You can visit the camps along the "Dead Road" not only live, but also virtually by studying satellite images or detailed military maps. Thanks to the cartographic data we have collected, the considerable scale of the construction of camps and the railway has become obvious, and so far we have been able to describe only an insignificant part of the entire complex.

Archival military topographic maps

Archival military maps used in the creation of our museum were made in the 60s and 70s, which is almost 20 years since the cessation of work in the camp complex. Despite this, both the railway itself and most of the camps are marked on the maps, which could not but serve us in good stead when planning expeditions. Separate camps, located at a distance of 5-10 km from each other, are indicated on the maps as “settlements”, “villages (non-residential)”, or “barracks”, next to it there is a mark indicating at what kilometer of the railway the camp is located.

At the moment, we have studied 44 scanned map sheets, including the entire segment of the Dead Road from Salekhard to Igarka. You can look at a single map made up of these disparate pieces here (Old military ...)

The area around Ermakovo and Barabanikha on military maps of the 70s

Detailed satellite imagery

Thanks to old military topographic maps, we knew that there were two camps to the north of the Turukhan River (a camp at km 48 and a camp at km 51), which are not visible on the publicly available site with satellite photographs. Due to lack of time and the fact that we did not know if there was anything left in these camps, we did not visit them during the last expedition. Multispectral images from the Landsat satellite lifted the veil - at least one of these camps is well preserved. Therefore, we decided to purchase detailed panoramic images of this camp, taken from the Worldview-1 satellite. We needed to find out what it really looks like there. It turned out, the truth: several barracks are untouched. In the northern part of the camp, a quarry is clearly visible, connected to the railway by a lift. The fully processed image can be studied in this window (Detailed satellite...)

We began to study the camp on the 169th km on the Bludnaya River in the same way as we did to the study of the two previous camps. It can be found on a topographic map, but we were unable to reach it due to a broken motorboat. The mysterious camp was in our minds, so we acquired pictures taken from the QuickBird satellite. Nothing was visible in the picture. after a long study, we managed to make out one single building (initially it was outside the camp), everything else was destroyed. Even the borders of the camp were indistinguishable - everything was overgrown.

The remains of the Prodigal camp in the photograph from the QuickBird satellite. (© COPYRIGHT 2015 DigitalGlobe, Inc.)

On July 11, 1929, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the use of the labor of criminal prisoners", according to which the maintenance of all those convicted for a period of 3 years or more was transferred to the OGPU. On April 25, 1930, by order of the OGPU No. 130/63, in pursuance of the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “Regulations on Correctional Labor Camps” dated April 7, 1930, the Office of Correctional Labor Camps of the OGPU (ULAG OGPU) was organized (SU USSR. 1930. No. 22. S. 248 ). On October 1, 1930, the ULAG OGPU was transformed into the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps of the OGPU (Gulag). On July 10, 1934, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR was created, which included five main departments. One of them was the Main Directorate of Camps (Gulag). In 1934, the escort troops of the USSR were reassigned to the Internal Guard of the NKVD. On October 27, 1934, all correctional labor institutions of the People's Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR moved to the Gulag.

On January 4, 1936, the Engineering and Construction Department of the NKVD was formed, on January 15, 1936 - the Department of Special Construction, on March 3, 1936 - the Main Directorate for the Construction of Highways (GUSHOSDOR). Under the jurisdiction of the NKVD were such enterprises as the Main Directorate for the Construction of Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises, Glavgidrostroy, Glavpromstroy, Dalstroy (Main Directorate for the Construction of the Far North) and others. The Gulag was disbanded in accordance with the order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs No. Ministers of the USSR No. 44-16 of January 13, 1960 and in connection with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of January 13, 1960 "On the abolition of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs."

According to official data, in total, in the system of camps, prisons and colonies of the OGPU and the NKVD in 1930-1956, from 0.5 to 2.5 million people were kept at a time (the maximum was reached in the early 1950s as a result of the post-war tightening of criminal legislation and the social consequences of the famine 1946-1947).

Compared to the civilian sector, the work of the prisoners was inefficient, and the productivity was negligible. In particular, the head of the Gulag, Nasedkin, wrote on May 13, 1941 that “the output per worker in the Gulag for construction and installation work is 23 rubles a day, and in the civilian sector for construction and installation work, 44 rubles.” The labor of prisoners brought an insignificant and often very unnecessary resource.

