View source for Kolyma

{{Short description|Region of the Russian Far East}}
{{Other uses|Kolyma (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox settlement
| name = Kolyma
| native_name = Колыма
| settlement_type = Region
| image_skyline = Kolymarivermap.png
|image_caption = [[Kolyma River]] basin
}}
[[File:Магаданская область.png|310px|thumb|[[Magadan Oblast]]]]

{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2016}}
[[File:Larix gmelinii0.jpg|thumb|right|300px|[[Larch]] forest in the [[Upper Kolyma Highlands]]]]

'''Kolyma''' ({{lang|ru|Колыма́}}, {{IPA|ru|kəɫɨˈma|IPA}}) or '''Kolyma Krai''' ({{lang|ru|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<ref name="ЭСБЕ">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Колымское нагорье |encyclopedia=[[Great Soviet Encyclopedia]] |year=1969–1978 |edition=3rd |url=http://bse.sci-lib.com/article063088.html |language=Russian |trans-title=Kolyma Highlands}}</ref>). It is bounded to the north by the [[East Siberian Sea]] and the [[Arctic Ocean]], and by the Sea of Okhotsk to 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 [[Sakha Republic|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 the year. [[Permafrost]] and [[tundra]] cover a large part of the region. Average winter temperatures range from {{Convert|−19|to|−38|C|F}} (even lower in the interior), and average summer temperatures, from {{Convert|3|to|16|C|F}}. There are rich reserves of [[gold]], [[silver]], [[tin]], [[tungsten]], [[mercury (element)|mercury]], [[copper]], [[antimony]], [[coal]], [[oil]], and [[peat]]. Twenty-nine zones of possible oil and gas accumulation have been identified in 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<sup>3</sup> of gas.<ref name="kommersant.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.kommersant.com/p-52/r_396/Magadan_Region/ |title=Magadan Region |date=8 March 2004 |publisher=Kommersant Moscow |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071025044008/http://www.kommersant.com/p-52/r_396/Magadan_Region/ |archive-date=25 October 2007 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>

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 [[icebreaker]]s. 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 a distillery form the city's industrial base.<ref name="kommersant.com"/>

{{anchor|labor camps}}

==Prehistory==
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 the [[Eskimo]]s, [[Chukchi people|Chukchi]] and [[Koryaks|Koryak]]s.<ref name="Dikov & Clark 1965">{{cite journal|last1=Dikov|first1=N.N.|last2=Clark|first2=Gerald H.|title=The Stone Age of Kamchatka and the Chukchi Peninsula in the Light of New Archaeological Data|journal=Arctic Anthropology|date=1965|volume=3|issue=1|pages=10–25 |jstor=40315601}}</ref>

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 [[Kolyma River|River Kolyma]] valley.

==History==
[[File:Lithuanian political prisoners celebrate Easter.jpg|thumb|Lithuanian political prisoners at the Christmas Eve table in the Kolyma region, 1955]]
[[File:Kolyma road00.jpg|thumb|Construction of the bridge through the Kolyma by the workers of the Dalstroy (part of the 'Road of Bones' from Magadan to Jakutsk), 1930s]]

Under [[Joseph Stalin]]'s rule, The Kolyma Gulag (Колыма гулаг, колымский гулаг) became the most notorious region for the [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s. 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 the Kolyma [[forced labour|forced-labour]] camps and the recently dedicated [[Church of the Nativity (Magadan)|Church of the Nativity]] remembers the victims in its icons<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070423144236/http://www.magadancatholic.org/englishpages/Icon.html Icons]. magadancatholic.org</ref> and Stations of the Camps.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120206080246/http://www.magadancatholic.org/englishpages/Stations.html Icons by Svetlana Rjanitcyna]. magadancatholic.org</ref>

===Emergence of the Gulag camps===
{{main|Sevvostlag}}
[[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 (Soviet Union)|first five-year plan]], 1928–1932) the need for capital to finance economic development was great. The abundant gold resources of the area seemed tailor-made to provide this capital. A government agency [[Dalstroy]] ({{lang|ru|Дальстрой}}, acronym for ''[[Far North (Russia)|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 [[Kulak|anti-Kulak]] campaign and the government's internal war to force [[Collectivization in the USSR|collectivization]] on the USSR's peasantry. These prisoners formed a readily available workforce.

