Uranium mines of the camp. Special uranium camps in the Magadan region

Valery Yankovsky

The first days of truly hard labor are unforgettable. At 6 in the morning, a light bulb that has been burning all night blinks, on the street - like a hammer on the back of the head - blows to a rail suspended on a pole - rise! Run to the toilet, run to the dining room, breakfast - a scoop of gruel, half a ration, semi-sweet yellow tea - and divorce!..
Two kilometers from the camp there is a cordoned-off work area. Tools are dumped there: crowbars, shovels, picks. There is a fight for them: you need to choose what is more reliable - it will be easier to fulfill the damned norm. They are moving away from the forge without formation, the convoy has gone into a cordon.

Valery Yankovsky

Prisoner of Chaunlag in 1948-1952.
From the book "The Long Return":

Open-pit ore mining is taking place on the slope. Everyone has a pick, a shovel, a wheelbarrow. You need to heat it up, load it and roll it manually along narrow shaky ladders for a hundred to one and a half meters. There, dump the contents of the wheelbarrow into the bunker and drive it along parallel ladders back to the face. The norm for a 12-hour shift, including the road from the camp and lunch, is forty wheelbarrows. The first three days are a guaranteed 600 grams of bread, and then from production, up to 900. A prisoner who fails to complete the task after three days becomes a fine, which means 300 grams of bread. Most of them are doomed, because it is absolutely impossible for a hungry person to fulfill the quota.

Valery Yankovsky

Prisoner of Chaunlag in 1948-1952.
From the book "The Long Return":

They worked like horses in the mines. The rock blasted at the face was poured into iron barrels cut to length on sleds, dragged a hundred or two meters to the exit, and tipped into a bunker for delivery to the mountain. The bottom of the drift was supposed to be covered with snow from ventilation pits, but this was often not done, and the horse-men, straining themselves, dragged the sleds loaded with ore along the rocky path. Moreover, with smokehouses - sparsely placed tin cans with a wick in diesel fuel. And the brigadier’s six - the most scum - make a career, shouting, waving sticks: “Come on, move, bastards!” Those who snapped were “taught” en masse after work in the barracks. And no one stood up. This regime was beneficial to the authorities and was secretly encouraged.

Valery Yankovsky

Prisoner of Chaunlag in 1948-1952.
From the book "The Long Return":

In the first winter in Chukotka, most ordinary prisoners were wearing shoe covers. These are sleeves from activated padded jackets, sewn to a piece of an old car tire that was constantly trying to crawl forward. It was necessary to live until tomorrow and, most importantly, to eat something. The polar winter stretches on endlessly and hopelessly in the camp. Especially for those who work underground. A four-hour, but without sun, gray day rises and fades away imperceptibly. It’s good if you see an asterisk at a divorce or on the way after a shift. Basically - a cloudy, dark, mournful sky, from which fine, tedious snow is constantly falling.

UNIQUE PHOTOGRAPHY

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

HISTORIANS TESTIFY

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

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

THE BUILDER'S WORD

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

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

DECEPTION OF THE ALLIES

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

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

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

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

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

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

The negatives are shown translated into a positive image.

Photo gallery "Butugychag"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Administrator | 03/26/2012 13:41

We bring to your attention a material dedicated to one of the most taboo topics - the Soviet death camps in the Gulag system. This is quite extensive material - so be prepared to invest your time.

When published, this topic immediately becomes overgrown with “nihilists” from virtual Young Soviets, neo-Bolsheviks, Russomirites and other imperialists.

They immediately start howling about “liberals from the State Department” who come up with “fables about our Great Teacher, Comrade Stalin” and discredit “God-pleasing Great Russia” and “God’s Chosen Great Russian People.”
In general, the new generation of “Hitler hat-throwers” ​​has been nurtured. The herd is confidently growing stronger and multiplying.

The persons submitting the material are also to blame for this attitude towards information. For example, Sergei Melnikoff(1), who presents the material in an excessively biased manner. Although it is probably difficult to expect anything else from a person who “loves Great Russia with all his heart.” Making allowance for the emotionality of Melnikoff's materials, and in this he is no different from his friends from Russkaga Miru, his articles are talented and well supplied with documentary material.

Therefore, the compiler carried out extensive digging on the network on this little-known topic and produced relatively dry material.

Why was what we are talking about possible?

Because in a country with the mentality of Horde despotism, a person, his life, meant absolutely nothing.
Initially, a person and his environment in Russia are a source of tribute, yasak, for the authorities. A sheep that is fed myths and disposed of after processing.

This was superimposed on the Bolshevik-Stalin era with talented psychopaths in power and the fascist ideology of creating a “new and correct person in a new society”, cleared of “alien and harmful elements that interfere with the construction of a new world.” And in such an ideology, as we know, the end justifies any means. Especially when the spiders in the jar are faced with a question of survival. You can see the prerequisites for this.

Hence, a priori, Gulag prisoners were considered subhuman, inferior creatures, slaves destined for building a bright future with subsequent disposal. AND NO MORE. And since the tyrant Dzhugashvili was burning under his ass, millions of “subhumans” were needed to modernize the eternally backward country, the eternally catching up modernizations. The executioners of the leader of all nations successfully carried out the plan to corral the sheep, and the troubadours of propaganda helped them in this. Therefore, what is strange to the modern man in the street or what modern mankurts do not want to hear about was easy in those years. Just like the burning of “witches” and “enemies of the church” by the Holy Inquisition was an absolutely common thing in its time. Only there it was not a total genocide of its people.

Hence, the position of the German fascists was both honest and courageous. Still, destroying the inhabitants of foreign territories is more natural than covering your ass with the meat of millions of your fellow citizens. The Russian-Soviet fascists were in fact much more deceitful and much more cowardly.

As always, you can hear hysterical rebuke that all sorts of damned Jews and Georgians were doing this, and the good Great Russian God-pleasing people had nothing to do with it and also suffered. Regarding suffering - yes, but the rest is a lie. Moreover, it was the Russians who were the foundation and guide on which the power and ideology of bloody ghouls like Stalin, this talented dullness, was built.

