Everyone remembers with what enthusiasm earlier in the 70s our country received the news about the construction of the BAM. Impact lane, the shortest exit to the Pacific ports, the road to new deposits ... But few know that BAM had a kind of northern twin - the Transpolar Railroad, the Chum - Salekhard - Igarka railway, which struck at a pace of 19-5 just as quickly forgotten in later years.
It is necessary to connect the deep sea port in the geographic 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 filled camps and prisons after
the end of the war is also necessary! And on the uninhabited expanses of the tundra, from the Ob and from the Yenisei, columns of prisoners stretched out to meet each other. The western part is the 501st line of the GULAG. The eastern part is the 503rd.
In 1949, the Soviet leadership decided to build the Igarka-Salekhard polar railway. The prisoners built the road. The total planned length of the road is 1263 km. The road runs 200 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.
Construction problems rested not only on climatic and geographic 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; across the Ob the ferry 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 highways, which are laid in winter, after snow falls, and numerous swamps and rivers are covered with ice. In order to make road crossings more reliable, the crossing points are additionally frozen - watered, increasing the thickness of the ice. Railway ice crossings were not just poured with water, logs and sleepers were frozen in them. The device of ice crossings for railway transport is a unique invention of Soviet engineers, this probably did not happen either before or after the construction of the Igarka-Salekhard road.
Construction was carried out simultaneously from both sides, from the Ob side - 501 construction sites and from the Yenisei side - 503 construction sites.
Inauguration of one of the sections of the road. 1952 year.
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. Many of them are perfectly preserved.
It was almost impossible to escape from the camps. The main road was controlled by security guards. The only way to freedom lay to the Yenisei, then up 1700 km along it 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.
The camp is near the river. Penzeryakha.
The door of the punishment cell.
The lattice of the punishment cell.
Surviving cauldrons from the catering unit.
The punishment cell.
Everything needed for construction, from bricks and nails to a steam locomotive, was brought in from the mainland. For construction site 503, the delivery of goods was carried out first along the Trans-Siberian mainline by rail to Krasnoyarsk, then down the Yenisei in the summer by river vessels.
Also, barges brought in rails, steam locomotives, carriages, railcars, which are still standing in the tundra.
In the post-war years, there were not enough rails in the USSR. Rails removed from the existing directions were brought in. On the rails and crutches of the road, a variety of dates of release - starting from 1879.
The timber had to be imported as well. At the latitude of the road construction - tundra and forest-tundra, there is no construction timber. It was specially harvested to the south and rafts were floated down the Yenisei. In winter, after the end of navigation, a large delivery of goods from the mainland was impossible. Navigation on the Yenisei lasts 3-4 months.
Ice crossing guidance.
The lack of sufficient material support forced us to constantly look for unconventional engineering and construction solutions. The roofs of the barracks in the camps are not covered with slate or tin. For roofs, wood chunks were specially split along the grain. They split, not sawed. 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 prisoners. After the death of the Leader, the construction was hastily curtailed. Camps, locomotives, bridges, and other property were simply thrown into the tundra. The great construction project, which took the lives of more than 100,000 people, ended in failure.
Over the next few years, an insignificant part of the property was removed, in some areas adjacent to the Ob and Yenisei rails were removed.
42 billion rubles were invested in the construction.
Transpolar highway today. Drive Salekhard-Nadym.
Almost no one has heard of the "Dead Road", unless the population of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, which, despite all the oddities, considers the "Dead Road" (Buildings 501 and 503)onlyrailway line along the Arctic Circle. True, in one place it was necessary to bypass one of the bays of the Northern Arctic, the Ob Bay. Well, ohcult of the Virgin (cult of Heroes, primordial faith)Krasnoyarsk people were not told anything. And they did not say that the "Dead Road" passes through the sacred places of the cult of the Virgin either.
To us, the indigenous peoples of Russia, the civilizers sniff: "Dead Road" is super secret, although there is nothing to hide on it, therefore, secrecy is supposedlya sign of Stalin's paranoia... The "dead road" did not make any economic sense, the volume of possible traffic is too negligible, therefore, the construction of the road supposedlya sign of Stalin's idiocy... For some reason, twisted rails from the battle zone of the War were brought to the "Dead Road", rails of a standard size were welded from meter-long pieces. In addition, ancient rails for this polar road were collected throughout the country. The press of the Krasnoyarsk Territory likes to publish photographs of the year of release on rails. Consequently, the use of "junk" is supposedly a sign in the USSRdevastation under Stalin, and most importantly, a sign of Stalin's stupidity, unable to organize the smelting of steel on rails for at least one road. "Dead Road" was built along the route drawn by Stalin without sufficient preliminary research. The technical design was completed almost after the cessation of construction, and this is supposedlya sign of Stalin's ignoranceunable to understand the need for preliminary research, andmegalomaniac signand painful faith in their genius. The "Dead Road" was built exclusively by the forces of traitors to the Motherland, prisoners of the GULAG, and thisa sign of Stalin's cretinism, unaware of the inefficiency of these labor, as we have been taught since the time of Perlmuter, innocently convicted "prisoners of conscience."
