Pechora railway Pechora railway participant in the construction of the North-Pechora railway

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, the Northern railway camp of the NKVD was also organized. Sevzheldorlag was subordinate to Gulzheldor. He received the lettering 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 don’t 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", 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 are shown.

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. Site admin)

PARTING

We part, we are with you

we say goodbye.

How many roads are together

we passed!

From the 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. 40-50s - the years of war and post-war, 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, 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 before 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. Their labor in the republic has built 3.5 thousand kilometers of railways, 121 railway stations, more than 2 million square meters of housing, schools, kindergartens, hospitals and much more.

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. 60-70s and the beginning of 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 famous 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, to 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 the personnel of 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 am next to him) for 15 years now. SMP-242, where both workers and engineers and technicians always remember him with a kind word. 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 the market economy and practical work are young and full of strength.

We have a program of action 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 enhance the glorious labor traditions of Pechorstroy.

Eternal memory to those veterans of "Pechorstroy" who are not alive today. Low bow and deep 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 those who work 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 OJSC 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 working 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, Inta, 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, 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 scales. 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 ...

“You’ll go out to the embankment - a thin yellow thread stretches 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, involuntarily, with your whole being, you hold on 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, but 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. To their lot, backbreaking work, polar nights, frosts and a four-week summer fell to their lot.

FIRST RAILS

The idea of ​​building a railway in the Komi Territory, 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 order 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, a railroad embankment was raised, and wooden bridges were built. However, on March 7, 1933, by order of the People's Commissariat of Railways of the USSR, 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 Yugorskiy Shar Strait, for which, in 1932-1934, the Vorkuta Yugorskiy 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 defined the main tasks of the trust, including the exploration and exploitation 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-Yugorskiy 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 on 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 storage 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 sharply spoke out 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 stated problems. "

As a result of the calculations, the indisputable advantage of the Kotlassky 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 by rail.

For the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the North Pechora Mainline is fraught with tremendous opportunities for the further development of industry, agriculture, railroad 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 highway 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 the Vorkuta - Khabarovo, Koposha - Volkhovstroy, Arkhangelsk or Mezen - Ukhta, Izhma - Solikamsk, Abez - Salekhard (across the Ural ridge), Kotlas - Kostroma, Shkares - Sykaries ...

“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 hub 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: 11/01/1938, 12/01/1939, 10/01/1941.

Vychegda - Knyazhpogost: 06/01/1938, 05/01/1939, 05/01/1941.

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 section Kotlas - Knyazhpogost 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. Very weakly populated areas of the route, continuous forest and boggy territory (deep swamps occupied about 20 percent of the length of the projected line), almost complete absence of roadways, freezing of soil in winter up to 1.4 meters were noted. Among the largest bogs, the prospectors attributed the Madmas bog, the swamp in the area of ​​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 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 Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 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 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 coastal two-tiered 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 North 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 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 in 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 administrations were organized, which led various branches of the camp economy, including the Main Directorate of the camps of the mining and metallurgical industry (GULGMP ), General Directorate of Timber 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 into 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, 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 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 THE. 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 title 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 on the 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 the 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, 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, 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 handed down 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 NKVD employee 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 Rybinsk, then, on May 10, 1938, he was appointed 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, he possesses organizational skills as a leader, and 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 of 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 construction of the Krasnoyarsk-Yeniseisk 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 named 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 unsuitable 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) at once.

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 over 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 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 sidings 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 section from Kotlas to Chibyu. By the summer of 1939, the 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. Following the results of 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.

Sevzheldorstroy's party and economic activists discussed on May 27, 1940, 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 decree of this party activist said: "The team of builders of Sevzheldorlag will with honor justify the high confidence 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 and economic activists noted that the tasks of high-speed construction require a quick and decisive restructuring of the work of all levels of the administrative apparatus, subdivisions, party, Komsomol and trade union organizations and outlined a number of practical measures.

At the same time, construction assistance was provided by the Komi Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the SNK of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 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 influx of labor, not provided with tools, household chores, in the absence of horses and insufficient food supplies." Thus, on 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 on September 8, 1940 to establish a transport connection between Ukhta and Kozhva. “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 in Ust-Vymsky district.

The third (Mikunskoe) carried out construction to the 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-wide 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 at all ready for winter. The construction of civilian and camp facilities is shamefully disrupted. The onset of frosts captured both civilians and prisoners in many departments, in summer tents. This is also the case in the village of Zheleznodorozhny. "

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 to 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, a huge 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 stubborn 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 swamps, increased embankment in the Shezhamsky bog. As a result of these works, the approaches to large bridges were completed in a timely manner 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 lines 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 mainline 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 the Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Komi ASSR N.A. Nefedov. The commission included representatives of the central apparatus of the NKPS, the apparatus of the GULZhDS NKVD, 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 the completion 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. Government awards were received by many engineering and technical workers in construction, including chief engineers of construction departments A.N. Belyavsky. 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.

Regions and the Komi ASSR.

Story

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 was headquartered 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 sort 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

Driver's license issued by the management of the North-Pechora railway

The main cargo transported by the road: coal, oil, timber, mineral construction materials.

To complete the construction of the railroad, the structures of the building under construction in Moscow at that time were urgently dismantled and transferred to the Komi ASSR.

"The barge was taken to Palamysh, from it a step further, to the station of Urdoma. In Urdoma, the party was placed in a barrack with an unfinished roof: while you spend the night somehow, you will make the roof tomorrow. We spent the night, and the next morning, early in the morning, to work." towards Tuva. For some time we worked here quietly. "

Ugryumov O. How the North-Pechora road began to be built / O. Ugryumov // Chronicle of the Northern Highway: from the XIX century to the XXI century. - Yaroslavl, 2008 .-- S. 142-155, 158-169.

140 years of the Northern Railway

How did the construction of the North-Pechora road begin

For a considerable time in the history of our country, the state has widely used the labor of prisoners. The so-called "camp" economy produced for the needs of the USSR a significant amount of gross domestic product, capital construction was carried out by the forces of the inhabitants of the camps.

The NKVD forced labor camps acquired a particularly significant role in remote from the center, rich in natural resources, but undeveloped parts of the country - in the north and east. The population density in these regions was extremely low, which made it impossible to attract local labor resources. The lack of qualified personnel was especially felt.

Both civilians and prisoners were involved as a labor force. Convicts also took part in geological exploration expeditions. Often, the expeditions were even led by former NKVD cadres who were transferred to the GULAG system for disciplinary violations.

