Kolyma

The Kolyma is an area of the extreme is Russia. At the time of the Stalinist period , many prisoners were sent in the Gulag S of the area. This period is known in particular by the accounts of Varlam Chalamov.

The area draws its name from the river Kolyma, long of 2 129 km and which drains a basin of 680 000 square kilometers. This basin consists of mountains in the south and the east, reaching 3 000 meters with the Chen mount in the Cherskii chain, and of the vast plain of Kolyma in north, where the river runs out in the Arctic Ocean. Its flow of 4 060 cubic meters a second is the more important sixth of Russia after the Ienisseï, the Ob, the Amour and the the Volga. The Kolyma river is cold on a depth of several meters during approximately 250 days per annum, becoming again free of the ices only at the beginning of June, and freezing again at the beginning of October.

Introduction

The Soviet prisoners, or “ lagerniks ” as they commonly were called, spoke about the cold country of Kolyma like another planet. This vast Arctic territory and the sub-Arctic, with its political and geographical borders evil defined, is in the most remote north-eastern borders of the Siberia.

Kolyma is different from the other Asian areas by as well of aspects as it can be considered, by Métaphore, like a world with share. Distance and insulation, the severity of the Climate, and the very hard living conditions made this cold hell a place with share of the remainder of Siberia.

The citizens of the Soviet Union feared Kolyma more than any other area of the Archipelago of the Gulag: " Kolyma znatchit smert" ( " Kolyma wants to say mort" ) said one at the time.

Kolyma had a remarkable specificity among the many areas of the Siberia of North: its wealth of layers of Gold. After the discovery of its mining potential, the area became the object of an intensive exploitation. The prisoners were the principal tools in this operation carried out by the State. Million “enemies of the people”, used as servile labor died in the gold mines of Siberian North. The system worked towards a double end: exploitation of the mining resources and simultaneously, the liquidation of the opponents.

Well before this territory ignored a long time is not known like the “ Crematorium white ” or “ the country of white death ”, about the Russian explorers, hunters and adventurers, had already spoken about its existence. Two elements had maintained the pioneers Russian out of this area: its severe climate and its geographical insulation. These combined elements created a solid barrier which delayed the redécouverte of Kolyma until the beginning of the XXe century.

The first explorers of this area found the climatic conditions of Kolyma too hard. The Soviet prisoners did not have this choice. They were to support these conditions as a long time as they could it. A maxim, known in all the Russia, said: " Kolyma, Kolyma, O magic planet/the winter have twelve months, all the remainder it is the été."

The inaccessibility of the area involved the abandonment of a highway design between Vladivostok and Magadan, the capital of Kolyma. The only possible link was made by sea route, of Vladivostok to the small port of Magadan, Kamchatka and the Arctic seaport of Amabartchik. One created a fleet of cargo liners transporting the prisoners with the outward journey and gold with the return.

In 1932, arrived the first director of the camps of work of Kolyma, Edouard Petrovitch Berzine. Under its direction, Kolyma became the new border of the Soviet Union. All the economy was based there on the forced labor of the prisoners. A little later the first transverse road towards North passed from 13 to 1 034 km, energy of Magadan to the Arctic port of Ambartchik. Thousands of camps of work were built along this road, and of the thousands of mines, mainly of the gold mines, entered in exploitation.

The Magadan capital

The key of this fast development was the capital of Kolyma, Magadan. This small village of fishermen developed quickly in active a penitentiary colony. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners arrived each year, intended for the camps of work. They constituted the population of Magadan and its back-country, and were supposed to work until their death, because no return was envisaged. Consequently, Magadan, which counted only 165 houses in 1935, became in one half-century a metropolis of 165.000 inhabitants.

Soviet publications, as the book “ Magadan ”, describes the city like a pleasant and modern place: alive, in progress and, more than all, free. There is no indication owing to the fact that it is the forced labor which gave rise to this city, at the price of dead and of innumerable sufferings. The capital of North seems not to have neither to remember, neither shame, nor desire to know the crimes of its past.

Not a sentence or a paragraph is not dedicated to all Soviet nationalities and to the many prisoners of country like the Poland, the Germany, the Romania, the Lithuania, the Latvia, the Mongolia, the China, the Korea, the Afghanistan, the Arménie, or the prisoners of war Japanese of the Second world war, who lived, worked and died here. With the dismantling of the camps of work in the years 1950 and 1960, the memory of these liquidated slaves and these war victims disappeared from the books of history and the files of the offices of the government. Although some reports/ratios came to the light starting from the old Soviet files, the refusal from what occurred to Kolyma continues today still.

