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125-756: Kolyma ( Колыма́ , IPA: [kəɫɨˈma] ) or Kolyma Krai ( Колымский край ) is a historical region in the Russian Far East that includes the basin of Kolyma River and the northern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk , as well as the Kolyma Mountains (the watershed of the two). It is bounded to the north by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean , and by the Sea of Okhotsk to

250-533: A military strategist , Alfred Thayer Mahan , to refer to the area of the Persian Gulf . This article about geography terminology is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( USSR ), commonly known as the Soviet Union , was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. During its existence, it

375-704: A one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , it was a flagship communist state . Its capital and largest city was Moscow . The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin , established the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the world's first constitutionally socialist state . The revolution

500-523: A Jewish Romanian survivor, Michael M. Solomon, in his book Magadan (see Bibliography below) which gives us a vivid picture of both the transit camps leading to the Kolyma and the region itself. Hungarian George Bien , author of the Lost Years , also recounts the horrors of Kolyma. His story has also led to a film. Soviet Gold , the first autobiographical book written by Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov ,

625-592: A closer relationship with France and Britain. In 1939, half a year after the Munich Agreement , the USSR attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain. Adolf Hitler proposed a better deal, which would give the USSR control over much of Eastern Europe through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact . In September, Germany invaded Poland, and the USSR also invaded later that month, resulting in

750-475: A distillery form the city's industrial base. During archaeological investigations of Paleolithic sites on the Angara, in 1936 the unique Stone Age site of Buret’ was discovered which yielded an anthropomorphic sculpture, skulls of rhinoceroses, and surface and semisubterranean dwellings. The houses were analogous, on one hand, to Paleolithic European houses and, on the other, to ethnographically studied houses of

875-500: A general amnesty that freed many prisoners. Various estimates have put the Kolyma death-toll from 1930 to the mid-1950s between 250,000 and over a million people. Dalstroy was the agency created to manage exploitation of the Kolyma area, based principally on the use of forced labour. In the words of Azerbaijani prisoner Ayyub Baghirov, "The entire administration of the Dalstroy —economic, administrative, physical and political—was in

1000-519: A greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии , romanized : Soyuz Sovyetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii ). Joseph Stalin initially resisted Lenin's proposal but ultimately accepted it, and with Lenin's agreement he changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), although all republics began as socialist soviet and did not change to

1125-597: A new profitable market. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin ordered Marxist-Leninist parties across the world to strongly oppose non-Marxist political parties, labour unions or other organizations on the left, which they labelled social fascists . In the usage of the Soviet Union, and of the Comintern and its affiliated parties in this period, the epithet fascist was used to describe capitalist society in general and virtually any anti-Soviet or anti-Stalinist activity or opinion. Stalin reversed himself in 1934 with

1250-481: A plea: "Some may say that the Gulag is a forgotten part of history and that we do not need to be reminded. But I have witnessed monstrous crimes. It is not too late to talk about them and reveal them. It is essential to do so. Some have expressed fear on seeing some of my paintings that I might end up in Kolyma again—this time for good. But the people must be reminded... of one of the harshest acts of political repression in

1375-405: A prisoner who survived because he knew how to grow cabbages. Palman spoke of how guards read out the names of those to be shot every evening. On one occasion a group of 169 men were shot and thrown into a pit. Their fully clothed bodies were found after the ice melted in 1998. One of the most famous political prisoners in Kolyma was Vadim Kozin , possibly Russia's most popular romantic tenor , who

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1500-631: A status that is retained by the Russian Federation . Covering a sixth of Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America . Two other successor states, Kazakhstan and Ukraine , rank among the top 10 countries by land area, and the largest country entirely in Europe, respectively. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to

1625-429: A total of almost five years. A detailed description of conditions in the camps is provided by Varlam Shalamov in his Kolyma Tales . In Dry Rations he writes: "Each time they brought in the soup... it made us all want to cry. We were ready to cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup was thick we couldn’t believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick soup in

1750-475: A union of equals, in practice the Soviet Union was dominated by Russians . The domination was so absolute that for most of its existence, the country was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as 'Russia'. While the Russian SFSR was technically only one republic within the larger union, it was by far the largest (both in terms of population and area), most powerful, and most highly developed. The Russian SFSR

1875-503: A warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; we’d been hungry for too long. All human emotions—love, friendship, envy, concern for one's fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty—had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies...." During and after the Second World War the region saw major influxes of Ukrainian, Polish, German, Japanese, and Korean prisoners. There is a particularly memorable account written by

