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Kolyma
Location of the river mouth in the Far Eastern Federal District, Russia
Etymology	Tundra Yukaghir kulumaa, "river"
Native name	Колыма (Russian)
Location
Country	Russia
Physical characteristics
Source	Kulu
• location	Okhotsky District, Khabarovsk Krai
• coordinates	61°55′05″N 144°36′11″E / 61.918°N 144.603°E / 61.918; 144.603
• elevation	1,426 m (4,678 ft)
2nd source	Ayan-Yuryakh
• location	Susumansky District, Magadan Oblast
• coordinates	62°54′36″N 146°07′48″E / 62.910°N 146.130°E / 62.910; 146.130
• elevation	992 m (3,255 ft)
Mouth	East Siberian Sea
• location	Kolyma Gulf
• coordinates	69°32′52″N 161°21′51″E / 69.5477°N 161.3641°E / 69.5477; 161.3641
• elevation	0 m (0 ft)
Length	2,129 km (1,323 mi)
Basin size	647,000 km (250,000 sq mi)
Discharge
• location	Kolyma Delta, East Siberian Sea, Russia
• average	(Period: 1984–2018)130 km/a (4,100 m/s) 4,190 m/s (148,000 cu ft/s)
Discharge
• location	Kolymskoye (Basin size: 526,000 km (203,000 sq mi))
• average	(Period of data: 1978–2000) 3,254 m/s (114,900 cu ft/s)
• minimum	30.6 m/s (1,080 cu ft/s) (in April 1979)
• maximum	26,201 m/s (925,300 cu ft/s) (in June 1985)
Basin features
Tributaries
• left	Popovka, Yasachnaya, Zyryanka, Ozhogina, Sededema
• right	Buyunda, Balygychan, Sugoy, Korkodon, Beryozovka, Omolon, Anyuy

The Kolyma (Russian: Колыма, IPA: [kəlɨˈma]; Yakut: Халыма, romanized: Xalıma) is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia.

The Kolyma is frozen to depths of several metres for about 250 days each year, becoming free of ice only in early June, until October.

Course

The Kolyma begins at the confluence of the Kulu and the Ayan-Yuryakh (Kolyma a natural continuation of Ayan-Yuryakh). The confluence happens in the Okhotsk-Kolyma Upland (Охотско-Колымское нагорье), which lies within the watershed that separates the Kolyma basin and the basins of rivers flowing into the Sea of Okhotsk. Kolyma flows across the Upper Kolyma Highlands roughly southwards in its upper course. Leaving the mountainous areas it flows roughly northwards across the Kolyma Lowland, a vast plain dotted with thousands of lakes, part of the greater East Siberian Lowland. The river empties into the Kolyma Gulf of the East Siberian Sea, a division of the Arctic Ocean.

The Kolyma is 2,129 kilometres (1,323 mi) long. The area of its basin is 647,000 square kilometres (250,000 sq mi). The average discharge at Kolymskoye is 3,254 m/s (114,900 cu ft/s), with a high of 26,201 m/s (925,300 cu ft/s) reported in June 1985, and a low of 30.6 m/s (1,080 cu ft/s) in April 1979.

Tributaries

The main tributaries of the Kolyma are, from source to mouth:

• Ayan-Yuryakh (left)
• Kulu (right)
• Tenka (right)
• Buyunda (right)
• Bakhapcha (right)
• Seymchan (left)
• Balygychan (right)
• Sugoy (right)
• Korkodon (right)
  • Bulun
• Popovka (left)
• Yasachnaya (left)
• Zyryanka (left)
• Debin (left)
• Taskan (left)
• Ozhogina (left)
• Sededema (left)
• Beryozovka (right)
• Omolon (right)
  • Oloy
• Anyuy (right)
  • Bolshoy Anyuy
  • Maly Anyuy

Islands

In the last 75-kilometre (47 mi) stretch, the Kolyma divides into two large branches. There are many islands at the mouth of the Kolyma before it meets the East Siberian sea. The main ones are:

