Why Russia's coal capital Vorkuta is rapidly disappearing

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Vorkuta was once a coal capital, a promising, populous city. Now it looks more and more like a ghost town. Of course, Vorkuta cannot be called extinct, but definitely dying. The Internet is replete with sad reports about how the city is emptying, its buildings being destroyed, and photos from such reports fascinate lovers of "abandonment". And they surprise and upset ordinary users. After all, it is always a pity when you see how the once prosperous city turns into ruins. Even if you don't live in it …

History of the coal capital

Thanks to the efforts of geological expeditions (by the way, coal has been searched in these parts since the beginning of the 19th century), the Pechora coal basin was discovered. It happened about a hundred years ago.

In the summer of 1930, five working seams of high-quality coal were discovered 70 km from the mouth of the Vorkuta River, in 1937 the first mine was built on the shore, and in 1940 the village of Vorkuta was formed here. By the way, the river, and then, respectively, both the village and the city received such an unusual name from the Nenets word “varkuta” (with “a” in the first syllable), which is translated from the language of the local aboriginal people as “teeming with bears”.

Soon a railway was built here, and the village was given the status of a city. The coal mining industry began to develop rapidly in Vorkuta: mines were built, houses, schools, kindergartens, hospitals were erected.

Prisoners were driven to build the future coal capital, because in those years Vorkulag was located here - one of the GULAG camps. It was difficult for the unfortunate prisoners to work in such harsh conditions, many died.

In addition, two underground nuclear explosions were carried out in the city (in 1971 and 1974) with the aim of probing the deep layers of the Earth.

What happened to the city after the collapse of the USSR

The worst thing is that Vorkuta began to die not gradually, but abruptly and rapidly. If from 1959 to 1986 the city's population doubled and until the mid-1990s the number of residents remained at approximately the same level, then since 1998 the population began to decline.

Over the past 30 years, the city has lost about 70% of its inhabitants! Now a little more than 52 thousand people officially live here, but the locals say that this figure is greatly overestimated - they say, in fact, there are 30-40 thousand inhabitants in the city, the rest are only Vorkuta residents by registration, and in fact they have long moved to other, more prosperous cities.

Now there are only a few mines left to work in the city. Coal production in Vorkuta is planned to be stopped around 2037, which means that this year could be the date of the final death of the city.

In addition to the harsh climate and lack of prospects, one of the reasons for the unattractiveness of the city for new residents and inconvenience for the old is poor transport links. Train tickets to Vorkuta are expensive, planes do not fly as often as we would like, and there are no roads here at all. Rather, there is a so-called winter road - a rolled road made of snow and ice, but you can drive along it only on special off-road vehicles and, accordingly, only during frost periods.

The dismal abandoned houses of Vorkuta with broken windows evoke thoughts of the apocalypse. Apartments in the city are now very cheap (living space can be bought for the price of an inexpensive car) and quite a lot of them are simply empty.

According to experts, it is possible to revive Vorkuta only if they start looking for new natural resources here, build new mines, but so far no one is in a hurry to do this.

By the way, the fate of another city is no less sad, but the reason for its gradual death is completely different. Ural lakes-dips in the city of Bereznyaki were formed due to too active interference of people in nature.