The origin of the prisoners

The prisoners, products of Stalinist repressions, started to be able at Kolyma at the beginning of the year 1930 to begin the exploitation of the mineral resources. The fleet of cargo liners ad hoc , transported its human cargo for an one-way ticket in the frozen country of North. Only very little of them could return in their country of origin and those which returned were for the majority invalids, victims of severe Gelure S. The majority of them rest in common graves, dug in the Pergélisol, are buried under stone heaps or were carried by the pig iron and cast iron of spring in the Arctic Ocean.

With the bursting of the Second world war in 1939, and the invasion of the is Polish by the Soviets, of new resources of forced labor were found for the economic needs for the Stalinist empire. Approximately two million Pole violently was torn off their houses by the Soviet police force and was off-set in the vast territories of the Siberia and the Kazakhstan. They were placed in the collective installations of the Taïga or dispatched like labor forced in the camps of the distant Scandinavian areas. The strange of artic regions and sub-Arctic names of Siberia entered the books of Polish history. The majority of them became the synonyms of the martyrdom endured by the Poles present in Soviet Union during the war.

Quickly, three other countries, violently annexed to the the USSR, contributed to provide labor to the Système concentrationnaire of the Gulag. The patriots of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia followed the tragic way of the Poland.

The transport of the prisoners towards Kolyma

The forced labor would have had a weak impact on the Soviet economy without the infrastructure which made possible the displacement of the prisoners of their point of extraction at their point of use and destruction. The train Transsibérien became the principal means of transport to bring the prisoners at the stages along the line which then led them in varied places of Siberian North. Its Eastern end, Vladivostok, were a stage for the prisoners bound for Kolyma. However, the terrestrial road (Moscow - Vladivostok: 9300 km) stopped there for those which were to go in the extreme Is Siberian. The only means to reach the coasts of Kolyma was the North Sea like the Mer of Japan and the Mer of Okhotsk. To this end a fleet based with Vladivostok was created.

Boats of slaves

Each boat, like the Djourma, the Sovlatvia, Dalstroï, Décabriste and well of others, transported in its compartments several thousands of prisoners. All these boats, at the origin of the cargo liners, were refitted to be able to transport a maximum human cargo.

A typical boat was Djourma. Its interior installations illustrate how the human cargo was transported in its compartments. A timber structure had been set up along the walls of the compartments, and included/understood four levels of berths out of wooden, the floor serving as fifth level. Each level was divided into sections to accommodate five men in position lying. To take seat, the prisoners were to slip the legs in first with their head turned towards the passages, to avoid the Asphyxie. If there were not enough place, the prisoners were to use the passages for a maritime voyage from six to eleven days.

The Toilette S consisted of Baril S, called “ parashas ”, which were periodically emptied in the sea. These barrels are frequently reversed, spreading the dejections in the compartments.

On these overloaded boats, food was always in reduced quantity. In these times, all the country was hungry and the slaves were the last on the list when it was a question of distributing food. On the boat, the rations were still below the usual ratios in the prisons. The daily meal of the prisoner during the crossing consisted of a thin portion of Pain, a portion of Choucroute and a bucket of Eau for each group of fifteen men. This choice followed the maxim practiced in the system concentrationnaire according to which “ the men who do not work do not need food ”.

The ventilation of the interior of the compartments was another problem. The fresh air entered by the higher trap doors of the compartments. However, even when they were completely open, quantity of air which tie-beam was hardly sufficient to avoid the Asphyxie. Moreover, the trap doors and the principal door were always closed when the boat passed in Japanese territorial water. Each day of voyage took its ration of human lives.

Catastrophes

The Djourma had a big part in these tragedies. Their memory was preserved for the posterity in books like that of Robert Conquest “Kolyma”. These incidents give a good testimony of little value which the Masters of the Soviet Union gave to the human life. Here some stories presented in this book.

During one of its voyages towards the Arctic port of Ambartchik, Djourma was taken by the Glace, because of the arrival of cold time. In impossibility of breaking the ice, the boat remained in ice-cold water during the whole winter, with a cargo of 12.000 men. Soviet did not have any means of helping them, and they did not accept the foreign aid suggested by an American weather station of the Arctic. This decision was certainly guided by the fear of revealing their system of slavery to the rest of the world. The whole human cargo died of cold and hunger in the holds. Finally, Djourma was delivered ices in spring and could continue the mission which it had received.

