Women's camps in Kolyma map. Shards of horror: what remains of the gulag camps

UNIQUE PHOTOGRAPHY

Ore mining in one of the Kolyma camps.
Possibly Tenkinsky district.
Archive photo of the NKVD.

HISTORIANS TESTIFY

"In 1946, uranium deposits were found in various regions of the Soviet Union. Uranium was found in Kolyma, in the Chita region, in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, near Pyatigorsk. The development of uranium deposits, especially in remote places, is a very difficult task. The first batches of domestic uranium began to arrive only in 1947 from the Leninabad Mining and Chemical Combine in the Tajik SSR. In the nuclear Gulag system, this plant was known only as “Construction-665”. The uranium development sites were classified. until 1990. Even the workers at the mines did not know about uranium. Officially, they were extracting “special ore”, and instead of the word “uranium” in the documents of that time they wrote “lead”.

Uranium deposits in Kolyma were poor. Nevertheless, a mining plant and the Butugychag camp were created here too. This camp is described in Anatoly Zhigulin’s story “Black Stones,” but he did not know that uranium was being mined here. In 1946, uranium ore from Butugychag was sent to the “mainland” by plane. It was too expensive, and in 1947 a processing plant was built here."
Roy and Zhores Medvedev.

THE BUILDER'S WORD

One of the builders of Butugychag recalls (Writer from Rostov-on-Don. He was imprisoned for 17 years, of which from 1939 to 1948 in the Kolyma camps. Rehabilitated in 1955)

“This mine was a complex complex: factories - sorting and processing, Bremsberg, a motor-cart, a thermal power plant. Sumy pumps were installed in a chamber hollowed out in the rock. Adits passed through. They built a village of two-story, log houses. Moscow architect from the old Russian nobles Konstantin Shchegolev decorated He cut the capitals with them himself. In the camp there were first-class specialists, I write this with every right, imprisoned engineers and workers, as well as excellent carpenters, from among the collective farmers who had completed their sentences and were not sent home, who became the main builders of Butugychag.
Gabriel Kolesnikov.

DECEPTION OF THE ALLIES

May 1944.
Intensified preparations are underway across all city institutions to meet and receive guests from America. The guests arrived in Magadan on the evening of May 25, and toured the city (schools, the House of Culture, the city library, ARZ, the Dukcha state farm). On the evening of May 26 we attended a concert at the House of Culture and on the morning of May 27 we set off on our further journey.
In Irkutsk, US Vice President Wallace gave a speech...

“I remember his visit well. He visited the mines of the Chai-Uryinskaya Valley, named after Chkalov, Chai-Uryu, Bolshevik and Komsomolets. They all merged into a huge industrial complex. Determine the approximate territory of the mine and its name it was possible only at the administrative buildings and houses for the so-called civilians, located on the highway. By the arrival of the distinguished guest, the Komsomolets mine had not removed gold from one of the washing devices for two days, and the excavator driver (prisoner) was temporarily dressed in a suit taken from him. in loans from a civilian engineer. However, later he was severely beaten for his clothes stained with fuel oil.
I also remember sawed-down watchtowers at numerous camp sites. For three days, from morning to evening, the entire contingent of prisoners was in a supine position, in small valleys that were not visible from the highway, under the protection of riflemen and authorities from the VOKhR, dressed in civilian clothes and without rifles. We ate dry rations and returned to the camp site only for the night. The paths and passages to the camps were sprinkled with white sand, the beds in the wards were covered with new woolen blankets and clean linen for the day - the distinguished guest would hardly have come to our barracks at night, but for us prisoners, his arrival was an unprecedented three-day rest from the hard, exhausting long-term everyday life."
Zherebtsov (Odessa).

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

After my broadcast on the news channel of the Japanese NHK dedicated to medical experiments in the Butugychag camp, the KGB came to its senses and, as friends from Ust-Omchug told me, they leveled part of the camp complex with bulldozers and graders. Still would! This is not a monument to a warrior-liberator, it is a black mark that directly testifies to the genocide of its people.
(Hereinafter - the author.)

The two frames shown above are taken from the video footage. There was not enough light in the mine for high-quality photographs, and I did not have an electronic flash with me. The digital video camera can also operate using the light of a flashlight.

A decade and a half later, another boss with big stars on his shoulder straps (although these people do not wear military uniforms, preferring gray, rat-colored suits) handed me on the street a thick gray bag with negatives that I had been looking for for so long and in vain. For a substantial dollar bribe, he agreed to rummage through the archives of Butugychag. Just a few dozen old negatives without signatures or explanations. But how eloquently they shout!
Notice the row of emaciated bodies on the floor of the room in one of the pictures in the photo gallery.

The negatives are shown translated into a positive image.

Photo gallery "Butugychag"

I remember the head of the camp point of the "Scout" mine, who tied (not himself, of course) exhausted, exhausted, so-called enemies of the people, to the tails of horses, and in this way they were dragged to the slaughter for three or four kilometers. During this operation, the camp orchestra played the most bravura marches. Addressing all of us, the head of this camp point (unfortunately, I forgot his last name) said: “Remember, the Stalinist constitution for you is me. I will do what I want with any of you...”
From the stories of Ozerlag prisoners.

