On May 10, 1938, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria issued order No. 090 "On the division of the Ukhtpechtrest camps." On its basis, including the Northern railway camp of the NKVD, were organized. Sevzheldorlag was subordinate to Gulzheldor. He received the letter designation "ITL YAYA or" PO Box 219 ". Corps engineer Naftali Aronovich Frenkel was appointed head of this department. It is to him that the camp rumor attributes the words that have become the ideology of the GULAG: "You need to take everything from the prisoners in the first three months, and then they are no longer needed." "For the fulfillment of the government assignment for the construction of the Kotlas - Kozhva railway line" he was awarded the Orders of Lenin and the "Badge of Honor", received the rank of Major General ... The camp administration first of all paid attention to the solution of production issues to the detriment of the organization of the camp itself, the arrangement of life and life prisoners. For example, “Camp No. 55 is a camp of the 1938 type: solid bunks, lice is 50 percent. The prisoners do not wash in the morning, they do not give tea in the morning, but only boiling water. "
PECHORSTROY
CREATION HISTORY
1940-2000
Pechorstroy. The history of creation. 1940-2000. - Publishing house "Pechora time", 2000. - 120 pages.
The book offered to the readers is dedicated to the 60-year activity of OJSC "Pechora Construction" - the largest organization of transport builders in the Komi Republic. Based on historical research, memoirs of veterans, publications in the media, archival materials, the history of the creation of "Pechorstroy" is shown, its role in the development of the transport network of the European North, in helping the front, in industrial and civil construction on the territory of the Komi Republic.
The book tells about the construction of the main transport artery of the North Konosha - Vorkuta, the second tracks of the railway lines, thanks to which access to oil, gas, and forest was obtained. A whole gallery of names will pass in front of the readers - these are the heroes of construction projects, people, before whose work it is worth bowing the knee.
© Publishing house "Pechora time", 2000
The quality of the illustrations corresponds to the polygraphic quality of this publication (approx.admin. Site)
PARTING
We part, we are with you
we say goodbye.
How many roads together
we passed!
From Pechorstroy darling
outskirts -
To the Syktyvkar capital
land.
Or were you not loved here
royally we?
Or the blizzards are evil here
shook?
How did they lure you
Syktyvkar
And they took their native away from Pechora?
We are breaking up. But we
We do not say goodbye.
We are all Pechora people forever.
We will reach each other with our hearts
Through the kilometers and after years!
Vera MURASHOVA.
PECHORSTROY IS 6O YEARS OLD.
PAST PRESENT FUTURE
Born in 1940 in the bowels of the NKVD - GULAG, the collective of transport builders of the Komi Republic survived several socio-economic formations: the Stalinist dictatorship (40-50s), the economy of "developed" socialism (60-70s), perestroika and transitional the period from the socialist economy to the market economy (80-90s).
The collective lived differently during these years. The 40-50s are the war and post-war years, heroic and tragic. A huge number of people worked on the construction of the railway from Kozhva station to Vorkuta: only the civilian population, except for prisoners, employed 30 thousand people. At the cost of many lives, at the cost of tremendous suffering and hardship in the Arctic, this section of 460 kilometers was laid in one year. From 1941 to 1950, the movement of trains with coal from Vorkuta was carried out under the conditions of the temporary operation of the railway. This book tells about the conditions in which people worked and how much courage, will, and organizational skills the leaders of the construction site of that time had to show in order to organize the work of tens of thousands of people and achieve their goal. I bow to the blessed memory of the leaders of those years: Vasily Arsentievich Baranov, who headed until 1947, Avraham Izrailevich Borovitsky (1947-1950), Boris Petrovich Grabovsky (1950-1972). It was they who created and educated, one might say, raised a team of transport builders in our republic, a team of courageous, seasoned, easy-going professional builders. Through their labor, 3.5 thousand kilometers of railways, 121 railway stations, more than 2 million square meters of housing, schools, kindergartens, hospitals and much more were built in the republic.
If in the war and post-war years "Pechorzheldorstroy" built mainly railways and adjacent facilities, then in the 60s and 70s, the volume of general construction work increased sharply. The 60-70s and the beginning of the 80s, I consider the best period of "Pechorstroy". Its leaders at that time were Efim Vladimirovich Basin, Vladimir Alexandrovich Linnik, Igor Evdokimovich Merkul. With the increased demand for industrial and civil construction in these years, the management of "Pechorstroy" obtained from the Ministry of Transport and Construction and the customers the necessary capital investments to expand its own base in Pechora. As a result, a reinforced concrete plant, a motor depot, and a mechanization department were built. Due to the introduction of new technologies, the widespread use of small-scale mechanization, labor productivity has increased. Party and trade union organizations played a role in carrying out measures to organize socialist competition among brigades, sections and subdivisions. Much credit for this goes to Nikolai Mikhailovich Klepchi, who for many years worked as the chairman of the post-industrial committee of Pechorstroy.
During these years, many well-known people in "Pechorstroy" worked heroically at construction sites. They are also mentioned in this book. Many were awarded orders and medals for their work. Among them are Nikolai Ivanovich Chepurnykh - Hero of Socialist Labor, Eduard Aleksandrovich Petrashevsky, Ivan Trofimovich Trofimov, Nikolai Mikhailovich Vernigor, Nadezhda Davydovna Kirichenko, Nikolai Stepanovich Drozd, Nelly Aleksandrovna Savelyeva, Franz Fridrikhovich Eret and others. During these years, the financial situation of people also stabilized, many received comfortable apartments, wages increased, and working conditions improved.
Over the past 15 years, the volume of railway construction has declined sharply, although there was no shortage of industrial and civil construction until 1993. Nevertheless, the loss of one of the most profitable and productive fronts of activity could not but affect the results of the work of "Pechorstroy". A sharp drop in volumes has been observed since 1993; it coincided with the beginning of reforms and the general crisis in Russia. I will cite statistical data for these years on the volume of construction and installation work performed in 1991 prices in thousand rubles: 1991 - 42023, 1992 - 40942, 1993 - 31627, 1994 - 24750, 1995 - 21944, 1995 - 16303, 1997 - 8042, 1998 - 7948, 1999 - 13814. With the loss of volumes, the number of employees decreased. In 1998, it was less than a thousand people. Under these conditions, there was no opportunity to acquire or renew anything, but nevertheless it was possible to preserve fixed assets and avoid bankruptcy.
In 1999, the volumes increased, the construction of the Vendinga-Karpogory railway began, the transshipment yard for the shipment of bauxite at the Chinyavoryk station was completed, and the volume of overhaul of the access roads of the Syktyvkar LPK appeared. In 2000, a sub-contract was signed with the Transstroy corporation for the construction of the railway station Chinyavoryk - Rudnik with a length of 160 kilometers. In addition, the volume of work for other customers has increased in comparison with 1999. All this insures us against unemployment.
But our task is not only to increase the volume of work. We understand that we have entered a different era, a different world with different values. If 15 years ago “the party and the government” still thought for us, today we must think about ourselves. Thinking and deciding how to preserve and increase the prestige and image of the company's team, and the well-being of the employees will depend on this. We understand the challenges we face. The main ones are the quality of the product we create and its competitiveness. We understand that the railways end sooner or later, but we need to continue to work, to find other points of application of forces. In my opinion, today in "Pechorstroy" there are grounds and opportunities for improvement. First of all, these are the people working in this team. We have preserved personnel from those years, these are our veterans who say: "If necessary, we will do it." I am the same age as "Pechorstroy", but I think that the idea that a person of retirement age is necessarily a retrograde, a conservative is deeply wrong. We have many veterans, and this is just as good and important as the influx of fresh, young forces. Vasily Tarasovich Novikov, a veteran who has brought up more than one generation of Pechorstroy workers in Vorkuta, has been working next to me (or I'm next to him) for 15 years now. SMP-242, where it is always remembered with a kind word by both workers and engineers and technicians. Even now, by his work, he shows the young people an example of organization, efficiency and efficiency.
Of course, younger and more experienced personnel are needed, and they are available. This is the chief engineer Alexander Richardovich Potapov, the deputy general director for economics and finance Sergey Pavlovich Markovsky, who graduated from the presidential program. Valery Petrovich Kucherin, Nikolai Nikolaevich Mokhov, Valentin Viktorovich Shavlovsky, Nikolai Fedorovich Perfiliev and a number of other leaders who are quite well versed in the theory of market economics and practical work are young and full of strength.
We have an action plan for the next two years, approved by the Board of Directors of OJSC Pechorstroy. There is great confidence that, despite the big financial problems, we will preserve and increase the glorious labor traditions of Pechorstroy.
Eternal memory to those veterans of "Pechorstroy" who are not alive today. Low bow and big gratitude to the veterans of "Pechorstroy" who are on a well-deserved rest. I wish you health and longevity! I congratulate all the veterans of "Pechorstroy", all working today on the 60th anniversary of "Pechorstroy", I wish you further success in work and prosperity, health and happiness in your personal life.
Nikolay POTEMKIN, General Director of OAO Pechora Construction.
DEAR EMPLOYEES AND VETERANS OF PECHORSTROY!
You are holding in your hands a book dedicated to the glorious labor history of your enterprise - the Pechora Construction Joint Stock Company.
Sixty years ago, in May 1940, the Pechorzheldorstroy NKVD trust was organized for the construction of the North-Pechora railway on the Kozhva-Vorkuta section. Already in December 1941, during the difficult days of the Great Patriotic War, the railway to Vorkuta was built in record time, and in 1950 it was put into permanent operation. The first pages of the history of "Pechorstroy" reflected the complex and contradictory history of our country in the 30-50s. The construction of the railway, the industrial development of the wealth of the Pechora coal basin in those distant years was carried out by the hands of prisoners and was accompanied by great sacrifices.
The entire work biography of "Pechorstroy" is closely connected with our republic. In the 60s and 80s, your company became a leader in the transport construction industry. The labor collective of the Pechorstroyers made a great contribution to the socio-economic development of not only our republic, but also the entire European North of the country. You have built more than three thousand kilometers of railways to storehouses of coal, oil and gas, carried out large industrial and civil construction in Pechora, Vorkuta, Inte, Usinsk, Sosnogorsk, Ukhta, Syktyvkar.
But the main pride of "Pechorstroy" has always been the transport builders themselves, who by their labor laid steel highways and erected new cities. In our republic, Heroes of Socialist Labor Nikolai Chepurnykh and Efim Vasin, Honored Builder of the RSFSR Galina Sandratskaya and many, many other Pechorstroevites are well known and respected.
I am sure that Pechorstroy has a great future. On October 5, 1999, the silver crutch of the new railway “Belkomur” was hammered, which will become a steel bridge between the White Sea and the Urals and will give an additional impetus to the development of all regions of the European North. This railway is also to be built by Pechorstroy.