On another occasion, on the open sea, criminals of common right lit a fire in a compartment. The commander of the boat made the simplest decision. The crew closed the doors and trap doors, and the whole human cargo died by Asphyxie. Fire was extinguished and the boat given in state to accommodate a new cargo.

Robert Conquest mentions another disaster, the explosion of the Sovlatvia, which convoyait Lithuanian prisoners and a cargo of Dynamite, while arriving at destination. The explosion was probably caused by a Sabotage of the prisoners.

A Polish source brings back another disaster implying Djourma. In spring of 1941, the boat, transporting 8000 men (including a quota of 3000 Poles), at sea undergoes another catastrophe during a violent storm. In the hold, the central benches crumbled, recovering hundreds of wood remains men and human body. There be several deaths and of many casualties, the exact number was never revealed.

The remainder of the fleet of the road of North could have similar mishaps, but much of accounts never the country of white death left. The police system would not have let pass only one of these accounts out of icy Kolyma.

The camp of work

The basic unit was the camp of work. Built in a place isolated from the Taïga, where Filon S of gold had been discovered, the camp was neither expensive nor complicated. It was supposed self-sufficing being, all resting on the work of the prisoner. They was of course the prisoners who built the camps completely, cutting and cutting wood, and building the huts. That started by releasing prisoners in taïga at the beginning of the short season of summer. The first task of the men was to build fences of Barbelé S, huts of wood with the residences of the prisoners and the services, as well as the external huts for the guard and the commander. Another group of prisoners was immediately affected with the construction of primitive equipment of exploitation of gold, opening the ground and beginning the mining work. The extraction of gold started almost at once after the arrival of the men. The needs for the prisoners was the junior by the concern of the persons in charge. The slogan above the entry of the camp carried: “The country needs metal”. It was necessary to read “needs gold”.

Thus for the gold mine known as “Pioneer”, (or “Pryisk pioneer” in Russian), located at 400-500 km in the north of Magadan in a valley in the middle of snow-covered mountains:

“ During the summer 1941, the first group of Polish prisoners arrived at the camp Là, they found that among the arrived first which had built the camp two years before, little remained in life. They was mainly the civils servant of the camp who, ensuring the essential services, received better rations of foods, better clothing and living conditions. At that time, two huts for the men working with the mine always had provisional roofs in bark of tree, the hut for the kitchen was with finished half and the medical room was a simple hut beside the entry of the camp the fence of barbed wires and the tower of guard was firmly in place, and the hut of the guards, raised, had all the installations permitted by the circumstances. ”

The organization of the production

All the efforts of the system related to a more effective production of gold. The lack of methods and modern equipment led the leaders to solve the bad productivity by increasing the forced labor. They counted that these primitive means would ensure a maximum production at a minimum cost for the State. The idea initial was that the company was to be sufficed for itself, and to produce a lucrative return for the State.

Several organizations existed to supervise the production of gold. One of it, the USWITL (for “Administration of the corrective labor force of north east”) had as a director some Garanine. The period of its severe reign was known in the penal tradition of Kolyma like the “Garaninchtchina”, which wants to say “the time of the sadistic terror of Garanine”. One can say with difficulty that its successors improved the system which it had created. None tried to introduce innovations which would improve the living conditions of the prisoners. Names like Vichnioviecki, Gakaïev and Drabkin E were established in the history of Kolyma like those of brutal administrators, always requiring and never not compromising.

Testimonys of the Poles

This period of the history of Kolyma was known world by the Polish which left the coasts of the country of gold, thanks to an unusual political arrangement between the Soviet Union and the Polish government in exile with London. Indeed, in 1941, after the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Nazi Germany, the Poles and the Soviets was same side, and became in spite of them allied. A treaty was signed in London, which ensured the release of all the Poles of the prisons and camps of work. Its clauses, which exigaient the immediate liberation of the Polish prisoners, were not always applied quickly by the administrators of the Soviet penal system. However, a broad proportion of the survivors integrated the Polish army, and left the Soviet Union for the the Middle East.