It was on the Russian soil of the epileptic “chosenness of God” and the Black Hundred chauvinism of the disadvantaged mob that the seeds of the idea of ​​Bolshevism fell and were cultivated, about Russia as the beacon of communism for the whole world. The Germans lost the war, but no moans are heard from them that the vile Austrians are to blame for everything.

WITHOUT THE TOTAL SUPPORT OF THIS BY THE GERMANS AND RUSSIANS INHERENT IN THEIR COMPLEXES, NEITHER HITLER NOR STALIN WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO COMMIT THEIR ATROCITIES.

BUT FOR THE SAKE OF THE PROMISED “GET UP FROM THE KNEES SO THAT EVERYONE WILL BE AFRAID”—THE HIMSELF GERMAN AND RUSSIAN WENT TO ANYTHING. UKRAINE AND BELARUS, FOR EXAMPLE, IN THIS CASE WERE CONSUMABLE MATERIAL FOR THE CROWD OF RUSSIAN AND GERMAN BLACKS CONSUMED BY COMPLEXES.

In general, it was written not at all in order to pinch “God-pleasing and God-chosen people,” but to balance justice. And so that those who refuse to remember their history will repeat it again.

I’ll tell you from myself (compiler’s note) - I saw this in my childhood. Remains of the Berievskaya Transpolar Railway near the city of Salekhard (Tyumen region) (2). It is perceived mystically as a lost civilization. Like the greatness of the Egyptian pyramids, erected to the glory of the whims of their masters on the blood and bones of thousands of subhuman slaves who died in torture. And which stand as a silent and useless monument to the bloody complexes of the pharaohs. It’s fun to look at the pyramids while riding a camel nearby. But I am sure that none of the mortals would want to be involved in this greatness from the other side - suffocating from lifelong hard labor and stone dust, coughing up blood from their lungs in honor of the whims of a psychopathic pharaoh, who imagines himself to be God over other creatures.

In this video you can see what it looks like now what I saw as a child. Nothing changed.

In addition to the main material, comments will be provided to complement the picture, indicating sources.

Delving into the topic, you can see here the abandoned objects of the Death Valley in the Magadan region (3) and here (4) descriptions.

Here you will find an excellent description with documents, justification and prerequisites for the creation of concentration camps in the USSR (5). An excellent selection of information for all years.

IT CAN BRIEFLY BE SUMMARIZED AS follows - THE COMPLETE FAILURE OF THE SOVIET ECONOMY, THE MEDIOCNESS OF ITS “GREAT LEADERS”, THEIR EXTRAORDINARY AND UNHEALTHY AMBITIONS REQUIRE ONE THING - MANY MILLIONS OF FREE SLAVES FOR THEIR WORKING AND DISPOSAL. At this moment, the slogan of the resource “Dedicated to everyone who created the mineral resource base of modern Russia” looks like a cruel mockery. Although, of course, the authors of the site have nothing to blame. This is a resource for geologists.

By the way, almost all the giant pre-war enterprises in the western part of the USSR were built on the seas of blood of Ukrainians in the South-East.

The scheme is simple: blockade of Ukrainian villages - selected grain - cheap dumping to the West - American technologies and engineers - factories named after. The Great Teacher and Leader Comrade Stalin.

The by-product of the scheme was a small trifle - one of the most massive genocides in human history. The killings of Ukrainians were so large-scale that all Western newspapers wrote about them, more about this -. But no one helped - one’s own skin is closer to the body. NO ONE WILL HELP NOW! Ukraine will be surrendered by its corrupt “elites” right away. Considering that most of them feed on foreign rations. Now there are no Ukrainians left in the South-East - only crests with no memory and Katsaps brought to the place of those killed.

In general, everything is according to the phrase supposedly expressed by Zhukov (I have little doubt about the reliability of this or a similar phrase from the butcher Zhukov, Stalin’s devoted dog) - “ALL KHOKHLS ARE TRAITORS! THE MORE WE DROP IN THE DNIEPR, THE LESS THEN, AFTER THE WAR, WE WILL HAVE TO BE EXPORTED TO SIBERIA!”

Siberian prisoners

“...In 1946, uranium deposits were discovered in various regions of the Soviet Union. Uranium was found in Kolyma, in the Chita region, in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, in Ukraine and the North Caucasus, near Pyatigorsk. Developing uranium deposits, especially in remote locations, is a very difficult task.

The first batches of domestic uranium began to arrive only in 1947 from the Leninabad Mining and Chemical Combine in the Tajik SSR, built in record time. In the nuclear Gulag system, this plant was known only as “Construction-665”.

The uranium mining sites were classified until 1990. Even the workers in the mines did not know about uranium. Officially, they mined “special ore”, and instead of the word “uranium” in the documents of that time they wrote “lead”.

Uranium deposits in Kolyma were poor. Nevertheless, a mining plant and a camp were created here too. Butugychag

This camp is described in Anatoly Zhigulin’s story “Black Stones,” but even he did not know that uranium was being mined here.

In 1946, uranium ore from Butugychag was sent to the “mainland” by plane. It was too expensive, and in 1947 a processing plant was built here..."

Roy Medvedev, Zhores Medvedev: “Stalin and the atomic bomb.” Rossiyskaya Gazeta, December 21, 1999, p. 7

“Valley of Death” is a documentary story about special uranium camps in the Magadan region. Doctors in this top-secret zone conducted criminal experiments on the brains of prisoners.

While denouncing Nazi Germany for genocide, the Soviet government, in deep secrecy, at the state level, implemented an equally monstrous program. It was in such camps, under an agreement with the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, that Hitler’s special brigades underwent training and gained experience in the mid-30s.

The results of this investigation were widely covered by many world media. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also participated in a special television program broadcast live by NHK Japan, along with the author (by telephone).

“Valley of Death” is a rare piece of evidence that captures the true face of Soviet power and its vanguard: the Cheka-NKVD-MGB-KGB.