[[File:Butugycheg mine.jpg|left|thumb|240px|[[Butugichag|Butugychag]] Tin Mine – a Gulag camp in the Kolyma area]]

The initial efforts to develop the region began in 1932, with the building of the town of Magadan by [[forced labor]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/marek/marek.html|archive-url=https://archive.today/20090111093658/http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/marek/marek.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=11 January 2009|title=Alaska Notes: communist morality, stalinism, gulag, Kolyma,Magadan}}</ref> (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 the [[Trans-Siberian Railway]], prisoners were disembarked at one of several transit camps (such as [[Nakhodka]] and later [[Vanino, Khabarovsk Krai|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<ref>Jackson, James O. (20 April 1987) [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930095752/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,964077,00.html Soviet Union]. ''Time''</ref> in ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine: "During the 1930s the only way to reach Magadan was by ship from [[Khabarovsk]], which created an island psychology and 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 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.<ref>{{cite book |title=Stalin's Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West |first= Martin J. |last=Bollinger |year=2008 |publisher=Naval Institute Press|isbn=978-1591140467}}</ref>

[[File:GULAG Logo.svg|thumb|The trademark for industrial goods produced by the Gulag system]]

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 the Kolyma camps was [[Eduard Berzin]], a [[Cheka]] officer. Berzin was later removed (1937) and shot during the period of the [[Great Purge]]s in the USSR.

====The Arctic camps====
[[File:Kolyma-goldmine.jpg|left|thumb|Prisoners at a Kolyma gold mine]]

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."<ref>Solzhenitsyn, A. ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'', vol. 2, p. 49.</ref> But there is no documentary evidence of this beyond Solzhenitsyn's speculation.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kriza |first1=Elisa |title=Review of: Kees Boterbloem Life in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk). |journal=Nations and Nationalism |date=2021 |volume=27 |issue=4 |page=1308 |doi=10.1111/nana.12775 |s2cid=244626613 |doi-access=free }}</ref> 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 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&nbsp;km) from 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.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20060425055248/http://www.iso.gmu.edu/~ikatcha1/Krawtchouk.html Krawtchouk story : How a scientist received a job offer from the American Mathematical Society, was accused of being a foreign spy, and sent to GULAG]. gmu.edu</ref>

[[File:Lithuanian deportee house in Kolyma.jpeg|thumb|A Lithuanian deportee house in the Kolyma region, 1958]]
[[File:Deportee camp in the upper Kolyma region.jpg|thumb|Deportee settlement in the upper Kolyma region, 1956]]

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.<ref name="Conquest, Robert 1978 pp. 228-229">Conquest, Robert, ''Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps'', Viking Press, (1978), {{ISBN|0-670-41499-9}}, pp. 228–229</ref>
Those judged guilty of collaboration with the enemy frequently received ten or twenty-five year prison sentences to the gulag, including Kolyma.<ref name="Conquest, Robert 1978 pp. 228-229"/>

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 [[Léon Theremin#Return to the Soviet Union|returned voluntarily]]. [[Joseph Stalin]] had Theremin imprisoned at the [[Butyrka]] in Moscow; he later came to work in 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 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.<ref>
{{cite book
| last1 = Hochschild
| first1 = Adam
| author-link1 = Adam Hochschild
| year = 1994
| chapter = 17: Beyond the Pole Star
| title = The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=PkI647v7GH4C
| location = Boston
| publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
| publication-date = 2003
| page = 237
| isbn = 0-547-52497-8
| access-date = 2017-06-14
| quote = Secret police authorities in Kolyma today say there are records—sometimes a complete file, sometime just a name on a list—of two million men and women who were shipped to the territory between 1930 and the mid-1950s. But no one knows, even approximately, how many of these prisoners died. Even historians who have spent years studying Kolyma come up with radically different numbers. I asked four such researchers, who between them have written or edited more than half a dozen books on the ''gulag'', what was the total Kolyma death toll. One estimated it at 250,000, another at 300,000, one at 800,000, and one at 'more than 1,000,000.'
}}
</ref>

