The Dead Road

For more than 20 years, beginning in the 1930s, the primary workforce of the Soviet Union was the prisoners of GULAG. New channels, railroads, cities, power plants, mines, and much more were constructed by their hands under the most severe conditions. The labor was extremely exhausting, and millions of people never returned from these sites.

Frequently, however, the labor proved pointless since many projects proved to be useless. The first large-scale project, which shaped GULAG, the channel that connected the White and Baltic seas, became the first project of this type. However, the most pronounced example of such absurd construction was the railroad Salekhard–Igarka. Approximately 700 miles of railroad were built along the polar circle, among the boundless uninhabited swamps of the Western Siberia lowlands. Conducted in extremely difficult natural conditions on permafrost soils, without thorough technical preparation, the construction was doomed to failure from the beginning. Enormous amounts of effort and money were wasted.

For four long years, this project inched forward, abandoned only with the death of Stalin in 1953. The result was the unfinished railway along with many small and large bridges, settlements, steam locomotive depots, and miles of barbed wire surrounding many dozens of labor camps for prisoners. Thousands of nameless prisoner graves follow the rail line. The project built by the sweat and blood of the forced workers stands deserted now. The almost complete isolation preserved this giant monument to the communist regime.

In the second half of the 1980s, I organized several expeditions to the eastern half of the railroad. The findings made in these expeditions serve as a basis for this publication.

The settlement and the labor camps that surrounded it were badly destroyed by time and by geological expeditions passing through the region with heavy equipment over the last decades. The thick, intertwined brush of trees greatly impeded both photography and movement. We had no maps and, in six days of searching, were unable to find the railroad. We later learned that the railroad didn’t leave the settlement to the south rather than to the west (which would seem logical). Our vacation time was coming close to the end, and our findings were very limited. We knew, however, that there was a group of a few people who camped in the center of the settlement. This was our last hope. These people could have given us a lot of information, but from the beginning, they weren’t friendly with us, and so we stayed away. Masha tried for the last time to establish contact with them, and this time she succeeded. It turned out that this was a group of workers preparing equipment for a winter geological expedition. The reason for their initial wariness also became clear. Like many other inhabitants of the lower reaches of the Yenisey River, they caught sturgeons with nets, which was prohibited. Fearing fisheries control, they were suspicious of all strangers. That was the reason for their initial disaffection. That evening, while drinking our vodka and eating their freshly salted sturgeon, we realized that we could be frank with them about our purpose there. They helped us greatly by pointing out the location of the elusive railroad, the steam locomotive depot, and a large, well-preserved prison camp within 3 miles of Yermakovo. The remaining two days of our trip became the most fruitful, and we photographed many interesting sites.

The geologists also solved the problem of getting out from Yermakovo – one of the workers took us on a motorboat to a passing ship. I must say that during this and subsequent expeditions, it would have been practically impossible for us to succeed without the help of the local people we encountered along the way. We were helped by these geologists in Yermakovo, the ship captains of the Yenisey River, gas workers of the small West Siberian city Tarko-Sale, the air squadron of Igarka, and many others. With special fondness, I remember Boris Khochuev, a fisherman who lived alone all year round on the shores of Yermakovo. But all of that is still to come in this story. At that moment, returning to Moscow, I was confident that this was my last trip to the railroad and I would never be back again.

We returned to our usual life in the city, but we did not keep a secret from our summer expedition. In the beginning, I only showed the expedition photographs to my friends. As word slowly got around, the audience began to grow. My first public presentation on the railroad construction took place at the political seminar for youth at the Institute of Molecular Genetics, where I worked at that time.