Sergey Melnikov

BUTUGYCHAG (LOCAL NAME “VALLEY OF DEATH”) - Separate Camp Point No. 12 Ex. PO Box 14 GULAG.

Butugychag was directly subordinate to the Directorate. PO Box 14 (engaged in the extraction and enrichment of uranium for Soviet atomic weapons).

The Separate Camp Point No. 12, organized in 1950, included camp units (mines) located around the Butugychag ridge, along Nelkobe and in the Okhotnik spring area, as well as a uranium ore enrichment plant: combine. No. 1.

The total number of workers employed in mining works is building. work and logging, as of 05/01/50 - 1204 people, of which 321 were women, 541 convicted of criminal offenses.

In the period from 1949 to 1953. On the territory of the camp, the cassiterite mine “Gornyak” of the Tenkinsky ITL DALSTROI worked, developing the Butugychag deposit discovered by B.L. Flerov in 1936

The place got its name when hunters and nomadic tribes of reindeer herders from the Egorov, Dyachkov and Krokhalev families, wandering along the Detrin River, came across a huge field strewn with human skulls and bones and, when the reindeer in the herd began to suffer from a strange disease - at first their hair fell out on legs, and then the animals lay down and could not get up. Mechanically, this name was transferred to the remains of the Beria camps of the 14th branch of the Gulag.

Uranium ore processing plant. BUTUGICHAG

The meter showed 58...

In 1937, the Dalstroy trust, which was developing Kolyma, began mining the second metal after gold - tin. Among the first mining enterprises of this profile was the Butugychag mine, which was simultaneously explored for several years and produced planned production. Residential and outbuildings for it were erected by prisoners of a camp assignment organized here, which later grew into a separate camp post (OLP) of the same name.

Since its organization in 1937, the Butugychag mine has been part of the Southern Mining Administration. The chief geologist of this department G.A. On April 20, 1938, Kechek noted in one of his reports: “At the Butugychag field, work was carried out throughout the year. First in very small volumes, and then in somewhat larger quantities. The scope of work was limited by the amount of cargo delivered: food and technical.”

The Butugychag mine was a complex complex - factories: sorting and processing, Bromsberg, motor-car, thermal power plant. Sumy pumps were installed in a chamber carved into the rock. The adits have passed. They built a village of two-story log houses...

Butugychag mine - Horizontal adits

Shoe dumps

I remember the head of the camp point of the “Scout” mine, who tied (not himself, of course) the exhausted, exhausted, so-called enemies of the people, to the tails of horses, and in this way they were dragged to the slaughter for three or four kilometers. During this operation, the camp orchestra played the most bravura marches.

Addressing all of us, the head of this camp point (unfortunately, I forgot his last name) said: “Remember, the Stalinist constitution for you is me. I’ll do whatever I want with any of you...”
From the stories of Ozerlag prisoners.

In February 1948, at the Butugychag mine, lag department No. 4 of special camp No. 5 - Berlaga "Coast Camp" was organized. At the same time, uranium ore began to be mined here. In this regard, plant No. 1 was organized on the basis of the uranium deposit, which, together with two other plants, became part of the so-called. First Department of Dalstroy.

The camp department serving plant No. 1 included two camp points. On January 1, 1950, there were 2,243 people in them. At the same time, Butugychag continued to mine tin. The extraction of this metal has periodically declined. For example, in 1950 alone, Butugychag produced just over 18 tons of tin. In quantitative terms, this was already just a minuscule amount.

At the same time, a hydrometallurgical plant with a capacity of 100 tons of uranium ore per day began to be built at Butugychag. As of January 1, 1952, the number of employees in the First Department of Dalstroy increased to 14,790 people.

This was the maximum number of people employed in construction and mining work in this department. Then there also began a decline in uranium ore mining and by the beginning of 1953 there were only 6,130 people there. In 1954, the supply of workers at the main enterprises of the First Directorate of Dalstroy fell even more and amounted to only 840 people at Butugychag.

In total, the change in the political situation in the country, the passing of amnesties, and the beginning of the rehabilitation of those illegally repressed had an impact. “Butugychag” began to curtail its activities. By the end of May 1955, it was finally closed, and the camp site located here was liquidated forever. The 18-year activity of Butugychag became history right before our eyes.

“Soon we entered a narrow valley between gray hills. To the left they stood as a solid dark gray stone wall. There was snow on the crest of the wall. The hills on the right were also high, but they gained height gradually, and adits with stone dumps were noticeable on them, and in the valleys there were some wooden towers, overpasses...

In the spring of 1952, Butugychag consisted of four (and, if you count “Bacchante,” then five) large camp points.

A cone-shaped, but round, not sharp or rocky hill rose high above the Central. On its steep (45-50 degrees) slope a bremsberg was built, a rail track along which two wheeled platforms moved up and down.

They were pulled by cables rotated by a strong winch installed and secured on a platform specially carved into granite. This site was located approximately three-quarters of the distance from the foot to the top.

Bremsberg was built in the mid-30s. It, undoubtedly, can still serve as a guide for the traveler, even if the rails are removed, because the base on which the Bremsberg sleepers were fastened was a shallow, but still noticeable recess on the slope of the hill.

From the upper platform of the Bremsberg, in a horizontal thread along the slope of the hill, a long one adjacent to the Bremsberg hill, a narrow-gauge road ran to the right to the “Sopka” camp and its “Gornyak” enterprise.

The Yakut name for the place where the camp and the Gornyak mine were located is Shaitan. This was the most “ancient” and highest above sea level mining enterprise in Butugychag. Cassiterite and tin stone (up to 79 percent tin) were mined there.

The Sopka camp was undoubtedly the most terrible in terms of meteorological conditions. Besides, there was no water. And water was delivered there, like many cargoes, by Bremsberg and narrow-gauge railways, and in winter it was extracted from snow. But there was almost no snow there; it was blown away by the wind.

The stages to the “Sopka” followed a pedestrian road along a ravine and, higher up, along a human path. It was a very hard climb. Cassiterite from the Gornyak mine was transported in trolleys along a narrow-gauge railway, then loaded onto the Bremsberg platforms. Stages from Sopka were extremely rare.