2000-460: Is almost entirely a description of the author's life in Magadan and the Kolyma gold fields. In Bitter Days of Kolyma , Ayyub Baghirov, an Azerbaijani accountant who was finally rehabilitated, provides details of his arrest, torture and sentencing to eight (finally to become 18) years imprisonment in a labour camp for refusing to incriminate a fellow official for financial irregularities. Describing

2125-573: Is derived from the Russian word sovet (Russian: совет ), meaning 'council', 'assembly', 'advice', ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of * vět-iti ('to inform'), related to Slavic věst ('news'), English wise . The word sovietnik means 'councillor'. Some organizations in Russian history were called council (Russian: совет ). In the Russian Empire ,

2250-595: Is generally the required precondition for the emergence of a regional identity . In Europe, regional identities are often derived from the Migration Period but for the contemporary era are also often related to the territorial transformations that followed World War I and those that followed the Cold War . Some regions are entirely invented, such as the Middle East , which was popularised in 1902 by

2375-591: Is his background, his education , his profession . These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror ." During his rule, Stalin always made the final policy decisions. Otherwise, Soviet foreign policy was set by the commission on the Foreign Policy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , or by

2500-501: Is no documentary evidence of this beyond Solzhenitsyn's speculation. The system of hard labor and minimal or no food reduced most prisoners to helpless "goners" ( dokhodyaga , in Russian). Conditions varied depending on the state of the country. Many of the prisoners in Kolyma were academics or intellectuals. They included Mikhail Kravchuk (Krawtschuk), a Ukrainian mathematician who by the early 1930s had received considerable acclaim in

2625-452: Is that older political and mental structures exist which exercise greater influence on the spatial-social identity of individuals than is understood by the contemporary world, bound to and often blinded by its own worldview - e.g. the focus on the nation-state. Definitions of regions vary, and regions can include macroregions such as Europe , territories of traditional sovereign states or smaller microregional areas . Geographic proximity

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2750-665: The Axis powers , suffering an estimated 27 million casualties , which accounted for most Allied losses. In the aftermath of the war , the Soviet Union consolidated the territory occupied by the Red Army , forming satellite states , and undertook rapid economic development which cemented its status as a superpower . Geopolitical tensions with the US led to the Cold War . The American-led Western Bloc coalesced into NATO in 1949, prompting

2875-520: The Council of People's Commissars ), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society. State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of

3000-577: The Eskimos , Chukchi and Koryaks . The indigenous peoples of this region include the Evens , Koryaks , Yupiks , Chukchis , Orochs , Chuvans and Itelmens , who traditionally lived from fishing along the Sea of Okhotsk coast or from reindeer herding in the River Kolyma valley. Under Joseph Stalin 's rule, The Kolyma Gulag (Колыма гулаг, колымский гулаг) became the most notorious region for

3125-504: The Gulag labor camps . Tens of thousands or more people died en route to the area or in the Kolyma's series of gold mining , road building, lumbering, and construction camps between 1932 and 1954. It was Kolyma's reputation that caused Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , author of The Gulag Archipelago , to characterize it as the "pole of cold and cruelty" in the Gulag system. The Mask of Sorrow monument in Magadan commemorates all those who died in

3250-542: The Gulag was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents, resulting in mass death, imprisonment, and deportation. In 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact , but in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II . The Soviets played a decisive role in defeating

3375-755: The Land Forces , the Air Force , the Navy , Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) and the Internal Troops . The OGPU later became independent and in 1934 joined the NKVD secret police, and so its internal troops were under the joint leadership of the defense and internal commissariats. After World War II, Strategic Missile Forces (1959), Air Defense Forces (1948) and National Civil Defense Forces (1970) were formed, which ranked first, third, and sixth in

3500-528: The Moscow State Institute of International Relations . The Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Soviet Union intensely debated foreign policy issues and changed directions several times. Even after Stalin assumed dictatorial control in the late 1920s, there were debates, and he frequently changed positions. During the country's early period, it was assumed that Communist revolutions would break out soon in every major industrial country, and it

3625-657: The Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia , was much less populous. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones , and over 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra , taiga , steppes , desert and mountains . The USSR, like Russia , had the world's longest border , measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), or 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it

3750-790: The Popular Front program that called on all Marxist parties to join with all anti-Fascist political, labour, and organizational forces that were opposed to fascism , especially of the Nazi variety. The rapid growth of power in Nazi Germany encouraged both Paris and Moscow to form a military alliance, and the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance was signed in May 1935. A firm believer in collective security, Stalin's foreign minister Maxim Litvinov worked very hard to form