====Dalstroy officials====
[[File:Deportee barrack in the Kolyma region.jpg|left|thumb|Deportee barrack in the Kolyma region, 1957]]

[[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 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:
* [[Eduard Berzin|Eduard Petrovich Berzin]], 1932–1937
* Karp Aleksandrovich Pavlov, 1937–1939.
* Ivan Fedorovich Nikishev, 1940–1948.
* Ivan Grigorevich Petrenko, 1948–1950.
* I.L. Mitrakov, from 1950 until Dalstroy was taken over by the Ministry of Metallurgy on 18 March 1953.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20061209121950/http://www.kolyma.ru/magadan/history/dalstroi.shtml История Дальстроя]. kolyma.ru</ref>

====Calendar of historical events====
[[File:Soviet NKVD ticket for Polish prisoner released from Kolyma camp 1942.jpg|thumb|A [[Sevvostlag]]-issued identity card of Polish prisoner (journalist and writer {{Interlanguage link|Anatol Krakowiecki|pl}}) released from a Kolyma Gulag camp, spring 1942]]

Calendar of events:{{Citation needed|date=February 2010}}
*1928–1929: Gold mines established in the Kolyma River region. Commencement of regular mining operations
*13 November 1931: Establishment of [[Dalstroy]]
*4 February 1932: [[Eduard Berzin]], Manager of Dalstroy, arrives with the first 10 prisoners.
*1934: The headcount increases to 30,000 inmates.
*1937: The number of inmates increases to over 70,000; 51,500&nbsp;kg of gold mined
*June 1937: Stalin reprimands the Kolyma commandants for their undue leniency towards the inmates.
*December 1937: Berzin is charged with espionage and subsequently tried and shot in August 1938.
*4 March 1938: Dalstroy is put under the jurisdiction of [[NKVD]], USSR.
*December 1938: [[Osip Mandelstam]], an eminent Russian poet, dies in a transit camp en route to Kolyma.
*1939: Number of inmates now 138,200.
*11 October 1939: Commandants Pavlov ([[Dalstroy]]) and {{Interlanguage link|Stepan Garanin|ru|3=Гаранин, Степан Николаевич}} ([[Sevvostlag]]) sacked from their posts. Garanin subsequently shot.
*1941: Headcount of inmates reaches 190,000. Also some 3,700 Dalstroy contract workers.
*23 May 1944: US Vice President [[Henry A. Wallace]] arrives for a NKVD-hosted 25-day tour of Magadan, Kolyma, and the Russian Far East.
[[File:Гаранин.jpg|left|thumb|Colonel Stepan Garanin (1898—1950), chief of Kolyma camps in 1937—1938 as prisoner]]
*October 1945: Camp for the Japanese prisoners of war is established in Magadan, to provide extra labour.
*1952: 199,726 inmates, the highest ever in the history of the Kolyma camps and Dalstroy.
*May 1952: According to commandant Mitrakov, Sevvoslag is dissolved, Dalstroy transformed into the General Board of Labour Camps
*March 1953: After Stalin's death, Dalstroy transferred to the Ministry of Metallurgy, camp units come under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Ministry of Justice.
*September 1953: Dalstroy camp units taken over by the newly established management board of the North-Eastern Corrective Labour Camps. Harsh camp regime gradually relaxed.
*1953–1956: Period of mass amnesties and the release of most political prisoners. Some camp closures begin.
*1957: Dalstroy liquidated. Many of the former prisoners continued to work in the mines with a modified status and a few new prisoners arrived, at least until the early 1970s.

===Post-Dalstroy developments===
The Chukot Autonomous Okrug<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20060512051754/http://www.chukotka.org/history/soviet/magadan/?lang=en Chukotka as a Part of the Magadan region]. chukotka.org</ref> 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 the Ministry of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy.