As the GULAG system expanded, industrial enterprises were created in forced labor camps; this is how peculiar production trusts were born, such as, for example, Ukhtpechtrest. The labor force of the Ukhto-Pechora trust was the prisoners of Ukhtpechlag. Researcher of the history of railway camps O.I. Azarov in his dissertation cites the following data: at the end of 1932, 13,400 prisoners were employed in coal and oil mining, and as of January 1, 1938, already 54,792 people.

Coal mining and the development of transport in the North were closely related to each other. This was the result of the prevailing economic and geographical conditions of the country.

In the Komi Territory, the railway "vector" of the camp system was not the only one. Prisoners' labor was also used in the mining, oil and gas, logging industries. The railway camp-production complex occupied a special place in the economic and social life of the northern region.

It was the Severo-Pechora road, built at the cost of inhuman efforts and exorbitant sacrifices, that ultimately made it possible to industrialize Komi, linking the undeveloped disparate territories of the republic with each other and integrating the Komi economy into the country's economic complex.

The North-Pechora road was given at a very high price - the cost of many thousands of lives dedicated to cutting through the permafrost. One of the builders of the highway called it like this: “A bottomless swamp, where prisoners threw wheelbarrows with sand” ...

By 1940, 4 mines were laid in Vorkuta, with a total capacity of over a million tons of coal per year. In those years, the Vorkutlag prisoners remained the builders and workers of the Vorkuta mines. Then there were about 15 thousand of them. Intelligent, highly educated people worked in inhuman conditions, and therefore died in thousands. Much later, in 1951, when the mines started working and the railway was built, a city committee of the party appeared in Vorkuta; this was a sign that the city was passing from the category of the camps to the category of free ones.

Built in unsuitable natural conditions and paid for by thousands of human lives, the North-Pechora road became the personification and a kind of monument to the "camp" page of our past. Today it is impossible to forget that forced labor was widely used in the construction of this highway. By order of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of May 10, 1938, the construction of the entire North-Pechora railway was entrusted to the Sevzheldorlag, which was given 7 years for all work - from May 1938 to September 1945. Then, by the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the construction of the North-Pechora railway and the development of the production of Vorkuto-Pechora coals" dated May 10, 1940, the production task of the Sevzheldorlag was somewhat changed and defined as the construction of only one of the constituent parts of the road, railway line Kotlas - Kozhva.

Sections of the new road were put into operation gradually, and immediately used the new lines for their intended purpose, combining rail and river transport to speed up the progress of work. 20.2 km of railway sidings to the quays were built in 1938-40.

… The road lived and developed extremely quickly. The dates that follow one after the other amaze with the intensity of the events crowning all new stages of the hard, but so necessary labor for the country.

On November 1, 1939, a temporary movement was opened on the Aikino - Shezham section, and less than a week after that, a temporary labor movement on the Knyazhpogost - Ukhta (formerly Chibyu) section was opened. Since that time, oil was shipped from Ukhta to the Vychegda River (the Aikino pier) in railway tanks, and from there - on barges. Freight traffic increased - in the summer up to 200-250 wagons a day went by rail. On a solemn day, the holiday of the October Revolution on November 7, 1940, the first train from Ukhta passed to Kotlas. By 1940, the Abez - Sivaya Maska section was opened.

On May 15, 1940, the first train with rails for laying arrived at the site of the future Izhma station (now Sosnogorsk). In December 1940, at the station Glush, which is 10 km north of the station. Irael on the border of Sosnogorsk and Pechora districts, there were builders moving from the south (from Knyazhpogost, Ukhta) and from the north - from the Pechora river, Kozhva station. The "golden" rails have been joined. On December 25, 1940, the first train from Kotlas arrived in Kozhva.

The Konosha - Kotlas railway line with a length of 367 kilometers, which was another component of the North Pechora railway, was built by Sevdvinlag, organized on September 25, 1940.

The temporary train traffic on the line was scheduled to open by February 1, 1942, while providing a throughput of 9 pairs per day.

By February 25, 1942, work on the preparation of the roadbed was completed, and on the night of March 4-5, 1942, the laying of the superstructure of the track was completed. Thus, in a short period of time, from January 1 to March 5, 1942, prisoners laid 130 km of the main track and about 13 km of station tracks. On March 7, 1942, the first through train arrived in Kotlas. In total, in March 1942, 27 transit trains with cargo going to the front were allowed through.

Continuation of construction

The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War introduced changes to the construction schedule of the North-Pechora railway.

At the very beginning of the war, the invaders occupied Ukraine, where the Donetsk coal basin, the largest in the Union, was located. The country, drawn into the war, was in dire need of fuel, and in the Komi Republic huge resources lay underground, the use of which could begin only if a railway was built. Therefore, the government demands an accelerated pace of construction of the highway, which has acquired a truly strategic state significance.

The economic policy of the Soviet state in relation to military conditions was formulated in the directive of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) "On the mobilization of all forces and resources to defeat the fascist invaders" of June 29, 1941. Economic changes were carried out in the following main directions: switching to military production practically all branches of industry; a sharp reduction or cessation of the release of civilian products; relocation (evacuation) of productive forces to areas remote from the front.

In accordance with the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) by the order of the NKVD "On the plan of capital works for the 3rd quarter of 1941" On July 11, 1941, a list of shock over-limit construction projects was approved, which included the Konosha-Kotlas railways and the North-Pechora railway. Investments, building materials, equipment, forced labor from the mothballed construction sites were directed to these construction sites. At the beginning of the war, the construction time of the Kozhva-Vorkuta railway line was shortened. According to the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (July 1941), the line should be put into operation not in October 1945, but much earlier on May 1, 1942. For this, an additional 4 thousand prisoners and equipment were sent. In the decree of the plenum of the Komi regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the progress of the implementation of the plan for the railway construction of the Pechora-Vorkuta line" of July 14-15, 1941, measures were outlined to ensure the opening of a temporary labor movement in December 1941.

In wartime, the railway was built according to the so-called temporary scheme with the use of simplified technical conditions. Bypasses were made around all natural barriers and impassable areas. Cost and effort were kept to a minimum. The rises and turns of the railway became critically acceptable, excavations and subgrade were minimal, the main structural elements of structures were simplified, scarce imported building materials were replaced by local materials, in particular, metal structures - wood or combined.

