The Road to Nowhere

Just under a century ago, Kolyvan District was bustling with settlers, frenetic development, expanding farms. Yet all these settlers were exiles – kulaks, victims of the Great Terror, ethnic Germans – dumped here and forced to survive by their wits in a mosquito-infested Siberian swampland. When the repression finally ended, many left, and most of what was built was swallowed up by the land. But there are still some here who remember…

Kolyvan District is just 130 kilometers from Novosibirsk – Russia’s third most populous city. But most of its formerly bustling villages are now overgrown ghost towns. Of the 20 settlements to which victims of Stalinist repression were exiled in the 1930s and 1940s, only five show faint signs of life. Together, these 20 settlements once comprised the “Pikhtovka Commandant Zone.” Barely anyone who was forcibly resettled here is still alive, but those who are remember everything and are willing to talk.

Seventy years ago, there were stores and schools nestled within the taiga’s dark-needled pine forests, and trains came through on narrow-gauge tracks. There was even an airport. Much of this was built by the political prisoners and Volga Germans exiled to this remote corner of Siberia. Most left at the first opportunity. The villages of Atuz and Ryamovoye are no more. Gone are the tiny hamlets Dalnaya Polyana, Zhirnovka, and Vershina. Old maps attest to the erstwhile existence of Alexeyevka, Noskovo, Yurki, and Cheremshanka. Where they once stood, the grass now grows to human height.