometimes it became simply scary that we would get stuck or tumble off a cliff, but the car always coped with any tasks perfectly. Of course, special thanks to the most experienced driver.

6. Finally, after traveling about 300 km and spending more than five hours on the road, we find ourselves at the location of the camp. There is already a lot of snow here, the temperature is dropping below zero, and it’s only the beginning of October.

7. In winter, the air temperature here easily surpasses the fifty-degree mark. Can you imagine what life and hard labor of prisoners was like here? So I can’t imagine.

8. A group of bloggers is trying to brighten up the minor mood of these places. In the photo Vasily vasya.online tries to dance something.

9. Vasya, Sasha and Dima.

10. Sasha Krylov and Sergey feelek Filinin.

11. Along the route you come across many artifacts of those times.

12. Stove, bunk and table.

13.

14. What is this?

15. This is all that remains of poor Snoopy ZiS-5.

16. The water has already frozen in some places.

17. And in some places not yet.

18. On the hills, pits are clearly visible, visible from the rock dumps on the slopes.

19. Finally, surviving wooden structures began to appear, serving as mining sites. Here it was transferred to wheelbarrows, which were transported by prisoners.

20. This is what Pyotr Demant and Vsevolod Pepelyaev, who served time in Dneprovskoe, tell about life and hellish labor in the camp.

"The Studebaker drives into a deep and narrow valley, squeezed by very steep hills. At the foot of one of them we notice an old adit with superstructures, rails and a large embankment - a dump. Below the bulldozer has already begun to mutilate the earth, turning over all the greenery, roots, and stone blocks and leaving behind a wide black stripe. Soon a town of tents and several large wooden houses appears in front of us, but we don’t go there, but turn right and go up to the camp guardhouse.
The watch is old, the gates are wide open, the fence is made of liquid barbed wire on shaky, rickety, weathered posts. Only the tower with the machine gun looks new - the pillars are white and smell of pine needles. We disembark and enter the camp without any ceremony." (P. Demant)

21. "Dneprovsky" received its name from the spring - one of the tributaries of the Nerega. Officially, "Dneprovsky" is called a mine, although the bulk of its production comes from ore areas where tin is mined. A large camp area is located at the foot of a very high hill. Between a few old barracks there are long green tents, a little higher up are the white frames of new buildings. Behind the medical unit, several prisoners in blue overalls are digging impressive holes for the isolation ward. The dining room is located in a half-rotten barrack that has sunk into the ground. We were accommodated in the second barrack, located above the others, not far from the old tower. I sit on the through upper bunks, opposite the window. For the view from here of the mountains with rocky peaks, a green valley and a river with a waterfall, I would have to pay exorbitant prices somewhere in Switzerland, but here we get this pleasure for free, at least for us. , it seems. We still do not know that, contrary to the generally accepted camp rule, the reward for our work will be gruel and a ladle of porridge - everything we earn will be taken away by the management of the Coastal camps." (P. Demant)

22. “The carpenters made a bunker, a trestle, trays, and our team installed motors, mechanisms, conveyors. In total, we launched six such industrial devices. As each one was launched, our mechanics remained to work on it - on the main motor, on the pump. I was left on the last device mechanic." (V. Pepelyaev)

23. "We worked in two shifts, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Lunch was brought to work. Lunch was 0.5 liters of soup (water with black cabbage), 200 grams of oatmeal and 300 grams of bread. My job was to turn on the drum, the tape and sit and see that everything is spinning and rock is moving along the belt, and that’s it. But sometimes something breaks - the belt may break, a stone may get stuck in the bunker, the pump will fail, or something else. At night, of course, it’s easier. From the night shift you get to the zone, while you’ve had breakfast, and as soon as you fall asleep, it’s already lunch, when you go to bed, there’s a check, and then it’s dinner, and then it’s time to go to work.” (V. Pepelyaev)

