Vorkutlag

The Vorkuta industrial concentration camp complex was located 160km above the Arctic Circle. The city had a population of approximately 15,000 and about 50 camps with more than 50,000 inmates.(Photos from the collection Tomasz Kizny, author of Gulag.)

Photo of Vorkutlag prisoners, 1945.

The Vorkuta Gulag was established by Soviet authorities in 1932 for the expansion of the GULAG system, on a site in the basin of the Pechora River, located within the Komi ASSR of the Russian SFSR (present-day Komi Republic, Russia), approximately 1,900 kilometres (1,200 mi) from Moscow and 160 kilometres (99 mi) above the Arctic Circle. The city of Vorkuta was established to support the camp, which was constructed to exploit the resources of the Pechora Coal Basin, the second largest coal basin in the Soviet Union. The camp was constructed mainly for Coal Mining and Forestry, There were approximately 132 sub-camps in the Vorkuta Gulag system during the height of its use in the Soviet prison system. From 1939, Polish prisoners were held at Vorkuta following the Occupation of Poland until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Vorkuta was then also used to hold German prisoners of war captured on the Eastern Front in World War II as well as criminals, Soviet citizens and those from Soviet-allied countries deemed to be dissidents and enemies of the state during the Soviet era, US soldier were also held in the camp, a majority of whom were captured mostly from the Korean War. Many prisoners didn't survive in the camp and died by freezing to death in the cold climate, dying from starvation as food was scarce in Vorkuta, or the inmates worked themselves to death. Prisoners were given Rye Bread, Buckwheat, a little meat and fish and potatoes as food but in very little amounts, Prisoners resorted to killing rats or stray dogs for food. Self harm was common in the camp, if an inmate sustained an injury they would be sent to the hospital where conditions were better, The average amount of working time in the camp was 16 hours for every inmate.

Vorkuta GULAG was located in the Komi Republic, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 160km above the arctic circle and roughly 50km from the Ural mountain range. since the camp was located in the very northern part of Russia, the harsh climate was hard to endure.

Vorkuta was extremely cold with temperatures reachng as low as −52 °C (−61 °F). Midnight sun or "Polar Days" was common in Vorkuta where the sun wouldn't set for three months which greatly affected the prisoners in Vorkutlag, prisoners weren't given good enough clothing to have survived the climate and some froze to death.

Vorkuta, 2009.

Vorkuta is now a town in the Komi Republic, Russia. The remains of the GULAG are partly or almost entirely destroyed. Vorkuta is heavily declining in population and is slowly being abandoned, after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Mining companies moved farther into the southern regions of Russia. A majority of the population in Vorkuta worked in the nearby coal mines but after the coal mine companies moved many lost jobs and started moving out of Vorkuta. Today, Vorkuta is barely inhabited with a small population. the towns estimated population is about 50,000 and is still decreasing.

Vorkuta, 2021.

Detention cell ("penal isolator") of a camp in the Vorkuta Region, 1945 | Source: Russian Federation State Archive, Moscow

• Heinz Baumkötter: SS concentration camp doctor.
• Walter Ciszek, American Catholic priest and memoirist - survived.
• Shlomo Dykman (1917–1965): Jewish-Polish translator and classical scholar.
• Valentín González (1904–1983): Spanish Communist and Spanish Republican Army brigade commander during the Spanish Civil War – successfully escaped in 1949.
• Anton Kaindl (1902–1948): SS commandant of Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1942 and 1945.
• Jaan Kross (1920–2007): Estonian writer.
• Jānis Mendriks (1907–1953): Latvian Catholic priest.
• Der Nister (1884–1950): Yiddish writer.
• John H. Noble (1923–2007): American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system (released after ~10 years) who wrote two books about experiences there.
• Eric Pleasants (1913–1998): British Nazi collaborator and member of the British Free Corps.
• Zvi Preigerzon (1900–1969): Hebrew writer and coal enrichment scientist.
• Nikolay Punin (1888–1953): Russian art scholar, curator and writer. Common law husband of poetess Anna Akhmatova.
• Georgy Safarov (1891–1942): Bolshevik revolutionary, member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – executed.
• Günter Stempel (1908–1981): East German politician and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party.

• Zoya Voskresenskaya, the chief of the Special Section of Vorkuta prison-camp, who served between 1955 and 1956.

• "Return from Workuta", track n. 3 of the album 1978 Gli Dei Se Ne Vanno, Gli Arrabbiati Restano! (1978) by the Italian progressive rock, jazz fusion, electronic, experimental group Area – International POPular Group, most commonly known as Area or AreA. The song is vocal and instrumental only and is accompanied by a text written by the singer Demetrio Stratos depicting portraits of people returning from the work camp.[3]
  

  Graves of the Lithuanian political prisoners in Vorkutlag, 20th century
• "Red Snow", the second segment of the twenty-first episode of the first season (1985–86) of the television series The Twilight Zone, features Vorkuta as the sanctuary of a vampire community.
• In the 2010 video game Call of Duty: Black Ops, the player character, an American named Alex Mason, is imprisoned at Vorkuta from 1961 to 1963 after being captured in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He participates in a prisoner uprising along with his ally Viktor Reznov.[4]

• Vorkuta
• Vorkuta uprising
• Vorkuta mine disaster
• Gulag
• Kolyma
• NKVD
• Red Army
• Soviet Union

• Barenberg, Alan (2014). Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20682-1.