For some reason, after the War, Stalin was interested in the affairs of the "Dead Road" more than other objects. Stalin had the same particularly intense interest only in the Battle of Stalingrad. And this incomprehensible interest in an economically meaningless project, according to the "prisoners of conscience", also testifies to paranoia Stalin, and about idiocy Stalin, and oh cretinism Stalin, and oh ignorance Stalin, and oh stupidity Stalin at once. So, unable to penetrate into the beauty of the primordial faith, degenerates have highlighted many points of departure for comprehending the meaning of this strange object.
Begins"Dead Road" from the Sacred Place of the Virgin (in Labytnangi) and ends at the Sacred Place of the Virgin (Cape Ermaki). Most likely, there is something else between these extreme points, only I have not been there yet.
And now let's think with our heads - and all these oddities, put together, will lead us to the fullness of beauty.
The "dead road" is, indeed, an object for which under Stalin was given the status of a secret. The length of "construction site 503" and "construction site 501" is one thousand two hundred kilometers. This strange object was not just built under Stalin, but this object was built by Stalin... It is alleged that Stalin telephoned every day, inquired about what had been achieved, learned about the pace, and corrected the route. He corrected the route because Stalin could not say aloud "the sacred place of the Virgin, Varga", but he needed the path to be laid close to these places. The previous facility, which Stalin also tightly controlled, was the Battle of Stalingrad.
The meaning of the road is precisely that the world of Virgo (primordial faith) is both the beginning and the end of the "Dead Road", and in general the whole road.
Stalin delved into the technical subtleties of projects so much that he surprised technical specialists. So the strange collection of rails of one specific series (1901 - 1913), the most unsuccessful series in the history of Russian railway transport, all over the country, was not accidental, and took place with the knowledge of Stalin, at his direction. There was a reason for that.
The "Dead Road" is an axis to the mysterious Northern civilization, Hyperborea, or rather, to the world, which, in fact, only gives rise to the Magi (white shamans). The "dead road" connects its nodal points, sacred places, which contribute to the initiation of the initiates of the higher degrees. That is why the Nenets shamans call the secret railway Varga, that is, the Sacred Road. Varga goes from varga to varga, because the word “varga” in the Khanty language is “sacred place”.
Dead road built to last
The waiters confirmed Varga's sacred status as the Dead Road. The rituals of bringing Stalin's body into the Mausoleum have not yet ended (!!!), the "electorate" could not even imagine that soon, with duty joy, they would rip Stalin's portraits off the walls, and steam locomotives were already rolled off the "Dead Road" and drowned in Yenisei, without fear of responsibility for damage to state property. Such courage meant only one thing: such was the will of the new higher authorities. And the will of the higher authorities to the six is a decree. Such an instant (several days) attempt to destroy a secret object was possible only as a result of a conspiracy, an early conspiracy.
Steam locomotives were drowned in the Yenisei and the road was preserved not under Khrushchev, but even under Malenkov - there was such a shibzdik in power between Stalin and Khrushchev. And this is an extremely important detail. If it were under Khrushchev, one would think that the collapse of the power of the USSR and Russia is the result of Khrushchev's individual actions. But Khrushchev did the same as Malenkov. So they had a common puppeteer!
If Malenkov had been the leader, he would have remained in power, and if Khrushchev had been, then he would have been appointed immediately. But no. Hence, there was a puppeteer. And this puppeteer would have been glad to defeat Stalin, but he could not. Could not! Not during life, not after death. I could - and the so frightening of the Jews, Construction 503, would not have started. The timing of the start of such a violent "conservation" of the road is an extremely important detail for understanding the meaning of Stalin's entire rule.
Monuments to Stalin all over the country stood for more than one year, they did not frighten. Museums too. They were scary and dangerous, but not like Dead Road. The most dangerous thing for the Jews is "Dead Road".
But Stalin even here twisted the Jew around his finger - the object is not destroyed in principle... The grandiose monuments of Stalingrad can be blown up, and the fragments can be drowned in the Volga. The pyramids of Egypt can also be torn down, and something else can be built in their place. And there will be no traces.
Not so with Dead Road. Even if you detonate an atomic charge every kilometer, then, all the same, the formed moat will mark the route of the "Dead Road" - and the road will remain. No matter how carefully the bulldozers work, leveling the railway embankment, but even then, in the conditions of permafrost and taiga, traces will be obvious for many hundreds of years. Stalin circled, circled the Jew around his finger. He spread them all into a sucker.
Another of the lessons of Stalin's rule is that, even with the entire Politburo as enemies, ruling the people, who for the most part were even less indifferent to what was happening than now, Stalin succeeded in everything. Stalin's successes in all areas are now perceived as a fairy tale. It turns out that one (!) Head was enough for the stunning success of Russia at that time.
Malenkov began, and Khrushch multiplied, driving away the curious from the "Dead Road" by radiation after the atomic explosion, carried out under the Ermakovsky depot, the only entrance accessible to the uninhibited. But no gu-gu about that explosion in the media. For some reason. But there is a reason for the newspapermen to be indignant: under Khrushchev, the explosion was carried out only from Ermakovo, practically within the city limits, under the depot. Moreover, without resettling the indigenous people who knew about the "Dead Road", and that it rests against Varga, the sacred place of the Virgin. Non-resettlement looks like genocide. However, the media representatives, so to speak, “prisoners of conscience”, have no conscience.
