| Pristine wilderness areas teeming
with wild animals characterise Magadan, a port on the Sea of Okhotsk encircled by the
hills of Nagaeva Bay. Grim and forbidding, it was a one way ticket to hell - aplace
from where few returned. Closely entwined with the Stalin era, it was one of the Gulags to
which Stalin sent those he wished to finish off. |
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Its history is replete with human and civil rights
violations, with stories of the brutal and senseless treatment of human beings by their
own fellow men. Magadan was little different from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
The sole difference being that it is less well known because of the tight controls of the
Soviet regime.
The capital of the Kolyma region, Magadan was the first (and last) port of call for the
human cargo sent in congested cattle cars and prison ships to the gold fields of Kolyma.
Those who survived the ardous journey were put to hard labour building docks, piers,
roads, administrative buildings and living accommodation. Working in the freezing cold
(-40° C)in knee-deep marshy waters and under the most primitive of conditions,
prisoners died like flies. Kolyma Highway, the road they built became infamously
known as the "Road of Bones". It is believed that one man's life was the price
paid for each kilogram of gold mined - in Stalinist Russia, it was cheap at the price.
Magadan's sordid saga ended in the late 1950s with Stalin's death and down came the
barbed wire fences, watchtowers and prison barracks. Present day Magadan bears little
resemblance to that Magadan - the prison complex and other buildings were replaced by dull
Soviet style architecture and the town sunk into comfortable obscurity as it tried to live
down its past. Today it is a desolate and bleak city with no railway line close to it and
all that is there to see are a few Stalinist baroque style buildings, the Regional
Museum and the Geological & Mineralogical Museum.
It seems that all roads lead to Magadan and none but one away - its that big a dead
end. Kolyma highway, the only one that goes anywhere heads down to Yakutsk, some 1500km to
the east. For the traveller who still wants to get there and away - daily flights come in
from Moscow, two flights a week from Vladivostok, and one each week from Khabarovsk. The
closest railhead is a good 1000km to the south.
A bus service runs two coaches each way to and from the airport and railhead every 45
minutes or so. There are a few conveniently located hotels in Magada. The better one is
well furnished but is in a drab gray modern concrete building just a couple of kms
from the bus station. The others have dilapidated rooms and bathrooms and with little hope
of occupancy. Cafés and hotel restaurants are the limited options for diners - the market
at Dzerzhinskogo can provide fresh produce and canned goods.
The post office, telephone and telegraph office are located on ploschad Lenina,
and open round the clock. Money can be exchanged at the Sberbank on ulitsa Pushkina and
the Vneshtorgbank on prospekt Karla Marxa but not in the hotels. At Proletarskaya is a
travel agency that arranges sightseeing trips, flora and fauna excursions, drives to the
old Gulag camps and boating trips to observe seals and walruses.
For detailed country and visitor information, see Russia. |