At that time, the British and the American did not accept testimonys of those which came from the Soviet concentration camps. The reports/ratios submitted by the Poles were ignored by the West and often refuted like false propaganda against the Soviet Union, diffused intentionally by the Poles anticommunists. Approximately ten years later, the British secret services questioned of the Poles in England in connection with their experiment in Soviet Union, for unknown reasons.

Life of the prisoners

Strong a long time ago, somebody expressed with a certain poetic talent the tragedy of the prisoners by songs made up on soft, sad agreements and melancholic persons. The prisoners, through all the area of Kolyma, sang these songs with many alternatives. Anatol Krakowiecki, Polish author, retained the first stanza, with the music and transcribed the whole in a book. Here translation:

Je screw on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk Where finishes Is remote I live in the deprivations and misery building a news installation. here

Deprivations and misery, cold, disease and hunger never left the forced workers of Kolyma. And the installation of which it is question is anything else only the camp itself with all the mining equipment. Other stanzas describe the misery in which the prisoners lived, and the last speaks about the frozen and snow-covered peaks of the mountains, where the hearts of deaths remained for their eternal rest.

The wages for work and the miserable existence were given in the form of rations of food, variable according to the productivity of each man. In summer, when the production reached its maximum, the most important ration reached 600 grams of Pain, a bowl of clear Soupe three times per day and a quarter of Hareng salted. For the least productive men, the ration of bread went down to 400 or 200 grams per day. In winter, all the rations were to the minimum reduced, and soup was been useful only twice a day. Principal work of the winter was to remove the snow of the ways and alleys, and to dig the ground to reach the level of gold.

Responsibilities in the camp

The supervision of the camp was responsibility for the detachment of guards and the commander. The prisoner-civils servant, selected among the criminals of common right, controlled the internal businesses. The political prisoners were excluded from the interesting functions. The subordination of the prisoners to the criminal elements had a justification with the eyes of the penal authorities. The criminals were the extension of police terror. These selected men were assigned at stations like the supervision interns, the kitchen, the provisioning or the maintenance of the huts. They were feared other prisoners because of the Gourdin which they carried and used to punish weakest of their group.

It was the responsibility for these civils servant of the camp to leave the men the huts the morning, and to use the means to maintain the rate of productivity highest possible. The use of the clubs, and the drubbings with blows of Shovel S and Pickaxe S, were current things. Among punitive measurements applicable to the prisoners, there was the reduction of the rations of food or work additional after the 12 usual work hours. Sometimes, the punishment was the death, for which the civils servant never took the responsibility.

The state of the men in the camps

Krakowiecki, describing a group of men sent since the mine towards an easier work of repair of road, gives an good image of work in the gold mines. Here how it describes this group of men: from here, gold mine, comes a procession from human phantoms. These men had to assume a heavy work, like animals, during all the season of summer. Animals would have revolted or died. The man endures more than them. The men, exploited all the season, became skeletons. It is difficult to include/understand how these men are still in life. Only skin and bones, without exaggeration. These beings, formerly of the men, completely destroyed physically, are not necessary any more to the gold mine, because their productivity is null. Thus, these dead men with half are assigned to the maintenance of the routes.

Mortality in Kolyma

According to the British historian Robert Conquest, death rate among the prisoners reached 30% the first year and about 100% in the second. The causes of so high losses were, initially, the extreme climatic conditions, involving death or the Amputation S because of the Gelure S. Ensuite, the very insufficient food intakes, which destroyed the men physically and mentally. And finally, diseases in proportions, like the Scurvy and the Dysentery. These diseases involved neither Hospitalization, nor treatment.

On the whole, between 1937 and 1953, according to the estimates of Robert Conquest (estimates re-examined with the fall in more recent work), Kolyma consumed almost three million human lives, especially originating in the USSR. Numerically, the Polish losses represent a very small proportion of the total, but only 5% of them survived. From the 12.000 Poles off-set in this area between 1940 and 1941, only 583 men returned alive. The following extracts, resulting from the writings of the survivors, give us an idea of the living conditions of the prisoners in Kolyma.

… it was rare that a labor force of 2000 or 3000 men is able to send would be this only 100 men with the mine… … among 3000 prisoners sent to the mine Maxime Gorki in 1944, only 500 were in sufficiently good health to be transferred to Laso the following season… … no Polish prisoner returned from the 3000 men sent to the camps of Chukhots… … in Maldyak, 16 of the 20 Poles of my group died… … in Komsomolets, there were only 46 survivors out of 436 men… … the 10th camp of special work in Magadan, on a total of 500 Poles, only 130 survived…

Kolyma was also the tomb for many communist high ranking officials fallen in disgrace. Much of them tried out the deprivations of work in the gold mines, before the cold, the hunger, the disease and misery do not consume their life.