In the times of Brezhnev, even tourist kayaks were not allowed to enter the "Dead Road" area from the top of the Yenisei - and there are no military installations there!
Consider the problem of old rails.
The rails were laid in the early fifties, when there were no problems with anything, but with steel in the USSR. The war is over, the production of tanks and shells has decreased, and the production of rails, presumably, has increased. There is an abundance of rails, rails roll alongside in Stalinsk (now Novokuznetsk). However, for Stroeks 501 and 503, rails are brought from afar, and they assembled old, moreover, unusable for operation, series of 1901-1913. This is not an oversight - Stalin controlled the progress of the construction!
On the "Dead Road", namely on Cape Ermaki, I lived for ten days - then I moved to Novaya Kureika. That Kureika, in which Stalin lived, is no longer there, not a soul. In the new Kureyka, a couple of days later, Leonid Leonov's book "The Road to the Ocean" literally crawled into my hands. The plot is tied to the fact that in 1931 a train wreck occurs due to unusable rails, from which the head falls off at the drilling sites. It's not just one defective rail - all of them are not suitable. All this pre-revolutionary branch, on which the crash occurred, is in patches, and is no good. That is, in 1931, the 1901 rails were completely unusable. Leonov figured out the technical side of the issue in great detail. So think, if in 1931 these rails were no longer suitable, then could they be suitable in 1952?
The railway museum (in Abakan) also turned up, maybe it is the only one for the whole country, in which samples of all series are collected. Different configurations, different grades of steel. It turns out that under tsarism, and after almost every ten to fifteen years, the series of rails was changed. The 1901-1913 series was the most unsuccessful. True, she the most stainless... Just for monuments. Or path pointers.
Further. Twisted rails were taken from the battle zones, cut off meter-long pieces and welded together. And what else did we do from meter-long pieces of rails? Only one thing: the "hedgehogs" in the War. This is such an anti-tank device. We took three pieces of rail about a meter long and welded them apart. The tank, and even more so the armored vehicle, rested on the "hedgehog", and could not get through. Very simple but effective. "Jerzy", too, probably preferred to make from the rails twisted during the German bombing. These "hedgehogs" were later used as monuments to the heroes of the defense. These are still preserved near Moscow. So the analogy of the strange rails of the "Dead Road" and monuments to the victorious heroes should suggest itself to anyone who is able to think with his head. That is, again, the theme of the monument comes up.
A. Menyailov
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Sunday repost! On this hot day, we remembered a post dated March 30, 2012 about the Dead Road "Salekhard" - "Nadym" - Building No. 501. It was an expedition to Salekhard “City at the Arctic Circle”. In this article, I have combined two posts.
Well, back to the expedition. After lunch on the 7th day, having thoroughly steamed in the bathhouse, we moved towards the winter road, stopping on the way to a small museum. ... Accordingly, while traditionally we were 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 ice of the Ob and goes a couple of kilometers along the river, then it bifurcates. The winter road goes to the left to Yar-Sale, and to the right - to Nadym. Here I (I was driving at that moment) was in for the first surprise: I do not know how to ride on the rolls. On the very first slightly difficult section, I put our minibus well in the snow. We dug it out and pulled it out with the help of the Skorokhod on the L200. While they 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, since after themselves they left a completely broken road along which it was rather difficult to drive. And if you do not know how, then it is deplorable in general. Having landed the car for the second time (we dug out on our own), I gave the steering wheel to Vita - fortunately, he clearly has more experience of such driving. Or just talent :) By the way, it was already completely dark, we were tired as devils, but continued to crawl stubbornly towards Nadym.
In the dark, we met the first traces of the 501st construction site - the remains of an embankment and some kind of bridge. After a while, the winter road went out onto the track of the Dead Road and then walked next to its embankment, through the forest. Here, at the 70th kilometer, we met the fear and horror of the entire 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. Directly in the center there are two huge gaps in the ice, where the Urals fell through the hub (the depth of the hole was established by the folk method of poking at it with a stick). On the left, near the forest, one could pass, but one had to climb there on clean and very slippery ice. On the right, the ice ended, and there was a meter-long cliff, where a truck fell, leaving beautiful imprints of the sidewalls of the wheels on the snow parapet. In general, at that moment it seemed to us that there was no way to get there.
While deciding what to do, a lone truck caught up with us, carrying workers to the base. The driver, a young guy, asked why we got up, if we needed help. We said no, since he doesn't have a helicopter :) He grunted, wished him a good journey and overcame these openings without any problems. Then we became completely sad, and we decided to return to the 65th kilometer, where there is a small playground. We'll spend the night there and decide what to do next.
To complete the situation, Skorokhod's plastic canister of diesel fuel leaked out and doused his entire hypercube and all its insides with diesel fuel. This completely knocked us down, and we were in a very depressed state. We decided that in the morning we will return to that place and again try to drive with a fresh mind and daylight. If it doesn’t work out, then we will return to Salekhard and go back with 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 for drying, all things were piled at night and left. The morning examination showed that the diesel fuel did not particularly damage them. Something had to be thrown away, 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 only wetted what was on the edge.