On the day of the anniversary of your enterprise, I wish you good health, personal happiness and prosperity, new successes in work for the benefit of the Komi Republic!
Head of the Komi Republic Yuri SPIRIDONOV
DEAR TRANSPORT BUILDERS!
Many of us who have gone through the Pechorstroy school of life remain grateful to this wonderful team, with whom fate has connected. Hundreds of workers have received recognition of their merits here, dozens of specialists have grown into leaders of the republican and Russian scale. My working career began 32 years ago at the Pechorstroy repair and rolling base. Working hardening, the first experience of a leader, I got it there. A special bow to the veterans of "Pechorstroy", which are the gold fund of the joint-stock company. Among them are the Knight of the Order of Lenin Sergey Fedorovich Sokolov, honorary transport builders - the bricklayer Angelina Petrovna Rocheva, the plasterer Maria Fedorovna Ovchinnikova, the honored builder of the RSFSR Gemma Aleksandrovna Vasilyeva, the knight of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor carpenter Valery Vasilyevich Shemshin.
The history of "Pechorstroy" is the history of the creation of transport builders on the land of Komi and neighboring regions. They created the transport network of the republic, provided conditions for the economic development of the European North of the country.
I sincerely congratulate you on the 60th anniversary of "Pechorstroy" and wish the transport builders not to grow old in soul, to remain necessary for people, the republic, and Russia. Good health, happiness!
CHAPTER I
BY THE TUNDRA, BY THE RAILWAY ...
“When you go out to the embankment, a thin thread stretches yellow against the colorful background of summer tundra, and on both sides of it there is such an untouched, mysterious wilderness, such an uninhabited space that you involuntarily hold on with your whole being to this thread that connects you with life, with the past and with the timid hopes for the future. "
Lazar SHERESHEVSKY,
Writer,
participant in the construction of the North-Pechora railway.
Many years have passed, and the song, the words of which are in the title, are being sung and sung - even by the young. Maybe because of the romantic motive on which the "prisoner" text is laid. And maybe the reason for everything is memory. The memory of deeds so great in scale and tragedy that it has already become almost genetic. Although for nature, which is responsible for heredity, those 50-60 years that have passed since the construction of the North-Pechora railway is not a period.
This is the memory of that Komi ASSR, which, along with Kolyma, Magadan, Norilsk and Karaganda, was in those years one of the largest islands of the "Gulag Archipelago". The memory of prisoners, prisoners of war, soldiers and officers, Komsomol members and civilian specialists, voluntarily or forcibly brought to the construction camps of the NKVD, whose hands in the 30s - mid 50s began the industrial development of the north of the republic - mining, construction of iron roads, laying of coal mines and oil wells, construction of cities and workers' settlements. Overwork, polar nights, frosts and a four-week summer fell to their lot.
FIRST RAILS
The idea of building a railway in the Komi region, necessary for the industrial development of the European North-East of the country, arose back in the years of the civil war, when the Donbass coal and Baku oil were in the hands of the White Guards. At the end of 1918, VSNKh organized preliminary surveys on the Moscow-Ukhta line. In 1918-1922, reconnaissance survey work was carried out in the directions of Koposha - Kozhva, Kostroma - Pinyug - Ust-Sysolsk. And in 1925, similar surveys were carried out by the People's Commissariat of Railways and the Ivanovo-Voznesensk executive committee along the Moscow - Yuryevets - Sheksna - Pinyug - Ust-Sysolsk highway. By the decree of the State Planning Committee of the USSR dated June 8, 1929, the construction of the Pinyug-Ust-Sysolsk road with a length of 296 kilometers began with the forces of two thousand prisoners of the Northern Camp, which was part of the USEVLON (Administration of Northern Special Purpose Camps) of the USSR OPTU. But in 1931, the work was suspended, and the prisoners were transferred to the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
In June 1932, the Executive Committee of the Komi region achieved a decision to continue construction. Almost by hand, along the entire future route, the railroad embankment was raised, and wooden bridges were built. However, on March 7, 1933, by order of the USSR People's Commissariat of Railways, all work on the construction site was curtailed. The hard work of thousands of prisoners was in vain.
After the discovery of the reserves of the Pechora coal basin and the Ukhta gas-bearing province, the question arose about the removal of the extracted minerals. The first tons of oil were produced in 1931 at the Chibyu field. In 1934, the first barge with Vorkuta coal was sent. Initially, preference was given to the waterway to Arkhangelsk along the Vorkuta, Usa and Pechora rivers, or through the Yugorsky Shar Strait, for which, in 1932-1934, the Vorkuta Yugorsky Shar railway line was surveyed and the construction of a large seaport was planned. This idea was reflected in the Decree of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR of August 8, 1936 No. 308-73-C, which provided for the construction of two "island" (closed) railway lines Ust-Vym - Chibyu with a length of 250 kilometers and Ust Usa - Vorkuta with a length 450 kilometers.
In 1936-1937, appropriate research was carried out, after which the technical project on January 28, 1938 was approved by the People's Commissar of Railways L.M. Kaganovich. However, in the course of further development of the project, it turned out that it requires large financial costs and does not solve the problem of coal export, since navigation in these areas is too short.
"THE WAYS ARE INDICATED BY OUR LEADER ..."
For the industrial development of natural reserves in the north of the Komi Territory, by the resolution of the Council of Labor and Defense of November 16, 1932, No. 1423/423, the Ukhto-Pechora trust of the OGPU (Ukhtpechlag) was organized. This decree determined the main tasks of the trust, including the exploration and operation of the industrial minerals of the Pechora basin, the construction of railways and dirt roads. In particular, it was supposed to complete already in 1933 the preparations for the construction of the Vorkuta-Yugorsky Shar railway and to build a narrow-gauge railway from Vorkuta to the pier on the Usa River with a length of 70 km. The general scheme of work of the Ukhtpechlag of the NKVD for the second five-year plan (1933-1937), developed by the planning department of the camp administration, provided for the construction of the Northern railway Arkhangelsk - Kozhva - Vorkuta - the coast of the Arctic Ocean, as well as the foundation of a research institute in the new socialist the city of Krasnopechorsk, construction of the Kozhva - Chibyo - Ust-Vym oil pipeline, four oil refineries, two shipyards, a radium and helium plant, three power plants and other industrial facilities.
The construction of the southern section of the Vorkuta - Yugorskiy Shar railway has not begun. The northern section of this road was to be built by the Vaygach expedition of the NKVD. This project was not implemented either in the 30s or later.
The industrialization of the country has caused an increase in the demand for coal and oil. On August 7, 1936, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted a special resolution "On the industrial development of Ukhta, Pechora and Vorkuta", which determined the main directions for the development of the Pechora coal basin and the Ukhta gas province. In accordance with this resolution, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR N.I. Yezhov on August 13, 1936 issued order No. 342 "On the production program for the Ukhto-Pechora trust for 1937-1939 and changing the structure of the trust apparatus." This order set new tasks in the field of railway construction:
a) build a normal gauge railway from Rudnik in Vorkuta to the village of Ust-Usa with a length of 450 km with a completion date by July 1, 1939;
b) build a normal gauge railway from Chibyu to the village of Ust-Vym with a length of 275 km with a deadline for completion of work by October 1, 1938. "
To solve these problems in the structure of Ukhtpechlag, a special Transport Department was organized with a center in the village of Knyazhpogost under the leadership of V.N. Gendenreich.
The local party-Soviet leadership directly linked the further socio-economic development of Pechora with the production activities of the Ukhtpechlag of the NKVD. Much was said about this at the 1st Pechora District Congress of Soviets in November 1936: “Ukhtpechtrest, organized on the initiative of Comrade Stalin, covered the territory of the district with its significant, broad scope of work. Prospecting works for oil, coal, precious metals, gold and other minerals showed the presence of exceptional natural resources in the depths of the Pechora District.
The ways of economic development of the district were indicated by our Leader, Comrade Stalin: to provide more oil, more coal. In this direction, under the leadership of the district party organization, we must deploy the Soviets for this work and ensure the successful development of the coal and oil industries of Ukhtpechtrest. "
On August 12, 1937, the Pechora Okrug Executive Committee allocated an area of 160 hectares for a “temporary base and berths for transport and warehouse operations for the construction of a railway and station facilities (station, workshops, warehouses, depots, residential buildings, railway tracks, crossings) on the banks of the Usa River above air and radio stations of Ukhtpechlag ". Already in August 1937, the First Department of Ukhtpechlag began construction of the Ust-Usa - Vorkuta railway, which was later stopped as unpromising.
Throughout 1937, the Pechora regional executive committee and the Ukhtpechlag administration of the NKVD actively discussed the issue of the construction site of an industrial and transport complex on the Pechora River. The district party-Soviet leadership spoke out sharply against its construction in the area of the village of Ust-Kozhva: “since the combine, designed to meet the needs of the District, and, above all, the District Center, built in Kozhva, cannot meet the needs of the developing construction, and the delivery of lumber and other cargo from Kozhva is possible only in navigation for two to three months. The Presidium of the Okrispolkom decides - to ask the Regional Executive Committee of the Komi ASSR to resolve the issue of building a plant closer to the village of Ust-Usa, which will positively solve all the problems outlined.
As a result of the calculations, the indisputable advantage of the Kotlas and Kozhvinsky options for the construction of the railway was clarified and the main direction of the projected line was determined, which was the basis of the corresponding government decree.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn mentions this railway in the "Gulag Archipelago": "The development of such a vast northern roadless region required the construction of a railway from Kotlas through Knyazhpogost to Vorkuta. This caused the need for two more independent camps, already railway ones - Sevzheldorlag (from Kotlas to the Pechora River) and Pechorzheldorlag (from Pechora to Vorkuta). "
"GIVE OUTPUT TO VORKUTINSKY COAL"
On October 28, 1937, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted Resolution No. 1952-343 on the construction of the North-Pechora railway through the settlements of Konosha - Velsk - Kotlas - Knyazhpogost - Chibyu - Kozhva - Vorkuta. Its significance was defined in the report “Construction of the Kotlas-Kozhva railway line” as follows: “For the national economy of our country, the importance of the Kotlas-Vorkuta railway can hardly be overestimated. Through the impenetrable taiga and tundra, through the permafrost regions, it opens up access to the enormous wealth hidden in the depths of the far North. With the opening of traffic along the North-Pechora mainline, there is no need to import Donetsk coal, Baku oil and oil products to the northern and north-western industrial centers and ports of the Baltic, Barents and White Seas.
Echelons with timber, coal, oil and other minerals will go to the heart of the country, to Leningrad, to the ports of the northern seas.
