10 Facts About Kolyma

Kolyma is a region located in the Russian Far East.

Under Joseph Stalin's rule, Kolyma became the most notorious region for the Gulag labor camps.

In 1932 expeditions pushed their way into the interior of the Kolyma, embarking on the construction of the Kolyma Highway, which was to become known as the Road of Bones.

Prisoner population of Kolyma increased substantially in 1946 with the arrival of thousands of former Soviet POWs liberated by Western Allied forces or the Red Army at the close of World War II.

Kolyma camps switched to using free labor after 1954, and in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev ordered a general amnesty that freed many prisoners.

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Dalstroy was the agency created to manage exploitation of the Kolyma area, based principally on the use of forced labour.

Vivid account of the conditions in Kolyma is that of Brother Gene Thompson of Kiev's Faith Mission.

One of the most famous political prisoners in Kolyma was Vadim Kozin, possibly Russia's most popular romantic tenor, who was sent to the camps in February 1945, apparently for refusing to write a song about Stalin.

Kolyma personally directed the constant and relentless purging of the archives.

Kolyma believed some of the bodies were still partially preserved in the permafrost.