University of Glasgow

How Vorkuta Began

Author(s): P. I. Negretov
Source: Soviet Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 565-575
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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 SOVIET STUDIES, vol. XXIX, no. 4, October 1977, pp. 565-75.

HOW VORKUTA BEGAN*

By P. I. NEGRETOV

THE USSR, which has a good half of the world's northern territories,
has the longest experience of their modern development (since the
prewar five-year plans). Amongst the lessons to be learned are:
I. A smaller and more delayed return on investment is to be expected
than in 'southern' areas;
2. But this does not justify mismanagement and waste;
3. The importance of an adequate infrastructure (transport and
communications, power and housing) for industrial development;
4. The importance of adequate study of the area before development
is undertaken.1
The Pechora coal basin is one of the achievements in Soviet northern
development. It began ten years before the war, but by 194I there was
only one coalmine. During the war ten more mines and a power station2
came into operation and the North Pechora railway connected Vorkuta
with the country's rail network. Pechora coal was particularly important
during the loss of the Donbas, supplying blockaded Leningrad and the
whole north-west and in part the centre, and the Baltic and Northern
Fleets. There is no comprehensive account of the Pechora Basin
development, even for the I94I-45 period, but there are two works of
interest on particular aspects.3

* This is a version of an article in the samizdat journal XX-yi vek (no. 3, 1975)
edited by Roy Medvedev. The present article is in principle a reduction of the original
article, in effect to the points for which references are given in the original, and with
considerable omission of technical-engineering detail in some places. This editing has
been done at Glasgow. The article was offered to Soviet Studies by Dr. Zhores
Medvedev, who agrees to the translation and editing. There has been no contact with
the author.
The author, P. I. Negretov, was a manual worker in mine no. 40 of the Vorkutaugol'
Trust, a prisoner there from 1945 to 1960, and is now a historian, living in Vorkuta.
1 G. A. Agranat, Zarubezhnyi sever: opyt osvoeniya (M., 1970), pp. 83, 85, 130-I,
345-6, 399, 400, 40I. See also his 'Osvoeniya severa: strategiya i taktika', Literaturnaya
gazeta, 6 September 1972.
2 These enterprises refer to Vorkutaugol'. In addition, a separate organization
(later Intaugol') was established in December 1941 for the Inta seam.
3 V. G. Toropov, Komi partiinaya organizatsiya v bor'be za osvoenie i razvitie
Pechorskogo ugol'nogo basseina v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Syktyvkar, I969);
Yu. L. Dyakov, 'Stroitel'stvo i ekspluatatsiya Severo-Pechorskoi zheleznoi dorogi v
gody Otechestvennoi voiny', Istoriya SSSR. I969, no. 5. The popular work most
worthy of attention is Pechorskii ugol'nyi bassein 1934-I959 (L., I959).

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566 HOW VORKUTA

The aim of this article is to consider the economic effectiveness of

the effort to open up the Vorkuta coalfield in the prewar decade, which
avoids the complications of the war period. The sources are basically
archives in the Vorkuta regional museum and in the offices of the coal
mining Combine Vorkutaugol'.
Coal was known to exist in the area by 1857, but one estimate put
its transport alone to Archangel at 20 kopeks per pood, against II-I2
and occasionally 15 kopeks total cost there for imported coal, apart from
the difficulty and costs of bringing labour to the area.4 A suggestion that
convict labour be used5 was ridiculed by progressive opinion,6 and does
not appear to have been taken seriously by the authorities.7
Systematic geological investigation began in 1923, with annual
expeditions until discovery of the Vorkuta seam in I930. This contained
coal of unusually high quality. A first shaft was completed by I934.
Production grew faster than deliveries (which were I8o,ooo tons in I939
and 13,000 in 1940) owing to extreme transport difficulties.8

