Yakut tin on bones

The "prison without gratings" was called Yakutia during the time of repression because of huge territories and harsh climate. During the years of Stalinism, the 105 camps of the Gulag located here occupied almost a third of the region of the region. The prisoners were sent to the most inaccessible areas - to the Topon, Oymyakonsky, Verkhoyansk, where free labor was mastered by new territories, built villages and roads, and developed deposits. Thousands of prisoners died here from hunger and frost. Today it is simply impossible to get to many of these places.

At the end of August, a group of youth from the Verkhoyansk district of Yakutia went to Mount Kester. There, where several decades ago, a mine and the Yani correctional labor camp was located. The remains of most other institutions of the Gulag, scattered throughout North Yakutia, are practically inaccessible today, and to the fact that it has been preserved from the Yang ITL, it still leads a straight line as an arrow, the road is 64 kilometers from the village of Batagay in the elevations and forests. Local residents say that Stalin himself drew a line from the enrichment factory to Mount Kester, not paying attention to the complexity of the relief. The prisoners of Jangens had to pave the way, many of whom, unable to withstand hard work, remained here forever.

Road to Mount Cester

Every year getting to the kester is becoming increasingly difficult. The route blurred in two places leads through an impassable forest to the ore -bearing mountain 1271 meters high. Already at the top, a narrow gravel road stretches with a serpentine along the edge of a rocky scree. There are no trees, only a stone lies - a ore field, which 80 years ago was appreciated above human life. This summer, in these places, the “Cester is our pain” that has already become the traditional campaign, which is conducting the district department of social policy, has again been held.

“The Gulag camp is a terrible echo of the totalitarian system of the Soviet state,” says Dmitry Gabyshev, chief specialist of the department. - Our Verkhoyansk district since the tsarist times was a place of political exile, and during the years of the USSR, also a place for mining, where the convicts of prisoners were used. A prison without gratings, around the mountains, even with great desire and diligence, it was impossible to escape and survive. The action was dedicated to the perpetuating of the memory of the prisoners of the Yang system of camps so that we, modern youth, remember and know how much the future was built for us.

A prison without gratings, around the mountains, even with a great desire and diligence, it was impossible to escape and survive

In 1937, on Mount Kester, Moscow Geologist Porfiry Prokopyevich Epifanov opened the tin and rare metals field. In those years, the northeastern Yakutia was little-studied, and any find on this earth was extremely important for the Soviet economy, which largely depended on the labor of prisoners at that time. On the basis of the largest of the tin deposits discovered by Epifanov, Ege-Haysky, the construction of the mine began in 1938, the village was laid here. Later, this deposit and the local enrichment factory became the leaders of the industry on the scale of the whole country.

Enriching factory

At the end of 1940, all construction in the vicinity was transferred to the NKVD, and soon the camps of prisoners with free labor appeared in Verkhoyansk. The first of them was the Ege-Hayan ITL No. 6. Following him is the camp station of Mount Kester. Eight years later, there were already 22 such points here, and all of them entered Yangling, subordinate to Dalstroy of the NKVD. The prisoners arrived here from Magadan. On cargo ships, they were brought to the mouth of the Yana River, where they transferred to barges and delivered to the Batagai pier, from where they were distributed along the camp points. Sometimes this path had to be done on foot.

One can only guess how many people died on the way, without reaching the place of hard labor

“These are hundreds and thousands of kilometers of the journey mainly on off -road in wild inhuman conditions,” the geologist Arkady Vishnevsky wrote in his memoirs. “You can only guess how many people died along the way, without reaching the place of hard labor. Already on the site of prisoners, they used in the most difficult physical work: in the mine, the construction, laying of roads, mining, ore mining, ore mining, mining. Forests and foresters, with brigades of 30–40 people under the supervision of the guards, went to work every morning, and in the evening, after the search, they again hit the prickly wire. Batagai, where I had to live and work, is largely connected with the difficulty of slaves of the Stalinist camps. "

House of Culture of the village of Batagai, built by prisoners

At the top of Mount Kester is absolute silence. Around only a mountain and taiga, there is no hint of a settlement to the horizon. There is nowhere to run away from here. The first thing that catches the eye is not the icy beauty of nature, but the huge heaps of tin ore, which prisoners mined in the mine, day after Krayka Kirka, is a stone. This convict could not cancel any weather-neither a penetrating purge, nor a 50-degree frost. In the winter of 1953, when they announced an amnesty, people, having thrown everything, left here who was where. Today, nobody needs this pile of stone, it became a monument to the prisoner of the cester - those who did not live to be released.