2. If I remember correctly, it was one of the coldest nights of our trip, something like -20 or -25. But in general we were lucky with the weather: for all the time there was neither terrible cold weather, nor a blizzard.
3. This hill 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. The part of it that passes through open places is often swept away. It is rather difficult to ride on such rifts of loose snow. And forest areas or areas passing along the embankment of the railway are passable even for cars. According to locals, sometimes there are seasons when you can even drive on a nine-road along the winter road, but this is very rare.
6. Morning. We have breakfast, wash, and get ready to go to storm that stupid place. Nobody wants to return to Salekhard.
7. Nearby, a column of three Urals stops, which are transporting a heater to Salekhard. We find out the way from them - 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 interference with the land leads to a violation of the heat balance, and the permafrost instantly melts, turning into a swamp. And the structures themselves are prone to swelling. The 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. The abutment of the bridge is a wooden well filled with sand. By the way, the place where we got up at night, we overcame during the day without problems. Alas, I did not take photos then. :(
10. There used to be a sand embankment here, which was completely eroded away.
11. Rails for the track were collected throughout the country. The earliest rail found on the construction site dates back to 1877!
12. Until now, historians argue and speculate about why Stalin authorized this construction - without any research, projects (he was more or less ready only by 1952, when the 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 in Wikipedia.
13. It is surprising that an iron span was used for such a small bridge.
14. Typical view of a winter road in the forest area.
15. With the beginning of the railway construction, a telegraph communication line was built 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 - the best car for winter travel. I have already cited 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 auto camper.
17. Miraculously preserved semaphore.
18. The entire road was built according to a very lightweight version, so that a steam locomotive with carriages could somehow pass. The construction was carried out in terrible climatic conditions. And at the same time, the designers and builders had little idea of how to subsequently exploit all this in permafrost conditions. The first winters showed that bridges swell up to half a meter, the canvas goes in waves and washes it away. 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 light line in an open area. Of course, the remains of the construction site must be examined in the summer, when it is not hidden under the snow, but in the summer it is only here 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 construction materials at all. Well that is was not 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 skeleton of the bridge on the go. Look how it swelled!
23. Let's go back a little, in the morning. After we crossed the openings, a 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. They advised what to see on 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 a weapon. We replied that no - he really was not. He also asked who rode in front of us, whom we saw. We talked about cars, of course. Our California aroused the general curiosity. Then they took the automatic machines out of the trunk, got into their jeep and, wishing us a good road, drove on. Here I felt somehow uneasy. A little further we met them again, exchanged greetings and dispersed completely. And other local comrades suggested this place - a former camp of prisoners who were building 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. The road is said to be built on bones. Nobody knows how many people have disappeared in this land.
26. In the summer - a vile that almost devoured it alive. In winter, it is bitter cold.
27. According to some memoirs of engineers, they themselves did not understand why they were building this road. Now there is gas there, but then there was NOTHING at all.
28. Now we can say unequivocally that the road would not have been built on time. And taking into account how the construction proceeded and what conditions there were, 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 is impossible to say unequivocally.
29. But back to our expedition. One of the features of our car was the presence of an incredible amount of pockets, shelves, nests and cabinets. Here, a 70-200 and a second penny with 16-35 mm can easily fit into the front door pocket.
30. On the windshield there is a camera that is filming a traffic video, and GoPro, which was filming Vitya and me. As a navigation - Asus netbook with ozi and general staff maps. The video from the expedition can be considered buried. : (Alas, nobody's hands even got there to collect it.
31. We met the evening not far from Nadym, but still on the winter road. Here he goes mostly along the embankment of the railway, bypassing bridges on ice crossings. At night we finally drove into Nadym and immediately fell asleep.
32. These were 300 kilometers of emptiness. There are no settlements here anymore, 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 maintain it in good condition. This, in fact, the most difficult section, we covered in a day and a half.
In March 1953, immediately after Stalin's death, construction was stopped. There was an attempt at conservation, but realizing how much it would cost, they simply abandoned everything. In the future, a section was completed from Novy Urengoy to Old Nadym, where at the very least they support the movement.
Overall, the Dead Road left a depressing impression on me. Throwing so much money and people's lives into such a construction site and abandoning everything ... As I said above, we will hardly know why Stalin decided to start this construction. In my opinion, then the time had not yet come for her ...
And a few self-study links:
Dead road. Building No. 501-No. 503
Internet road museum
501st construction site on Wikimapia. In high-resolution areas, the road track is very well traced.
"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 # 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 see. Railway bridge over 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. There was a terrible shortage of metal 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 embankment and the 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. Slightly not sharp, but you can see how the metal superstructure rests on a wooden abutment. No pivot points to compensate for thermal expansion!
7. A bit more winter tundra.
10. An excellent illustration of how the permafrost pushes the wooden piles of the bridge out of itself.
11. The nature here is very harsh.
But all this pales in front of some wooden bridges, built at different times. Here's what wentogle:
Viaduct over the Verruga Gorge in the Andes, filigree in wood. From here.
Bridge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Hamilton railroad bridge
And ... drum roll!