3875-521: The Sea of Okhotsk shelf. Total reserves are estimated at 3.5 billion tons of equivalent fuel, including 1.2 billion tons of oil and 1.5 billion m of gas. The principal town Magadan has nearly 100,000 inhabitants and is the largest port in north-eastern Siberia . It has a large fishing fleet and remains open year-round because of icebreakers . Magadan is served by the nearby Sokol Airport . There are many public and private farming enterprises. Gold mines, pasta and sausage factories, fishing companies, and

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4000-581: The Soviet republics , and the control of the Communist Party weakened. The failed coup attempt in August 1991 against Gorbachev by hardline communists hastened the end of the Soviet Union , which formally dissolved on December 26, 1991, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule. With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), the Soviet Union was the world's largest country,

4125-772: The State Council , which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers. The Soviets as workers' councils first appeared during the 1905 Russian Revolution . Although they were quickly suppressed by the Imperial army, after the February Revolution of 1917 , workers' and soldiers' Soviets emerged throughout the country and shared power with the Russian Provisional Government . The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin , demanded that all power be transferred to

4250-560: The Trans-Siberian Railway , prisoners were disembarked at one of several transit camps (such as Nakhodka and later Vanino ) and transported across the Sea of Okhotsk to the natural harbor chosen for Magadan's construction. Conditions aboard the ships were harsh. According to a 1987 article in Time magazine: "During the 1930s the only way to reach Magadan was by ship from Khabarovsk , which created an island psychology and

4375-635: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), saying that it was "overly juridical" and potentially infringed on national sovereignty. The Soviet Union later signed legally-binding human rights documents, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1973 (and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ), but they were neither widely known or accessible to people living under Communist rule, nor were they taken seriously by

4500-769: The largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world . As an Allied nation, it was a founding member of the United Nations as well as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council . Before its dissolution, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomatic and ideological influence (particularly in the Global South ), military and economic strengths, and scientific accomplishments. The word soviet

4625-538: The right to food , the right to work , and the right to education . The Soviet conception of human rights was very different from international law . According to Soviet legal theory , "it is the government who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be asserted against the individual". The Soviet state was considered as the source of human rights. Therefore, the Soviet legal system considered law an arm of politics and it also considered courts agencies of

4750-703: The 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers. In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union , concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government, now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR , to himself. Tensions grew between the Union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling

4875-482: The 1950s, the Soviet Union expanded its efforts in space exploration and took a lead in the Space Race with the first artificial satellite , the first human spaceflight , the first space station , and the first probe to land on another planet . In 1985, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev , sought to reform the country through his policies of glasnost and perestroika . In 1989, various countries of

5000-601: The 1990s, people in the West were also interested in the radioactive hazards of nuclear facilities, decommissioned nuclear submarines , and the processing of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel . It was also known in the early 1990s that the USSR had transported radioactive material to the Barents Sea and Kara Sea , which was later confirmed by the Russian parliament. The crash of the K-141 Kursk submarine in 2000 in

5125-486: The CIA in the 1950s and appears to be a flawed estimate. This number is also estimated by the last survivors. Anne Applebaum , 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner for her book Gulag: A History , carried out an extensive investigation of the gulags. In a lecture in 2003, she explained that it's extremely difficult not only to document the facts given the extent of the cover-up but to bring the truth home. This ecoregion encompasses

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5250-526: The CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees , local Soviets and executive committees . While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary. The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies ) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Red Terror and Great Purge , but

5375-529: The Communist authorities. Under Joseph Stalin , the death penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935. Sergei Kovalev recalled "the famous article 125 of the Constitution which enumerated all basic civil and political rights" in the Soviet Union. But when he and other prisoners attempted to use this as a legal basis for their abuse complaints, their prosecutor's argument

5500-511: The Elgen forests came to me from cranberries, sour, bitter northern berries, not ripening at the end of summer as they would do in a normal climate, but remaining from the previous year, to be coaxed out of their hiding place by the timid Kolyma spring, after their ten months' sleep under the snow." Finally, Ukrainian prisoner Nikolai Getman who spent the years 1945–1953 in Kolyma, records his testimony in pictures rather than words. But he does have

5625-557: The Kolyma forced-labour camps and the recently dedicated Church of the Nativity remembers the victims in its icons and Stations of the Camps. Gold and platinum were discovered in the region in the early 20th century. During the time of the USSR 's industrialization (beginning with Joseph Stalin 's first five-year plan , 1928–1932) the need for capital to finance economic development

5750-616: The Kolyma camps was Eduard Berzin , a Cheka officer. Berzin was later removed (1937) and shot during the period of the Great Purges in the USSR. At the height of the Purges, around 1937, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 's account imagines camp commander Naftaly Frenkel as establishing the new law of the Archipelago: "We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months—after that we don't need him anymore." But there