For the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the North-Pechora Railway is fraught with tremendous opportunities further development industry, agriculture, railway and water transport, which will create even greater preconditions for the industrial and cultural development of the rich Northern Territory. The use of the richest subsoil, the maximum export of coal and oil along the North Pechora mainline to the industrial centers of the country are the primary tasks of today. "
The planned railway had a length of 1,560 kilometers, including on the following sections:
Vorkuta - Kozhva - 462 km,
Kozhva - Kotlas - 728 km,
Kotlas - Konosha - 370 km.
Simultaneously with the Severo-Pechora Mainline, a long-term plan for the development of railway lines was planned for the construction of railways Vorkuta - Khabarovo, Koposha - Volkhovstroy, Arkhangelsk or Mezen - Ukhta, Izhma - Solikamsk, Abez - Salekhard (across the Ural ridge), Kotlas - Kostroma, Shkares - Sykries ...
“There is no doubt that the ongoing movement of the metalworking industry from the European part of the USSR to the regions of the Urals and the huge demand for coking coal presented in this regard will cause the need to supply the Ural factories with Vorkuta coals - the construction of the Ural line from the Izhma station of the Severo-Pechora railway through Krutoy area - to Solikamsk, - it was noted in the same report. The Izhma-Solikamsk railway line, in addition to transit importance, will also have a major local importance, contributing to the development of the productive forces of the Krutoy region, thereby turning it into a powerful junction of the oil, gas and asphaltite industries. "
According to the new direction established by the government in 1938-1939, technical surveys were carried out and technical projects were drawn up.
START
On July 7, 1938, the Economic Council of the USSR, in its resolution, determined the calendar dates for construction:
Kotlas - r. Vychegda: 1.11.1938, 1.12.1939, 1.10.1941.
Vychegda - Knyazhpogost: 1.06.1938, 1.05.1939, 1.05.1941.
Knyazhpogost - Chibyu: 1937, 1.12.1938, 1.11.1941.
Chibyu - Kochmes: 07/01/1939, 11/01/1941, 11/01/1942.
Kochmes - Abez: 1.07.1939, navig. 40, 1.11.1942.
Abez - Vorkuta: 07/01/1938, navig. 40, 1.11.1942.
Subsequently, these dates were postponed, construction was delayed. The issue of conservation of the Abez-Vorkuta and Chibyu-Kozhva sections has been raised more than once. Institutes "Khartransproekt" (Kharkov) and "Lentransproekt" (Leningrad) several times revised technical projects.
The Kotlas - Kozhva railway line was researched and designed by the Kharkov branch of Soyuztransproekt. On the Knyazhpogost - Ukhta section with a length of 200 kilometers, surveys were carried out from September 1936 to February 1937 under the leadership of the head of the expedition, engineer V.I. Levin. On the Kotlas - Knyazhpogost section with a length of 280 kilometers - from December 1937 to May 1938, under the leadership of the head of the expedition, engineer P.N. Yeshchenko. And on the 250-kilometer section of Ukhta - Kozhva - from March 1938 to August 1939, under the leadership of the head of the expedition, engineer V.I. Petrov.
Each expedition consisted of several geological and prospecting parties, evenly distributed along the line. As the surveyors found out, the Severo-Pechora railway was to be built in extremely difficult natural and climatic conditions. There was a very weak population of the areas where the route passes, continuous forestedness and swampiness of the territory (deep swamps occupied about 20 percent of the length of the projected line), an almost complete absence of roadways, and soil freezing in winter up to 1.4 meters. Among the largest bogs, the surveyors attributed the Madmas bog, the swamp in the area of the Sordyu station, the length of which reaches 3 kilometers, and the depth - up to 3 meters, Mezhogskoe - about a kilometer long and 1.5 meters deep, and the Shezhamsky bog about a kilometer long and more than meters, as well as Kozhvinskoe and Intinskoe.
Local soils turned out to be unsuitable for filling the subgrade. Therefore, it was necessary to develop in quarries and deliver to the dumping site at a distance of tens of kilometers, millions of cubic meters of soil.
The research was carried out mainly in the winter. And this helped the prospectors to note that “winter in the Komi ASSR is characterized by deep snow cover, the total height of which is Kotlas - Knyazhpogost about 80-100 centimeters, on the Knyazhpogost - Mesyu section - 100-130 centimeters, on the Ukhta - Kozhva section - more than 100 centimeters.
Freezing of soils covered with snow reaches 120 centimeters, not covered with snow - up to 200-220 centimeters.
A negative phenomenon of winter is also a short daylight hours, which is 4 hours 40 minutes in Kotlas, 3 hours 30 minutes in Ukhta, and 2 hours in Kozhva. The lack of lighting is aggravated by the prevalence of cloudy days and low clouds ... "
The main principles of the work carried out were the desire to lay the future route as close as possible to the overhead line, as much as possible to reduce curves and bypasses of wetlands.
In the Komi ASSR, there were almost no local qualified personnel of civil engineers and railway workers, workers. The party-state leadership of the country found an effective way out of this situation: to build a railway with the hands of prisoners, to organize construction camps in the north of the Komi ASSR.
The construction of the highway began in the Knyazhpogost area 15,000 prisoners of the Transport Department of the Ukhtpechlag of the NKVD. For this, three construction sites were organized. In December 1936, the prisoners cut through the first clearing in the taiga, in April 1937 they began to build an earthen embankment, in January 1938 they laid the first rails to the Ropcha station, and in October of the same year - to the Chinyavoryk station. All excavation works in 1937 were carried out in gross violation of technical conditions.
On May 12, 1937, on the left bank of the Vym River, near Knyazhpogost, on a specially built two-tiered coastal pier, two steam locomotives of the OD series No. 724 and No. 2228, as well as 63 platforms and 5 old covered wagons brought from the Volga-Moscow canal. The next day, steam locomotive OD # 724 was assembled and refueled, and on May 14, 1937, movement began on the Severo-Pechora Main Line.
During the entire first year of construction, every morning at 5 o'clock the first steam locomotive departed from Knyazhpogost, pushing platforms loaded with sleepers and rails in front of it. This packing train went to the end of the finished track. At 6 o'clock, the second steam locomotive set off with the platforms on which the workers were, and reached the place where the canvas was laid.
In September 1937, a special railway section was organized, the headquarters of which was located in Knyazhpogost, and on December 12, 1937, the first passenger train was sent, which brought voters to the station for elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
In the winter of 1937/1938, several more steam locomotives were transferred in disassembled form along the highway from Ust-Vymi to Knyazhpogost. At the same time, one passenger, two covered and one service carriages were built at the Knyazhpogost depot.
FROM SMUGGLER TO LIEUTENANT GENERAL
By the end of the 30s, in the system of the Main Directorate of Forced Labor Camps, Labor Camps and Places of Detention (GULAG) of the NKVD, several specialized sectoral central boards were organized, which led various sectors of the camp economy, including the Main Directorate of the camps of the mining and metallurgical industry (GULGMP ), General Directorate of Forestry Camps (GULLP), General Directorate of Highways (GUShos-Dor).
On January 4, 1940, by order of the USSR People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria, the Main Directorate of Railway Construction Camps (GULZHDS) was organized, under the jurisdiction of which 9 railway camps were transferred. By the beginning of 1941, their number had increased to 13. The main specialization of the new GULAG headquarters was the construction of railways in the Far East, on North of the European part of the USSR and in the Caucasus. The number of prisoners in the GULZhDS camps was 397,994 as of January 1, 1940, 421,412 as of January 1, 1941, and 355,123 as of January 1, 1942.
On May 10, 1938, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L.P. Beria issued order No. 090 "On the division of the Ukhtpechtrest camps." On its basis, Ukhtizhemlag, Vorkutpechlag, Ustvymlag and Northern railway camp of the NKVD... The Sevzheldorlag of the NKVD was organized on the basis of the Transport Department of Ukhtpechlag. The new camp was subordinate to Gulzheldor. Each new camp, in accordance with the industry specifics, was entrusted with the fulfillment of planned tasks previously carried out by the Ukhtpechlag of the NKVD. He received the letter designation "ITL YAYA or" ".
Corps engineer Naftali Aronovich Frenkel was appointed head of this department.... Born in 1883 in Odessa in a tradesman's family, he began working at the age of fifteen in various commercial firms in Odessa and Nikolaev. In 1918 he was actively involved in commercial activities, stock exchange operations in Odessa. During the NEP years, he organized a private trading company that served as a cover for smuggling.
In 1924, Frenkel was arrested by the OGPU and sentenced to death, which at the last moment was commuted to ten years in prison in the Solovetsky camps. While in custody, N.A. Frenkel showed organizational and commercial abilities and in 1927 he was released ahead of schedule, then he was appointed head of the production department of the Directorate of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camps. On Solovki, he appeals to the leadership of the OGPU with a proposal to involve prisoners in labor. It is to him that the camp rumor attributes the words that have become the ideology of the GULAG: "You need to take everything from the prisoners in the first three months, and then they are no longer needed."
ON. Frenkel developed a project for organizing camps of a new type, in which an educational and labor system for keeping prisoners was organized. This idea of his then became the basis for the functioning of the entire Soviet penitentiary system. The prisoners began to cut down timber, lay mines, build factories and plants, lay rails.
In 1931-1933 N.A. Frenkel is one of the leaders of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, he is the head of the construction department of the White Sea-Baltic Waterway. In 1932 he was awarded the Order of Lenin "for successes in socialist construction".
In August 1933 N.A. Frenkel was appointed head of the Bamlag (Baikal-Amur labor camp) of the GULAG of the OGPU USSR. In 1934, prisoners who built the White Sea Canal were brought to this construction site. Here I.L. Frenkel organizes the construction of the Bai-kalo-Lmur railway, which was supposed to connect Taishet on the Trans-Siberian Railway with Komsomolsk-on-Amur. In 1936 he received the rank of divisional quartermaster.
In May 1938 N.A. Frenkel was appointed head of the huge Railway Construction Directorate of the Gulla NKVD in the Far East and at the same time head of the Amur railway camp. In this capacity, he is in charge of all railway construction in the Far East of the country. In 1940, but by personal order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria receives the title of corps engineer and becomes the first head of the Main Directorate of the Gulla Railway Construction Camps of the NKVD of the USSR, is awarded the second Order of Lenin.
Frenkel spent months at the construction site of the North-Pechora railway and reported directly to the USSR State Defense Committee on its progress. In October 1943, he was awarded the rank of Lieutenant General of the Engineering and Technical Service, and the third Order of Lenin was awarded. In April 1947, he retired from the post of permanent head of the GULZHDS.
He died in 1960 at the age of 77.
"EXCLUSIVELY SENSITIVE COMRADE"
Tamara Vladimirovna Petkevich, who was serving a sentence in Sevzheldorlag, in her memoirs "Life is an unpaired boot", painted a collective portrait of the camp administration as follows: "Camp ranks in good-quality ironed greatcoats, polished squeaky boots."
