Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 11 – Vorkuta, a
coal-mining center in Russia’s far north, became notorious in Stalin’s times as
a center of the GULAG to which thousands of political prisoners were sent to
work to their deaths. Now, while coal continues to be mined there, the city is
on the way to becoming a ghost town.
In a copiously illustrated
6,000-word article the Znak news agency provides a searing portrait of a
city that symbolized the worst of the Soviet system and that now is dying
because of some of the worst aspects of the system in Russia today (znak.com/2019-11-11/kak_v_nashi_dni_vymiraet_vorkuta_severnoe_eldorado_sovetskogo_soyuza_reportazh_znak_com).
Between the arrival of the first “zeks”
in May 1931 and the death of Stalin, some two million political prisoners were
sent to Vorkuta to work in the mines. Exact figures are unknown, but a local
historian of the Vorkuta camps, Irina Vitman, says that she estimates approximately
200,000 of them died and were buried in mass graves there.
Today, she continues, there is not
even an exhibition about the camps in the city itself, although there are
memorials of sorts in the cemeteries of the surrounding towns. Today, there is
only one corrective labor colony left, No. 22, “but as local residents say, the
officials are planning to close it down,” Znak reports.
After the death of Stalin, Vorkuta
remained an important coalmining center and attracted “free” workers from
around the USSR because pay at its 13 major mines and support facilities was
extremely high by Soviet standards. In
1959, the city had 55,600 residents. By 1991, the city had 117,000 and the
surrounding territory “almost 250,000.”
Since that time, the population
fallen dramatically, to fewer than 50,000 in the city itself and far fewer than
their 1991 highs in the surrounding area. Nine of the 13 mines have closed, and
wages and salaries have plummeted as prices have skyrocketed, prompting ever
more residents to leave.
In 2018, officials say, only 810
children were born, barely above the 738 who died. But the outflow of the population
is so great that Vorkuta has the highest rate of population decline of any city
in the Russian Federation. Tax collections have plummeted, infrastructure has
collapsed, and large numbers of apartments, even entire buildings, are now
empty.
City officials insist that it is wrong
to describe what is happened as “a withering away” of Vorkuta. Rather, they
say, that “the correct term” is “regulated contraction.” But whatever you call it, the city is in fact
dying; and residents are wondering if anything can save them.
Because of the poverty of the region,
most assume that salvation can come only if Moscow gets involved. Some hope
that renewed interest in coal production will lead to the reopening of the
mines. Others place their bets on gold mining. Still others on new military
installations. And some even think Vorkuta could be a tourist destination.
Many local residents are skeptical that
anything will help. “Vorkuta very soon will be a ghost town,” one said. It is
already the leader among Russian cities in the loss of population and that’s
according to official figures. The real ones, he suggests, are far, far
worse. But like many, he doesn’t plan to
leave.
“What’s the sense of doing so?” he
asks rhetorically. The entire country is
in trouble. It is living off the reserves built up in Soviet times and those
are running out. What will we leave our
children? The whole system needs to be
changed from top to bottom. But it is unclear who will do that. Certainly not
the people he sees every day in Vorkuta.
Russians need to speak out but now “they
prefer to remain silent. No long ago, we had three grown men in the mine
discussing ‘The Battle of the Extra-Sensory People.’ When you here this, then
you understand perfectly well that something isn’t right” – and won’t be soon enough
to save a place like Vorkuta.
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