If you look from Dieselnaya (go from Central) at the Bremsberg hill, then to the left there was a deep saddle, then a relatively small hill, to the left of which there was a cemetery. Through this saddle a bad road led to the only women's OLP on Butugychag.

It was called... "Bacchante". But this name was given to this place by geologists. The work of the unfortunate women in this camp was the same as ours: mountainous, hard. And the name, although it was not specially invented (who knew that there would be a women’s convict camp there?!), smacked of sadism. We saw the women from the Bacchae very rarely - when we escorted them along the road.

Behind the building of the former diesel plant stretched a wide valley, but quickly narrowing towards the hills. In its depths was the main mouth of mine No. 1 BIS. A huge mountain towered above the mouth of the mine, above the access roads, offices, instrumental rooms, lamp rooms, and burpekhs. It was in it, inside it, that Mine No. 1 BIS was located, where prisoners from Dieselnaya worked. They simply called it “BIS”.

The ore vein there was explored and developed, basically the same as in mine No. 1 - the ninth. The lifting machines were not powerful. The limit, the maximum depth of descent of the Butugychag lifting machines was 240 meters - both in terms of motor power, and in terms of the drum, and in terms of the length of the cables. The horizons on Butugychag were 40 meters deep...

An ore processing plant is a terrible, grave place. In the crushing shop there is the same, but even finer dust. Both the chemical and press shops, and the dryer (drying ovens for enriched ore) were extremely dangerous due to caustic harmful fumes. Big long ovens, big steel pans...

Butugychag, a factory for processing uranium ore

The mortality rate in Butugychag was very high. In the “medical” special zone (more accurately called the death zone), people died every day. The indifferent watchman checked the personal file number with the number of the already completed sign, pierced the dead man’s chest three times with a special steel lance, stuck it into the dirty, purulent snow near the watch and released the deceased into freedom...

A wide, sloping saddle between the hills, to the left of the Central camp. There is a cemetery there (or, as it was often called, Ammonalovka - there was once an ammonal warehouse on that side). Rough plateau. And all of it is covered with neat, even, as far as the terrain allows, rows of barely noticeable elongated stone tubercles.

And above each tubercle, on a strong, rather large wooden peg, there is an obligatory tin plate with a hole-punched number. And if grave elevations are clearly visible nearby (sometimes and even often these are just wooden coffins, placed on a slightly cleared rocky scree and lined with stones; the top cover of the coffin is often fully or partially visible), then they merge with the bluish-gray stones, and no longer signs are visible, but only pegs here and there..."

Steep hills, mines carved into a stone ridge, stone barracks (there is a lot of stone here), sections of a narrow-gauge railway... and in the saddle, between the hills, a cemetery. Hundreds, and maybe thousands of low, rickety columns with tin plates - the numbers of the forms of prisoners who ingloriously perished here in the 30s - 50s...

A month and a half ago the goons arrived

The mortality rate in Butugychag was very high

The Butugychag mine was located 320 kilometers from Magadan inland between the villages of Ust-Omchug and Nelkoba in the present Tenkinsky district. Initially it became known as one of the tin deposits.

Its background began in 1931 and is associated with the name of the washerman of the Second Kolyma Expedition S.I. Chernetsky.

It was he, as noted by its leader, the famous geologist V.A. Tsaregradsky, “... established by washing samples the increased tin content, which led to the discovery of Butugychag.”

And in 1936, geologist B.L. Flerov discovered a tin deposit in this area. Four veins with a thickness of 5 to 10 centimeters were of obvious industrial importance. Following this, the so-called Butugychag exploration was organized, headed by engineer-geologist I.E. Drabkin.

At the beginning of 1937, reconnaissance arrived at Butugychag...

According to B.L. Flerov and I.E. Drabkin's total tin reserves amounted to 10,000 tons. In the same year, the Butugychag mine was created, initially part of the Southern State Pedagogical Unit.

In the first year of its existence, the mine extracted 1,720 cubic meters of sand from colluvial placers and produced 21,080 kilograms of concentrate containing 65% tin.

The following ore was extracted from exploration workings: with a content of 1-4% tin - 90.5 tons, with a content of over 10% - 35 tons, with a content of 53% tin - 4.5 tons.

Work at the Butugychag field was carried out all year round.

In 1938, according to the plans of the Dalstroy management, the Butugychag mine was supposed to produce “57% of the annual tin mining program” of the state trust.

On April 17, 1938, a team was created consisting of engineers and topographers, whose task was to collect materials for drawing up a design building for the construction of a tin ore plant.

The team made a preliminary (approximate) calculation of the plant's population. “We accept,” it was noted, “that the main (quantitative expression) workforce for the entire existence of the enterprise will be provided by camp workers... The payroll of the mine is accepted as 600 people (approximately) of which: civilians - 20%, or 120 people, camp prisoners 80 % or 480 people.”

The total number of prisoners employed in production work at the plant was supposed to be 1,146 people.

In the summer of 1938, tin ore veins called “Carmen”, “Jose”, “Aida” and others were also developed at the Butugychag mine... In 1940, a crushing plant was put into operation, giving it the name “Carmen”...

The Bacchanka enrichment plant, which came into operation with a total capacity of 200 tons per day, became one of the largest in Dalstroy. During 1940, it processed 61.1 thousand tons of ore...

The factory was staffed mainly by female prisoners...

Batskevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, head of the construction site at the Bacchante factory. August 1940

Since August 1941, the “Bacchante” enrichment plant began to be called the Chapaev factory (the Chapaev enrichment plant on 02/01/50 was subordinate to the Tenkinsky GPU, on 10/01/50 it was part of the Butugychag plant) ... “This year a completely new log barracks of good quality for 1800 people. The remaining barracks have been renovated. The dining room, bathhouse, and disinfection chamber are prepared for winter...”

In February 1948, lag department No. 4 of special camp No. 5 - Coastal camp (Berlaga) was organized at the mine. At this time, uranium ore mining had already begun here.