The hero of very mediatized lawsuit Kirov, Ivan Zaporozec, became a prisoner of Kolyma before it is finally carried out in 1937. The first director of the “cold country”, Edouard Berzine, was shot. Later, the man who had instituted his own kind of terror in the camps under his authority, Garagine, disappeared some share in North, one of the gold mines. Its Vichnioviecki successor knew the same destiny, ironically put in lawsuit for the death of prisoners whom it had taken along for a forwarding in order to find new fields of exploitation of gold.

Quantity of gold produced

In this enormous government enterprise, implying million people, under conditions of deprivations ever seen, there is another side which must be taken into account. This element is the invaluable Or itself. According to the estimates of Robert Conquest, the gold bearing production started with a few tons the first year, and reached 400 to 500 tons each year at the top of the human losses. They are very excessive estimates almost divided by 10 today.

To confront approximate total tonnage with the human losses shows that there was not more than one kilogram of gold produced for each human life lost in the production process.

The Second world war

The release of the war with the Nazi Germany in 1941, and the initial heavy losses on the face, forced the Soviet leaders to soften their policy towards the forced labor. Indicator that their sources of work were limited, they made drastic changes for the benefit of the prisoners. The labor rarefying because of war, it took value. The very hard treatments of years 1937-1942 were given up, which allowed an improvement of the living conditions in the camps of work. Death rate dropped significantly. During several years, the Soviet Union, while remaining a slave empire, was a little more tolerant towards its prisoners.

With the victory over the Germany in 1945, the losses on the face ceased. This situation opened new sources of labor in the lately subjected countries. The new arrivals were the prisoners of war German and Japanese, the nationalists Ukrainian, Rumanian, and even of the members of the Tajna Armia Polska, the Polish army of resistance, who had helped the Soviet Union. All these men filled the vacuums left by their predecessors deceased. However, they found in Kolyma of the conditions more tolerable than those endured before. Many purged a ten years sorrow, and because of the political changes in Soviet Union, could return in their country.

End of the camps of Kolyma

With the dissolution of the organization of the camps of the “Dalstroï” in 1957, the Soviets adopted a new policy of work in Kolyma. Although the population of the prisons is always subjected to the forced labor, they were especially ordinary prisoners. The political part disappeared. Free labor existed already in the area, but a new labor was recruited of all the parts of the Soviet Union on a voluntary basis. Many the new pioneers settled here, melting of the families and building houses. Young men and women were attracted in this country-border with the promise of high incomes and a better standard of living. The entry of modern technology returned the country of livable gold and in made a prosperous area of current the Russia.

Lies on Kolyma

With time, the past of this territory of the North-East of the Siberia disappears gradually in the lapse of memory. History of this country during the communist period forever made the topicality in the world. For much of Russians, Pole, Lithuanians and Latvians, the word “Kolyma” would be synonymous with the horrors of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka and others, although it is almost unknown in the West. Today, few people know this name and connect it to its appalling last. Its infamy remains hidden for the rest of the world, because the Soviet system of secrecy did not let leave information out of the borders of the country. The victims buried in the cold ground cannot speak, and the Western countries preferred to accept the lies of Stalin rather than the truth which sometimes came from the rare survivors.

The American vice-president, Henry Wallace, visited Kolyma in 1944. After its visit, it left the country with the absolute conviction that “ these camps never existed ”. It was impressed by the cultural life of Magadan and by the well appovisionnés stores.

However, during the three days of its visit, the chiefs of Kolyma made very to hide reality to him. The Mirador S out of wood were cut down, the prisoners were not authorized to leave their huts and the American visitor did not have idea of the smallest aspect of the life in prison. He was taken along in the only farm of the area, to 23 km of Magadan, and of the well equipped and well nourished young girls (of the women police officers, disguised into farm) gave a false impression to him on the agricultural effort in this part of the country. It was also taken along by plane towards North, with the Berelakh mine, where it found that the mines of State were an impressive company.