Transport
Before the Vorkuta railway was built, all supplies went via Archangel,
thence by sea to Nar'yan-Mar at the mouth of the Pechora river, where
it was transferred to river steamers and barges. Up the river at Ust'-Usa
it was again transferred-to boats drawing o08 to i metre-and pro-
ceeded up the river Usa to Adz'va-Vom where it was yet again transferred
onto small barges (shnyagi), in which it reached the unnavigable river
Vorkuta, for its last transfer to a narrow-gauge railway connecting the
Vorkuta-Vom quay to the mine at Rudnik. There were other transfer
points for freight. On the 2,300 kilometre journey from Archangel not
less than five or six transfers were necessary.9 The transfer points were
open to the sky, with freight 'unloaded on the open waterside to await
re-loading on the smaller vessels'-sometimes for six months or more.10

4 A. Antipov, 'O gornykh issledovaniyakh v Pechorskom krae, proizvedennykh v

1857 g.', Gornyi zhurnal, ch. 2 (St. Petersburg, x858), pp. 28-33.
5 M. K. Sidorov, Sever Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1870), pp. 393-6.
6 For example, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in Collected Works, vol. Io (M., 1970),
p. 279, and note on pp. 730-4.
7 See S. V. Slavin, Promyshlennoe i transportnoe osvoenie Severa SSSR (M., 1961),
p. 79. For a history of the geological exploration of the area, see G. A. Chernov (the
discoverer of the Vorkuta seam), Iz istorii otkrytiya Pechorskogo ugol'nogo basseina
(Syktyvkar, 1968).
8 Archive of the Vorkutaugol' Combine (hereafter AVC), Explanatory Note to
Annual Accounts for Basic Activity of Vorkutstroi for 1939, sheet 40, and sheet io
reverse.

9 An alternative route using the river Ob and thence by the valleys of the Polar
Urals on foot through the tundra was rejected. But one of the first groups of the
builders of Vorkuta went that way, carrying everything, in 193I.
10 V. P. Sokolov (assistant chief of Vorkutstroi 1938-42), Vospominaniya, Archive
of Vorkuta Regional Museum (hereafter VRM). See also V. Kantorovich, Bol'shaya
Pechora (M., 1934), p. 70, for sacks of food without protection rotting at Vorkuta-Vom.

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BEGAN 567

Coal going in the opposite direction accumulated at the quaysides of

Vorkuta-Vom and Adz'va-Vom awaiting vessels, into which it was
loaded by hand during the 24-hour Polar day in the short summer when
all the mine workers became loaders. Our sources give differing periods
of navigability for the upper Usa, but all are shorter than the summer.1
Administrative reorganizations and lack of coordination caused
additional difficulties. Thus in I938, in connection with the separation
of Vorkutstroi from the Ukhto-Pechora Trust, despatch of freight from
Archangel was delayed and much of it was caught in the ice. Vorkuta
received only 56% of the timber and 40% of the fuel and lubricating
oils. Of I,889 tons of fresh vegetables, 1,785 tons were caught in the ice,
as were 679 tons of groats out of I,095 tons, and 529 tons of fish out of
535 tons. Fifteen million rubles' worth of freight was caught at 25
points en route.l2 In I940 48% of the technical freight got through.l3
Attempts at winter transport by sledge made little impression on the
problem and their costs were 'quite disruptive of the economy' according
to the I938 Accounts.l4 But even normal transport by water was
expensive. Thus Sokolov recalls that timber delivered to Vorkuta was
'gold': it cost thousands of rubles per cubic metre, even though it came
not from Archangel but from the Upper Pechora, where Vorkutstroi
itself felled it.
Delivery over the 64-kilometre narrow-gauge railway from Vorkuta-
Vom to Rudnik often seemed a harder task than the preceding 6o0
kilometres of waterway The railway was built and run by the mining
organization itself, and was far below any standards acceptable to a
central civil authority such as the Commissariat of Railways. It operated
from I934 to 1942, and the journey took 8-Io hours when the line was
in working order.15