5875-470: The Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution circulated widely, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka (a secret research-laboratory), together with other scientists and engineers, including aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev and rocket scientist Sergei Korolyov (also a Kolyma inmate). The Soviet Union rehabilitated Theremin in 1956. The Kolyma camps switched to using (mostly) free labor after 1954, and in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev ordered

6000-573: The Ministry of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy. Industrial gold-mining started in 1958 leading to the development of mining settlements, industrial enterprises, power plants, hydro-electric dams, power transmission lines and improved roads. By the 1960s, the region's population exceeded 100,000. With the dissolution of Dalstroy, the Soviets adopted new labor policies. While the prison labor was still important, it mainly consisted of common criminals. New manpower

6125-481: The Politburo after the deaths of Lenin and Stalin, as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal, itself due to a decision by both the Politburo and the Central Committee. All leaders of the Communist Party before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party. Between 1988 and 1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from

6250-420: The Russian name of the Soviet Union as СС has been taboo, the reason being that СС as a Russian Cyrillic abbreviation is associated with the infamous Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany , as SS is in English. In English-language media, the state was referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. The Russian SFSR dominated the Soviet Union to such an extent that, for most of the Soviet Union's existence, it

6375-450: The Soviet Union and turned into SSRs, which was not recognized by most of the international community and was considered an illegal occupation . After the Soviet invasion of Finland , the Karelo-Finnish SSR was formed on annexed territory as a Union Republic in March 1940 and then incorporated into Russia as the Karelian ASSR in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below). While nominally

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6500-477: The Soviet Union . Boris Yeltsin , the leader of the RSFSR, oversaw its reconstitution into the Russian Federation , which became the Soviet Union's successor state; all other republics emerged as fully independent post-Soviet states . During its existence, the Soviet Union produced many significant social and technological achievements and innovations . It had the world's second-largest economy and largest standing military. An NPT-designated state , it wielded

6625-448: The Soviet Union to form its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact , in 1955. Neither side engaged in direct military confrontation, and instead fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars . In 1953, following Stalin's death , the Soviet Union undertook a campaign of de-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev , which saw reversals and rejections of Stalinist policies. This campaign caused tensions with Communist China . During

6750-417: The Soviet Union's priorities changed. Despite previous conflict with the United Kingdom , Vyacheslav Molotov dropped his post war border demands. The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc , which began following World War II in 1945. The term cold war is used because there

6875-480: The Soviet Union's superpower status, the economy struggled due to its centralized nature, technological backwardness, and inefficiencies. The vast military expenditures and burdens of maintaining the Eastern Bloc, further strained the Soviet economy. In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev 's policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) aimed to revitalize the Soviet system but instead accelerated its unraveling. Nationalist movements gained momentum across

7000-567: The Soviet Union. My paintings may help achieve this." The Jamestown Foundation provides access to all 50 of Getman's paintings together with explanations of their significance. The amount of hard evidence in regard to Kolyma is extremely limited. Unfortunately, no reliable archives exist about the total number of victims of Stalinism ; all numbers are estimates. In his book, Stalin (1996), Edvard Radzinsky explains how Stalin, while systematically destroying his comrades-in-arms "at once obliterated every trace of them in history. He personally directed

7125-424: The Soviet authorities admitted. The Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of harmful emissions. In 1988, total emissions in the Soviet Union were about 79% of those in the United States. But since the Soviet GNP was only 54% of that of the United States, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the United States per unit of GNP. The Soviet Chernobyl disaster in 1986

7250-406: The Soviets, and gained support from the workers and soldiers. After the October Revolution , in which the Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Soviets, Lenin proclaimed the formation of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (RSFSR). During the Georgian Affair of 1922, Lenin called for the Russian SFSR and other national Soviet republics to form

7375-415: The Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin (1941–1953) and Khrushchev (1958–1964) were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership, but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the mostly ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet ,

7500-430: The USSR. Moscow eventually stopped threatening other states, and instead worked to open peaceful relationships in terms of trade, and diplomatic recognition. The United Kingdom dismissed the warnings of Winston Churchill and a few others about a continuing Marxist-Leninist threat, and opened trade relations and de facto diplomatic recognition in 1922. There was hope for a settlement of the pre-war Tsarist debts, but it

7625-409: The Warsaw Pact overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes , and nationalist and separatist movements erupted across the Soviet Union. In 1991, amid efforts to preserve the country as a renewed federation , an attempted coup against Gorbachev by hardline communists prompted the largest republics—Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—to secede. On December 26, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of

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7750-405: The West. After a summary trial, apparently for reluctance to take part in the accusations of some of his colleagues, he was sent to Kolyma where he died in 1942. Hard work in the labor camp, harsh climate and meager food, poor health as well as accusations and abandonment by most of his colleagues, took their toll. Kravchuk perished in Magadan in Eastern Siberia, about 4,000 miles (6,000 km) from

