The village of Kadykchan, Magadan. Kadykchan is a forgotten ghost town that was once bustling with life! Finval submarine base
YELTSIN 90s
The final and fatal blow was dealt with particular sadistic cruelty. Someone will object that it was such a time, the dashing nineties. The culprits cannot be found, nor the intent. There is intent. Eat! Why are only Kolyma and Chukotka in ruins? Why, eighty kilometers from Kadykchan, having passed the border with Yakutia, you won’t see anything like this? After all, it’s the same Kolyma, the same climate, the same country? This means we are witnesses to a clearly planned action carried out exclusively on a territorial basis. And this was not in “ancient times”; we are living witnesses to a catastrophe about which everyone is silent. The truth is kept silent at all levels, which indicates a highly organized genocide.
Thousands of miners' families were thrown out of life. Erased from history. Forgotten as agents behind enemy lines without documents. The country betrayed a people loyal to the country, as it has done many times before. How she betrayed the sailors of the Kursk nuclear submarine, how she betrayed her own in the near abroad, how she betrayed her own in Krymsk, and I won’t list everything that is already quite well known.
People were doomed to starvation. Their salaries were “forgiven” not for months... but for years! People fled to the mainland as best they could, saving their children, getting into debt, borrowing money from relatives to pay for the move. Money went out of circulation. Gold became the means of payment. It's that damn gold again. A bottle of vodka cost three grams of sand, and a two-room apartment cost nine! But even for three bottles of vodka no one bought an apartment, the houses are empty, go to any one and live, it has everything you need for life, including furniture and household appliances. People simply did not have the means to take out what they had acquired over many years.
The Ingush organized criminal group from Susuman immediately became active. They began to buy gold for next to nothing, like from African savages during the colonial period. First they paid with stewed meat, bread, ammunition, and other essentials. In order to survive, people began to go to the taiga for gold, just as before for mushrooms and berries. Do you remember how many worthless tires used to be lying along the sides of the Kolyma highway? If they were stacked into a pyramid, the top would scratch the bellies of passing planes. Can you find one now? No. All tires became worth their weight in gold, because prospectors began to use them as fuel to thaw permafrost. They will burn several cylinders, and quickly wash the soil before the water freezes in order to earn money for a can of stew. But this was not enough for the Ingush! People do not want to be slaves, they began to demand decent payment for their hard labor, life-threatening work. A proven method was used - to get people hooked on drugs. And our Caucasian brothers began to pay in heroin. The method worked instantly. When people realized what a trap they were in, dozens of gold miners were already working day and night not for food for their wives and children, but for the next check of gold. Realizing the horror of the situation, people gathered and shook themselves. They remembered that they were Russian men, not slaves. And they decided to fight back against the Ingush slave owners. When none of the miners handed over the mined gold to the Caucasians, they began to threaten with violence. Several jeeps with abreks arrived, and at the entrance to the village at the Nizhny store they were already met by a dozen Russians with carbines and guns. There was a shootout, no one was seriously injured, several participants had minor scratches. But the battle was won. The sons of the mountains jumped into their leaky SUVs and very briskly went back to their homes.
And you say Sagra.... But now an even more cruel period has come, there is no one to hand over the gold to! Don’t bring it to the state that betrayed them and left them to be torn to pieces! If you bring it, you will immediately find yourself in a detention center and go to trample the zone for illegal trafficking in precious metals. and then a miracle happened!
The government now had the means to move. And at the beginning of the 2000s, the last residents of Kadykchan left for the mainland under the resettlement program. Finally, the opportunity to find a new homeland arose. Almost everyone who had nowhere to go was transported to the city of Neryungri in the south of Yakutia. They gave us housing, although it was mostly squalid, in old wooden houses, but it was free. They gave me some "lifting" allowances for settling in, and got me a job at a local coal mine. Kadykchan was excluded from the cadastre of Russian settlements, the postal code 686350 remained an empty cell in the catalogs. The supply of water and electricity was stopped, the last boiler house was stopped.
KADIKCHAN IN A COMA
At the last stage of the murder, people moved from all over the house into one entrance. So as not to heat empty areas. They switched PBX cables and compiled telephone directories themselves, which became shorter and shorter every month.
Remember TV presenter Yana Chernukha? So these films were shot by her dad, a correspondent for the Susuman newspaper "Miner of the North". He was a very talented photographer, it should be noted.
The sports ground of the school, whose graduates have now scattered all over the world. USA, Italy, Spain, Canada, Israel, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc.
Everyone defended themselves from the looters as best they could.
The last Kadykchan resident, the hermit Yura Apollonsky, lived in this kennel until the mid-2000s. My school friend, with whom many miracles were done in his time. Now, as far as I know, he lives in Magadan.
I lined the kennel with snow blocks like an Igloo. He sawed metal in the ruins of the “Ten” mine, and once a week, a car came and took away what he sawed in exchange for food. Thus ended the history of the village. but not the story of Kadykchan. Kadykchan is alive as long as the last Kadykchan is alive. In the future there will be an article about New Kadykchan, which now exists virtually, but once a year, for a week, it is reincarnated in the form of a tent town on the shore of a lake in the Dzerzhinsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region. There is hope that we will still be able to make sure that the truth comes to light. So that everyone knows what kind of government we have. So that no one has any illusions that without government rule we will turn into an unorganized crowd. The state as an institution of law appeared in the form of a machine of coercion and submission. Its positive role in the history of society is questionable. A developed state is able to regulate itself more effectively than written laws, police and lawyers. I will also write about this if I am alive.
Kadykchan, ghost town (below - 71 photos of the city).
SOMEONE'S HOMETOWN...
Why is that? People didn’t want to leave him like that! Why so??? 
Address: Russia, Magadan region, Susumansky urban district, urban settlement Kadykchan.
The most famous abandoned village in the Magadan region. Kadykchan (translated from the Evenk language - Kadagchan- “small gorge, gorge”) is an urban-type settlement in the Susumansky district of the Magadan region, 65 km northwest of the city of Susuman in the Ayan-Yuryakh river basin (a tributary of the Kolyma). The population according to the 2002 census is 875 inhabitants, according to unofficial estimates for 2006 - 791 people. According to data for January 1986 - 10,270 people.
The village was once the location of one of the Kolyma Gulag camps.
The Russians built the village after geologist Vronsky found coal of the highest quality there in 1943 at a depth of 400 meters. As a result, the Arkagalinskaya CHPP operated on Kadykchan coal and supplied electricity to 2/3 of the Magadan region.
The nearly 6,000-strong population of Kadykchan began to rapidly melt away after a mine explosion in 1996, when it was decided to close the village. A few years later, the only local boiler house defrosted, after which it became impossible to live in Kadykchan. By this time, there were about 400 people living in Kadykchan who refused to leave, and there had been no infrastructure for several years.
The awarding of the status of unpromising to the village of Kadykchan and the resettlement of its residents was announced on the basis of the law of the Magadan region No. 32403 of April 4, 2003.
According to former Kadykchan resident V.S. Poletaev, “Kadykchan residents were not evacuated in 10 days, but they left on their own. Those who were entitled to housing after the liquidation of the mine and open-pit mine waited. Those who had no chance left on their own to avoid freezing. Secondly, Kadykchan was closed not because it was unfrozen, but on orders from above, as an unprofitable village.”
Nowadays it is an abandoned mining “ghost town”. There are books and furniture in houses, cars in garages, children's potties in toilets. On the square near the cinema there is a bust of V.I., which was finally shot by residents. Lenina.2757
From Ghazaryan Anatoly:
I open this topic with pain in my heart.
There is something terrible in all this. Heartbreaking.
It was like seeing the Apocalypse.
At one time I saw the Dead City - Spitak.
Empty destroyed houses, with broken glass, with gaping black holes in the windows.
Ruin.
Tuff stones crumbling into dust.
Scattered things on the streets.
Coffins, coffins...
But even in this dead city there was life.
Only at night, when the rescue work stopped, sitting by the fire and looking at the stars, did I feel this world was different. The souls that had gone to heaven seemed to be hovering around these ruins like ghosts.
Here.......
Everything here is already dead and even these souls are not there.
Only the wind is blowing....
And all this after the collapse of the USSR.
Dobronravov opened the topic: """""Gaidar was reminded of starvation deaths""""
And the conversation turned to the dying villages and towns of Russia, about cities that no longer exist.
I looked at the materials.
What I saw shocked me.
I felt death.
She is there. In these cities. In these dead cities of Russia, in villages where they once worked, sang, played weddings, gave birth to children.
No, God did not create all this. People.
Soulless, ruthless.
Perestroika gave birth to a monster. And this monster lay like a two-headed eagle on Russia.
This is not the same eagle that was in Russia. No... it's fresh, smelling like a leafy fake of that one.
Thanks to Anatoly for the photos...
IN DETAILS
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Here's another thing that shocked me. And photos too!
<Поселок с населением в 6 тыс. человек стремительно угасал после взрыва на местной шахте в 1996 году>. Kadykchan has been completely uninhabited for several years now; there are no inhabitants left [source?]
Kadykchan... Translated from the Even language - Death Valley. Such a terrible name because in this valley there are underground lakes that sometimes break through to the surface, in an unexpected place, at an unexpected hour! The indigenous Kolyma residents feared this place as if it were enchanted. And the Russians built a village there after the geologist Vronsky found coal of the highest quality there in 1943. Coal began to be mined from underground from 400 meters away. The Arkagalinskaya CHPP operated on Kadykchansky coal and supplied electricity to 2/3 of the Magadan region! A beautiful urban village with a population of 10,270 people (as of January 1986).
Photos and descriptions taken from http://kadykchan.narod.ru/ and http://kadykchan.narod.ru/
The recording was made under the impression of http://live-report.livejournal.com/983517.html 
The city is located 730 km from Magadan 
Photos were taken in the city in the last century 
Photos of the city of Kadykchan of the 21st century.
Entrance to the city 
Microdistrict. 
Abandoned house 
Graffiti 
Restaurant "Polyarnik" 
In the most beautiful and richest place! He was... Now he's gone... He's dying. Time destroys five-story buildings with rain and winds, the wind blows through empty apartments, streets and squares are overgrown with grass... Residents live on what they can get from hunting and fishing, and even selling scrap metal.