From here.
Immediately I remember the ancient toy Build Bridges and its continuation Pontifex (first and second)
He has worked in the Far North for over twenty years. And just in those places the route of the famous construction site No. 501 \ 503 GULZHDS ran. Railway: Salekhard-Nadym-Igarka. Or as it was also called by the locals in later times "Stalin" or "dead road". Now in the tundra, on the site of that road, there are almost completely destroyed camps, rails overgrown with bushes, collapsed bridges ...
I wanted to summarize the available material and try to write a story about that construction site, about the people who worked there, about their life. About how the construction began and how it ended. And about the future of this road.
Start of construction.
By the time construction began (1947), the entire north of Western Siberia was absolutely uninhabited territory. With rare settlements, with a nomadic population of Khanty and Nenets. And complete off-road. It was only possible to get there during a short navigation period along the rivers. Deep into the mainland in the summer it was generally impossible to deliver any cargo - the conditions of the swampy tundra and forest-tundra. Only a rare message during the formation of winter roads. And it was necessary to develop these territories. And we thought about this even in the pre-war period. And the decision to build the road was taken personally by Stalin. According to the memoirs of P. K. Tatarintsev, head of the Northern Expedition, “the question was: what did you do on the survey? But not so: is it necessary or not? Building the road to Igarka was Stalin's personal instruction. He said: we must take on the North, Siberia is not covered from the North, and the political situation is very tense "(source - V. LAMIN Secret object 503 //" Science in Siberia ", 1990, No. 5, p. 6.)
Survey work was carried out already during the war. According to V. Lamin, Doctor of Historical Sciences, in the technical archives of the Northern Railway, documents were found that testify to research in 1943-44. in order to study the connection of the Norilsk-Dudinsk line with the network of European Russia. The diaries of G.E. Elago, the equipment of the Yenisei expedition of the Zheldorproekt of the NKVD of the USSR testify that in August 1944 the members of the expedition were in the region of Kureika, where Stalin was in exile before the revolution.
It is difficult to say exactly when the Soviet leadership came to the idea of the need for the construction of the Transpolar Highway. Most researchers are inclined to one conclusion: such a thought came to Stalin during the war. V. Lamin, emphasizes that the materials of the interrogations of German generals strengthened the idea of building the Northern Railway in Stalin. In particular, it became known that Hitler abandoned the idea of landing 3 airborne corps on the Ob and Yenisei. (source: LAMIN V. Secret object 503 // "Science in Siberia", 1990, No. 3, p. 5.) The very thought of the insecurity of the Arctic coast, the absence of a strategic railroad could not leave Stalin alone.
During the war the Norilsk metal deposits, in particular manganese, the most important for steel smelting, were extremely insecurely connected with the "mainland", because the only way was sea, but German submarines and the raider "Admiral Scheer" operated in the Kara Sea. They sunk Soviet ships and even tried to shell the port of Dixon. In the summer of 1945, the United States had an atomic bomb, and this meant a revolution in military-strategic ideas. In particular, this required the creation of naval and military air bases where they were not previously needed, for example, in the central and eastern sections of the Arctic Ocean coast. The successful creation and operation of military bases would be facilitated to a greater extent by such a reliable mode of transport as rail.
The next apparent reason was the desire of the state to industrialize the vast expanses of the Soviet North. The Great Northern Railway was conceived, which was supposed to connect the northwestern regions of the Soviet Union with the Okhotsk and Bering Seas.
A separate consideration could be and perhaps was that the oil and gas potential of Western Siberia, academician I. M. Gubkin predicted and formally raised the question back in 1931. Construction began long before the feasibility study prepared by the Arctic project was made in 1950. Glavsevmorput. The effect of the construction of the port at the junction of sea and river routes in the presence of a year-round railway connection was as follows:
1. The distance from the departure base to the Arctic and to the northeast was reduced by 1,100 nautical miles, compared to the distance from the existing base in Arkhangelsk. 2. Now it is possible to deliver goods to the northern arctic regions by the shortest water and railways. For example, the route from Novosibirsk to Provideniya Bay through Igarka was reduced by 3000 kilometers compared to the route through Vladivostok.
3. In a special situation, cargoes to the Arctic and to the northeast could be sent bypassing the sea adjacent to the Arctic.
4. Naval and air force bases could be located in the construction area.
It was necessary not only to develop that rich region, but also to strengthen the defense of the country's northern coast. And for this, a reliable connection with the central part was needed. At one of the meetings, attended by Voroshilov, Zhdanov, Kaganovich, Beria, Stalin, having heard Tatarintsev's data summarized after research, made a decision: “We will build a road.
Initially, it was planned to create a seaport and at the same time a railway center of the North on the Ob (Cape Kamenny). But according to the technical conditions, Cape Kamenny did not fit as a seaport.
For this, it was required to build a railway there from the Pechora Mainline, but they began to build a seaport simultaneously with the railway even before the development of the project itself. In general, the entire construction of 501, 502, 503 was carried out in the absence of a project due to the extremely short time allotted for the delivery of the road. The project was developed simultaneously with the construction of camp sites along the proposed route of the road and at the same time with the excavation of the bed by the prisoners of the GULAG, as a result of which the project was corrected after the fact. On April 22, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted Resolution No. 1255-331-ss, in which it ordered the Ministry of Internal Affairs to immediately begin the construction of a large seaport at Cape Kamenny, a shipyard and a residential village, as well as begin construction of a railway from the Pechora Mainline to the port.
