501 construction of the century prisoner uprising. Dead ghost road: the tragic story of construction (66 photos)

Everyone has heard about the Gulag camps, this darkest symbol of the dark side of the USSR. But few people saw them - unlike the Nazi concentration camps, they were rarely built capital and for the most part disappeared almost without a trace, remaining only in the most remote corners of the Far North, where no one had ever lived except for prisoners and guards, and there was no one to dismantle the abandoned barracks and no need. One of these places is the Dead Road, the unfinished Transpolar Highway between Salekhard and Nadym: the ruins of the camps, perfectly visible, are inextricably adjacent to the shown bridges and sidings. I decided to open the camp theme separately from the actual railway one, so let's go this way again.

We saw the first camp a little further than the first bridge - at the next turn of the road in the woods above Poluy, this view opened up: the ruins of wooden buildings, including the roof of the food warehouse sticking out of the snow - such natural refrigerators in the frozen ground we met more than once along the way:

To the ruins of the barracks (or what was it?) Were knee-deep in snow:

And the first thing that caught my eye was what materials it was all built from.

Great Stalinist building on Far North- this phrase itself evokes images of barbed wire, earthy people in gray padded jackets, a gloomy guard with a rifle on a log tower and an intellectual in a cold Leningrad apartment frozen in anticipation of a knock on the door. Buildings No. 501 and 503 were no exception: the Transpolar Highway was laid almost by hand, and 40-45 thousand people worked on its construction at a time, and in the peak year of 1950, even 85 thousand people - more than the entire population of the then Yamalo-Nenets District or the current Salekhard and Nadym. But contrary to the well-known image of "a dead man under every sleeper," the 501st Stroyka was very different in its organization from other Gulag projects. They didn’t get here by sentence: Vasily Barabanov, who led the construction until 1951, at whose funeral in 1964 it was not by chance that many people took off their hats former convicts, threw a call to the camps of places not so gloomy, inviting prisoners to a heavy construction site, the year of which will be counted as one and a half, and if the plan is overfulfilled, as two years in the camps of the mainland. As a result, in the 501st quarter of the prisoners were political, more than half were domestic, and only 10-15% were criminals, but all underwent a strict selection for health reasons and past biography. And although the slave volunteers, signing up to go to the North, hardly understood what awaited them there, nevertheless, both the quality of the workforce and the attitude to work on Transpolyarka were completely different than on most of the "islands" of the Gulag: the local prisoners were not disenfranchised slaves, but fully motivated workers, and Barabanov preferred not to scatter such material.

Here it was better than in other camps, with supplies - in most camps, according to at least those where there were good-Soviet chiefs, the convicts were fed to the full, no worse than in the hungry post-war freedom. But here, in the cold and uninhabited land, it was terrible with housing: echelons of s / c were brought literally "into an open field", where they first built a perimeter for themselves, and then barracks. But even the barracks with thin walls here were almost elite housing, and for many years they huddled in tents, which in winter could only be insulated with a layer of snow, or in dugouts, where in summer there was water up to the bunk beds. But civilians from all over the Union lived in the same icy, damp, mosquito-ridden hell (there were more of them at the 503rd Construction site closer to the Yenisei), and specialists (who often did not have the opportunity to build their own houses due to constant movements from object to object) , and security, and coupled with a small number of criminals and an abundance of intelligent political prisoners, the relations themselves at Stroyka-501 were much more humane. In a summer post about the objects of the 501st in Salekhard, I talked, for example, about the theater that rallied in these camps under the auspices of Barabanov around the famous actor and director (and at that time a convict and a kaer) Leonid Obolensky. A lot has been written about the life of the 501st, the most canonical memoirs were left by the "Nadym Count" Apollon Kondartiev, and on the same site "Doroga501" in the "Library" section you can find a dozen and a half articles. Let's put it this way - there is much more information about the camps of Transpolyarka than about infrastructure and technology.

From Salekhard to Nadym, the road was served by 34 camps - there were as many of them as sidings, but at the same time they did not always coincide with the sidings, and apparently the figure was due to the same "step" from object to object - 8-12 kilometers. Detailed overview camps with hundreds of photos are all on the same site, but I will only say that it turned out to be unexpectedly difficult to look for them: if the embankment is linear, then the camps are still points that are far from always standing near the highway. In addition, the first quarter of the Dead Road from Salekhard is completely away from the winter road, and several very interesting camps have been preserved there: "Kinzhalny Cape" (bunks have completely survived in its barracks), "Prizhim-Gora" with numerous color drawings on the walls of the barracks, " Saber Cape" with gates made of frame and barbed wire... But even on the road that we drove, it's not so easy to find something. Driving through the sunset Russian field and descending into the valley of Yarudei, we stopped at a huge camp, deep into which trodden paths led.

Sunday repost! On this hot day, we remembered the post dated March 30, 2012 about the Dead Road "Salekhard" - "Nadym" - Building No. 501. It was an expedition to Salekhard "City on the Arctic Circle". I have merged two posts into this article.