And here are excerpts from an article by Yu. Solovyova for bbcrussian.com, Moscow: “The multi-story school was burned down. Huge cracks are crawling through the building of the sports complex with a swimming pool and ice arena. The roof of the former club has completely collapsed, as if after a bombing. There are broken windows of houses and mountains everywhere construction waste. The ghost village was supposed to be resettled before the start of winter, but they did not have time to do this. Several hundred people remained here to spend the winter."
“The almost 6 thousand population of Kadykchan began to rapidly melt after an explosion at the mine in 1996, when it was decided to close the village. There has been no heat here since last January - due to the accident, the local boiler room froze forever. The remaining residents are heated using potbelly stoves. Sewerage has not been working for a long time, and they have to go outside to the toilet. A handful of the last of the Kadykchan residents are determined to dig in here until they are provided with better conditions for resettlement."
The head of the Susuman administration, Alexander Talanov, has been building housing and infrastructure in Kolyma for many years. Now his task is to destroy all this with his own hands and systematically. He compares the stubborn reluctance of Kadykchan residents to move to “the syndrome of prisoners who have served many years and are afraid to be released.” “If you don’t want to move, give up everything and live here like Robinson Crusoe,” he gets irritated. “If production is closed, social services and communal services cannot be city-forming.” Talanov has come to terms with the fact that he is blamed for all the troubles, but claims must be made to Moscow: “Not a single government, not a single president has ever paid enough attention to the far north,” says Belichenko. “The inhabitants of the far north have been made extreme.”
“Viktor Plesnyak has been turning the steering wheel along the highway for 30 years. Throughout the 650 km of the road to Susuman, he keeps pointing his finger out the window - here was the village of Nexikan, here Atka, there Strelka. All that remains from them are the ruins of technical buildings and whitewashed stone houses without windows, well built by prisoners for the authorities. Wooden barracks for the common people were burned down long ago. On the walls there are peeling panels with cheerful slogans. One from afar reads like<Наш труп - Родине>, summing up the feat of several generations of Kolyma residents who gave their most precious things to this region."
Pripyat is one of the most famous Soviet ghost towns. Pripyat was founded in 1970, but received city status only in 1979. After the largest Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Europe was built in Pripyat, the city received the name City of Nuclear Scientists. Unfortunately, Pripyat continued to exist only 16 years after receiving the status of a city, since in 1986 a terrible tragedy occurred, which the whole world is still talking about and which turned Pripyat, which was living a full life, into a ghost town. This terrible tragedy was the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which caused an unfavorable radiation situation in the city and the residents were urgently evacuated; accordingly, the inhabitants of Pripyat left almost all their belongings in the city. Now the level of radiation contamination in the city has been significantly reduced, but it is still impossible to live in it. However, Pripyat has become one of the most popular places for stalker tourists who travel through it, exploring the ghost town. 
KADIKCHAN
Kadykchan is one of the most famous abandoned villages in the Magadan region. The village was once the location of one of the Kolyma Gulags. Kadykchan is an urban-type settlement located in the Susumansky district of the Magadan region. It arose during the Great Patriotic War as a settlement for coal mining. The village and mine were built by prisoners. In 1996, a tragedy occurred - an explosion at the mine, which killed six people. Immediately after this, Kadykchan was closed, people were evicted, they were paid compensation for new housing, all houses were disconnected from heating and electricity. Until 2010, there were two residential streets in the village, but in 2010 almost no one remained. Interestingly, one elderly man with two dogs now lives in Kadykchan. Until now, Kadykchan looks like a ghost, as people left books, clothes, children's toys in their houses, and their cars in garages.
OLD LIPS
Like Kadykchan, Old Gubakha is a former coal miners’ village. It was located in the Perm region, subordinate to the city of Gubakha. In 1721, the Kizelovskoye coal deposit was discovered in the Solikamsk district of the Siberian province, and in 1778 the Gubakhinsky mines were founded, around which workers settled. In 1941, Old Gubakha was transformed into a town of workers from the villages of Nizhnyaya and Verkhnyaya Gubakha. Unlike other ghost towns where accidents occurred, Old Gubakha was abandoned by residents due to the fact that coal deposits were depleted - people quickly began to leave the city in search of work. However, until the very end, several residents remained in the city, who lived here for several more years. At the moment, the village is almost completely absorbed by nature.
IULTIN
The urban-type settlement of Iultin is located in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. It was the center of tin mining in Chukotka, one of the largest polymetallic deposits. Iultin is located in the spurs of the Ekvyvatapsky ridge and is connected by road to the port of Egvekinot. The area where the village is located is characterized by severe weather conditions, which led to difficulties with transportation. Until 1992, planned tin mining was unprofitable, and already in 1994, due to market conditions, the Iultinsky GOK stopped production, and the mineral deposits were mothballed. In the same year, the village began to settle, and in 1995 it finally ended its existence, when the city’s population of thousands began to leave very quickly, taking with them only the most necessary things. Already in 2000 he completely died.
MOLOGA
The city of Mologa is located at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga. The city itself is very old, it was built back in the 12th century. Later, Mologa became famous for its excellent butter and milk, since during the spring flood the nutritious silt remained in the meadows, after which it was consumed by cows. In September 1935, the government decided to begin construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex. This implied the flooding of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land along with the settlements located on it. These are 700 villages and the city of Mologa. The liquidation began when life in the city was flourishing in full force. In Mologa there were about six cathedrals and churches, plants, factories and about nine educational institutions. In April 1941, the waters of nearby rivers began to overflow their banks and flood the area, as the last opening of the dam was blocked. The city began to be destroyed - buildings, cathedrals, factories. An urgent evacuation of residents began; about 300 people categorically refused to leave. Many were taken away by force. After this, mass suicides began to occur among former residents of Mologa, the survivors were urgently taken to another part of the country, and the city of Mologa was forgotten by everyone, turning into a ghost town with a terrible history.
CHAGAN
Chagan is an urban-type settlement in the East Kazakhstan region of Kazakhstan, which is located 74 kilometers from the city of Semipalatinsk on the banks of the Irtysh River. Once upon a time, about 11 thousand inhabitants lived in the town of Chagan; it was landscaped for a full life: there were kindergartens, a secondary school, an Officers' House, a stadium, shops and a hotel. From 1958 to 1962, the most active tests took place at the training ground, and in 1995, all military units were withdrawn, the town was transferred to the Republic of Kazakhstan, after which the village was plundered. Chagan received the status of a ghost town, which is still the site of research trips of stalkers and invasions of marauders.
NEFTEGORSK
Neftegorsk is an urban-type settlement in the Okha district of the Sakhalin region, which was originally conceived as a rotation camp for oil workers. Neftegorsk was a comfortable village, where there was a school and about four kindergartens. Mostly oil workers and their families lived in the village. On May 28, 1995, when graduates of the Neftegorsk school were graduating, a terrible tragedy struck the village - an earthquake with a magnitude of about 7.6 occurred. The devastating consequences of the natural disaster were enormous: 2,040 people died from the rubble of buildings out of a total population of 3,197. After this tragedy, the village of Neftegorsk was almost completely destroyed, and the authorities decided not to restore it, but to resettle the surviving residents to other settlements in the Sakhalin region. To this day, the ruins of the ghost town of Neftegorsk are sometimes plundered by looters.
Continuation of the list of abandoned settlements and objects on the FORUM,
where you can post your interesting material yourself, or discuss any topic in the appropriate section.a blog with information provided to us by a site visitor in the guest book with a nickname kvastravel.
- Ivan Kupala. Kostroma.
Nizhneyansk is a village in the Ust-Yansky ulus, the center of the village administration of the same name. Located beyond the Arctic Circle, in the river delta. Yany, 581 km north of the ulus center of the village of Deputatsky. Population – 2.5 thousand people. (01/01/1999). According to the 1989 census, the population was 3.0 thousand people. It emerged during the war years as a river port. Classified as a workers' settlement in 1958. Served as a transport center. The village's facilities include a river port, ship repair shops, a cultural center, a secondary school, healthcare, trade and consumer services institutions.
Nizhneyansk today is a ready-made scenery for a horror film. The wildest fantasies of a director who tried to paint an abandoned city are unlikely to be able to compete with what happens to this city in reality. Some old high and completely endless barbed wire fence. Gray blocks of two-story houses with black eye sockets of broken windows stretched into the depths of the city, forming gloomy streets. Fallen lampposts, downed electrical wires, mountains of snow-covered rubbish, abandoned equipment.
The construction of the railway along the Arctic Circle Salekhard - Igarka, also known as the "dead road", can be considered one of the most ambitious projects of the Gulag. On April 22, 1947, the Council of Ministers, in Secret Resolution No. 1255-331-ss, decided to begin the construction of a large seaport in the Gulf of Ob in the area of Cape Kamenny and a railway from the station. Chum (south of Vorkuta) to the port. The need to build the railway was caused by two reasons: economic - the development of northern territories rich in minerals and military-strategic - the protection of the Arctic coast. The idea of construction belongs to Stalin himself: “We must take on the North, Siberia is not covered by anything from the North, and the political situation is very dangerous.” Construction was entrusted to the Main Directorate of Camp Railway Construction (GULZhDS), which was part of the Gulag system. The main labor force was prisoners and exiles. Civil servants made up a small number and occupied mainly leadership positions.
By the end of 1948, the Chum - Labytnangi branch (a village at the mouth of the Ob) with a length of 196 km was built. By this time, it became clear that in the area of Cape Kamenny, the construction of a seaport was impossible due to hydrogeological features. However, the idea of creating a polar port on the Northern Sea Route was not abandoned. It was proposed to move the port to the Igarka area (north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory), which required extending the Chum - Labytnangi line to the east. Two construction departments were created: No. 501 with a center in Salekhard and No. 503 in Igarka (the departments had numbers because the construction was secret). The construction of the railway was carried out towards each other.
According to archival sources, the approximate number of prisoners along the entire Salekhard-Igarka highway ranged from 80 to 100 thousand. Despite the harsh natural conditions: frosts below 50 degrees, swamps, off-road conditions, midges, the road was built at a rapid pace. By the beginning of 1953, about 800 km of the planned 1,482 km had been built. On the western section, the Chum-Salekhard branch was completely built. A labor movement was opened from Salekhard to Nadym. In the central section - from the Bolshaya Hetta River to the Pur River - 150 km of roadbed were laid. On the eastern section - from Ermakovo to Yanov Stan on the Turukhan River - a labor movement was opened. There was an ice ferry crossing on the Ob and Yenisei rivers. The central section of the construction site remained unfinished - between Pur and Taz. In 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, the government decided to mothball the construction site and its subsequent liquidation.