“For a month and a half, the goons who arrived from Central to Dieselnaya did not work, but they were fed tolerably. This was done to preserve, or rather, to temporarily preserve, the workforce. For the Butugychag complex was ultimately designed for the gradual death of all prisoners - from dystrophy and scurvy, from a variety of diseases."
A. Zhigulin.

“The mortality rate in Butugychag was very high. In the “medical” special zone (more accurately called the pre-mortem zone), people died every day. An indifferent watchman checked the personal file number with the number of a ready-made plate, pierced the dead man’s chest three times with a special steel lance, stuck it in the dirty purulent snow near the watch and released the deceased..."
A. Zhigulin.

In these furnaces, the primary uranium concentrate was evaporated manually on metal pans. To this day, 23 barrels of uranium concentrate lie behind the outer wall of the enrichment plant. Even if nature rewarded with good health from birth, a person lived near such stoves for several months.

“An ore processing plant is a terrible, grave place...” - as Anatoly Zhigulin wrote about these places.
Quiet, unnoticed, but painful death lay on these iron pallets. It was on them that the atomic sword of the thrice-damned evil empire was forged. Millions (!!!) of people paid with their lives for the medieval nonsense of idiots who imagined themselves to be big politicians.

“By the beginning of spring, by the end of March, by April, there were always 3-4 thousand prisoners exhausted from work (fourteen hours underground) at Central. They were also recruited in neighboring zones, in neighboring mines. Such weakened, but still capable of work in the future sent to the camp on Dieselnaya - to return to normal a little. In the spring of 1952, I ended up at Dieselnaya. From here, with Dieselnaya, I can calmly, without haste, describe the village, or rather, perhaps, the city of Butugychag, because there was a population in it at that time. time no less than 50 thousand, Butugychag was marked on the all-Union map In the spring of 1952, Butugychag consisted of four (and, if you count “Bacchante”, then five) large camp points.
A. Zhigulin.

“Together with Ivan, we celebrated the death of Stalin. When the mourning music started playing, there was a general, extraordinary joy. Everyone hugged and kissed each other, as if on Easter. And flags appeared on the barracks. Red Soviet flags, but without mourning ribbons. There were a lot of them, and they fluttered boldly and cheerfully in the wind. It’s funny that in some places the Russians of Harbin hung a flag - a pre-revolutionary Russian one, white-blue-red. And where did the material and colors come from? The authorities didn’t know. what to do - after all, there were about 50 thousand prisoners at Butugychag, and there were hardly 120-150 soldiers with machine guns! What a joy it was!
A. Zhigulin.

“The Sopka camp was undoubtedly the most terrible in terms of meteorological conditions. In addition, there was no water there. And water was delivered there, like many cargoes, by Bremsberg and narrow-gauge railway, and in winter it was extracted from the snow. The stages to Sopka followed a pedestrian route road along the ravine and - higher - along the human path. It was a very difficult climb. Cassiterite from the Gornyak mine was transported in trolleys along a narrow gauge railway, then loaded onto the Bremsberg platforms. Stages from the Sopka were extremely rare.
A. Zhigulin.

“If you look from Dieselnaya (or from the Central) at the Bremsberg hill, then to the left there was a deep saddle, then a relatively small hill, to the left of which there was a cemetery. Through this saddle a bad road led to the only women’s OLP on Butugychag. It was called...” Bacchante." But this name was given to that place by geologists-prospectors. The work of the unfortunate women in this camp was the same as ours: mountainous, hard. And the name, although it was not specially invented (who knew what would happen there a women’s convict camp?!), it smacked of sadism. We saw the women from “The Bacchae” very rarely - when we escorted them along the road.”
A. Zhigulin.

At the pass itself, right on the watershed, there is this strange cemetery. In the spring, bears and local punks from Ust-Omchug come to the cemetery. The former are looking for food after a hungry winter, the latter are looking for skulls for candlesticks...

Even a non-pathologist can see that this is the skull of a child. And sawed up again... What monstrous secret is hidden in the upper cemetery of the Butugychag camp?

“From the upper platform of the Bremsberg, a horizontal thread along the slope of the hill, a long one adjacent to the Bremsberg hill, ran to the right a narrow-gauge road to the Sopka camp and its enterprise Gornyak. The Yakut name for the place where the camp and the Gornyak mine were located is Shaitan This was the most “ancient” and highest above sea level mining enterprise in Butugychag. Cassiterite and tin stone (up to 79 percent of tin) were mined there.”
A. Zhigulin.

A group of Japanese politicians, journalists and scientists flew over the camps of this huge zone under the noses of the KGB. Holding the door of the Mi-8 open in the bitter cold of February and almost falling out of it, I incessantly rattled my Pentax...