Well, back to the expedition. After lunch on the 7th day, after a good steam bath, we moved towards the winter road, stopping by a small museum on the way. . Accordingly, while traditionally stupid, we lost a lot of time, and we already left for the winter road in the late afternoon.

First, the road descends onto the Ob ice and goes a couple of kilometers along the river, then it splits into two. The winter road goes to the left to Yar-Sale, and to our right - to Nadym. Here I (I was driving at that moment) was waiting for the first surprise: I do not know how to drive on the riffles. On the first slightly difficult section, I carefully planted our minibus in the snow. They dug out and pulled it out with the help of the Skorokhod on the L200. While we were doing this, we were overtaken by a column of Urals (offering help), who were driving to the 150th kilometer of the winter road, where the base of road workers is located.

We remembered these Urals more than once, because after themselves they left a completely broken road, along which it was quite difficult to drive. And if you don’t know how, then it’s deplorable in general. Having planted the car for the second time (we dug it out on our own), I gave the steering wheel to Vitya - fortunately, he clearly has more experience in such driving. Or just talent :) By the way, it was already completely dark, we were tired as hell, but continued to stubbornly crawl towards Nadym.

In the darkness we met the first traces of the 501st construction site - the remains of an embankment and some kind of bridge. After some time, the winter road came out on the track dead road and then walked next to its embankment, through the forest. Here, on the 70th kilometer, we met the fear and horror of the whole trip. Here the fate of the entire expedition was decided ...

A small river flowing out of the forest overflowed in front of the embankment and formed a frozen lake. With a good slope towards the embankment. Right in the center - two huge hollows in the ice, where the Urals fell through the hub (the depth of the hole was set folk method poking it with a stick). On the left, near the forest, one could pass, but one had to climb up on clean and very slippery ice. On the right, the ice was ending, and there was a meter-long cliff where some truck fell, leaving beautiful imprints of the sidewalls of the wheels on the snowy parapet. In general, at that time it seemed to us that there was no way to get through.

While we were deciding what to do, we were overtaken by a lone truck carrying workers to the base. The driver, a young guy, asked why we got up, if we needed help. We said no, because he didn’t have a helicopter :) He chuckled, wished him a good road and overcame these polynyas without any problems. At this point, we became completely dreary, and we decided to return to the 65th kilometer, where there is a small platform. We'll spend the night there and decide what to do next.

To top it off, Skorokhod's plastic canister leaked with diesel fuel and doused his entire hypercube and all of his insides with diesel fuel. This completely knocked us down, and we were in a very depressed state. We decided that in the morning we would return to that place and again try to drive with a fresh head and daylight. If it doesn’t work out, then we’ll return to Salekhard and go back to another winter road.

So, the morning of the eighth day of the expedition. We met him at the 65th kilometer of the Salekhard-Nadym winter road.

For general acquaintance, it will be enough for you to read wikipedia, where an inquisitive reader can independently find material of interest to him. Yes, and using Google and Yandex, in general, is not so difficult.

1. L200 Skorokhod and Yurievich. The hypercube is open to dry, all things were dumped at night and left. Morning inspection showed that the diesel fuel did not really hurt them. Something had to be thrown out, but most of the things in the center of the cube were not damaged at all. Diesel flowed down the walls of the structure and wet only what lay on the edge.

2. If I remember correctly, it was one of the coldest nights on our trip, something like -20 or -25. But we were generally lucky with the weather: for all the time there was no terrible cold, no blizzard.

3. This slide is the remains of an embankment railway.

4. And the overgrown embankment itself. In August 1952, at the Salekhard-Nadym section, labor movement including passenger.

5. Winter road. That part of it that runs through open spaces, is often swept away. It is quite difficult to ride on such rifts of loose snow. And forest areas or areas passing along the railway embankment are passable even for passenger cars. According to the locals, sometimes there are such seasons when you can even drive a nine on the winter road, but this is very rare.

6. Morning. We have breakfast, wash up and get ready to go storm that stupid place. No one wants to return to Salekhard.

7. A column of three Urals stops nearby, which are transporting insulation to Salekhard. We learn from them the way - they say that there are difficult areas in open spaces. Well, let's go.

8. One of the many small bridges on the railway line. Incomprehensible construction in the permafrost zone, on the border of zero degrees. Any intervention in the ground leads to a violation heat balance, and the permafrost instantly melts, turning into a swamp. And the structures themselves are subject to swelling. Permafrost does not like it when something is stuck into it - it squeezes out the wooden piles of the bridge supports. Most of the bridges on the highway are temporary, built of wood.

9. Coastal abutment of the bridge - a wooden well filled with sand. By the way, the place where we got up at night, we overcame during the day without any problems. Alas, I did not take pictures then. :(

10. There was once a sand embankment here, which was completely washed away.

11. Rails for the path were collected throughout the country. The earliest rail that was found in the construction site dates back to 1877!

12. Until now, historians argue and speculate why Stalin authorized this construction - without any research, projects (he was more or less ready only by 1952, when construction was nearing completion) and justifications. In fact, he personally ordered the construction of this road. More details about various points view you can read on wikipedia.

