These haunting photographs reveal the rotting carcasses of Soviet gulags and a partially built railway where up to 300,000 prisoners died, with their remains still buried in the soil.
Strewn across the Siberian wilderness, just below and above the Arctic circle, prisoners at these horrific camps were forced to work on a train line dreamt up by Joseph Stalin – the Salekhard-Igarka Railway. His aides knew it was a pointless scheme mapped out in terrain that was impossible to work with, but dared not tell him.
The gulags, part of a network of more than 100 scattered across Russia, were photographed by New Zealand-based Radio Free Europe photographer Amos Chapple, who was tipped off about the macabre mausoleums by an adventurer friend.
New Zealand-based Radio Free Europe photographer Amos Chapple ventured to several abandoned Russian gulags, where prisoners were forced to work on a railway project dreamt up by Joseph Stalin. Above, an aerial view of the incomplete train line running through the wilderness
Stalin’s aides knew the Salekhard-Igarka Railway, pictured, was a pointless scheme but dared not tell him
While researching the history of the line, Chapple said that he read ‘incredible’ survivor accounts of the inhumane conditions inside the gulags. In one testimony, a male prisoner described the punishment for attempting to escape, which involved being tied naked to a pole and left to blood-sucking mosquitoes
Heavy labour on the railway line, parts of which are in the Arctic Circle, was carried out by gulag prisoners, while most of the engineers were from outside the camps
A rusting barbed wire fence in one of the gulags can be seen in the foreground with a watchman’s tower lurking beyond
He said he didn’t know the names of the camps, located between Salekhard and Nadym, as they were ‘unnamed, or their names are lost to history’.
Chapple’s images serve as a chilling reminder of Russia’s nightmarish past. One particularly poignant shot shows punishment cells with metal-lined doors. Chapple contacted one survivor from the railway project, Aleksandr Snovsky, who told him that this was where starving prisoners received just 200 grams of bread and a cup of water per day.
The cameraman told MailOnline Travel that it was one of the most intense photography projects he’s undertaken and that he did lots of historical research before journeying to the crumbling sites.
Describing what it was like when he got to one of the camps, he recounted: ‘Standing inside the punishment cells, where people were dumped and given starvation rations was the most powerful moment for me. The whole site is one enormous crime scene. But it’s a crime that no one has ever been held accountable for.’
While researching, Chapple said that he read ‘incredible’ survivor accounts of the inhumane conditions inside the gulags. In one testimony, a male prisoner described the punishment for attempting to escape, which involved being tied naked to a pole and left to blood-sucking mosquitoes.
Apparently, within two to three hours, blood loss would cause the punished prisoner to lose consciousness and perish. Chapple said that another prisoner described throwing love letters into the women’s barracks, and even bottles of semen.
The above photo shows one of the gulag’s punishment cells with a metal-lined door. One former gulag prisoner told Chapple that those who were consigned to the cells received 200 grams of bread and a cup of water per day
Chapple says with each winter the gulags get shabbier, with buildings succumbing to the weight of the snow
Chapple took this harrowing photo of rotting bunk beds in one of the gulags. Prisoners slept behind barred windows, watched by guards through a peephole
The Salekhard-Igarka Railway, which is located in northern Siberia, was the brainchild of Stalin. The aim was to connect Russia’s Arctic waters with its western railway network and the nickel mines in the north with the Soviet factories in the west
The women would then try to get pregnant so they could avoid the back-breaking regimen of hard labor.
The gulag, an acronym in Russian of Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps, was a system of forced labor camps first set up in 1919 by communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin after he took control of the Soviet Union in 1917.
The prisons were designed to remove ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and other ‘undesirables’ – including gay men – from society by placing them in savagely inhospitable environments, and working them to death.
When Lenin died in 1924 and Joseph Stalin rose to power, the gulags became increasingly widespread. Between 1929 and the year of Stalin’s death in 1953, 18 million men and women were transported to Soviet slave labour camps in Siberia and other outposts of the Red empire – many of them never to return.