The political atmosphere was swiftly changing at the time, and the public interest in the history of the Gulag was rising. A group of young people attempted to create the first government-independent historical society, “Memorial”, dedicated to the victims of the Soviet regime. The initiators of the "Memorial" wrote a petition that asked the government to create the first memorial to the victims of Stalin’s purges. They tried to collect signatures under this petition on the streets of Moscow. Just a year earlier, it was unimaginable to ask the public on the streets to sign a petition without the explicit permission of the communist government. At first, police detained the volunteers who collected the signatures but quickly released them. The Communist regime began to show cracks in its uncompromising armor, and society quickly reacted to freedom after decades of instilled fear. Soon, the Memorial Society received official status. Newspapers and thick magazines were full of stories about the years of repression by the government. The first political meeting dedicated to the memory of the victims of Stalin’s repressions took place in Moscow on May 30, 1988. The popular journal “Ogonyok” announced plans to dedicate a week in the next autumn to the memory of the victims of political repressions, the “Week of Conscience” as it was named, with various exhibitions in a large cultural complex in Moscow. I realized that this is an excellent opportunity to present our pictures from the site of the railroad construction. However, more materials were needed. It seemed that they could be found if we traveled further along the railroad. One result of the first expedition was that we knew now what we could expect there and how we could organize the logistics of the next expedition. Therefore, I started thinking about the second expedition to the abandoned site.

This time, my friends, programmer Victor Bakhmin and factory worker Yuri Pototsky, joined me. Another friend supplied us with a map of the eastern section of the railroad (still classified at the time), which greatly helped us during this expedition. That year, we hiked for about 35 miles along the railroad, from Yermakovo to the small abandoned outpost at the Turukhan River. Although the railroad was destroyed, it served us as a good hiking trail. If not for the railroad mound, a narrow thread of solid soil along the endless swamps, travel would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. It served not only as a road but also as a place for a night's camping. Unfortunately, it couldn’t protect us against the clouds of hungry mosquitoes and gnats. During the first trip with my wife, we were close to the Yenisey River, where the mosquito population was smaller and easier to deal with. Even the strongest mosquito repellent did not protect us completely, and our faces were swollen from the hundreds of bites, so it was difficult to open our eyes in the mornings. We photographed everything we encountered along the way: the countless destroyed bridges and various crumbling pieces of railroad infrastructure.

Bridges in the Eastern part of the railroad. Photographs of 1988.

But first of all, we searched for Gulag camps. Although all the camps were located close to the railroad mound, it was hard to see them because of the impenetrable scrub and low trees on both sides. We managed to find five camps in the first 25 miles. They were almost destroyed, compared to the camp we found in the previous year in the vicinity of Yermakovo. We were ending the segment of the railroad that we had planned for this expedition, and our mood was turning sour. We kept searching, however, and our perseverance was rewarded. This was what we had been dreaming about. The camp became the most valuable and unique finding of this and all my other expeditions. Almost everything was well preserved: various buildings and inscriptions on many of them, watchtowers and barbed wire fences, and even wooden walkways. Several expressive, remarkably well-preserved posters hung in the cultural and educational section. A strange feeling came over us as we looked at these posters. Everything we'd seen before—the roadway, the bridges, the locomotives, the buildings—had been almost completely destroyed in the 35 years since the construction site closed. And suddenly these fragile posters, untouched by time, appeared, as if they'd been preserved in another world... It was simply unbelievable. But the most important finding awaited us in the stove of one of the camp's administrative buildings: among the papers pulled out from there, we discovered the set of record cards for every inmate of the camp, listing their names, the articles under which they were convicted, their sentences, their occupations before arrest, and the areas where they lived. Perhaps one of the guards simply forgot to light the stove and destroy these documents before the abandonment of the camp. 

In the photographs: 1. A guard tower. 2-3. Inside a barrack in the labor camp. The text says: "Be quiet, do not prevent your comrades' rest". 4. In the “Political Room” of the camp. On the banners: “Long live our mighty socialist motherland - USSR”, “Completion of the fifth five-year plan will be a big step on the way from socialism to communism”, “The labor in USSR is a matter of glory, a matter of honor, a matter of valor and heroism.” 5. Punishment cell. 

We spent the rest of the day and the following morning here before continuing on to the Turukhan River. Finding nothing else of note, we reached the river a few days later. There, using the inflatable tubes we'd brought with us, we built a catamaran and sailed to the Yenisei River, to the city of Turukhansk. Turukhansk is a fairly large city, and from there we had no problem getting to Moscow.