A team of Lithuanian exiles at a logging site in the Mansky District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. 1950

Barrack of the 3rd camp of the Leningrad Region No. 4 Belbaltlag. Pos. Segezha, Medvezhyegorsk district of the Karelian ASSR. Photo 1936-1938.

Warehouse of the Siblag branch. Photo. 1930s - 1940s

Servicemen of the 79th Aldan division of the OGPU troops. Mine Nezametny, Yakutia. 1926

Performance by the Rechlag amateur art group. Late 1940s - early 1950s. Vorkuta (Komi ASSR)

Performance by the dance group of amateur performances Craft No. 2. Ukhtizhemlag (OLP No. 10), 1940

A group of Poles-special settlers. Karabash, Chelyabinsk region, 1941

7th All-camp rally of drummers of the White Sea-Baltic Combine (Beltbaltlag). After 1935. Far right - M.I. Dengin. Pos. Bear Mountain, Karelian ASSR

Bamlag propaganda team. Photo 1933

Alexander Kindergarten. 1935

Ensemble of accordionists at the EHF. Inta, Komi ASSR. Photo from the early 1950s

Artists of the camp theater. In the second row, the first from the left is V.Ya. Dvorzhetsky. Vaigach expedition of the OGPU (Vaigach Island). 1931

In the club of the expedition there are coffins with the bodies of prisoners who died on a business trip Belyi Mys. 03/29/1934

At the camp bakery. Camp Sudostroy, Ukhtpechlag

Unloading coal. Ukhtpechlag. Photo 1938

A group of prisoners and employees of the Velsk branch of the Northern Railway ITL. August 1949, Art. Velsk, Arkhangelsk region.

A group of Polish special settlers. Pos. Yuzhno-Vagransky, Serov District, Sverdlovsk Region. November 1940

A group of camp administration workers and prisoners. Camp Sudostroy, Ukhtpechlag

Children of special settlers who grew up on the shores of the Laptev Sea. Yakutia. Photo from the early 1950s.

Children of special settlers. Pos. Peschanoe, Surgut district. Photo 1936–1937

Women are prisoners of the Novo-Ivanovsky branch of Siblag. Photo 1940s

Lieutenant of the Internal Troops of the NKVD

A group of special settlers. Pos. Yuzhno-Vagransky, Serov District, Sverdlovsk Region. 1940 or 1941

A group of exiled Lithuanian women at work in a forestry in the Irkutsk region. 1952

A group of exiled Lithuanians at work in the Yemelyanovsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. 1950s

A group of exiled Poles in a shoe shop. 1943, pos. Pervomaisk, Berezovsky District, Sverdlovsk Region

A group of exiled Poles at the funeral of Tadeusz Kondziolka. 1940s, Berezovsky, Sverdlovsk region.

Group portrait of employees of the Omsk Gubchek. 1920, Omsk. Among the persons depicted is Pyotr Yakovlevich Petrukho (1890-1930), in January-May 1920 an inspector and head of the department of the provincial committee.

Double portrait of E.P.Salyn with his wife. 1920. Photography. Eduard Petrovich Salyn (1894-1938) - an employee of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD

Prisoners and civilian employees on the construction of the railway Chum - Labytnangi. 1954

Imprisoned priests. The village of Spassk (Lugovoy camp, Kazakhstan), 1956.

imprisoned miners. Vaigach expedition of the OGPU (Vaigach Island). 1933. From left to right I.A.Gotsiridze, N.V.Kukuradze, I.A.Namidze.

A prisoner working in furniture workshops. Novo-Ivanovskoe branch of Siblag. Photo 1940s

Group 2 d.o Spitsino UNKVD 1938

NKVD officers

NKVD officers, mid-1930s

A.V. Mikhalev, head of the Kuznetsk resettlement center.

A.F.Toporkov, head of the EHF camp Sudostroy Ukhtpechlag.