Unlike other “great construction projects of communism,” the Northern Railway turned out to be a dead road. Several billion rubles were spent on construction. In 1953 alone, 78 million rubles were spent on its liquidation. (at prices of that time). But a huge amount of material assets could not be removed (due to the distance from populated areas and lack of transport). Much of the equipment, furniture, and clothing was destroyed before the eyes of the residents of the railway villages. What remained were abandoned locomotives, empty barracks, kilometers of barbed wire and thousands of dead construction prisoners, the cost of their lives beyond any accounting.
Now the railway The Salekhard-Igarka highway is similar to the zone from A. Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”: permafrost distorted rails, raised bridges, washed away embankments, destroyed barracks, and overturned steam locomotives. The abandoned mining town of Humberstone in northern Chile, an hour’s drive from the prosperous porto-Franco Iquique, is recognized valuable. In 2005, UNESCO added this ghost town to the list of World Heritage Sites, giving the eerie place the status of an open-air museum.
It all started with the fact that humanity was afraid of starvation and called on scientists to solve the issue of soil fertility. In the first half of the 19th century, it became clear that plants obtain the nitrogen they need for their growth not from the air, but from the soil, and it must somehow be returned to the fields and gardens. The solution to the problem was saltpeter, from which gunpowder was made for centuries. But it was expensive until, in 1830, abundant saltpeter mines were discovered on the border of Chile and Peru. Meter-thick layers of the famous Chilean sodium nitrate matured for centuries in the Atacama Desert, where it never rains.
The nitrate boom of the century before last was akin to a gold rush. It was believed that the reserves of nitrate in Chile exceeded 90 million tons and the world would have enough of this goodness almost forever. In 1872, James Thomas Humberstone created a company that settled for a long time 48 kilometers from the ocean. The town grew like cereal on fertilizers. Thousands of miners from Peru, Chile and Bolivia came here in search of work, forming a special cultural oasis, struggling not so much for wealth, but for life in general in this waterless area. While the saltpeter kings built themselves palaces on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and indulged in all sorts of excesses. It had its own language, its own customs and laws, there was so much money here that after a work shift the miners could afford to go not only to the tavern, but also to the theater. Everything in the theater has been perfectly preserved - the hall, the stage, and the curtain.
The town of Humberstone reached its heyday in 1930-40. While the old economic model was mired in the Great Depression and nitrogen fertilizers began to be produced through ammonia synthesis, Humberstone survived modernization and avoided bankruptcy. But the depletion of sodium nitrate reserves did not lead to good things, and in 1958 the Chileans curtailed its production at this deposit. Overnight, 3 thousand miners were left without work. Humberstone is deserted. The Kola Peninsula is a cape in the extreme North-West of the European part of the former USSR, part of the Murmansk region of the Russian Federation. In the North it is washed by the waters of the Barents Sea, and in the South and East by the waters of the White Sea. Because of this, its strategic position prevails, which was appreciated by the Russian army, and hundreds of military bases were placed on the peninsula. But due to sharp budget cuts in the Russian army in the 1990s, many of the bases were abandoned. And along with them, small towns that were built around military installations. Now dozens of such cities remain on the Kola Peninsula, unvisited and uninhabited.
The western border of the Kola Peninsula is a meridional depression stretching from the Kola Bay along the valley of the Kola River, Lake Imandra and the Niva River to Kandalaksha Bay. The length from North to South is about 300 km. From West to East it is about 400 km. The area is about 100,000 square km. The northern shore is high and steep, the southern shore is low and flat.
The climate of the Kola Peninsula, despite its northern location, is relatively mild due to the softening influence of the warm Atlantic Current. The average temperature in January is from -5° (on the northern shore) to -11° (in the central part of the peninsula), in July - from +8° to +14°, respectively. On the northern coast of the Kola Peninsula is the ice-free port of Murmansk.
The Kola Peninsula abounds in rivers, lakes and swamps. The rivers are turbulent, rapids, and have huge reserves of hydropower. The largest of them are: Ponoy, Varzuga, Umba (White Sea basin), Teriberka, Voronya, Iokanga (Barents Sea basin). The most significant lakes are: Imandra, Umbozero, Lovozoro, Kolvitskoye, etc. The northern part of the peninsula is occupied by tundra and forest-tundra, the southern by taiga forests of pine, spruce, and birch. In the depths there are huge reserves of apatite-nepheline and nickel ores, building materials and other minerals. On the development and use of natural resources of the Kola Peninsula in 1929-1934. A lot of work has been done under the leadership of S. M. Kirov. The seas washing the Kola Peninsula are rich in fish.
- My address is Gremikha. Poems by Yu. A. Diamentov.
- City number. Performed by Yu. A. Diamentov
For most of the town's history, while the coal industry was active, the population was over 2,000 residents. About 500-600 more people lived in the suburbs, in close proximity to Centralia.
In May 1962, the Centralia City Council hired five volunteer firefighters to clean up the city's garbage dump, located in an abandoned open pit near the Odd Fellows Cemetery. This was done before Memorial Day, as in previous years, but previously the city's landfills were located in other locations. The firefighters, as they had done in the past, wanted to set the trash piles on fire, let them burn for a while, and then put the fire out. At least that's what they thought.
Due to the fire not being completely extinguished by firefighters, deeper deposits of debris began to smolder and the fire eventually spread through an opening in the mine to other abandoned coal mines near Centralia. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to rage throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1979, local residents finally learned the true extent of the problem when a gas station owner inserted a stick into one of the underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he took out the stick, it seemed very hot. Imagine his shock when he discovered that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was about 172 degrees Fahrenheit (77.8 °C)! Statewide attention to the fire began to mount, culminating in 1981 when 12-year-old Todd Domboski fell into a four-foot-wide, 150-foot (45-meter) deep earthen well that suddenly opened up beneath his feet. The boy was saved only because his older brother pulled him out of the mouth of the hole before he met certain death. The incident quickly brought national attention to Centralia as the investigative team (including a state representative, a senator, and a mine safety chief) coincidentally happened to be walking in Domboski's neighborhood at the exact moment of the near-fatal incident.
In 1984, Congress appropriated more than $42 million to prepare and organize the relocation of citizens. Most residents accepted this offer and moved to the neighboring communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. Several families decided to stay, despite warnings from government officials.
In 1992, the State of Pennsylvania required a permit to expropriate all of the city's private property, citing the buildings' unfitness for use. The residents' subsequent attempt to obtain some kind of solution to the problem through the courts failed. In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service eliminated the town's zip code, 17927.
The city of Centralia served as a prototype for the creation of the city in the film Silent Hill. In the early 60s, the bay was used as a reserve maneuverable basin area, and sometimes boats entered the bay to anchor.
A new era in the history of Bechevinskaya Bay was the development of its shores for the construction of a submarine base. The “Godfather” of the new garrison was the then Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Sergei Georgievich Gorshkov. He personally visited Bechevinsky Bay and even lived there for some time on the edge of the coastal cliff in a wooden barn, which survived almost until the end of the garrison’s existence.
In the depths of the bay, in a valley between the hills, the arriving builders built several panel houses for themselves, which did not last long. But in a short time, the builders erected the first three residential buildings. The numbering of houses henceforth corresponded to the order of their construction. The first four-story building housed a dormitory and the name “wonderful” was firmly attached to it. The second was intended for the families of officers and was three-story. A third four-story residential building was erected at a distance, next to the barn in which Gorshkov once lived. A grocery store was added to the right side of the building. Other priority infrastructure facilities at the base point were also built: headquarters, barracks, galley, garage, boiler room, warehouses, diesel substation. There was also a fuel depot not far from the original location of the floating piers. Subsequently, the berth front was rebuilt in a new location, closer to the exit from the bay. Two anti-aircraft batteries were provided from wartime single-barrel naval anti-aircraft guns. One was located near the coastal part where nuclear warheads for torpedoes were stored, and the other was located next to the headquarters. They periodically conducted training firing on the opposite bank, and more often than not, in cloudy weather, anti-aircraft gunner sailors sat nearby when ready “once.” Although the uselessness of such an event was obvious - on the opposite shore of the bay, just above the exit, there was the village of Shipunsky, where there were quite modern anti-aircraft missile systems.
For reasons of secrecy, it was not allowed to use the geographical name of the bay in documents, and for this purpose a new, “open” name was invented - Finval. More often, the place in official correspondence was named by the post office number - Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky-54. Initially, a submarine division of five units of Project 641, formed from the EON submarines that crossed the Northern Sea Route from the Northern Fleet, was based in Bechevinskaya Bay - Finval. But in August 1971, the 182nd brigade of diesel submarines from Krasheninnikov Bay was transferred to Bechevinskaya Bay, after which the brigade began to be called “separate”. At that time, the brigade was commanded by Captain 1st Rank Valentin Ivanovich Betz. After reorganization, the brigade consisted of 12 submarines: “B-8”, “B-15”, “B-28”, “B-33”, “B-39”, “B-50”, “B- 112", "B-135", "B-397", "B-855" of project 641, "S-73" of project 640 and "S-310" of project 690. To support the basing of submarines there was a floating base "Kamchatsky Komsomolets" . Initially, until the completion of the construction of residential buildings, part of the brigade personnel was stationed at the floating barracks. There was no land communication with the “mainland”. About once a week, “transport” came from the “city” (as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was called) - the transport and passenger ship “Avacha”, converted from a sea tug. Sometimes, when “Avacha” was under repair, a similar “Olonka” came to the village. After unloading at night, “Avacha” went back in the morning, and in the morning a line formed at the grocery store. All the products brought were sorted out in literally a few hours, and the rest of the time the store’s assortment was dominated by bread from the local bakery and everyone’s tired of canned goods. Sometimes a helicopter would fly in from the city for an urgent call. He also brought high authorities to the garrison.