The next fall, during the “Week of Conscience,” the photographs and other materials from the two expeditions were exhibited in the cultural complex in Moscow. Our exposition was unique. It drew enormous attention from numerous visitors of exhibition and the press. The story and the photos were published in many papers and magazines. From that point on, the abandoned railroad became a popular destination for both Soviet and international photographers and journalists. My phone rang nonstop from people interested in receiving copies of the photographs or consultations regarding their upcoming expedition to the railroad. A few museums requested copies of the photographs for their exhibitions. People whom I have never met called me asking to join another expedition to the railroad if I organize it. Eventually, I decided to do it after a call from a man who came to Moscow from the West Siberian settlement of Tarko-Sale, located not far from the center section of the railroad. He offered the use of a helicopter for any of my future expeditions. This offer was very tempting because it would allow us to investigate the entire eastern section of the railroad.

My third expedition, in August of 1989, was sponsored by the Moscow Memorial Society. The members of this much larger expedition were biologists and senior administrators of the Society Oleg Orlov and Tatiana Kasatkina, photographer of the Historical Museum Ernst Ivanov, my good friend physician Yevgeniy Khazanov, participant of the second expedition Yuri Pototsky, teacher Dmitriy Davydov, and former director of the Museum of Cosmonautics Constantin Vernikov.

In the two years that passed since my first expedition, the situation in the Soviet Union had changed tremendously, and now many people wanted to help us. When there were no more seats on the plane that flew to Tarko-Sale from the Airport of Tyumen, the airport supervisor immediately scheduled a second plane, and we rapidly reached the town. We were met very warmly at Tarko-Sale and had a meeting at a local club, where we talked about the Memorial Society and the railroad construction. The next morning, helicopters delivered us to the most western point of the eastern section of the railroad. The next day, we started moving East along the railroad mound, toward the Yenisey River. We had to hike 170 kilometers to conduct a thorough inspection of all the camps located along the route, as well as the remains of the railroad itself. We found and explored many camps, but they were all badly destroyed by time. There was nothing similar to the camp near the Vymskaya River discovered during our second expedition. The more interesting findings had to do with the railroad itself. Moss-covered railroad beams, bridges twisted and destroyed by permafrost, platforms that had fallen over, semaphores rising above the forest, and locomotive trains overturned in the bushes produced a surrealistic impression.

Locomotives and railway cars in the Eastern part of the railroad. Photographs of 1989.

Although we realized the tragedy and absurdity of this railroad, the out-of-this-world experience of walking among these ruins cast a powerful spell. This surreal impression is especially amplified by the complete lack of people there. On the entire journey, we met only two employees of the meteorological station and two residents, Nikolai Kusamin and his wife. Nikolay was very helpful when one of the expedition members suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. Luckily, our doctor, Evgeny Khazanov, was nearby and quickly revived the man. This happened on a section of the route that runs along the Turukhan River, not far from Nikolai's house. We ran to Nikolai for help, and he took the patient in a motorboat to the meteorological station, from where he was picked up by a medical helicopter, summoned by radio. The consequences of this incident could have been much worse if it had happened at another place on our route.

Nikolai showed us a small cemetery from the time the railroad construction. Among the stunted vegetation stood several dozen gray wooden posts with small markers nailed on top. These markers once had inscriptions on them, but were now completely faded and unreadable. If you don't know where this cemetery is located, it is practically impossible to find it.

For three weeks, we hiked to the Yenisey River, scrutinizing and photographing everything connected with the railroad. After a week of relatively good weather, constant rain began to fall. It was impossible to dry anything, and the photo and video equipment stopped functioning. The good news was that the rain drove away the gnats and mosquitoes, so the swelling from their bites began to shrink. We could see how unsuitable this place was for human habitation.

Even though we had explored the entire eastern section of the railroad, I still returned there two more times. Ernst Ivanov and Polish journalist Tomasz Kizny participated in these expeditions with me. The peak of public interest in the GULAG topic was waning, and after losing their political overtones, our expeditions began to look like more of a professional activity. The country was quickly changing, and that changed our technical and financial possibilities. We no longer lacked professional photo equipment, and instead of walking so much, we often flew above the railroad on a helicopter leased in Igarka.

