Magadan – Russia’s Auschwitsz
I have now been in Magadan, NE Russia, for just over one week, making preparations to fight my way on a bicycle through the encroaching Siberian winter – the first leg on a 15,000 mile ride back home.For me, Magadan has seemed a most haunting city. The strange presence of sorrow is tangible. Stalin condemned over 2 million innocent people to work to their deaths in the local gold mines, earning it the nickname “the gateway to hellâ€?. It was generally understood that “if you were sent to Magadan, you never came homeâ€?.
Perhaps Magadan haunts me because those curses and prayers of anguish which rose to heaven fifty years ago still hang in the air, unable to move on or let go. Father Michael, the amazing Catholic Priest whose community I am staying with, tells me that every day since he was called here, he has felt something of this spiritual depth. God is indeed present in the
place of sorrow. Father Michael now works tirelessly and gracefully to raise a beacon of hope and love in the wasteland of despair, corruption, alcoholism and desperation which is post Soviet Russia.
The Maske Scorbe (mask of sorrow) – a monument to the 3 million innocent Russians who were sent to their deaths by Stalin in the gold mines around Magadan.
Russia, it seems, has been unable to free herself from her past. For the majority, the hope that an allegedly new political system would bring opportunity, is now lost. One commentator claimed that in fact ‘darkness has followed the dawn’. Corruption holds virtually all offices of power, and a baffling, pointless and dehumanising bureaucracy strangles the will of any who have aspirations for noble endeavour or honest employment. It has taken me an astonishing 8 trips to the local visa office to try and get my visa registered – I must go for the 9th time tomorrow! As Kafka once said of such a system of bureaucracy: “â€?one is more an object, a thing, than a living creatureâ€?.
This said, the Russians i have got to know so far have proved themselves a very good people. They are friendly, generous, helpful, interesting… and they speak barely a word of English!
With Al plus Beryl (his bike) now here from Alaska, our panniers are all packed and we are ready to start riding on the challenging first leg through the Kolyma Mountains to Jakutsk. Apparently the snow is already falling inland and temperatures are now dropping below zero. We must move fast – the Siberian winter is on its way.
To Russians, Magadan was known as the “gateway to hellâ€? – over 3 million
Russians who arrived at this port were sent to work to their deaths in the
icy gold mines of Kolyma.
Prisoners were shipped from all across Russia, like cattle.
“If you were sent to Magadan, you didn’t come home.�
The ghosts of communism still seem to haunt Magadan.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This is great reading! I took a train journey from Warsaw to Astana and have been victim to this ridiculous bureaucracy as well. My visa was declined 4 days before my flight to Warsaw without any indication why (all the supporting documents abode by every regulation). So, living in Scotland at the time, my only choice was to gamble; I rescheduled my flight to the next day and stayed in a youth hostel in Warsaw, rising early the next day to go to the Russian Embassy in Warsaw, in person! Thankfully several hours queueing and waiting resulted in my bloody 3-day transit visa! I spend over £150 and many weeks rearranging and organising around a visa for a country I’d be in for less than 3 days, whereas the Kazakhstan visa was £23 and arrived after 3 working days!
And when I was on the train, my passport was heavily scrutinised (sometimes with special UV sensors), one official tried to force me to purchase a new visa without reading the details of my current one (fortunately a cotraveller talked him out of it!) and some officials would unnecessarily place my approved passport down on the bunk below me so that I would have you get down on to the floor to collect it. So often they caused this unnecessary anger and stress!
However the normal citizens I met were great, and the Kazakhs were extremely welcoming!
Well Done! I Like it!