By September 1, 1941, the timber industry of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic provided sleepers for the construction of the Kozhva - Vorkuta railway line only for 58.2% of the need. Therefore, with the technical standards of 1600 sleepers per kilometer of the main track, 700 - 900 sleepers were laid. In the northernmost section, rails and sleepers were laid directly on permafrost and ice without erecting a subgrade.

P.D. Korolev recalled: “Winter helped out. Such a severe winter, which stood out in 1941, I, perhaps, will never remember. In the Vorkuta River, the ice thickness reached 1 meter 60 centimeters ... And now, given such a harsh winter, we increased the distance between the sleepers. And the frost really helped us out. Shackled this road, and we got out of the situation. And as the sleepers came to us, we quietly added them in between. We managed to calculate it before spring. " Bypasses were made around natural obstacles, including large lakes, marshes and excavations. According to the memoirs of the deputy head of the camp administration A.I. Borovitsky: “... due to tight deadlines, we had to go through separate excavations in narrow trenches, in which the train had just passed. Once a landslide occurred in such a trench and a steam locomotive with several platforms fell asleep. I had to leave the train underground, and make a detour nearby. Time was the most important thing. "

Thus, the temporary scheme used in the construction of the railway turned out to be not only a forced technological innovation, but also a method of forced railway construction.

Vorkuta miners also worked on the edge of human capabilities. The order for the extraction of coal during the war years meant the same as a military order. 2-3 norms per shift have become a common, daily work situation. Indeed, Vorkuta coal not only warmed the besieged Leningrad, but also became the main fuel for the entire North of the country.

On December 28, 1941, the first echelon with coal was sent from Vorkuta, driven by the driver Dunaev. A weak steam locomotive of the OV series No. 5831, according to our modern ideas (the famous, now perceived as a touching, almost living creature, "sheep") pulled at a speed of 4-5 km per hour two two-axle platforms and several wagons with gifts for Red Army.

In February 1942, this train passed through the Izhma and Ukhta stations. The long time spent on the road is explained by constant delays due to snow drifts, as well as by the fact that the embankment was unreliable due to subsidence, divergence of paths - as we remember, rails and sleepers in a hurry were laid directly on the frozen soil of the embankment, otherwise and on the ice.

The work done was impressive: in two and a half years, about 120 thousand free and "forced" builders of Sevzheldorlag, Pechzheldorlag, at the cost of titanic efforts, achieved that a 1600 km long railway, counting from Konosha, was laid through rivers, taiga, swamps into the polar one, coal-rich Vorkuta. A reliable path connected the Far North with the center of the country, on whose territory the Great Patriotic War blazed for more than six months.

However, what to hide? The operation of the road, with an unwittingly low quality of construction work, led to frequent accidents and train crashes and interruptions in traffic. So, on February 15, 1942, on the Pyshor - Oshvor stretch, due to a skewed track, train # 707 crashed, 7 cars were broken, in August 1942, on the Hanovei - Piesets stretch, train # 716 crashed due to a shift in the superstructure of the track, 20 cars were broken.

The work of the road gradually entered the routine. By the decree of the State Defense Committee of the USSR of June 4, 1942, the Administration of the North-Pechora Railway was organized with the headquarters in the city of Kotlas.

And now everyday life has begun - despite the extreme conditions of construction and organization of the movement, the same super-difficult wartime conditions. During these days, the main task of the road was to provide a connection between the northern regions and the center of the country. From the north came, first of all, coal, oil, oil products and timber. Passenger traffic was limited and local in nature.

The road department was established to organize the operation of the newly built Kotlas-Vorkuta road and the Kotlas-Konosha line under construction.

The composition of the road included: the Kotlas - Kozhva railway line with a length of 728 km; the Konosha - Kotlas railway section with a length of 363 km; a section of the Gorky railway Kotlas - Kirov with a length of 370 km.

The boundaries of the road were established: Kozhva (including), Kirov (including), Konosha (excluding). The road was divided into 5 traffic sections:

DN-1 - Konosha (excluding) - Kizema (including) with the location of the branch at st. Kuloy

DN-2 - from st. Kizema (excluding) to st. Madmas (excluding) and from Art. Kotlas before the Zaovrazhie junction (including) with the location of the branch at the Kotlas station. But there was no room in Kotlas, so the department was temporarily located at the Cheryomukha station.

DN-3 - From Kirov - Kotlas (excluding) according to Art. Zavrazhie (excluding) with the location of the branch at the Murashi station.

DN-4 - from st. Madmas (including) to the Izhma station (excluding) with the location of the branch at the Knyazh-Pogost station.

DN-5 - from Izhva station (including) to Kozhva station (including) with the location of the branch at Izhva station, the office was temporarily located at Ira-Iol station.

The North-Pechora railway, built according to a temporary scheme, needed further large and lengthy construction work to complete the construction to the design standards. The Sevzheldorlag administration characterized the quality of the construction of the Kotlas - Kozhva railway line as follows: “Despite the open on December 29, 1940, the labor movement on the Kotlas - Kozhva section, the track needed major and very significant improvements throughout. The subgrade, laid along wet and clayey ditches or filled with an incomplete profile in swampy places, was deformed in a number of places and did not guarantee either continuity or an acceptable speed of train movement. Bridges were installed on numerous bypasses. The station development was negligible and did not meet the growing needs of traffic and cargo turnover. Permanent industrial and residential buildings were absent at most stations and railway lines. The water supply of steam locomotives was carried out at the simplest and temporary structures. Even before the war, the need for uninterrupted traffic in 1941 and the lack of large bridges with metal trusses required the construction of temporary combined bridges. "

After the completion of the entire railway line from Konosha to Vorkuta, a list of urgent works was approved to ensure the throughput of 12 pairs of trains per day, which included adding soil to the roadbed, ballasting the track, eliminating bypasses, arranging the water supply system, building station facilities and housing household premises.

Movement - in spite of all obstacles

The fourth five-year plan, adopted after the war, mainly focused on the demilitarization of the economy and, in particular, the further development of industry and railroad transport. During the Great Patriotic War, 31,850 industrial enterprises were destroyed in the Soviet Union, including metallurgical plants that produced about 60% of steel, mines that produced more than 60% of coal. Heavy industry production was 74.9% of the pre-war level. 4,100 railway stations and 65 thousand km of railway lines were destroyed.

