The fourth day of the trip turned out to be a great, almost solemn day. Not only because our numerous little finds had already accumulated into a whole train – but we finally met human beings! The children from Yanov Stan came running to the camp we set up, after we had reached Makovskaia via the river Turukhan.; they began to climb the locomotives and carefully watched the ordinary research work of the people who had come over from “the continent”.
The family names of the two boys were –Arkadiev and Kusamin. The began to tell us where they were born. They were from the northernmost, “dying out” Turukhansk settlement of Sovetskaia Rechka. the eldest, Yevgeniy Kondratev, a likeable adolescent, assumed an air of dignity. Mosquitos and black flies were surrounding his uncovered head, unswervingly flying into his mouth; but the boy politely refused to make use of any of the recommended preventive measures, without which we would not have dared to walk along the railroad at all. Instead, he offered us his services as a tour guide and companion with undescribable pleasure.
He and his group led us, the journalists, to the barracks and then went back to pick up the scientists we had left behind, in order to show them once again with utmost delight all local places of interest.
Look, this boarding school education has its points (referring to the nearby school in the national settlement of the Selkupes – in Farkovo)! – “Children attending schools in Moscow do not behave that polite and resüpectful towards foreigners”, - Professor Tai Shepitko expressed his thoughts in a loud voice.
The scientists had already stopped to survey rails and sleepers in this line section. They were now studying locomotives, motor-powered track motor cars and everything that had been preserved of the waggons. For some reason or other the entire railroad business had gone to hell in a handbasket. It had somehow malfunctioned from the very beginning. First of all the construction project had suddenly been stopped, an later daredevil tourists or locals had misused the rails with hay trailers.
In fact, history confirms that this construction project was dropped as quickly as it had been started up. Having calculated that it would turn out to be almost more expensive to preserve the old railroad compared to the sum they had originally raised for ist construction, they simply decided to abandon the project. 700 kms of decaying, rotting rails and sleepers, all covered with moss, remained in the remote taiga and tundra districts, without mentioning those sections leading directly to the stone pits, side tracks and junctions, pipelines, bridges, depots for the storage and maintenance of locomotices, as well as everything around automotive and tractor engineering. Only very few objects were removed from this place, and the ferries were relocated to the Strait of Kerch (Black Sea).
One remarkable thing is the fact that the railroad treck was lain without any technical planning and without being based on any geodesic knowledge. The project was presented for acceptance on the 1 March 1952, exactly one year before it was stopped. All of a sudden nobody cared for the railroad anymore, and even cost estimates of the past years remained unapproved.
The railroad near Yanov Stan took as directly to the camp. As you, dear reader, might have understood by this time, no civil public utility buildings were found in this place, accept for the special resettlers’ colonies. These colonies were called “camp sub-sectors”, “small camp towns” and, in habitual language use – construction gangs. The method of construction was typical for all of them: there was a barbed-wire fence in the shape of a square (200 x 200 meters), with watch towers at each corner and a little wooden house with gates for the guards; this house had been erected just at that side of the house, where the trains were passing by. It is a fact that the prior-ranking task of the scientists was not the research on the railroad itself, but on the localities, wher the construction brigades spent most of their time.
Not far from Yanov Stan we discovered a settlement for women. We were able to guess this from a baking dish for bread, which had been left in front of the dwelling. The barracks had partly sunk into the ground or were disassembled, so that nothing was left but an entirely decayed attic.
A short line section of the main railroad, which adjoined to the camp, had been a work sector. And I followed the two boys rolling: two wheels joined together were placed on the tracks, feet on the sleepers and – off you go! Provided that you dispose of a good deal of childlike phantasy, you can well imagine going with a real locomotive. For when do the local youths have the opportunity to travel om board a train? The only child leaving for “the continent” from time to time is Yevgeniy, whose grandmother lives in Novosibirsk.
By contrast, “continentals” really aspire to visit these remote places. And this is not just because they like to go hunting or fishing but in particular because they fell in love with rarities and rare technics. Recently, a couple of Germans came here by plane to rate the general dimension of the construction project. They took pictures from eachother standing beside the locomotives. And when the come home, they will tell their fellow countrymen, how the people in Russia achieved communism – by means of wooden spades, pickaxes and wheelbarrows, working in chill, during blizzards, when, in the spring, the ground was all muddy and in the blazing heat of the sun surrounded by greedy insects. However, they neither succeeded to achieve communism nor to get all the way up to Igarka. For some reason or other the well-working machinery suddenly came to a halt again. But the Baikal-Amur-Mainline got ready some day, even though with significant delay. The transpolar line was buried in oblivion for such a long time that nowadays it is just a pitiable scene of imaginable and unimaginable destruction
If nowadays people intended to realize the erstwhile plan to construct a railroad network from the Ural Mountains up to Siberia and Chukhotka, they would need incomparably more financial means. In accordance with the roughest calculations made by Professor Tai Shepitko, the costs would presumably amount to 4-5 million dollars for every single kilometer of the Great Northern Mainline, taking into consideration the fact that this road today would be built by free people. And they will not come here to experience the fog and the smell of the taiga, which had attracted young people in the 19702, but to earn money.
