Vorkuta is the fourth most populous city beyond the Arctic Circle and the easternmost city in Europe. The city's residents have jokingly called Vorkuta the capital of the world since the distant Soviet times. The fact is that the city was founded by GULAG prisoners. And people of many nationalities were assigned to the camp. According to one version, it was the prisoners who were the first to call Vorkuta "the capital of the camp world." Over time, one word was removed and it turned out simply: Vorkuta is the capital of the world.
The name of the river, like the city of Vorkuta itself, is translated from the Nenets language as "abundant in bears." In fact, another unofficial name for these hard-to-reach places is Bear Land.
Getting to Vorkuta today is not an easy task. The road leading to the city has never been built. The only reliable option is by rail. A train runs from Moscow to Vorkuta. The travel time is two days. Scientists had already guessed that these places were rich in coal in the 19th century. However, a full-fledged expedition was organized only in the 30s of the twentieth century. By 1936, a workers' settlement had already been organized on the banks of the Vorkuta River. The construction of the first coal mine began with the hands of prisoners. Vorkuta received the status of a city in 1943. And in the 70s, the city's population was already 100 thousand people. Vorkuta is a classic example of a Soviet single-industry town, when the entire population is somehow connected with the extraction of the main product - coal. The city was built on a ring system. In the center of the ring is the city itself, which housed a mechanical plant for servicing and repairing drilling equipment and all the necessary social infrastructure facilities, a bus depot, a hospital, shops, a community center, a train station, etc. The coal mines themselves were located in a ring around the city, at a distance of 10-15 km, and over time, small settlements were built next to them so that the miners and their families could live close to their place of work. All the settlements were connected by a ring road.
The coal that the Vorkuta mines produced was of very high quality. It was used not only in boiler houses that heated the homes of Soviet residents, but also in factories throughout the country, mainly for kindling smelting furnaces. In the best years, 13 coal mines were operating here at the same time. They mined a colossal amount of coal, increasing the volume time after time. However, with the advent and development of alternative energy sources, the need for coal that Vorkuta provided began to decline rapidly. In addition, new large deposits were discovered, which is why, taking into account the cost of transportation and complex logistics, local coal became unprofitable.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, things got even worse. Many miners were not paid for months or even years. This caused a wave of strikes across the country.
The owners of the enterprises, now non-state, were barely making ends meet. Serious financial losses and debts to workers crossed out all opportunities for modernization of the mines. Ultimately, this led to a series of disasters. Several explosions at different mines took the lives of dozens of miners. So in 1998, 27 people died as a result of a methane explosion at the Yur-Shor mine. In 2013, an explosion at the Vorkutinskaya mine killed 19 people. In 2016, an explosion at the Severnaya mine killed 36 people. Several mines were closed for financial reasons.
All this led to the fact that many miners and their families began to leave the villages and the city itself en masse in search of a better life. Today, Vorkuta is the fastest dying city in Russia. Officially, the city has over 50,000 registered residents. In fact, this figure barely reaches 30,000. Some people who have left for other regions still remain officially registered in Vorkuta so as not to lose state cash allowances for living in the conditions of the Far North.
The villages located on the ring around the city have practically ceased to exist and have long been abandoned. There are villages in which one or two residents remain. Apartments here are sometimes given away for free to get rid of the need to pay high utility bills.
Of the 13 coal mines, only four remain in operation today. Among them is the Komsomolskaya mine, the deepest mine in Russia. All of them belong to the Vorkutaugol company. The company's holding also includes the Yunyaginsky coal mine, where coal is mined using an open-pit method. Although in the conditions of the Far North, this is very difficult and labor-intensive work. Winter here lasts 8 months a year. The polar night, when the sun never rises above the horizon, lasts from December 17 to 27. Heavy snowstorms are common here, and temperatures drop to -40 degrees Celsius. In December 1978, a record was broken, when the temperature dropped to -52 degrees.