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The history of the Gulag is closely intertwined with the entire Soviet era, but especially with its Stalin period. A network of camps stretched throughout the country. They were visited by a variety of groups of the population, accused under the famous 58th article. The Gulag was not only a system of punishment, but also a layer of the Soviet economy. Prisoners carried out the most ambitious projects

The birth of the Gulag

The future Gulag system began to take shape immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. During the Civil War, she began to isolate her class and ideological enemies in special concentration camps. Then this term was not shunned, since it received a truly monstrous assessment during the atrocities of the Third Reich.

At first, the camps were run by Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. The mass terror against the “counter-revolution” included total arrests of the wealthy bourgeoisie, manufacturers, landowners, merchants, church leaders, etc. Soon the camps were given over to the Cheka, whose chairman was Felix Dzerzhinsky. They organized forced labor. It was also necessary in order to raise the ruined economy.

If in 1919 there were only 21 camps on the territory of the RSFSR, then by the end of the Civil War there were already 122 of them. In Moscow alone there were seven such institutions, where prisoners from all over the country were brought. In 1919 there were more than three thousand of them in the capital. It was not yet the Gulag system, but only its prototype. Even then, a tradition developed, according to which, all activities in the OGPU were subject only to internal departmental acts, and not to general Soviet legislation.

The first forced labor camp in the Gulag system existed in emergency mode. The civil war led to lawlessness and violation of the rights of prisoners.

Solovki

In 1919, the Cheka created several in the north of Russia, or rather, in the Arkhangelsk province. Soon this network was called SLON. The abbreviation stood for "Northern Special Purpose Camps". The Gulag system in the USSR appeared even in the most remote regions of a large country.

In 1923, the Cheka was transformed into the GPU. The new department has distinguished itself by several initiatives. One of them was a proposal to establish a new forced camp on the Solovetsky archipelago, which was not far from those same Northern camps. Before that, there was an ancient Orthodox monastery on the islands in the White Sea. It was closed as part of the fight against the Church and the "priests".

This is how one of the key symbols of the Gulag appeared. It was the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp. His project was proposed by Joseph Unshlikht - one of the then leaders of the Cheka-GPU. His fate is significant. This man contributed to the development of a repressive system, of which he eventually became a victim. In 1938, he was shot at the famous Kommunarka training ground. This place was the dacha of Heinrich Yagoda, People's Commissar of the NKVD in the 30s. He, too, was shot.

Solovki became one of the main camps in the Gulag in the 1920s. According to the instructions of the OGPU, it was supposed to contain criminal and political prisoners. A few years after the emergence of Solovki, they grew, they had branches on the mainland, including in the Republic of Karelia. The Gulag system was constantly expanding with new prisoners.

In 1927, 12 thousand people were kept in the Solovetsky camp. The harsh climate and unbearable conditions led to regular deaths. During the entire existence of the camp, more than 7 thousand people were buried in it. At the same time, about half of them died in 1933, when famine raged throughout the country.

Solovki were known throughout the country. Information about problems inside the camp was tried not to be taken out. In 1929, Maxim Gorky, at that time the main Soviet writer, arrived in the archipelago. He wanted to check the conditions in the camp. The writer's reputation was impeccable: his books were printed in huge numbers, he was known as a revolutionary of the old school. Therefore, many prisoners pinned hope on him that he would make public everything that was happening within the walls of the former monastery.

Before Gorky ended up on the island, the camp went through a total cleaning and was put in a decent shape. The abuse of prisoners has ceased. At the same time, the prisoners were threatened that if they let Gorky know about their lives, they would be severely punished. The writer, having visited Solovki, was delighted with how prisoners are re-educated, taught to work and returned to society. However, at one of these meetings, in a children's colony, a boy approached Gorky. He told the famous guest about the abuses of the jailers: torture in the snow, overtime, standing in the cold, etc. Gorky left the barracks in tears. When he sailed to the mainland, the boy was shot. The Gulag system dealt harshly with any disgruntled prisoners.

Stalin's Gulag

In 1930, the Gulag system was finally formed under Stalin. She was subordinate to the NKVD and was one of the five main departments in this people's commissariat. Also in 1934, all correctional institutions, which had previously belonged to the People's Commissariat of Justice, moved to the Gulag. Labor in the camps was legally approved in the Correctional Labor Code of the RSFSR. Now numerous prisoners had to implement the most dangerous and grandiose economic and infrastructure projects: construction, digging canals, etc.