The photographs and documents brought back from the expeditions were undoubtedly very telling. But to properly present these materials, knowledge of the construction's history was lacking. Therefore, starting in the late 1980s, I began collecting information about this construction. I learned much of this from a participant, the poet and translator Lazar Shereshevsky, who worked at the construction site’s camp theater. His memory perfectly preserved the details of the events of those years. Zoya Dmitrievna Marchenko spent several years in exile at this construction site, and her recollections complemented the emerging picture well. I was greatly assisted by the railway researchers from Alexander Nikolsky's group, who directed me and Eric Ivanov to the Leningrad Railway Museum, where we found numerous archival materials. We also came across publications in various newspapers and magazines. Reflecting on everything I saw at the construction site, heard from various people, and read in publications, I gradually coalesced a fairly clear picture of the history of this construction.

When you fly over the North West Siberian lowlands you will see nothing but swamps in every direction for hundreds of miles. Not even one inhabited village. A question naturally arises: Why was a railroad constructed here in the first place? Even if the railroad had been completed and maintained in working shape, there would have been practically nothing to transport on it. Yet the construction continued for four years, ending with Stalin’s death in the spring of 1953.

The only possible reason for the construction was Stalin’s military strategy. It was decided that the country must have a powerful naval base on the coast of the Arctic Ocean deep inside Russia and very far away from the country's borders. They decided to construct the port beyond the ridge of the Ural Mountains. Because of the secret military nature of this project, the railroad leading to it had practically unlimited financing.

At first, the erection of the port and a large ship-repair plant were planned on the coast of Obskaya Guba, in the region of the Cape Kamenny (Kamen – is stone in Russian; however, contrary to its name there was no a single stone at the cape). In 1947 the rail line construction to the Cape started. This railroad had to cross the Ridge of the Ural Mountains and then run several hundred kilometers northeast to the future site of the port. At the end of 1948, the first stage of the construction was completed and the railroad reached the Labytnangi village on the left shore of the Ob River. A small northern town called Salekhard stood on the right shore of the river, opposite the village. The construction of the second stage of the railroad, from Obsky station to Cape Kamenny, had been just at the beginning when it was realized that Obskaya Guba was completely unsuitable as a location for a port because the water was simply too shallow. The construction was stopped. A new plan to erect the port on the lower reaches of another great Siberian river – the Yenisey – was proposed. The unsuccessful experience with the Gulf of Ob did not deter Stalin and his advisers. The decision to build the Salekhard–Igarka railroad and a port on the lower reaches of the Yenisei River was taken at the highest levels of communist government on January 29 of 1949, without any technical preparation.

Construction work began as soon as the snow melted in the spring of 1949 – by this time, the first camps had already been established along the route. This work was carried out simultaneously with design and survey work, even when maps of the area were unavailable. As A. Pobozhy, one of the project managers, writes in his memoirs, mapping the area was the surveyors' primary task during the first year of work. Meanwhile, construction was already in full swing.

Apparently, in the history of railroads, there has never been an attempt to build a line this long under such extreme environmental conditions. At these latitudes, the area between the Ob and the Yenisey rivers is covered by continuous swamps. For more than seven months each year, the ground is covered by a few feet of snow. There is often high wind and temperatures descend to under -60ºF. But the main obstacle to railroad construction is permafrost. The boundary of long-standing permafrost soil lay only two feet deep there. Construction almost unavoidably changes the heat insulation of the upper soil layer, displacing this boundary. The result causes all construction to become warped in little time. Furthermore, the swampy permafrost soil contains ice pockets that thaw out due to the disturbance of heat insulation, causing enormous cave-ins. The problems of building on permafrost are very complex and are still not completely solved today despite worldwide interest in finding a solution. During one of my expeditions, I saw in Igarka a five-story house cracked in half because of a permafrost-warped foundation. The house was constructed just a couple of years earlier. Of course, the problems related to building roads in permafrost were well known many decades before this railroad construction. Still, people involved in the decision to build the railway did not want to or were afraid to talk about these problems. 

