On October 13, 1942, a barge containing prisoners en route to a Soviet labor camp in the remote Arctic city of Norilsk took on water along the Yenisei River. Different accounts suggest it was the result of the inmates desperately trying to escape or that it struck rocks. The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, officially declared that 26 detainees perished, but historians and eyewitnesses have maintained that the actual death toll may have been much higher.
Those On The Top Bunks Survived
Traversing the Yenisei River late in 1942 was plagued with delays. The water level had been low, increasing the possibility that ships would become stuck in the fifth-longest river system in the world -- the largest to flow into the Arctic Ocean.
Transportation in the winter season also presented another challenge as the waterways would regularly freeze, trapping unprepared ships and their goods as they traveled north to the camps in the Arctic Circle.
Officials at the Norilsk labor camp demanded the cargo be delivered no matter the risk. The camps, or gulags, played a crucial role in the Soviet economy by supplying valuable metals, particularly nickel, that were needed for the war effort.
Prisoners in these camps endured the harsh Arctic conditions of Norilsk's tundra, extracting minerals. Many prisoners did not survive their sentence, and the mortality rate at the camps was high.
At the end of September 1942, barge No. 46 departed from Krasnoyarsk with a cargo of roughly 1,500 inmates and metal pipes for the Norilsk mining camps. It was going to be pulled by the steamboat Ivan Papanin, also called the Red Plowman.
Upon its arrival in Yeniseisk, a more powerful vessel, the Klim Voroshilov, would take over. Two more wooden barges, which the rivermen called "carskie" due to their use in traveling up the Cara Sea to Norilsk, were also to join up with the ill-fated No. 46.
No. 46 was the type of barge popularly called a "slat." There was no place to wash onboard, so an unpleasant odor emanated from the crew and prisoners, who slept in three-story bunks in the hold of the ship. During the voyage, the inmates were given rations, a loaf of bread and a piece of salted fish per day.
The NKVD -- a feared agency used by Stalin to enforce internal security -- had positioned its guards atop the ship, who enforced the law with rifles and machine guns.
Nikolai Zalipukhin, a prisoner, said the guards would regularly pull out the pumps that removed the hold water in order to throw out prisoners' rations. He added that not everyone was able to get food to eat.
With the barge at full capacity, it eventually ran aground near Krasnoyarsk. Fortunately, there were no sharp stones under the shallow water, and the barge was able to plow ahead as it scraped against the stony riverbed.
After 70 kilometers, the boats were warned of a large ship coming toward them along the narrow river. The captain of the caravan decided to drop anchor in order to allow the oncoming steamer to pass by. Zalipukhin recalls the song Valenki, performed by Lydia Ruslanova, was being played as the Spartak passed by.
During the night, the prisoners became alarmed as the water kept rising. Panic ensued, with prisoners scrambling to climb the ladder to the exit, which was closed off by metal bars. The NKVD personnel who were alerted to the pleas of the prisoners did not unlock the hold; they were terrified of allowing prisoners the chance to escape.
The ones who could not swim quickly drowned. Those who occupied the upper tiers of the bunks survived, as they had enough air to wait out the panic. Many died struggling to make their way to the exit along the stairs as the prisoners trampled each other and pulled each other down, trying to get higher and closer to the deck.
Zalipukhin managed to survive by standing above a prisoner named Petro as he desperately clung to the top of the stairs, where there was still air. During the struggle, Petro lost his grip and was pulled underwater by the crowd below him.
As the prisoners continued their struggle below, the ship's captain was able to push the barge to the shore, a few kilometers from Predivinsk. After some time, NKVD officers opened the bars to the hold as the surviving prisoners threw themselves onto the deck.
Most were bloodied and naked, having had their clothes pulled off during the crush in the hold. To avoid freezing, they went into food tents on the deck and ate bread and fish, which the guards did not interfere with. Later, the surviving prisoners were forced to retrieve the dead from the hold. Zalipukhin caught sight of the lifeless Petro.
Prisoners At The Camps
Prisoners were transported by train from various parts of the country to Krasnoyarsk and from Krasnoyarsk to Norilsk. The transit prison was located on Republic Street in the city center.
During World War II, more than 7,000 prisoners died from disease and dystrophy at the Norilsk labor camp. Nevertheless, in the 1930s and '40s, Norilsk, unlike the Kolyma camps, was not an extermination camp, says the head of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial, Aleksei Babiy. It was believed that it was easier to survive at Norilsk since the Soviet government needed skilled labor for the construction and subsequent operation of the metallurgical plant.