• Mikhalkino 69°24′58″N 161°15′18″E / 69.416°N 161.255°E / 69.416; 161.255 is the largest island, it lies to the west of the Kolyma's eastern branch, the Kamennaya Kolyma anabranch. This island breaks up into smaller islands on its northern end. It is 24 kilometres (15 mi) long and 6 kilometres (4 mi) wide. Mikhalkino is also known as "Glavsevmorput Island" after the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route.
• Sukharnyy, or Sukhornyy, is 3 kilometres from the northeastern shores of Mikhalkino. It is 11 kilometres (7 mi) long and about 5 kilometres (3 mi) wide. Northeast of Sukhornyy lies a cluster of small islands known as the Morskiye Sotki Islands.
• Piat' Pal'tsev lies 5 kilometres to the southeast of Sukhornyy's southern end. It is 5 kilometres long and has a maximum width of 1.8 kilometres.
• Nazarovsky Island 69°31′59″N 161°05′10″E / 69.533°N 161.086°E / 69.533; 161.086 lies on the western side of the Kolyma's western branch, the Prot. Pokhodskaya Kolyma, in an area where there are many small islands. It is 4.5 kilometres long and 1.3 kilometres wide.
• Shtormovoy Island 69°39′58″N 161°01′52″E / 69.666°N 161.031°E / 69.666; 161.031 lies offshore, about 10 kilometres (6 mi) to the north of Nazarovsky Island. Shtormovoy is the northernmost island off the Mouths of the Kolyma. It is 4.3 kilometres long and 1.5 kilometres wide.

History

In 1640 Dimitry Zyryan (also called Yarilo or Yerilo) went overland to the Indigirka. In 1641 he sailed down the Indigirka, went east and up the Alazeya. Here they heard of the Kolyma and met Chukchis for the first time. In 1643 he returned to the Indigirka, sent his yasak (tribute) to Yakutsk and went back to the Alazeya. In 1645 he returned to the Lena where he met a party and learned that he had been appointed prikazchik (land administrator) of the Kolyma. He returned east and died in early 1646. In the winter of 1641–42 Mikhail Stadukhin, accompanied by Semyon Dezhnyov, went overland to the upper Indigirka. He spent the next winter there, built boats and sailed down the Indigirka and east to the Alazeya where he met Zyryan. Zyryan and Dezhnyov stayed at the Alazeya, while Stadukhin went east, reaching the Kolyma in the summer of 1644. They built a zimovye (winter cabin), probably at Srednekolymsk, and returned to Yakutsk in late 1645.

In 1892–94 Baron Eduard Von Toll carried out geological surveys in the basin of the Kolyma (among other Far-eastern Siberian rivers) on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Barr, 1980). During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 kilometres (16,000 mi), of which 4,200 kilometres (2,600 mi) were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route.

The Kolyma is known for its Gulag labour camps and gold mining, both of which have been extensively documented since Joseph Stalin–era Soviet archives opened. The river gives its title to a famous anthology about life in Gulag camps by Varlam Shalamov, The Kolyma Tales.

After the camps were closed, state subsidies, local industries and communication dwindled to almost nothing. Many people have migrated, but those who remain in the area make a living by fishing and hunting. In small fishing settlements, fish are sometimes stored in caves carved from permafrost. The last Americans to visit the Kolyma during the Soviet era, before perestroika, were the crew of the sailing schooner Nanuk in August 1929, whose visit was captured in a film taken by the Nanuk owner's 18-year-old daughter, Marion Swenson. The first two Americans to visit the Kolyma after the Nanuk's visit were writer Wallace Kaufman and journalist Rebecca Clay, who traveled by cutter from Ziryanka to Green Cape in August 1991. Kaufman and his daughter Sylvan and CPA Letty Collins Magdanz also travelled part of the Kolyma in August 1992, the first American visitors since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both trips were arranged by North-East Scientific and Industrial Center: Ecocenter to try out an ecotourism route which was found to be impractical. In February 2012, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that scientists had grown plants from 30,000-year-old Silene stenophylla fruit, which was stored in squirrel burrows near the banks of the Kolyma river and preserved in permafrost.

Settlements

Settlements at the Kolyma river include (listed downstream) Sinegorye, Debin, Ust-Srednekan, Seymchan, Zyryanka, Srednekolymsk and Chersky.

Constructions

The Kolyma Hydroelectric Station is a hydropower plant at Sinegorye, downstream from the Kolyma Reservoir in the upper part of the river. The plant was started in the 1980s by Kolyma Gestroi and both the plant and the town of Sinegorye were built under the supervision of chief engineer Oleg Kogadovski. The town included an olympic sized swimming pool, an underground rifle range, and many amenities absent in most other small Russian towns. Kogadovski said that in order to attract and employ good talent in such a remote place, the town had to be exceptional. The dam provides most of the electricity to the region including Magadan. the Kolyma dam is an earthen dam some 150 ft high. Air circulation tubes carry frigid winter air into the core of the dam where frozen earth stabilizes the structure. Kolyma Ges. said it was the largest dam ever built in a permafrost region. In 1992 a new hydropower plant was under construction at Ust-Srednekan, the Ust-Srednekan Hydroelectric Plant. Larch forests cleared for the reservoir were cut in winter when the trunks were frozen and easily snapped. The wood was sold for pulp.