The railroad had to run about 800 miles along the polar circle to connect the mouth of the Ob River with the lower reaches of the Yenisey River. Along the axis of the future road, there were only four small villages: Yangi-Yugan, Nadym, Urengoy, Yanov Stan, and Ermakovo. Across the Ob River, in the Salekhard region, and across the Yenisey River next to the Ermakovo village, the engineers were planning to use ferries, so trains could cross the rivers in the summer. During the winter, direct ice roads were intended. After crossing the Yenisey River to the east coast, the railroad had to pass 60 additional miles to the north before reaching the city of Igarka.

The Ob and Yenisei rivers served as the main access routes to the construction site. Accordingly, the road was built from both ends: from the west, from Salekhard, located on the right bank of the Ob, and from the east, from the village of Ermakovo, located on the left bank of the Yenisei. Each year, equipment and materials were delivered during the winter to the section of road planned for completion in the current season—approximately 100 km on each side. At the same time, prisoners, who formed the main labor force for the construction site, were transported by car or on foot along the winter road. Before work on the route began, they had to build barracks for themselves, surround them with barbed wire, put up watchtowers in the corners, and erect buildings for the camp guard and administration.

During the winter season, these prisoners built the embankment and erected all the necessary engineering structures. A special detachment, based on railway platforms, laid the rails on the prepared embankment.

The sand for the railroad mound was brought in from the river valleys in the surrounding vicinity. Lumber was much more difficult to obtain since the trees in this part of the country are smaller, unusable for the beams. Therefore, the lumber was supplied from more southern regions where special labor camps were set up to harvest it. These felled trees were floated down the rivers to the construction sites. In general, the supply of the construction site, located so far away from any inhabited area of the country, presented complex problems. Besides using the constructed sections of the road and special airlifts, the only way to get supplies to the central section of the line was through Obskaya Guba, along the rivers Nadym, Pur, and Taz during the short navigation period.

Sometimes one hears the opinion that such senseless construction projects were used exclusively to liquidate unwanted people by forcing them to work under terrible conditions. This is wrong, to kill people, the government used much cheaper methods. Stalin wanted to build the Salekhard–Igarka railroad. The enormous cost of construction is just one of the compelling pieces of evidence. Over the first two years, the construction was financed by the unlimited mechanism, which meant that the spending was unrestricted. A large amount of construction equipment was delivered to the road, including approximately 400 trucks, over fifty tractors (tanks were sometimes used due to shortages of tractors), and even excavators. Hundreds of kilometers of rails, dozens of locomotives, and hundreds of railroad cars were also brought in. There were also a large number of paid workers employed. Yet the majority of these employees could not be called “free” in the full sense of the word. The camp guards (just like the convicts) did not choose to work in this harsh environment and were not allowed to leave or transfer to a different location. Most of the released convicts were also not permitted to leave the area. However, all the paid employees received very high salaries compared to what their counterparts would have made in the central regions of the country. Zoya Dmitrievna Marchenko, a just-released prisoner, was “re-employed” on the eastern section of the railroad, remembers that her salary was high enough not only to buy all the provisions for herself but also left her enough money to send to her sister and mother in the European part of Russia. An incentive that had not been used for years was introduced to stimulate prisoners to work harder. If a day target was completed on schedule, the prisoners were credited two or three days, instead of one, toward the completion of their prison sentence. With this incentive, many prisoners in the European section of the country eagerly volunteered to go on this construction project, remembers Lazar Shereshevsky. This doesn’t mean that the volunteer prisoners comprised a high percentage among all prisoners working on the railroad. Lazar Shereshevsky declined to volunteer for the railroad but was still forced to work there.