Attention!
The last two photographs (18+) demonstrate the moments of the opening of a person’s brain with a clarity capable of causing long-lasting, unpleasant sensations. Please do not view the photographs if you are an easily excitable person, suffer from any form of mental illness, are pregnant or are under 18 years of age.
In all other cases, you must be firmly convinced that you want to see such pictures.

Camp Butugychag. Medical experiments on the brains of prisoners. Photo from the NKVD archive

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 Stories” 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 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 there correctional colonies 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.

September 9th, 2013 , 03:01 pm

The other day we had the opportunity to take two Poles, Anna and Kristov, who were hungry for adventure, to a well-preserved camp from the Gulag era. We set off in two cars. Travel time is 5 hours from Magadan.

The Austrian Jew Peter Demant, who wrote “Zekameron of the 20th Century,” and Vsevolod Pepelyaev served their time in this place; they describe the camp. I’ll try to tell you everything using quotes from the memories of former spouses.

"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)

Hammer drill. A hard crown was inserted into the slot.

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)

Panel from the tube receiver. The camp was radio-wired, as evidenced by wires on homemade wooden insulators inside residential buildings.

Lamp. Rag with fuel oil.

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)

Telephony with towers.

“Dneprovsky” was not a new place. During the war, there was an ore section of the Kheta mine, located on the highway thirty kilometers away. When in 1944 tin turned out to be less important for the state than gold, the site was closed, the barracks soon fell into disrepair, the roads were overgrown with grass, and only in 1949 the mine workings were reopened and, in addition, they began to open up the ranges in order to wash the tin stone on the instruments. (P. Demant)

In addition to the Russians, there were Hungarians, Japanese, Estonians, Lithuanians, Finns, Greeks, Ukrainians, Hutsuls, and Serbs in the camp. Everyone learned Russian in the zone.

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)

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)

At the end of summer, there was an “emergency” - the escape of three people from the work area. In derogation from the law, one was never returned: neither alive nor dead. I already wrote about the second one: 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. And he did it strictly according to the camp laws: first he woke him up so that he knew why, then he finished him off and calmly went on duty, surrendering his knife. The regime was strengthened, machine guns appeared on the towers. Everyone is walking around nervous and angry. Some had thoughts of suicide out of despair. Frost, snow and wind. A desperate prisoner approaches the foreman and asks: “Do a good deed, here’s an ax - cut off my fingers. I myself can’t, I don’t have enough courage, but I see you can do it. I’ll say it myself.” Shows the shirt he has taken off so he can tie his hand later. The foreman thought a little and said: “Put your hand on this log and turn away.” He turned away and closed his eyes. The foreman 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 stayed in the hospital for a couple of days and spent 10 days in the zone, got better and thanked the foreman for his cunning, for saving his hand. (V. Pepelyaev)

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

Soldier's bathhouse.

The medical unit is overcrowded, injuries at work have become more frequent - some have had their feet crushed by a block, some have been caught in an explosion, and soon the first dead person is the cheerful Petro Golubev, who so hoped to see his family soon. 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 device, there he became the right-flank, and over time a whole cemetery grew behind him - on each grave there was a stake with a number. “Cleopatra” (chief doctor) did not leave the medical unit for days, but she was also powerless - they did not give medicine for “traitors to the motherland”! (P. Demant)

There are not so many graves, about 70... out of 1000 people over five years. Mortality was due to accidents or transient illness.

A hundred paces 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 as 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)

The first year at the mine was stormy and full of surprises. Geologists often got into trouble with their forecasts; huge testing sites did not always live up to expectations, but by chance people sometimes stumbled upon incredibly rich places. Volunteers scoured the testing grounds and often brought cassiterite nuggets weighing tens of kilograms, and were paid well for them. Once, a five-pound block fell onto the conveyor belt of the device. The prisoner, who mistook it for a simple stone and tried in vain to push it, stopped the tape. Suddenly the Greek was nearby, he took the find away 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)

This is the same compressor room on the slope.

Wheels from English gun carriages. Tubeless, rubber, very heavy.

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 camp director. Only his nickname is “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 ones, for 4 people; also a spacious bathhouse-laundry room, kitchen, dining room. Amateur activities flourished under him - almost daily cinema, sometimes concerts, a brass band. All this distracted us a little from the terrible reality. Near the exit from the camp there is 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 I passed by, quite legitimately, loudly saying: “When will this end?” (V. Pepelyaev)

A residential barracks in the free part of the camp, a dormitory. Lots of private rooms with hooks inside, radio and electricity.

Lantern made from tin cans.

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 wood, which had 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)

Before the closure, recalls a former Dnipro resident
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 had been 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. They also placed a large barrel of red fish - chum salmon, 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)

In the thirties, fifty correctional camps were founded in Kolyma. In the fifties, they became ordinary villages, where descendants of former prisoners lived for another half century. Now they cease to exist. The sons of prisoners of the Elgen women’s camp told us how one of these villages was born and died.