24. “Eight washing devices were in operation in the valley. They were installed quickly, only the last, eighth, began to operate only before the end of the season. At the opened landfill, a bulldozer pushed the “sands” into a deep bunker, from there they rose along a conveyor belt to the scrubber - a large iron rotating barrel with with many holes and thick pins inside to grind the incoming mixture of stones, dirt, water and metal. Large stones flew into the dump - a growing pile of washed pebbles, and small particles with the flow of water supplied by the pump fell into a long inclined block paved with grate bars. under which lay strips of cloth. Tin stone and sand settled on the cloth, and earth and pebbles flew out of the block behind. Then the settled concentrates were collected and washed again - the mining of cassiterite took place according to the gold mining scheme, but, naturally, the amount of tin found was disproportionately large." (P. Demant)

25. "Dneprovsky was not a new place. During the war, there was an ore site of the Kheta mine, located on the highway thirty kilometers away. When in forty-four tin turned out to be less important for the state than gold, the site was closed, the barracks soon came to disrepair, the roads were overgrown with grass, and only in 1949 the mine workings were reactivated and, in addition, they began to open up the landfills in order to wash the tin stone on the instruments." (P. Demant)

26. “There is almost no night here. The sun has just set and in a few minutes it will be almost out, and mosquitoes and midges are something terrible. While you are drinking tea or soup, several will definitely fly into your bowl. They gave you mosquito nets - these are bags with a mesh in front, pulled over the head. But they don’t help much." (V. Pepelyaev)

27. “In the zone, all the barracks are old, slightly renovated, but there is already a medical unit, BUR. A team of carpenters is building a new large barracks, a canteen and new towers around the zone. On the second day I was already taken to work. The foreman put us three people on This is a pit, with a gate above it, like a well. Two people are working on the gate, pulling out and unloading a bucket - a large bucket made of thick iron (it weighs 60 kilograms), the third one at the bottom is loading what they blew up. Before lunch, I was working on the gate. We completely cleared the bottom of the pit. We came back from lunch, and then there was an explosion - we had to pull it out again. I volunteered to load it, I sat down on the bucket and the guys slowly lowered me down 6-8 meters. They loaded the bucket with stones, and the guys lifted it for me. suddenly I felt bad, my head was spinning, I was weak, the shovel was falling out of my hands, and I sat down in the tub and somehow shouted: “Come on!” Fortunately, I realized in time that I was poisoned by the gases left after the explosion in the ground, under the stones. After resting in the clean Kolyma air, I said to myself: “I won’t climb again!” I began to think how, in the conditions of the Far North, with severely limited nutrition and a complete lack of freedom, I could survive and remain human, even in this most difficult time of hunger for me (more than a year of constant malnutrition had already passed), I was sure that I would survive, I just needed to study well? situation, weigh your options, think through your actions. I remembered the words of Confucius: “A person has three paths: reflection, imitation and experience. The first is the noblest, but also the most difficult. The second is easy, and the third is bitter.”
I have no one to imitate, I have no experience, which means I have to think, relying only on myself. I decided to immediately start looking for people from whom I could get smart advice. In the evening I met a young Japanese man I knew from the Magadan transit. He told me that he works as a mechanic in a team of machine operators (in a mechanical shop), and that they are recruiting mechanics there - there is a lot of work to be done on the construction of industrial devices. He promised to talk about me with the foreman." (V. Pepelyaev)

28. “At the end of the summer, there was an “emergency” - the escape of three people from a work zone. In derogation from the law, one was never returned: neither alive nor dead. I already wrote about the second: they brought the beaten man to the BUR, and then to the punishment brigade. The foreman there was Zinchenko, who, they say, was some kind of executioner for the Germans. But here he ended badly. One fine night, he was stabbed to death by a young prisoner. He did it strictly according to the camp laws: first he woke him up so that he knew why, then he killed him. and calmly went on duty, handed over the knife. The regime was strengthened, machine guns appeared on the towers. Everyone was walking around nervously and angry. Some of them had thoughts of suicide out of hopelessness, the snow and the wind. A desperate prisoner approached the foreman and asked: “Do a good deed. "Here's an ax - cut off my fingers. I can't do it myself, I don't have the courage, but I see you can do it yourself." Place your hand on this log and turn away.” He turned away, closed his eyes, turned the ax and hit two fingers with the butt, wrapped the poor guy’s hand in a rag and sent him into the zone. There he lay in the hospital for a couple of days and spent 10 days in the zone, corrected himself and thanked the foreman for his cunning, for saving his hand." (V. Pepelyaev)

