March 30, 2021

Mines from Aluminum to Crypto


Mines from Aluminum to Crypto
Nadvoitsy has been called the Pripyat of the Arctic; this is what a post-Chernobyl Pripyat classroom looked like in 2011. Wikimedia Commons user Shanomag

What's more mysterious than a nearly abandoned Soviet-era ghost town in the Arctic? A nearly-abandoned Soviet-era ghost town in the Arctic that's seeing an uncanny resurgence through internet wizardry.

The town of Nadvoitsy developed around an aluminum factory planted in the Arctic by the Soviets. At its height, it had more than 10,000 residents. Now, apartments are on sale for R150,000-R400,000 ($1,973-$5,262), and no one buys them. For comparison, the cost of an entire apartment in Nadvoitsy would buy a person root canals and crowns on two teeth in St. Petersburg, as this author knows from recent personal experience.

Now that the aluminum factory is closed, who wants to stay in the Arctic? No one, really. The Komsomolskaya Pravda writer who investigated the story contends that, "According to all the laws of economics, [Nadvoitsy] had to die."

But investors recently spent $5 billion dollars to keep this monotown from turning into a ghost town. Why?

The old factory is now a data center. After all, "every pie shop now has an online store." That digital data has to be stored somewhere!

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can also be mined there, meaning that a town that was once close to being forgotten is now becoming more and more valuable. With a hydroelectric plant nearby, electricity is cheap. Servers and mining release enormous amounts of heat, but in the Arctic, there is no need for expensive coolers.

Since a data center pretty much runs itself, thousands of factory jobs have been replaced with only hundreds of high-tech ones. Still, the new facility is pumping a lot of money into the local economy.

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Driving Down Russia's Spine

Driving Down Russia's Spine

The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. 
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955