The chiefs of the Sevzheldorlag directorate in the 40s were regular NKVD officers Semyon Ivanovich Shemena, Iosif Ilyich Klyuchkin, Alexander Evstigneev, the father of the famous Soviet actor Yevgeny Yevstigneev, worked as the deputy chief, Philip Mikhailovich Gartsunov was the assistant chief. The chief engineers of the construction were Khaidurov, Novoselov, Perekresten, the chiefs of the political department were Lieutenant of State Security Alexei Mikhailovich Malgin, Nikolai Vasilyevich Shtanko, and the head of the operational-KGB department Gnedkov.
For most of these people, the direction in the Komi ASSR was a clear official demotion, exile, disgrace. Chekist personnel for the northern camps were mainly recruited from guilty workers of the central office of the OGPU-NKVD or other regions of the country. All the chiefs of the camps in the Komi ASSR were regular officers of the NKVD, had a long Gulag biography behind them. They were often transferred from one construction site to another, so they managed to serve in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and in the Far East, on the Kola Peninsula, on Sakhalin, in Mongolia. The fate of these people, as well as the fate of the prisoners, reflected the difficult and contradictory years in the history of the country.
In the central office of the NKVD of the USSR in Moscow, S.I. Shemen, who, perhaps, can be called the most famous head of Sevzheldorlag. T. Petkevich writes about him in the following way: “... was known by the management workers as an educated and good person who knew how to see people in prisoners. The appointment to this position meant exile and punishment for him after his Polish wife was arrested in 1937 and he did not refuse her. Prior to that, S.I. Shemena was the military representative of the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia. "
In fact, he was never a military attaché of the USSR. But otherwise, this beautiful legend has a foundation.
Semyon Ivanovich was born on February 26, 1903 in the village of Novaya Osota near Kharkov, into a poor peasant family. He graduated from a higher primary school, and in 1920 - a road-building technical school, a district party school. He worked on his own farm. Since 1920 he served in the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD in Ukraine (counterintelligence). “For active participation in the fight against. counterrevolution "was awarded the badge" Honorary Chekist ", and in 1929 - a military weapon. In January 1930, he was admitted to the party by the Zhuravlevsky district committee of the CP (b) U of the city of Kharkov (party card number 1257526). In 1937 he worked as the head of the department of the GUGB NKVD of the USSR in Moscow.
In February 1938, the party committee of the GUGB NKVD issued S.I. Shemene "severe reprimand with a warning for blunting the KGB and party vigilance." This is due precisely to the fact that in 1937 the wife of S.I. Shemena Gavrilov in the case of her first husband Brezovsky (Brenzovsky).
“In June 1937 my wife was arrested in connection with the case of her first husband, Brezovsky,” S.I. Shemena. - Why my husband was arrested is unknown to me. For Gavrilova, with whom I lived for four years, I did not notice anything bad, and she is not guilty of her ex-husband's actions. After Gavrilova's arrest, I submitted an application to the party committee and the administration in order to clarify my situation. I was told that "You have nothing to do with the arrest of your wife, continue to work as you did." But after a while the question was raised at the UG15 party committee of the NKVD of the USSR, where I was accused of having to study it in four years. I was severely reprimanded with a warning for blunting the KGB vigilance. "
About the meeting with S.I. Shemenoy in his book “The NKVD from the Inside. Notes of the Chekist, ”says the employee of the NKVD M.P. Schreider: “Once his former colleague and comrade Semyon Ivanovich Shemena, whom Nikolai Ivanovich Dobroditsky introduced him to, came to visit him for one day. From Dobroditsky, I learned that at that time Shemena's wife was arrested allegedly as a spy, and he himself was in reserve and did not yet know where fate would throw him. "
At the beginning of 1938, the captain of state security S.I. Shemena was transferred to work as deputy head of the 3rd department of the NKVD of the city of Rybinsk, then, on May 10, 1938, he was appointed the first head of the newly organized Sevzheldorlag of the NKVD.
According to the communists, S.I. Shemena “restored discipline in our camp, improved work, and brought the camp out of the breakthrough. An exceptionally sensitive comrade, a good leader. "
“In the camp of comrade Shemena he showed himself as a communist: disciplined, politically self-possessed, possesses organizational skills as a leader, takes an active part in party political work. He is a member of the party bureau, a deputy of the District Council. The production plan of railway construction was fulfilled in 1939 by 102 percent ”. Having stated this, the party commission under the political department of the SZhDL of the NKVD in February 1940 made a decision: "the party punishment - a severe reprimand with a warning - to withdraw."
After working as the head of Sevzheldorlag until January 1944, he was recalled to Moscow to work in the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the NKVD of the USSR, and then sent for further service in the Far East. In 1949 - 1951, General S.I. Shemena was the head of the Western ITL Dalstroy in the village of Susuman of the Magadan Region, which was engaged in the development of gold mines and tin mines in Kolyma. In 1952-1954 he was the head of the labor camp and the construction of the Krasnoyarsk-Yeniseysk railway, and in the mid-50s - the head of the Krasnogorsk labor camp in the city of Sverdlovsk, which conducts large industrial construction in the Urals.
"For the fulfillment of the government assignment for the construction of the Kotlas - Kozhva railway line" he was awarded the Orders of Lenin and the "Badge of Honor", received the rank of Major General.
"... COMPLETELY COMPLETE
ORDER OF COMRADE BERIA ... "
The main task of Sevzheldorlag in the order of the NKVD of the USSR was the construction of the Kotlas-Vorkuta railway.
“If one could look at the construction site from a bird's eye view, it would resemble an anthill stretching for hundreds of kilometers. Some of the builders are chopping wood, uprooting stumps, someone in wheelbarrows takes away bad soil, peat and swamp slurry, someone blows up mountains and falls asleep in ravines. The work went on around the clock, in two shifts. During the day - in the light of the sun, if there was one, and at night the light was provided by fire-burners from a weak team ”, - this is how a participant E. Vaza describes the construction of the railway.
The 1938-1939 production plan provided for the priority construction of two large sections of the Chibyu - Knyazhpogost - Aikino highway (268 kilometers) and Kochmes - Vorkuta (by the Abezsky construction district).
To solve this problem, about 30 thousand prisoners were concentrated on the highway in 58 camp points and four construction departments were organized:
the first - on the section Kotlas - Chibyu,
the second - from Chibyu to Kozhva,
third - from Kozhva to Abezi,
the fourth - from Abezi to Vorkuta.
Subsequently, the number of departments and their locations changed as the construction plan was fulfilled.
The number of prisoners in the new camp was: October 1, 1938 - 25199 people,
January 1, 1939 - 29405,
January 1, 1940 - 26310,
July 1, 1941 - 66926,
January 1, 1942 - 53344,
January 1, 1943 - 27,741 people.
With the division of the material base and technical equipment of Ukhtpechtrest, the new camp received only two excavators, 17 cars and two steam locomotives in a very worn-out condition. The mechanization of work at the construction site was 11.7 percent. More than half - 64.4 percent - of all earthworks were carried out manually.
The highway was built at an accelerated pace. Construction camp departments covered short sections of the route of 20-30 kilometers. They had to erect an earthen embankment and lay the rails as soon as possible, after which they were immediately thrown through several sections ahead of them along an auto-sludge road to a new section of the track. The rest of the work was carried out by stationary construction departments.
The construction of the railway on the Knyazhpogost - Chibyu section, cut off from the railway and waterways, was difficult. For the first three years, equipment and tools had to be delivered exclusively by water along the Vychegda River, and then by road along the road from Ust-Vymi, Kotlas and even from the Murashi station through Syktyvkar. For example, steam locomotives to Ust-Vym, where a supply base was created, were transported disassembled in 1936 in cars or large sleighs in winter. Subsequently, the base was moved to Aikino.
At the same time, along the future railway track, an autotrainage was built. It was a single-track road with siding every one or two kilometers. It made it possible to transport the necessary building materials and food in a timely manner.
In 1939, construction work began along the entire length of the section from Kotlas to Chibyu. By the summer of 1939, the degree of readiness of the road sections for operation was:
Kotlas - Mezog - 20%,
Mezog - Knyazhpogost - 25.6%,
Knyazhpogost - Chibyu - 35.5%,
Abez - Vorkuta - 24.5%.
According to the 1939 plan, it was planned to commission 310 kilometers of the route, in fact, 268 kilometers were commissioned. As a result of the labor competition between the construction camps of the NKVD, Sevzheldorlag moved this year from 23rd to the more honorable eleventh.
The administration of the camp first of all paid attention to the solution of production issues to the detriment of the organization of the camp itself, the arrangement of life and the way of life of the prisoners. For example, “Camp No. 55 is a camp of the 1938 type: solid bunks, lice is 50 percent. Inmates do not wash in the morning, they don’t give tea in the morning, but only boiling water, ”- stated in one of the reports on the progress of construction. At a party meeting in September 1939, S.I. Shemena said: “Comrade Uralov suggested using the prisoners for 18 hours. This question is of great fundamental importance, and the communist needs to think of it before. The question is, what will happen in three days from such performance? Comrade Uralov underestimates the issue of labor force preservation. It's the same with prisoners' weekends. ” In 1939, four thousand people were sick with scurvy in the camp.
On November 1, 1939, train traffic was opened on the Aikino - Knyazhpogost section.
The party and economic activists of Sevzheldorstroy on May 27, 1940 discussed the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated May 10, 1940 "On forced high-speed construction." Speaking at this meeting, S. II. Shemena outlined the main prospects of construction as follows: “Comrade Beria, comrade Sevzheldorlag, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, assigned the following tasks:
1. Lay 130 kilometers on the Kotlas - Chibyo section.
2. On the section Chibyu - Kozhva with a length of 252 kilometers, open labor traffic.
3. Start construction of a large bridge on the Vychegda River.
The resolution of this party activist said: "The team of builders of Sevzheldorlag will honorably justify the high trust placed in it, in a Bolshevik way will solve this important task and ensure the opening of temporary train traffic from Kotlas to Ukhta-Kozhva by the specified date." The party-economic activists noted that the tasks of high-speed construction require a quick and decisive restructuring of the work of all links of the administrative apparatus, subdivisions, party, Komsomol and trade union organizations and outlined a number of practical measures.
At the same time, the Komi Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic provided assistance in the construction, allocating forest, allotting land plots for agricultural enterprises, sending workers to the construction site and establishing the passing banner of the Presidium of the Komi Supreme Soviet.
However, the new stages of prisoners aimed at construction were not sufficiently provided with tools. In one of the reports on the progress of construction, I note "an intensive flow of labor, not provided with tools, household chores, in the absence of horses and inadequate food supplies." Thus, as of June 15, 1940, less than 11 percent of newly arrived construction prisoners were provided with axes and saws.