29. “In the compressor room, in which two old tank engines and an American mobile compressor are installed, a crowd has gathered - prisoners and free bombers. I approach - a short, stocky old man stands with his back to the wall. His forehead is bleeding, his nose is broken. The old man is threateningly waving a short crowbar. Three machine operators in oily overalls, servicing the compressor, are trying in vain to get close to him..." (P. Demant)

30. “The medical unit is overcrowded, injuries at work have become more frequent - some had their legs crushed by a block, some were caught in an explosion, and soon the first dead person was the cheerful Petro Golubev, who so hoped to see his family soon. He died of jaundice because there was no medicine and not enough sugar. He was taken in a car (a dump truck, of course) behind the eighth unit, where he became the right-flank, and over time a whole cemetery grew behind him - on each grave there was a stake with the number “Cleopatra” (the chief doctor) did not leave the medical unit for days, but she too. was powerless - they didn’t give medicine for “traitors to the motherland!” (P. Demant)

31. “A hundred steps from the office, also on a slope, a new compressor building stood white, behind it stood a large bunker into which ore was poured from the sixth, richest adit. There the road turned behind the hill to the second section, where the ore was lowered along the Bremsberg by trolleys. Near the bunker there was a clearly visible hole, we felt a little uneasy when we passed by: this was the exit of the fifth adit, which collapsed in April 1944, burying an entire brigade, according to stories, about thirty prisoners." (P. Demant)

32. “The first year at the mine was stormy and full of surprises. Geologists often got into trouble with their forecasts, the huge sites did not always live up to expectations, but by chance people sometimes stumbled upon incredibly rich places. Civil servants scoured the sites and often brought back cassiterite nuggets weighing tens of kilograms, They paid well for them. Once, a five-pound block fell on the conveyor belt of the device. A Zek, who mistook it for a simple stone and tried in vain to push it, stopped the belt. Suddenly the Greek was nearby, he took away the find on a dump truck, promising the foreman:
- I won’t offend you guys!
Soon Khachaturian appeared on the device and cursed the brigade loudly:
- Idiots, they gave away such a piece! I would feed you without enough food for a week, and even bring you some smoke...
The power was turned off, the guys sat on the conveyor and took turns smoking rolled-up cigarettes made from cigarette butts.
“They couldn’t do otherwise, citizen chief,” said the foreman.” (P. Demant)

33. “It’s a pity that I didn’t remember the names of many interesting people with whom I was in the camp. I don’t even remember the name of the head of the camp. Only his nickname - “Literally”. I remember it because he inserted this word where necessary and not necessary in the conversation. And He was also remembered because he really cared about the life of the prisoners in the camp. Under him, good barracks were built without common bunks, but with separate bunks for 4 people; , sometimes concerts, a brass band. All this distracted us a little from the terrible reality. Near the exit from the camp there was a large stand with the title “When will this end?” various shortcomings in the work of the camp were reported, and I remember, every time, passing by, quite legitimately, I said loudly: “When will this end?” (V. Pepelyaev)

34. “The entire hill opposite the office was covered with waste rock extracted from the depths. The mountain seemed to be turned inside out, from the inside it was brown, made of sharp rubble, the dumps did not fit into the surrounding greenery of the dwarf elfin, which covered the slopes for thousands of years and was destroyed in one fell swoop for the sake of mining the gray, heavy metal, without which not a single wheel can spin - tin. Everywhere on the dumps, near the rails stretched along the slope, at the compressor room, small figures in blue overalls with numbers on the back, above the right knee and on the cap were swarming around. We tried to get out of the cold adit, the sun was especially warm today - it was the beginning of June, the brightest summer." (P. Demant)

35. "March 1953 came. The mourning all-Union whistle found me at work. I left the room, took off my hat and prayed to God, thanking for the deliverance of the Motherland from the tyrant. They say that someone was worried, crying. We didn’t have that, I didn’t I saw that before Stalin’s death they punished those whose numbers had been taken away, but now it was the other way around - those who had not had their numbers removed were not allowed into the camp from work.
Changes have begun. They removed the bars from the windows and did not lock the barracks at night: walk around the zone wherever you want. In the dining room they began to serve bread without quota; take as much as was cut on the tables. A large barrel of red fish - chum salmon - was placed there, the kitchen began baking donuts (for money), butter and sugar appeared in the stall. The head of the regime (the Estonians called him “the head of the pressure”) walks around the zone - smiling, he probably has nothing to do, nothing to punish for. Some prisoners with Article 58 began to use thieves' jargon with visible pleasure, inserting into the conversation the words "chernukha", "parasha", "vertukhay", "ass"...
There was a rumor that our camp would be mothballed and closed. And, indeed, soon a reduction in production began, and then - according to small lists - stages. Many of our people, including myself, ended up in Chelbanya. It is very close to the big center - Susuman." (V. Pepelyaev)

