Russian wild wild East

Magadan is a town at the Far North-East of Russia (about 8 hours flight from Moscow), which was made as base place for a Soviet Gulag (the main Soviet forced labor camp systems during the Stalin era).

Magadan is a town at the Far North-East of Russia (about 8 hours flight from Moscow), which was made as base place for a Soviet Gulag (the main Soviet forced labor camp systems during the Stalin era). Because of no transport road, electricity, telephone or Internet cable connection with any other Russian region people here feel like they live on an island and call the rest part of Russia - Continent, in spite of geographically they live on the same continent. The natural condition here is one of the most brutal on the Earth, but this is also a place of a lot goldfields. This is a story about a small electric station some 400 km from Magadan which gives electricity to the nearest gold-mines. The station keeper Sergei spend almost all winter here, because nobody wants to take this job.There is no television, radio, Internet or mobile connection here and Sergei lives alone with his dog. Sometime hunters visit him. Inspire Sergey is a hero of this story he is not unusual person and he is not hero at all, on his place could be any other person - he is very typical Russian man. He don't do anything very bad, but he is also do not do anything good - he is like neutral buoyancy. He doesn't have any real civic stand, but he like President (because he is strong) and he doesn't like all country around Russia, especially US and China. Sergey is shy, but rude, his dog attack by the command "Germans!" and he doesn't see anything strange with it. He doesn't read, write, hunt or handmade something. He just sit and wait.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Novovetreniy is a place with small electric station and couple gold-mine around. It's use to be pretty big village, but now only a station keepers live here. They change each other every 2-3 weeks. One of them - Sergey. In reality Sergey can't do anything with electric, but nobody else don't want to take this job. The reason to keep him here is to save station from metal scrap collectors, which are ready to destroy and steal any metal things they can find.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Sergey are waiting for a call from the nearest village (about 150 km, but sometimes 8 or more hours of driving) from him. Telephone is his only one connection with other people, during Russia-Ukraine conflict he get all news by phone from his friends in the village which retells by their words news which they get from official Russian channels. In spite of this way (with a lot distortion) of getting news Sergey and his friends still feel like they understand main things about international political situation and have a lot of reasons to dislike all countries around Russia.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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A dog stands near one of the gold-mines near Novovetreniy. In spite Magadan one of the world richest region for gold mining people live very poor here. Local industry send all mined resources to Moscow and then Moscow distribute part of this budget back to Magadan. This is one of the reason why local people hate Moscow. Most of locals don’t want to work at mining factories because of very bad living condition, that’s why a lot of artels are from Ukraine. Because of crisis between Russia and Ukraine workers and hunters fights with each others and don’t want to help each other - in this weather condition the lack of assistance often means manslaughter.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Sergei spend most of his time playing at 10 years-old computer game. The game should be on-line, but there is no Internet connection here. All region have only very expensive satellite Internet or very slow mobile one. There is still no cables connection between Magadan region and the rest of Russia.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Hunters visit Sergey’s house from time to time. They share some food and of course drink together. Some hunters are really brutal and easily tell stories about killing not only animals. There is no typical cash flow in this region (it’s not because people don’t use credit cards) - some cheap things can be extremely expensive and some expensive very cheap. That’s why one of local businessmen bring a train tank of alcohol to his gold field and partly use it as a salary, because rouble goes up and down, but in alcohol everything cost the same for a lot of years without any devaluation.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Valenki is one of the most comfortable type of footwear for this weather condition, that’s why valenki are still so popular here.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Using fire-wood is still common in a lot of regions of Russia and in Magadan region using fire-wood, hunting and plucking are not a hobby, but the way of survival. Sergey still didn’t have a toilet or water inside house, so even during - 40 degrees of Celsius he need to use outside toilets.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Dead bodies of raven are seen on the trees to scare other animals from dump near Sergey’s house, because he didn’t utilise garbage anyhow. In spite of very beautiful nature with so romantic toponyms as "The lake of Jack London" this mentally typical Russian land is fool of wildness, brutality, lawlessness and conservatism.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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Sergey is playing at the simplest mobile game near the door of electric station - the only one spot around him with (very poor) mobile connection - sending one sms can take an hour or more. He play this game for several years and would like to meet with some of his on-line friends in real life, but most of them are imprisoned and have their phones illegally.

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Dead bodies of marshotter are seen near Sergey's house
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Dead bodies of marshotter are seen near Sergey's house

© Dmitry Kostyukov - Image from the Russian wild wild East photography project
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The road from Magadan were build by Gulag prisoners to connect the sea-port and gold fields of the region. This is the only one road on more than thousands kilometres around. Locals have saying that this road was build on humans bones. Except some nomads, before Stalin's Gulag people were never trying to live here and even now a lot people die here because of freezing.

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