In the summer of 1940, the 6th Kozhvinsky construction department was organized, which began to build an auto-sludge road from the north, which made it possible to establish a transport connection between Ukhta and Kozhva on September 8, 1940. “The Kozhvin branch, in turn, threw people and equipment forward along the rivers Kozhva and Chikshina, organizing strong points for setting up bases and expanding the front of work.
By September 1940, a stable production and organizational structure of Sevzheldorlag had been formed. It included 11 construction departments, which were divided into steps, several dozen columns, which included several hundred brigades. The brigades, in turn, were divided into units.
The first (Aikinsky) branch was building a railway from Kotlas to the Vychegda river.
The second (Izhemskoe) was stationed from Shies station to Mezhog station of Ust-Vymsky district.
The third (Mikunskoe) was building up to Mikun station.
The fourth, fifth and sixth departments were building a track to the Knyazhpogost station.
Seventh and eighth - from Knyazhpogost to Iosser station.
Ninth, tenth and eleventh - from Iosser to Ust-Kozhza.
In total, from Koryazhma to Ust-Kozhva, 27 construction and assembly, logging, agricultural, and hospital individual camp sites were located along the future railway route.
In August-September 1940, to strengthen the operational management of construction, the Northern Command Headquarters were organized under the leadership of the head of the camp, Captain of State Security S.I. Shemeny and the southern headquarters of the department, headed by the deputy head of the department, captain of state security I.I. Klyuchkin.
On October 6, 1940, at 103 km, a camp meeting of builders-shock workers was held. On this day, the laying of the track was brought to the hundredth kilometer.
In the fall of 1940, the leadership of the camp faced an acute problem of preparing for the winter. At a meeting in the political department in October 1940, it was said: “The camp is not ready for winter at all. The construction of civilian and camp facilities is shamefully disrupted. The coming frosts captured both civilians and prisoners in many departments, in summer tents. This is the case in the village of Zheleznodorozhny as well.
Let us return to the report “Construction of the Kotlas-Kozhva railway line”: “The entire civilian staff was building the main line. After a hard day's work, the soldiers and the kompolitstaff of the VOKhR of many units changed their rifle for a shovel, got into the face and did not leave the track until the day's assignment was completed. Administrative and technical staff, wives, family members of construction workers helped organize food, living conditions and cultural services for the campers. The Leninist-Stalinist Komsomol gave the construction site a lot of enthusiasts who captivated others with their example. Hundreds of examples speak of exceptional enthusiasm, tremendous upsurge among construction workers ...
November and December 1940 passed in an extremely tense atmosphere, where every day and hour they were registered. Along with the decisive issues on the transfer of rails from south to north, the elimination of bottlenecks in the 6th department, it was necessary to simultaneously accelerate the construction of large bridges, the pressing issues of equipping station tracks and premises, the transfer of workforce to Pechorstroy and Sevdvinstroy and a number of other issues ... "
Trains opened on the section from Kotlas to Knyazhpogost, and on December 25, 1940, on the entire section Kotlas - Kozhva. "Thanks to the persistent energy of the builders of Sevzheldorstroi, who gave the floor to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Comrade Beria, to open temporary train traffic within the timeframe set by the Government, the laying of the last picket on the Kotlas Kozhva line with a length of 728 kilometers was completed on December 25 at 15:00."
From November 1940 to May 1941, 135 thousand tons of cargo were transported on the new railway. In January 1941, the technical management of the construction was changed. P.P. Perekrestov was appointed chief engineer and deputy head of the camp administration.
The entire laid track needed a lot of improvements. The roadbed, laid in swampy places, was deformed in many areas during the thaw, which posed a threat to the continuity and speed of trains. On bypasses were built wooden temporary bridges that needed strengthening... The constructed railway had no long-distance communication, signaling. At most stations and routes, there were no permanent passenger, residential, utility and industrial buildings. Water supply steam locomotives were carried out on the simplest and temporary structures. The elimination of all these shortcomings was planned for 1941.
By the end of 1941, 45 bypasses were eliminated, including the most difficult ones, most of the stations were expanded, embankments were filled up on Vandysh, Green and Pechora bogs, increased embankment in the Shezhamsky bog. As a result of these works, the approaches to large bridges were completed on time and the continuity of traffic was ensured in the most difficult spring period.
The tasks of 1942 were to connect the Kotlas-Kozhva railway line along the axis of the main track to the Kotlas-Konosha and Kozhva-Vorkuta line and to increase the capacity of the entire highway for the intensive export of Vorkuta coal, oil and timber. In this regard, the plan provided for the construction of combined bridges across the Severnaya Dvina and Pechora rivers, as well as the construction of the Kotlas railway junction.
According to the order of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated June 29, 1942 No. 12111 PC "On the transfer of the constructed section of the North-Pechora highway from Kotlas to Kozhva for permanent operation to the services of the NKPS USSR", the NKVD handed over the object to the railway workers.
From July 15 to August 21, 1942, on the Kotlas-Kozhva railway, a government commission worked under the leadership of N.A. Nefedov, deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Komi ASSR. The commission included representatives of the central apparatus of the NKPS, the apparatus of the GULZhDS of the NKVD, and the Sevzheldorstroy NKVD administration. Having studied how the road condition complies with the technical standards of the NKPS of the USSR, the commission accepted the road into operation.
After the organization of the independent Pechorzheldorlag, the Northern Railway Camp continued to complete the construction of the Kotlas-Kozhva railway, and from September 1, 1946, it took over the Konosha-Kotlas construction site from the liquidated Sevdvinlag of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.
On September 15, 1943, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On rewarding the builders of the North-Pechora railway” was issued, on September 16, the Decree was published in the newspaper Pravda, and on September 18, in the republican newspaper For the New North. Many engineering and technical construction workers, including chief engineers of construction departments A.N.Belyavsky, received government awards. M.M.Zotkin, P.V. Zhemchuzhnikov, M.D. Krasheninnikov, I.M. Podorovsky, civil engineers S.A. Volovich, A.A. Georgievsky, A.M. Glukhov, L.V. Moroz , I. I. Livanov, I. L. Rivkin, bridge engineers L. V. Kim, O. V. Shchekin, railway engineers A. S. Bugov, I. S. Gurgenidze, geologists A. V. Kazarov, I. M. Kanukov, B. G. Konovalov, N. V. Shmelev, engineers N. I. Berezovsky, O. F. Berzon, L. G. Blinova, A. I. Boykov, V. T. Dmitrievsky, A. V. Dobrovolsky, E. F. Linde, foremen A. I. Balashov, S. M. Kolobov.
If you travel by train, the Komi Republic begins long before its official border - after all, the Pechora Railway is an integral part of it. The 1953 km long diesel locomotive line, built in 1937-47 mainly by the forces of prisoners, is the backbone of the republic. If Komi itself is Lesser Siberia, then the Pechora Railway, respectively, is the Lesser Transsib. And in combination - one of the most colorful railways in Russia with a unique atmosphere and unique history.
Therefore, the first part of my story will be devoted to the near part of this railway: from Konosha station on the Moscow-Arkhangelsk line to Mikun station - the main "gateway" of the republic.
The Pechora Mainline is one of the four Great Northern Highways of Russia, together with the older Murmansk Railway (built before the revolution) and the later Yugorskaya and Baikal-Amur Mainlines. It was built in the most Stalinist era, partly during the Great Patriotic War, and since 1942 it has supplied Moscow and Leningrad with Vorkuta coal. The road was built on the bones of prisoners - but without it there would have been no Victory. The history of the highway is rather complicated: the first station on it was Kotlas, where in 1895 a railway was brought from Perm - here passengers changed from trains to river vessels along the Dvina, Sukhona and Vychegda. The Kotlas-Vorkuta line was built in 1937-42, and was one of the most terrible construction projects in the Gulag. Somewhat earlier, the logging branches Kotlas-Girsovo (1897-99) and Konosha-Velsk (1929-34) were built, and most of the site, which I will talk about in this part, was launched in 1947 - the Konosha-Kotlas line on the border of the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions. In 1948, the northern branch Chum-Labytnangi was built - part of the failed Transpolar Mainline, and in the 1950s-70s in the Komi Republic the line was overgrown with "mustaches" to Syktyvkar, Usogorsk, Usinsk, Troitsko-Pech Orsk ... But that's another story.
The first half a day of the journey to Vorkuta, the train goes along the Arkhangelsk railway - through Sergiev Posad, Aleksandrov, Rostov Veliky, Yaroslavl, Vologda ... The road was stretched to Vologda back in 1872, to Arkhangelsk - in 1898, and before the First World War it was narrow-gauge ...
In the very south of the Arkhangelsk region, the train reaches the Konosha station:
This is where the Pechora Main Line begins. The gloomy Stalinist railway station, with its appearance already reminiscent of the Far North, is adjacent to the romantic view of the water tank:
And obviously pre-revolutionary wooden houses:
Konosha itself is a fairly large (11 thousand inhabitants) urban-type settlement, built up mainly with barracks:
And from the overpass, the fork is clearly visible - the Pechora highway departs from Arkhangelskaya almost at a right angle:
A diesel locomotive is hooked up to the train here - there will be no further electrification. And this is how the Arkhangelsk Mainline looks like from the first hundred meters of the Pechora Mainline:
Somewhere here there is a miniature station Konosha-2, which I did not have time to photograph. The train now goes not to the north, but to the east, and the landscapes along the line are the usual Russian North with villages on the rivers:
And countless sawmills:
But in general, everything becomes somehow different here. The train goes slower and smoother, almost no wires flicker outside the window, but every now and then the gray smoke from the locomotive flies by. Two hours from Konosha - Velsk, the most Old city on the Pechora highway. It has been known as a collection point for tribute from the Chud tribes since 1147, since 1397 - a volost center, since 1560 - a posad, and since 1780 - a county town.
It seems that the merchant center is well preserved in Velsk, and in the surrounding villages there are very unusual wooden churches with huge pear-shaped domes. But the railway runs along the outskirts (and it was brought here back in 1934), and what is most impressive is the huge and very modern station for such a small station. None of the major stations on the line - Kotlas, Mikun, Ukhta, Vorkuta - can boast of anything like that. And the architecture is very pleasant - one of the best examples of modern railway station construction in Russia.
Where is he here from and even more so why is a mystery. The train stops are short, the city is small (24 thousand inhabitants), and there are no large cities that Velsk could serve as the nearest station.
Literally in half an hour - Kuloi stations in a small village:
This part of the line was built already in 1942-47, which is reminiscent of the characteristic Stalinist train station:
Just a view of the Kuloysky platform. It should be noted that in the much poorer Arkhangelsk region, the stations are much tidier than in the oil and gas Republic of Komi.
The next four hours the road goes through a rather remote area - in general, it is understandable why it was built only after the war. Some of the stations are in the Arkhangelsk region, some in the Vologda region. On some (for example, Lomovatka) traces of narrow-gauge railways have been preserved. Until recently, Yadrikha station was the main gateway to Veliky Ustyug, one of the most beautiful cities in the Russian North.