36. These are such extraordinary stories that make you almost shudder and marvel at the inhuman resilience of people who managed to survive all this hell.

37. Only the remains of buildings, carried away by the inexorable passage of time, are still visible to rare guests.

38. Like threads of old clothes - smoldering and dissolving on the motionless bodies of the hills.

39. By the way, it’s amazing what bizarre structures the local architects created using almost one tree! For example, there once was an elevator leading into the mine.

40. But everything is gradually disappearing, closing one of the saddest pages of our history.

41. And only silent nature remains the same.

42.

Like this. To be continued!

This is the “Dneprovsky” mine - one of Stalin’s camps in Kolyma. On July 11, 1929, a decree “On the use of labor of criminal prisoners” was adopted for those sentenced to a term of 3 years or more; this decree became the starting point for the creation of forced labor camps throughout the Soviet Union. During a trip to Magadan, I visited one of the most accessible and well-preserved Gulag camps, Dneprovsky, a six-hour drive from Magadan. A very difficult place, especially listening to stories about the life of prisoners and imagining their work in the difficult climate here.

In 1928, the richest gold deposits were found in Kolyma. By 1931, the authorities decided to develop these deposits using prisoners. In the fall of 1931, the first group of prisoners, about 200 people, was sent to Kolyma. It would probably be wrong to assume that there were only political prisoners here; there were also those convicted under other articles of the criminal code. In this report I want to show photographs of the camp and supplement them with quotes from the memoirs of former prisoners who were here.

“Dnieper” received its name from the name of the spring - one of the tributaries of the Nerega. Officially, “Dneprovsky” was called a mine, although the bulk of its production came from ore areas where tin was mined. A large camp area lies at the foot of a very high hill.

From Magadan to Dneprovsky it’s a 6-hour drive, along an excellent road, the last 30-40 km of which look something like this:

It was my first time driving a Kamaz shift vehicle and I was absolutely delighted. There will be a separate article about this car, it even has the function of inflating the wheels directly from the cabin, in general it’s cool.

However, getting here to Kamaz trucks at the beginning of the 20th century was something like this:

The Dneprovsky mine and processing plant was subordinated to the Coastal Camp (Berlag, Special Camp No. 5, Special Camp No. 5, Special Blag of Dalstroy) Ext. ITL Dalstroy and the GULAG

The Dneprovsky mine was organized in the summer of 1941, worked intermittently until 1955 and extracted tin. The main labor force of Dneprovsky were prisoners. Convicted under various articles of the criminal code of the RSFSR and other republics of the Soviet Union.

Among them were also those illegally repressed under so-called political charges, who have now been rehabilitated or are being rehabilitated

All the years of Dneprovsky's activity, the main tools of labor here were a pick, a shovel, a crowbar and a wheelbarrow. However, some of the most difficult production processes were mechanized, including with American equipment from the Denver company, supplied from the USA during the Great Patriotic War under Lend Lease. Later it was dismantled and taken to other production facilities, so it was not preserved at Dneprovsky.

» The Studebaker drives into a deep and narrow valley, squeezed by very steep hills. At the foot of one of them we notice an old adit with superstructures, rails and a large embankment - a dump. Below, the bulldozer has already begun to mutilate the earth, turning over all the greenery, roots, stone blocks and leaving behind a wide black stripe. Soon a town of tents and several large wooden houses appears in front of us, but we don’t go there, but turn right and go up to the camp guardhouse.