By the end of 1947, the designers came to the conclusion that it was necessary to build, first of all, a railway to the mouth of the Ob, in the area of the village. Labytnangi and Salekhard, located on the opposite bank. This opened up an unobstructed transport exit to the northern part of the vast Ob - Irtysh basin. The construction of the seaport at Cape Kamenny was proposed to be carried out at the next stage, relying on the construction and technical base prepared in the Salekhard-Labytnangi region. For 1947-1949. in the area of the future port, 3 camps were built in the villages of Yar-Sale, Novy Port and Mys-Kamenny. The prisoners built a five-kilometer pier and storage rooms out of larch. The development of the route in the area of st. Sandy cape at 426 km (Yar-Sale village). At the beginning of 1949, it turned out that the water area of the Gulf of Ob was too shallow for ocean-going ships, and it became clear that it was impossible to artificially deepen the harbor.
They finally abandoned the construction of the port on Cape Kamenny and the construction of a railway to it in 1949.
In 1948-1949. the center of railway construction in Siberia was finally transferred to the construction of the Chum - Labytnangi line. However, the idea of creating a polar port on the Northern Sea Route was not abandoned. A whole commission was working on the search for a new place for the construction of the port and the shipyard. A proposal was made to move the construction of the port to the Igarka area, for which it was necessary to continue the Chum-Labytnangi line eastward to the village. Ermakovo on the left bank of the Yenisei. The Igarsky port on the right bank of the Yenisei and the future Ermakovsky on the opposite bank would be approximately equally accessible for river vessels and large sea transport. The exit of the railway to the junction of sea and river communications promised the possibility of creating a large transport hub in the Igarka-Ermakovo region. Economically, this project was more profitable than the previous (northern) one. The development of the line in the eastern direction created real prerequisites for establishing a reliable transport connection between the northeastern regions of Siberia and the industrial centers of the country, for the development of the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Combine. By the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 384-135-ss dated January 29, 1949, the construction site of the port was moved to Igarka, which caused a new direction of the road: "Salekhard-Igarka". Apparently, January 29, 1949 can be considered the beginning of the second stage of the construction of the Chum-Salekhard-Igarka railway, since the road took a different direction, different from the original plan. By the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated January 29, 1949, surveys and design of the seaport in Igarka and the complex of structures under it were entrusted to the Main Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (GUSMP) under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
The communication between the builders and the directorates was maintained first by radio, and then by a pole telephone and telegraph line stretched from Salekhard to Igarka along the proposed route. On January 29, 1949, a Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was adopted, which spoke of the need to build the Salekhard railway. -Igarka 1200 kilometers long. It was supposed to open the labor movement in the IV quarter of 1952, and in 1955 to start the operation of the road. Crossings across the Ob and Yenisei rivers would be carried out by self-propelled ferries. Under the Northern Directorate, two buildings were formed - Obskoye No. 501 and Yeniseiskoye No. 503. They had to pave the way towards each other.
Construction work began without a project (it was completed only in 1952, when more than half of the highway was already ready). On the new highway, they were going to build 28 stations and 106 sidings. By the beginning of construction, there were only 5-6 small settlements on the line of the future highway, with several houses in each. Very soon there were a lot of them: these were camp points for prisoners, placed every 5-10 km. From Igarka to Ermakovo there were 7 columns for prisoners - two in the area of the city, the rest along the Yenisei. From Ermakovo, the camps were located every 6 km, in order to avoid confusion and for clarity and clarity of the picture of the work performed, the camps were assigned the number of the kilometer on which they were located. According to A.S.Dobrovolsky, who conducted the expedition by rail, about 40,000 prisoners worked on its construction. Sand for the embankment was used local, from the valleys of nearby rivers. The situation was worse with the forest: in the area of the construction site, mainly small forest grew. Therefore, timber for construction was delivered from more southern regions, where special camps were set up for its extraction. This forest was rafted to the route along the rivers. In general, the supply of a construction site, cut off for many hundreds of kilometers from the inhabited regions of the country, was a difficult problem. In addition to the already constructed sections of the road and special aviation, there was only one way to the central regions of the route - through the Gulf of Ob along the Nadym, Pur and Taz rivers with their short northern navigation.
Quite a lot of construction equipment was delivered to the road, including trucks, tractors and even excavators. In addition to the scarce equipment at the construction site, the labor of a large number of free people was used.
Construction .
Lagpoints were placed along the sections of the route under construction every 5-10 km. They were small, for 400-500 people each. A typical such camp was a 200 x 200 m area, surrounded by barbed wire, with towers at the corners. There are 4-5 barracks, a canteen, a cultural and educational part, a bathhouse. There could be a stall, a warehouse for personal belongings, a bakery, a water tank made in the form of a huge wooden barrel. Everything was built quite neatly, not even without architectural delights. Next to the camp there was a guard barracks, not much different from the barracks for prisoners, also about a hundred people, and houses for the authorities. The camp was certainly illuminated, first of all by the fence, with the help of a diesel engine.
