Tomasz Kizny
I arrived in Vorkuta in May 1990, probably as one of the first foreigners to reach this region of the USSR. The first one voluntarily to Vorkutlag because previously Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Germans and other nations of the USSR were sent there. I came voluntarily but illegally, having been refused permission to enter the Vorkuta region, then required of foreigners. Still, I was determined to go.
Vorkuta is located beyond the Arctic Circle. In winter, it is shrouded in polar night with purgi – with blizzards raging across the tundra – several days of strong winds and snowstorms, with temperatures dropping to –40°C. In summer, the sun never sets below the horizon Alongside Kolyma and Norilsk, the Vorkuta coal basin was the third major gulag-industrial complex in the north of the USSR. Between 1931 and 1956, prisoners and exiles built 22 mines, a town, housing estates, a railway line, the entire infrastructure and dozens of labour camps in the Arctic tundra.
I take the Workucka Bypass, which connects the mines and mining settlements in a 60-kilometre loop: Oktiabrsky, Severny, Komsomolsky.. I stop in front of the Yur-Shor housing estate. The mine shaft No. 29 is visible in the distance. A hundred yards further on, in the tundra, I find dozens of wooden posts sticking out of the ground. A burial ground for the victims of a bloody uprising by prisoners of the labour camp at Mine No. 29. A participant in the uprising, a Home Army soldier Witold Augusewicz, who survived and returned to Poland in 1956, told me about this place. In July 1953, after Stalin’s death, six of the 17 labor camp complexes went on strike, more than 15,000 Vorkutlag prisoners refused to go to work. A strike committee of Poles, Russians and Ukrainians was formed at labour camp No. 29. On 1 August 1953, soldiers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened fire with machine guns on approximately 400 prisoners gathered in the camp square. Fifty-three people were killed and 120 were wounded in the massacre.
I also try to find the camp cemetery near Mine No. 40, where Jeremi Odyński and Jan Preuzner were buried after being shot while trying to escape in 1954. The request came from Jeremi’s sister – Natalia Odyńska, also a prisoner of Vorkutlag. I am assisted by Paweł Nigrietow, a historian and former prisoner of labour camp No. 40. There is no sign of the cemetery. Instead, there is a building on the site of the Polish graves at 5 Kirowa Street.
A few days into my stay at the hotel, two men came to see me – one in a uniform, the other an undercover officer. They said I had 24 hours to leave Vorkuta. They were firm but polite – it was the fourth year of perestroika. Vitalij Troshin, chairman of the Vorkuta Memorial Association, goes straight to the point: ‘Are they following you?’ ‘They are not. I’ve checked.’ ‘Let’s meet up in an hour’s time. Bring your equipment.’ He drives me around the labour camp sites all day, I take photos, and at night, I travel by train along the Pechora Railway. Its construction in 1941 was of strategic importance, as it was about coal, because the Wehrmacht was approaching the Donetsk Coal Basin. No one cared about the lives of the prisoners, who died en masse and were buried wherever they fell. In the memories of survivors, the phrase ‘there is a corpse under every railway sleeper’ comes up repeatedly. I fall asleep to the rhythm of the wheels, with two days of travel to Moscow ahead of me.
Photographs and text by Tomasz Kizny.
Translated by Małgorzata Giełzakowska.
Tomasz Kizny is a photographer and journalist, author (in collaboration with Dominique Roynette) of a photo album entitled ‘Gulag’, Warsaw 2015