Soon other houses in the village were built: a fourth house was built above the third house, and a fifth house was built at a distance, opposite the helipad. Above the fourth house stood the sixth, to the right end of which a post office and a store were attached. There was also a club with an annex for an orchestra, but it burned down around 1987. Initially, the village had an eight-year school, and the kindergarten was located in the first house.
After the construction of the new berth front, the boats were transferred there, and the old oil storage facility was abandoned. The remaining piers sank and this place was popularly called the “top pier.” Some deciphered it as a “fuel pier”, others - as a “flooded pier”, whoever liked what they liked best. The composition of the brigade also changed. The S-310 was transferred to the Black Sea Fleet, the S-73 was decommissioned and sunk in Peter Ilyichev Bay, the Kamchatsky Komsomolets floating base was relocated to Zavoiko. After an average repair, a rather old one arrived, converted from the North Fleet missile carrier “BS-167” of project 629r, and long before it, “B-101” of project 641 was relocated to Bechevinka from Ulysses Bay.
A new stage in the construction of the garrison began with the beginning of the re-equipment of the brigade with Project 877 submarines, which were commonly called “Varshavyankas”, or simply “Warsaws”. The first to arrive at the garrison was “B-260” under the command of Cap. 2nd rank Pobozhy A.A. The appearance of the new boat was so unusual that immediately after the boat was moored, a crowd of curious children gathered on the pier, looking in surprise at the never-before-seen “iron.”
For the newly arrived crews, a seventh multi-story building was laid out and soon built. The eight-year school was transformed into a ten-year high school and in 1985 moved to a new building with large classrooms, spacious recreation areas and a huge gym. The kindergarten was moved to the former one-story school building. Three years after the seventh house, a similar eighth house was built.
By 1989, all boats of the 641 project were transferred to other formations. What remained of the old composition was the long-stalled relay submarine “BS-167”, the training equipment and the air defense system, converted from Project 613 boats. At different times, the brigade included boats of project 877: “B-187”, “B-226”, “B-260”, “B-248”, “B-394”, “B-404”, “B- 405", "B-446", "B-464", "B-494"
The end of the garrison came during the period of so-called “reforms” in 1996. Planned for reduction, the remote garrison was faced with one very unpleasant news. To please, first of all, the personal interests of one high official, it was necessary to transport all the property of the base to a new location as soon as possible. Tank landing ships were allocated for military equipment. People “at the top” cared little about how and how the families’ belongings and personal belongings would be transported. The promised containers were not allocated; furniture, boxes and suitcases had to be transported directly in heaps on the Avachi deck. It was impossible to stay there - all heating and electricity were turned off. The boat brigade was relocated to Zavoiko, and after another 6 years - to Krasheninnikov Bay, from where, in fact, it came to Bechevinka.
None of the businessmen needed the garrison, therefore, in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated June 24, 1998 No. 623 “On the procedure for the release of real estate military property” and the appeal of the Russian Federal Property Fund dated July 12, 2000 No. FI-24-2/5093 from the accounts of the Ministry of Defense Russia, in accordance with the established procedure, the buildings and structures of military camps No. 52 “Bechevinskaya” and No. 61 “Shipunsky” were written off.
After leaving the garrison, the press and media of Kamchatka were rocked by “environmental” scandals related to the supplies abandoned in Bechevinka. All sorts of self-proclaimed “human rights activists,” who grew like mushrooms after rain on the grandees and prizes of overseas democracy, excitedly ranted about the danger to the environment from tons of fuel and lubricants left in Bechevinka, without mentioning that the military did not leave this place of their own free will. The greatest danger was posed by the reserves of highly toxic rocket fuel in the rocket crews' village. The problem with them was solved quite simply: they shot them from a helicopter with machine guns. Although not without consequences for nature. But there was no other way out: there were no funds provided for removal and disposal in the budget.
Now the garrison is a pitiful sight: residential buildings look out at the world through empty window sockets, foxes and bears roam the streets. The only reminder of the submarine fleet that was once based here is the skeleton of the old UTSka, lying on the shallows at the exit of the bay.
- My house is Petr.-Kamchatsky. I. Demarin
- Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. V. Artamonov
According to some other opinions, this village was never inhabited. At one time, it was planned to place a flight squadron here, and construction began for military families, which was simply not completed, as evidenced by photographs with piles sticking out of the ground.
Traveler Mikhail Arkhipov about the village: “On the road from Dudinka to Norilsk you can see the local abandoned ones. These are abandoned nine-story buildings in the village of Alykel, which is located near the Norilsk airport. At one time it was planned to house a flight squadron here, and these houses were built for military families. But times and plans have changed, and the houses built turned out to be unnecessary."
Alykel Airport was built on the site of a military airfield. Subsequently, there were rumors that Nikita Khrushchev was going to fly to Norilsk and the airfield was built specifically for his arrival. This was allegedly evidenced by the pace at which construction proceeded, and by the fact that the runway was special and reinforced. Be that as it may, Khrushchev did not come, but the port was built. They say that even Mount Alykel was razed to build an airstrip.
The correct name of the a/p “Alykel” in the Dolgan language: Alyy kyuel - swampy clearing, literally - clearing (valley) of lakes. This is quite consistent with the landscape of the area on which the airport is built. In 1969, a city with the promising name Zhanatas appeared on the map of Kazakhstan. The ongoing scientific and technological revolution required the necessary acceleration of the pace of development to raise the country's mining industry to a high level. Armed with high-tech equipment, the mining industry developed in incredible time. In order to ensure the normal functioning of mining industry enterprises, it was necessary to build new cities. All the country's forces were directed to the construction of Zhanatas. With the creation of conditions for work, it was necessary to create conditions for rest. Therefore, the city was transformed before our eyes.
In those years when there were the “Five Year Plan”, “Plan” and “Building Communism”, the people were busy only with work, and the current issues of social security did not worry the working people. Because any employee knew that the enterprise where he worked would provide him with a trip to a sanatorium, gifts for families for the holidays, and, finally, a decent pension. The Soviet economic model did not allow enterprises to fail because they were under state control.
Citizens from all over the Union were drawn to Zhanatas, and not only by the high salaries of miners. The state responded with gratitude to the Zhanata people. A hospital, a Palace of Culture, kindergartens and schools, and dormitories for workers and students were built. An entire house-building plant was also built, since the construction of housing and the modernization of factories and factories were required. In a word, the city lived its own life. The developed infrastructure and conditions for normal life made it possible to consider the city developed and modern. At that time, no one could have imagined the inhuman conditions in which they would have to exist in the future.
With the advent of perestroika and the democratization of society, a kind of healers and predictors began to appear more and more often on central television. And then the now famous astrological couple Globa predicted that in the near future such young cities as Magnitogorsk would become unsuitable for existence. A little time has passed, and we have what we have.
After the collapse of the Union, the newcomers “internationalists” were the first to leave. They thought that now everything would be different, and they were not mistaken. Independent Kazakhstan did not suit them. There was only one option left - to go to their historical homeland.
Then the breakdown of industrial chain ties led to the fact that the enterprise for which the city was created could not provide not only the city, but also its employees with either wages or social benefits. This was explained by the lack of cash. Although several years earlier the Karatau production association was a billionaire.
The rest of the persistent part of the Zhanatasians could not believe that such a “colossus”, which provided a great country with phosphorus raw materials, would become unnecessary for the state. But the state was busy with other urgent matters and did not pay enough attention to this industry. The management of the plant had to look for partners through their connections and establish a sales market. However, the money earned, due to the need to convert it, passed through one now famous bank and got stuck in the government. Naturally, this could not but cause indignation among the company's workers. The unpaid wages were blamed on investors who paid off the company’s debts. And it seemed that life was getting better, salaries were being paid on time, but, as one would expect, dubious investors of those years went home, leaving behind a new salary debt.
Then everything happened according to approximately the same pattern, but the people could no longer tolerate the bullying. Putting forward demands, miners went on strikes, organized marches from Zhanatas to Almaty and pickets in front of the government in order to attract attention to themselves. But, as the famous saying goes, “a well-fed man is no friend to the hungry.” Millions of Kazakhstanis watched on television what the situation in Zhanatas had become, and no one, not a single public organization, considered it necessary to stand up for their compatriots. As a result, the situation reached the point where the strikers seized the Taraz-Almaty railway and did not allow locomotives to pass in either direction. Traffic stopped and the railway suffered losses. A decision is made to suppress the strikers, those who have particularly “distinguished themselves” and to punish them.
Now I remember it like a bad dream. Electricity was only supplied for two hours a day, there was no hot or cold water at all, and most importantly, there was no money. Children should study, dress no worse than others and, finally, eat nutritious food. These seemingly basic things, without which life in modern society is unimaginable, were not something the Zhanata people could afford. Not much has changed since then. The city is still in darkness. Entering the city, the first thing that appears before the eye are empty houses, although no, not houses, but entire microdistricts. Thanks to the leadership of the country that we don’t have wars, but looking at Zhanatas, probably only because of his appearance, the desire comes to make some kind of film about the war and the feeling of being somewhere in Chechnya or Yugoslavia. The city turned into a big camp. The disadvantaged residents of the city simply adapted to these conditions, since there was no one to expect help from.
If previously the overwhelming majority of the working population worked for the plant, now this “oasis” is only for those who have worked at the enterprise for a long time and have good connections with management. Some have settled down to the budget trough, while the majority are either not busy with anything or are trading in the markets. There are already two of them in Zhanatas, as well as trays near shops and commercial kiosks. Fortunately, food prices are reasonable.
According to the stories of local residents, the people are no longer the same as before. Decency has faded into the background. All psychologists and political scientists believe that the more difficult the conditions of existence, the more united the team and the state. Now there is another trend, contrary to all the rules. On the contrary, people began to divide: those who have a stable salary look down on those who do not have it at all or trade in the market. As for our fellow citizens who serve in banks, the tax office or the akimat, this is a completely unattainable elite.
It is sad that the once friendly and united city, which people from all over the Union wanted to get into, is now a forgotten settlement with a population that is angry with each other and takes bribes even to hire an employee. The plant, which now has only one mine for the extraction of phosphorus ore, because the rest were stolen and resold, is still an object for pumping out money from investors. Probably no one can change the current state of affairs, since the chance to get out of poverty with dignity has been missed. Of course, it was hard and, probably, it will be like this for a long time, but doing such vandalistic things as periodically stealing telephone cables and power lines for kilometers, as well as achieving something in life through honest work became a big problem.