In the Pechora basin, coal production was to be increased by 2.5 times, in the Ukhta oil-producing region - oil production by 2.3 times. All this urgently demanded a further increase in the carrying capacity of the Pechora railway.

The camp system, which took root in Komi during the war years, underwent changes. Having existed for six years, having fulfilled the task set before him at the cost of the super-intensive use of forced labor and large human casualties (in 1940-1945 10,584 prisoners died), Sevdvinlag was liquidated by order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of September 4, 1946.

In the post-war period, Sevzheldorlag increased the throughput and technical equipment of the Kotlas-Kozhva line, after the liquidation of Sevdvinlag, it was completing the Konosha-Kotlas line. At Pechorzheldorlag, construction work was carried out to fine-tune the Kozhva - Vorkuta railway line to the design standards, for which it was necessary to carry out excavation work in the amount of 4.5 million cubic meters. m, increase the capacity of trains to 20 pairs per day. Plans 1946 - 1947 were completed by Pechorzheldorlag for construction by 100.4%, for coal transportation by 101%. The 1948 plan provided for a further increase in the throughput of trains, the construction of new railway lines to the stations Oleniy and Zapadnaya, the creation of normal sanitary and living conditions for prisoners. As a result of these works, the Pechora railway, as it was recorded in official documents, "... has dramatically approached the design technical equipment", for example, all shifts and most of the bypasses have been eliminated. The throughput of trains on January 1, 1949 was 19.4 pairs of trains per day (on January 1, 1948 - 15.9). The earthwork plan was successfully completed, the track laying plan was completed ahead of schedule: to st. Western - in June 1948, to st. Deer - by November 7, 1948

According to the 1949 plan, it was necessary to prepare the Pechora railway for commissioning by the Ministry of Railways, for which it was necessary to remove another 571 thousand cubic meters. m of land, build permanent water supply points for steam locomotives, replace wooden bridges with reinforced concrete. In 1949, the throughput of the railway was significantly increased, which contributed to an increase in freight traffic. In total, 6338 thousand tons of coal were transported (according to the plan - 6359 thousand tons), while in 1948 - 5029 thousand tons of coal (according to the plan - 5010 thousand tons).

The Pechora - Vorkuta railway line by the time the Ministry of Railways was put into permanent operation (as of September 1, 1949) was a complex transport enterprise with a length of 462.26 kilometers. The erected embankments accounted for 405.07 km, or 88% of the entire length of the line, excavation excavations - 57.19 km, or 12%. The line was "snow-dependent" for 158 km, and therefore 134 thousand portable shields and a permanent fence with a length of 2865 meters were erected for the fence. A total of 490 artificial structures were built along this line, including 4 title, 12 large, 6 medium, 84 wooden bridges, 16 wooden trays, 200 reinforced concrete and 168 wooden pipes with a length of 5543 meters.

But - technique is technique, and people, their way of life, everyday life, family interests were also in the field of vision of those who developed railway transport in the North. In the post-war period, the development of the social infrastructure of the railway continued, two-story wooden and cinder block 8-apartment, one-story wooden 4-, 3-, 2-apartment buildings with a total area of ​​91.4 thousand square meters were built. meters.

The Pechora-Vorkuta railway line was accepted into permanent operation in accordance with the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated June 29, 1950 and the order of the Ministry of Railways of the Ministry of Railways of July 3, 1950. On July 10, 1950, the line was included in the Pechora Railway. On August 1, 1950, the state commission accepted the line for permanent operation with a rating of "good".

Road linking

During the little over ten post-war years, important events have taken place in the life of the road. Its borders changed, construction continued.

On June 17, 1946, the North-Pechora railway was renamed into the Pechora railway. On July 3, 1950, the 462 km Kozhva-Vorkuta railway line, which was accepted into permanent operation, was included in the Pechora railway. In order to improve transport links with the capital of the Komi Republic, construction of the Mikun - Syktyvkar line began in 1958.

In July 1959, the Pechora railway was transferred to the Northern Railway (order of the Ministry of Railways No. 42 / C dated 07.14.59).

By the time the Pechora railway was unified with the Northern one, new railway lines had been built on it. So, next to the existing lightweight line, the Konosha - Velsk line (104 km) was built. The Chum-Labytnangi line was built with a length of 195 km, it cut through the Polar Urals, going out to the Ob Bay. The Pechora road received a connection with the port of Salekhard, and a ferry crossing was arranged between Salekhard and Labytnangi. Second tracks were built on the Kotlas - Sosnogorsk section.

The construction of the railway noticeably revitalized the region of the Far North. Three distinct industrial regions were designated: Vorkutinsky - coal, Ukhtinsky - oil refining and Syktyvkarsky - timber processing.

The industry of the Komi Republic itself began to develop along the route under construction.

The population of the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in comparison with 1939 as a whole has increased 2 times, and the urban population during the same period increased more than 11 times. The Komi ASSR became an industrial region of the country with developed agriculture.

1930-40s became for the USSR the time of a new round of intensive industrialization. The record speed of construction of the North-Pechora railway was a direct result of the use of extreme measures. The average daily construction speed reached 1.9 km. For comparison: on Turksib - 1.1 km, on the Central Siberian Railway - 0.9 km.

In the book on the history of the SZD, published in 1968, the birth of this line is mentioned in passing, although the heroism of the builders who performed a great deed in a short time is noted. Today, many pages of the history of the development of the North, which owes a new life to the construction of steel highways, are perceived in a new way, leaving no one indifferent.

PERSONS

The names of outstanding entrepreneurs, engineers, specialists, prospecting for minerals, builders and workers of various specialties associated with the movement of trains remained in the history of the Northern Railway.

But among the people who played their role in the history of the North, there were a lot of people whose dramatic fates were repeated many times in the fates of other people, and whose names practically do not say anything to our contemporaries. These are all those who worked for the good of the country, being forced in the North, in camps, in prison. Their story about themselves is an incomparable page in the history of the SZD.

Today, we are told about the events of those years when the North-Pechora railway was built, which appeared not so long ago, based on open archival data about the life of the camps. There is another source of knowledge about that page of our history - these are the memories of eyewitnesses and participants in those events.