Sokolov notes some warehousing there by the late 1930S for the smaller and more
valuable items. Insufficiency of storage and the complete lack of it for cement is
bewailed in 1938 in the AVC Accounts for that year, sheet 24.
11 Sokolov-20-30 days 'big water'; the AVC 1938 Accounts-4o-50 days (these
Accounts, sheet 5, speak of 'extreme pressure' due to 'brevity of the navigation season'
in 'bringing in food and equipment and getting coal out').
12 AVC, Accounts for 1938, sheets 6, 24. According to Sokolov, most of the vegetables
never got through as there was not sufficient time to transport them between the
rather late northern harvesting and the river freezing. After the thaw they were never
usable.
13 AVC, Accounts for 1940, sheet 5.
14 AVC, Accounts for 1940, Sheet 23. The same Accounts (for 1938) note the 'need
to reduce capital construction' in the fourth quarter of I938 and 'in the first half of
1939 the almost complete conservation (i.e. cessation of capital construction), and
reduction of coal extraction, which led to unavoidable idleness of labour and losses'
(Sheet 7).
15 Pechorskii tgol'nyi bassein . .., p. 299. See P. I. Sheremetenko, Vospominaniya,
VRM Archive. Sheremetenko was dismissed as chief of the railway by Ya. M. Moroz,
who arrived as head of the Ukhto-Pechora Trust in June 1935. Moroz was a man of
the 'energetic but technically illiterate' type, and issued orders overriding elementary
technical requirements, with disastrous consequences.

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568 HOW VORKUTA

It was well understood in Vorkuta that proper transport connection

with the inhabited parts of the USSR was essential, and this could only
be by a railway.16

Permafrost
Before the war there was no experience of industrial development in
the Far North, and mistakes were costly but inevitable. To what extent
were lessons learned from the hard experience of the Vorkuta pioneering
effort?
It took a long time to learn how to construct buildings and mines in
such a way that the extremely hard permafrost ground did not thaw out.
Something was learned in this respect from mistakes made in building
the narrow-gauge railway. It was not until 1936 that the Academy of
Sciences' Committee for the study of permafrost set up the Vorkuta
research station at Rudnik.
The first big task of this station was to advise the Leningrad Gipro-
shakht organization on special problems in the project of a mine on
the left bank of the Vorkuta river which was to produce three-quarters
of a million tons of coal per year. In its report dated December I936 the
permafrost station notes that experience hitherto concerned housing,
transport and some industrial construction, but not large-capacity
mines, and that even such a basic question as flooding had received no
attention in the existing Vorkuta mine.l7

Supply of Equipment
In the popular literature it is usual to praise the courage and
stubbornness with which the first builders and miners of Vorkuta
overcame difficulties.18 It would be more useful to discover the causes
of these difficulties. Life in the Vorkuta of the thirties was, of course,
hard. The long Polar night was spent in the cold of tents or the damp-
ness of dugouts (barracks were a luxury, not for everybody). Summer's
respite from intense cold brought the gnats and midges. The almost
16 In addition to Accounts of Vorkutstroi and the memoirs of Sokolov and
Sheremetenko in the Museum archives, the prewar transport problem is illuminated
by materials of A. M. Gendon, N. K. Krochik, V. F. Sanaev and F. A. Titov in the
Museum archives. There are some further data in a brochure Bogatstva Pechory-
na sluzhbu sotsialisticheskomu stroitel'stvu by N. Roslov and others (Archangel, I934).
17 AVC, Report of VNIMS (the permafrost station) for I936, part 5, pp. i, 82, 86.
Much of the AVC documentation of the I930S was destroyed for lack of space, but
this report appears to have survived fortuitously. It has the stamp of the library of
Leningrad Giproshakht, to which it must have been sent and then for some reason
been returned to Vorkuta.
18 For example, N. V. Ushpik, Vorkuta (Syktyvkar, I964): 'The North does not
like those of weak spirit. It conducts a natural selection and submits only to those
worthy .... I have never ceased to wonder at the inventiveness, courage and endurance
of these people. For many hours of the 24 they did not leave the coalface, worked up
to the waist in icy water, . . . lay on hard bunks and thought . .. that they had not
done enough, what could be done, tomorrow one must do more ... ' (pp. 24, 39).