The minors, according to him, in good health and were well built, and more productive than their colleagues of Fairbanks, in Alaska. Tasting a delicious fresh fish of the river Kolyma, he complimented the “chief on the camp of the mines”. The fraud was a total success. The outside world thus accepted a credible and first hand testimony in connection with Kolyma.

Conclusion

The secrecy on Kolyma is always of topicality. This country marked by the infamy, the human suffering and death, is always nimbus of mystery. Encyclopedias Western, documentary, and work of journalists seldom inquired into this sinister country. The Russian tradition of the secrecy had a parallel with the Western policy towards the Soviet, carefree past of the innumerable tombs and traces of blood which one can still find on the Pergélisol. The Russian publication “ Magadan ” does not mention the forced labor in the development of the capital of Kolyma, and avoids any information which could discredit a place in charge of a fatal past. The Encyclopedia Britannica briefly mentions the name Kolyma like an Arctic river with unimportant comments in connection with the gold mines and does not make any allusion to the camps and the forced labor.

Commenting on this amnesia, the professor Wladyslaw J. Ciesielewicz concludes his article thus “strapping It Russian gold”: George Orwell predicted in her fiction “ 1984 ” that the victims of socialist “Big Brother” would be removed even memory of people, to become truths “not-beings”. Today, in 1985 of the true world, this destiny arrived at the 4 to 6 million victims of Russian socialism. Because of the censure in Russia and in its colonies (old satellite countries), and in the Western democracies, these people virtually disappeared in the dustbin from the history. They appear only in one small number of books, and obscure reports, often not published, written in other languages that English, that nobody reads. But it nor documentary did not televise there, films, major historical studies, or literary discussions on this subject, and not of conference of the human rights, resolution of UNO, audiences of the congress, monument or memorial nowhere to point out the Great Holocaust of Kolyma. to us

Kolyma, always a major center of mining extraction, changed face since the Stalinist era. However, its long period of human suffering and the sacrifice of lives should not be forgotten. Some regard it as a place of Génocide, like Auschwitz, and that for this reason, it would deserve to have its place in the history on bases similar to those of the Death camps Nazis.