Zosima Vasilievich Panev

(party worker of the Komi ASSR, since 1972 - chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Komi ASSR)

“At the end of September 1941, a group of comrades and I visited one of the construction sites - in the Kochmes area, north of the town of Pechora. The section 10 kilometers long is divided into pickets of 500 meters, each of which employs 160-200 people, depending on the complexity of the section. On a board nailed to two poles, we read: "We will hand over picket 57 by September 28". The head of the detachment, noticing our doubts, confirmed: yes, the work will be completed. Many bonfires were burning everywhere, but not a single person was near them, everyone was working. People, like in an anthill, moved non-stop along the embankment: some were pushing wheelbarrows, others were laying sleepers, still others were carrying rails, others were hammering crutches ... impossible.

The secretary of the regional committee S.A. Ignatov, the head of the camp, the head of the camp department and the leader of the detachment, approached a group of workers. Have greeted. When asked how things are going, no one answered. The harsh, frowning looks of the workers seemed to say: what, don't you see? One of them waved his hand towards the dying fire. There, on the ground, five people were lying motionless. What's this? The head of the detachment reluctantly grunted: "They have already made the ends." There was nothing more to ask. We walked through the pickets of four detachments: the picture was the same everywhere. Eagerly, without noise, people did their job. The slogans "We will die, but we will win" - were in every detachment. We have not heard any complaints. Only one of the workers asked: “Too few grubs, I can't stand it for a long time. Could you add two hundred grams of bread? " Yes, the food was bad. The physical activity was enormous - 16-18 hours a day. Many, exhausted to the limit, fell and did not rise again. There were especially many losses in the last ten days: 30-40 people perished in the camp department every day "

(Based on materials: Path to Victory. Yaroslavl, 2000)

"I built this road"

“… But before you start asking, I'll ask you one question myself. Just one question: why only now do you remember us?

Prepared for a long conversation, the tape recorder diligently wound up the pause. What could I answer to a former prisoner? They didn’t know, didn’t believe that all this: camps, barbed wire and hard labor, could take place in our country? Like thousands of other boys, I once learned by heart the bright history of our country, darkened only by the war. Like everyone else, sometimes, more than once for a day, I stepped over the sparkling rails of the railway to Vorkuta, not thinking that I was crossing the greatest monument of sorrow and lawlessness for our places.

And only much later, when in the diversity of the published memoirs, diaries, testimonies of the Gulag prisoners, once and again such a familiar name for this road flashed, I realized one thing: that terrible and cruel, in whose existence I did not want to believe, was happening here.

But it is difficult to find even now, in our hidden area, a building more grandiose than this road. Tall earthen embankments, bridges, all this gives off such inviolability, as if there are no swamps, streams, rivers and rivers on the way. But it's not like a museum, you can't find a true display of the history of its construction. What museum is there - documents and those are reliably lost. What remains is only rare witnesses of that construction. Such as Nikolai Gennadievich Arbatov.

He was arrested at the very beginning of the thirty-seventh year. The guilt of the young NKVD guard really turned out to be "serious": accompanying the "enemies of the people" in railway cars from Chelyabinsk to Moscow, he, completely forgetting about "class intransigence", sometimes talked with them.

It is now almost as usual for us to perceive stories about what befell that generation. But imagine, even for a moment, the shock of a Komsomol member, not so much by a ticket as by the liking, who is escorted through the whole city under escort. Past life: Moscow, where he lived, school, study at a FZU, graduated with honors from an evening technical school, all this remained far, far away.

Court. Another trial. Final sentence: seven years. First he ended up in the Chelyabinsk prison. In the thirty-eighth, Arbatov was sent to the North.

The construction of a railway line from the distant coal-mining Vorkuta to Kotlas had just begun. The road only reached Vezdino. A lot of manpower was required, camps in the taiga, among the swamps, grew like mushrooms: numbers 36, 37, 38 ... The stages of prisoners went here one after another.

They gave us some kind of scow, I mean a wooden-chopped barge - Arbatov now and then spices his story with the tart smoke of a cheap "Prima" - such a strong one. Luke, through it all there, down. We were packed like herring in a barrel. They took me to Aikino. There was a church on the shore, whether it is worth it now - I don't know. There was a barge at that church, they took us out, and then on foot - to the track.

Even during the Kotlas transfer, Arbatov fell ill. And he fell seriously ill, the Chelyabinsk cell said. In the barge, occupying a wooden place in the sweaty crowd, he realized that something even more terrible was ahead. And, it is true, that stage from Aikino to the camp was the last for many: after long days in prison, everyone had little strength left. With the fallen convoy dealt with briefly: a shot, the column, without stopping, strides on. If it were not for his fellow prisoners, who did not let him fall, forced him to go, he would not have overcome this road.

The new batch of labor in the camp was immediately assigned to their places. To whom in the hands of an iron wheelbarrow and on the route: a quarry - an embankment. Anyone who could hardly keep not only a wheelbarrow, but also himself on his feet, fell into "weak-strength". And from there there are two ways: either you get better, you get stronger, or ...

It's just easy to say: "you will get stronger." These are hard workers, and even then they were given six hundred grams of bread for fulfilling the norm. Here (what to feed the goners for free) was supposed to be half less.

In the camp, the iron wheelbarrow was beyond his strength. Identified in "weak strength". In the barracks there is a fuel barrel, one side of it knocked out for firewood. The firewood will be brought directly by the long hours. So they put it in, there was no saw, no axes, but what kind of ax the prisoner had! Both day and night they warmed themselves and saved themselves near that stove.

A lot of people died, no one kept score. Each such barrack had its own funeral team; the men did not sit without work. They will even take off their linen and bury them naked.

Then I felt: I could not stand it for so long, I had to do something. He had a watch: an ordinary ladies' medallion in a silver case. The watchmaker has attached handles for the strap for convenience. When the soldier was arrested, he ran it over his hand while searching, but the sweater was thick and did not feel it. Then, in prison, this watch was hidden with the whole cell, protected like the apple of an eye. They hid until they stopped walking. And then he carried them through all the prisons and stages. Wherever I didn’t hide it: it would put it in bread, then in soap. As if he felt that they would come in handy.

I went up to one person, showed those hours:

- Tell me how to eat them.

- And you give them to the capter.

There was such a person, sitting in a good place, letting go of bread and cereals from the scales.

- Only you do not bargain with him, give it back. And he himself will figure out how to help you.

And so he did.

At first, the capter supported him on pieces: he would put a piece of bread on top, then a piece of sugar. Then, either tired, or, on the contrary, regretted, he says:

- You don't come to me anymore, I won't give you the pieces. I will do better for you. They bring frozen potatoes to the track, so they will put you on guard. Eat there.