The watch is old, the gates are wide open, the fence is made of liquid barbed wire on shaky, rickety, weathered posts. Only the tower with the machine gun looks new - the pillars are white and smell of pine needles. We disembark and enter the camp without any ceremony.” (P. Demant)

Pay attention to the hill - its entire surface is covered with geological exploration furrows, from where the prisoners rolled wheelbarrows with rock. The norm is 80 wheelbarrows per day. Up and down. In any weather - both hot summer and -50 in winter.

This is a steam generator that was used to defrost the soil, because there is permafrost here and it is simply impossible to dig several meters below ground level. This is the 30s, there was no mechanization then, all work was done manually.

All furniture and household items, all metal products were produced on site by the hands of prisoners:

Carpenters made a bunker, overpass, trays, and our team installed motors, mechanisms, and conveyors. In total, we launched six such industrial devices. As each one was launched, our mechanics remained to work on it - on the main motor, on the pump. I was left at the last device by the mechanic. (V. Pepelyaev)

We worked in two shifts, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Lunch was brought to work. Lunch is 0.5 liters of soup (water with black cabbage), 200 grams of oatmeal and 300 grams of bread. My job is to turn on the drum, the tape and sit and watch that everything spins and the rock moves along the tape, and that’s it. But sometimes something breaks - the tape may break, a stone may get stuck in the hopper, a pump may fail, or something else. Then come on, come on! 10 days during the day, ten at night. During the day, of course, it’s easier. From the night shift, you get to the zone by the time you have breakfast, and as soon as you fall asleep, it’s already lunch, when you go to bed, there’s a check, and then there’s dinner, and then it’s off to work. (V. Pepelyaev)

During the second period of the camp's operation in the post-war period, there was electricity:

“The Dnieper received its name from the spring - one of the tributaries of the Nerega. Officially, “Dneprovsky” is called a mine, although the bulk of its production comes from ore areas where tin is mined. A large camp area lies at the foot of a very high hill. Between the few old barracks there are long green tents, and a little higher up are the white frames of new buildings. Behind the medical unit, several prisoners in blue overalls are digging impressive holes for an insulator. The dining room was located in a half-rotten barracks that had sunk into the ground. We were accommodated in the second barracks, located above the others, not far from the old tower. I settle down on the through upper bunks, opposite the window. For the view from here of mountains with rocky peaks, a green valley and a river with a waterfall, you would have to pay exorbitant prices somewhere in Switzerland. But here we get this pleasure for free, or so it seems to us. We don’t yet know that, contrary to the generally accepted camp rule, the reward for our work will be gruel and a ladle of porridge - everything we earn will be taken away by the management of the Coastal camps” (P. Demant)

In the zone, all the barracks are old, slightly renovated, but there is already a medical unit, a BUR. A team of carpenters is building a new large barracks, a canteen and new towers around the zone. On the second day I was already taken to work. The foreman put us three people in the pit. This is a pit, above it there is a gate like on a well. Two are working on the gate, pulling out and unloading the tub - a large bucket made of thick iron (it weighs 60 kilograms), the third below is loading what was blown up. Before lunch I worked on the gate, and we completely cleared the bottom of the pit. They came from lunch, and then there was an explosion - we had to pull them out again. I volunteered to load it myself, sat down on the tub and the guys slowly lowered me down 6-8 meters. I loaded the bucket with stones, the guys lifted it, and suddenly I felt bad, dizzy, weak, and the shovel fell from my hands. And I sat down in the tub and somehow shouted: “Come on!” Fortunately, I realized in time that I had been poisoned by the gases left after the explosion in the ground, under the stones. Having rested in the clean Kolyma air, I said to myself: “I won’t climb again!” I began to think about how to survive and remain human in the conditions of the Far North, with severely limited nutrition and a complete lack of freedom? Even during this most difficult time of hunger for me (more than a year of constant malnutrition had already passed), I was confident that I would survive, I just needed to study the situation well, weigh my options, and think through my actions. I remembered the words of Confucius: “Man has three paths: reflection, imitation and experience. The first is the most noble, but also difficult. The second is light, and the third is bitter.”