Beyond Yadrikha, the floodplain of the Northern Dvina begins, and the elevator of Kotlas rises on the horizon like a medieval castle:
The Trinity Church (1795-1806) in the village of Vondokurye in the style of "Ustyug Baroque" is clearly visible:
In 2008, she looked like this.
And then the train enters the bridge across the Northern Dvina. For an unprepared person, its size, especially in winter, when the channel cannot be distinguished from the floodplain, is shocking - it is much wider than the Volga, Dnieper and Ob, despite the fact that it is several times inferior to all of them in abundance:
In the distance there is a road bridge, built in 1997-2001 and which made it possible to "settle" Ded Moroz in Ustyug - before that the city was too inaccessible for mass tourism.
The first stop is Kotlas-Node, or Kotlas-Node:
As already mentioned, Kotlas is the oldest station of the Pechora mainline: the Perm-Kotlas railway was commissioned in 1895, and became something like the never-realized Belkomur (Belomorye-Komi-Ural mainline) - connected the basins of the Kama and Northern Dvina ... The terminal station Kotlas-Yuzhny is located in a small appendix, while Kotlas-Uzlovaya is on the main course of the Pechora highway. Most trains stop at both stations, each for half an hour. Kotlas-Knot is known for its trade - for example, residents of Vorkuta are regularly stocked with potatoes.
Kotlas itself is now quite large by the standards of the North (68 thousand inhabitants), but an extremely dull city. Actually, it received city status only in 1917, between two revolutions. But it is difficult to find another city that is equally tightly tied to the railroad. For example, on the approaches to Kotlas-Yuzhny, the city theater is clearly visible almost at the very paths:
Kotlas-Yuzhny railway station (1957) - by far the largest on the Pechora railway. This time I didn’t capture it, so I’m shooting a shot of summer 2008 when. Since then, the station has hardly changed - it is huge, shabby, dark and in a state of endless renovation.
Between the railway station and the Northern Dvina there is a huge asphalt space, where there is a bus station and an almost non-functioning river station. In the past, it was here that there was an overload from trains to steamers, one of which - the wheeled Nikolai Gogol - still runs along the Northern Dvina as a cruise ship. On the banks of the Dvina there is the Church of Stephen of Perm, built in 1825-29, when Kotlas was still a village.
But her presence and dedication were by no means accidental. Since 1379, the Zyryan village of Pyras has been known at this place, mentioned in connection with the fact that Stepan Khrap landed here, later better known as Stefan of Perm. A missionary from Veliky Ustyug, the son of a Russian clerk and a Zyryan peasant woman, in 1379-80 he converted Malaya Perm (as the land of Komi was then called) to Orthodoxy and single-handedly, almost bloodlessly, annexed it to Russia. He created a unique Komi alphabet "Anbur" (out of circulation in the 17th century), and to this day is considered the heavenly patron of this people. And the village has stood at this place since those times, only in the 17th century it was imperceptibly renamed from Pyras to Kodlas.
In 2008, after spending several hours in Kotlas, I never thought to go over the railway, where the historical center is located. I had to make up for lost time now, running on ice for half an hour.
But this race was necessary - half a kilometer from the station there is a building, without which the story about the Pechora Mainline cannot be considered complete. The stalinka, grandiose against the background of the surrounding grayness, is nothing more than the management of the North-Pechora railway:
The harsh and inaccessible view is very appropriate - from this building you can see that the road leads to the deep taiga and the Arctic, and that it was built by prisoners. However, the building was not used for its intended purpose for long: in 1958, the Pechora Railway as a separate unit was abolished and included in the Northern Railway. What exactly is here now - I did not have time to see. But the inscription on the facade is preserved:
In general, Kotlas is the real "capital" of the Pechora railway. Both in the past and now, it is no coincidence that most trains spend more than an hour on it (two stops and a crossing).
Further, the railway turns northeast, and runs parallel to Vychegda, although quite far from the river.
KOMI-2011
"...". Trip overview.
South Komi.
Pechora highway. Konoshi - Mikun.
... The ancient capital of Malaya Perm.
Sytkyvkar. General.
Syktyvkar. Miscellaneous.
Yb and Vylgort. Suburbs of Sytkyvkar.
Middle Komi.
Pechora highway. Mikun - Irael.
Ukhta. The oil capital of Komi.
Troitsko-Pechorsk. Gates of the Northern Urals.
Izhma and its inhabitants.
Izhma villages.
Izhma in Syktyvkar.
Northern Komi.
Pechora highway. Inta - Vorkuta.
Inta.
Vorkuta. General.
Vorkuta. Particulars.
Vorkuta. Mine.
Vorkuta ring.
P.S.
Still, I decided to upload the episode now, but not too quickly. I'll post what I have in time, and the rest (most likely the entire Northern Komi) - upon my return from Odessa.
Syktyvkar, 1999.v.2.
PECHORSKAYA RAILWAY, a highway connecting the Pechora coal basin with the Center and North-West of the country. The following were accepted for permanent operation: the Kotlas-Pechora section in August 1942, the Pechora-Vorkuta section in July 1950.
The Pechora railway runs through the entire territory of the Komi Republic from the South-West to the North-East. Construction was started by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated October 28, 1937 with commissioning in 1945.
Construction was carried out through the settlements of Konosha, Kotlas, Knyazhpogost, Ukhta, Kozhva, Abez, Vorkuta. The first kilometers of the road were laid in 1938. The first train to the station. Kozhva arrived on December 25, 1940. Trains began to move through the Kotlas-Kozhva section (728 km).
The main line was erected by the Sevzheldorstroy administration for 730 km from Kotlas to Kozhva (from 1938) and the Pechzheldorstroy administration (Pechorstroy) - 461 km from Kozhva to Vorkuta (from August 1940). The total length of the highway is 1191 km.
Since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the pace of its construction was intensified, the construction was carried out by the labor of the GULAG prisoners. The country needed Vorkuta coal, Ukhta oil and oil products.
On December 29, 1941, the first through train arrived in Vorkuta. The opening of goods traffic on the highway was of great military-strategic and economic importance. Hundreds of thousand tons coal echelons were sent for the needs of the front, besieged Leningrad and ships of the navy.
All the years of the war, the highway was being completed, improved, because the roadbed was very unstable, many temporary bridges required completion, it was necessary to build residential buildings, technical structures for the locomotive and carriage facilities.
The Pechora railway, like the Pechora coal basin, was created by prisoners under the auspices of the NKVD, mainly during the Great Patriotic War. The highway had a positive impact on the development of the economy of the Komi ASSR, including it in a single national economic complex of the country, connected the geographically and economically disparate regions of the Komi Republic. The construction of the Pechora railway was directly related to the problem of creating the northern coal and metallurgical base of the USSR on the basis of Vorkuta coking coals and the Kola iron ore concentrate, with the creation of the Cherepovets metallurgical complex (1955).
Lit .: Dyakov Yu.L., Northern coal and metallurgical base of the USSR: emergence and development, M., 1973. The author of the article is M. Dmitrikov.
"PECHORZHELDORSTROY" (1940-50), a construction organization of the NKVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) of the USSR, which was building the northernmost section of the Severo-Pechora railway. Kozhva-Vorkuta road (461 km). Prison labor was used in the construction.
A winter road (700 km) was built to deliver materials and equipment. The work unfolded on a broad front. The builders laid the path from several points at once, going towards each other, connecting the sections into a continuous highway.
The laying of the track was completed on December 28, 1941, and on December 29, the first through train arrived in Vorkuta. Echelons of coal began to be sent for the needs of the front, besieged Leningrad. For 1942-44, 723 thousand tons were sent. coal.
Completion of the site continued during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war five-year plan. In 1950, Pechorzheldorstroy put the Kozhva-Vorkuta section into permanent operation.
"SEVZHELDORSTROY" (1938-46), a construction organization of the NKVD of the USSR, which was building the Kotlas-Pechora section (730 km) of the North-Pech with the help of prisoners. yellow roads. Sevzheldorstroy was entrusted with the task of opening temporary train traffic on this section in 1940.
During the construction of the railroad the roads were erected by the prisoners, villages were built, timber roads were laid, and along the route there were wheel roads for the delivery of materials, rails and other goods.
An auto-sludge road (235 km) was built between Ukhta and Kozhva, along which the route was supplied with everything necessary. In November 1939, the track was laid on the Aikino-Shezham-Ukhta section, and in October 1940, Sevzheldorstroy completed the laying of the track at Kotlas.
For the first time in history, the Komi republic received a permanent connection with the center of the country. On December 25, 1940, working train traffic was opened on the entire Kotlas-Kozhva section, which in August 1942 was accepted into permanent operation.
During the Great Patriotic War, "Sevzheldorstroy" carried out work on the reconstruction of large railways. bridges.
Lit .: Dyakov Yu.L., Construction of the North-Pechora railway in the pre-war years (1937-1941), in collection: Questions of the history of the working class of the Komi ASSR, Syktyvkar, 1970.
PECHORSTROY, Pechora Construction, OJSC. Organized in August 1940 as the Pechorzheldorstroy trust of the NKVD of the USSR for the construction of the Severo-Pechora railway. roads on the Kozhva-Vorkuta section. Until 1954, it was part of the Main Directorate of the Railway. construction of the NKVD-Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (GULDZHS).
On the construction of railway the road was used by the labor of prisoners, whose number on 1.1.1942 was 50 thousand people. The construction work was accompanied by great loss of life.
North-Pechora railway the road on the Kozhva-Vorkuta section was put into permanent operation in 1950; bridge over the river Pechora in 1942. "Pechorstroy" carried out industrial and civil construction along the entire railway line. roads, incl. in the cities of Pechora, Inta, Vorkuta.
In 1954 "Pechorzheldorstroy" of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs was reorganized into the "Pechorstroy" Administration as part of "Glavzheldorstroy" of the North and West of the USSR Ministry of Transport and Construction. Trust "Pechorstroy" carried out the construction of railway. roads Chum-Labytnangi (1947-59), Mikun-Syktyvkar (1958-61), Sosnogorsk-Troitsko-Pechorsk (1963-77), Mikun-Koslan (1961-74), Synya-Usinsk (1974-80). The Pechora river port, the Kozhvinsky crushed stone plant, airports in the cities of Pechora and Salekhard were built.
Pechorstroy made a great contribution to the social and economic development of the Komi Republic. During its activity, "Pechorstroy" has built: 121 railways. railway station, hospitals for 1520 beds, schools for 20,520 places, housing 1 million 822.4 thousand m2, 3309 km of new railways. lines, 260.6 km of secondary and station tracks, 257 km of access roads.