The authorities did everything to make the Gulag system in the USSR seem like a norm to free citizens. For this, regular ideological campaigns were launched. In 1931, the construction of the famous White Sea Canal began. It was one of the most significant projects of the first Stalinist five-year plan. The Gulag system is also one of the economic mechanisms of the Soviet state.

In order for the layman to learn in detail about the construction of the White Sea Canal in positive terms, the Communist Party instructed well-known writers to prepare a laudatory book. So the work "Stalin's Channel" appeared. A whole group of authors worked on it: Tolstoy, Gorky, Pogodin and Shklovsky. Of particular interest is the fact that the book spoke positively about bandits and thieves, whose labor was also used. The Gulag occupied an important place in the system of the Soviet economy. Cheap forced labor made it possible to implement the tasks of the five-year plans at an accelerated pace.

Political and criminals

The Gulag camp system was divided into two parts. It was a world of political and criminals. The last of them were recognized by the state as “socially close”. This term was popular in Soviet propaganda. Some criminals tried to cooperate with the camp administration in order to make their existence easier. At the same time, the authorities demanded loyalty and surveillance of the political from them.

Numerous "enemies of the people", as well as those convicted of imaginary espionage and anti-Soviet propaganda, had no opportunity to defend their rights. Most often they resorted to hunger strikes. With their help, political prisoners tried to draw the attention of the administration to the difficult living conditions, abuses and bullying of the jailers.

Solitary hunger strikes did not lead to anything. Sometimes the NKVD officers could only increase the suffering of the convict. To do this, plates with delicious food and scarce products were placed in front of the starving people.

Fight against protest

The camp administration could pay attention to the hunger strike only if it was massive. Any concerted action by the prisoners led to the fact that among them they were looking for instigators, who were then dealt with with particular cruelty.

For example, in Ukhtpechlage in 1937 a group of convicts for Trotskyism went on a hunger strike. Any organized protest was seen as counter-revolutionary activity and a threat to the state. This led to the fact that in the camps there was an atmosphere of denunciation and distrust of the prisoners to each other. However, in some cases, the organizers of hunger strikes, on the contrary, openly announced their initiative because of the simple desperation in which they found themselves. In Ukhtpechlag, the founders were arrested. They refused to testify. Then the NKVD troika sentenced the activists to death.

If the form of political protest in the Gulag was rare, then riots were commonplace. At the same time, their initiators were, as a rule, criminals. The convicts often became victims of criminals who carried out the orders of their superiors. Representatives of the underworld received exemption from work or occupied an inconspicuous position in the camp apparatus.

Skilled labor in the camp

This practice was also connected with the fact that the Gulag system suffered from shortcomings in professional personnel. Employees of the NKVD sometimes had no education at all. The camp authorities often had no choice but to put the convicts themselves in economic and administrative-technical positions.

At the same time, among the political prisoners there were a lot of people of various specialties. The "technical intelligentsia" was especially in demand - engineers, etc. In the early 1930s, these were people who had been educated in Tsarist Russia and remained specialists and professionals. In fortunate cases, such prisoners were even able to establish trusting relationships with the administration in the camp. Some of them remained in the system at the administrative level when they were released.

However, in the mid-1930s, the regime was tightened, which also affected highly qualified convicts. The position of specialists who were in the intra-camp world became completely different. The well-being of such people depended entirely on the nature and degree of depravity of a particular boss. The Soviet system created the Gulag system also in order to completely demoralize its opponents - true or imaginary. Therefore, there could be no liberalism towards prisoners.

Sharashki

More lucky were those specialists and scientists who fell into the so-called sharashki. These were scientific institutions of a closed type, where they worked on secret projects. Many famous scientists ended up in camps for their freethinking. For example, such was Sergei Korolev - a man who became a symbol of the Soviet conquest of space. Designers, engineers, people associated with the military industry got into sharashki.

Such institutions are reflected in the culture. The writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had been in a sharashka, many years later wrote the novel “In the First Circle”, where he described in detail the life of such prisoners. This author is best known for his other book, The Gulag Archipelago.