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BEGAN 569

complete lack of fresh vegetables led to scurvy.19 All kinds of work in

the mine and at the surface were done mostly by hand. Even horses
did not appear in the mine until I940-until then the wagons were
manhandled.20 The trouble was not 'objective difficulties' but neglect.
For example, the first machine to provide electric power (30 h.p.), used
to cut sleepers for the narrow-gauge railway in 1933-34, was old when
sent (Sheremetenko said its first work was on construction of the Lenin
mausoleum). A 65-h.p. motor and a 40 kW generator were sent in the
1935 navigation season. By the end of 1936 Rudnik had a second
generating unit, of 240 kW capacity, but electric power was not avail-
able in the mine until 1937, and it was only then that drilling machinery
became possible.21 The reason why such generating and drilling
equipment was not supplied several years earlier was not lack of it, but
poor organization and neglect. Even skis were not supplied. The
prospecting party for the route of the future North Pechora railway
lacked many things, skis above all. They had to make their own skis with
axes from tree trunks.22
Sokolov provides details of the four generating units available for
the mine in January I939, when only one was usable and was pumping
water. Work in the mine was coming to a stop, when Moscow promised
to fly in the necessary part (which should in any case have been ordered
much earlier) via Archangel. Eventually, after frantic efforts to save the
mine, the part arrived, but it turned out to be a consignment intended for
the Far East (which received that intended for Vorkuta).23

Coal Output
Like the narrow-gauge railway, the first mine was put into exploitation
as early as I934 only because of the organization which controlled it.
The Commissariat for Heavy Industry would never have accepted a
mine in that condition as ready for production. 'It was thought by many
at Rudnik to be impossible: there was no cleared coalface, no surface
equipment, the shaft mechanism was poor, there were no qualified
cadres, no study of the geological conditions, and the roof support

19 Sickness due to inadequate protection from the climate and insufficient food is
noted in the Accounts of Vorkutstroi (see AVC, 1939 Accounts, sheet 30 reverse, and
1940, sheets I2 reverse and 13 reverse). Work excused by sickness was added to the
tasks of others. Thus, the 1939 Accounts note that in that year the workers received
only 43 % of the days off due to them. 20 Pechorskii ugol'nyi bassein . . , p. 30.
21 Ibid., pp. 444-5. Steam pumps and hoists were operating earlier, old and of low
power. Available figures for 1932-34 are consistent with the low productivity of
manual labour. But Sheremetenko speaks of high individual achievements in manual
work despite the torture from gnats and especially midges.
22 E. A. Pavlov in the newspaper Zapolyare (Vorkuta), I0 June I97I.
23 Sokolov, op. cit. In I937 Vorkuta had acquired its own light plane, and this was
to pick up the consignment at Ust-Tsilma. Contact with Moscow (by radio) was
difficult.

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570 HOW VORKUTA

method had not been decided.'24 This was in 1935, when the mine was
set its first output plan, of Ioo,ooo tons. The plan was actually over-
fulfilled, 103,000 tons being produced. But this does not mean that the
plan was realistic. The plan was raised by 50% for 1936, and for 1937
up to an incredible 260,000 tons (it fulfilled this only 35'3%, producing
92,000 tons-i.e. less than in I935).25 There was, however, a significant
improvement in 1937, when more of the requisites for production
became available.

