The Most Brutal Labor Camps In The Soviet Union - Vorkuta Gulag

 

The Vorkuta Gulag was one of the largest camps in the GULAG system, with huge amount of prisoners at its peak in 1951, including Soviet and foreign prisoners, including prisoners of war, dissidents, political prisoners ("enemies of the state") and common criminals.  As forced labor in coal mining.

Without proper food or wages, they performed a lot of work that an ordinary man could not afford, in unbearable environmental conditions, without any protection, and between 1931-62, their death toll was two hundred thousand (200,000).  ) is estimated to be about

Some of the political prisoners in these camps, who had been there for over 20 years, were highly educated and had been sent here by the Stalinist government for Nazi ties and other crimes.  Others were sent here because of their anti-Stalin political views.  Those who raised their voices against the injustices of the Soviet government were also sent here, and some of them remained in this place even after the evacuation of these camps, and their descendants are still there today.

The Vorkuta Gulag camps were located about 1000 miles north of the Arctic Circle, about 1000 miles from Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.  Over a million 'workers' belonging to 130 camps are regularly employed in the coal mines here.  Known as 'Vorkuta Gulag workers or prisoners', they were not even provided with basic equipment to protect themselves from the extreme cold.  They worked very long hours a day and did not receive proper food or remuneration.

During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, in the 1840s, Russia was looking for a suitable, unpopulated plot of land to house its political prisoners.  He abandoned the idea as it proved difficult to survive in Vorkuta's challenging environmental conditions.

However, later Russian nobles opposed it on two grounds.  First, they saw that if one of their own class suddenly became a political prisoner, they could arrange to place him there safely, and second, that they could locate unpaid laborers in the natural resource-rich Vorkuta to exploit its natural resources.  For industrialization if possible.  So they had to guess

Coal was discovered in the Republic of Komi in 1930.  This gave new life to the idea of ​​labor camps in connection with Vorkuta.

The Vorkuta Gulag concept quickly became popular among Russian rulers.  The reason for this was that by the mid-1930s the coal supply in the area was very good.  By 1938 it served more than 15,000 prisoners and by 1946 it exceeded sixty thousand (60,000).

Initially, the prisoners who reached Vorkuta did not have proper accommodation.  They had to live in tents.  Built around coal mines, these had no proper facilities to protect against the cold and consisted of things like donkey beds and buckets for embalming.  After the walls of these were broken, they had to be covered with mud.

Life as a prisoner in Vorkuta was not easy for many.  Prisoners were transported to it in overcrowded steam wagons.  The authorities called them 'white coal'.  Several people died en route, and one or two bodies were removed from almost every stop.  However, the authorities tried to convince the prisoners who were going to serve here that serving in this way was a proud service to Russia and would lead them to happiness and humanity.

The biggest challenge for those visiting Vorkuta was the extreme cold.  Winter lasts for about 10 months of the year and at its peak the temperature drops below minus 40 degrees Celsius.  Dangerous blizzards also occur regularly.  The dogs taken to protect the prisoners and their guards start barking in fear of an approaching snowstorm.

When that happens, the prisoners have to dig the ground where they are, make pits, and stay in them.  At one point an avalanche buried 150 prisoners alive and the guards were more concerned about their lost clothes than their lives, a prisoner later told the media.

Workers who worked at Vorkuta were not provided with proper gloves and footwear.  They all had to wake up at five in the morning and work 12 hours a day.  Because of the extreme cold, the prisoners' organs often turned to stone and rotted.  Those who tried to escape from this area were caught, brutally beaten, stripped, separated from others, and imprisoned.

Joseph Satlin died in 1953.  . By this time the prisoners were tired of working in Vorkuta they took advantage of Stalin's death to walk out and protest. They went on a general strike in July of that year, but on August 1 the authorities opened fire on them, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.

But they did not give up the fight, proving that unity can defeat any force.  This soon marked the end of the Vorkuta Gulag, which was closed in 1962.  At that time, the number of people who died while working there had exceeded twenty lakhs.

After the Vorkuta Gulag was closed, the prisoners left the area, but some of them had nowhere to go.  They stayed in Vorkuta, settling it.  After that, some people from all over Russia also came to this place based on economic reasons.

With the departure of the prisoners, the Soviet authorities faced a big problem.  That is because Vorkuta had become a coal supply center for Russia at that time.  There was no way to close the coal mines there.  Because of this they had to send laborers there paying huge wages.  Because of this, slowly Vorkuta became a city with schools, churches and hospitals.  At that time there were 13 coal mines and by the 1980s the population had increased to two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000).

Only 4 coal mines are operating today.  Some of its places are completely deserted, giving it the appearance of a 'ghost' town.  Its population is now down to sixty thousand (60,000).  Although land and land prices are low, its people have moved to places with more facilities.  The reason for this is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the authorities' attention to the area decreased