During the busiest time, about two hundred thousand people worked on this construction project, half of them were prisoners. Who were these people who filled more than a hundred labor camps along the path of the railroad? Recollections of former prisoners and the record cards we found in the camp stove in 1988 shed some light on this question. About half of the prisoners were convicted under Political Article 58 (counter-revolutionary activities). For the majority of these people, the conviction was, in one way or another, connected to World War II. Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians were guilty of collaborating with their old ‘bourgeois government’ before the Red Army occupied and took over those countries. There were Russian citizens from the western part of the country interned by the Germans, as well as Russian soldiers captured during the first unsuccessful years of the war. There were Poles, the soldiers of the Army Krayovy, who fought against the Germans for an independent Poland. Some were guilty by the fact that they lived in the occupied territories or participated in the partisan movement (Stalin did not trust partisans). The only group that fought with the Soviet regime was the Banderovtsy, who were fighting in the guerrilla brigades for West Ukrainian independence. Together with these groups, many rural inhabitants were dispatched to GULAG camps, suspected of helping Banderovtsy, and as a result, Ukrainians composed the most numerous national group at these labor camps. In contrast to the prisoners of the end of the 1930s, there were no Soviet party apparatchiks and military commanders among these prisoners. People with a higher education held a small percentage on the construction site; there were people of the most usual professions: chauffeurs, carpenters, tractor operators, mechanics. Certainly, on the gigantic construction site, it was possible to find people of all professions: doctors, teachers, lawyers, writers, artists, and composers. For several years, the mobile theater worked on the construction site, comprised of professional actors, who were found to be "enemies of the people".

About 15% of the prisoners were convicted under the decree of April 6, 1947, for embezzlement of socialist property. On this edict, it was possible to obtain up to 25 years in the camps for a bag of flour taken away from the collective farm storage. Usually, these convicts were not the professional pilferers, but the usual toilers, who were unable to feed families with the state wage or collective farm payments. And finally, about a third of prisoners were real criminals. Their terror of other prisoners was considered by many to be one of the most difficult aspects of life in the labor camps. There were also women's camps on the construction site. In essence, women were to do the same hard work as men. Only a fraction of them was so lucky as to get on sewing combines, which manufactured clothing for the prisoners.

The prisoner camps were located along the constructing sections of the road every 3 to 6 miles. They were relatively small, 400 to 500 people each. A typical camp measured 200 by 200 yards, surrounded by barbed wire, with the guard towers at the corners. Inside were 4 to 5 barracks, a dining building, a cultural-educational center, a bathhouse, a small storage house, a bakery, and a huge wooden barrel as a water tank. Everything was constructed with sufficient accuracy, even with decorative elements like, for example, an arch before the entrance into the dining room in the large camp near the Yermakovo settlement. In a corner of each camp, separated by another fence, was placed SHIZO –

Arch before the entrance into the camp dining hall (left).  “Board of Honor” in the camp (right). Prisoners who worked and behaved themselves better than others had their names displayed there.

the intra-camp prison. Due to their very solid construction, small SHIZO buildings in many camps were preserved well by the time of my expeditions. Iron-covered doors with eye holes and thick bars on the small windows are all telling attributes of a prison. The barracks for guards were located next to the camp and were not very different from the barracks for the prisoners. The camp was permanently illuminated, most importantly, the fence, by a small electric plant. The majority of camps on the construction site were of the ordinary regime, and living conditions there were not the most severe in the GULAG. No one died from hunger there, although prisoners suffered from a catastrophically insufficient amount of vitamins, and some died from scurvy. Mortality in the camps was below average in the Gulag. Nevertheless, camp existence frequently led people to complete desperation, and prisoners tried to escape. Fugitives had no chance for success: there was nothing around but hundreds of miles of swamps, and the round-ups awaited them in the rare settlements. The fugitives caught were punished by the most severe means. For example, in summer, people were undressed and placed under the camp tower to be eaten by gnats, and after two hours, men perished from loss of blood. 

The gigantic construction completely overturned and subordinated life in this almost uninhabited region. The entirety of the scant local agricultural workers now worked solely to supply construction. Local productions were reoriented to accommodate the construction’s needs. Enormous masses of people appeared there. Thus, the small settlement Yermakovo became a town with a population of approximately twenty thousand people, without accounting for the prisoners. All were implicated in the construction, with its specific GULAG tinge. In Salekhard, Igarka, and other towns along the route, the mobile camp theater toured and performed. Residents were frequently assigned to rounding up fugitives and were warned not to walk alone.