7875-449: The accident, but this led to a relatively low number of deaths (WHO data, 2005). Another major radioactive accident was the Kyshtym disaster . The Kola Peninsula was one of the places with major problems. Around the industrial cities of Monchegorsk and Norilsk , where nickel , for example, is mined, all forests have been destroyed by contamination, while the northern and other parts of Russia have been affected by emissions. During

8000-405: The author emphasizes, his calculations are by no means definitive. In addition to the number of deaths, the dreadful conditions of the camps and the hardships experienced by the prisoners over the years need to be taken into account. In his review of Bollinger's book, Norman Polmar refers to 130,000 victims who died at Kolyma. As Bollinger reports in his book, the 3,000,000 estimate originated with

8125-490: The camps: "The Polit bureau formed brigades which would, under surveillance, go on tours of the concentration camps and perform for the prisoners and the guards, including those of the highest rank." In 1993, while being interviewed by Theo Uittenbogaard for the TV documentary Gold – Lost in Siberia [1] , he recalled how he was released from exile temporarily and flown into Yalta for a few hours, because Winston Churchill , unaware of Kozin's forced exile, had asked Stalin for

8250-472: The chain of events that ultimately lead to her exile to Kolyma, arriving in Magadan in the winter of 1939. Part 2 chapters 5 to 9 cover her time in Kolyma, first working on land improvements, and then being sent to the "state farm" of Elgen, sometimes El'gen, Russian Эльген, to fell trees. "During the 18 years of our ordeal, many times I found myself face to face with death, but it was an experience I never got used to.... To begin with, salvation from death in

8375-402: The constant and relentless purging of the archives." That practice continued to exist after the death of the dictator. In an account of a visit to Magadan by Harry Wu in 1999, there is a reference to the efforts of Alexander Biryukov, a Magadan lawyer to document the terror. He is said to have compiled a book listing every one of the 11,000 people documented to have been shot in Kolyma camps by

8500-429: The country was limited. The state restricted rights of citizens to private property . According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , human rights are the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." including the right to life and liberty , freedom of expression , and equality before the law ; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture ,

8625-442: The creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers relating to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the government budget . The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium (successor of the Central Executive Committee ) to wield its power between plenary sessions, ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court , the Procurator General and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as

8750-409: The degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941). They were not controlled by

8875-658: The drainages of Arctic rivers from the Indigirka River eastward to Chaunskaya Guba Bay. In the west, the Indigirka River drainage is separated from the Khroma River and Yana rivers by the spurs of the Polousnyy Kryazh Range and the Chersky Range . During the Pleistocene the ecology of this part of Beringia was quite different from modern times, with the extinct woolly mammoth and the wooly rhinoceros being present. The polar bear most likely evolved here. 65°0′N 152°0′E  /  65.000°N 152.000°E  / 65.000; 152.000 Historical region The fundamental principle underlying this view

9000-553: The duty of the Russian Bolsheviks to protect what they had in Russia, and avoid military confrontations that might destroy their bridgehead. Russia was now a pariah state, along with Germany. The two came to terms in 1922 with the Treaty of Rapallo that settled long-standing grievances. At the same time, the two countries secretly set up training programs for the illegal German army and air force operations at hidden camps in

9125-580: The enemy frequently received ten or twenty-five year prison sentences to the gulag, including Kolyma. There were, however, some exceptions. Rumor suggested that Soviet agents seized Léon Theremin , an inventor, in the United States and forced him to return to the Soviet Union; he actually returned voluntarily . Joseph Stalin had Theremin imprisoned at the Butyrka in Moscow; he later came to work in

9250-551: The famous singer Vadim Kozin to perform, during a break in the Yalta Conference , held February 4–11, 1945. In her autobiographical account Journey into the Whirlwind , academic Yevgenia Ginzburg details her persecution, arrest, trial, imprisonment, and exile to Kolyma. The book starts with a 4 a.m. phone call on the first of December 1934 calling for her to attend the regional committee office at 6 a.m. and follows

9375-779: The founding republics who signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in December 1922. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were formed from parts of Russia's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan PSPs . In 1929, Tajikistan was split off from the Uzbekistan SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR

9500-410: The general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism , demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above. The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state mainly through its control over the system of appointments . All senior government officials and most deputies of

9625-525: The globe. The post-Stalin leadership, particularly under Nikita Khrushchev , initiated a de-Stalinization process, leading to a period of liberalization and relative openness known as the Khrushchev Thaw . However, the subsequent era under Leonid Brezhnev , referred to as the Era of Stagnation , was marked by economic decline, political corruption, and a rigid gerontocracy . Despite efforts to maintain