There are only a few bridges over the river, including at Ust-Srednekan, at Sinegorye and at Debin (which carries the Kolyma Highway).

See also

• Kolyma (greater region)
• East Siberian Mountains
• List of rivers of Russia

References

1. Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta (September 1, 2010). Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis Vol. 127 (2010). Wydawnictwo UJ. ISBN 9788323330271 – via Google Books.
2. "Аян-Юрях" [Ayan-Yuryakh]. Вода Россия [Water Russia] (in Russian). Retrieved 10 July 2021.
3. ^ "Водоток Колыма (пр. Каменная Колыма) in the State Water Register of Russia". textual.ru (in Russian).
4. Dongmei, Feng; Colin, J. Gleason; Peirong, Lin; Xiao, Yang; Ming, Pan; Yuta, Ishitsuka (2021). "Recent changes to Arctic river discharge". Nature Communications. 12 (6917): 6917. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.6917F. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27228-1. PMC 8617260. PMID 34824255.
5. Edward Lyn, Lewis; E. Peter, Jones; Peter, Lemke; Terry D., Prowse; Peter, Wadhams (1998). The Freshwater Budget of the Arctic Ocean. Springer. ISBN 0792364392.
6. ^ "Kolyma At Kolymskoye". R-ARCTICNET. Retrieved 2017-08-11.
7. МАГАДАНСКИЙ ЗАПОВЕДНИК
8. Lantzeff, George V.; Pierce, Richard A. (1973). Eastward to Empire: Exploration and Conquest on the Russian Open Frontier, to 1750. Montreal: McGill-Queen's U.P. ISBN 0773501339.
9. Personal observation in 1991, journals kept by Wallace Kaufman
10. Gleason, Robert J. (1977). Icebound in the Siberian Arctic. Alaska Northwest Publishing. ISBN 0882400673.
11. unpublished journals of Wallace Kaufman
12. Black, Richard (February 20, 2012). "Ancient plants back to life after 30,000 frozen years". BBC News.
13. Personal observation in 1991, journals kept by Wallace Kaufman

Further reading

• William Barr, Baron Eduard von Toll’s Last Expedition: The Russian Polar Expedition, 1900-1903 (1980).
• Shalamov, Varlam Tikhonovich (1994) Kolyma tales , Glad, John (transl.), Penguin twentieth-century classics, Harmondsworth : Penguin, ISBN 0-14-018695-6
• Once-cursed Gulag river now Siberian lifeline:
• Position and names of islands

External links

• Колыма in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian) – via Great Scientific Library
• Information and a map of the Kolyma's watershed Archived 2005-04-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Picture of Mikhalkino Island

v t e Islands of the East Siberian Sea (Russian Arctic)

Anzhu Islands Ayon Island Bennett Island Bolshoy Fedorovskiy Chengkuul De Long Islands Glavsevmorput Island Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island Henrietta Island Jeannette Island Kolesovsky Island Kolesovskaya Otmel Kotelny Krestovyy Island Maly Lyakhovsky Island Medvezhyi Islands Mikhalkino New Siberian Islands Novaya Sibir Ploskiy Routan Islands Ryyanranot Shalaurova Sukhornyy Uparovskiy Usun Ary Vilkitsky Vkhodnoy Wrangel Island Zhokhov Island