As of 1.1.1998, the former Pechorstroy consisted of 9 independent subdivisions: SMP-234 (Kozhva settlement), SMP-235 (Syktyvkar), SMP-242 (Vorkuta), SMP-258 (Sosnogorsk), SMP -331 (settlement Troitsko-Pechorsk), SMP-562, reinforced concrete products plant, commercial center, mechanization department (Pechora).
If you go from Moscow to Vorkuta by train, you can see a lot of interesting things outside the window. The train route runs along two famous northern highways - the Arkhangelsk highway, built by the merchant Savva Mamontov and the Pechora highway, built mainly by prisoners in the unbearable conditions of taiga, tundra and permafrost.
In two days of travel, the train crosses the Moscow, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Arkhangelsk regions and almost the entire Komi Republic ...
The road from Moscow to Vorkuta begins at the Yaroslavsky railway station, in the same place where the Trans-Siberian Railway officially begins. A stylized kilometer column tells about this: 
The route adjacent to the Moscow-Vorkuta train is occupied by the Moscow-Blagoveshchensk train, bursting with tourists. 
This is exactly how much it costs to travel from the capital to the extreme north. In principle, the price is quite reasonable. You can also get to Vorkuta by plane, the flight takes about 3 hours, but the prices for the plane are the height of idiocy: 15,000 rubles one way. For those who care about it, there is a budget reserved seat with the traditional smell of socks and drunk shift workers, and crazy people can use a sitting carriage for a trip to Vorkuta for some ridiculous 1,500 rubles. 
The train starts to move and starts moving northward. For the first hours of the journey, the terrain characteristic of central Russia flashes outside the windows: 
The car is empty - there are very few people who want to go north in summer. Looking ahead, we note that it will remain the same empty until the very end of the path. Nobody got into our compartment. 
The car is the most ordinary brown ammendorf with authentic windows that could be opened and leaned out of them. 
Sterile toilet. Conscientious guides washed him two or three times a day along the way. I did not expect such a service from a "five hundred" train ... 
In the meantime, the train travels through the Yaroslavl region. This is perhaps the fastest-passing section of the route - the train travels almost 300 kilometers from Moscow to Yaroslavl in 4 hours. On the way, you come across small halt stations with train stations built in the style typical for the Arkhangelsk highway, along which the first part of the route passes. 
Right up to Yaroslavl, the area outside the window does not undergo any significant changes: woods and puddles. 
Finally, the train reaches Yaroslavl, crossing the Kotorosl River within the city limits: 
Yaroslavl-Glavny is the first long-term stop of the train, it takes almost 40 minutes. This is just enough for a quick acquaintance with the station and its surroundings. Here, in fact, the station: 
And here is the monument to Savva Mamontov, who built the Arkhangelsk highway, against the background of the map of the Northern Railway, painted on the wall of the nearest station building. 
Close examination of the map reveals glaring inaccuracies. From Kotlas to Mikun, according to this map, it takes almost 15 minutes to drive, the authors of the map moved Sosnogorsk to the middle of the branch leading to Troitsko-Pechorsk ... Shame and shame! 
And this is how the station square of Yaroslavl looks like. Apparently, since my military training in this city in 2009, it has changed very little. 
Beyond Yaroslavl, the railway crosses the Volga bridge. 
Quite already northern half-stations in small villages. Nevertheless, some kind of infrastructure in the form of platforms with railings is present here. A few passengers are waiting for the evening train to Yaroslavl: 
And the train continues to move north. 
The next stop is Danilov, a docking station and, in combination, a junction station, where a branch departs from the Arkhangelsk main line to the latitudinal route "St. Petersburg - Kirov", the so-called northern route of the Transsib. 
In addition to this detail, there is nothing remarkable in this town, and this is clearly evidenced by the view from the station's bridge bridge: 
Long-term parking of all trains without exception generates a lot of street vendors. Literally everything is traded - from boiled potatoes and pickled cucumbers ... 
Up to plush toys. Although you can hardly imagine that someone is buying plush toys along the route on the train. 
A local resident looks with curiosity at the train, leaving on. Apparently, he reads the name of the route on the plate .. 
Meanwhile, outside the window begins the Vologda region with neatly plowed and sown fields. 
A section of the forest where a tornado swept through in 2010. Read more at varandej
in this post. As you can see, since then, no one even scratched themselves to somehow bring this place in order. 
But here they are proud of the citizenship of the Russian Federation! The most ordinary village house at Baklanka station bears a proudly waving Russian flag: 
And then the train reaches the station Gryazovets. It was here, on the platform of this station, that the opening scene of the famous Soviet trash film "City of Zero" was filmed. It is also noteworthy that the hero of the film disembarked from a train en route to Vorkuta (seen on the route board of the train). 
In general, it is the most common linear station in an ordinary provincial town. 
It is getting dark. At the entrance to Vologda, clouds of a fantastic mushroom-shaped form grow in the distance: 
Despite the fact that we are heading north, forests give way to almost continuous fields for a while. 
There are very few trees here, the area is more like a forest-steppe in the Voronezh region. 
Directly in front of Vologda, the train passes without stopping a huge marshalling yard with the idiotic name Lost (remember the TV series Lost on Channel One?). Losta station is one of the largest marshalling yards in the European part of Russia: here the Arkhangelsk highway crosses the latitudinal route St. Petersburg - Kirov, or rather, it does not completely cross, and on some segment these roads turn out to be combined. There is also a locomotive depot (TCh-11), opened in 2004. 
Vologda itself looks very usual from the train, if not sadly: panel five-story buildings, interspersed with brick high-rise buildings ... 
One of the types of products of the local area is timber in whips: 
Vologda railway station is quite large by provincial standards: 
A small but beautiful weather vane with the inscription "Vologda" is installed on the roof of the station 
Bell. Immediately I remember the famous "Give me back my bell, bl #" ... There is nothing else to see at the Vologda station. 
Departing from Vologda, on the left along the train, you can see the buildings of the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery. The Savior-Prilutsky Monastery was founded in 1371 by Saint Dmitry Prilutsky, a disciple and follower of St. Sergius of Radonezh. In 1812, the treasures of the patriarchal sacristy, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and a number of other Moscow monasteries and cathedrals were kept here. After the revolution, it housed a colony for homeless children and a transit camp for dispossessed people, later - a military unit. There was so much that was not here ... Currently, the monastery operates for its intended purpose. 
Enchanting evening Vologda dawns, which gave the name to the Moscow-Vologda branded train: 
Hay is harvested in the fields: 
At night, the train reaches the Konosha-I station in the Arkhangelsk region. At this station, farewell to the Arkhangelsk highway takes place: further the route turns to the east. At the same time, electrification ends - the Pechora mainline is completely diesel-powered.
Notice how it is light here at night - at 3:00 am the sky is only slightly dark. 
And inside the station, an impressive exhibition of children's drawings awaits us. Students of local art schools drew. There are also kalyak-malyaks, there are also impressive drawings. 
Of the railway artifacts, it is worth noting the chic typesetting schedule of the times of the Ministry of Railways (and, possibly, the USSR). 
The most beautiful section of the road from Konosha to Valdeevo could not be photographed because of the darkness. The morning began here at this station: 
The station is located in the village of the same name, surrounded by forests and impassable swamps. There are no roads to the outside world (except for the winter road); you can drive only on a tractor. Well, here on the train. In the village itself, there is terrible mud, puddles and dull barracks. But there is a shop number 21. 
Pechora highway in the vicinity of Sengos station. It is worth noting that curves on this road are an exception, it mainly consists of straight lines like an arrow. 
Around - gray and shriveled from time to time severe northern villages with knocked out eye sockets of unpainted houses. These landscapes evoke incredible melancholy ... 
The oppressive impression of the northern devastation is slightly diluted by the relatively decent barracks of railway workers at the rare halt stations. But they are also surrounded by rickety sheds and toilets: 
And the severity and poverty inexorably remind of themselves. Here settlement Udimsky. 
From the "city", there are only two-storey barracks. 
The railway turns to the north in small portions, revealing long straight sections. The wind carries smoke and the stench of diesel fuel to the end of the train ... 
The floodplain of the Northern Dvina begins: 
The river itself. Even in the middle reaches, it is huge - the width of its channel is in no way less than the width of the Volga channel: 
After passing the bridge over the Northern Dvina, the train arrives at the Kotlas-Uzlovaya station: 
The locomotive is interlocked at the tail of the train in order to lead the train to the Kotlas-Yuzhny station. 
Further, the locomotive will again be hooked into the head of the train and the train will go further to Vorkuta, passing again Kotlas-Uzlovaya. All these driving back and forth are due to the inability to turn to Kotlas-Yuzhny directly from the bridge over the Northern Dvina. Although they could have built a loop from Kotlas-Uzlovy to the Kotlas-Kirov branch a long time ago. But, apparently, it is cheaper to waste the time of passengers and drivers and diesel fuel.
Kotlas-Yuzhny. The renovation of the station goes on and on, and there is no end to it: 
Station square with a steam locomotive-monument and infernal puddles on the crumpled asphalt. The most terrible abandoned wooden barracks remained behind the scenes, if you do not know about them, then, in principle, it looks within the permissible limits, of course, with an amendment to the Russian outback: 
Seagulls shit on the head of the bronze Vladimir Ilyich: 
Loaves of the PAZ factory drive up to the bus stop ... 
Next to local towns and villages, deprived of such a blessing of civilization as a railway: 
In general, life is in full swing. And we drive back past the tattered and abandoned elevator. Apparently, this is the vicinity of Mostozavod station: 
The next stop of the train is Solvychegodsk. It is still twenty kilometers from here to the real Solvychegodsk, nevertheless, the station looks much more decent than the station of a large city and the regional center of Kotlas: 
There is a monument to the victims of the builders of the Pechora highway - hundreds, thousands of nameless prisoners who built the road in inhuman conditions among the taiga, tundra, permafrost, in a blizzard and thirty-degree heat, suffocating from cold and gnat. Frost creeps across the skin at the sight of this simple, austere monument ... 
Pyrsky. This is the name of the station a little further than Solvychegodsk: 
To the east of Kotlas, along the railroad, there are huge impenetrable swamps. This, for example, is the Rada swamp: 
It was not possible to find out the name of this swamp. 
"The Russians call the place where they are going to go by the road" - such a quote involuntarily comes to mind when looking at what serves as a road here. Only a lumber truck, a tractor, and a shift truck will pass along such a road ... 
In general, this is the main transport here - the main product of the Arkhangelsk region is timber. Forest, forest, forest, nothing else. The beggar region sits on a wooden needle. 