Labour

We now deal with an aspect of the subject hitherto left aside. In the
thirties Vorkuta was in the domain of the NKVD (until I934-OGPU),
and its labour force came from the camps (formally, the corrective
labour camps, or ITL).26 In general, the use of convict labour in
industry and construction, especially in remote parts of the USSR, was
never (except, perhaps, in the forties) a secret. However, apart from
official publications, this topic appeared only in publicistic writing and
the arts.27 Scholarly research on the subject has not yet been undertaken
by historians, and indeed can scarcely be done by historians alone.
Effective research on so complex a question can be undertaken only by
a team including economists, philosophers, jurists and historians. The
guiding thread for them would, evidently, be the party and government
decree of I954 on the defects disclosed in ITL and on the means of
overcoming them. For the purpose of this short essay it is enough to
24 Pechorskii ugol'nyi bassein . . ., p. 299.
25 Istoriya industrializatsii Severnogo raiona. (Arkhangel'skaya, Vologodskaya oblasti
i Komi ASSR.) I926-I94I (Archangel, 1970), p. 534.
26 In 1953 the Vorkutaugol' Combine was transferred to the Ministry of the Coal
Industry, and on 26 August I955 the USSR Council of Ministers decreed a change
of the Combine to free labour. This change was completed by I960.
27 See V. M. Molotov at the Sixth Congress of Soviets (Pravda, i i March 193 );
Decree of the Sovnarkom dated 2 August I933 'On the Opening of the White Sea-
Baltic Canal named after Cde. Stalin' (ibid., 5 August 1933).
Of artistic works in the thirties, N. Pogodin's play 'Aristocrats' and the film based
on it entitled 'Prisoners' were well known. Less known were the travel sketches by V.
Kantorovich, mentioned above, published in a volume under the title Bol'shaya
Pechora. (In them, e.g. p. 60, the role of 'OGPU corrective labour camps' in the
construction of Vorkuta is mentioned with such frankness as was possible at that time.)
A considerable part of this book on the Pechora camps was in the same year I934
published in the USSR in German and English (Zuriick ins Leben and Return to Life).
All these publications and productions of the thirties were of an apologetic character.
In the forties it was preferred not to mention the forced labour aspect. Popular
literature of that time on Vorkuta had this kind of approach: 'The creation of Vorkuta
is a striking example of putting into practice the theory of Marxism that it is not the
geographical environment which determines the development of society but the level
of material life, the mode of production of material goods. Construction of the new
town in the distant tundra could be achieved only by Soviet people, armed with
Marxist-Leninist theory and equipped with advanced technology' (N. I. Shishkin,
Pechorskii promyshlennyi raion (Syktyvkar, 1947), p. 55).
In the fifties began the critical period concerning this theme. However, up to the
present time neither in specialist nor in popular literature is there recognition of the
well-known fact that Vorkuta was created by convict labour.

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BEGAN 57I

note that the assumption of responsibility by the organs of the NKVD

for developing the Pechora coalfield had the most unhappy conse-
quences. These organs were least suited to the tasks of industrial
construction, especially in the extreme conditions of the Far North.
This is shown by what has been said above, and by what follows.
The key problem in the opening up of the Pechora coal basin was
obviously that of labour. As late as I933 we find informed opinion
noting the necessity of a very high level of mechanization and manage-
ment in view of the difficulty of attracting labour, and in order to
attract any labour the need for 'especially favourable housing and living
conditions suited to circumstances in the harsh North'.28 But the task
had already been handed over to the Ukhto-Pechorsk ITL. In May 193
the first detachment of prisoners had been sent to Vorkuta via Arch-
angel.29 Vorkuta remained one of the subdivisions of Ukhtpechlag until
1938, when the latter was split up.30 Vorkutpechlag, established on the
basis of the first section of Ukhtpechlag, in the first year of its existence
had labour of the following composition:
Yearly average number of personnel I6,508 persons
of which, v/n (free hired) 1,367 persons
z/k (prisoners) I5,14I persons.31
The part of the free hired that may be constituted by the administration
and militarized guard (VOKhR) is not indicated.
In the last prewar year the average for the year was 2,107 free, of
whom 786 were industrial. Prisoners numbered 19,080 in January I94I.32
Some indication of the proportions of work done by convict and free
labour respectively is given in the following totals of man-days, on
construction and assembly work only (work in the mine was entirely
convict labour except for a few specialists):
v/n and z/k together 353,121 man-days
of which, v/n only I4,377 man days, or 4'7% of the total.33
Even in such 'clean' work as accounting, convict labour predominated-
it formed 85% and free labour I5% in I938.3
28 K probleme Pechorskogo promyshlennogo kombinata (Komi Oblast Planning
Commission, Syktyvkar, I933), pp. 31-32.
29 P. D. Poleshchuk, Vospominaniya, VRM Archive.
30 See protocol of 5 June 1938 session of the GULag commission for subdivision of
the Ukhto-Pechora camps (AVC, bundle 490: materials on subdivision of camps,
sheet 58).
Ukhtpechlag was divided into three camps: Sevzheldorlag, Ukhtoizhemsky ITL,
and Vorkuta-Pechorsky ITL (ibid., sheet 62).
31 AVC, Accounts for 1938, sheet 27.
32 AVC, Accounts for 1940, sheet I2; for 1941, sheet 5.
The Accounts for I944 (sheet i reverse) give the Vorkutaugol' labour force (as at
I January 1945) as: z/k 29,953, ktr (katorzhane) 9,036, mobilized Germans 6,631,
free hired I0,223 (total 55,843). 'Mobilized Germans' means Soviet citizens of German
origin arrested on general security grounds. 33 AVC, Accounts for 1939, sheet I8.
34 AVC, Accounts for 1938, sheet 37. But the 'free' labour included persons deprived
of the right to reside outside the territory of Vorkutpechlag.