In this regard, on the basis of the uranium deposit, plant No. 1 was organized, which, in addition to Butugychag, included plant No. 2 (Sugun in Yakutia) and plant No. 3 (Severny in Chukotka). On January 1, 1950, the camp department for servicing plant No. 1 numbered 2,243 people.

Tin mining also continued, but rates were declining. In 1950, just over 18 tons were mined here.

According to archival data published in the press, in 1951, 11,476 people were employed in construction and mining work in the entire first department of Dalstroy (and then a hydrometallurgical plant with a capacity of 100 tons of uranium ore per day was being built at Butugychag): 3,313 of them were at plant No. 1 .

In these ovens, by hand

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

Quiet, inconspicuous

Quiet, unnoticed, but painful death lay on these iron pallets. It was on them that the atomic sword of the thrice-damned evil empire was forged. Millions (!!!) of people paid with their lives for the medieval nonsense of idiots who imagined themselves to be big politicians.

Butugychag, cemetery

Prisoners made up 82.8% of the total number of workers. As of January 1, 1952, the number of employees in the First Department of Dalstroy increased to 14,790 people.

Then the decline in uranium ore mining began, and by the beginning of 1953 there were 6,130 people in management.

In 1954, 840 people worked at the Butugychag mine...

I came across a cemetery. Quite small, no more than a couple of dozen graves. It became clear from the inscriptions that it was not prisoners who were buried here.

One of the signs read: “died in the line of duty.” The fires almost completely destroyed all the tombstones, leaving only the metal ones located to the south. The most recent grave dates back to 55.

These photographs [above] were published in materials about Butugychag in regional newspapers as evidence that in the 40s. in this camp some medical or other research experiments were carried out on people, which was supposedly confirmed by the sawed-off skulls.

However, this statement is absolutely unsubstantiated and, most likely, a clever invention of businessmen hungry for “sensations.” Moreover, it is blasphemy and mockery of the ashes of the dead, since human remains were specially removed from the ground and put on display, as it were.

It is quite possible that they were sawn apart after extraction, and the holes in them (supposedly from a bullet) were made artificially to make the photograph seem even more “scary”.

My statement that no experiments were carried out on people in Butugychag, and, moreover, prisoners were not shot here, is based on personal research of the territory of the mine-camp, all the surviving buildings and cemeteries.

As a result of the examination, no evidence (signs) of experimental research activities on prisoners was found, that is, appropriate premises for conducting this work, any medical equipment, etc.

And my conclusion is simple: why experiment with something in such a wilderness, if this work can be carried out in clinics in cities that are more suitable and equipped with technology. It is absurd today to consider, firstly, the people whose descendants we, so “humane” and “smart” are, to be barbarians, and secondly, to so easily assert about “secret” experiments on people.

But they simply couldn’t shoot slaves here, since in Dalstroy, in simple terms, there were special points for carrying out death sentences (Magadan, “Maldyak”, “Serpantinka”)

(I risk disagreeing with this text. Almost all known photos of the remains in Butugychag have sawed-off skulls. Both skulls dug up by animals, and in graves. This is not found anywhere in other places of mass graves. Considering that the graves were just “material”, dust, then it is quite possible to assume that parts of organs or entire organs were extracted as “raw materials" for experiments and research on the mainland, where they were transported by plane. It is quite possible that the material was taken from people who were still alive - for the purity of the experiment. This was a time of large-scale study of the effects of radiation on people and the party elite were keen on finding ways for longevity. For example, the consequence of this was the creation of powerful institutes of gerontology in the USSR, which were puzzled by the problems of longevity of party bosses. And there is no doubt that they did not stand on ceremony with the experimental subjects. When similar experiments of the Germans and Japanese are described - there is no doubt. When in the Union with its equally cruel regime, whim immediately begins - compiler's note)

Butugychag, former factory 1993

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

I was able to interview one of the very few surviving eyewitnesses of camp life on Butugychag, who lives in Magadan. Now I saw with my own eyes the very weather that killed so many people there. People who were loved by their parents, girlfriends, children, friends... This eyewitness's name was Andrei Vasilyevich Kravtsov. He was fortunate to work in the “clean” room of a uranium mine, where he packaged ore, purified from impurities, to be sent for further processing, probably at processing plants north of Chelyabinsk.

His comrades were not so lucky.

Those who ended up working in the mine and in the crusher that crushed piles of uranium into sand inhaled so much uranium dust into their lungs that they became fatally ill with lung cancer after just two months of work, and after another couple of months they died.

Kravtsov couldn’t talk about it for a long time and simply burst into tears, noting: “Butugychag is the most terrible of all places on earth, and this is where I ended up.”

Approaching the old prison-built road to the camp, we passed an abandoned collective farm poultry farm. According to a local Magadan story, a uranium mine was converted into a poultry farm, but then abandoned due to the fact that the birds there were radioactive. The truth differed little from the tale; the level of radioactivity was actually very high, although the poultry farm was not set up at the mine itself, but eight kilometers from it. And even at such a distance, the bird was radioactive, which is why the entire facility had to be abandoned before construction was fully completed.

Once upon a time, I specifically asked a physicist friend how dangerous it was to visit such a place. He replied that you can come there and it is not dangerous, but it is better not to stay there even for a few days and you need to stay away from mines and buildings. However, it was these very buildings that I was looking for. And Kravtsov lived there for several years...

I was struck by how difficult it was to break through the virgin snow, and I remembered Shalamov’s story about teams of prisoners clearing roads in waist-deep snow. It must have been terribly difficult. As time passed, we also reached a critical point.

Time was running out, and common sense dictated to me that I had to return. I told Alexander about this. And I heard in response: “You’re right, but going down is faster and easier than going uphill, we only have to go a little further.” Which is what we did; having delayed beyond measure, we still saw the gloomy silhouette of the mine.

We were already walking, staggering from fatigue, and besides, there were many obstacles hidden under the snow that we kept tripping over. Near the mine itself, I fell into uranium sand, in that very place with a high level of radioactive radiation. But after all, it wasn’t enriched uranium...