13. It is surprising that an iron span was used for such a small bridge.

14. A typical view of a winter road in the forest part.

15. With the start of construction, the railway was erected telegraph line connections from Salekhard to Igarka. It was maintained in working order until 1992. Its workers used the railway for their transportation. After 1992, both the telegraph line and the railway were completely abandoned.

16. Our expedition car - WV California - is the best car for winter travel. I have already provided a link to Viti's review for Apex more than once, where you can read in detail about all the advantages and disadvantages of this autocamper.

17. Miraculously preserved semaphore.

18. The whole road was built according to a very lightweight version, so that a steam locomotive with wagons could somehow pass. Construction was carried out in terrible climatic conditions. And at the same time, designers and builders had little idea of how all this would subsequently be exploited in permafrost conditions. The first winters showed that bridges swell up to half a meter, the canvas goes in waves and erodes it. All structures must be strengthened and be able to drain water, otherwise you can easily drown in a "man-made" swamp.

19. Our expedition.

20. Very easy crossing open area. Of course, the remains of the construction site should be studied in the summer, when it is not hidden under the snow, but in the summer here - only on foot. By the way, there have already been many such expeditions.

21. In addition to all the difficulties of construction, which I have already mentioned, it is worth mentioning that building materials it wasn't there at all. Well, i.e. didn't exist at all. Unless it was possible to wash a little sand to fill the embankment. And so - everything, from metal to wood and stone, was brought from mainland.

22. I photographed this bridge skeleton on the go. Look how fluffed up he is!

23. Let's go back a little, in the morning. After we crossed the polynyas, some local jeep caught up with us. Four stern men came out of it, greeted us, asked who we were, where we were from, where we were going. Advised what to see along the way and what to expect. After that, one introduced himself as a police chief from Nadym (he did not show any documents) and asked if we had weapons. We replied that no - it really was not. He also asked who passed in front of us, whom we saw. Of course, we talked about cars. Especially general curiosity was caused by our California. Then they took machine guns out of the trunk, got into their jeep and, having wished us a good road, drove on. This is where I got a little uncomfortable. A little further we met them again, exchanged greetings and parted completely. And other local comrades suggested this place - former camp prisoners who built the road.

24. Construction began in 1947. Up to 80,000 people worked on the construction of the road. 42 billion rubles were invested in the construction.

25. As they say, the road is built on bones. How many people perished in this land - no one knows.

26. In the summer - a midge that almost ate alive. In winter - bitter cold.

27. According to some recollections of engineers, they themselves did not understand why they were building this road. It is now there is gas, but then there was nothing at all.

28. Now we can say for sure that the road would not have been built on time. And taking into account how the construction went and what conditions there, it would have taken many more years to bring it to a normal operational state ... Then such a road was needed with such forces - it’s impossible to say for sure.

29. But back to our expedition. One of the features of our car was the presence of some incredible number of pockets, shelves, drawers and lockers. Here, 70-200 and a second nickel with 16-35 mm are quietly placed in the pocket of the front door.

30. On the windshield - a camera that shoots a road video, and GoPro, which filmed Vitya and me. As a navigation - Asus netbook with Ozi and General Staff maps. Video from the expedition can be considered buried. :(Alas, no one's hands got around to picking it up.

31. We met the evening not far from Nadym, but still on the winter road. Here it goes mostly along the railway embankment, bypassing the bridges along the ice crossings. At night, we finally drove into Nadym and immediately fell asleep.

32. It was 300 kilometers of emptiness. No longer here settlements, No cellular communication. Only traffic on the winter road. In the middle, at the 150th kilometer, there is a base of road workers who keep it in good condition. This, in fact, the most difficult section, we overcame in a day and a half.

In March 1953, immediately after Stalin's death, construction was stopped. There was an attempt to preserve, but realizing how much it would cost, they just abandoned everything. In the future, they completed the section from Novy Urengoy to Stary Nadym, where, at the very least, they support the movement.

In general, the Dead Road left a depressing impression on me. To swell so much money and people's lives into such a construction site and abandon everything ... As I said above, we are unlikely to find out why Stalin decided to start this construction site. I don't think it's time for her yet...

And a few links for self-study:
Dead road. Building №501-№503
Internet museum of the road
501st construction site on Wikimapia. In high-resolution sections, the road trace is traced very well.

"Dead Road" small addition

It turns out that the folder on the poppy did not contain several photos that I wanted to show in the last post about construction site No. 501. On the one hand, the material has already been posted, on the other hand, these photos will be of interest to those who love various technical solutions. So let's look. Railway bridge across the Idyakha river.

1. As I said, there were big problems with building materials at the construction site. Everything had to be brought from the mainland.

2. Metal was in terrible shortage in the country, but it had to be spent on large bridges, otherwise there was no way. But they tried to do everything else from wood, which was also imported, since the local forest was not suitable for such construction.

3. The abutment and overpass are made entirely of wood.

4. Wooden technical genius.

5. In the future, these temporary structures were supposed to be replaced with reinforced concrete structures ...

6. A little not sharply, but you can see how the metal span rests on a wooden abutment. No hinged supports to compensate for thermal expansion!