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572 HOW VORKUTA

Although Vorkutstroi was the chief enterprise of Vorkutpechlag, it

was not the only one. So some of the labour represented in the above
figures was in other camps than the Vorkuta one, along the rivers Usa,
Inta and Pechora.
The working day was eight hours for miners and ten for others, but
subject to prolongation as required.35
How much did the labour cost? Outlay on convict labour per man-day
is given as follows in the Accounts for 1938:
Expenditure for administration 20 kop.
guarding 71
food 3r. 47
other consumer goods
(veshchdovol'stvie) 71
domestic services 47
medical-sanitary 48
cultural-educational 6
Contribution to fund for aid to former prisoners I
Transport of prisoners 30
Contribution to GULag 9

6r. 50 kop.36
In addition, money premiums were credited to convict workers. In
the Accounts for 1939 this is given as 99 kopeks per man-day.37
The annual Accounts do not answer all the questions that arise in
their perusal. Thus, we do not know what proportion of the prisoners
were women, although we know that some were imprisoned there with
their children. In this connection the I937 Accounts note 'outlay on
maintenance of children of z/k', in the sum of 3,II7 rubles.38

Personal Information
The incompleteness of the Accounts can only to some degree be made
good by the written materials of veterans, which are not very forth-

35 For example, an i8-hour day without breaks was worked to unload barges at
Adz'va-Vom in the summer of 1938, according to L. M. Valershtein (Vospominaniya,
in the author's own archive).
36 AVC, Accounts for 1938, sheet 26. These figures are, of course, averages. Food,
for example, had several categories. In practice a prisoner's food depended on his work
norm fulfilment. According to Valershtein, for Ioo% of norm fulfilment on unloading
barges (Ioo wheelbarrows, or 7 tons, of coal, in Io hours) the '3rd Kettle' of food was
issued (800 grammes of bread per day); less for underfulfilment and more for over-
fulfilment.
37 AVC, Accounts for 1939, sheet 7. This is the average for all prisoners. The
amount was considerably larger for those engaged in production.
38 AVC, Accounts for I937. It is not clear why the figure is so low. According to
veterans of the camp, there were several dozen children under 15.