Fifteen years ago, a school was closed in the village of Elgen in the Magadan Region. Lika Timofeevich Morozov, walking along the street, saw the remains of a fire. He came closer and recognized school magazines in the burnt scraps of paper. I figured out where the rest might be, ran there and managed to pick up 150 magazines with personal files and photographs. In 2008, the village was frozen. He, as the former chairman of the executive committee and then the head of the administration, was the last to leave.

Now there are almost no villages left in Kolyma; the history of this place is scattered throughout the country along with the people. But it is important for locals to preserve at least something, collect it, give form to history and pass it on to generations. Victor Sadilov wrote more than 30 stories about the life of Elgen and its inhabitants. For the last ten years, Lika Timofeevich has been restoring names from documents saved in a fire, collecting photographs, finding these people and sending them to them: from Sakhalin to Ussuriysk, so that they will be remembered.

Both Victor and Lika were born in Elgen, one of the largest women’s camps where their mothers served their sentences.

Villages of Kolyma / Photo Sergey Filinin

"Elgen": women's camp at the end of the world

The development of Kolyma began in the 30s of the last century. Dalstroy's main task was to obtain as much gold and other minerals as possible. It was also planned to use the camps for the further settlement and use of previously uninhabited territories of the USSR. In total, there were fifty settlements in Kolyma, and all of them were camps.

The Elgen women's camp appeared in 1934. They solved two problems at once: they opened a state farm to feed the constantly arriving prisoners, and isolated women from men.

The sons of imprisoned women write in their memoirs that it was really necessary to isolate, because “love made its way through indestructible sprouts even on the harsh northern soil,” “extraordinary situations arose,” “even to the point of outbreaks of venereal diseases.” The prisoners themselves have different memories.

The writer Olga Adamova-Sliozberg in her book “The Path” described harassment from superiors, blackmail, when easier conditions were offered for relationships or sex, and gang rape. For example, she wrote about the foreman Sashka Sokolov, who selected young women into a separate “fun” tent and sold them to the guards and prisoners. He deceived one of those who refused: he said that her boyfriend had arranged a surprise for her. Instead, a crowd of prisoners to whom Sashka sold her was waiting for her in the house. She returned to the camp three days later, her superiors punished her for absenteeism, and as a result she went to the “fun” tent. Sliozberg once tried to complain about the foreman, but he was engaged in “business” together with the head of security. In the end, she was glad that the case at least remained motionless and did not turn into an extension of her sentence or murder.

Gang rapes were so common that a term was coined for them: “And the woman in Kolyma? After all, there it is completely rare, there it is in great demand and in great demand. Don't come across a woman on the highway there - even a guard, a free man, or a prisoner. In Kolyma, the expression “tram” for gang rape was born. K.O. tells how the driver lost them at cards - a whole truckload of women being transported to Elgen - and, turning off the road, brought them to unescorted construction workers for the night.”

At the same time, Elgen was still a “resort” for many prisoners, because working at the agricultural base meant working in the heat. In addition, the camp was located practically in a swamp, so for a long time there were no fences or barbed wire - there was nowhere to run.

True, when the state farm expanded deeper into undeveloped territories, the women had to adapt to a new problem: bears. In the wilderness downstream of the Tuscan, a dairy farm and poultry house were built. So bears came to him every night: they were attracted by the smell of seal carcasses, which they fed the birds. Viktor Sadilov says that at night the women had to batten down all the entrances and exits, like in a submarine, and wait until the morning.

Get to Elgen and survive

Victor Sadilov's father, Alexander, was born in the village of Chufarovo, Nizhny Novgorod province, in July 1904. He graduated from four classes of a parochial school and immediately plunged into rural workdays, “without complaining about fate and without building sweet illusions for the future.” At seventeen he was married. He himself did not want to get married: two strapping young men walked him down the aisle so that he would not run away. So the parents wanted to keep their son from running away to war, because the eldest had already run away.

Alexander joined the army, but later, in a relatively peaceful time. He finished his service as a machine gun platoon commander with a bunch of thanks and awards and returned home to the village to his wife as a hero.

For his creative approach to work, in 1935 Alexander was sent to Moscow to the All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers. “The solemn atmosphere of the congress, the pomp of decoration and the grandeur of the Kremlin interiors struck me on the spot. The scale of the event promised some kind of turning point in life, new career heights and great deeds were dreamed of. The chairman of the collective farm, recently accepted into the party, saw with his own eyes all the power and strength of the country. When he saw Stalin himself for the first time, he took his breath away with delight and excitement. What was happening almost lost its reality. Here she is! The story itself breathes in the face of a simple man!” writes Victor in the story about his father. In 1937, at one of the meetings, Alexander, criticizing the authorities from the district, said: “The fish rots from the head.” His accusers will think that he was pointing to a portrait of the leader. He will be given 9 years of imprisonment followed by the loss of his rights for 5 years.

Alexander reached Kolyma in October 1938. The liberal rule of Eduard Berzin at Dalstroy had already ended by this time, and stories about new routines did not add joy to Alexander. What killed most people, besides the cold, in Kolyma was the system of rations that was in place at that time - as much as you worked, that’s what you get. For example, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg later wrote that she and other “newcomers” looked forward to the first working day in Kolyma after five years of almost no movement in prison. But when they were sent to dig a trench, they completed only 3% of the norm per person for the entire day.