So I ended up where Kravtsov went through such terrible times. The crushing equipment has been gone for a long time, but the entire workshop has an ominous and overwhelming appearance. How much suffering has been experienced here! Next to the crushing shop we found a chemical processing room where Kravtsov worked for a short time. Everything looked exactly as he said, and above the chemical processing shop there was a packaging shop, where Kravtsov worked for most of his time.

It got dark and it became difficult to take photographs. We began to descend back to the Ural. The descent is only theoretically faster than the ascent; already at the very beginning of our return we were completely exhausted. Alexander said: “Now we’ll see if we can return at all. I hope the pictures were worth the pain.” He wasn't joking at all.

It was late evening when we finally got back. We were completely exhausted and on the last stage of our journey we could only cover about 50 meters between rest stops. When we saw the hunters remaining in the Ural, one of them shouted: “I will kill you! Where have you been! We already wanted to go save you!”

Staggering, we climbed into the kung on the Ural, it was warm there, and hot soup and a sea of ​​vodka were waiting for us. After some time, the hunter who met us said: “Jens, now you have pictures of real local conditions, and now only you have them. Other explorers come here only in the summer or after the very first snowfall. Some people may not see the difference, but we see it!”

Butugychag - crushing shop

Concentrating factories of Dalstroy NKVD

Kolyma: Organ of the Main Directorate for Construction of the Far North. Magadan: Soviet Kolyma, 1946
A special issue of the Kolyma magazine is dedicated to the development of the Far North and the construction carried out in this region of the USSR during the 15 years of the existence of the Dalstroy NKVD camp system.

Slave labor of political prisoners played a major role in the development of the Far North. The publication “Kolyma” (1946) is dedicated to the successes and the new five-year plan in the development of this extremely difficult climate region, the extraction of minerals, the construction of mining and processing enterprises, the introduction of new, more advanced technology, the development of energy, transport and communications, and folk art. , education and sports.

Some materials and articles talk about the mining of gold, coal and other minerals, as well as fur, and reindeer breeding. The history of the founding of Magadan and its daily life are covered.

A large amount of photographic material and drawings tells about different aspects of life and economy in Kolyma. On the first pages there are two large portraits: I. Stalin and L. Beria.

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

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

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

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

P. Martynov, prisoner of the Kolyma camps numbered 3-2-989, points to the direct physical extermination of Butugychag prisoners that took place: “Their remains were buried at the Shaitan pass. Despite the fact that, to hide traces of crimes, the place was cleared from time to time from the remains of animals dragged from the glacier at the pass, human bones are still found there over a huge area...”

Perhaps that’s where we need to look for the adit under the letter “C”?

We managed to obtain interesting information from the editorial office of the newspaper “Leninskoe Znamya” in Ust-Omchug (now the newspaper is called “Tenka”), where a large mining and processing plant is located - the Tenkinsky GOK, to which “Butugychag” belonged.

Journalists gave me a note from Semyon Gromov, former deputy director of the mining and processing plant. The note touched on a topic that interested me. But perhaps the price of this information was Gromov’s life.

Here is the text of this note:

“The daily “departure” for Tenlag was 300 prisoners. The main reasons are hunger, disease, fights between prisoners and simply “shooting at the convoy.” At the Tymoshenko mine, an OP was organized - a health center for those who had already “made it.” This point, of course, did not improve anyone’s health, but some professor worked there with the prisoners: he walked around and drew circles with a pencil on the prisoners’ uniforms - these will die tomorrow. By the way, on the other side of the highway, on a small plateau, there is a strange cemetery. It’s strange because everyone buried there had their skulls sawed off. Isn’t this related to professorial work?”

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

“Together with Ivan we celebrated the death of Stalin. When the mournful music began to play, there was a general, extraordinary joy. Everyone hugged and kissed each other like on Easter. And flags appeared on the barracks. Red Soviet flags, but without mourning ribbons. There were many of them, and they fluttered boldly and cheerfully in the wind. It’s funny that the Russian residents of Harbin hung a flag here and there—pre-revolutionary Russian, white, blue, and red. And where did the matter and paint come from? There was a lot of red in the EHF. The authorities did not know what to do - after all, there were about 50 thousand prisoners on Butugychag, and there were hardly 120-150 soldiers with machine guns. Ax! What a joy it was! ". A. Zhigulin.

THE BUILDER'S WORD

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

“This mine was a complex complex: factories - sorting and processing, Bremsberg, motor-car, thermal power plant. Sumy pumps were installed in a chamber carved into the rock. The adits have passed. They built a village of two-story log houses. The Moscow architect from the old Russian nobles, Konstantin Shchegolev, decorated them with pilasters. He cut the capitals himself. There were first-class specialists in the camp. We, I write this with full right, imprisoned engineers and workers, as well as excellent carpenters, from among the collective farmers who completed their sentences and were not allowed to go home, became the main builders of Butugychag."
Gabriel Kolesnikov.

DECEPTION OF THE ALLIES

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

In Irkutsk, US Vice President Wallace gave a speech. . .

“I remember his arrival well. He visited the mines of the Chai-Uryinskaya Valley, named after Chkalov, Chai-Uryu, Bolshevik and Komsomolets. They all merged into a huge production complex. It was possible to determine the approximate territory of the mine and its name only from the administrative buildings and houses for the so-called civilians located along the route. Before the arrival of the distinguished guest, the Komsomolets mine had not removed gold from one of the washing devices for two days, and the excavator operator (prisoner) was temporarily dressed in a suit borrowed from a civilian engineer. True, then he was severely beaten for his clothes stained with fuel oil.

I also remember sawed-down watchtowers at numerous camp sites. For three days, from morning to evening, the entire contingent of prisoners was in a supine position, in small valleys that were not visible from the highway, under the protection of riflemen and authorities from the VOKhR, dressed in civilian clothes and without rifles. We ate dry rations and returned to the camp site only for the night. The paths and passages to the camps were sprinkled with white sand, the beds in the wards were covered with new woolen blankets and clean linen for the day - the distinguished guest would hardly have come to our barracks at night, but for us prisoners, his arrival was an unprecedented three-day rest from the hard, exhausting long-term everyday life."
Zherebtsov (Odessa).