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 BEGAN 573
coming. An explanation may be found in the letter of a former Vorkuta
official, I. A. Duritsky, who worked there from 1938 to I960. In reply
to an enquiry from the Vorkuta Regional Museum as to whether he had
kept any documents on old Vorkuta, he wrote that little in the way of
documents was preserved. 'We all worked in the organs of the MVD,'
he writes, 'where the rule was: not to let much out beyond Vorkuta. So
we were all afraid to keep things .. . and destroyed everything necessary
or unnecessary. It was better so. A frightened crow is scared of a bush,
and that is how it was in our time.'39
Others are bolder in their letters, but still unwilling to respond to
the Museum's suggestions. Thus one of the veterans, K. Z. Shcheinikov,
party member since 1925, in reply to the Museum's request to write
his recollections on the thirtieth anniversary of the railway, says he is
reluctant to return mentally to this construction: 'We built Vorkuta and
the Stalin henchmen got the awards, decorating their chests as the real
sons of the Stalin epoch. How can I say, after all we went through, that
we built the Vorkuta railway with enthusiasm' ?40
The same reluctance to recall detail, and anger at the awards and
rewards for NKVD officials who did not do the work, is found in other
responses of former prisoners. Ya. Grodzensky observes that Vorkuta
was created on the sweat and blood of 'the people of Article 58'.41
The terrible times of I937-38 did not by-pass the Vorkuta camps,
but were sharper there than in 'freedom', since no formal procedure
was followed for repression. Veterans recall the terror imposed by
Kashketin. Nobody, not even the Chekists, could feel safe. Ya. M.
Moroz, the chief of Ukhtpechlag, who perished at that time, is
remembered as a striking, contradictory personality.42 Those times are
echoed in the Accounts for I937 on the turnover of financial and
accounting staff, made more acute by 'regime conditions'.43

Standard of Management
Thus, the Pechora basin got enough labour, which worked, whether

39 Letter from Rostov-on-Don, I February 1968 (in VRM Archive)

40 Letter of 29 April 1963 (VRM Archive).
41 Letter from Ryazan, 20 March 1965 (VRM Archive). The 'people of Article 58'
are all the political prisoners, most of whom in the 1930S were sentenced not under any
Article of the Criminal Code but were given terms under 'the four letters'-KRTD
('counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activity').
The special role of 'people of Article 58' lay not only in their being the majority of
all prisoners, but in that they worked best. During the war, when some mines of
Vorkutaugol' had only political prisoners, their production increased. The AVC
Accounts for I944, sheet i2, note: 'As is evident from the work of mines no. 6, 7, 9
and I , the ktr (katorzhane) there give a good labour productivity.'
42 Cf. Ocherki istorii Komi partiinoi organizatsii (Syktyvkar, 964), p. 202.
43 AVC, Accounts for I937, sheets 96, 99.

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574 HOW VORKUTA

with or without enthusiasm, in the inhuman conditions, and built and

settled Vorkuta.44 How was this labour used by the ITL management?
Some of the management were more of the technical and business
type than NKVD type, and did cherish competent workers, especially
specialists, who could be found only among 'people of Article 58'. As
NKVD men they knew the groundlessness of the supposed crimes under
Article 58. Some were courageous enough to protect prisoner colleagues
from repression by the 'operative' NKVD men. The chief of Vorkuta
Rudnik during I935-36, V. A. Barabanov, was of this kind, and is
remembered gratefully by veterans, as is V. P. Sokolov, whom we have
often quoted. The first chief of the Vorkutaugol' Combine during the
war, M. M. Mal'tsev, was one of these. But even such men were quite
unable to change the system, and did not try to. They adapted them-
selves to it. There is little to say on the mass of the administrative
chiefs, typical of their period and their NKVD. It was these people who
set the climate of the Pechora camps.
The extent of arbitrary command methods in the whole prewar
economy is well known. They were particularly characteristic in the
NKVD enterprises. Thus, the Accounts for I937 directly note the
combination of incompetence with self-confidence of many chiefs in
the localities. 'They give no effort to studying their enterprise, have no
concern for cost of production.' They do not wish to heed 'those finance
workers who inform their chiefs of illegal expenditures'. As example,
the head of a sovkhoz in Kochmes wrote on a document of the senior
accountant (who 'forbade in writing an illegal operation by the sovkhoz
chief'), 'Idiotic instructions by a z/k don't have to be followed. Do what
I order.'45
The condition of Vorkutpechlag (which was organizationally divided
off from Ukhtpechlag in 1938) is described as 'a burdensome economic
legacy'. 'Its basic part, the Vorkuta Rudnik . . . needs capital repair,
:although such repair has just been completed. The generating equip-
ment, inadequate in itself, is in a state of complete collapse. The standard
of the new buildings is poor, needing immediate repair. There is no
44 The only collective refusal to work in the 1930S was in I936 by a group of newly
arrived real Trotskyists with some former Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
They were prepared to work only in their own occupations. The dispute reached the
stage of a collective hunger strike, when in I937, with the arrival of Kashketin's
commission, these people became its first victims.
The post-Stalin strikes are partially noted in the Accounts. For example, the
Accounts for 1953 speak only (sheet 3) of 'crude infringement of labour discipline. At
the end of July and August some mines were completely stopped, viz., mine no. 7
for nine days, no. 6 for three days, SHU-2 for six days and no. 29 for six days'. The
fact that MVD troops fired on strikers at mine no. 29 is not mentioned.
45 AVC, Accounts for I937, sheets 95-96. Sheet 85 reports the 'complete ignoring'
of financial discipline by section chiefs as noted in the protocol of the meeting of
technical-administrative staff at section i of Ukhtpechlag which considered and
approved the Accounts for I937.

