Magadan … What is hidden in this word? Kolyma pops up before my eyes, the harsh climate of the hill, taiga, and the sea. And, of course, prison, camps, zones at every turn. Well, the songs of Mikhail Krug and Vasya Oblomov about Magadan. But what is this northern city really like and how many prisons are in Magadan?
Briefly about the city
Magadan is the youngest city in the Far East. The distance to Moscow is almost 7 thousand km. The regional center is located in the north-east of Russia, on the banks of the Nagaenva Bay and the Gertner Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk.
The structure of the city, in addition to Magadan itself, includes several villages. These are Dukcha, Snezhniy, Snezhnaya Dolina, Uttar and the village of Sokol, in which the Magadan International Airport is located.
Communication with the world takes place only by air. Therefore, the airport is called the Golden Gate of Kolyma. This is so, since there is no railway to Magadan, and there is no way to get there by road. The Kolyma highway is often closed: it is washed out by rains, then littered with snow.
High-speed Internet always crashes, mail exists more for show. Parcels have been sent for months, or even not reach at all. The city is practically isolated from the outside world.
The birth of the city
Magadan dates back to the distant 1930 of the last century, when mining of natural resources and gold began in this region. In 1939, Magadan was given the status of a city. The development of gold deposits, as well as the construction of the city and the Kolyma highway, was carried out mainly by political prisoners.
One of them was S.P. Korolev, a world-famous designer of space rockets. In honor of him in the village. Falcon named street. After World War II, exiled Japanese and Germans who worked in the mines were exiled here.
Sunny Magadan
Residents of Magadan, having arrived in the center of the country, are faced with the same situation. Magadans are asked silly questions for them. But do you live in yarangs, instead of cars and buses, ride deer, and bears walk along the streets of the city? Well, or the same questions, only in a different interpretation: do you eat red caviar in big spoons, and gold is lying around under your feet, and Magadan, prison and hills - is it all very close?
And the indigenous people begin to dispel all myths. That they live in ordinary houses and apartments, drive cars and buses, don’t eat eggs with spoons, they mine gold in the mines, they don’t roll nuggets under their feet. Bears are often and regularly seen in the suburbs and in the forest. Hills are also nearby, every day from any part of the city are visible. But the connection of Magadan - the prison is very doubtful.
A gloomy and dark story stretches beyond Kolyma, the other was not and never will be. But criminals here do not walk around the city, camps and prisons do not stand at every step. There are no kilometers of barbed wire in sight, guard dogs are not heard, and everyone has long forgotten about the prisoners.
Magadan, zone, prison, Kolyma camps
It is generally accepted that Magadan is a city surrounded by prisons, zones, and prisoners can be seen on every corner. A native Magadan who arrived on the "mainland" will always be asked the traditional question: "Is Magadan, the prison, the camps tied into a strong knot?" There is none of this, everything has sunk into oblivion. Camps in Kolyma by the 60s of the 20th century, almost everything was closed.
The reason for this is simple and banal: the expensive detention of prisoners in such difficult and inaccessible places. And the support of the infrastructure poured into huge funds. Therefore, it was decided to close all prisons and colonies.
Currently, there is one colony-settlement, one pre-trial detention center, two correctional colonies. In 2006, the last prison was closed. This is a prison in Magadan, whose name is "Melt". The name received from the village of Talaya, with which the colony was adjacent.
The story of "Thawed"
The general labor correctional colony was far from the city of Magadan. The prison is located three hundred kilometers from it, among hills and taiga. Three high fences isolated her from the world. An external fence was connected around the perimeter to an electric current. Such precautions were not accidental. Robbers, rapists, and murderers were brought here from all over the country.
The road to the prison was bumpy and vile, even at KAMAZ it’s hard to drive. And if you get on foot and in winter, it is almost impossible. For this reason, any prison became a small city that provides for itself.
Prison "Melted" is no exception. There were workshops for sewing clothes and repairing shoes. On the territory of the colony lived cooks, doctors, mechanics, electricians. It differs only from the city in the absence of women and children and is in complete isolation from the outside world. Only mountains, a fence, barbed wire and time, frozen in place.