I have no one to imitate, I have no experience, which means I have to think, relying only on myself. I decided to immediately start looking for people from whom I could get smart advice. In the evening I met a young Japanese man I knew from the Magadan transit. He told me that he works as a mechanic in a team of machine operators (in a mechanical shop), and that they are recruiting mechanics there - there is a lot of work to be done on the construction of industrial devices. He promised to talk about me with the foreman. (V. Pepelyaev)

There is almost no night here. The sun will just set and in a few minutes it will be almost there, and the mosquitoes and midges are something terrible. While you are drinking tea or soup, several pieces are sure to fly into the bowl. They gave us mosquito nets - these are bags with a mesh in front that are pulled over the head. But they don't help much. (V. Pepelyaev)

Just imagine - all these hills of rock in the center of the frame were formed by prisoners in the process of work. Almost everything was done by hand!

The entire hill opposite the office was covered with waste rock extracted from the depths. It was as if the mountain had been turned inside out, from the inside it was brown, made of sharp rubble, the dumps did not fit into the surrounding greenery of the elfin forest, which covered the slopes for thousands of years and was destroyed in one fell swoop for the sake of mining the gray, heavy metal, without which not a single wheel can spin - tin. Everywhere on the dumps, near the rails stretched along the slope, near the compressor room, small figures in blue work overalls with numbers on the back, above the right knee and on the cap were scurrying around. Everyone who could tried to get out of the cold adit; the sun was especially warm today - it was the beginning of June, the brightest summer. (P. Demant)

In the 50s, labor mechanization was already at a fairly high level. These are the remains of the railway along which ore was lowered down from the hill on trolleys. The design is called "Bremsberg":

And this design is an “elevator” for lowering and lifting ore, which was subsequently unloaded onto dump trucks and transported to processing factories:

There were eight flushing devices operating in the valley. They were installed quickly, only the last, eighth, began to operate only before the end of the season. At the opened landfill, a bulldozer pushed the “sands” into a deep bunker, from there they rose along a conveyor belt to a scrubber - a large iron rotating barrel with many holes and thick pins inside to grind the incoming mixture of stones, dirt, water and metal. Large stones flew into the dump - a growing pile of washed pebbles, and small particles with the flow of water supplied by the pump fell into a long inclined block, paved with grate bars, under which lay strips of cloth. Tin stone and sand settled on the cloth, and earth and pebbles flew out of the block behind. Then the settled concentrates were collected and washed again - cassiterite was mined according to the gold mining scheme, but, naturally, in terms of the amount of tin, disproportionately more was found. (P. Demant)

Security towers were located on the tops of the hills. What was it like for the staff guarding the camp in the fifty-degree frost and piercing wind?!

Cabin of the legendary "Lorry":

March 1953 arrived. The mournful all-Union whistle found me at work. I left the room, took off my hat and prayed to God, thanking for the deliverance of the Motherland from the tyrant. They say that someone was worried and cried. We didn’t have anything like this, I didn’t see it. If before Stalin’s death those whose numbers were removed were punished, now it was the other way around - those who had not had their numbers removed were not allowed into the camp from work.

Changes have begun. They removed the bars from the windows and did not lock the barracks at night: walk around the zone wherever you want. In the dining room they began to serve bread without quota; take as much as was cut on the tables. A large barrel of red fish - chum salmon - was placed there, the kitchen began baking donuts (for money), butter and sugar appeared in the stall.

There was a rumor that our camp would be mothballed and closed. And, indeed, soon a reduction in production began, and then - according to small lists - stages. Many of our people, including myself, ended up in Chelbanya. It is very close to the big center - Susuman. (V. Pepelyaev)

V. Shalamov is a prisoner of the Kolyma camps. Dalstroy camps in “Kolyma Tales”

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov lived to be 75 years old. It's amazing that he lived to that age. Why is it surprising? Because he spent 18 years of his life in camps, 14 of which were spent in Kolyma, in the Gulag. It's a miracle that he returned from there alive. The name of the writer Varlam Shalamov became known after his death in 1982, because camp prose during the author’s lifetime was beyond the “legitimate” line. His “Kolyma Tales” was included in the list of books for which readers could get into big trouble for keeping them.

Shalamov was first sent to the camp in 1926 at the age of 19, while a university student, for “distributing a forgery known as Lenin’s Testament.” Because of her, he served 3 years in the Vishera camp in the Northern Urals. In 1937, 8 years after his liberation, he again ended up in a camp. For what? It’s simple: the “authorities,” carrying out orders to expose “enemies of the people,” arrested people mostly based on false denunciations, and Shalamov, with his student past, was suspicious even without any denunciations. Therefore, he was one of the first to be arrested for “counter-revolutionary activities” and received 5 years of imprisonment and sent to the Dalstroy forced labor camp in Kolyma, and after the expiration of the term he received another 10 years of imprisonment for “anti-Soviet agitation.”

