Abandoned Northern Land

This time - about abandoned lands of the country that used to be great, the USSR. They were never occupied with military bases and finally were assumed to be an unneccessary burden.

These photos are a part of project "Far Lands" of Andrey Shapran, who since 2005 has travelled to the Southern Kuril Islands, Yakutia, Yamal, Krasnoyarsk region, Chukotka and Kamchatka.

In fact these images don't need to be commented, just take time to look at them silently.

The territories are closed for people since the Soviet time. It's still hard to reach, but now the reason is different, it's hard to do technically.

North Cape - this is how the territory was named by James Cook himself, he was there in 1778. It was the northernmost place he ever reached. The Russian throne belonged to Catherine II then, and these lands only started to emerge on maps from white spots.

---

Across the network:

In the Soviet time North Cape was one of the most secret closed areas on the planet. Here were military units, an air defence base, military aircrafts were flying over. It was a "pop up airdrome" for strategic aviation ready to bomb America in any moment.

Today this land is almost free from people - population of the cape declined from 17000 to 30...

People, who lived in a settlement at Schmidt's Cape, was officially resettled in 2013.

Shot through star on an old grave (1943) located on the territory of an abandoned air defence base.

North Cape blizzard.

Let's block ads! (Why?)