7. A little more winter tundra.

10. A wonderful illustration of how the permafrost squeezes out the wooden piles of the bridge.

11. Nature here is very harsh.

But all this pales in front of some wooden bridges built in different time. Here's what blew up:

Viaduct over the Verruga Gorge in the Andes, filigree wood construction. From here.

Bridge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Hamilton Railroad Bridge

And... drumroll!

From here.

I immediately recall the ancient toy Build Bridges and its continuation Pontifex (first and second)

Immediately after the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union, which had not yet risen from the devastation, began to implement grandiose project. The forces of the prisoners of the Main Directorate of Camps of the NKVD of the USSR in the practically uninhabited subpolar tundra launched a large-scale construction of the Great Northern railway track, a 1,400-kilometer-long highway that was supposed to connect European part countries with the Yenisei Delta. Only six years after the start of work, tens of thousands of builders quickly left the already half-built road.

Even before the revolutions of 1917, in the wake of the explosive development of railways in Russia, engineers developed alternative routes that more or less duplicated the Great Siberian way which we now know as the Trans-Siberian Railway. Almost immediately after the completion in 1916 of the construction of this railway, which connected the European part of the empire with its Pacific coast, enthusiasts presented the first projects of a similar highway in the northern regions of the country, which, in turn, was supposed to connect Murmansk, an ice-free port in the Barents Sea, with the Ob, Surgut, Yenisei, the northern shore of Lake Baikal and then go to the Tatar Strait separating the mainland and Sakhalin.

Of course, the revolutionary disorder and the ensuing Civil War did not contribute to the practical implementation of the colossal project in terms of financial and labor costs. However, in 1924 the future Transpolar Highway, in official documents referred to as the Great Northern by rail, was presented on the map perspective development railways of the USSR. However, before the war, the state preferred to concentrate on the development of another Great Northern Route - the sea route.

The beginning of the creation of the Transpolar Highway in broad sense can be considered the construction of the Pechora railway, connecting the city of Kotlas Arkhangelsk region with polar Vorkuta. Built by prisoners of the Main Directorate of Camps of the NKVD of the USSR (Gulag) in 1937-1941, the road received strategic importance, opening up access to high-quality coking coal from the Pechora basin for Soviet metallurgy.

The first train on the new line, late December 1941.

It is difficult to document the chain of events that forced the builders to go further east along the Arctic Circle, most of the documents are still classified. Nevertheless, almost all researchers are inclined to believe that the decision to deploy in 1947 the active construction of the railway in areas that were completely inconvenient for this was personally Soviet leader, teacher and friend of all children I. V. Stalin. He is even credited with a phrase that supposedly laid the foundation for a mighty construction project: “We must take on the North, Siberia is not covered by anything from the North, and political situation very dangerous."

It is difficult to vouch for the authenticity of the quote, but the fact remains the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of April 22, 1947. According to the document, in the Gulf of Ob (Bay Kara Sea, into which the Ob flows) in the area of Cape Kamenny a new large sea port with a residential village, and from the Chum station on the Pechora highway (south of Vorkuta) a 500-kilometer-long railway was laid to them. On the fragment of the map, the red dot No. 1 marks the starting point of the prospective highway, and the red dot No. 2 marks Cape Kamenny.

To carry out work, already on April 28, within the framework of the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps (GULZhDS, one of the divisions of the Gulag system), construction departments No. 501 were formed, which was in charge of the construction of the main line, and No. 502, which was engaged in work on seaport. The work was carried out at a pace characteristic of the time and even more accelerated by the close attention of the country's leadership. Already in December 1947, just eight months after the issuance of the relevant decree, the working movement opened on the 118-kilometer stretch of Chum - Sob, and the road crossed river valley The Polar Urals - the Sob junction was already on the territory of the Tyumen region.

A year later, by December 1948, the builders advanced up to the Labytnangi station on the left bank of the Ob, opposite Salekhard. However, at the same time, it suddenly became clear that it was simply impossible to create a new seaport on the Ob Bay, in the area of that same Kamenny Cape. Hydrographic studies carried out in parallel with general construction work showed that the bay is shallow and even after deepening the bottom, it will still be unable to receive large ocean-going ships.

So, from April 1947 to December 1948, the 196-kilometer route Chum - Labytnangi was put into operation. It was completely incomprehensible what to do next, given the futility of the former northern "Ob" direction. On January 29, 1949, after a meeting between Stalin, Beria and the head of the GULZhDS "Naftalia" Frenkel, another decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued, which determined a new place for the construction of the same "large intermediate base of sea communications." It was decided to move it to the area of the city of Igarka in the Turukhansk region of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, that is, more than a thousand kilometers to the east, on the right bank of the Yenisei, where the seaport had functioned since the late 1920s. This is how this polar city looked in the early 1950s, at that time about 20 thousand people lived here.

Instead of a relatively modest 500-kilometer road Chum - Cape Kamenny, a grandiose idea was born to build the real Great Northern Route Chum - Salekhard - Igarka with a total length of 1482 kilometers, of which 1286 had yet to be built. The road on the map of Russia is marked with a red line (click to open a larger image).