Zavinyagin (head of Norilsk from 1938 to 1941) was not originally a security officer. He was a metallurgist. When he was sent to Norilsk, they told him, "There was an idea to shoot you, but then they thought that it was better to see if you could handle this (camp). If so, you'll live."
As Zavinyagin was not a security officer, he approached the process more methodically. "For example, he transferred prisoner engineers and chemists from general work to camp administration so that they could be more useful. The conditions there were milder than in other camps," Babiy said.
During the war, mortality at camps such as Norilsk increased sharply, but it was still low compared to other camps in the gulag system.
The road to Norilsk also posed risks for the prisoners. The authorities tried by various means to deliver workers to the Arctic Circle in order to speed up the production of nickel that was needed -- especially for the production of tanks.
The first prisoners destined for the construction of the future plants were brought along the northern sea route from the European part of Russia in the mid-1930s.
When war broke out between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the route along the Cara Sea became too dangerous as German submarines and cruisers regularly attacked the shipping vessels.
Under such conditions, the burden of providing Norilsk with fresh bodies was now focused on the Yenisei River.
Over the years, the route changed. First Soviet engineers tried to reroute rivers such as the Ob, but they became convinced it was impossible to use the Ob-Yenesie Canal built under the tsar. River workers had mastered the route from Krasnoyarsk to Norilsk in 1932, and a year later transportation began for the construction of the camp and plant.
Later, the ships went along the Yenisei to Dudinka, from where the prisoners traveled to Norilsk. The prisoners also had to endure walking roughly 90 kilometers in Arctic conditions to get to the camp.
In 1938, the authorities built a narrow-gauge railway from Dudinka to Norilsk. To transport goods, they used wooden barges built on a rope in the village of Predivinsk. This settlement, about 100 kilometers from Krasnoyarsk, was founded in the early 1930s by exiles and special settlers who were sent to the Yenisei to build ships. The Yenisei route became so important for the Norilsk plant that after the war, the enterprise was given the Dudinsky port and part of the river fleet.
Downplaying The Numbers
Information regarding what happened varies, as do beliefs about what caused the catastrophe. Newspaper articles discussed two scenarios: an escape attempt and a crash on the rapids. The barge slid to the right on the Podjeminskie stones near Predivinsk, according to the original account. There was a red buoy in this location, designating a hazardous region. The barge rushed past the buoy and ran aground. After a hole was made in the wooden ship, water started to flood the hold with inmates.
According to another version, a group of prisoners deliberately cut a hole in the hull to escape. They did not take into account that there were metal pipes on the deck; the barge sank lower than usual, so the escape hole was below the water line, and water poured through it into the hold.
"They brought a variety of people to the camps in Norilsk, 40 percent of whom were political prisoners, about the same number were domestic prisoners -- those who were tried for domestic crimes, and about 20 percent -- professional criminals. The plan -- to cut out a window in the side, escape, and then swim to the shore in October-- seems desperate," said Babiy.
"Over the years, this event became a legend. For example, the idea that the NKVD specifically loaded martyred prisoners onto barges and then drowned them in the Yenisei. But what's the point?" Babiy added.
A note from the deputy head to the head of the Norilsk camp was found in the archives, which states there were 1,669 prisoners on board, of whom 26 had died. Both leaders simultaneously served in the NKVD. No other documents related to the disaster were found in the archives, notes Ivan Bulava in his book Born of the Yenisei.
The victims' final resting place is unknown, said local historian Valentina Kharchuk. They were allegedly buried in a mass grave beside an oil storage facility in Predivinsk, where an adjacent cemetery had expanded over the years.
Locals recall hearing creaky carriages being used to move bodies to the cemetery in the evenings following the tragedy. Later, a cross was placed at the mound by one of the settlers, but it disappeared. "There is no memorial sign in Predivinsk,” says Kharchuk.
"Yenesei is a formidable river, especially in that region," Babiy said. "If the barge had sunk and people were prevented from leaving the holds, the death toll could have easily reached the hundreds." He adds: "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the numbers were downplayed in that situation: Perhaps 200 or 300 perished, yet they officially reported 26."
That fall, the Yenisei River froze, making it impossible to transport the survivors to Norilsk. They were housed in barracks in Predvinsk, near the local shipyard.
Throughout the winter, the survivors were involved in the construction of eight wooden barges destined for Norilsk. Among them, Nikolai Zalipukhin, who started out as a carpenter during the construction of the barges.
After completing his sentence, Zalipukhin secured a position as a sailor on one of the barges. By 1944, he had risen to the role of skipper, responsible for managing the barge.