Sliozberg herself was serving her sentence in another camp; she couldn’t get into “Elgen”: the healthy and strong were selected there, and by that time she had already lost her health so much that she didn’t have enough strength to pretend to be cheerful even for a couple of minutes while the boss was looking at her.

The worst thing for prisoners was to get involved in lime or gold mining. Sliozberg was once washing dishes in the river, and gold settled in the plate. She called everyone to look, but the only man in the company - a huge Prokhorov with hands “the size of a chest of drawers” ​​- abruptly interrupted their joy, loudly said that this was not gold, and threw it all back. Later he came up and told her: “Well, that means you’re a fool. Educated, but stupid. Well, why do you need gold? We live here and mow hay. If they find gold, do you know how many people will be injured? Have you seen how they work at the mine? Isn't your man there? Do not you know? Maybe the gold for this has been lying in the pit for a long time. A person can work one season on gold and that’s it.”

Alexander ended up at a woodworking plant. No men were housed in Elgen itself. The plant was located downstream and had its own barracks town. Alexander, who had just arrived, witnessed a terrible situation:

“Komsomol members of the village neighboring Elgen organized a ski race, which they dedicated to the next anniversary of the Great October Revolution. Either the connection did not work, or the organizers made a mistake, but at our checkpoint they forgot to warn the security about the event. The vigilant fighters noticed an approaching detachment of skiers in the twilight light and, impressed by strict instructions and themselves obsessed with “proletarian vigilance,” they decided to take the fight to the “fugitives.” The ending was terrible and tragic. Komsomol members from the neighboring village of Mylgi died under the lead rain of vigilant guards.”

Death was not a rare occurrence in Kolyma at all. The bodies were stacked like firewood on top of each other during the winter on the territory of the women's camp. In early spring, they were loaded onto tractor sleighs and taken to the other side of the Tuscan to be buried: they were thrown into a ditch and covered with improvised garbage, as long as their limbs did not stick out. Alexander told his son that one day he, too, had to lie in the same pile with bodies: “I was walking along the road to Elgen, a distance of twenty miles, I did not calculate my strength and fell exhausted in the middle of the road. There were many business trips in the valley, and the authorities returned to the camp after the tour. They picked up the body, brought it to the watch and dumped it in a general pile. Whether he lay there for a long time or not, it was only his luck that Starley Lugovskoy passed by and was surprised that the fresh corpse threw his hand into the aisle. A accustomed man, he did not lose his composure and, entering the shift, menacingly asked why a living person was thrown out to the dead. The mistake was immediately corrected by dragging the body to the medical unit. From then on, my father’s toenails remained disfigured - he froze them,” Victor told his father’s story.

His mother went to the camps in 1948. A year before, she was carrying 15 bags of grain on a cart, and quietly threw one into the bushes, so that they would later come back and pick it up: in a large peasant family, a younger brother was dying of hunger. When he was found and arrest was already inevitable, she did not remain silent. For the phrase “you are stealing cars here, and we are dying of hunger”, she was accused of both theft and an attempt on Soviet power. They gave me five years. She was 24 years old and had given birth to a daughter less than a year ago.

She gave birth to Victor in 1950: judging by the total number of pregnancies in the women's camp, its isolation function did not work.

In 1939, this issue already required an immediate solution, and the authorities ordered the construction of a “children’s factory.” It worked for almost sixty years until it burned down.

In another way, the plant was also called an orphanage, and children were there until they were three years old. If the mothers had not completed their term by this time, the children were sent to a boarding school.

Lika Timofeevich and Viktor Sadilov stayed with their mothers only because they managed to free themselves before they were sent to boarding schools.

Lika Timofeevich Morozov was born in 1950. He knows nothing about his father. He also doesn’t know why his Moldavian mother ended up in the camps. She says that she really didn’t like to talk about it.

Lika received his surname and patronymic from his stepfather. He was sent to Kolyma in 1938 “for Trotskyist activities,” he was then 23. Ten years later he was freed, stayed to work, met Lika’s mother and adopted him. He already remembers Elgen as an ordinary Soviet village with a youth club where they watched films on a projector.

Viktor Sadilov describes this period in his stories as follows:

“And changes followed, reluctantly at first, as if with a creak, but gaining momentum year after year. The attitude of the guards towards prisoners began to change noticeably; they began to pay attention to the needs and requirements. We remembered that a woman with a child has special rights and benefits, and it is not human to separate mother and child. And the supply of new personnel to the women’s camp began to noticeably dry up.

And four years after Stalin’s death, the very existence of this sad institution lost its meaning and relevance. So in 1957, the OLP, a special camp point, ceased to exist in Elgen. The liquidation took place calmly, without celebrations or fireworks. Remembering the dark years of the camp system, Elgen adapted to the new conditions of existence. The vacated objects began to be adapted for the needs of production and everyday life. A number of units and missions have been reduced.