By that time, a narrow-gauge railway had already been laid along the highway, and everything, including potatoes, was brought to the camp along it. The bags were dumped right under the open shed.

The gatehouse partner looked at the goner and just shook his head in doubt:

- Eat more. Either you will get stronger, if your stomach can withstand it, or you will completely weaken.

... Arbatov made a long pause in his story, asked to turn off the tape recorder. He sat resting, then went to the kitchen. He returned with a new pack of Prima. He lit a cigarette, nodded to me: turn it on.

- I first fell on the potatoes - I have diarrhea. And the partner is all his own: eat more. Either pan, or disappeared. So I ate. After a while, the diarrhea stopped. I began to recover, even once I went to unload the bags. The men were carrying sacks, and I put my back on my back. They put a sack on me - and I fell right there.

“Nope,” they say, “you’re not good enough yet.

Survived. But we have to work, give the norm. On the embankment - like an anthill in the early morning: some carry heavy sand on carts, others load it, others count the carts. There is also work for the elite: they indicate where to unload the cart.

No matter how little the prisoner's strength, and in the cold, work is the main salvation. Yes, and there was an incentive: you dung the norm on a wheelbarrow - you will get 600 grams of bread. Overfulfilled - also the appendage is attached. If you fail, the ration will be cut in half, and there will be nothing to receive at all.

I went up to one of the foremen, a thief, also a Muscovite, from Maryina Roshcha: take him to your brigade.

- I'll take it, - he replies, - if you promise that you will do the norm. Or at least close to normal, then I will help.

Then Arbatov realized what it means to help a person if he almost fulfills the norm. Ten or fifteen percent is not enough for it, the foreman will add. But, adding extra carts of soil, he has to take them away from someone. Not from someone who himself exceeded the norm, and, therefore, provided himself with an additional ration. They take it away from someone who is doomed to failure in advance because of his weakness. He doesn’t care what the incomplete ration gets for.

The rate was considerable. Of course, there were healthy men, they had carts - almost a cubic meter of sand was included in this one. But the majority was given the norm with great difficulty. Until the red circles in front of his eyes he rested, thinking only of one thing: to stand.

Many years after the liberation, the same cart was still rusting for a long time in the barn, sometimes he carried firewood into the yard on it. The workers of the local history museum took an interest: if only the exhibit was valuable. Nikolai Gennadievich only threw up his hands: she's gone.

There were Chinese, a whole brigade. The workers are excellent, hardworking, well, like ants - my interlocutor is in a hurry to express something, as if he is afraid to forget the most important thing, and then he becomes silent, resting from the surging memories. - Little ones, but everyone is driving, they are driving, they will not stand up, they will not rest. And they fell, so no one survived. What was destroying? Both hunger and frost. Terrible frosts. Such a saying existed among us: we are not afraid of a frost of forty-five degrees, much more terrible when forty-one is in the yard. Why? At forty-five they left in the barracks, they didn't drive to work, but at forty-one - go ...

That first winter of 1938-1939 was fierce and fatal for many. They gave out wadded trousers and wadded quilted jackets to the prisoners, the rest - all their own. Instead of felt boots - tuni. They were made by local craftsmen in the following way: you bring them the sleeves of a quilted jacket, they will sew rubber tops - here are the shoes.

In the summer, the same kind of prisoners came to the embankment.

- And we were sent on. This time we were loaded into veal wagons and along the way, which we had dumped, but not yet balanced, they were taken out again to Vezdino. But there were already significantly fewer of us. If half survived, that's good.

Again they brought them to the river, where a barge was waiting. Command: for landing, one at a time. The convoy ran and fussed.

- And how did the guards treat you?

- There was no particular bullying. And there was discipline. He has a gun, if you want it or not, you will become obedient. He didn't like something about us: lie down. So you throw your head into the snow. You are lying: citizen boss, we are already tired. - Well, look ... By the way, when they moved here, to Urdoma, there were practically no deaths.

The barge was taken to Palamysh, from it a stage further, to the station of Urdoma.

In Urdom, the party was placed in a barrack with an unfinished roof: while you spend the night somehow, you will make the roof tomorrow. We spent the night, and the next morning early in the morning to work.

They built a section from Urdoma towards Tuva. We worked quietly here for some time. As I remember now, I even managed to receive two parcels from home. I handed over these parcels for fidelity to the capter, only on faith. And the capter changed, they changed often, like gloves. What are you, - is surprised, - what a package, you didn't hand over anything to me, fuck off. That's all. My father sent me everything so-called hard smoked sausage, it was black, dry.

The bridge was erected, the route was cut. The bypass road was first built there, it was not built so carefully: the slopes, climbs could not be maintained. The roof of the barracks was made. Instead of a bed, there is moss, but it was here in those years such that as you step, your foot will fail. As soon as they settled down, they got involved in the work, as the new prisoners were driven to their habitable place: Polish prisoners of war.

They were left to finish building the road, the camp was removed further, to Tuva. On foot, okay, what else is not far. The first night they spent on the ground, only then they hurriedly began to build for themselves something similar to housing.

I remember one incident from my life in Tuva. The finger on the hand is swollen, hurt somewhere. A messenger comes to the barrack: the boss calls you. And the new chief settled behind the zone, when he arrived, they cut down a new house for him.

I came.

- Why are you not at work, - asks.

- I can't work. The redness has gone, - as proof, Arbatov put his finger forward.

- Well, well, okay. We will check this.

He sat down opposite himself, he sat down next to him and the question asks:

- And where is everyone else that went with you on the case - and names those with whom Arbatov went through the court.

He named those with whom he had a chance to go through the stages. The chief listened:

“I have no more questions for you.

And he let go.

Here Arbatov asked questions: how does the new boss know all the circumstances of his case? I met the foreman who lived with the chief in the house, he came up to him:

- Well, tell me, how does he know everything about me, about my monoceeds?

He laughs:

- He knows you as flaky, he knows you better than you do yourself, because all your affairs passed through his hands. He was the People's Commissar of the NKVD in Bashkiria, and Chelyabinsk also belonged to Bashkiria, to Ufa. So he sat you down - and sat down himself.

How many worked there, in Tuva, then the new boss somehow imperceptibly disappeared. But in the end he did a good deed to Arbatov, put him on a thug's job: to carry bread.

