Beyond the World of the Living

When I was a child, I often overheard the hushed conversations of adults alluding to the fact that, starting in the 1930s, there had been concentration camps for political prisoners in our region’s most remote and inaccessible reaches.

As I was a young boy at the time, I did not fully grasp the meaning of these conversations, but they generated in me an intense curiosity to see these places.

Many years passed, and I began to pursue photography seriously and to travel Russia and the world with my camera.

Then, in 2012, I decided to undertake a difficult, mysterious, and exciting journey to the places I had dreamed of since my childhood.

I saw this trip as both an exploration and an opportunity to promote the rustic lifestyles, beauty, and history of my native region.

The first half of the trip, from Khonuu (a town of about 2500, located about 800 km northeast of Yakutsk) to Ulakhan-Chistay (also known as Sasyr, located near the Chersky mountain range). I traveled by plane. The second half I traveled with a local guide, by horse – the only means of transport in this area.

The camps are located in difficult to reach mountainous tundra, where the only residents, just as in Soviet times, are Evenk reindeer herders.

We traveled on horseback for a week, crossing rivers and streams, surmounting mountain passes and slowly traversing dangerous swamps. This was possible thanks to our Yakut workhorses, who steadfastly bore both us and our packs, adroitly crossing water barriers and heroically withstanding multitudinous bites from taiga midges.

During our travels I was able to talk with several surviving witnesses of those horrific years, people who recalled how prisoners were herded through their settlements, how their guards humiliated them, how the authorities would not allow them to help these unfortunate souls, and how, if someone tried to escape, they would be shot on sight.

Here are a few of the recollections from those years, recounted to me by the Evenk herders and hunters that we met along the way:

“I was 5 or 7. Once, out the window, I saw them herding prisoners past our home. The guards were riding horses and had warm clothes on. The prisoners were walking alongside them, dressed in rags. One of the guards came into our yard and asked my mother for a feed bucket. Then he took a bag of groats out of his backpack, emptied them into the bucket, and started tossing them at the prisoners. We felt very sorry for these people, but we were told that they were enemies of the people and we weren’t allowed to help them. Not many of them made it to the camp; many of them died along the way.”

“In the summer, we children would sneak off to see the prisoners who were being held out in the open, behind barbed wire. It was awfully hot, the people moaned and asked for something to drink. The guards in the tower, to amuse themselves, would let them go to a nearby stream one at a time, but made them crawl there on their bellies. As soon as the person got close to the water, the guard began to shoot either at him or near him. Many were left to die along that stream.”

En route.

A lightpole with barbed wire.

A ruined watchtower.

A garage built from local stone.

Rails that once led to the mine.

Double bunks.

A women’s cell.

I listened to these stories and understood that I had to get to these places, in order to honor the memory of the innocent victims who perished there, to provide a photographic record for us and our descendants.

Finally, we made it to the main camp. I immediately headed out to explore it, aided by the white nights.

The main camp, Sugun, is located in northeastern Yakutia, in Momsky District. It is bordered by the Moma River, from which it gets its name, and its tributary, the Kinendya.

I was surprised to discover that its basic infrastructure – barracks, huts, fences and posts – was still in good condition, despite being more than 70 years old.

I began to photograph this place, which was incredibly beautiful, despite its dismal history.

As I walked from one structure to another, a chill ran through me. My scalp crawled and my head began to ache; when I was shooting in the isolation cell, I felt that I could hear the screams and moans of prisoners.

The cell was a stone enclosure with bars over the windows, and it had clearly been unheated. The stove stood in the corridor, where the guards would have been. Keeping in mind that winter temperatures in Yakutia can drop to 60 below (centigrade), it soon becomes clear that frozen bodies were often dragged from this cell, to be carted down the nearby road, along with the stone detritus of uranium mining, at which the prisoners worked night and day. The uranium mined here was used to build the first Soviet atomic bombs.

There was no thought of burying prisoners, even though locals confirmed that there was a cemetery nearby. I tried to find it, but without success. And my guide refused to set foot in the former camp, saying that such places have bad energy. His ancestors have always stayed away.

Not far from the main camp there was a sort of administrative outpost with a similar infrastructure. In 1953, after the camps were closed, reindeer herders dismantled several wooden structures to heat their yurts.

I continued taking photographs on my journey back to civilization, sadly marveling at how places of such horror had existed amid such singularly beautiful mountains, velvety green grasslands, and blue skies... alongside pure, babbling mountain streams. RL