Vorkuta ' onMouseout='HidePop("67233")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Nenets_language">Nenets
Nenets is a language spoken by the Nenets people in northern Russia. It belongs to the Samoyedic languages which form the Uralic language family with the Finno-Ugric languages. There are two major dialects—Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets—with low mutual intelligibility between the two...
for
Place teems with bears) is a
coalCoal is a readily combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock normally occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
miningMining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash...
town in the
Komi RepublicThe Komi Republic is a federal subject of Russia .-Geography:The republic is situated to the west of the Ural mountains, in the north-east of the East European Plain...
,
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, situated just north of the
Arctic circleThe Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. In , it is the parallel of latitude that runs approximately 66° 33′ 39″ north of the Equator. The region north of this circle is known as the Arctic, and the zone just to the south is called the Northern...
in the Pechora coal basin at the
UsaUsa is a river in the Komi Republic of Russia. It is the largest tributary of the Pechora River, which it joins from the right. It is 565 km long, with a drainage basin of 93 600 km²....
river.
Vorkuta ' onMouseout='HidePop("67233")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Nenets_language">Nenets
Nenets is a language spoken by the Nenets people in northern Russia. It belongs to the Samoyedic languages which form the Uralic language family with the Finno-Ugric languages. There are two major dialects—Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets—with low mutual intelligibility between the two...
for
Place teems with bears) is a
coalCoal is a readily combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock normally occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
miningMining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash...
town in the
Komi RepublicThe Komi Republic is a federal subject of Russia .-Geography:The republic is situated to the west of the Ural mountains, in the north-east of the East European Plain...
,
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, situated just north of the
Arctic circleThe Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. In , it is the parallel of latitude that runs approximately 66° 33′ 39″ north of the Equator. The region north of this circle is known as the Arctic, and the zone just to the south is called the Northern...
in the Pechora coal basin at the
UsaUsa is a river in the Komi Republic of Russia. It is the largest tributary of the Pechora River, which it joins from the right. It is 565 km long, with a drainage basin of 93 600 km²....
river. , its population was 84,917. It had its origin in one of the more notorious forced labour camps of the
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
which was established in 1932. It was at Vorkuta, in 1937, that the Stalinist regime in the 1930s completed the physical liquidation of the Trotskyist
Left OppositionThe Left Opposition was a faction within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1927 headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with...
.
In 1941 the town and the labor camp system based around it were connected to the rest of the world by a prisoner-built railroad linking
KonoshaKonosha is an urban-type settlement and the administrative center of Konoshsky District of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located south of Arkhangelsk. Population:...
and
KotlasKotlas is a town in the south of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, situated at the confluence of the Northern Dvina and Vychegda Rivers. Population: The town has the largest paper mill in Russia and also is a center of the timber industry and an important river port and a railroad center .The place...
, and the camps of
IntaInta is a town in the Komi Republic, Russia. During the Soviet era a "corrective labor camp" was located here. Population: 38,300 ; It is served by Inta Airport.At Inta, there is a CHAYKA-transmitter....
. Vorkuta became a city on 26 November 1943. It was the largest centre of
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
camps in
European RussiaEuropean Russia refers to the western areas of Russia that lie within Europe, comprising roughly 3,960,000 km², and spanning across 40% of Europe. Its eastern border is defined by the Ural mountains and in the South it is defined by the border with Kazakhstan. This area includes Moscow and St...
and served as administrative center for a large number of smaller camps and sub-camps, among them Kotlas,
PechoraPechora is a town in the Komi Republic, Russia. It is situated on the Pechora River, near the northern Ural Mountains. Population: 48,700 . It is served by Pechora Airport and is affiliated with the nearby Pechora Kamenka military air base....
, and Izhma (modern
SosnogorskSosnogorsk is a town in the Komi Republic, Russia. It is located at . During the Soviet era, a corrective labour camp was located here. Population: 29,587 . The town was known as Izhma until renamed in 1957.- External links :* *...
). In 1953, the town witnessed a major uprising by the camp inmates, the
Vorkuta UprisingThe Vorkuta Uprising was a major uprising of the concentration camp inmates in Vorkuta, Russia in July–August 1953, shortly after the arrest of Lavrentiy Beria. The uprising was violently stopped by the camp administration after two weeks of bloodless standoff....
. Like other camp uprisings (such as the
Kengir uprisingThe Kengir uprising was a prisoner uprising that took place in the Soviet prison labor camp Kengir in May and June 1954. Its duration and intensity distinguished it from other Gulag uprisings in the same period ....
), it was bloodily quelled by the
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
and the
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
. Afterwards, in the 1950s, many of the Gulag camps were disbanded. However, it is reported that some in the Vorkuta area continued to operate into the 1980s.
By the early part of the 21st century many of the mines have been closed as problems with high costs of operations have plagued the mine operators. At one time during the late 1980s and 1990s there were labor actions in the area by miners who had not been paid for a year.
The city is served by
Vorkuta AirportVorkuta Airport is a small airport in the Komi Republic, Russia located 3 km west of Vorkuta. It services small airliners. The pavement length is 2200 meters, however it is shortened 300 m due to a displaced threshold.-References:*-External links:*...
. During the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
an Arctic Control Group forward staging base for
strategic bomberA strategic bomber is a heavy type aircraft designed to drop large amounts of ordnance onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating an enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, which are used in the battle zone to attack troops and military equipment, strategic bombers are...
s was located at Vorkuta Sovetskiy.
External links
Adapted from the article Vorkuta, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation LicenseThe GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
.