Driving the Siberian Road of a Million Bones

Snaking through Russia’s wild and unforgiving Far East, small towns dot an otherwise barren, lunar landscape. A single road, the Kolyma Route, connects the furthest outposts of the former Soviet empire. But it is better known by a more sinister name: the Road of Bones.

 

A Gold Rush in Siberia

At the turn of the 20th century, gold and platinum were discovered in Siberia’s Kolyma region. At the time, the USSR was rapidly industrializing under Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan, launched in 1928 to expand heavy industry and collectivize agriculture. Mining Kolyma’s vast resources would help finance economic development across the Soviet Union. But the region was remote and inaccessible, so a massive highway was proposed to transport miners and minerals.

Construction began in 1932. Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners and convicts were forced to build a 2,000km stretch of highway from the Pacific port city of Magadan to Yakutsk, the capital of the Yakutia region in eastern Siberia. It would take 20 years to complete.

One death per metre

Prisoners hacked their way through insect-infested swamps and frozen wastelands using only shovels and wheelbarrows. According to one camp commander, Naftaly Frenkel, "We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months—after that, we don’t need him anymore."

Tens of thousands were executed for not working quickly enough, while hundreds of thousands more froze to death in temperatures as low as -50°C. Up to one million died building the road—one death for every metre constructed. Their bodies were simply buried in its foundations.

The highway remains mostly unpaved, covered in dirt, gravel, and sand. Driving on it was only possible in summer or winter when it was either completely dry or frozen solid. In spring and autumn, it became impassable mud.

Authorities installed heated shipping containers with two-way radios and made it illegal to pass a stranded vehicle without stopping. Even today, breaking down in winter almost certainly means freezing to death.

The very real human toll

After the road was finished, hundreds of thousands more prisoners were sent along it. Many were common criminals, but most were political prisoners—victims of Stalin’s Great Terror.

Sergei Korolev, the rocket scientist later regarded as the father of Soviet space travel, was sentenced to death and sent to Kolyma, where he lost most of his teeth. After being rehabilitated, he led the development of the Soviet rocket program, launching the first dog, Laika, and the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space.

Nikolai Getman, a Ukrainian poet who spent nearly a decade building the road, later wrote:

"Some may say that the Gulag is a forgotten part of history, that we do not need to be reminded. But I have witnessed monstrous crimes. It is not too late to talk about them, to reveal them. It is essential to do so. Some have expressed fear that I might end up in Kolyma again—this time for good. But the people must be reminded... of one of the harshest acts of political repression in the Soviet Union."

Today, the Road of Bones serves as a memorial to those who perished. In the early 1990s, a statue called the Mask of Sorrow by artist Ernst Neizvestny, was erected in Magadan at the highway’s starting point, commemorating the suffering and death that built it.T

Today, the R504 Kolyma Highway (Road of Bones) serves as a memorial to those who died. In 1996, artist Ernst Neizvestny's Mask of Sorrow was erected in Magadan at the highway’s starting point, to commemorate the suffering and loss behind its construction.