Varlam Shalamov was officially released in 1951, but it took him another 2 years to obtain permission to leave Kolyma. During the 15 years of absence, his family, who remained in Moscow, fell apart. He left for the Kalinin region, where he began writing “Kolyma Stories” - a collection consisting of several dozen small but capacious stories. In 1956, his civil rights were restored, and he was able to move back to live in Moscow.

The Kolyma Stories, already published and starting to circulate from hand to hand, seriously complicated his life. Because of them, he was not accepted into the Union of Writers of the USSR, where he sought to get into. His candidacy was approved only in 1971, when he officially confirmed that the publication of “Kolyma Stories” in the West was carried out without his knowledge and consent. He died 11 years later, in 1982, after a serious illness - Kolyma was not in vain for him.

“Kolyma Tales” is the fate of martyrs who were not, were not able to, and did not become heroes. These stories contain people without a biography, without a past and without a future.

In the Dalstroy camps there were special regulations that turned convicts into slaves, “waste material” used to implement government projects.

Living conditions in the labor camp were extremely harsh: a lukewarm stove in the residential barracks, which heated so poorly that hair froze to the pillow overnight; a “vitamin” drink made from dwarf pine needles, without drinking which it was impossible to get lunch, consisting of thin fish soup and a couple of spoons of watery porridge; “replacement tables” according to which meat was replaced with herring; drawing up daily rations without taking into account the live weight of people... As a result, many either died from exhaustion or were sent to the hospital with severe dystrophy. The overwhelming number of people were sick - scurvy, dysentery, frostbite and frostbite were widespread V.T. Shalamov, “Kolyma Tales”, “Tatar Mullah and Clean Air”, Moscow ed., 1989. Employees of the Chaunsky Museum of Local Lore made an exhibition of camp life: the interior furnishings of the barracks, household items of prisoners seemed to be taken from the pages of “Kolyma Tales” Photo archive of the Chaunsky Museum of Local Lore in Pevek.

Exhausted and exhausted prisoners were sent to work without lists, counting 5 people at the gate in any frost, unless the temperature fell below -60 degrees. In order to warm up at least a little in the cold, they were allowed to make fires. But they were only available to the convoy; such a privilege was not provided for prisoners. The working day lasted 16 hours, there were day and night shifts. At hard labor, ridiculous prohibitions reigned, for violation of which they were immediately shot: it was forbidden to talk to each other while working, to absent themselves or leave their workplace; if work was carried out in clearings or in the forest, then it was forbidden to go beyond the boundaries of the “forbidden zone” marked with markers. Once, a convoy shot a prisoner who did not cross the border, but only came very close to the line of the forbidden zone, carried away by collecting rotten berries V.T. Shalamov, “Kolyma Stories”, “Children’s Pictures”, published in Moscow, 1989.

For failure to meet the daily production norm, a penalty ration was given - 400 grams of bread for the whole day instead of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many prisoners, unable to withstand the cruel regime, feigned illness in order to get at least a little rest in the camp hospital. But such cases were very rare, because they hospitalized very rarely and only the most severely ill patients. But even for this, not everyone had enough mental and physical strength - many committed suicide: they threw themselves under loaded trolleys, poisoned themselves, hanged themselves, drowned themselves...

Parcels from relatives were issued only to those who fulfilled the production quota - the rest of the parcels were confiscated. No money was paid for the work - the convicts worked for free for the benefit of the state.

All camp inmates were constantly kept in fear - investigators recruited false witnesses from hungry prisoners, and gave additional sentences for distracted conversations.

On the gates of the labor camp it was written: “Work is a matter of honor, a matter of glory, a matter of valor and heroism.” They say that a quote from Nietzsche was written on the gates of Hitler’s death camps: “To each his own.” I think there is an analogy.

“Life has become better, comrades. Life has become more fun. And when life is fun, work goes smoothly. Hence the high production standards” - these are the words of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Did he know at what price these high production standards were given? Did he know what was really going on in the Gulag? Surely he knew. He couldn't help but know.