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BEGAN 575

housing. The camp inmates are placed in unadapted summer tents and
in dugouts. The free labour is not well housed. The narrow-gauge
railway, which began operating in 1935, was not completed: the
permanent way surface requires immense additional work, the rolling
stock needs additions and repair, the bridges need basic repair .... The
boatyards46 are in the wrong places and lack equipment, which causes
millions of rubles losses per year. The farms operate without any
leadership at all.'47
The new organization was thereby rejecting responsibility for what
it had to administer, but it was part of the same NKVD, which kept
watch over everything else but could not efficiently manage its own
affairs. We find, in the protocols of a meeting under the assistant head
of GULag which examined the affairs of Vorkutstroi for 1939, that
2,460,000 rubles was stolen or wasted in I939: 'Nobody was concerned
to avert mismanagement and theft.'48 These terms cover losses of many
kinds, but the total waste was far greater than any figures given.
Some indication may be gained from the extent by which actual
losses exceeded planned losses (Vorkutstroi was a state enterprise with
a loss planned for each year). The actual loss is given (in thousands of
rubles) as I5,157 in I937, I0,705 in I938, I3,405 in I939, I4,896 in
I940.49 If we look further into I940, a year in which the financial
situation of Vorkutstroi 'significantly strengthened' according to the
Accounts, we find (in thousand rubles) the loss was planned at 4,927,
there was an additional subsidy of 8,900 (including three million for
winter transport because of navigation disruption) and an unplanned
loss of i,0o69-of which 745 comes under 'deficiencies, waste and theft'.
For the last heading, 14 persons were prosecuted and ordered to repay
a total of 32,000 rubles; the remaining 713,000 is not mentioned.50
Leaving quite aside the immeasurable cost in human suffering, and
speaking in purely financial terms, the GULag style of management
may well have doubled the cost needed to create Vorkuta.

Vorkuta

46 The boatyard was at Pokcha, on the upper Pechora. It built barges.

47 AVC, Accounts for 1938, sheet 6. Vorkutpechlag had three state farms. The most
efficient was worked by 'dekulakized' peasants. This farm was even granted participa-
tion in the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow (ibid., sheet I2).
48 AVC, Accounts for I939, sheet Io. Thefts of goods in transit were made easier
by the very poor record-keeping at the main points-Nar'yan-Mar and Ust'-Usa;
at secondary points there were no records at all-see Accounts for 1937, sheet oo0.
The Accounts often refer to various financial irregularities-e.g. I937, sheets 95-97,
1938, sheets 13-15, 1939, sheet 8, 1940, sheet I36.
49 AVC, Accounts for 1938, sheet 36, 1939, sheet io, 1940, sheet 13 reverse.
50 AVC. Accounts for 1940, sheets 13, 14, I7, I37.

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