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Alberto Caspani
Vorkuta is a coal-mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin at the Usa River.
Alberto Caspani
The voice announcing a train’s arrival at the remote edge of the Komi Republic – a 48-hour journey from Moscow – can still make passengers shiver.
Alberto Caspani
Vorkuta has an arctic climate with short, cool summers accompanied by very cold and dry winters. Average February temperature is about −20 °C (−4 °F), and July is about +13 °C (55 °F).
Alberto Caspani
Vorkuta may be imprisoned in ice for nearly eight months of the year, but its citizens today are freed from the ghosts of the soviet past.
Alberto Caspani
The few remaining survivors of that period have all gone: some searching for relatives all over Russia, others in order to forget, still others just to carve out a different future for themselves.
Alberto Caspani
Kirov Square, surrounded by elegant Stalinist buildings and the region's first grand hotel awaits the arrival of a monument to architect and political prisoner Lunyov.
Alberto Caspani
Vorkuta had its origin in one of the most notorious forced labor camps of the Gulag which was established in 1932. In 1941, Vorkuta and the labor camp system based around it were connected to the rest of the world by a prisoner-built railroad linking Konosha, Kotlas, and the camps of Inta.
Alberto Caspani
Town status was granted to Vorkuta November 26, 1943. It was the largest center of the Gulag camps in European Russia and served as the administrative center for a large number of smaller camps and subcamps.
Alberto Caspani
Impossible to hold back the torment of memories, especially if you have read "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" by A. Solzhenitsin.
Alberto Caspani
If you take a look at the monument to the victims – an incomplete sketched mass full of rusty barbed-wire – all you that will see is the Rudnik's houses above the shore of the Usa River.
Alberto Caspani
Here the relatives of those who suffered in Gulag camps gather every year on 31 October.
Alberto Caspani
Although much in the city has changed since the Gulag years, one thing that remains the same is the fields of Ivan Chai, a wild herb that grows in the countryside around Vorkuta.
Alberto Caspani
Every spring it blooms in encarnadine flowers, reminding some of the tragedy that befell this far corner of Russia.
Alberto Caspani
The town grew as prisoners were sent to work in its enormous mineral deposits; but only about 50 residents can say today that they had family members who were involved in the mass deportations.
Alberto Caspani
Vorkuta is gradually extending its borders; expanding, disappearing into the uncultivated fields at the edge of the city towards the ruins of Yurshor in one direction and Severny Poselok's brick smokestacks in another.
Alberto Caspani
The capital of the Gulag realizes that tourists may come because of its association with the darkest days of the Soviet state, but hopes they discover that the city has more to offer.