In the early fifties, the administrative and economic structure of the entire region underwent tremendous changes. The Magadan region was born, separating from the giant Khabarovsk Territory. The region acquired districts, each district having its own administrative center.

The “orphanage” has long since become a thing of the past, and the building was given over to apartments. The kindergarten, located near the “director’s” house, could no longer accommodate the influx of children, and therefore a new complex of three buildings was built. This is how a whole microdistrict called “Children’s Town” arose. Then they opened a new school, and the issue with the younger generation was resolved for many years.”

Death of Elgen: “I realized that we were in trouble”

Lika just finished eighth grade at this school. There was no more there, so in the ninth he went to a boarding school in the village of Yagodnoye. He didn’t like it there, he returned to Elgen and went to work - at the state farm as a car mechanic. He was 17.

“Already in 1968 we had our first ninth grade. And we, the older guys, were all taken off work and sent to the same class to fill the required number of students,” says Lika. “I finished ninth grade in Elgen, and in tenth grade we went to the neighboring village of Ust-Taskan.”

Then everything also went according to plan: evening school, college, second marriage, until on one of his vacations in 1982, Lika ran into an instructor from the district party committee at the door. He offered him the position of chairman of the executive committee.

The first time Lika Morozov worked for three years, then he couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t come to terms with the new style of work: “How can you make any report on any topic without getting up from your chair?” He left in 1985 and worked for 7 years as a production equipment foreman. But, it seems, those at the top did not forgive him for such a departure, so in 1992 he received an order in which he was already listed as the head of the administration of the village of Elgen. And this is a punishment because his task immediately became clear - to resettle three villages and close them down. That same year, 265 people left Elgen alone in one summer, leaving another fifteen hundred.

“Since 1992, when I became the head of the administration, I realized that we were in trouble. Because that year the neighboring village of Energetikov was closed, and there was a huge coal station in it that supplied us. Then Vladimir Pekhtin came to me in 1997. He was then the head of KolymaEnergo. He came with a proposal to transfer the state farm as a subsidiary farm to KolymaEnergo. Naturally, they came and took away everything that could be taken: equipment, livestock. And then they said: “We don’t need you.” And we began to fall apart: there was no equipment, the fields were overgrown, and people began to leave. In 1999, the kindergarten and grades 10-11 at the school were closed, and it was finally closed in 2003. At the same time, our electricity was turned off. But there is no light - the boiler room does not work, the water intake does not work. And until 2008, we carried water several kilometers from the river,” Morozov recalls. “I felt most sorry for the first people who left—they left for their own money. Since 1993, the head of the administration has provided financial assistance, but only a penny. Only since 2006 it was possible to get 2 million for the purchase of housing, but maybe a hundred people have already gotten there.”

The Morozov family was the last to leave, in 2008. Now in the village of Elgen there live several families who refused to leave, and a couple of business travelers at the weather station.

According to Lika Timofeevich, people from Kolyma did not want to leave: when one village closed, they moved to the neighboring one. So Anna Pavlovna, born in 1914, left the village of Energetikov and later changed more than one village. They were already trying to persuade her to leave: they say, there is no water, there is nothing, as much as possible! She answered: “I’ll live to be 90 and leave.” She lived and left. She died in 2007. She once drove steamships, transporting coal to that station.

Memory of Kolyma

Now Lika Timofeevich Morozov lives in his wife’s homeland, in Syzran. Our interview with him immediately did not go according to plan: I didn’t ask a single question, and he made the first pause after forty minutes. He listed who he found from Elgen and with whom he communicates, using only one telephone and e-mail, which is controlled by his daughter in Ulyanovsk.

“I try to collect photographs for each class. I don’t have a single photograph of my class, but I found ten classmates, and so I call them, ask who has what, and they send it to me.

He restored the students of our school, starting with those who went to school in 1949. I got 2000 people. I restored the list of teachers, almost all of them: 70 people. All school directors and, in general, the majority of residents of the village of Elgen until 1963. I know everyone: who arrived when, who came from where, who they worked for, where they lived, etc. Separately on the list are those who were born in Elgen.

A year before I left the village, I visited television from the Czech Republic. Vanya Panikarov calls and says that he is a Czech going to Elgen, he was born there. I don't know how his mother got there. One of the camp buildings was still standing then: we walked around and reminisced. Of course, he found nothing there. When they told me his last name, I quickly went to the registry office, found his birth certificate and waited for him to visit. And a little later, Evgenia Ginzburg’s adopted daughter, Antonina Aksenova, came to see me. We also walked around Elgen with her, talked, and I told her what I could. Vanya Panirov takes everyone to see me. I don’t know where he gets them.”

Vanya Panikarov is a former plumber who later became the main chronicler of Kolyma. He initiated the creation of the “Search for the Illegally Repressed” society, runs the “Memory of Kolyma” museum, publishes the book series “Archives of Memory”, in which he publishes memoirs and works of Gulag prisoners.

We contacted him at an inconvenient time - he is now on another expedition in Magadan, but was able to send us the materials that we used in this article.