The south of the Komi Republic, which suddenly begins outside the window, looks similarly: pine logs piled up to the skies at Madmas station: 
There are still eerie ruins here, similar to those already seen in the Arkhangelsk region: if you do not know about the location of the border, it is difficult to determine where one region ends and another begins. The rotten barn bears the proud sign "ELECTROTSEKH": 
If the administrative border of the Arkhangelsk region and the Komi Republic passes somewhere near the Madmas station, then by eye the difference becomes obvious after crossing the Vychegda River. By the way, the river is no less impressive than the Northern Dvina: 
The train here goes northeast, and the nature outside the window begins to gradually change. Behind Vychegda, the southern taiga begins with a predominance of conifers: 
Deserted landscapes are occasionally interrupted by traces of human activity: 
Mikun is a large junction station in the southern part of the Komi Republic. The train costs about 20 minutes here, and a large number of passengers enter and leave. From the station "mustache" departs to Vendinga and Syktyvkar, people change here to local trains. 
View from the bridge. Our train will go there after a while: 
A paddy wagon of the Federal Penitentiary Service awaits its passengers: 
Station Square. Compare with what you saw in the large city of Kotlas. Here, the difference in income of neighboring regions is especially striking: 
To the north of Mikuni, the train crosses the Vym River over the bridge: 
And then neat little houses appear in the forest. This is the city of Emva, in which the Knyazhpogost station is located. 
The station itself. There is exactly the same station in Sosnogorsk, further along the train. 
The most flaky houses in the city. Remember the urban settlement Udimsky ... 
Another river, its name could not be established. At a distance you can see the place of its confluence with the Vym: 
A typical linear station on the highway: EC post, aka a railway station, a shed (or a toilet?), A transformer box and some kind of platform. However, the passenger traffic here is so small that more is not needed. 
The road continues to turn north. 
In the evening the train reaches Ukhta. 
A large marshalling yard in a large city. Behind the station you can see Mount Vetlasyan, on which is the head of Lenin. Once upon a time this head also glowed in the dark, then the illumination was plundered. 
The private sector of the city. These are the very wealthy houses are present here. 
The railway runs right under the slopes of the mountain here. 
On the right is the mountain, and on the left is the valley of the Ukhta River. 
Sosnogorsk. It is also a large station, from which the branch to Troitsko-Pechorsk departs. Unlike the imagination of the mapmakers on the wall in Yaroslavl, Sosnogorsk is located directly on the highway. True, there is still the Sosnogorsk-II station, but it is doubtful that it was there. 
I photographed the Sosnogorsk station on the way back, but in fact the sun is already setting: 
The distance to Moscow is already like from Adler, nevertheless, almost 700 kilometers remain to go to Vorkuta. 
People walk around the reserved seat carriage. In the meantime, no more than 5 people remained in our carriage. 
The road to the north of Sosnogorsk goes through continuous taiga. 
Kerki station. Kerki in the Komi language means "huts", "houses". Several houses here actually have a place to be, along with the ancient "Zaporozhets" on a platform made of old sleepers. I wonder where you can drive it here? 
Because civilization here has already ended completely. 
The huge Pechora river near the city of the same name. The train crosses it at night. 
Taiga. Pay attention to the shape of the spruce crowns, how much it differs from the usual Central European fluffy Christmas trees. 
Well, now the sun is out. The picture was taken at 3 o'clock ... at night? in the morning? 
A tributary of the Pechora is the Usa River. Even this river is not inferior in size to the Volga in its middle course. The picture was taken on the way back, which is why it is so dark. 
Suddenly, swampy bald patches appear in the taiga, behind which you can see the peaks of the mountains of the Polar Urals: 
There are no signs of human activity anymore. 
Wire communication lines stretch along the road, of course, which have not been working for a long time. But it is extremely unprofitable to take wires out of these fucking in order to hand them over for recycling. So it all rots. 
Railroad barracks at the Shor junction. Or Pyshor. Or Pernachor. Or maybe Amshor? I do not remember which one of them, before that they are all alike. Judging by the shooting time, it seems that this is still Pernachor ... 
Seida is the last long-term stop of the train in front of Vorkuta. Despite the fact that the Chum station is formally the junction, from which the only "live" section of the Chum-Labytnangi transpolar highway departs, the local train "Vorkuta - Labytnangi" runs with a mandatory stop at Seida, having unthinkable parking hours for one and a half or two hours ... The Vorkuta train stops here for 23 minutes; during this stop, passengers storm the local store. 
After Seida, the taiga ends and the forest-tundra begins: 
Bridge over the Seida River. In a few minutes, the train will go on it. Interestingly, all railway bridges are unguarded here. 
On the right along the way, we can see the river Usa, already familiar to us. 
The guide brought a book of reviews. There was such a mention in it. Drunken shift workers are not a myth! 
And outside the window is already tundra. 
Because of the permafrost, the path is constantly heaving. The speed at which the train goes here does not exceed 60 kilometers per hour. 
Somewhere there we were just driving. The path runs on an embankment, which offers an impressive view of the local "roads" - ruts in the mud, along which a caterpillar bulldozer is unlikely to pass. 
Departure Kykshor. The railway workers do not live here, everyone works on a rotational basis. Just because it is impossible to live here - there is nothing around. Absolutely nothing. 
Another bridge over some tundra river, of which there are a great many: 
Departure Arctic fox. 
In principle, the name of the station says it all. Comments are superfluous here ... 
This shed still remembers the times of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Federation, judging by the plate. 
Finally the train arrives in Vorkuta. 
The train is immediately washed of dirt and soot. 
This is how the trip along the Pechora highway ends. The highway itself does not end there, but goes to the village of Severny, where the Ayach-Yaga station is located, but there is no public passenger service there. Our 2,264 kilometer journey is now complete.
The road was formed in June 1942, until 1947 it was called North-Pechora railway... The total length of the road in 1954 was 1953 km. The road administration was located in the city of Kotlas.
The road included the Konosha - Kotlas - Vorkuta line and the Girsovo - Kotlas section.
Oddly enough, it became easier to live in our camp by the end of 1942.
Hunger raged in the country. The camp stopped receiving both rye flour and even oats. But Vorkuta coal became more and more needed. Therefore, as soon as food began to arrive under the American Lend-Lease, they flowed to Vorkuta. There were times when, due to the lack of black bread, the entire camp was fed lush American white bread. There was so much of the famous American stew that all the metal utensils for the camp - bowls, mugs, all the lighting fixtures, and in some places the roofs were made from cans. Whole wagons brought in beautifully packaged, albeit rancid, stale American butter. Tons of ascorbic acid were imported and scurvy almost survived. The prisoners were dressed up in some kind of American tracksuits and yellow shoes with two-toe-thick soles.
Life in our camp has become, perhaps, better than in the wild. At the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943, a train of Leningrad children was brought to us. Only then did we see with our own eyes what was happening in the country
P. 129
The main cargo transported by the road: coal, oil, timber, mineral construction materials.
see also
Write a review on the article "Pechora Railway"
Notes (edit)
Links
| This is a draft article on railways. You can help the project by supplementing it. |
An excerpt characterizing the Pechora Railway
- No, it seems that the sale will take place one of these days, - someone said. - Although now it's crazy to buy something in Moscow.- From what? Julie said. - Do you really think that there is a danger for Moscow?
- Why are you going?
- I AM? That's weird. I'm going because ... well, because everyone is going, and then I'm not Joanna d'Arc and not an Amazon.
- Well, yes, yes, give me some more rags.
“If he manages to get things done, he can pay all the debts,” the militia continued about Rostov.
- A good old man, but very pauvre sire [bad]. And why do they live here for so long? They have long wanted to go to the village. Does Natalie seem to be well now? Julie asked Pierre with a sly smile.
“They are expecting a younger son,” said Pierre. - He entered Obolensky's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov. A regiment is being formed there. And now they have transferred him to my regiment and are waiting every day. The count had long wanted to go, but the countess would never agree to leave Moscow until her son arrived.
- I saw them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie looked prettier and more cheerful again. She sang one romance. How easy it is for some people!
- What's going on? - Pierre asked with displeasure. Julie smiled.
“You know, Count, that knights like you are only in madame Suza's novels.
- Which knight? From what? - Blushing, asked Pierre.
- Well, fullness, dear count, c "est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous admire, ma parole d" honneur. [all of Moscow knows this. Indeed, I am surprised at you.]
- Fine! Fine! - said the militia.
- OK then. You can't say how boring it is!
- Qu "est ce qui est la fable de tout Moscou? [What does all of Moscow know?] - Pierre said angrily, getting up.
- Completeness, Count. You know!
“I don’t know anything,” said Pierre.
- I know that you were friends with Natalie, and therefore ... No, I am always better friends with Vera. Cette chere Vera! [This dear Vera!]
- Non, madame, [No, madam.] - Pierre continued in an unhappy tone. - I did not take on the role of Rostova's knight at all, and I have not been with them for almost a month. But I don't understand the cruelty ...
- Qui s "excuse - s" accuse, [Who apologizes, he blames himself.] - Julie said smiling and waving lint and, so that she had the last word, she immediately changed the conversation. - What is it, today I found out: poor Marie Volkonskaya arrived in Moscow yesterday. Did you hear she lost her father?
- Really! Where is she? I would very much like to see her, - said Pierre.
- I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to the Moscow Region with her nephew this morning or tomorrow.
- Well, how is she? - said Pierre.
- Nothing, sad. But do you know who saved her? It's a whole novel. Nicolas Rostov. They surrounded her, wanted to kill her, wounded her people. He rushed and rescued her ...
“Another novel,” the militia said. - Decisively, this general escape is made so that all old brides marry. Catiche is one, Princess Bolkonskaya is another.
“You know that I really think she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune homme. [a little in love with a young man.]
- Fine! Fine! Fine!
- But how can I say this in Russian? ..
When Pierre returned home, he was handed two posters of Rostopchin brought that day.
The first said that the rumor that Count Rostopchin was forbidden to leave Moscow was unfair and that, on the contrary, Count Rostopchin was glad that ladies and merchant wives were leaving Moscow. "Less fear, less news," said the poster, "but I answer with my life that there will be no villain in Moscow." These words for the first time clearly showed Pierre that the French would be in Moscow. The second poster said that our main apartment was in Vyazma, that Count Wittgstein defeated the French, but that since many residents want to arm themselves, they have weapons prepared in the arsenal: sabers, pistols, guns, which residents can receive at a cheap price. The tone of the posters was no longer as playful as in the previous Chigirin conversations. Pierre pondered over these posters. Obviously, that terrible thundercloud, which he summoned with all the forces of his soul and which at the same time aroused involuntary horror in him - obviously, this cloud was approaching.
“To enter military service and go to the army or wait? - Pierre asked himself this question for the hundredth time. He took the deck of cards that were on his table and began to play solitaire.
“If this solitaire comes out,” he said to himself, mixing the deck, holding it in his hand and looking up, “if it comes out, it means ... what does it mean?” the senior princess asking if it was possible to enter.
“Then it will mean that I have to go to the army,” Pierre said to himself. “Come in, come in,” he added, addressing the princess.
