Kolyma: Land Of The White Death

Were history subject to the laws of karma, the name "Kolyma" would be as familiar as "Dachau" or "Auschwitz". But because of the totalitarian secrecy of Josef Stalin's Soviet Union, few in the West know of this place at which large-scale human sacrifice was once carried out.

Located on the far northeastern shore of Russia, Kolyma is a remote area of extreme winters, white mountain peaks, frozen rivers, and valleys of gold. When gold was first discovered there in the 1920s, Stalin made mining it a top Soviet priority. Needing workers to carry out operations, Kolyma became a vast labor camp for the political prisoners and petty criminals. Amid the harsh conditions of Siberia in which temperatures often drop to -70 F in the winter, Stalin was able to conveniently carry out two tasks simultaneously: mining of precious metals and killing of political opponents. As a result, Kolyma earned the nickname "The Land of the White Death".

Among the victims shipped out to Kolyma were those raised a voice against communism, refused to join a farm collective, were labeled 'wreckers' in factories that did not meet production quotas, were caught setting aside a small amount of wheat to feed their starving children, Russian soldiers exposed to 'foreign' ideas as prisoners of war, kulaks, and any 'inconvenient' Communist Party member suspected by Stalin of being an enemy. Foreign nationals, including Poles, Germans, Jews, Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazaks, Georgians, Armenians, Turks, Latvians, and Finns, among others, were deported in mass numbers during Stalin's various purges. Although the exact numbers have been difficult to quantify, historians estimate up to 3 million people died in the Kolyma camp.

As the isolation of the region made it difficult to transport prisoners by rail, the ocean began the preferred route of transport. A fleet of ships based in Vladivostok carried out the operations. In the late fall of 1941, one such slave ship - the Dzhurma - carrying 12,000 Polish prisoners became trapped in the frozen waters near Wrangle Island. The Soviets could not carry out a rescue and refused help from outsiders for fear of exposing their slave apparatus to the world. The entire contingent died due to cold and starvation.

Of those that made it to the Kolyma camp, most died soon after arrival. Back-breaking labor, meager rations, poor sanitation, lack of medical care, summary executions, and the Siberian winters resulted in the bleakest of existences for the prisoners. Food rations were given proportionally to the productivity of the worker, and as a result, the neediest workers were the least well fed. Scurvy and dysentery took their toll. The bitter cold was another obstacle to survival. Amputations from frostbite were common. In the late 1930s, due to Stalin accusations of "coddling" of prisoners, fur coats and felt boots were outlawed as "luxuries". Throughout the Gulag system, the response was an increase in brutality. Prior to this, were a prisoner able to tolerate the environment, survival was perhaps achievable. Afterwards, the additional increase in predation from administrators made survival essentially impossible.

US Vice President Henry Wallace gave his seal of approval to Kolyma after his 1944 visit. Though he praised the health of the gold miners and the cultural life of the region, it is believed that he was given a false impression of the conditions prevalent in that part of the country.

It was only after Stalin's death that the Soviet Union altered its policy toward Kolyma. Political prisoners were released having been "rehabilitated", and the labor force consisted mainly of criminals. The rest of the labor pool was filled with voluntary workers from all over the USSR. Today, Kolyma is afterthought to all but its surviving victims and their descendents. The extreme secrecy of the Soviet regime and lack of a free press prevented the knowledge of the events from filtering to the outside world. It is only through personal accounts published years after the fact and invaluable research performed by historians that the truth eventually surfaced. Like many other tragedies of communist regimes, the story of Kolyma needs retelling.

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Shalamov, Varlam. Kolyma Tales. Penguin Books. 1995. Excerpt here

Conquest, Robert. Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps. Viking Adult. 1978.

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