Behind the polar circle

What is known about the colony in which Alexei Navalny was found

Alexei Navalny was found in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the correctional colony No. 3 (“Polar Wolf”). She is located in a small village of Harp. "Cold" says what is known about it.

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The village of Harp, in which IK-3 is located, is located behind the polar circle. You can get there from Moscow by train - the road takes almost two days.

The colony is located in the same place , where in the late 1940s, prisoners of the Ob correctional labor camp who worked at the 501st construction site of the Gulag lived-it was the eastern section of the railway , which was supposed to stretch from the polar Urals to the Yenisei River.

Due to the post-war hunger of 1946-1947, most convicts in this camp were serving a sentence for the theft of food. There were many who got there under the 58th article for a wide variety of political crimes: from jokes to the armed struggle against the Soviet regime. There were, of course, criminals.

At the construction site, the prisoners had to bring down the forest, build a railway embankment, clean the paths of snow. In winter, such work combined with meager equipment led to frostbite. In the summer of the prisoners, mosquitoes and midges were pestering, and due to the polar day some had to work on a night shift. At the same time, on a general scale of the Gulag, mortality was low there. Researchers associate this with the fact that the authorities were forced to protect employees on an important project for them, which had to be completed in just six years.

After Stalin’s death, more than half a project, an completed one - was 800 kilometers - was abandoned. It was later considered inappropriate to resume him. The construction incredible in scale, which demanded so many victims, but did not bring any benefit, began to be called the "dead road" and "dear to nowhere."

IK-3 is considered a colony for especially dangerous criminals, but about 20 years ago, general regime detachments created there. That is why in 2005 they were able to send the businessman Platon Lebedev, convicted in the Yukos case.

In IK-3, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug regularly identifies violations. In 2013, prisoner Miho Hulilidze stated the torture in the colony. Then a check was checked in the colony. This year, a young man was reported , who sewed his mouth with threads in protest against cruelty from the colony. This situation was not commented on the FSIN.

In the same Harpe is the IK-18 “Polar Owl” , where “Bittsev maniac” Alexander Pichushkin and convicted for the terrorist attack in Beslan Nurpash Kulaev are serving a sentence.