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, colonies and camp complexes had become an important element in many industrial sectors. The Gulag system, in short, existed wherever the slave labor of prisoners could be used. It was especially in demand in the mining and metallurgical, fuel and timber industries. Capital construction was also an important direction. Almost all large buildings of the Stalin era were erected by convicts. They were mobile and cheap labor.

After the end of the war, the role of the camp economy became even more important. The scope of forced labor has expanded due to the implementation of the atomic project and many other military tasks. In 1949, about 10% of the production in the country was created in the camps.

Unprofitability of camps

Even before the war, in order not to undermine the economic efficiency of the camps, Stalin abolished parole in the camps. At one of the discussions about the fate of the peasants who ended up in the camps after dispossession, he stated that it was necessary to come up with a new system of rewards for productivity in work, etc. Often, parole was waiting for a person who either distinguished himself by exemplary behavior, or became another Stakhanovite.

After Stalin's remark, the system of offsetting working days was abolished. According to it, prisoners reduced their term by going to work. The NKVD did not want to do this, since the refusal to pass tests deprived the prisoners of motivation to work diligently. This, in turn, led to a drop in the profitability of any camp. And yet the credits were cancelled.

It was the unprofitability of enterprises within the Gulag (among other reasons) that forced the Soviet leadership to reorganize the entire system, which had previously existed outside the legal framework, being under the exclusive jurisdiction of the NKVD.

The low efficiency of the work of prisoners was also associated with the fact that many of them had health problems. This was facilitated by a poor diet, difficult living conditions, bullying by the administration and many other hardships. In 1934, 16% of the prisoners were unemployed and 10% sick.

Liquidation of the Gulag

The abandonment of the Gulag took place gradually. The impetus for starting this process was the death of Stalin in 1953. The liquidation of the Gulag system was started just a few months after that.

First of all, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on a mass amnesty. Thus, more than half of the prisoners were released. As a rule, these were people whose term was less than five years.

At the same time, most political prisoners remained behind bars. The death of Stalin and the change of power instilled confidence in many prisoners that something would change soon. In addition, the prisoners began to openly resist the harassment and abuse of the camp authorities. So, there were several riots (in Vorkuta, Kengir and Norilsk).

Another important event for the Gulag was the XX Congress of the CPSU. It was addressed by Nikita Khrushchev, who shortly before that had won the inner-apparatus struggle for power. From the tribune, he also condemned the numerous atrocities of his era.

At the same time, special commissions appeared in the camps, which were engaged in reviewing the cases of political prisoners. In 1956 their number was three times less. The liquidation of the Gulag system coincided with its transfer to a new department - the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1960, the last head of the GUITK (Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps), Mikhail Kholodkov, was fired into the reserve.

The infamous period from 1930 to the 1950s is written in bloody ink in the history of the USSR. On October 1, 1930, the Gulag was established - the Main Directorate of Camps. Everywhere in all the republics of the USSR, the GULAG had a network of forced labor camps, in which for the period 1930-1953. visited by about 6.5 million people. Unable to withstand the inhuman conditions, about 1.6 million people died there.

The prisoners did not just serve their sentences - their labor was used for the benefit of the USSR and was regarded as an economic resource. Gulag prisoners were building a number of industrial and transport facilities. With the death of the “leader of all peoples,” Comrade Stalin, the Gulag camps began to be abolished at a fairly rapid pace. The survivors were eager to leave their places of detention as soon as possible, the camps were empty and dilapidated, and the projects on which so many human lives had been thrown quickly fell into disrepair. But on the map of the former USSR, one can still come face to face with the evidence of that era.

Former camp located near the city of Perm. Currently, this strict regime correctional labor colony for those convicted of "especially dangerous state crimes" has been turned into a museum - the Perm-36 Memorial Museum of the History of Political Repressions. Barracks, towers, signal and warning structures and engineering communications were restored and recreated here.

Solovki

The Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON) was the first and most famous camp on the territory of the Soviet Union. It was located in the White Sea, on the archipelago of the Solovetsky Islands, and quickly became a symbol of a repressive system. SLON ended its existence in 1937 - in 20 years several tens of thousands of prisoners passed through Solovki. In addition to the "political" common criminals and the clergy were massively exiled to the archipelago. Now there is only a monastery on the island, which has been carefully restored in recent years.