Prisoners at work in Butugychag. Photograph from the history department of the House of Culture in Ust-Omchug

DUALITY OF BEING OF THE ERA

What you will read now eloquently and without words testifies what a puzzle arises in the younger generations when looking at that terrible time, and what pliable material they are for creating in their heads “the blissful image of the romantic grandfather Stalin,” when “their hearts are light.” from a cheerful song."
But for some this is extremely beneficial. Someone wants to enter heaven again at someone else's expense. In general, I noticed long ago that ardent lovers of Stalin love him for others. And at the same time they “forget” to love him for themselves...

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT ABOUT GEOLOGISTS

... Having studied the article “Uranium for a superpower” in the magazine “Mineral” No. 1 of 1998, authored by the leading geologist of the Chaun-Chukotka mining and geological enterprise, honorary citizen of the city of Pevek I.V. Tibildova learned that geologists (just like others) “were suicide bombers of the system. How many of them were here who received lethal doses of radiation “at a combat post” can hardly be established reliably”...

…. When studying geology, we rarely turn to outstanding geologists who, with their life experience, can serve as an example for developing respect and love for this profession. Their professional skill and service to the fatherland can be a role model, instilling a sense of patriotism, pride and gratitude towards them.

Overcoming the difficulties associated with the profession of a geologist, making courageous decisions, and taking a principled position make these people devoted to their profession until the end of their lives. Their merits in exploration of deposits perpetuate their names for future descendants.

Faced with the historical biography of the head of the Irbinsk geological exploration party V.V. Bogatsky (1943), I decided to dedicate this essay to him. To do this, I needed to carefully work with the archive and study many documents located in the museum.

During the same period, our museum was visited by a famous person, a member of the Union of Journalists of Russia, Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Khakassia Oles Grigorievich the Greek. Its goal was to work with archival documents related to the life and years of repression of V.V. Bogatsky. He is the author of the book “Cruel Uranium” and continues to accumulate information about repressed geologists.

Bogatsky’s personality attracted me not only because of the significance of his great work left on Irbinsk land, but also because he was twice repressed. His fate was affected in the same way as the fates of the most prominent luminaries of geological science, such as L.I. Shamansky, K.S. Filatov, M.P. Rusakov and the entire geological industry of Russia.

Peering at the faded photograph of the graduates of geological engineers of the Siberian Geological Prospecting Institute in 1932, one is amazed at the cruel fate of the repressed specialists, their background of life and work, the courage of Soviet geologists during the Stalinist period, which now no longer requires special comments, but is also not subject to thoughtless oblivion.

I AM AMAZED BY THE FACT OF REPRESSION AND HOW IT WAS POSSIBLE WITH SUCH MERIT OF A GEOLOGIST...

Rebrova Nadezhda Igorevna, student of 11 “B” class of Irbinsk secondary school No. 6, Fragments from the work “Personality in Geology” at the All-Russian competition of historical works of high school students “Man in history. Russia XX century”, B-Irba settlement, 2006.
Work leader: Olga Sergeevna Grankina, biology teacher and leader of the “Young Geologist” club. (6) (7) (8)

Gizi Georgy Petrovich from Odessa;

Pimenidi Fedor Konstantinovich, a native of the village of Beshkardash in Abkhazia;

Tambulidi Alexander Georgievich, born in Uzbek Kokand, but lived in Tashkent;

Feofanidis Alexander Pavlovich, a native of the city of Surmene, a resident of Batumi;

Feohari Mark Alexandrovich, a native of Tbilisi and a resident of Moscow.

Further along the highway, towards the village of Omchak, many Greeks were serving a special settlement, who first served ten years in camps and then were left in Kolyma. Dalstroy was reluctant to part with acclimatized personnel. Among them are three natives of the Krasnodar Territory, whose families were deported to Kazakhstan in 1942:

Deliboranidi Konstantin Anastasovich from Adler;

Popandopulo Dmitry Feodosievich from the Crimean region and

Chikuridi Georgy Khristoforovich from the village of Lesnoye.

All survived and returned to their families in the mid-50s.

Near the village of Omchak, at the Timoshenko mine, he served a special settlement after the German camp Panteley Panayotovich Karalefterov, born in 1924, a native of the village of Grekomaisky, Natukhaevsky district, Krasnodar Territory. An agent from among his “colleagues”, special settlers, a certain Aleksandrov, was assigned to follow him. He preserved for history some of P. Karalefterov’s statements. So, on November 29, 1946, in the evening, P. Karalefterov sang a ditty in the barracks:

Now, guys, we should

Invite Stalin to visit...

Then Panteley switched to prose: “If only I could bring him here and give him a dry crust, I would take it away from him, and then he would know how they live in the world. And then I would drive him up the hill to collect firewood and say: you bastard, come on, otherwise I’ll quickly break off your ribs!”

It’s strange, but he didn’t get anything for this. That’s it, really: they won’t send you further!

...This was not my last trip to Kolyma. Therefore, there is still a chance to thoroughly get acquainted with Nelkoba and the numerous mines around it, with the Matrosov mine, where the third ore deposit in the world in terms of reserves is registered (about 2000 tons of gold). I set myself the task of definitely visiting Omchak and Kulu. And then it will be possible to say that I drove along the entire Kolyma “Golden Ring”.

A. Sechkin promised to drop everything and take a thorough drive to his favorite places.

I somehow felt in a special way now how dear these places are to me! - he admitted when we (I almost wrote: “tired, but happy”) returned to Magadan.

In the 60s they built launch silos for ballistic missiles. Essentially the same prisoners... Freedom comes at a very high price.

Butugychag(local name "Death Valley") - Separate Camp Point No. 12 Ex. PO Box 14 GULAG.