v t e Rivers of Russia by drainage basin
Barents Sea and White Sea (Arctic Ocean)	Iokanga Kem Malaya Belaya Mezen Nautsiyoki Niva Northern Dvina Pinega Sukhona Uftyuga Vaga Vychegda Yomtsa Yug Onega Pechora Usa Ponoy Varzuga Voronya
Baltic Sea	Luga Oredezh Narva Plyussa Neman Šešupė Neva Izhora Mga Okhta Tosna Pregolya Angrapa Instruch Lava Sestra Western Dvina Polota Kasplya Mezha
Lake Peipus	Velikaya Kukhva
Lake Ladoga	Svir Pasha Oyat Syas Volkhov Tigoda Vishera Vuoksi Volchya
Lake Ilmen	Lovat Polist Kunya Msta Berezayka Peretna Uver Pola Shelon
Lake Onega	Andoma Suna Vodla Vytegra
Black Sea	Dnieper Desna Vyazma Don Temernik Manych Sal Donets Khopyor Osered Bityug Voronezh Kuban Bolshaya Laba Mius Mzymta Yeya
Caspian Sea	Kuma Podkumok Sulak Andi Koysu Terek Malka Sunzha Ural Ilek Sakmara Volga Aktay Anish Bolshaya Kokshaga Bolshoy Cheremshan Bolshoy Irgiz Bezdna Chapayevka Dubna Ilet Kama Kashinka Kazanka Kerzhenets Kostroma Kotorosl Kudma Malaya Kokshaga Maly Irgiz Medveditsa Mologa Nerl Nyomda Oka Rutka Samara Selizharovka Sheksna Shosha Sogozha Sok Suda Sura Sviyaga Tereshka Tsivil Tvertsa Unzha Uzola Vetluga Vazuza Yeruslan
Arctic Ocean, east of the Urals	Alazeya Buor-Yuryakh Rassokha Amguema Anabar Bolshaya Kuonamka Malaya Kuonamka Suolama Udya Bogdashkina Chaun Chegitun Chondon Buor-Yuryakh Nuchcha Gusinaya Indigirka Allaikha Badyarikha Bolshaya Ercha Byoryolyokh Chibagalakh Druzhina Elgi Khastakh Kuydusun Kyuyente Moma Nera Selennyakh Shandrin Shangina Uyandina Ioniveyem Khatanga Kheta Kotuy Khroma Uryung-Ulakh Kolyma Anyuy Ayan-Yuryakh Bakhapcha Balygychan Beryozovka Buyunda Debin Korkodon Kulu Omolon Popovka Ozhogina Sededema Seymchan Sugoy Taskan Tenka Yasachnaya Zyryanka Kyuyol-Yuryakh Lena Aldan Batamay Begidyan Belyanka Biryuk Bolshoy Patom Buotama Byosyuke Chaya Chechuy Cherendey Chuya Derba Dzhardzhan Dyanyshka Eyekit Ichera Ilga Khanchaly Khoruongka Kenkeme Kirenga Kuta Kyuelenke Kyundyudey Linde Lungkha Lyapiske Lyutenge Markha Markhachan Menda Menkere Molodo Motorchuna Muna Myla Namana Natara Nuora Nyuya Olyokma Peleduy Pilyuda Sinyaya Sitte Sobolokh-Mayan Suola Tamma Tayura Tikyan Tuolba Tutura Tympylykan Tyugyuene Uel-Siktyakh Undyulyung Ura Vilyuy Vitim Nadym Ob Aley Barnaulka Biya Chaya Chulym Irtysh Kazym Kasmala Katun Ket Kievsky Yogan Parabel Sob Synya Tom Tromyogan Tym Vasyugan Vakh Vatinsky Yogan Olenyok Alakit Arga-Sala Beyenchime Birekte Buolkalakh Bur Khorbusuonka Kelimyar Kuoyka Kyuyutingde Merchimden Siligir Ukukit Omoloy Arga-Yuryakh Kuranakh-Yuryakh Ulakhan-Kyuegyulyur Palyavaam Pegtymel Pur Pyasina Sellyakh Sundrun Maly Khomus-Yuryakh Taz Khudosey Tolka Uele Volchya Yana Abyrabyt Adycha Baky Bytantay Dulgalakh Oldzho Sartang Tykakh Yenisey Abakan Angara Bakhta Bazaikha Bolshaya Kheta Bolshoy Pit Kacha Kan Kem Khantayka Khemchik Kureyka Mana Nizhnyaya Tunguska Podkamennaya Tunguska Sym Tanama Turukhan Yeloguy
Pacific Ocean/Sea of Okhotsk	Amur Amazar Amgun Anyuy Argun Bureya Gorin Gur Shilka Ussuri Zeya Anadyr Belaya Mayn Tanyurer Yablon Yeropol Arman Avacha Khasyn Bolshaya Gizhiga Inya Kamchatka Khatyrka Iomrautvaam Kikhchik Kukhtuy Okhota Ola Paren Penzhina Belaya Oklan Taui Chyolomdzha Tumen Uda Maya Ukelayat Ulbeya Urak Velikaya Yama Yana
Russia portal Category

• Rivers of the Sakha Republic
• Rivers of Magadan Oblast
• Rivers of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
• Kolyma basin
• East Siberian Lowland