In The Valleys of Death: The Top 5 Russian Ghost Towns

2017/01/09

In the 1930s in the Soviet Union an active development of natural resources of the north began. Among the gray snow of tundra and walking reindeer coal, tin, gold, nickel, oil and molybdenum were extracted from the earth. A little later, the military joined a bearded geologists and miners: these little adapted areas were suitable for defense from attacks of probable enemy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union a lot of northern businesses and a significant number of military bases became unnecessary for the government. Along with the slaughters, shops and airfields towns in which their employees lived became abandoned.

Iultin, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug

In the mid-1930 s industrialization came to the Land of the Soviets. In different parts of the state at the same time they were built hundreds of large industrial enterprises. Most of the new industrial giants needed relevant raw material base – there weren’t enough of old resources found in the times of the Russian Empire, and many valuable minerals were not mined. Meanwhile, in the face of the deteriorating of international relations, when everything showed the coming of world war, development of new deposits becomes a matter of strategic importance.

In search of the desired "Klondike" by party and Comrade Stalin personally geologists climbed into the most inaccessible places. In 1937, in the north-west of Chukotka they found large reserves of tin, molybdenum, tungsten, lead. The nearby Mountain is called Iultin, the deposit and the village near it had the same name. Construction was made by prisoners, and the scale of development was such that, in addition to the settlement of miners, at the same time on the shore of the Bering Sea was built port for export production and a 200-kilometer road between them.


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Due to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and extremely difficult natural conditions the start of Iultinsky mining and processing plant took began only in 1959. The nearby village has grown rapidly in a fairly large by the standards of the Chukotka village where residents have tried to create the most comfortable conditions. Iultin was completely cut off from the mainland, fresh food was expensive and brought here only twice a year, and an average annual temperature was minus 10 ° C could only be loved by people with particularly hardened spirit. But on the other hand, a good salary, a great vacation, feeling of closed, but relatively tight-knit community, and a full infrastructure around with kindergartens and schools, a sports complex and the house of culture, and the health center allowed living a normal life even beyond the Arctic Circle.

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