So, why, with persistence possible, probably only under Stalin, a person in the technologically not the most advanced 1940s began to build a colossal railway in the deserted subpolar tundra? About what rich deposits of mother oil and father gas contain subsoil Western Siberia, Soviet geologists still only guessed. Probably, main motivation the Soviet leadership and the leader of the peoples in particular had a desire to create an understudy of the Northern sea route, not subject to seasonal freezing, with access to a new head arctic sea port, remote from the borders of the country.

The events of the Great Patriotic War showed insecurity Soviet Arctic from outside attack. Surely Stalin's memory was still fresh in the operation "Wunderland" ("Wonderland"), carried out by the Kriegsmarine in the summer of 1942 in the Kara Sea in order to prevent the passage of Allied convoys from the east to Murmansk. German submarines torpedoed several Soviet ships, and the heavy cruiser Admiral Speer even bombed the port of Dikson, located at the exit of the Yenisei Bay to the Arctic Ocean.

A new port in Igarka, which, quite possibly, was also considered as a promising base Northern Fleet, looked much more reliable in this sense. In addition, in the immediate vicinity of it was the Norilsk industrial region with its largest nickel reserves in the country and strategically important for the defense industry. It could also be connected to the unified railway system of the USSR with the help of a new highway.

By the way, these places were not foreign to Stalin. At one time, in 1914-1917, here, in the village of Kureika, Turukhansk Territory, 170 kilometers south of Igarka, he served a link. After the war, the surviving hut, where the future generalissimo lived by the will of the bloody tsarist regime, covered with a special pavilion, turning it into a museum, which, however, did not survive the fight against the cult of personality.

The second stage of the construction of the Transpolar Highway has begun. Construction Department No. 502, which previously dealt with the port in the area of Cape Kamenny, was included in a similar subdivision No. 501 and instructed the united structure to work on the Salekhard - Nadym - Pur river section. At the same time, construction management No. 503 was formed in Igarka, which was supposed to pull the railway from the opposite, east side. Both armies of builders were supposed to meet on the Pur River. In documents and literature, the Transpolar Highway has since often been referred to as "Building-501" or "Building-503" - depending on what it is about. section goes speech.

The main problem of the Transpolar Highway was the speed with which it was built. Now it is difficult to say what caused such an assault and emergency. Other researchers prone to conspiracy theories even consider the construction of this railway as one of the stages in the preparation of the USSR and Stalin personally for the Third World War. Be that as it may, in the same January resolution of the Council of Ministers, which determined new track highway, contained another fundamental thesis: it was to be built according to "lightweight technical conditions." The working movement of trains on separate sections it was planned to open in 1952, and the entire road was supposed to be ready by 1955.

It was assumed that the new 1300-kilometer the track will pass parallel to the Arctic Circle, it will be single-track with sidings every 9-14 km (106 sidings in total) and stations every 40-60 km (28 stations). average speed train movement with stops at sidings was supposed to be about 40 km/h, including acceleration and deceleration. Bandwidth- 6 pairs of trains per day. At the stations of Salekhard, Nadym, Pur, Taz, Ermakovo and Igarka, the main depots were arranged, and at the stations of Yarudey, Pangody, Kataral, Turukhan - turnarounds.

The work was carried out in fact without design estimates, mainly by the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps. In total, there were 290 thousand prisoners in this division of the Gulag, a significant part of which was concentrated on construction sites 501 and 503, the northernmost in the country.

A winter road was laid along the entire highway by special tractor trains. The production columns of the two departments of the GULZhDS were located along it. They were built mainly in a short summer season. To begin with, a relatively low two-meter embankment was built (mainly from imported stone-sand mixture), on which sleepers and rails were then laid. All work was carried out under conditions continental climate with severe long winters (up to eight months) and short, cold and rainy summers and autumns. On average, the builders managed to build about 100 kilometers of the railway per season.

The transpolar highway was built in extreme conditions permafrost. The technologies of the 1940s and the required speed of construction did not allow the railway to be properly equipped, as, for example, the Chinese did 70 years later with the Qinghai-Tibet Mainline. After the onset of positive temperatures in Western Siberia, active thawing of the topsoil and permafrost under it began, which led to regular and widespread deformations of the roadbed and its engineering structures. In fact, a significant part of the road, made in past seasons, had to be reconstructed with the advent of a new one. Repairs of the embankment, strengthening of the canvas, bridges and other infrastructure continued continuously, every year.

The climate made work in the highway construction area exceptionally difficult. In winter, the prisoners working on construction sites 501 and 503 were covered with snow and tormented by frost, in summer they were overcome by rains, impassable mud and ubiquitous clouds of insects varying degrees bloodlust.

Along the entire route, small settlements of civilian builders, administration and prisoners of the camp attached to them were arranged. There were few local building materials in the conditions of the subpolar tundra; in most cases, timber was imported from outside. While it came to the construction of more or less capital housing, the builders were forced to live in tents and dugouts. Gradually, they were replaced by barracks by the forces of their future inhabitants themselves. The remains of many camps and settlements are still regularly found along the Transpolyarnaya.