The garden city has turned into a polluted “dead city”, where only those people who have nowhere to go and have to put up with all the hardships and difficulties that befell them remain to live. Neftegorsk was conceived as a rotation camp for oil workers. In Neftegorsk there were four kindergartens and one ten-year school, which in 1995 prepared to see 26 graduates into adulthood, for whom the last school bell rang on May 25. Many of them gathered to celebrate this event in a local cafe. Cheerful music was playing, despite parental prohibitions, cigarettes were smoking and glasses with not soda were clinking. One couple ran away from the cafe to kiss. These boy and girl did not even suspect what they were fleeing from - a few minutes later the ceiling of the cafe collapsed on the former schoolchildren. Together with 19 graduates, more than two thousand Neftgorsk residents died that night. On May 28, at 1 hour 4 minutes, an earthquake with a magnitude of 10 occurred in Neftegorsk.
1995 was a year of unprecedented seismic activity in the Pacific Ocean. In the winter of 1995, an earthquake in the Japanese city of Kobe killed 5,300 people. Russian seismologists also expected tremors in the Far East, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Nobody expected an earthquake in Neftegorsk, partly because the north of Sakhalin was traditionally considered a zone of less seismic activity than the southern part of the island or the Kuril Islands. And the extensive network of Sakhalin seismic stations, built in Soviet times, had practically collapsed by 1995.
The earthquake was unexpected and terrible. Tremors ranging in magnitude from five to seven were felt in the city of Okha, the villages of Sabo, Moskalvo, Nekrasovka, Ekhabi, Nogliki, Tungor, Vostochny, Kolendo. The most powerful shock occurred in Neftegorsk, which was located 30 kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake. Subsequently they wrote that from helicopters a multi-kilometer crack was visible, so deep that it seemed as if the earth had burst.
Actually, the disaster did not last long - one shock, and the once well-kept houses turned into a shapeless pile. Although, eyewitnesses said that not all the houses collapsed at once, and some townspeople, even half asleep, managed to orient themselves and jump out of the windows, but the falling concrete slabs covered them already on the ground. Most of the Neftegorsk residents died in their own apartments - where respectable citizens should be at one in the morning. For some, death came so unexpectedly that they did not have time to realize what had happened. But the real human tragedy came after the earthquake. Those who survived the shock found themselves buried alive under the ruins, in pitch darkness, immobility, alone with thoughts of the terrible fate of their loved ones, with the awareness of the inevitability of the end. Miraculously, those who survived rushed around the city, or rather, what was left of the city, trying to find their relatives under the rubble. The chaos continued for several hours until rescuers arrived.
By the way, after the earthquake, Russia officially refused the help of foreign rescuers, for which it was criticized both within the country and abroad. Then this step seemed crazy, but in Neftegorsk the rescuers of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry actually saved everyone who COULD be saved. Help came with unprecedented speed - already 17 hours after the earthquake, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Khabarovsk search and rescue services, and the military were working in the city; in total, about 1,500 people and 300 pieces of equipment were involved in the rescue operation. It’s no secret that it was after the tragedy in Neftegorsk that the star of Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Emergency Situations, appeared on the Russian political Olympus. And it was after Neftegorsk that the high class of Russian rescuers was recognized throughout the world, and in almost all cases of major disasters abroad, if the affected countries invited foreign rescuers, they first of all invited the services of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Then, in Neftegorsk, all the living were faced with one task - to save those under the rubble. Save at any cost - children, decrepit old people, men, women, mutilated, crippled, but still alive. For this, rescuers and all those who miraculously survived the earthquake worked for days. For this purpose, dogs were brought in and found more than a dozen people buried alive. For this purpose, hours of silence were arranged, when the equipment fell silent, and a deathly silence reigned in Neftegorsk, in which someone’s knocking, someone’s groan, someone’s breathing could be heard.
There were also looters. One, two, three people, but they were there. They rummaged through the remains of household belongings, looking for some valuables, or rather, what was considered valuable for them only at that time. It's disgusting, but you can still live with it. But among the looters there were also those who cut off fingers from living people buried under slabs. Ring fingers with wedding rings.
Among the dead in Neftegorsk there are those who were caught at the crime scene with severed fingers in their pockets. They, non-humans, were also crushed under the slab. Just not by the will of God and not by the force of the elements.
The tragedy in Neftegorsk also shook up the authorities. It’s scary to say, but after the earthquake in the Kuril Islands, which happened several years before the tragedy in Neftegorsk, and in which, thank God, there were much fewer casualties, there were officials who made fortunes from the allocated subsidies. Neftegorsk residents, those who survived, received housing and financial assistance, and their children, as well as the children of residents of the Okha region, received the opportunity to study at any university in the country for free. I don’t know, maybe the officials’ conscience bothered them this time, or maybe they realized that profiting from such a tragedy is a mortal sin, the worse of which there is nothing. Of course, there were some bureaucratic problems - the state, worried that the remaining Neftegorsk residents would not receive more than they were entitled to, issued Neftegorsk residents certificates for free housing with the condition of living anywhere in Russia, but according to established standards. The norms turned out to be ridiculous - a single person can receive no more than 33 square meters of total area, a family is given 18 per person, i.e., for two people there are 36 square meters of total area. In Russia, the minimum one-room apartment is 40 - 42 square meters. Therefore, the scheme for issuing apartments is the same everywhere: 36 meters are free, for the rest you have to pay extra. Considering that the Neftgorsk residents did not receive apartments overnight, many of them managed to spend monetary compensation. However, those whom I call Neftegorians are already former Neftegorians. They left long ago, some to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, some to the mainland. And the city of Neftegorsk no longer exists. In its place is now a dead field. All that remains of the cute, cozy town of oil workers. Klomino is an abandoned settlement in Poland. It is a partially destroyed military town, abandoned by the Soviet army during the withdrawal of troops from a large military-territorial formation of the armed forces of the USSR in 1992. Since 1993, under the control of the Polish administration, it has no official status as a settlement. It is considered the only ghost town in Poland. Until 1992, more than 6,000 people could simultaneously live on the territory of the military camp.
In the thirties of the 20th century, in a place near present-day Klomino, located on German territory, a tank training ground was created, and military garrisons were built on its northern and southern edges, respectively, Gross-Born (now Borne-Sulinovo) and Westvalenhof. With the outbreak of war, a camp for Polish prisoners of war was established near Westvalenhof. In November 1939, approximately 6,000 Polish military personnel were placed in this camp, as well as 2,300 civilians. On June 1, 1940, “oflag” II D Gross-Born (German: Oflag II D Gross-Born) was created in its place - a camp for captured officers of the allied armies. In 1945, retreating German troops abandoned the camp, evacuating some prisoners of war deep into Germany.
The Wehrmacht was replaced by Soviet troops, who organized a camp here for captured German soldiers. After the war, the training ground and former German garrisons began to be used by the Soviet army to station its troops in Poland. On the site of Westvalenhof, a Soviet military town was built, in which a separate motorized rifle regiment was located as part of a division, the headquarters of which was located in Borne-Sulinovo. During construction, the preserved infrastructure and buildings were used, but most of the buildings (about 50) were dismantled. Barracks, boxes for military equipment, outbuildings, residential buildings and shops, a school and a cinema were built. On Soviet military maps the place was marked as Grudek or Grodek, but among the residents of the town it was also known as Sypnevo, after the name of a nearby Polish village. The training ground and the garrisons surrounding it were classified and therefore were not indicated on Polish maps.
The Soviet garrison existed until 1992, until the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland, after which the place was abandoned, and houses and buildings were partially looted by looters. The Polish authorities of Borne Sulinovo (which received the status of a city in 1993) put the territory of the former military town up for auction for about 2 million zlotys, but Klomino did not attract any interest from investors. Currently, the city is completely abandoned. Kursha-2 was built shortly after the revolution - as a workers' village in the Ryazan region, to develop the huge forest reserves of Central Meshchera. From the already existing branch of the Meshcherskaya highway (Tuma - Golovanovo), a narrow-gauge railway line was stretched there, and soon continued further south - to Lesomashinny and Charus.
The village grew, by the 1930s it already had more than a thousand inhabitants. Seasonal workers from surrounding villages also lived at the cutting sites. Several times a day, old steam locomotives brought trains with logs from the depths of the forests “to the field” - to Tumskaya, where the timber was processed and sent further - to Ryazan and Vladimir.
The summer of 1936 was very hot, thundery and windy. Now no one knows why a fire broke out in the very center of the Meshchera region, in the Charus area, in early August. Driven by a strong southern wind, the fire quickly moved north, turning from a grassroots fire into the most terrible fire - a crown fire.
At first, no one realized the threat. On the night of August 2-3, a train with empty couplings arrived in Cursha-2. The train crew, who knew about the fire, offered to take out at least the women and children - all the men had long been in the forest doing fire protection work. But the dispatcher ordered to proceed to a dead end to load the accumulated logs - so as not to “waste the people’s property.” This work dragged on almost until the flame front approached, and the train arrived at Cursha-2, hot on its heels by a forest fire.
It is difficult to imagine what was going on at that small station in the forest village. The danger became clear to everyone - after all, the village was located in the very center of a huge pine forest. No one tried to throw the logs off the couplings - people were put wherever possible - on the locomotive, on the buffers and couplings, on top of the logs. There was not enough space for everyone; when the train left to the north, to Tuma, hundreds of people followed it with distraught glances.
Precious time was lost. When the train approached the bridge over a small canal three kilometers north of Cursi-2, the wooden bridge was already on fire. First the head of the train caught fire, and then its tail. People tried with all their might to save themselves, to escape from this hell, but there was no way. With severe burns, suffocated by smoke, they fell where their fate overtook them.
The tragedy of August 3, 1936 killed approximately 1,200 people. Of the entire population of Kurshi-2, the settlements in the logging areas, as well as the personnel of the military units sent to fight the fire, a little more than 20 people survived. Some sat out in the pond of the village of Kursha-2, along wells and cesspools, and some miraculously managed to run through the front of the fire from a stopped train, saving themselves on a small treeless hillock.