- Kaper only teases: you eat, eat, that you bring whole loaves. And honesty torments me so much that I can't even break off the hump. I'll bring everything and hand it over to him by weight. He reproaches me afterwards. He sees that I'm afraid to take, he will break off a chunk himself: go to the barrack, cover yourself with a blanket and eat.

On Tuva, they barely had time to make an embankment, they drove further - to Tyla-Yol. The station was deserted, except for the birch forest there was nothing. I didn’t go with a wheelbarrow any more, they made me a rationer.

Once on the embankment appeared the chief of works, the second person after the chief of the camp. Arbatov decided on a desperate act: he stopped him and blurted out quickly:

- I am an electrician, a good electrician, Moscow. He graduated from FZU, evening technical school, worked a lot. If you need me, please remember.

He took the notebook out of his pocket:

- Full Name?

I wrote it down. A month passes, the second.

Call to watch:

- Arbatov, pack your things, you will go to another place.

And what should the prisoner collect, what things? A piece of half-eaten bread, a spoon, a bowl from a canning jar. They gave out a convoy - a young soldier, so they went.

- I am ahead, he lagged behind a little, - Arbatov even seems ridiculous to imagine this picture himself now, - he is not particularly afraid of me, he walks about five steps. When he also crawls into his pocket, he will take out a piece, chew.

So they came to the Protoka, a large camp on the very bank of the Vychegda. Arbatov was installed as an electrician. There he was issued a pass to the unconvoy and the problem was explained:

- You will provide the excavator with water and electric light. There is an engine, there is a pump, but it still needs to be done to make them work.

Here he lived both the summer and the winter of 1939-1940. Here I almost gave up, having recovered from malaria. I saw how the bridge was being built across the Vychegda, how the embankment was brought up to it. The road was being built in a hurry: the country, living in anticipation of an imminent war, needed Vorkuta coal. The camp command urged on: faster, faster, neither the forces of the prisoners, nor their lives sparing. There was even a Stakhanov movement in the camp: for exceeding the norm - increased rations.

The spring of the forty-first is over, summer. On the twenty-second of June in the camp a commotion swept through the prisoners: war. However, there were no big changes after that. The convoy was reinforced: they recruited old men through the villages, and shoved rifles into their hands. They didn’t see good food before the war: only potatoes, they suffered very much from the lack of salt. The makhorka was also terribly expensive. After June 1941, the food was even worse.

They took to the front and from the camp, but, of course, not the 58th - political - article. They took criminals, summoned them to watch:

- Will you go to the front?

- I'll go.

The first train on the road passed on November 7, 1941, quite a bit late by the start of the war. Everyone in the camp already knew: both the authorities and the prisoners that there would be a train. It was small: one two-axle trailer was cool, the rest were ordinary, veal. A power station was being transported in one of the carriages, it was working, the train was all decorated with garlands of light bulbs. It was late afternoon, and he walked in a halo of lights past Madmas station, where the whole camp was lined up.

The train passed, but there was still a lot of work on the road. Construction wagons went along its only track, coal and other cargo went. Arbatov was soon transferred again to Urdoma, to the camp on the Column. There he remained an electrician.

Knowledge of the electric power saved me from many troubles. Like that, I have claws on my shoulders and - go wherever you want: I am a man in the line of duty. But there was also a responsibility. They say once: big bosses are coming. The bosses did not go alone, with him the deputies for energy, communications and other issues. While the trailer is at a dead end, it is necessary to make lighting in it. I say: I will. How to do it? The power plant stood at the station. The current station in Urdom is already the third in a row, and the oldest, the first, looked more like a hut. And the power plant stood where the stone bath is now.

They took a wire of large cross-section, unwound the bay, pulled it to the arrow. And the point is in December, frosts. They dragged the wire under the rails and attached it to the trailer. We tried to turn it on - there is a light. It's scary: a bare wire lies right in the snow, if you step in, it will kill you. But the light was on all night in the trailer.

Arbatov spent the whole night at the power plant. The peasants who work for it, I asked about one thing: do not let down, the lights will go out - everyone will be uncomfortable. All right.

In the winter of 1944, his sentence ended, but for another five years after that he had a defeat in his rights: he had no voting rights, could not be a member of a trade union ... Once every three months he had to report to the district commandant's office, so the Yarensk roads had to be trampled down a lot.

There was nothing to think about returning to Moscow, the capital was closed to him. When he was rehabilitated in 1958, by that time there was a family, five children. Here, in Urdom, I first bought a house as old as firewood. Then he set up his house, not far from the road, you can hear through the windows the noise of passing trains. The road did not seem to let him go from itself, like an all-powerful mistress, tying his fate with hers.

In the mid-fifties, some kind of imperceptible, quiet reorganization took place: Pecherlag was renamed Pecherstroy, the towers began to be demolished, reinforced concrete insulators were blown up, and they were so strong, they say that the explosions were not taken.

Nikolai Gennadievich does not complain about life and does not blame anyone for his twisted fate. No matter what happened, he still had a starting point from those thirties and forties that allowed him to endure all adversity with courage: "It has been worse."

He worked until retirement, as before, as an electrician. And although it was not possible to study later, I did it all by self-taught. He was considered a cool specialist, it happened that he found errors in projects with certified engineers from Arkhangelsk.

The house, though old, is its own. Children with grandchildren often come. All is well, I just began to get sick often. Things are good. But still…

The most important holiday in Urdom, Victory Day, has recently gone quiet. On such a day, almost the entire village gathers for a rally, war veterans are honored as heroes, and they have earned such respect. But on this holiday I suddenly clearly imagined how a former prisoner stood alone at the gate of a small old house, who had devoted a large and most difficult part of his life to the construction of the road. How people like him, people with a broken fortune and illnesses acquired by hard work, are silently looking out of the windows at their peers surrounded by honor. What are they guilty of before you, Victory?

Oleg Gloomy (Based on the text sent to the competition dedicated to the history of the Northern Railway)

Kotlas Centralized Library System:

Type of document: Article from the collection (one-volume)

Title: How did the construction of the North-Pechora road begin

Place of publication: Chronicle of the Northern Highway: from the XIX century to the XXI century. - Yaroslavl, 2008 .-- S. 142-155, 158-169.

The Pechora Railway 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.

Unlike the old and inhabited, mainly sawmill, South Komi, Central Komi is a remote taiga region where oil is extracted. The darkest page in the history of Komi - the camps and prisons - is best preserved here. The center of the region is the second largest city of Ukhta in the republic. We will travel by train to Knyazhpogost, Ukhta, Sosnogorsk and stop at the taiga station Irael.