Most of the construction camps were of the general regime, and living conditions in them were not the harshest in the Gulag. The construction completely overturned and subjugated the life of this almost deserted land. Local production was reoriented to meet the needs of construction. Hitherto unseen masses of people appeared in these parts. So, the small village of Ermakovo, where the management of the eastern section of the construction was located, turned into a city with a population of about 20 thousand people, not counting the prisoners of the surrounding camps. All were involved in the construction, with its specific GULAG coloration. A mobile camp theater toured in Salekhard, Igarka and other settlements along the route.
The pier of Igarka.
Igarka, late forties of the twentieth century.
501st construction (western section).
Already in December 1947, just eight months after the issuance of the corresponding decree, the working traffic opened on the 118-km Chum - Sob section, and the road crossed the Polar Ural river valley - the Sob junction was already on the territory of the Tyumen region.
A year later, by December 1948, the builders moved 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 Gulf of Ob, in the area of that very Cape Kamenny. So, from April 1947 to December 1948, the 196-kilometer Chum-Labytnangi highway was commissioned. ) and stations after 40-60 km (28 stations). The average speed of the train with stops at the siding was assumed to be about 40 km / h, including acceleration and deceleration. The capacity is 6 pairs of trains per day. At the stations Salekhard, Nadym, Pur, Taz, Ermakovo and Igarka, the main depots were set up, at the stations of Yarudey, Pangody, Kataral, Turukhan - the reverse ones. Along the entire highway, special tractor trains laid a winter road. The production columns of the two departments of the GULZhDS were located along it. They were built mainly in the 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 in a sharply continental climate with severe long winters (up to eight months) and short, cold and rainy summers and autumn.
The transpolar line was built in extreme permafrost conditions. The technology of the 1940s and the required speed of construction did not allow for the proper equipping of the railway.
After the onset of above-zero temperatures in Western Siberia, active thawing of the upper soil layer and permafrost under it began, which led to regular and widespread deformations of the road bed and its engineering structures. In fact, a significant part of the road, made over the past seasons, had to be reconstructed with the onset of a new one. Repairs of the embankment, strengthening of the road, bridges and other infrastructure continued continuously, every year.
In comparison with other camps of the Gulag system, the construction of Transpolarnaya was relatively good. Here, the extremely difficult working conditions of the prisoners were somewhat compensated for by a higher nutritional standard. We will touch upon the conditions of life of prisoners below.
The construction site even worked its own mobile theater.
The road crossed small rivers on wooden bridges. Bridges across the large rivers Barabanikha and Makovskaya were built much more thoroughly: made of 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 the "lightweight technical conditions".
No bridges were built across the great Siberian rivers Ob and Yenisei. The locomotives first went to Labytnanog, then they were transported across the Ob by a railway ferry. Four railway ferries ("Nadym", "Zapolyarny", "Severny" and "Chulym"), built according to projects 723-bis and 723-y for crossing the river. Ob and R. Yenisei, after the closure of construction sites 501 and 503, worked for the needs of the North for some time. and then they were sent to the Black Sea to work on the Kerch ferry crossing. In winter, ice crossings were established.
The rails, of course, were also delivered from the mainland. In total, the researchers found 16 different species of them on the route, including pre-revolutionary and trophy ones.
At the end of 1948, the road "approached" the Ob in the area of st. Labytnangi. They began to build an ice crossing over the Ob. Its construction was supervised by an engineer, then the captain of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Zailik Moiseevich Freidzon. According to him, the canvas was strengthened over the logs laid across. This turned out to be sufficient to withstand the trains with cargoes for five winter seasons before the closure of the 501st. In 1952, a bridge was also built across the Nadym River. At its base there were wooden pile supports, on which metal 11-meter packages were laid. In the spring, before the start of the ice drift, the railway track and packages were removed, and after its completion they were laid back.
In 1949, as part of the Northern Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, two construction directorates, No. 501 and 503, were organized. The Construction Directorate No. 501, located in Salekhard, managed the section from Chum station to Pur station, including the crossing of the Ob River. All construction was supervised by the head of the Northern Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Vasily Arsenievich Barabanov. (It will be discussed in more detail below). According to many reviews, he was a wonderful person in his own way. It was on his initiative that, in particular, a theater was created at a construction site from prisoner actors, whose art was appreciated not only by numerous "citizens-chiefs", but also by the then convicts. Initially, the 501 construction site was commanded by V.V.Samodurov. 503 - A.I. Borovitsky. In the summer of 1952, both buildings were united under the leadership of V.V. Samodurov.
The break in movement was about one and a half months. By the end of 1952, the builders reached the Bolshaya Khetta River. In August 1952, as planned, they opened labor traffic on the Salekhard - Nadym section, by March of the next year, a passenger train was even running between settlements. However, its speed (and the speed of the freight trains used to supply the construction), due to the extremely low quality of the railway track, was low and averaged 15 km / h, not even close to reaching the standard indicators. and was completely abandoned before the construction of the Northern Latitudinal Passage began. But until the early 1990s, the railway was used by signalmen to service the Salekhard-Nadym communication line, until the communication line was abolished. Soon after the abolition of the communication line, 92 km of rails, starting from Salekhard, were collected and taken out by some company, looking for valuable Demidov steel.