They ordered to forget the Meshchera tragedy - after all, it was 1936. There is almost nothing in the literature and museum data about the events of this black summer. After the fire, the village was partially restored, but did not last long. After the war, people were evicted from there, the Kursha-Charus railway was dismantled, and only foresters began to live in Kursha-2. Nowadays, there remains only an overgrown clearing with ruins, some of which were probably houses built after the fire of 1936. On the northeastern edge of the clearing, not far from the brick foundation, which apparently was once a locomotive depot, there is a large mass grave . The victims of a now forgotten tragedy are buried here. Mologa is a city at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga. It was located 32 km from Rybinsk. The city was rebuilt at the end of the 12th century. From the 15th to the end of the 19th century, Mologa was a major trading center, with a population of 5,000 people at the beginning of the 20th century.
Incredibly lush grass grew in the fields of Mologa because during the spring flood the rivers merged into a huge floodplain and unusually nutritious silt remained in the meadows. The cows ate the grass that grew on it and produced the most delicious milk in Russia, from which butter was produced at local creameries. Such oil is not produced now, despite all the ultra modern technologies. There is simply no more Molog nature.
In September 1935, the USSR government adopted a decree on the start of construction of the Russian Sea - the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex. This implied the flooding of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land along with the settlements located on it, 700 villages and the city of Mologa.
At the time of liquidation, the city was living a full life, there were 6 cathedrals and churches, 9 educational institutions, factories and factories.
On April 13, 1941, the last opening of the dam was blocked. The waters of the Volga, Sheksna and Mologa began to overflow their banks and flood the territory.
The tallest buildings in the city and churches were razed to the ground. When the city began to be ravaged, the residents were not even explained what would happen to them. They could only watch as Mologa-paradise was turned into hell. Prisoners were brought in to work, who worked day and night, demolishing the city and building a waterworks. Prisoners died in hundreds. They were not buried, but simply stored and buried in common pits on the future seabed. In this nightmare, residents were told to urgently pack up, take only the essentials and go for resettlement.
Then the worst thing began. 294 Mologans refused to evacuate and remained in their homes. Knowing this, the builders began flooding. The rest were forcibly taken away.
After some time, a wave of suicides began among former Mologans. Whole families and one by one they came to the banks of the reservoir to drown themselves. Rumors spread about mass suicides, which reached Moscow. It was decided to evict the remaining Mologans to the north of the country, and remove the city of Mologa from the list of ever existing ones. Mentioning it, especially as a place of birth, was followed by arrest and prison. They tried to forcefully turn the city into a myth.
Mologa rises from the water twice a year. The reservoir level fluctuates, revealing cobbled streets, remains of houses, cemeteries with tombstones.
- Oh Mologa. Performed by Y. Lebedeva.
True, Charonda managed to hold out for only a short time in city status. The trade route through the city began to fade, and along with it, life flowed away from an amazing place. By the beginning of the 19th century. Charonda has slipped to the status of a village within the Belozersky district. During Soviet times, the former center of the district continued to quietly die, increasingly turning into a ghost town on the clear waters of Lake Vozhe. Spacious wooden houses fell into disrepair, the cathedral was destroyed in the early 30s of the last century, winter ice cut the pier year after year. By the 70s, not a single road led to Charonda; the last inhabitants lived out their lives as if on a desert island.
By the beginning of the collapse of the USSR, Charonda actually ceased to exist as a populated area. It seemed that nothing could bring her back to life. But in 1999, a young documentarian, Alexei Peskov, made a short film about today’s Charonda, the heroes of which were several old-timers who, at their own risk, returned to their small homeland in their declining years. The correct, as they say now, promotion did its job. A thin trickle of tourists looking for special romance flowed to Charonda. Even regional officials said something a couple of times about the tourism potential of the ancient settlement. There will probably never be a city here again, but the charm of one of the best places in the Russian North will last for many, many years. Asu-Bulak, Ulan district, East Kazakhstan region. In 1950-1951, a group of geologists under the leadership of Yu.A. Sadovsky discovered a group of rare metal minerals and the Belogorsk Construction Department was created, which began the construction of industrial and residential facilities in the village of Asu-Bulak. In 1950-1953, processing plants 3 and 6, a diesel power plant, and prefabricated wooden houses were built; finishing factory built in 1968. From 1967 to 1970, the living area of the workers of the Belogorsk mining and processing plant increased by 4688 sq.m.
In 1971, gas began to be delivered to the village, and a hospital complex with 120 beds was put into operation. Two schools for 1,600 students were built, a music school, a sports school, a nursery, and kindergartens were opened. The television repeater was working. Heating boiler houses were expanded, the Asu-Bulak-Ognevka road was built. A livestock breeding complex for the plant's subsidiary farm and a brick factory with a capacity of 3 million bricks per year were opened. New comfortable buildings were put into operation: two dormitories, a cinema, a medical dispensary with 100 seats, a cafe with 98 seats, a department store, a department store, a pharmacy, a vegetable store, a pioneer camp, a training center for 192 students with a gym.
At the end of the 80s, no one needed tantalum concentrate and the Belogorsk GOK began to slowly become impoverished. By the 90s there was already complete collapse, they tried to revive the looted mines. People began to slowly leave. There were hours-long queues for bread. Then gas supplies stopped, heating and water were turned off - and that’s it...
Now it is a ghost village. Houses are being dismantled for bricks, and hunters are scouring for non-ferrous metals. Amderma is an urban-type settlement; located on the Yugra Peninsula (coast of the Kara Sea) at the northern tip of the spurs of the Polar Urals - the Pai-Khoi ridge. The nearest railway station Vorkuta is 350 km, Naryan-Mar is 490 km, Arkhangelsk is 1260 km by sea, 1070 km by air. The village was founded in connection with the start of construction of a mine for the extraction of fluorspar (fluorite) in July 1933.
The northern branch of the Geographical Society of the USSR established the exact border between Europe and Asia, passing through the point of closest approach of Vaygach Island to the mainland. Here, on the shore of the Yugorsky Shar, not far from the weather station, on July 25, 1975, the geographical sign “Europe-Asia” was erected. Thus, the village of Amderma is located in the Asian part of the world, that is, on the eastern slopes of the Pai-Khoi ridge.
The legend about the origin of the name of the village has survived to this day. One day, a Nenets hunter sailing on a boat saw a huge nest of pinnipeds on the coast of the Kara Sea. Admiringly exclaiming “Amderma!”, which translated means “walrus rookery,” he brought his relatives here, who placed them on the shore of the plague and formed a camp. Since that time immemorial, this place has been called Amderma, and the etymology of the toponym was included in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Amderma is surrounded by unusually picturesque surroundings: on the right side of the Amderminki River, black rocks with white veins fall into the Kara Sea; on the left side there is a long and smooth sand spit, separating the lagoon from the sea. The Black Rocks, both in winter and summer, are a favorite walking place for the residents of Amderma.
The terrain here is gently undulating, steep, with a maximum height above sea level of up to 60 meters. There is a well-known expression: “Moscow stands on seven hills.” Likewise, Amderma is located on hills, only there are 9 of them. The height of the hills, called ridges, increases as you move deeper into the mainland. Towards the Belyaev ridge the heights reach 155 m above sea level. Only the first three hills are located on the right bank of the Amderminka, and ridges 4-7, Topilkina ridge and Belyaev ridge are located on the left bank. The Amderminka River originates from the eastern slopes of the Pai-Khoi ridge, which forms the morphostructural basis of the Yugra Peninsula and flows into the Kara Sea. The river is rapids, with frequent small riffles. Five kilometers above the mouth, two tributaries flow into the river - Vodopadny and Sredny.
The Kara Sea is figuratively called an “ice cellar”, since it has been hidden under ice for more than eight months. In some years, steady northeastern winds constantly press the ice against the Amdermin coast, and the sea is freed from its ice shell only in September.
The polar day lasts in Amderma from May 20 to July 30, the polar night - from November 27 to January 16.
The organizer of the construction of the village and mine for the extraction of fluorspar is mining engineer Evgeniy Sergeevich Livanov. In his honor, the Amdermen named the rocks that jut out into the sea Cape Livanov.
The Amderma fluorite deposit, discovered in 1932 by the geological prospecting party of P.A. Shrubko, already in 1934 produced 5,711 tons of fluoride to the industry, and in 1935 - 8,890, and in 1936 15,195 tons were extracted. Thanks to the rich reserves of Amderma fluorite, the country was able to refuse import purchases of this mineral.
Amderma has always been a reliable base for crossing the Northern Sea Route and Arctic air routes.
Airplanes have been accepted since 1935 on a sea sand spit between the sea and the lagoon, in the area of the left bank of the Amderminki River. In 1937, under the leadership of O.Yu. Schmidt organized the famous expedition to the North Pole. On the way back, the planes made an intermediate landing in Amderma to change skis for wheels. Since the snow in Amderme had almost melted, all residents of the village were mobilized to work on expanding and lengthening the landing strip (snow was transported on sleds and trucks from ravines and gullies). The planes landed safely on the snow strip in June.
All polar expeditions were serviced by the Amderma radio station, and flight participants received assistance in Amderma in preparing the aircraft for the continuation of flights.
In the period of the 60-80s, intensive construction and development of the industrial complex took place in Amderma.
In 1964, the Northern Sea Shipping Company conducted an experimental voyage to open the Arkhangelsk - Amderma-Arkhangelsk passenger line on the comfortable motor ship Bukovina, but due to the incomplete loading of the ship, the experiment ended with one voyage.
In connection with a change in the country's military doctrine, the garrison was withdrawn from Amderma in 1993-1994; in 1995 the complex permafrost laboratory was liquidated; in 1966 - oil and gas exploration expedition; in 1998 the Torgmortrans office was closed; in 2000 - SMU "Amdermastroy"; in 2002 - the Amderma Territorial Administration for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Control became part of the Northern Territorial Administration of the Hydrometeorological Service as the OGMS Amderma of the Arkhangelsk Central Hydrometeorological Service-R, with a minimum number of employees.
- Song about Amderma. Performed by Vladimir Makarov.
Today Tkvarcheli is called the “dead city”. Eternal silence reigns in it. The population decreased by more than four times. The creaking of a rusty swing can be heard for several kilometers in the center of Tkvarcheli. Such silence has reigned in this city for many years that local residents can only determine by the distant sound what is happening on the neighboring streets. There has been such prolonged silence in Tkvarcheli for more than 15 years. This city was a phenomenon of the Soviet era, when the rest of the settlement was built around one industry. Everything began to stop here with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The last loud sounds that the city remembers are gunfire and the roar of bombing during the Georgian-Abkhaz war.