Shalamov himself was a prisoner of one of these camps for 15 years and became one of the few who returned from there alive. “Every story I tell is a slap in the face to Stalinism. The slap in the face should be short and loud” Russian literature of the 12th-20th centuries, literature of the 20th century, V.T. Shalamov, ed. "Enlightenment", 2006. His stories, not exceeding 2-3 pages, really look like slaps in the face. Short, but at the same time capacious, full of hopelessness, grief and despair, they leave the most terrible impressions of the totalitarian regime that reigned at that time. In order to “correct” through labor and lack of freedom, an entire world was artificially created behind barbed wire. Even civilian workers in these camps lived in constant anticipation of arrest - no one knew what awaited him tomorrow.

Without exception, all groups of convicts were subject to a terrible spiritual genocide brought down “from above.” “There is no one to blame in the camp. And this is not a pun, not a joke. You are being judged by yesterday's prisoners who have already served their sentences. And you yourself, having completed your sentence under any article, at the very moment of liberation acquire the right to judge others” - words of Varlam Shalamov Russian literature of the 12th-20th centuries, literature of the 20th century, V.T. Shalamov, ed. "Enlightenment", 2006.

There is no fiction or any exaggeration in his stories - their accuracy is documented. The ITLs were located in the Far North - hence the low temperatures; ITL prisoners were involved not only in construction, but also in the development of mines for various minerals, including uranium - hence the high mortality rate (and as can be seen not only because of unacceptable living conditions, but also because of radiation); the development of scurvy due to the lack of vitamins and anti-scorbutic drugs - instead of rose hips growing in large quantities, they gave completely useless elfin wood.

Photographs of the Severny camp, which N.A. Nikolaeva spoke about, confirm and clearly show the living conditions of the prisoners described by Shalamov: barracks, adits, mountains of waste ore. Personal archive of N.A. Nikolaeva.

A huge number of people fell under Stalin's repressive machine. And all of them - from thieves, murderers and political traitors to the innocently convicted - had one road - the camp. Paradoxically, people from pre-trial detention prisons tried to leave as quickly as possible with the convoy to the camp. Their monstrous delusion was that they thought that it would be better in the camp: work in the fresh air, and not aimlessly sitting in cramped, crowded prison cells, etc. No one explained to them that everything in the camp is different than they imagine. Only a few returned from there, but even these lucky ones did not have the right to live in big cities. Often they had no rights at all. And therefore, it was almost impossible to find out what was happening in the camp. “The camp is a negative experience for a person, from the first to the last hour. A person shouldn't even hear about it. Not a single person becomes better or stronger after the camp” B. Gurnov, “Who Preserved the Soul”, Moscow publishing house, 1989.

The natural question is: “Why were convicts sent to the Far North? Why was Dalstroy organized there?” The USSR government pursued a policy of developing Siberia and the Far North in order to identify mineral deposits necessary for the development of the country's economy. That is why Dalstroy was organized there. But not many would agree to work far from civilization and in poor conditions. Then the government decided to move correctional colonies there with prisoners who, in fact, did nothing while sitting in prison. It was decided to use the labor of prisoners for the benefit of the state. And therefore, at each production department of Dalstroy, an ITL was created, which served this department. Stalin's repressions contributed to this, the labor camps were constantly replenished, and Dalstroy did not lack workers. Most likely, it is because of this that Dalstroi is associated with the Gulag.

The world of camp life reflects the style of barracks socialism in which the whole country lived.

Recently a documentary film “Lenin's Testament” appeared on television. It is based on real events that took place in the life of Varlam Shalamov, who is, in fact, the main character of his works. Therefore, when they make a film about him, it turns out that they are adapting his prose. The film received the name of the document, because of which young Shalamov suffered for the first time, receiving 3 years in the camps. The film’s producer, Nikolai Dostal, perceives Varlam Shalamov this way: “I don’t agree that Shalamov is scary and hopeless. He believed that the camp was a negative experience. You don’t need to see this, you don’t need to know. But if you saw it and survived, you should tell people about it. This was the stimulus for his creativity. He saw this as his duty." Interview with the producer of the film "Lenin's Testament" N. Dostal.