The Salekhard-Igarka Railway, which is located in northern Siberia, was the brainchild of Stalin. The aim was to connect Russia’s Arctic waters with its western railway network and the nickel mines in the north with the Soviet factories in the west.
One of hundreds of railway bridges built by prisoners to span the swampy terrain
A length of rail, which Chapple says was forged shortly before Lenin’s Communists took power in Russia in 1917
A building within a gulag subsides into the boggy earth, with the timber support beams scattered at different angles
Chapple was accompanied by an armed huntsman into the wooded areas, as bears are known to frequent the region
A weathered sign on a crumbling exterior wall in one of the gulags. The camps were set up in 1917 by Lenin
Stalin’s monstrous gulag camps where prisoners were worked to death in brutal conditions
The gulag was a system of forced labor camps that were set up in 1919 by communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin after he took control of the Soviet Union in 1917.
The prisons were designed to remove ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and other ‘undesirables’ – including gay men – from society by placing them in savagely inhospitable environments, and working them to death.
When Lenin died in 1924 and Joseph Stalin rose to power, the gulags became increasingly widespread. Between 1929 and the year of Stalin’s death in 1953, 18 million men and women were transported to Soviet slave labor camps in Siberia and other outposts of the Red empire – many of them never to return.
In the winter, the gulag convicts were used as slave labour in temperatures that plummeted to -50C in winter, while in summer they were plagued by vicious mosquitoes. The monstrous treatment of prisoners would often start when they were being transported to the camps, by truck, train or boat.
In 1942, a Polish teenager recalled how the male prisoners smashed their way into the female compartment and started to rape women.
The gulag prisons were designed to remove ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and other ‘undesirables’ – including gay men – from society by placing them in savagely inhospitable environments, and working them to death. Above, prisoners of the Vorkuta gulag seen in 1945
‘Several men attacked each woman at once,’ wrote Janusz Bardach. ‘I could see the victims’ white bodies twisting, their legs kicking forcefully, their hands clawing the men’s faces. The women hit, cried and wailed. When the rapists ran out of women, some of the bulkier men… hunted for young men. These adolescents were added to the carnage…’
Many of the testimonies from gulags are reminiscent of Holocaust memoirs. Wagons intended for 18 people would have 48 passengers crammed into them, and the occupants were given pitiful amounts of food and water. On one transport during the bitter cold of December 1944, it was recorded how ‘the prisoners were given frozen bread, and for ten days got none at all’.
By the time the prisoners – wearing summer uniforms – arrived at the camp, many had frostbite and were covered in lice. They were the lucky ones. Fifty-three prisoners had died on that transport of 1,402 people, and 400 more ended up in hospital. Those who made it alive to the camps met a miserable fate. Many prisoners went on to die with no gravestones, with their bodies left to rot in mass burial sites. The only means of identification was a number tag tied to their remains.
The gulag institution was closed by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs on January 25, 1960. However, forced labour colonies for political and criminal prisoners continued to exist and prisoners remained at one the most famous camps, Perm-36, until 1987 when it finally shut its doors.
Prisoners from the Soviet gulag system installed bits of track across the country from 1947 until Stalin’s death in 1953.
Communist rulers abandoned Project 501, as it was known, soon after he died in 1953, even though it was only 40 miles short of completion.
To get to the abandoned line Chapple flew to Salekhard, which straddles the Polar Circle. He says that some people in the community joke that ‘in the right house you can sleep with your head in the Arctic and your feet in the mainland’. From there, Chapple journeyed in an all-terrain vehicle capable of navigating the swampy landscape.
A hatch on one of the punishment cell doors, through which starving prisoners were dealt their meagre rations
Chapple says that some of the gulag remains, like this timber shack that once probably housed guards, have been maintained and are now regularly used by hunters
Chapple took a shot of one of the water-logged roads he traversed, with some kind of tipper truck ahead
In the winter Siberia is freezing cold, while in the summer, mosquitoes are rife. Chapple decided to visit in the autumn in a bid to make his expedition a little easier. Although he did encounter heavy rain
The hardy vehicle Chapple travelled in makes its way across the wilderness
While the gulags are empty, with rotting bits of timber and dismembered lengths of train track nearby, Chapple said one of the gulag buildings he went into was in excellent condition.