Together with Lika Morozov and Viktor Sadilov, they, each in their own way, are engaged in restoring and preserving information about the Kolyma camps, its prisoners and village residents after the liquidation of the Gulag.

Last year, Panikarov won a presidential grant for the “Memory of Kolyma” project. Here's what he wrote in the application:

“I am not a leader, not a professor, not a scientist, however, having been studying the history of the region for more than 30 years, I know something about the Kolyma land, and in every possible way, often despite the regional authorities, I do what the people, the Kolyma residents, need. And we managed to do a lot - announce competitions in the media on historical and local history topics, publish the newspaper "Wonderful Planet", publish books about the history of the region and memories of Kolyma by former prisoners, carry out expeditions to the remains of the camps, including with schoolchildren... And all this was done for... foreign grants... Times are different now: winning foreign grants is “dangerous”, since you immediately become an “agent of a foreign state,” that is, a spy, and there are not so many Russian grant givers. And the years are no longer the same, although I still call a spade a spade and try to benefit the region and people. And even if there is no grant, all the activities planned in the application will still be completed, although not within a year, but over a longer period of time.”

At the beginning of February 1932, the leadership of Dalstroi, headed by Eduard Berzin, arrived in Nagaev Bay, and in June-July, ships began delivering prisoners en masse.

At the beginning of July 32, a “calico town” appeared next to the Magadanka River (on the site of the current Proletarskaya Street) and subsequently became the prototype of the city under construction. Volunteers then settled in 60 tents... But it was at this time that Berzin, having created the basis of Dalstroy, went to Moscow with his plan for the colonization of Kolyma and the construction of Magadan.
By his order, the first camp centers appeared in the Dukchi area. They became the beginning of USVITL - the Office of North-Eastern Forced Labor Camps.



On a blog tour at the Dneprovsky mine. Photo by Dmitry dimabalakirev Balakireva

This time I will not talk about the reasons for the creation of the Gulag in the USSR and the number of prisoners who died in Kolyma. Let me just say that their name is Legion. And in order to imagine what kind of land we walk on, I invite readers to take a trip to... camp places. The description does not include Chukotka and Ust-Nera; data on the largest camps is provided.

Berlag
Organized 02/28/48, closed 06/25/54 - all camp units were transferred to USVITL.
The administrative center is Motley Dresva in Shelikhov Bay, the name is “Coast Camp”.

Production: underground and surface work at enterprises of mining departments, including maintenance of the Yansk State Pedagogical Directorate; mining plants with mines of the same name and processing plants attached to them (named after Belov, "Butugychag", "Henikandzha", No. 2 of the Tenkinsky GPU, named after Lazo, "Alyaskitovy" of the Indigirsky GPU), the Omsukchansky mining plant with the "Galimy" mine and the processing plant -koy, Utinsky gold mining plant with the Kholodny, Kvartsevy mines and the Petrovich site; cobalt plant "Canyon", mines and mines with processing factories ("Dneprovsky" and named after Chapaev, named after Matrosov (in 1949-1950 - named after Beria), mines named after Gorky and "Chelbanya".
Berlag prisoners also served the facilities of the First Directorate of Dalstroy in Magadan; builds. objects of Gorest "Kolymsnab", "Promzhilstroy", local construction materials department, SMU and communications department, carried out repairs, logging work, and built housing in Magadan.

Number:
1948 - 20 758;
1949 - 15 3787;
1950 - 23 906;
1951 - 28 716;
1952 - 31 489;
1953 - 24 431;
1954 - 20 508.

The Chapaev enrichment plant.

Zaplag
Organized 09/20/49, closed 12/30/56.
The administrative center is the village of Susuman.

Production: work at the gold mines "Komsomolets", "Stakhanovets", "Frolych", "Otporny", "Hidden", "Bolshevik", "Central", "Shirokiy", "Belichan" (formerly "Kuronakh"), named after. " Nadezhda", "Tsentralny" and "Otporny", work at the gold mines named after. Chkalova, "Kontrandya", "Udarnik", "Chelbanya", agricultural work at the Susuman state farm, maintenance of the Susuman repair shop. plant and car depot, builds. and road construction, logging, construction and maintenance of a brick factory in Susuman.

Number:
1951 - 16 585;
1952 - 14 471;
1953 - 9708.

ITL "Promzhilstroy"
Organized between 09/01/51 and 05/20/52, closed after 01/01/54. Reorganized no earlier than 05/20/52 - from LO to ITL;

Production: industrial, housing and road construction, work at a timber mill, brick factory, stone quarry.

Number:
1952 - 31644.

Maglag
Organized no later than 02/01/51, closed 06/13/56.

Production: agricultural work, wood and logging, brick making, maintenance of municipal services, industrial complex, food processing plant, auto repair work, maintenance of the Magadan railway, Baby House. In 1951, in Magadan, s/k worked on more than 200 objects, including the construction of the city party committee, the editorial office of the newspaper "Soviet Kolyma", the House of Pioneers, etc.