The average camp here was a perimeter fenced with barbed wire 500 × 500 meters with watchtowers, one-story residential barracks, a dining room and a punishment cell. One such formation housed from 500 to 1000 people. Outside the perimeter there were houses of guards and civilian workers, a shop, a bathhouse, warehouses, and a club.

And this is how the village of Ermakovo looked before and looks like now, one of the largest construction sites (up to 15 thousand inhabitants), located on the left bank of the Yenisei, not far from Igarka. Here, in fact, was the headquarters of construction No. 503 (the eastern half of the road), they even managed to build a power station, a depot, a club, a clinic, six shops, a hotel, a ten-year school, an infant home, where the children of imprisoned mothers were handed over, a restaurant and some other elements of the usual big land, but such a rare infrastructure here.

In comparison with other camps of the Gulag system, the construction of the Transpolyarnaya was relatively good. Here, the extremely difficult working conditions of the prisoners were somewhat offset by a higher food standard. The construction site even had its own mobile theater. Mortality, according to the recollections of surviving eyewitnesses, was relatively low.

In addition to tens of thousands of people provided by the GULZhDS, there were many Komsomol members and other enthusiasts who arrived here, in fact, at the call of the heart and the corresponding ticket.

In addition to the climate, work on the Salekhard - Igarka line was complicated by its remoteness from the mainland. There were practically no high-quality building materials “on the spot”, they were forced to be delivered from Salekhard along the already built kilometers of the road or using the Northern Sea Route through Igarka.

The road crossed small rivers on wooden bridges. Bridges across the large rivers Barabanikha and Makovskaya were built much more thoroughly: from metal on concrete supports 60 and 100 meters long, respectively. However, deformation and destruction due to thawing and subsequent freezing of soils did not escape any of the structures built according to “lightweight technical conditions”.

No bridges were built across the great Siberian rivers Ob and Yenisei. Special ferries were used in summer, ice crossings were built in winter.

Rails, of course, were also delivered from the mainland. In total, the researchers found 16 different types of them on the track, including pre-revolutionary and trophy ones.

In August 1952, as planned, the working movement was opened on the Salekhard - Nadym section, by March next year there was even a passenger train running between settlements. However, its speed (and the speed of the freight trains used to supply the construction), due to the extremely poor quality of the railway track, was low and averaged 15 km / h, not even close to reaching the standard indicators. But even in such a situation, train derailments were frequent and ubiquitous.

By the spring of 1953 in total about 700 kilometers of the Great Northern Way were built, more than half of the entire length of the highway, but on March 25, 1953, another decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued, according to which the construction of the Salekhard-Igarka railway was stopped. An immediate and rapid evacuation of the labor force began. According to most estimates, in a few months from the interfluve of the Ob and Yenisei was taken to big land up to 100 thousand people.

Such a voluntaristic decision at first glance was explained very simply: on March 5, 1953, Stalin died, and with him the Transpolar Highway was first seemingly mothballed, and then finally abandoned. The railway, which was built at an unprecedented pace in extreme natural conditions, turned out to be unnecessary for the country.

In total, 3.2 billion rubles were literally buried in the ground and swamps of the West Siberian polar tundra, which was so necessary for the one rising from the ruins Soviet Union. This amount amounted to 12.5% of the capital investments of the USSR in railway construction for the five-year plan of 1946-1950 and about 2% of all capital investments of the USSR for the same period. How many lives were claimed by construction sites 501 and 503, it’s impossible to establish for sure.

Construction, railway equipment and other material resources that could be evacuated were removed from the highway, the rest was simply abandoned, such as, for example, this depot near the Taz River with several steam locomotives of the Ov series, the legendary “sheep”, the most massive steam locomotive Russian Empire. The section with them was isolated from the rest of the road, so the steam locomotives remained here as a kind of monument to the “construction of the century”.

The road was doomed to a quick death. Extremely low quality construction and the climatic and natural conditions caused its rapid degradation. The canvas that collapsed and crumpled at unimaginable angles, bridges rearing up with mounds, rotten remains of former camps - such a sight is now presented by the Transpolar Highway, the failed Great northern path and the current Dead Road, the dream of many lovers of abandoned objects.

Little survived her. Back in the late 1940s, a telegraph and telephone line was laid along the entire highway, which ensured reliable communication with Igarka. Long time, until the 1980s, the specialists of the USSR Ministry of Communications serving it remained the only ones who used the remnants of Transpolyarnaya on a regular basis for their intended purpose, moving along it on makeshift railcars.

In 1955, another ministry - communications - took on its balance sheet the railway line Chum - Labytnangi, the first line of the highway. It has been successfully operating to this day.

After the development of the richest hydrocarbon reserves in Western Siberia began in the 1960s and 1970s, the railway returned to these regions. A branch line was built to Nadym and New Urengoy, but not from the west or east, from Salekhard or Igarka, but from the south, from Tyumen. Gazprom also built a branch line on the Yamal Peninsula, connecting local oil and gas fields with the Chum-Labytnangi line near the Obskaya station.