During the 1992-93 war, Tkvarcheli was one of the centers of resistance; it was under siege, subjected to constant shelling, but was never captured by Georgian troops. On September 27, 2008, the President of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh signed a Decree conferring the honorary title “Hero City” on Tkvarcheli. Russian pilots took part in the evacuation of residents of besieged Tkvarcheli. One of the helicopters carrying refugees was shot down over the village of Lata. In memory of the victims of the Lat tragedy, a monument was erected in Gudauta Park. After the war, the population of Tkvarcheli decreased significantly, the Tkvarcheli State District Power Plant closed, and industrial enterprises and mines stopped.
Local resident Geronty Karchava has lived here almost his entire life. This is how he remembers the sounds of his youth:
“Previously, everything was humming, especially the state district power plant. When she released steam, there was a hum. There were factories on every corner here. In general, our city was very industrial and very dirty. Here I would walk around a little in a white shirt, and if it started to drizzle, my shirt would turn black.”
The population of Tkvarcheli is now about five thousand people. This is almost four times less than in the early 90s. The local maternity hospital says that if previously they accepted up to 700 children a month, now they are happy if at least 10 are born. You rarely see any passers-by on the streets. These are mainly older men. They either stand somewhere on the sidewalk, or smoke a cigarette in the shade of an overgrown park. Local high-rise buildings resemble a chessboard. White glazed frames replace the black holes of windowless apartments. It seems that there are more empty apartments in Tkvarcheli than occupied ones. In residential buildings, at best, 2-3 families live in one entrance.
Samantha, a native of Tkvarcheli, is 24 years old. She came here for a month to see her parents. Several years ago, she, like most of her age, left her hometown for Russia.
“There is practically no one left here. My generation is practically gone. I even walk around the city and see it’s empty. In the evenings, only those who have already stayed too long, well-grounded, the same age as my parents. And there are very few young people,” says Samantha.
Locals say that people are leaving Tkvarcheli because there is no work left there. The main employer here is the Turkish-founded Tamsas company. Last year it was renamed “Tkuarchalugol”. As the locals explain, about eight years ago, the company’s owners hired several dozen unemployed miners and miners, found an open deposit of coal and organized a quarry there. The coal is then transported along the old railway to the port of Ochamchira, and from there it is transported in a direction unknown to the locals, most likely to Turkey.
Some complain that their salaries are small - five to six thousand rubles a month. It's somewhere under 200 dollars. But there is still no other work here. And the profit from this enterprise amounts to about 90 percent of the local budget.
Previously, the mining profession was the most prestigious here, says local resident Eliso Kvarchia. She is 59 years old and remembers the time when people fought to be sent to work in Tkvarcheli after graduating from prestigious Soviet institutes. Then this was a guarantee for further professional advancement.
“The city was so indicative - as it should have been in the Soviet Union. There was industry, there was the entire social package, as they would say now. They mined coal. There was a mining town where the most prestigious profession was a miner. And everything is around the miner - hospitals, schools. Therefore, there was also an intellectual center here, in my opinion, not only a mining town,” recalls Eliso Kvarchia. During the Georgian-Abkhazian war, this place was under a long siege. In some places, traces of exploding shells are still visible on the streets, and holes from gunfire can be found on the walls of houses. As the locals say, in the first months of the war they had almost no weapons to keep the siege of the city. Because of this, some local workers began equipping homemade crossbows. Grenade launchers were made from a simple factory pipe. Some of the remains of weapons from that time are still kept in the city museum. The walls of a small museum room are completely covered with portraits of local residents who died on the eastern front. This small museum is probably the only place in Tkvarcheli where you can still see the smoking chimneys of factories and trolleys running along the cable car, even if all this is only in faded photographs.
- Song about the city of Tkvarcheli. George Kemularia.
The history of the formation of the administrative center of the rural settlement of Korzunovo begins on October 13, 1947 - the date of the formation of a separate aviation technical battalion of the Northern Fleet Air Force. During 1948-1949, the personnel of the OATB of the Northern Fleet Air Force built a flight-mechanical and sailor canteen, and repaired the barracks and living quarters. At various times, the 769th Fighter Aviation Regiment, the 912th Separate Transport Aviation Regiment and the 122nd Fighter Aviation Division of the Northern Fleet were stationed on the territory of the village of Korzunovo. Yuri Gagarin served.
The village of Korzunovo was officially registered on December 13, 1962. Then it was called Luostari-New. In 1967, the village of Luostari-Novoe was renamed the village of Korzunovo in honor of the Hero of the Soviet Union Ivan Egorovich Korzunov. From February 25, 1961 to November 28, 1979, the village was subordinate to the Polar Council and the Polar City Council. Since November 28, 1979, the village of Korzunovo has had independent legislative and executive administrative bodies: the Korzunovsky village council, the administration of the rural settlement, the representative office of the administration of the Pechenga district in the village of Korzunovo.
The boundaries of the municipal formation of the rural settlement of Korzunovo were approved by the Law of the Murmansk Region dated December 29, 2004. No. 582-01-ZMO "On approval of the boundaries of municipalities in the Murmansk region." At that time, the population of the village was estimated at just over two thousand people. However, after the closure of the garrison in the nineties, the village fell into decay; a significant part of the inhabitants left it. Many houses stand empty.
According to the latest information, a large firebox, which stands near the 41st house, heats two houses: the 42nd and 43rd. They live only in these houses. In the rest, glass was broken and floorboards were torn off. But there is nothing left to loot - recently the Gagarin Museum was opened, but they say they filed a lawsuit and put things in order.
- Yu. Gagarin - Speech before the start.
APPLICATION
PLACES LEFT BY PEOPLE in RUSSIA
Now some “strange” travel agencies take tourists here. In Russia nowadays they make money on everything...
ANCIENT RUSSIAN VILLAGE CHARONDA
Where is: Vologda region, Kirillovsky district, the only settlement on the western shore of Lake Vozhe.The settlement was founded back in the 13th century on the White Sea-Onega waterway in the Novgorod Republic. In the second half of the 16th century, Charonda became a major trading center, with 1,700 houses and 11,000 inhabitants. Since 1708, the village received city status. Churches, workshops, a large pier, a guest courtyard, and wide streets were built here. But at the end of the 18th century, the water trade route began to lose its relevance, and Charonda began to decline. In 1776, the city again turned into a village. In 1828, a stone Charonda St. John Chrysostom Church with a bell tower was erected here, which today has been preserved, although in a deplorable state.
During Soviet times, the former center of the district continued to die. The wooden houses fell into disrepair, and in the early 1930s the church ceased to function. The road to the village was never built; in the 70s of the 20th century, residents lived out their lives as if on an island.
By the beginning of the collapse of the USSR, Charonda ceased to exist as a functioning settlement. In 1999, documentarian Alexey Peskov made a short film “The Governor of Charonda”, the hero of which was the only resident of the village. After the film was released, tourists and pilgrims flocked to the ancient Russian settlement.
MINING VILLAGE KADIKCHAN
Where is: Magadan region, Susumansky district.The urban-type settlement of Kadykchan was founded in 1943, during the Great Patriotic War, around a coal mining enterprise. Miners and their families lived here. In 1996, an explosion occurred at the mine, which killed 6 people. The mine was closed. About 6,000 people received compensation and left the village. Homes were cut off from heat and electricity, and almost the entire private sector was burned. However, not all residents agreed to leave the city; even in 2001, two streets remained residential in the village, a clinic operated, and construction was underway on a new boiler room-skating rink and a shopping complex.
A few years later, an accident occurred at the only surviving boiler house. Residents (about 400 people) were left without heating and were forced to warm themselves with the help of stoves. In 2003, Kadykchan was officially given the status of an unpromising village. By 2010, only two of the most principled residents lived here. By 2012, only one elderly man with two dogs remained.
Now Kadykchan is an abandoned mining “ghost town”. The houses have preserved furniture, personal belongings of former residents, books, and children's toys. On the square near the cinema you can see a bust of Lenin that was shot.
RUSSIAN ATLANTIS - THE FLOODED CITY OF MOLOGA
Where is: Yaroslavl region, 32 kilometers from Rybinsk, at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga.The time of the initial settlement of the area where the city of Mologa stood is unknown. But the first mentions of the settlement and the river of the same name in chronicles date back to the mid-12th century. In 1321, the Principality of Mologa appeared. The city of Mologa has been a major center of trade for centuries due to its location on the water trade route.
In the 1930s, the city had more than 900 houses, 11 plants and factories, 6 churches and monasteries, 3 libraries, 9 educational institutions, hospitals and clinics, 200 shops and shops, and numerous fairs were held. The population did not exceed 7,000 people.
In 1935, the USSR government adopted a decree on the start of construction of the Russian Sea - the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex. This implied the flooding of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land along with the settlements located on it, which included 700 villages and the city of Mologa.
The resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937 and lasted for four years. On April 13, 1941, the last opening of the dam was blocked. The waters of the Volga, Sheksna and Mologa began to overflow their banks and flood the territory.
They say that 294 Mologans refused to evacuate and remained in their homes until the city was completely submerged under water. There are rumors that after the city was flooded, a wave of suicides began among its former residents. As a result, the authorities decided to evict the remaining Mologzhans to the north of the country, and delete the city of Mologa from the list of ever existing ones.
In 1992–1993, local historians organized an expedition to the exposed part of the flooded city. They collected interesting materials and made an amateur film. In 1995, the Museum of the Mologsky Region was created in Rybinsk.
Mologda can be seen twice a year. When the water level drops, paved streets, foundations of houses, walls of churches and other city buildings appear above the surface of the water.
FINVAL SUBMARINE BASE
Where is: Kamchatka Territory, Shipunsky Peninsula, Bechevinskaya Bay.The garrison village in Bechevinskaya Bay was founded in the 1960s. A naval submarine base was built here. Today, buildings that previously served as dormitories for families of officers (three to five-story buildings), former barracks, headquarters, galley, garage, boiler room, storage rooms, diesel substation, fuel depot, store, post office, school, kindergarten have been preserved.
