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Vorkuta (Template:Lang-ru) is a coal mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic circle in the Pechora coal basin, at 67°30′N 64°00′E / 67.500°N 64.000°E / 67.500; 64.000. Its population as of the 2002 census was 84,917. It had its origin in one of the more notorious forced labour camps of the Gulag which was established in 1932.

In 1941 the town and the labor camp system based around it were connected to the rest of the world by a prisoner-built railroad linking Konosha and Kotlas, and the camps of Inta. Vorkuta became a city on November 26, 1943. It was the largest centre of Gulag camps in European part of the USSR and served as administrative centre for a large number of smaller camps and sub-camps, among them Kotlas, Pechora, and Izhma (modern Sosnogorsk). In 1953 the town witnessed a major uprising by the concentration camp inmates, so-called Vorkuta Uprising. After it was bloodily quelled by the Red Army and the NKVD, many of the Gulag camps were disbanded in the 1950s. However, it is reported that some in the Vorkuta area continued to operate into the 1980s.

By the early part of the 21st century many of the mines have been closed as problems with high costs of operations have plagued the mine operators. At one time during the late 1980s and 1990s there were labor actions in the area by miners who had not been paid for a year. .

During the Cold War an Arctic Control Group forward staging base for strategic bombers was located at Vorkuta.

External links

• Satellite images of the Vorkuta region
• Don't Forget Vorkuta: A Soviet Holocaust
• Contemporary photographs - Vorkuta city
  • Contemporary photographs of the city on the webpage of the local mine rescue association
  • Photos from Vorkuta, 1996
  • Links to photos of Vorkuta and Usinsk, 1998
  • Rusko 2005 – Galerie: Vorkuta
• Historical photographs
  • Fotod
  • Gulag report - Vorkuta
  • Gulag settlement outside Vorkuta
• Other photographs
  • Wooden crosses of the German prisoners of the Gulag
  • Vorkuta coal mines
  • Places and mines - Vorkuta

Adapted from the article Vorkuta, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

• Cities and towns in the Komi Republic
• GULAG