In the next essay, there will be a continuation of the construction of the eastern section - construction site No. 503.
503-building...
Construction site 503 included the Pur - Igarka section. On the right bank of the Pur River is the old Urengoy, with which there is no railway connection. The road between the Pur and Turukhan rivers was not completed. So, according to some reports, the department in Dolgoi managed to build about 15 kilometers of the highway towards Ermakovo, and a branch to Sedelnikovo. Two other construction departments of the 503 construction site, located in Yanov Stan and Ermakovo, by 1953 had built a section with a length of 140 kilometers and opened up labor traffic on it, moving further west. By 1953, about 65 km of track had been laid from Igarka to the south towards the Yeniseiskaya station (opposite Ermakovo).
materials from the book "The History of the Dead Road" by V.N. Gritsenko, the Internet magazine "UFO-World"
3D "excursion" Construction site 501. Art. Yarudey http://nadymregion.ru/3d-3.html
3D "excursion" Construction site 501. Lagpoint "Glukhariny" http://nadymregion.ru/3d-1.html
The next article will tell about the contingent of the construction site, about the leadership, about the life and life of prisoners and guards..
to be continued
Everyone has heard of the Gulag camps, this darkest symbol of the dark side of the USSR. But few saw them - unlike the Nazi concentration camps, they were rarely built capital and for the most part disappeared practically without a trace, remaining only in the most remote corners of the Far North, where, except for prisoners and guards, no one had ever lived, and there was no one to disassemble the abandoned barracks and there is no need. One of these places is the Dead Road, the unfinished Transpolar Highway between Salekhard and Nadym: ruins of camps, perfectly visible, are inextricably adjacent to the shown bridges and sidings. I decided to reveal 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 forest above Poluy, the following view opened up: the ruins of wooden buildings, including the roof of a grocery warehouse sticking out of the snow - we encountered such natural refrigerators in the frozen ground on the road more than once:
To the ruins of the barracks (or what was it?) They pushed their way up to their knees in the snow:
And the first thing that caught my eye was what materials it was all built of.
The great Stalinist construction site in the Far North - this very phrase evokes images of barbed wire, earthy people in gray quilted jackets, a sullen security guard with a rifle on a log tower and an intellectual in a cold Leningrad apartment waiting for a knock on the door. Buildings No. 501 and 503 were no exception: the Transpolar highway was laid practically by hand, and 40-45 thousand people worked at its construction at a time, and in the peak year 1950, even 85 thousand people - more than the entire population of the then Yamal-Nenets Okrug or the current Salekhard and Nadym. But contrary to the well-known image of "a dead man under every sleeper", the 501st Construction site was very different in its organization from other projects of the Gulag. They did not get here by sentence: Vasily Barabanov, who was in charge of the construction until 1951, at whose funeral in 1964 it was not by chance that many former convicts took off their hats, threw a call to the camps of places that were not so gloomy, inviting prisoners to a heavy construction site, a year of which would be counted as a year and a half. , and when the plan is overfulfilled, and like 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 were strictly selected 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, the quality of the labor force and the attitude to work on Transpolyarka were completely different than on most of the "islands" of the Gulag: the local convicts were not disenfranchised slaves, but quite motivated workers, and such material Barabanov preferred not to scatter.
It was better here than in other camps, with supplies - in most of the camps, at least those where there were conscientious chiefs, the convicts were fed their fill, no worse than on the hungry post-war will. But here, in the cold and uninhabited land, it was terrible with housing: echelons of z / k were brought literally "into a clear field", where they themselves first built a perimeter, and then barracks. But even a hut with thin walls here was 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 to the very bunks. But in the same icy, cheese, mosquito hell, civilians from all over the Union lived (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 houses for themselves due to the constant movement from object to object) , and the security, and coupled with the small number of criminals and the abundance of intelligent political prisoners, the very relations at Construction-501 were much more humane. In a summer post about objects 501 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 prisoner and caer) Leonid Obolensky. A lot has been written about the life of the 501st, the most canonical memoirs were left by the "Nadym count" Apollo Kondartiev, and on the same site "Doroga501" in the "Library" section one can find a dozen articles. Let's just say - there is much more information about Transpolyarka camps than about infrastructure and technology.
From Salekhard to Nadym, 34 camp stations served the road - there were the same number of sidings, but at the same time they did not always coincide with sidings, and apparently the figure was due to the same "step" from object to object - 8-12 kilometers. A detailed overview of the camps with hundreds of photos is all on the same site, but I will only say that it turned out to be unexpectedly difficult to find them: if the embankment is linear, then the camps are still points that are not always located near the track. 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: "Dagger Cape" (bunks have completely survived in its barracks), "Prizhim-Gora" with numerous colored drawings on the walls of the barracks, " Saber cape "with a gate made of a frame and barbed wire ... But even on the road that we passed, it is not so easy to find something. Having passed the Russian field at sunset and descended into the Yarudeya valley, we stopped at a huge camp, deep into which trampled paths led.
