Useful Information
Vorkuta City Info
Vorkuta, population about 116,000, is a coal mining community in the Komi Republic of Russia just north of the Arctic circle in the Pechora coal basin, at 67?30?N 64?00?E. It had its origin in one of the more notorious concentration camps of the Gulag which was established in 1932. Vorkuta entrance circa early 1950s. The sign reads: "Labor in the USSR is a matter of honor, glory, pride and heroism". Compare with Arbeit macht frei.In 1941 the town and the labor camp system based around it were connected to the rest of the world by a prisoner-built railroad linking Konosha and Kotlas, and the camps of Inta. Vorkuta became a city on November 26, 1943. It was the largest centre of Gulag camps in European part of the USSR and served as administrative centre for a large number of smaller camps and sub-camps, among them Kotlas, Pechora and Izhma (modern Sosnogorsk). In 1953 the town witnessed a major uprising by the concentration camp inmates, so-called Vorkuta Uprising. After it was bloodily quelled by the Red Army and the NKVD, many of the concentration camps were disbanded in the 1950s. However, it is reported that some in the Vorkuta area continued to operate into the 1980s.