In the summer of 1952, the bridge across the Nadym River was opened on the Western half of the road. Trains started moving over this section that ran 220 miles in length. About 100 miles of the railroad were up and running in the Eastern section. In the different sections, about 120 more miles of road were built. 75 workers' settlements, 35 station buildings, and 11 warehouses were built in the tundra and along the riverbanks. Train ferries were delivered on the Ob and Yenisey. There were stations and settlements, all possible workshops, and steam locomotive depots. But the highest authorities’ interest in the construction had already faded. Maybe the strategic military priorities had changed. The modernization of the Igarka port and the building of the ship-repair plant had not begun. The financing of the construction became limited. In the spring of 1953, almost immediately after Stalin's death, the authorities decided to stop the construction. First, they ordered the conservation of the construction site. Then, after calculating the cost of conservation, they decided just to abandon the railroad. Part of the equipment was taken back; part was left on the spot. The deserted equipment and inventory were spoiled to the point that no one could use them. The locomotives were cut, felt boots were burned in the furnaces, holes were pierced in the basins, and boots were chopped by axes.

Basins and boots at the camp. Eastern part of the railroad, 1989.

Everything that was built became useless. For four years, under the harshest natural conditions, tens of thousands of people built this road. Many thousands of prisoners remain buried in this harsh land forever. A significant amount of the country’s resources was allocated to service the construction. In 4 years, the expenditure for the construction comprised more than four billion rubles — more than 1% of the country’s capital investments in the first postwar five-year plan. All of this proved to be useless. Certainly, along the road, even if it was completed, there would be nothing to transport at the time.

But there was another reason to end the construction: it failed technically. The constructed sections of the road were falling apart immediately and could not be used without constant repair. The mound built on the permafrost was deforming fast, and the bridges were pushed out of the soil. Because of the enormous volume of repair work, all of the camps along the road had a full load of work. Nevertheless, the constructed sections of the road remained in a state of emergency. Trains moved at a rate of 10 mph, and they still constantly descended the rail. In one of the expeditions, we found a poster: "Railroad workers! Bring the road into a good state, do not allow train crashes!" What other railroad saw such posters?!

By 1952, all the participants in the construction, from prisoners to managers, understood that the project had failed and only pretended that they were seriously trying to build something. The catastrophic state of the road was not a secret for the country's leadership either. This is evidenced by the fact that, through the removal of material assets during the liquidation of the construction, the use of the built sections of the railroad was prohibited. Among the inhabitants of the Siberian north, this railroad was called the Dead Road. The fate of the road could, nevertheless, change in the last quarter of the XX century, when very rich fields of gas and oil were found at these places. Unexpectedly, the railroad could prove to be very useful. The issue of resuming the abandoned construction site has been considered several times since then. However, after inspection of the railroad sections, the idea was abandoned.

During the preparation of this work, the author was greatly helped by ChatGPT.

Literature (all in Russian)

1. A. Pobozhy. The Dead Road (The notes of the engineer). Novy Mir, № 8, 1964, Moscow.

2. L. Shereshevsky. Joyful Five Hundred. In the newspaper The Red North, November of 1988 - January 1989, Salekhard.

3. The report on the full-scale inspection of the railroad line Salekhard - Nadym. Report of LENGIPROTRANS, 1957. Fund of the Central Museum of Rail Transport of Saint Petersburg.

4. The report on the building of the railroad line Chum - Salekhard - Igarka. Report of LENGIPROTRANS, 1963. Fund of the Central Museum of Rail Transport of Saint Petersburg.

5. A. Berzin. Roads in anywhere: 1947-1953. Proceedings of the History of Natural Science and Technology, Nauka,1990, Moscow.

6. V. Gritsenko, V. Kalinin. The history of The Dead Road, Basko, 2010, Ekaterinburg.

7. V. Remizov. The permafrost. Alpina non-fiction, 2021, Moscow.

8. M. Mishechkina. Construction site 503. Archive of the Krasnoyarsk branch of the Memorial Society.