Butugychag was directly subordinate to the Directorate. PO Box 14 (engaged in the extraction and enrichment of uranium for Soviet atomic weapons).
The Separate Camp Point No. 12, organized in 1950, included camp units (mines) located around the Butugychag ridge, along Nelkobe and in the Okhotnik spring area, as well as a uranium ore enrichment plant: combine. No. 1.
(Collapse)
The total number of workers employed in mining works is building. work and logging, as of 05/01/50 - 1204 people, of which 321 were women, 541 convicted of criminal offenses.
In the period from 1949 to 1953. On the territory of the camp, the cassiterite mine “Gornyak” of the Tenkinsky ITL DALSTROI worked, developing the Butugychag deposit, discovered by B. L. Flerov in 1936.

The place got its name when hunters and nomadic tribes of reindeer herders from the Egorov, Dyachkov and Krokhalev families, wandering along the Detrin River, came across a huge field strewn with human skulls and bones and, when the reindeer in the herd began to suffer from a strange disease - their hair initially fell out on legs, and then the animals lay down and could not get up. Mechanically, this name was transferred to the remains of the Beria camps of the 14th branch of the Gulag.

What was Kolyma like in those distant years?
First of all, it, like the entire region, differed from other regions of the country in its oversaturation of prisoners. They were everywhere, at all enterprises. Early in the morning, small columns of women and men walked in different directions of Magadan, accompanied by armed guards. They were sent to institutions, construction sites and other work sites.

In 1954, Butugychag was in a fever. The mine was living out its last days. His reserves were depleted. The metal content in the ore dropped to the minimum industrial level. Mining was carried out in only one area, located at the top of a granite divide at an altitude of one thousand three hundred meters above sea level.

To the west of the mining site, in the valley of the right tributary of the Butugychag River, there was a mining village and a men’s camp of Bandera prisoners convicted under Article 58 and serving the mine. On the other side of the site in the east, in the valley of the Vakhanka River, there is a concentration plant named after Chapaev and a women’s camp. Women were imprisoned under the same article.
The ore mined at the site was loaded into trolleys, attached to an electric locomotive, and it delivered them to the Bremsberg - a steeply inclined two-track rail descent of trolleys on a winch. Teams of women worked on the ore carrier and Bremsberg. Each such brigade had one or two guards. The work of female prisoners was especially difficult. They unhooked two or three trolleys loaded with ore from the ore carrier, and manually rolled them onto the rotary disk of the Bremsberg. It happened that when the trolleys were launched, they went off the rails. Then the whole brigade began to roll them onto the rails with a “one-two-take.” From the outside it seemed that they were doing it quickly and efficiently. One can imagine how difficult this was to do, because 0.7 cubic meters of ore were loaded into the trolley, which was about two tons plus the weight of the trolley itself.

Women prisoners were strictly forbidden to have intimate relations with civilian men. This was strictly monitored by the camp guards. The civilian men who entered the mine were also made to understand that they would be severely punished for having an intimate relationship with enemies of the people. However, despite the prohibitions and strictures, such connections existed, as evidenced by the large children's plant at the women's camp.

The small mining village had a post office, a store, a canteen, a club and a sports ground. There were telephone communications and local radio broadcasting. The village was illuminated by a diesel power plant. That is, there was everything necessary for people to live a normal life. Civilian mine workers and VOKhRA employees lived in the village. There was also a camp nearby where 700-800 Western Ukrainian prisoners were kept. They lived in anxious anticipation of the amnesty decree. Somehow it was known that a government decree on amnesty for prisoners under Article 58 who had one-third of the credits had been ready for six months already.

Shortly before my arrival at the mine, the “aces of diamonds” were removed from the prisoners. "Aces of Diamonds" are square pieces of black fabric with prisoner numbers on them. They were sewn onto the visor of a hat, the back of a padded jacket and trousers.

The prisoners told how difficult it was for them in the first years of imprisonment in Kolyma. Then they were guarded by former soldiers, many of whom fought against Bandera. Early in the morning, when they took the prisoners out of the camp to work, they ordered the entire column to kneel down and stand like that for an hour or two. There was a saying in those days: “A step to the right is a provocation, a step to the left is agitation, a jump up is an escape.” I'm shooting." The soil in Kolyma is hard and rocky. You can’t stand on your knees for a long time without moving. As soon as one of the prisoners moved, he received a kick from the guard with a forged boot. There were no such atrocities in the fifties. The guards changed, and another time came.

The prisoners spoke very evilly about Stalin. They said that in Zapadynitsyn they were tolerant of the portraits of Lenin hanging on the walls. But as soon as someone hung up a portrait of Stalin, he was no longer alive in this world. Portraits of Hitler were also not tolerated, but some people had them hanging. By the way, they did not like their relatives from Eastern Ukraine either. Almost none of the prisoners said that they were convicted undeservedly. They believed that they had fully atoned for their guilt before the Soviet Union. They remembered how many of them arrived at Upper and Lower Butugychag and how many remained in the hollows in the cemeteries.

One should not think that in those years life was gray and gloomy. Maybe there were fewer newspapers and magazines then, libraries were poorer and there was no television, but people followed the events taking place in the country and region with no less interest. There was a lively discussion about the news heard on the radio. People lived then the same way as they do now. There were everyday life, there were holidays, there were tears and dancing. Only each era has its own songs.

By the end of the summer, the mine was plagued by serious accidents. The situation became nervous and difficult. Curses hung over the mine. Even nature itself struck him this year, as if finishing him off. The weather was beautiful and sunny all summer, but one night there was such a downpour that a small harmless stream caused a lot of trouble. The water in it swelled so much overnight that it washed away the industrial equipment. In the morning, when the rain stopped, the latter was almost completely covered with pebbles and sand. The failure of an industrial device was a significant loss for the mine.
The mine ended its existence at the end of 1954. During its short life, Butugychag gave the country a lot of tin and uranium. It was said that the first domestic atomic bomb was made from uranium from this mine. As a monument to a bygone era of the unique Kolyma civilization, gloomy ruins remained in that place. This is the fate of all deposits in the world, no matter what reserves their subsoil has. A new era began in the mid-fifties. The heyday of life in Kolyma, which lasted about thirty-five years.