9750-475: The government's internal war to force collectivization on the USSR's peasantry. These prisoners formed a readily available workforce. The initial efforts to develop the region began in 1932, with the building of the town of Magadan by forced labor . (Many projects in the USSR were already using forced labor, most notably the White Sea–Baltic Canal .) After a gruelling train ride in unheated boxcars on

9875-497: The government. Extensive extrajudicial powers were given to the Soviet secret police agencies . In practice, the Soviet government significantly curbed the rule of law , civil liberties , protection of law and guarantees of property , which were considered as examples of "bourgeois morality" by Soviet law theorists such as Andrey Vyshinsky . The USSR and other countries in the Soviet Bloc had abstained from affirming

10000-548: The hands of one person who was invested with many rights and privileges." The officials in charge of Dalstroy, i.e., the Kolyma Gulag camps were: Calendar of events: The Chukot Autonomous Okrug site provides details of developments after the official closure of the camps. In 1953, the Magadan Oblast (or region) was established. Dalstroy was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Metallurgy and later to

10125-518: The highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989, the first in Soviet history. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, and much stronger than before. For the first time since

10250-472: The implementation of socialist policies and the New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed for market-oriented reforms. The rise of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s ushered in an era of intense centralization and totalitarianism. Stalin's rule was characterized by the forced collectivization of agriculture , rapid industrialization , and the Great Purge , which eliminated perceived enemies of

10375-477: The late 1990s gives details of the region's economic shortfall citing outdated equipment, bankruptcies of local companies and lack of central support. It does however report substantial investments from the United States and the governor's optimism for future prosperity based on revival of the mining industries. Dalstroy and the camps did not close down completely. The Kolyma authority, which was reorganised in 1958/59 (31 December 1958), finally closed in 1968. However

10500-403: The mining activities did not stop. Indeed, government structures still exist today under the Ministry of Natural Resources. In some cases, the same individuals seem to have stayed on over the years under new management. There are indications that the political prisoners were gradually phased out over the years but it was only as a result of Boris Yeltsin 's far reaching reforms in the 1990s that

10625-541: The most common Russian initialization is Союз ССР (transliteration: Soyuz SSR ) which essentially translates to Union of SSRs in English. In addition, the Russian short form name Советский Союз (transliteration: Sovyetsky Soyuz , which literally means Soviet Union ) is also commonly used, but only in its unabbreviated form. Since the start of the Great Patriotic War at the latest, abbreviating

10750-417: The newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR , and communist hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged a coup attempt . The coup failed, and the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power 'in the period of transition'. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR. The judiciary

10875-400: The nominal head of state . The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations . However, in practice the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party, nor

11000-608: The official Soviet system of importance (ground forces were second, Air Force fourth, and Navy fifth). The army had the greatest political influence. In 1989, there served two million soldiers divided between 150 motorized and 52 armored divisions. Until the early 1960s, the Soviet navy was a rather small military branch, but after the Caribbean crisis , under the leadership of Sergei Gorshkov , it expanded significantly. It became known for battlecruisers and submarines. In 1989, there served 500 000 men. The Soviet Air Force focused on

11125-544: The only legal party and the final policymaker in the country. At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee , elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. In turn, the Central Committee voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952 and 1966), Secretariat and the general secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the de facto highest office in the Soviet Union. Depending on

11250-694: The other order until 1936 . In addition, in the regional languages of several republics, the word council or conciliar in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian soviet and never in others, e.g. Ukrainian SSR . СССР (in the Latin alphabet: SSSR ) is the abbreviation of the Russian-language cognate of USSR, as written in Cyrillic letters . The Soviets used this abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. After this,

11375-570: The partition of Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II . Up until his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin controlled all foreign relations of the Soviet Union during the interwar period . Despite the increasing build-up of Germany 's war machine and the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , the Soviet Union did not cooperate with any other nation, choosing to follow its own path. However, after Operation Barbarossa ,

11500-538: The party's highest body the Politburo . Operations were handled by the separate Ministry of Foreign Affairs . It was known as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (or Narkomindel), until 1946. The most influential spokesmen were Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) and Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989). Intellectuals were based in

11625-482: The place where he was born. Kravchuk's last article had appeared soon after his arrest in 1938. However, after this publication, Kravchuk's name was stricken from books and journals. The prisoner population of Kolyma increased substantially in 1946 with the arrival of thousands of former Soviet POWs liberated by Western Allied forces or the Red Army at the close of World War II. Those judged guilty of collaboration with