Since the object was classified, the geographical name of the bay was not allowed to be used in documents. “Openly” the village was called Finval or by the post office number - Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky-54.
Initially, a division of submarines of five units of Project 641 was based in Finval. In 1971, a brigade of diesel submarines, which consisted of 12 submarines, was transferred here.
In 1996, the garrison came under reduction and it was decided to disband. It was necessary to relocate the boat brigade to a new location - in Zavoiko - as soon as possible. Tank landing ships were allocated for military equipment. Personal belongings and furniture of the residents of the bay had to be transported in heaps on the deck of the Avachi. The heating and electricity were turned off in the village, so it was impossible to stay there.
At the same time as the Bechevinka garrison, the Shipunsky rocket settlement, located on a hill on the other side of the bay, ceased to exist. The buildings and structures of military camps were written off from the accounts of the Ministry of Defense.
FOREST WORKING VILLAGE KURSHA-2
Where is: Ryazan region, Klepikovsky district, today it is the territory of the Oksky Nature Reserve biosphere reserve.Kursha-2 is interesting not for its spectacular buildings, but for its sad history. Today, almost nothing remains of the settlement.
The village was founded in the late 20s of the last century for the development and development of forest reserves of Central Meshchera. By the 1930s the population numbered about 1,000 residents. A narrow-gauge railway was built in Kursha-2, along which the timber was sent to Tuma for processing, and then to Ryazan and Vladimir.
In the summer of 1936, a fire started in the forest. The wind carried the fire towards Courche-2. A train arrived from Tuma to the village. The brigade, aware of the approaching fire, offered to remove the village residents from the danger zone, but the dispatcher decided to load the harvested timber first. When the work was finished, the fire had already approached the village. There was no way to get out on foot; the blazing forest surrounded Cursha-2 on all sides. People began to board the train, but there was very little free space. People climbed wherever they could - on the locomotive, on buffers and couplings, on top of logs. There was not enough space for everyone; hundreds of people saw off the train.
When the train approached the bridge over a small canal three kilometers north of Curshi-2, the wooden bridge was already on fire. It also set fire to the logs on the couplings.
According to eyewitnesses, about 1,200 people died as a result of the tragedy. Among the dead were not only local residents, but also prisoners working in logging operations and military personnel sent to extinguish the fire. About 20 people were able to escape. Some sat out in the village pond, along wells and cesspools, and some miraculously managed to run through the front of the fire from a stopped train and wait out the fire on a small treeless hill.
Experts traveled from Moscow to the scene of the tragedy to assess the scale of the disaster. At a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, it was announced that as a result of the fire, 313 people died and another 75 received severe burns. The Politburo ordered the director of the timber mill, his deputy, the technical director, the chief engineer, the chairman of the Tumsky district executive committee, the secretary of the district committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the head of forest protection to be brought to trial on charges of criminal negligence.
Soon the village was restored, but after the war people were evicted and the narrow-gauge railway was dismantled. On the outskirts of the clearing in Courche-2 there is a large mass grave.
In 2011, a memorial complex was created at the site of the tragedy, including a Poklonny cross, a memorial plaque and a road sign “Cursha-2”. The tragedy is dedicated to the composition of the same name by the Velehentor group and the novel “Kursha-2. Black Sun".
The most famous abandoned village in the Magadan region. Kadykchan (translated from the Evenki language as “Valley of Death”) is an urban-type settlement in the Susumansky district of the Magadan region, 65 km northwest of the city of Susuman in the basin of the Ayan-Yuryakh River (a tributary of the Kolyma). The population according to the 2002 census is 875 inhabitants, according to unofficial estimates for 2006 - 791 people. According to data for January 1986 - 10,270 people.
History of origin
The Russians built the village after geologist Vronsky found coal of the highest quality there in 1943 at a depth of 400 meters. As a result, the Arkagalinskaya CHPP operated on Kadykchan coal and supplied 2/3 of the Magadan region with electricity.
The village was built in several stages, so it was secretly divided into 3 parts: Old, New and Newest Kadykchan. Old Kadykchan is located closest to the highway, New surrounds the city-forming mine No. 10, and Newest is 2-4 kilometers away from both the highway and the mine and is the main residential settlement (after its construction, Old and New Kadykchan were used mainly for farming (greenhouses) , vegetable gardens, pigsties, etc.) In the east there is another coal mine (No. 7).
Crash and decline
Almost 6 thousand population The population of Kadykchan began to rapidly melt after a mine explosion in 1996, when it was decided to close the village. After the explosion the mine was closed. All people were evicted from the city, giving them from 80 to 120 thousand rubles for resettlement, depending on their length of service. The houses were mothballed, disconnecting them from heat and electricity. Almost the entire private sector was burned to prevent people from returning. But even in 2001, 2 streets remained residential in the village (Lenin and Stroiteley) and one house on Mira Street (which housed a clinic, by that time a hospital, as well as utilities). Despite this bleak situation, in 2001, construction was still underway in the village of a new boiler house-skating rink and a shopping complex next to the village council.
A few years later, the only local boiler house defrosted; after the boiler house accident, the heating no longer worked and residents were forced to heat themselves using stoves. By this time, there were about 400 people living in Kadykchan who refused to leave, and there had been no infrastructure for several years. The awarding of the status of unpromising to the village of Kadykchan and the resettlement of its residents was announced on the basis of the law of the Magadan region No. 32403 of April 4, 2003.
By 2010, only two of the most principled residents lived in Kadykchan. By 2012, only one elderly man with two dogs remained.
Now Kadykchan is an abandoned mining “ghost town”. There are books and furniture in houses, abandoned cars in garages, and children's potties in toilets. On the square near the cinema there is a bust of V.I., rashly shot by one of the residents. Lenin.
Photo of Kadykchan in winter
Photo (based on materials from sergeydolya.livejournal.com)
Another photo of the dead city of Kadykchan.
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On the territory of the former USSR there are many towns and villages abandoned by its residents for one reason or another. It happens that even a busy, active town can become a ghost. This is exactly the fate that befell Kadykchan, a small urban village in the Susumansky district of the Magadan region. People hurriedly left it, taking only all the most valuable things and leaving a huge amount of things in the apartments...
And it all started quite well, for that period of history. The village was founded back in 1943, around a coal mine. It is noteworthy that both the town and the mine were built by prisoners. During the Soviet era, such cities were very popular.
Secret military unit - a town is being built near it; a mine or a strategic plant - a town is being built nearby, of course; secret laboratory - again, a village or town is being built for the employees, which is kept secret just don’t play around. Research ends, the military is relocated to another location, the mine ceases to play a strategic role - the “technical” villages built next to it, as a rule, became deserted.
Kadykchan has a slightly different story. The coal found at the local mine turned out to be of very high quality and lay at a depth of up to 400 meters. The extracted fuel was used to support the Arkagalinskaya State District Power Plant, so the village grew and developed all the time. Having successfully gone through perestroika and the collapse of the USSR, the mining town continued to exist.
However, the new government of the turbulent 90s did not need distant Kadykchan. He didn't even benefit from the coal that was mined at the local mine. The powers that be were waiting for an excuse to “close” the village. The opportunity for this presented itself in 1996. Then an explosion occurred at the mine, causing casualties. The arriving commissions immediately decided to close the mine and resettle the village residents. Significant financial resources were allocated for the resettlement of people.
Kadykchan- the most famous of the abandoned villages of the Magadan region. Kadykchan (translated from the Evenk language - Death Valley) is an urban-type settlement in the Susumansky district of the Magadan region in the Ayan-Yuryakh river basin (a tributary of the Kolyma) 65 km northwest of the city of Susuman on the Magadan - Ust-Nera highway. The population according to the 2002 census is 875 inhabitants, according to unofficial estimates for 2006-791 people. According to data for January 1986 - 10,270 people.
The village was once the location of one of the Kolyma Gulag camps.
The village was built after geologist Vronsky found coal of the highest quality there in 1943 at a depth of 400 meters. The mine and the village were built by prisoners, among whom was the writer Varlam Shalamov. Mining was carried out underground from depths of up to 400 meters. Coal was used mainly at the Arkagalinskaya State District Power Plant, which supplied electricity to 2/3 of the Magadan region.
The village arose in stages, so it was secretly divided into 3 parts: Old, New and Newest Kadykchan. Old Kadykchan is located closest to the above-mentioned route, New surrounds the city-forming mine (No. 10), and Newest is 2-4 kilometers away from both the route and the mine and is the main residential village (with its construction, Old and New Kadykchan were increasingly used for conducting farms (greenhouses, vegetable gardens, pigsties, etc.) In the east there was another coal mine (popularly called seven, No. 7, it was abandoned in 1992).
The almost 6 thousand population of Kadykchan began to rapidly melt after an explosion at the mine on November 15, 1996, in which 6 people died. After the explosion the mine was closed. All people were evicted from the city, giving them from 80 to 120 thousand rubles for resettlement, depending on their length of service. The houses were mothballed, disconnecting them from heat and electricity. Almost the entire private sector was burned to prevent people from returning. However, even in 2001, 2 streets (Lenin and Stroiteley) and one house on Mira Street (which housed a clinic, and by that time a hospital, as well as utilities) remained residential in the village. Despite this dismal situation, in 2001, construction was still underway in the village of a new boiler house-skating rink and a shopping complex next to the village council.
A few years later, the only local boiler house defrosted, after which it became impossible to live in Kadykchan. By this time, there were about 400 people living in Kadykchan who refused to leave, and there had been no infrastructure for several years.
The awarding of the status of unpromising to the village of Kadykchan and the resettlement of its residents was announced on the basis of the law of the Magadan region No. 32403 of April 4, 2003.
According to former Kadykchan resident V.S. Poletaev, “Kadykchan residents were not evacuated in 10 days, but they left on their own. Those who were entitled to housing after the liquidation of the mine and open-pit mine waited. Those who had no chance left on their own to avoid freezing. Secondly, Kadykchan was closed not because it was unfrozen, but on orders from above, as an unprofitable village.”
By 2010, only two of the most principled residents remained in the village. By 2012, only one elderly man with two dogs remained. Now Kadykchan is an abandoned mining “ghost town”. There are books and furniture in houses, cars in garages, children's potties in toilets. On the square near the cinema there is a bust of V.I. Lenin, which was finally shot by residents.