====Industrial and economic evolution====
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 was recruited from all Soviet nationalities on a voluntary basis, to make up for the sudden lack of [[political prisoner]]s. 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.<ref>[http://www.cosmicelk.co.uk/1917on.htm Yakutia ASSR and the Sakha Republic from Cosmic Elk]. Retrieved 23 January 2007.</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2013}} A U.S. report from 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.<ref>Kuzmichenko, Svetlana (1998) [https://web.archive.org/web/20070929124954/http://www.russiancouncil.org/reports/magadanupdate.html Magadan Region Update], U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service and U.S. Department of State.</ref>

====Last political prisoners====
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 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 prisoner]]s 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 the very last prisoners were released from Kolyma.
The Russian author [[Andrei Amalrik]] appears to have been one of the last high-profile [[political prisoner]]s 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 a total of almost five years.<ref>{{cite journal |first=John |last=Keep |title=Andrei Amalrik and '1984' |journal=[[Russian Review]] |volume=30 |issue=4 |year=1971 |pages=335–345 |doi=10.2307/127788 |jstor=127788 }}</ref>

==Accounts of the Kolyma Gulag camps==
=== Varlam Shalamov ===
A detailed description of conditions in the camps is provided by [[Varlam Shalamov]] in his ''[[The Kolyma Tales|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 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...."

=== Michael M. Solomon ===
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 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.<ref>[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2005/06/22/george_bien_gulag_survivor/ George Bien, Gulag Survivor] in the ''[[Boston Globe]]'', 22 June 2005</ref> His story has also led to a film.<ref>[http://www.gulag.hu/szalkai.htm Documentary film ''Walk on Gulagland Kolyma''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061128044501/http://www.gulag.hu/szalkai.htm |date=28 November 2006 }} by [[Zoltan Szalkai]]. Retrieved 17 January 2007.</ref>

=== Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov ===
''Soviet Gold'', the first autobiographical book written by [[Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov]], is almost entirely a description of the author's life in Magadan and the Kolyma gold fields.

=== Ayyub Baghirov ===
[[File:Mačiuika, Vytautas. Gastello klubas, 1955-03-05.jpg|thumb|Vytautas Mačiuika, Lithuanian political prisoner in Kolyma, 1955]]

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 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."

=== Brother Gene Thompson ===
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, 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.<ref>Thompson, Gene (2002) [https://web.archive.org/web/20071210163636/http://www.missionreporter.org/road_of_death.htm Kolyma – The Road of Death]. missionreporter.org</ref>

=== Vadim Kozin ===
One of the most famous political prisoners in Kolyma was [[Vadim Kozin]], possibly Russia's most popular romantic [[tenor]], who 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 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."<ref>[http://russia-in-us.com/Music/Romance/Kozin/ Vadim Kozin, One Way Trip from Petersburg to Magadan] from the Little Russia in US site. Retrieved 13 February 2007.  {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061017072625/http://russia-in-us.com/Music/Romance/Kozin/ |date=17 October 2006 }}</ref>
In 1993, while being interviewed by [[Theo Uittenbogaard]] for the TV documentary ''Gold – Lost in Siberia'' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apbN2qypLM8], 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 the famous singer Vadim Kozin to perform, during a break in the [[Yalta Conference]], held February 4–11, 1945.

=== Yevgenia Ginzburg ===
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 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"<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Ginzburg |first=Yevgenia |title=Journey into the Whirlwind |publisher=Harcourt Inc |year=1967 |isbn=9781903155967 |edition=First Harvest edition 1975 |location=United States|page=394 |translator-last=Stevenson |translator-first=Paul |author-link=Yevgenia Ginzburg |translator-last2=Hayward |translator-first2=Max}}</ref> 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 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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ginzburg |first=Yevgenia |title=Journey into the Whirlwind |publisher=Harcourt Inc. |year=1967 |isbn=9781903155967 |edition=First Harvest edition 1975 |location=United States of America |pages=411  |translator-last=Stevenson |translator-first=Paul |author-link=Yevgenia Ginzburg |translator-last2=Hayward |translator-first2=Max}}</ref>

=== Nikolai Getman ===
Finally, Ukrainian prisoner [[Nikolai Getman]] who spent the years 1945–1953 in Kolyma, records his testimony in pictures rather than words.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.artukraine.com/paintings/getman.htm |title=Arts Gallery |access-date=16 July 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090722083646/http://www.artukraine.com/paintings/getman.htm |archive-date=22 July 2009 }}</ref> But he does have 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 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.<ref>[http://www.jamestown.org/aboutus/getmanpaintings/getmancatalog Nikolai Getman: The Gulag collection] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111230070831/http://www.jamestown.org/aboutus/getmanpaintings/getmancatalog/ |date=30 December 2011 }}. Retrieved 13 February 2007.</ref>