In addition, currently Russian authorities the project of the highway in the latitudinal direction, from Nadym to Salekhard, was also revived. Now the construction of a corresponding motor road is in full swing, which should be followed by a railway. Who knows, perhaps someday the long-standing project of the Great Northern Railway, which was dreamed of even before the revolution, will nevertheless be realized. Oil and gas are great motivators.

A small but necessary digression. Now I am in the hospital, where, in addition to the main inconveniences, there is an extremely slow Internet connection. There is not even a question about Wi-Fi, but there is no 3G, or you have to run around the body to catch it. Therefore, it is difficult for me to provide many links on the subject of the 501st construction site, but there are more than enough of them on the Internet. For general acquaintance, it will be enough for you to read wikipedia, where an inquisitive reader can independently find material of interest to him. Yes, and using Google and Yandex, in general, is not so difficult.

I am processing photos now on a new macbook, where the screen has never been calibrated. Therefore, on your monitors, you can see (although I hope that this is not so) a slightly different picture than you are used to seeing on me before.

Since there is still no semajik on the poppy, writing a post for LiveJournal turns into quiet horror, especially when tagging. A matter of habit, of course, but still the convenience of work has not been canceled :)

Within the framework of one post, it is absolutely impossible to talk about this entire tragic construction site, and I do not set myself such a task. These photos were taken in March last year during the "City on the Arctic Circle" expedition. I deliberately skipped the photo report from the tropospheric communication station in Salekhard, since there are two panoramas there, but I can’t make them on a poppy - I suddenly discovered that I didn’t install the software for assembling them.

In the darkness we met the first traces of the 501st construction site - the remains of an embankment and some kind of bridge. After some time, the winter road entered the Dead Road and then walked next to its embankment, through the forest. Here, on the 70th kilometer, we met the fear and horror of the whole trip. Here the fate of the entire expedition was decided ...

A small river flowing out of the forest overflowed in front of the embankment and formed a frozen lake. With a good slope towards the embankment. Right in the center - two huge hollows in the ice, where the Urals fell through the hub (the depth of the hole was set by the folk method of poking it with a stick). On the left, near the forest, one could pass, but one had to climb up on clean and very slippery ice. On the right, the ice was ending, and there was a meter-long cliff where some truck fell, leaving beautiful imprints of the sidewalls of the wheels on the snowy parapet. In general, at that time it seemed to us that there was no way to get through.

So, the morning of the eighth day of the expedition. We met him at the 65th kilometer of the Salekhard-Nadym winter road.

3. This slide is the remains of a railroad embankment.

4. And the overgrown embankment itself. In August 1952, labor traffic, including passenger traffic, was opened on the Salekhard-Nadym section.

5. Winter road. That part of it, which passes through open places, is often swept up. It is quite difficult to ride on such rifts of loose snow. And forest areas or areas passing along the railway embankment are passable even for passenger cars. According to the locals, sometimes there are such seasons when you can even drive a nine on the winter road, but this is very rare.

6. Morning. We have breakfast, wash up and get ready to go storm that stupid place. No one wants to return to Salekhard.

7. A column of three Urals stops nearby, which are transporting insulation to Salekhard. We learn from them the way - they say that there are difficult areas in open spaces. Well, let's go.

8. One of the many small bridges on the railway line. Incomprehensible construction in the permafrost zone, on the border of zero degrees. Any intervention in the ground leads to a violation of the thermal balance, and the permafrost instantly melts, turning into a swamp. And the structures themselves are subject to swelling. Permafrost does not like it when something is stuck into it - it squeezes out the wooden piles of the bridge supports. Most of the bridges on the highway are temporary, built of wood.

10. There was once a sand embankment here, which was completely washed away.

11. Rails for the path were collected throughout the country. The earliest rail that was found in the construction site dates back to 1877!

12. Until now, historians argue and speculate why Stalin authorized this construction - without any research, projects (he was more or less ready only by 1952, when construction was nearing completion) and justifications. In fact, he personally ordered the construction of this road. You can read more about different points of view on Wikipedia.

13. It is surprising that an iron span was used for such a small bridge.

14. A typical view of a winter road in the forest part.

15. With the start of construction of the railway, a telegraph communication line was erected from Salekhard to Igarka. It was maintained in working order until 1992. Its workers used the railway for their transportation. After 1992, both the telegraph line and the railway were completely abandoned.

17. Miraculously preserved semaphore.

19. Our expedition.

20. Very easy crossing in the open. Of course, the remains of the construction site should be studied in the summer, when it is not hidden under the snow, but in the summer here - only on foot. By the way, there have already been many such expeditions.

21. In addition to all the difficulties of construction, which I have already described, it is worth mentioning that there were no building materials at all. Well, i.e. didn't exist at all. Unless it was possible to wash a little sand to fill the embankment. And so - everything, from metal to wood and stone, was brought from the mainland.

22. I photographed this bridge skeleton on the go. Look how fluffed up he is!

24. Construction began in 1947. Up to 80,000 people worked on the construction of the road. 42 billion rubles were invested in the construction.