Nowadays, you will only be able to find work in the Turukhansk District on one of the Vankor oil fields. In the region of the estuary of the Makovskaia river we discovered an oil-well derrick abandonned more than fifty years ago. Maybe, they were afraid of not receiving the necessary means for pipelines a<nd infrastructure (to remove the oil). However, when they would restart the construction project, enough people will probably be found, who would be interested to produce coal or oil or deal with other mineral resources. There are rich deposits in these places ...
But the people are poor. And those who were promised heaven and earth, the inhabitants of Igarka, turned out to be the most unlucky. Basic work at the building site of the secret object N° 503 developed in town a long time before the corresponding decree was passed by the Soviet of Ministers of the USSR. At that time, they idea (which had already come up in the early 1930s) – the development of the lumbering industry in the woodlands around Igarka and further to the south up to Turukhansk, the exportation of saw log and trimmed timber – seemed to lead to nothing, so that the inhabitants of Igarka even began to consider their removal to “the continent”.
In January 1949 a session took place in the presence of Stalin, Beriya and Frenkel, the head of the main camp administration of railroad construction. They passed the decision to liquidate the construction project on the Yamal peninsula, relocate the main port and other objects of the main directorate of the Northern Sea Route as well as the laying of the Salekhard – Igarka – Dudinka – Norilsk railroad, , which will certainly fit in an ideal way in the illustrious picture of future gigantic construction projects in Siberia.
Many a people tend to characterize this project as being one of Josef Vissarionovich’s biggest adventurers. Others call it a brilliant foresight.
Time arranged everything in its place. New people needed a new economic formation and new means of transport. Discussions about the possible restauration of the transpolar railroad were also supported by the Yamal Railroad Company, which financed the present expedition of scientists from the capital of Moscow. And it seems as if they are content with the results, so that our friends give an optimistic forecast regarding the continuation of scientific research, which will be carried out next year at the latest. In case the management of the “Russian Railroad” Stock Corporation agrees to play an active role in this project, too, the former construction project N° 503 will become the N° 1 without any doubt.
And we, the journalists of the “Krasnoyarsk Labourer”, will be proud that we were fated to get to the very first origins of the new old construction site. In my opinion they should not complete the former railroad, but rearrange it, maybe, by taking into consideration new aspects of today’s economic situation in the regions concerned, and then better try to change the route of lines and sections. If, for example the line passes by Turukhansk as it had been planned at that time, this might be detrimental for the district town – a strategically important territory.
Only very few people are aware of the fact that the proper idea of laying this main roadline is ascribable to Averall Harriman, a fellow combatant of US President Harry Truman. It was just this Harriman, who foisted his idea to Stalin on the occasion of one of their meetings. According to his plans the great railroad was to connect Alasaka with Vorkuta and for this reason was supposed to run beneath the Bering Sea (although a written confirmation of this project, relevant documents about the definite plan, were never found).
Harriman’s idea was destroyed with the beginning of the “cold war” between America and the Soviet-Union, but, at large, Stalin was not adverse to it at all.
Josef Vissarionovich, who knew the Turukhasnk District quite well from the times when he spent the internal exile in Kureyka, supervised the progress of construction work personally.
And he would exclusively approve reports about successful steps in connection with this huge project. People learned from newspapers and radio transmissions about the erection of railway stations in the middle of the tundra, the laying of pipes, the construction of bridges … How brightly are the streetlights glooming, clearing the way for a “great future”.
Yesterday’s future is our presence. Stalin’s roadline turned into an open-air museum, whose rare visitors try to get a maximum of information about those times, its regime, the lunatic dream of a leader who was striving for the realization of huge projects and inhumane difficulties. People could only be forced to overcome these difficulties by guiding and controlling them by means of an “iron hand”.
In the summer of 1953 the special contingent was removed from the taiga in a hurry in order to board one of the barges operated on the rivers during the short shipping period. Maybe, when travelling on the Makovskaia, Turukhan and Yenisey, they also noticed, just as we did, the snow-white, mirror-inverted clouds on the water surface, which seem to separate you from a huge black abyss. This is the history of a state with “white” spots. In civilized countries there must not be any spots in history.
Tatyana MAKOGONOVA
“Krasnoyarsk Labourer”, 06.08.2005