Vorkuta

From Wikinfo

Coordinates: 67°30′N 64°02′E / 67.5, 64.033

Vorkuta(Russian: Воркута́, Komi: Вӧркута, Vörkuta; Nenets for Place teems with bears) is a coal mining community in the Komi Republic of Russia just north of the Arctic circle in the Pechora coal basin. Its population as of the 2002 census was 84,917. It had its origin in a complex of concentration camps of the Gulag which were established in 1932. 13 of the 30 camps were katorga, hard labor death camps. It was at Vorkuta, in 1937, that the Stalinist regime in the 1930s completed the physical liquidation of the Trotskyist Left Opposition.

Vorkuta is in a roadless area of the tundra although a loop road runs north to the mine locations, many of them abandoned today. Especially notable is Mine 29 which was the scene of a determined labor protest in 1953 following the death of Stalin.

In 1941 the town and the labor camp system based around it were connected to the rest of the world by a prisoner-built railroad linking Konosha and Kotlas, and the camps of Inta. Vorkuta became a city on November 26, 1943. It was the largest centre of Gulag camps in European Russia and served as administrative centre for a large number of smaller camps and sub-camps, among them Kotlas, Pechora, and Izhma (modern Sosnogorsk). In 1953 the town witnessed a major uprising by the camp inmates, in the so-called Vorkuta Uprising. Like other camp uprisings (such as the Kengir uprising), it was bloodily quelled by the Red Army and the NKVD. Afterwards, in the 1950s, many of the Gulag camps were disbanded. However, it is reported that some in the Vorkuta area continued to operate into the 1980s. During the Cold War an Arctic Control Group forward staging base for stragegic bombers was located at Vorkuta [1]

By the early part of the 21st century many of the mines have been closed as problems with high costs of operations have plagued the mine operators. At one time during the late 1980s and 1990s there were labor actions in the area by miners who had not been paid for a year.^[1]

The city is served by Vorkuta Airport. During the Cold War an Arctic Control Group forward staging base for strategic bombers was located at Vorkuta Sovetskiy.^[2]

Footnotes

External Links

• The site of Vorkuta (Russian)
• Satellite images of the Vorkuta region
• Contemporary photographs - Vorkuta city
  • Contemporary photographs of the city on the webpage of the local mine rescue association
  • Photos from Vorkuta, 1996
  • Links to photos of Vorkuta and Usinsk, 1998
  • Rusko 2005 – Galerie: Vorkuta (Czech)
• Historical photographs
  • Fotod
  • Gulag report - Vorkuta
  • Gulag settlement outside Vorkuta
• Other photographs
  • Wooden crosses of the German prisoners of the Gulag
  • Vorkuta coal mines
  • Places and mines - Vorkuta (Russian)

Adapted from the article Vorkuta, from Wikipedia, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.