11750-532: The south. Kolyma Krai was never formally defined and over time it was split among various administrative units. As of 2023, it consists roughly of the Magadan Oblast , north-eastern areas of Yakutia , and the Bilibinsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug . The area, part of which is within the Arctic Circle , has a subarctic climate with very cold winters lasting up to six months of

11875-438: The state security organ, the NKVD . Biryukov, whose father was in the Gulag at the time he was born, has begun researching the location of graves. He believed some of the bodies were still partially preserved in the permafrost. It is therefore impossible to provide final figures on the number of victims who died in Kolyma. Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror , now admits that his original estimate of three million victims

12000-659: The state. The Soviet Union played a crucial role in the Allied victory in World War II , but at a tremendous human cost, with millions of Soviet citizens perishing in the conflict. The Soviet Union emerged as one of the world's two superpowers, leading the Eastern Bloc in opposition to the Western Bloc during the Cold War . This period saw the USSR engage in an arms race, the Space Race , and proxy wars around

12125-469: The struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare , propaganda campaigns, espionage , far-reaching embargoes , rivalry at sports events and technological competitions such as the Space Race . Constitutionally, the USSR was a federation of constituent Union Republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine or Byelorussia (SSRs), or federations, such as Russia or Transcaucasia (SFSRs), all four being

12250-506: The term Gulag archipelago. Within the crowded prison ships thousands died during transportation. One survivor's memoir recounts that the prison ship SS Dzhurma was caught in the autumn ice in 1933 while trying to get to the mouth of the Kolyma River. When it reached port the following spring, it carried only crew and guards. All 12,000 prisoners were missing, left dead on the ice." It turns out that this incident, widely reported since it

12375-466: The train journey to Siberia, he writes: "The terrible heat, the lack of fresh air, the unbearable overcrowded conditions all exhausted us. We were all half starved. Some of the elderly prisoners, who had become so weak and emaciated, died along the way. Their corpses were left abandoned alongside the railroad tracks." A vivid account of the conditions in Kolyma is that of Brother Gene Thompson of Kiev's Faith Mission. He recounts how he met Vyacheslav Palman,

12500-492: The truth". Human rights in the Soviet Union were severely limited. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state from 1927 until 1953 and a one-party state until 1990. Freedom of speech was suppressed and dissent was punished. Independent political activities were not tolerated, whether these involved participation in free labour unions , private corporations , independent churches or opposition political parties . The freedom of movement within and especially outside

12625-587: The very last prisoners were released from Kolyma. The Russian author Andrei Amalrik appears to have been one of the last high-profile political prisoners to be sent to Kolyma. In 1970, he published two books: Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? and Involuntary Journey to Siberia . As a result, he was arrested for "defaming the Soviet state" in November 1970 and sentenced to hard labour, apparently in Kolyma, for what turned out to be

12750-527: The west further raised concerns. In the past, there were accidents involving submarines K-19 , K-8 , a K-129 , K-27 , K-219 and K-278 Komsomolets . There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislature represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , the government represented by the Council of Ministers , and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),

12875-465: The world's largest lakes; the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran ), and Lake Baikal , the world's largest (by volume) and deepest freshwater lake that is also an internal body of water in Russia. Neighbouring countries were aware of the high levels of pollution in the Soviet Union but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was discovered that its environmental problems were greater than what

13000-454: The year. Permafrost and tundra cover a large part of the region. Average winter temperatures range from −19 to −38 °C (−2 to −36 °F) (even lower in the interior), and average summer temperatures, from 3 to 16 °C (37 to 61 °F). There are rich reserves of gold , silver , tin , tungsten , mercury , copper , antimony , coal , oil , and peat . Twenty-nine zones of possible oil and gas accumulation have been identified in

13125-624: Was a coastline . The country bordered Afghanistan , the People's Republic of China , Czechoslovakia , Finland , Hungary , Iran , Mongolia , North Korea , Norway , Poland , Romania , and Turkey from 1945 to 1991. The Bering Strait separated the USSR from the United States . The country's highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismoil Somoni Peak ) in Tajikistan , at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The USSR also included most of

13250-539: Was also the industrial center of the Soviet Union. Historian Matthew White wrote that it was an open secret that the country's federal structure was 'window dressing' for Russian dominance. For that reason, the people of the USSR were usually called 'Russians', not 'Soviets', since 'everyone knew who really ran the show'. Under the Military Law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of

13375-483: Was brought under strict party control after Stalin's death. Under Yuri Andropov , the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure, culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high-ranking party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The constitution , which

13500-540: Was carried out within the terms of the Soviet Civil Code. Some Soviet legal scholars even said that "criminal repression" may be applied in the absence of guilt. Martin Latsis , chief of Soviet Ukraine 's secret police explained: "Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what