He said that hunters appeared to be using the structure as a shelter in the wilderness. It had a functioning metal stove emblazoned with a communist star.
Another interesting discovery the photographer made was a glass jar that once contained stewed pork, left over from the period.
Chapple said he didn’t need to seek permission to visit the gulags and the requirement to have a permit was lifted last year.
The photographer mused: ‘Now you can just wander right into these places, which is thrilling, but also disheartening: the theft of artefacts is no doubt taking place.’
Stalin’s train scheme – which was 40 miles from completion
The Salekhard–Igarka Railway, which is located in northern Siberia, was the brainchild of Joseph Stalin. The aim was to connect Russia’s Arctic waters with its western railway network and the nickel mines in the north to the Soviet factories in the west. Stalin’s aides knew it was a horribly pointless scheme, but dared not tell him.
Prisoners from the Soviet gulag system were forced to work on the project, with bits of track installed across the country from 1947 until Stalin’s death in 1953.
Communist rulers abandoned Project 501, as it was known, soon after he died in 1953, even though it was only 40 miles short of completion.
Stalin’s plan was that the line, far to the north of the famous Trans-Siberian track, would link Salekhard – a town straddling the Arctic Circle – with the obscure village of Ikarka, envisioned by the megalomaniac tyrant as a new deep-water port that would give him control of the Arctic Ocean. The bonus would be that two of Siberia’s great rivers – the Ob and the Yenisei, respectively the seventh and fifth longest in the world – would be linked, too.
Described as ‘outstandingly and deliberately senseless’, the notorious ‘Railway to Nowhere’ was built under a cloak of Soviet secrecy. Some 120,000 convicts – many of them political prisoners – laboured on the track at any one time – women as well as men. Remarkable archive footage from the Stalin era shows the harsh conditions they faced on the ‘Railroad of Death’.
Today – flanked by the rotting remains of cruel gulag camps – it is described as ‘one of the most shocking museums in the world’ and an unofficial necropolis where the corpses of the fallen lie buried. Convicts were brought to gulags close to the railway line by cattle trains, including thousands from the Baltic republics, eaten up by Stalin in the Second World War. Others came in appalling conditions by water in summer. A survivor from this hell recalled 600 mainly young women prisoners – emaciated, half-naked and bald – jammed into the hold of a ship, en route to the sinister camps serving this railway.
The Salekhard–Igarka Railway, which is located in northern Siberia, was the brainchild of Joseph Stalin. His aides knew it was a pointless scheme, but dared not tell him. Prisoners from the Soviet gulag system were forced to work on the project, with bits of track installed across the country from 1947 until Stalin’s death in 1953. Above, gulag prisoners working on a railway site in 1949
‘It was impossible to tell where one pair of buttocks ended and another set of breasts began,’ read the grim account. The scene was likened to a medieval painter’s evocation of the Last Judgement. Some gulags had facilities where children of female convicts were kept separately, with mother’s barred from seeing their toddlers if they failed to meet the harsh labouring targets.
Most of the labour was done manually, with spades and wheelbarrows rather than heavy machinery. The terrain proved to be a nightmare and in the summer, swathes of newly-built track would sink into the swampy land.
Meanwhile, in winter the threat to life for the slave labourers was the severe, unyielding cold with temperatures plummeting to -50 degrees Celsius. In summer – with 24 hour daylight – convicts suffered from incessant mosquitoes described by one survivor as ‘a tortuous mob – there were more of those beasts in the air than raindrops in a thunderstorm’.
Lyudmila Lipatova, the former director of the Salekhard city museum, previously told The New York Times that Russian historians had estimated the numbers who died building this rail link at 300,000, but exact figures will never be uncovered.
‘We haven’t really looked that hard,’ she admitted candidly. ‘Some things you don’t want to know.’
Along with accidents, disease and illness scurvy was another major killer in the gulags. So, too, was exhaustion and overwork. Many of the camps have been destroyed by forest fires, with little more than the barbed wire remaining.