Land of gold

Land of gold

Magadan Oblast is one of major gold mining regions in Russia. More known like Kolyma this region is situated in the Far East of Russia. In 30-s this subarctic region was populated by prisoners of Gulag, that were building roads, towns and infrastructure for gold mining in a cold endless forest at the edge of the world. In 50-s the Gulag period ended and Kolyma became populated by ordinary soviet people from all the country. Despite frozen temperatures and the hard-to-reach position of the region in Soviet times Kolyma was a well populated region with more than 550 thousand of inhabitants. With the end of USSR local economy collapsed and the population of the region dropped more than four times. A territory bigger than Germany or UK become nearly uninhabited, full of ghost-towns.

Today, gold is still mined here. It is everywhere - even at the site of the former villages and labor camps. From the ghost-towns remain only ruins. Where houses, streets, shops and hospitals were once, gold is mined today. Instead of villages or forests you can see a lunar landscape: quarries and mountains of lifeless frozen land.