13625-542: Was colloquially, but incorrectly, referred to as Russia . The history of the Soviet Union began with the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War , the Soviet Union quickly became a one-party state under the Communist Party . Its early years under Lenin were marked by

13750-404: Was dissolved, resulting in its constituent republics of Armenia , Georgia and Azerbaijan being elevated to Union Republics, while Kazakhstan and Kirghizia were split off from the Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status. In August 1940, Moldavia was formed from parts of Ukraine and Soviet-occupied Bessarabia , and Ukrainian SSR. Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania were also annexed by

13875-606: Was far too high. In his article Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the 20th Century , Matthew White estimates the number of those who died at 500,000. In Stalin's Slave Ships , Martin Bollinger undertakes a careful analysis of the number of prisoners who could have been transported by ship to Magadan between 1932 and 1953 (some 900,000) and the probable number of deaths each year (averaging 27%). This produces figures significantly below earlier estimates but, as

14000-534: Was first mentioned in a book published in 1947, could not have happened as the ship Dzhurma was not in Soviet hands until mid 1935. In 1932 expeditions pushed their way into the interior of the Kolyma, embarking on the construction of the Kolyma Highway , which was to become known as the Road of Bones. Eventually, about 80 different camps dotted the region of the uninhabited taiga . The original director of

14125-422: Was great. The abundant gold resources of the area seemed tailor-made to provide this capital. A government agency Dalstroy ( Дальстрой , acronym for Far North Construction Trust ) was formed to organize the exploitation of the area. Prisoners were being drawn into the Soviet penal system in large numbers during the initial period of Kolyma's development, most notably from the so-called anti-Kulak campaign and

14250-424: Was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers , but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars . The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment,

14375-534: Was not accepted by all within the Russian Republic , resulting in the Russian Civil War . The RSFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin came to power, inaugurating rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant economic growth but contributed to a famine between 1930 and 1933 that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system of

14500-450: Was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts ( People's Court ) and applied the law as established by the constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union used the inquisitorial system of Roman law , where the judge, procurator , and defence attorney collaborate to "establish

14625-485: Was promulgated in 1924 , 1936 and 1977 , did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in

14750-455: Was recruited from all Soviet nationalities on a voluntary basis, to make up for the sudden lack of political prisoners . Young men and women were lured to the frontier land of Kolyma with the promise of high earnings and better living. But many decided to leave. The region's prosperity suffered under Soviet liberal policies in the end of the 1980s and 1990s with a considerable reduction in population, apparently by 40% in Magadan. A U.S. report from

14875-477: Was repeatedly postponed. Formal recognition came when the new Labour Party came to power in 1924. All the other countries followed suit in opening trade relations. Henry Ford opened large-scale business relations with the Soviets in the late 1920s, hoping that it would lead to long-term peace. Finally, in 1933, the United States officially recognized the USSR, a decision backed by the public opinion and especially by US business interests that expected an opening of

15000-538: Was sent to the camps in February 1945, apparently for refusing to write a song about Stalin. Although he was initially freed in 1950 and could return to his singing career, he was soon framed by his enemies on charges of homosexuality and sent back to the camps. Though released once again several years later, he was never officially rehabilitated and remained in exile in Magadan where he died in 1994. Speaking to journalists in 1982, he explained how he had been forced to tour

15125-482: Was that "the Constitution was written not for you, but for American Negroes, so that they know how happy the lives of Soviet citizens are". Crime was determined not as the infraction of law, instead, it was determined as any action which could threaten the Soviet state and society. For example, a desire to make a profit could be interpreted as a counter-revolutionary activity punishable by death. The liquidation and deportation of millions of peasants in 1928–31

15250-473: Was the largest country by area , extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries , and the third-most populous country . An overall successor to the Russian Empire , it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics , the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR . In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized . As

15375-587: Was the Russian responsibility to assist them. The Comintern was the weapon of choice. A few revolutions did break out, but they were quickly suppressed (the longest lasting one was in Hungary)—the Hungarian Soviet Republic —lasted only from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919. The Russian Bolsheviks were in no position to give any help. By 1921, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin realized that capitalism had stabilized itself in Europe and there would not be any widespread revolutions anytime soon. It became

15500-404: Was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power plant . Unparalleled in the world, it resulted in a large number of radioactive isotopes being released into the atmosphere. Radioactive doses were scattered relatively far. Although long-term effects of the accident were unknown, 4,000 new cases of thyroid cancer which resulted from the accident's contamination were reported at the time of

15625-486: Was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned . The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets ) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history, at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, its powers and functions were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including

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