An hour's journey from Mikuni, the train reaches the Knyazhpogost station, behind which the town of Emva (14 thousand inhabitants) is hidden:

Emva is the Komi name of the Vym river, at the mouth of which is the ancient village of Ust-Vym. The village of Knyazhpogost up the river has been known since 1490, and probably here was the residence of the Zyryan prince. In 1941, the village of Zheleznodorozhny was founded on the other side, and by 1985 it had grown so much that it received the status of a city.

Local architectural landmark - vocational school in the style of wooden constructivism:

Abandoned sawmill. Pay attention to the graffiti - remember there was such a party in the 1990s?

People on the platform:

Due to warming, the snow has turned gray and shriveled from the rain. This is the result of such endless gloom. The picture was added by a paddy wagon:

Transfer of prisoners in Knyazhpogost from train to van:

Sindor station is an hour and a half from Knyazhpogost - many stations on the Pechora highway are made in a similar style:

Most of the Stalinist railway stations of the Pechora Mainline are wooden (Tobys station):

From Mikuni to Ukhta - almost 7 hours of travel. Half an hour before the last, a black waste heap suddenly grows out of the taiga:

This Yarega is a much more interesting place than it seems. Here is the world's only OIL MINE. The super-heavy oil of the Yarega field is more like bitumen; it is very difficult to pump it from a well with a pump. True, it is shallow - only 200 meters. It is even more interesting that the field is not just oil, but oil-titanium - that is, titanium ore is also extracted along with viscous oil.

At the station there is one of the few authentic Stalinist railway stations that have survived on the small stations of the Pechora Main Line.

The train enters Ukhta, which stretches along the river of the same name (in the Komi language - Ukva) at the foot of the Timan ridge:

In modern Komi, Ukhta is the second largest (117 thousand inhabitants), over the past 20 years, almost twice ahead of the deserted Vorkuta. It was founded in 1929 as the village of Chibyu, which since 1933 has become the center of Ukhtpechlag (Ukhtinsko-Pechora camp), especially gloomy fame was created by the "Kashketinskie shootings" - in 1937-38, during the suppression of unrest among the w / c, more than 2,500 people were shot ... The head of the camp, Efim Kashketin, used a very effective method: the suicide bombers were allegedly led through the taiga to another camp, and in a certain place without warning they were shot from a machine gun - while those who remained in the camp did not even know about it ...

However, as time went on, the village located in the center of the republic grew, and in 1938 it was withdrawn from the Gulag, receiving the status of an urban settlement and the name Ukhta. In 1939-41, there were plans to move the capital of the Komi ASSR there (due to a much more adequate location).

The station at Ukhta station is almost the same in Inta and Vorkuta:

The station is located in a deep lowland, about a kilometer from the city center - but the way there goes through the industrial zone and the bridge, so it's better to take a minibus. Behind the railway are high and very steep hills of the Timan Ridge:

One of them, Mount Vetlasyan, is crowned by Electric Lenin ... more precisely, it has long been no longer electric, but remains one of the symbols of Ukhta:

From the trains you can see the Ukhta oil refinery - small by national standards, but the only one in the Komi Republic. Oil has been known here since the 15th century, but then people simply did not know what to do with this muck. In 1745-67, the miner Fyodor Pryadunov carried out its production - oil seeped from the springs, and he somehow collected it from the water film. As much as 3.5 tons were mined! From Ukhta, oil was sent to Moscow, where it was refined. The next well was drilled a hundred years later (1868), and at the end of the 19th century, Ukhta oil was used to refuel steamers in the Barents Sea, sailing down the Pechora. And the first oil refinery operated on this site back in 1914-24.

The highway runs parallel to the Ukhta River. Vetlasyan station, again within the city limits:

Half an hour by train from Ukhta - and here is the Sosnogorsk station:

The suburb of Ukhta (27 thousand inhabitants) already stands on Izhma, at the mouth of the Ukhta River. In fact, it grew out of the Izhma station founded in 1939. From here the mustache branches off to Troitsko-Pechorsk, but this is not the main thing: for the highway Sosnogorsk is the Land of the Earth. Further there is a winter road to Pechora, and in summer it is a dead end. The goods are loaded from cars to trains, and the cars themselves are transported on railway platforms. In general, this is probably why Sosnogorsk is perhaps the largest station in Komi:

The city of Sosnogorsk itself is quite distinctive:

Private sector of the Soviet era:

Touch up the house and the fence - and you get a picture for a New Year's card.

And one of the strangest features of Central Komi is the barbed wire fences. Most likely, this is protection from animals, and most likely not only dogs.

Wooden churches of Sosnogorsk:

The Sosnogorsk Gas Processing Plant, founded in the late 1940s as a technical soot plant, impresses with its harsh post-apocalypticism:

Between Izhma and Pechora there is a remote taiga region, where you cannot see large settlements along the railway, only small station settlements. Therefore, we will finish the trip at the Irael station, 2.5 hours from Ukhta.

The fact is that Irael is the "gateway" to two distant taiga regions at once. Closer - Izhma, inhabited by the most unusual and close-knit Komi subethnos. Further away is the Pomor Old Believer Ust-Tsilma, which is considered to be one of the last strongholds of the reserved Russian North. From the Irael station to Izhma, for all 100 kilometers along the road, there are no signs of housing - only a deep taiga.

Such a harsh and brutally beautiful land can be observed from the train window. It is interesting, of course, to get to know the North better. After all, the most interesting begins there, away from the highway.

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 taken by the Moscow-Blagoveshchensk train, which is 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 madmen can use a sit-down car 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, drawn 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, at which a branch departs from the Arkhangelsk mainline 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 onward. 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.

An area of ​​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 put 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).

But in general - 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, the 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 section these roads turn out to be combined. There is also a locomotive depot (TCh-11), opened in 2004.

Vologda itself looks quite ordinary 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. So many things were 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 a little 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 across 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.

Then 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:

Railway 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, 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 midges. 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 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. This is where the difference in income between neighboring regions is particularly 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, it was not possible to establish its name. At a distance you can see the place of its confluence with the Vym:

A typical linear station on a highway: an 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 railroad 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 there was any talk about it.

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?

The Pechora tributary 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, boggy bald patches appear in the taiga, behind which you can see the peaks 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" segment 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. Drunk 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. Simply 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 RF Ministry of Railways, 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.