25. As they say, the road is built on bones. How many people perished in this land - no one knows.

26. In the summer - a midge that almost ate alive. In winter - bitter cold.

27. According to some recollections of engineers, they themselves did not understand why they were building this road. It is now there is gas, but then there was nothing at all.

32. It was 300 kilometers of emptiness. There are no more settlements, there is no cellular communication. Only traffic on the winter road. In the middle, at the 150th kilometer, there is a base of road workers who keep it in good condition. This, in fact, the most difficult section, we overcame in a day and a half.

Now there is talk again about building a railway between Salekhard and Novy Urengoy with the prospect of extending it to Igarka. It is called Northern latitudinal way, which is being implemented as part of the Ural Industrial - Ural Polar project. The cost of this site will be 180 BILLION rubles. True, by latest information, due to the simplification of the project (no, due to kickbacks!) managed to reduce the cost to 130 billion. Which, anyway, is more than fucked up. Whether it will be built or not, only time will tell. The commissioning of this section with a length of 707 kilometers is scheduled for 2016.

And a few links for self-study:

Everyone remembers with what enthusiasm earlier in the 70s our country perceived the news about the construction of the BAM. Shock construction, the shortest access to the Pacific ports, the road to new deposits ... But few people know that BAM had a kind of northern twin - the Transpolar Highway, the Chum - Salekhard - Igarka railway, which was built at an accelerated pace in 1949-53 and just as quickly forgotten in subsequent years.

It is necessary to connect the deep-water seaport in the geographical center of the country, in Igarka, with the country's railway system! It is necessary to facilitate the export of nickel from Norilsk! Give work to hundreds of thousands of prisoners who overflowed the camps and prisons after
the end of the war is also necessary! And on the deserted expanses of the tundra, from the Ob and from the Yenisei, columns of prisoners stretched towards each other. West Side- 501st GULAG building. Eastern part - 503rd.

In 1949 Soviet leadership It was decided to build the polar railway Igarka - Salekhard. The prisoners built the road. The total planned length of the road is 1263 km. The road runs 200 kilometers south arctic circle.

Construction problems rested not only on climatic and geographical problems - permafrost and a ten-month winter. The route had to cross many streams, rivers and large rivers. Wooden or concrete bridges were built across small rivers, crossing the Ob was carried out in the summer - by heavy ferries, in the winter - along rails and sleepers laid directly on the ice. The ice was specially strengthened for this.

The northern regions of Siberia are characterized by the existence of winter roads - temporary roads that are laid in winter, after snow falls, and numerous swamps and rivers are covered with ice. In order to make car crossings over rivers more reliable, the crossing points are additionally frozen - they are poured with water, increasing the thickness of the ice. Railway ice crossings were not just poured with water, logs and sleepers were frozen into them. Construction of ice crossings for railway transport- a unique invention Soviet engineers, this probably did not happen either before or after the construction of the Igarka - Salekhard road.

Construction was carried out simultaneously from two sides, from the side of the Ob - 501 construction sites and from the side of the Yenisei - 503 construction sites.

Grand opening one of the sections of the road. 1952

Camps were built along the single-track along the entire route at a distance of 5-10 km from each other. These camps are still standing today. Many of them are perfectly preserved.

Escape from the camps was almost impossible. The main road was guarded. The only way to freedom lay to the Yenisei, then up along it 1700 km to Krasnoyarsk or 700 km north to the mouth of the Yenisei or to Dudinka and Norilsk, which were also built by prisoners and heavily guarded.

Camp near the river Penzeryakha.

Locker door.

Carcer grate.

Preserved boilers from the catering unit.

punishment cell.

Everything needed for construction, from bricks and nails to a steam locomotive, was imported from the mainland. For construction site 503, delivery of goods was carried out first by trans-siberian railway railroad to Krasnoyarsk, then down the Yenisei to summer time river courts.

Also, rails, steam locomotives, wagons, railcars were brought by barges, which are still standing in the tundra.

AT post-war years there were not enough rails in the USSR. Rails removed from existing directions were imported. On rails and crutches, the roads are the most various dates issue - since 1879.

Timber also had to be brought in. At the latitude of the road construction - tundra and forest-tundra, there is no construction timber. It was specially harvested to the south and rafted down the Yenisei. In winter, after the end of navigation, a large supply of cargo from the mainland was impossible. Navigation on the Yenisei lasts 3-4 months.

Guidance of the ice crossing.

Lack of sufficient material support forced to constantly look for non-traditional engineering and construction solutions. The roofs of the barracks in the camps are not covered with slate or tin. For roofs, wood chocks were specially split along the fibers. It was split, not sawn. 40 years after construction, such roofs continued to perform their functions.

By 1953, the year of Stalin's death, more than 900 kilometers of a single-track railway had been built by the prisoners. After the death of the Leader, the construction was hastily curtailed. Camps, locomotives, bridges, and other property are simply thrown into the tundra. great building, which claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people, ended in failure.

Over the next few years, an insignificant part of the property was taken out, rails were removed in some areas adjacent to the Ob and Yenisei.
42 billion rubles were invested in the construction.

Transpolar highway today. Salekhard-Nadym stretch.

Portal for the student. Self-training

RELATED ARTICLES