There are no exact data on the number of prisoners of the Jangin, the composition of the contingent, and the official reasons for their imprisonment in the correctional camp today.

“The theme of the January remains completely closed,” says the doctor of historical sciences Pavel Ghazaryan . - We do not have data on the quantity, the names of prisoners, their personal affairs. All this information in the Soviet period was classified for obvious reasons. Today, the documents are stored in Magadan, as Yangling was part of Dalstroy. There are papers dedicated to the economic activity of the enterprise in the public domain, and no matter what prisoners. A special resolution is necessary to get this data. Until we own them.

At the same time, there were from 200 to 1000 people in the camp, the former director of the Local Lore of Verkhoyansk Varvara Kirillina believes. For many years, she has been studying the old buildings of the Gulag in the district and came to the conclusion that the prisoners were located in small huts about a hundred people in each. I had to sleep with bunk bunks, hiding in the remains of fabric from old quilted jackets. Winter in the top is harsh, especially at the top of the mountain. The walls froze and covered with ice, no snow melted on the floor.

Exposition at the Verkhoyan Museum "Pole of the Cold" dedicated to the prisoners

Not everyone was able to withstand such conditions, someone was dying, someone tried to run. The local population actively helped to search and find fugitives. Pavel Ghazaryan gives as an example a case dated September 15, 1943, when the head of Dalstroy awarded the Certificate of Honor and the money of a student of the 4th grade of the school of the collective farm named after Voroshilov for the capture of the convict fled from the camp, who was serving 8 years under the 58th article for counter-revolutionary activities.

Winter in the top is harsh, especially at the top of the mountain. The walls froze and covered with ice, no snow melted on the floor

In 1952, nine political prisoners fled from the camp on Mount Kester - the newspaper "Trud" wrote about this. The six of them were killed during the detention, three were returned to hard labor. To intimidate the rest, the guards chopped off their hands and threw them near the camp of the camp.

“I visited Mount Kester this summer for the first time,” says a 19-year-old resident of Batagai, student Yegor Oldostin . - For a long time I wanted to go, but since not any car will go there and not everyone wants to take it, it was possible to get out only this year. On the mountain is very heavy air, it was difficult for me to breathe, and the situation itself seemed to be pressing. So many empty barrels, destroyed buildings, the former mine and everywhere cobblestones that were taken out. It is hard to imagine how people could live and work there. We were told at school about camps and prisoners, but when you see all this with your own eyes, you experience other emotions. The story flew before my eyes. A very heavy place.

There is very heavy air on the mountain, it was difficult for me to breathe, and the situation itself seemed to be a crushing

29-year-old Nikolai Gabyshev , a signalman from Yakutsk, was in the vicinity of Batagai as a child, knows that there were many victims in the local camps, he heard from his father about the slopes of huts near the adults near Steplen. Nevertheless, he defines his attitude to Stalin rather as neutral:

- I saw how local Komsomol members and communists from the Communist Party collected signatures for installing the monument to Stalin. I can’t say anything good or bad about him. I am neutral, I know that his bust is installed in Yakutsk. And I have a positive attitude to the monuments of history, the history of the country needs to know, and I do not mind.

Remains of the mine on Mount Caester

Over the years, the deposit had impoverished, the prisoners were thrown for processing dumps, forced to open the old mines. But, despite the use of slave labor, Olov’s booty became unprofitable, and immediately after the Gulag collapse the mine was closed. After 20 years, the Mining of Ege Hai and the Batagai enrichment factory ceased their work.

Memorable sign to the repressed prisoners

In the Bataga itself, the relatives of the prisoners can no longer be found. Most of the liberated immediately left these places in the late 50s. The remaining lived a short lonely life. In those days, local schoolchildren were often taken on hike to Mount Kester. Among them was a former resident of the Verkhoyansk district Natalia Zhukova.

“Then the remains of the camp were still visible, since the program of repression and labor camps was completed only in 57,” she recalls. - And in the Pioneer camp of "Yutty" we rested every summer, the vouchers stood out to parents through the trade union committee. Getting to the camp was not easy. As it turned out later, the "yutty" was a place of exile of prisoners, mainly according to the ill-fated 58th article. In the village of Ege Hai, under this article in the "Correctional Labor Yangling" there was a lot of intelligentsia, among them teachers, doctors, engineers. They carried culture to our village.

Today it is only possible to guess how many people died behind the barbed wire of the Yang ITL. Local residents say that the guard carried corpses beyond the territory of the zone, where they were laid with stacks, and then threw them into trenches and covered with turf. The burial of the camp prisoners have not yet been discovered.