==Estimating the number of victims==
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 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.{{cn|date=April 2025}}

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 was far too high.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}} In his article ''Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the 20th Century'',<ref>White, Matthew (1998) [http://necrometrics.com/battles.htm#Kolyma "Worst Massacres of the 20th Century"] in ''Historical Atlas of the 20th Century''</ref> 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 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<ref>{{cite journal|author-link=Norman Polmar|author=Polmar, Norman |url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_cold_war_studies/v009/9.3polmar.html |title=Stalin's Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West (review)|journal=[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]|volume=9|issue=3|year=2007|pages=180–182 |doi=10.1162/jcws.2007.9.3.180|s2cid=57563119 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> 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 the CIA in the 1950s and appears to be a flawed estimate.

==Ecology==
This [[ecoregion]] encompasses 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]].<ref name="FEOW 2014.">{{cite web|last1=FEOW|title=609: Kolyma|url=http://www.feow.org/ecoregion_details.php?eco=609|website=Freshwater Ecoregions of the World|publisher=Nature Conservancy|access-date=25 May 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150525034225/http://www.feow.org/ecoregion_details.php?eco=609|archive-date=25 May 2015|df=dmy-all}}</ref>

===Paleoecology===
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.<ref name="Boeskorov et al. 2009.">{{cite journal|last1=Boeskorov|first1=G.G.|title=Preliminary study of a mummified woolly rhinoceros from the lower reaches of the Kolyma River|journal=Doklady Biological Sciences|date=2009|volume=424|issue=1|pages=53–56|doi=10.1134/S0012496609010165|pmid=19341085|s2cid=2674199 }}</ref>

The [[polar bear]] most likely evolved here.<ref name="Kurten 1964.">{{cite journal|last=Kurtén|first=B.|title=The evolution of the polar bear, ''Ursus maritimus'' (Phipps)|journal=Acta Zoologica Fennica|year=1964|volume=108|pages=1–26|url=https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/37762}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Gulag]]
* [[Vorkutlag]]
* Soviet Union
* {{portal-inline|Russia}}
* {{portal-inline|Geography}}

==References==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite book |author-link=Robert Conquest |last=Conquest |first=Robert |title=Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps |publisher=Viking Press |year=1978 |isbn=0-670-41499-9 }}
*{{cite book |last=MacCannon |first=John |title=Red Arctic |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1998 |isbn=0-19-511436-1 }}

==External links==
{{commons category|Kolyma River}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060305081954/http://www.okay.com/dunc/gulag.htm The Soviet Gulag Era in Pictures, 1927–1953] Photographs, several of Kolyma, collected by James Duncan
*[http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai141_folder/141_articles/141_kolyma.html Kolyma – Off to the Unknown: Stalin's Notorious Prison Camps in Siberia, Personal Account by Ayyub Baghirov] AZER.com at ''Azerbaijan International'', Vol. 14:1 (Spring 2006), pp. 58–71.
*[http://gulaghistory.org/exhibits/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php Work in the Gulag] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180430155402/http://gulaghistory.org/ |date=30 April 2018 }} from the Stalin's Gulag section of the Online Gulag Museum with a short description and images of Kolyma
*[http://www.sgovio.com/ Italian-American artist Thomas Sgovio (1916–1997) created a series of drawings and paintings,  based on his life as a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag]
*[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/109812.Kolyma_Tales Shalamv Kolyma Tales]
*[http://altermundi.free.fr/kolyma/kolyma.html Kolyma the Land of Gold and Death] Private site of a former Polish prisoner, Stanislaw J. Kowalski.
* [http://www.memo.ru/history/NKVD/GULAG/maps/ussri.htm Russian map of the Gulag camps across the Soviet Union] at the Memorial website

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[[Category:Historical regions in Russia]]
[[Category:History of the Russian Far East]]
[[Category:Geography of Gulag]]

[[de:Kolyma#Goldgewinnung in Straflagern]]