Number:
1951 - 13 6042;
1952 - 9401;
1953 - 4756.

Sevlag
Organized 09/20/49, closed 04/16/57.
Administrative center - village. Yagodny (now Yagodnoye).

Production: work at the mines "Burkhala", "Spokoiny", "Sturmovoy", "Tumanny", "Khatynnakh", "Upper At-Uryakh", "Debin", "Upper Debin", "Tangara", "Gorny", "Myakit" .

Number:
1951 - 15 802;
1952 - 11 683;
1953 - 9071;
1954 - 8430.

Maldyak village. Photo by Evgeniy drs_radchenko

Sevvostlag
Organized 04/01/32, closed no earlier than 09/20/49 and no later than 05/20/52.
Administrative center - first, from 04/01/32, village. Srednikan (now Ust-Srednekan), then - the city of Magadan.
The largest and most important camp in Kolyma. Reorganized several times. The ITLs already listed above were also “merged” into it.

Production: servicing the work of the Dalstroy trust: development, search and exploration of gold deposits in the Olsko-Seymchansky region, construction of the Kolyma highway, gold mining in the Kolyma and Indigirka basins; development of several dozen mines and mines - “Sturmovoy”, “Pyatiletka”, “Udarnik”, “Maldyak”, “Chai-Urya”, “Yubileiny”, named after. Timoshenko... Prospecting and exploration work in the Kolyma-Tenkinsky, Kulinsky, Suksukansky, Deras-Yuneginsky and Verkhne-Orotukansky tin-bearing districts (including associated mining at the primary deposits "Butugychag", "Dagger", "Pasmurny" and at alluvial deposits - “Butugychag” and “Taiga”). You can continue ad infinitum. All of Kolyma and Chukotka were under the control of Sevvostlag.
In addition - the construction and maintenance of a number of thermal power plants (Arkagalinsky, Magadan, Pevek, Iultinskaya, Tenkinskaya, Khandygskaya, etc.), the construction of a hydroelectric power station on Jack London Lake, and a highway to Tenka. narrow gauge railway Magadan-Palatka, work at VNII-1 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, construction of airfields, shipbuilding and ship repair plants in Kolyma and the bay. Nagaev, housing and communal services in Magadan...

Number:
1932 - 11 100;
1934 - 29 659;
1938 - 90 741;
1939 - 138170;
1940 - 190 309;
1945 - 87 3358;
1948 - 106 893;
1950 - 131 773;
1951 - 157 001;
1952 -170 557.

Shadowlag
Organized 09/20/49, closed 06/29/56. Administrative center - village. Ust-Omchug.

Production: work at the Gvardeets mines, named after. Gastello, im. Voroshilov, geological survey and geological exploration work (including underground) of the Armansky, Butugychagsky, Khenikandzhinsky, Kandychansky, Urchansky and Porogistoye deposits, geological exploration work at the Inskoye and Maralinskoye deposits, gold mining at the Lesnoy and Zolotoy mines, work at the mine and processing plant factory "Urchan", mining work at the mines "Duskanya", "Pioneer", named after. Budyonny, "Vetrenny", "Bodriy", named after. Timoshenko, Khenikandzha mine, logging.

Number:
1951 - 17990;
1952 - 15517;
1953 - 8863.

Yuzlag
Organized 09/20/49, closed between 01/01/54 and 03/17/55. Reorganized: between 05/22/51 and 05/20/52 - from LO to ITL3. Administrative center - village. Nizhny Seymchan.

Production: work at the mine. 3rd Five-Year Plan, tin mining at the Verkhne-Seymchansky mine, expansion of the processing facility at the Dneprovsky mine, gold mining at the Oroek mine, exploration at the deposits named after. Lazo, im. Chapaev, named after 3rd Five-Year Plan, "Suksukan", "Dneprovskoye", including underground mining, construction of the Dnieper Central Power Plant, Dneprovsky-Kheta power line, highways from the 286th km of the Kolyma highway to the Dneprovsky plant, tin mining at the "Suksukan" mine, logging , haymaking, vehicle and tractor fleet maintenance.

Number:
1951 - 5238;
1953 - 2247.

Omsukchanlag
Organized no later than 02/01/51, closed 06/13/56. Reorganized between 05/22/51 and 05/20/52 - from LO to ITL. The administrative center is Omsukchan village.

Production: work at the Verkhniy Seymchan, Khataren, Galimy mines, construction of the Gerba-Omsukchan, Pestraya Dresva-Omsukchan highways, Omsukchan-Ostantsovy power lines, processing plants No. 7, 14, 14-bis, tin mining and construction of a processing plant ki at the Ostantsovy mine, power transmission line Galimyy-Ostantsovy, work in a coal mine.

Number:
1951 - 8181;
1953 - 4571.

Prepared by Anatoly Smirnov.
Based on materials from the Munich Institute for the Study of History and Culture of the USSR,
orders and instructions of the OGPU, NKVD, Ministry of Internal Affairs, research by S. Sigachev,
State materials archive of the Russian Federation, State Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Information Center of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Magadan Region.