Chronology

1928 - 1929: gold bearing grounds were delimited at the edges of Kolyma and put in exploitation by the State.
November 13rd 1931: creation of the Company of Construction of the Roads and Industry in the area of High Kolyma (Dalstroï) with seat with Magadan to exploit the mineral richnesses, to build roads and to industrialize part of the country, called Country of the Far East.
February 4th 1932: arrival of a boat with, at its edge, the first commander de Dalstroï, eminent senior official of the NKVD (Soviet political police), EP Berzine with the first ten prisoners.
April 1st 1932: order to create for the needs for Dalstroï the complex of camps Sevostlag (correctional Camps of work of the North-East).
1932 - 1933: on 11.100 prisoners of the camps of Kolyma (figures of December 1932): 10% work with the extraction of gold and 25% only survived the winter. Extraction of 500 kg gold.
1933 : decision of Berzine instituting for the prisoners of the standards of work, rationalizing the exploitation and softening the prison mode so, inter alia, to decrease mortality.
January 1st 1934: following the arrival of new convoys of the political prisoners and common right, the number of the prisoners of Sevostlag reaches 30.000. Berzine stigmatizes the ill treatments inflicted to the prisoners, their bad living conditions, the prolongations of sorrows without reason and other abuses who compromised the execution of the politico-productive plans of Dalstroï.
1936 : extension of the ground of the activities of Dalstroï to 700.000 km square.
1937 : the number of the prisoners passed from 36.000 in 1935 to more than 70.000; the extraction of gold passed from 14.500 in 1935 to 51.500 kg.
March 1937: Berzine brings back the hunger strike and the plot of 200 prisoners trotskists, condemned later to died and shot.
June 1937: Stalin criticizes the policy of the commanders of the camps of Kolyma like softening and too soft for the prisoners.
December 1937: Berzine and its assistants are returned to Moscow, are stopped, accused of espionage and shot the 1938.
January 17th 1938: denunciations by the writers of the newspaper of the part Sovietskaïa Kolyma of the totalitarian mode imposed in the camp by the new commander, K.A. Pavlov. Stalin qualifies the demagogic ones and nonfounded massive executions of prisoners decided by S.N. Garanine, chief of the NKVD with Sevostlag.
March 4th 1938: by decision of the the Council of the police chiefs of the people of the USSR, Dalstroï, which since its creation depended on the Council of Work and Defense near the Council of the police chiefs, is subordinated to NKVD.
December 1938: Ossip Mandelstam, large Russian poet, dies in Magadan, on the way for Kolyma.
1938 - 1939: during the winter, according to the not checked evaluations of the former prisoners, more than 40.000 people died; the losses were replaced by new convoys; the number of prisoners thus passed from 90.700 in January 1938 to 138.200 in January 1939.
October 11th 1939: following the going beyond of the limit of mortality in the prisoners and of the non-fulfilment of the output programs of gold and other ores, Pavlov and Garanine were isolated; Garanine was condemned to died for espionage and shot. Arrived at Magadan of the écrivaine Evguénia Guinzbourg which will spend 18 years in the camps.
1939 - 1940: Between 7.600 to 10.000 (appreciations) Polish citizens find themselves in Kolyma. They were separated from old prisoners Soviet and sent in the remote mines in the East of Dalstroï where the work conditions were particularly hard and dangerous. Extraction of 62 tons gold in 1939; one estimates at 45 tons the gold extraction on average in the following years.
March 10th 1941: the territory of Dalstroï was increased up to 2.266.000 km (10% of the surface of the USSR at the time), the number of prisoners reached 190.000 including 3.700 former members of the liberal professions, mainly engineers, geologists and technicians.
1942 - 1944: following difficulties of transport, to the insufficiency of the human reserves and the sending with the face of part of prisoners, their number had fallen to 84.700 in January 1944; the working time was prolonged beyond 12 hours per day, which under a brutal, unchanged mode in spite of the departure of Pavlov, resulted in increasing the death rate of the prisoners.
October 1945: a prison camp of Japanese war was opened in Magadan and was attached to Dalstroï; at the time of the release in September 1949 there were 3.479 more prisoners.
February 28th 1948: a special camp n°5 subjected to a worsened mode was created; subordinated to Dalstroï and installed in its central part independently of the productive sector of Dalstroï.
September 20th 1949: for a better organization and to reinforce the exploitation of the work of the prisoners, the Ministry for the Interior matters of the USSR creates the Administration of the Camps of Work of Dalstroï, of which directions of 26 prison units which had been created before the war in 11 administrative branches of mining industry and whose commanders were to also direct the camps of work which depended on them. The reorganization was slowly set up because of the resistance of old of the NKVD.
1949 - 1952: the increase in the number of prisoners of 108.700 in January 1949 with almost 200.000 (199 726 say the reports/ratios) at January 1st 1952 accompanied this reorganization. It was, in all the history of Dalstroï and Kolyma, the highest number of prisoners. The conditions of their life and their work, compared to the period of war, underwent only one unimportant improvement.
May 1952: end of the reorganization of the camps of Kolyma, undertaken in 1949; “Sievvostlag was liquidated and Dalstroï constitutes the Central administration of the Camps - (Gulag)” INTER-F Mitrakov declared, which was ordering at the time.
March 18th 1953: died of Stalin and installation of a new direction of the party and State. By a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Dalstroï is attached to the Ministry for the Metallurgy, and its camps in the Gulag, which depends then on the Ministry for the Justice of the USSR.
September 1953: beginning of the massive release of the prisoners and the progressive liquidation of the camps of Kolyma.

It is estimated that in the Soviet camps of Gulag more than 20 million people, mainly citizens of the USSR, found death; only Kolyma absorbed between 1932 and 1954 more than one million existences.

Sources

Alexandre Soljenitsyne, the Gulag Archipelago , 1973
Varlam Chalamov, Accounts of Kolyma , 1966 (published in France by the Editions François Maspero in 1980, republished by the Verdier editions in 2003)
Evguénia Guinzbourg, Sky of Kolyma , Points, the Threshold
Robert Conquest, great Terror , preceded by Bloody harvests: Stalinist purgings of the Thirties , Books, Laffont, 1995
collective Work, the black Book of Communism: Crimes, terror, repression , Books, Robert Laffont, 2000
Tomasz Kizny (Polish photographer), Gulag : collection of photographs of files and current on the camps of the Gulag and Kolyma in particular, 2003
Anne Appelbaum, Gulag: A history , Grasset, 2005
Jacques Rossi, the handbook of Gulag , seeks It midday, 1997

External bonds

Kolyma, the Land off gold and death by Stanislaw J. Kowalski (whose this article contains important extracts)

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