Dneprovsky mine

The Dnieper mine is located in Kolyma, just three hundred kilometers from Magadan. When rich gold deposits were discovered in Kolyma in the 1920s, prisoners began to be exiled here en masse. In sub-zero weather (in winter, the thermometer dropped below -50 ˚С), the “traitors to the motherland” mined tin at this mine using picks, crowbars and shovels. In addition to Soviet citizens, Finns, Japanese, Greeks, Hungarians and Serbs also sat in the camp.

dead road

The construction of the railway along the Salekhard-Igarka Arctic Circle was one of the most ambitious projects of the Gulag. The idea of ​​construction belonged 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." Despite the harsh weather conditions: severe frosts and swamps infested with midges, the road was built at a rapid pace - having begun construction in 1947, by 1953 800 km of the planned 1482 km had been laid. In 1953, after the death of Stalin, it was decided to mothball the construction site. Abandoned locomotives, empty barracks and thousands of dead construction workers from among the prisoners remained along its entire length.

Vasilievka

The camp "Vasilievka" in the Aldan region was one of the largest. Five thousand people, sentenced to 25 years under criminal and political articles, were employed here in the extraction of monazite (a mineral containing uranium-235) and logging. A distinctive feature of the camp was tough discipline, even for the LUGaga camps: for attempting to escape, prisoners were sentenced to the highest measure of punishment - execution. The prisoners lived in complete isolation from the outside world, as they were deprived even of the right to correspondence. On the former territory of the camp, officially closed in 1954, two crosses were erected in memory of the victims of Stalin's repressions.

target

The Stvor camp on the banks of the Chusovaya River, 20 km from the city of Chusovoy, was founded at the end of 1942. The Ponysh hydroelectric power station was supposed to grow on the river with the forces of prisoners. Thousands of people, mostly convicted under the infamous Article 58, cleared the bed of the future reservoir, cut wood and extracted coal from mines. Hundreds died, unable to withstand the intense pace of work - the hydroelectric power station was planned to be built in just two years. But in 1944, all work was mothballed - the dam was never built. Toward the end of the Great Patriotic War and after its completion, the camp became a "check-filtration" camp. Soldiers who passed through Nazi captivity were sent here.

Surmog

The main camp on the site of the village of the same name, located on the banks of the Glukhaya Vilva River, where exiles from the Baltic republics were sent. It is noteworthy that until 1941 they were not considered political prisoners, but had the status of “temporarily displaced” persons. Many well-known representatives of social-democratic and democratic parties, members of the government of Latvia were sitting in Surmoga. Among them are G. Landau, a well-known journalist, leader of the Cadet Party of Latvia, and B. Khariton, the father of the "father of the atomic bomb" Yu. Khariton, editor of the Riga newspaper Segodnya. Today, there is a penal colony on the site of the camp.

Camp near Mount Toratau

The Salavat system of Gulag camps in Bashkiria included 10 camps, and the camp near Mount Toratau was the worst of them all. The prisoners were numb with horror only at the mere mention of it. Three thousand prisoners, whose shackles were never removed, mined and burned limestone here. Mountain waters flooded the barracks of the prisoners, turning their lives into hell, and people died not only from hunger, cold and disease, but also killing each other. They were buried in the same place, not far from the limestone workings. In May 1953, the camp was abolished, but apparently, there were very few prisoners who survived to this day by that time.

KARLAG

Karaganda corrective labor camp - one of the largest camps - existed from 1930 to 1959. and obeyed the Gulag of the NKVD of the USSR. On the territory there were seven separate settlements with a European population - over 20 thousand people. Currently, the former building of the Administration of the Karlag camps in the village of Dolinka houses a museum in memory of the victims of political repressions.

road of bones

The infamous abandoned highway leading from Magadan to Yakutsk. The road began to be built in 1932. Tens of thousands of people who participated in the laying of the route and died there, were buried right under the roadway. For this reason, the tract was nicknamed the "road on the bones." The camps along the route were named after kilometer marks. In total, about 800 thousand people passed through the “road of bones”. With the construction of the Kolyma federal highway, the old Kolyma highway fell into disrepair, and today it is in an abandoned state.