Time to read: 18 minutes(s)

Vladimir Sevrinovsky

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When the celebrations for the BAM's 50th anniversary thundered in 2024, local old-timers laughed. They knew that the railway had begun to be built back in the 1930s, and not by ruddy Komsomol members, but, for the most part, by prisoners. A separate BAMlag was created for this purpose by order of the OGPU. The first train from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to the port of Vanino on the Tatar Strait arrived in 1945. True, it had to be transported across the Amur by ferry. In late Soviet times, the BAM only assumed its current appearance—builders erected bridges and dug tunnels. The Komsomol-led construction work was concentrated primarily on the western side of the line. In the east, the prisoners were replaced by railway troops.

The western Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) is considered more picturesque, crossing numerous rivers and mountain ranges and running alongside Lake Baikal. The eastern section is less dramatic, already evoking the proximity of the continent's edge—and the imminent war that affected the Far East more than Siberia. But even here, there's room for dreams, whether the dream is of an independent life, a Komsomol utopia in the taiga, peace—or forgiveness for everyone.

February

– Imagine there's a man in front of you with a gun, ready to kill for a bad word. Would you curse?

The young, talkative Father Alexander blessed many who were leaving for the front. All from the workers' settlement of Fevralsk, where, according to According to According to the latest census, 3,5 residents lived there, but according to locals, at least 45 people went to war. That's roughly one in every seventeen men aged 20 to 49. The priest offers paternal advice and urges people not to swear in battle:

"It's been proven that those who pray and don't swear are less likely to die. Frontline priests confirm this. Those who swear don't last long there."

In the church, above the lampstand with candles, a “special petition for the litany for the dead” is affixed: “for the repose of the souls of the departed servants of God killed during the fratricidal turmoil in Ukraine, and for the forgiveness of all their sins, both voluntary and involuntary.”

Father Alexander confirms that this formulation is no accident—we must pray for everyone, on both sides of the front. However, he does make a caveat:

"We, unlike them, don't go wild. Because the people here are Christian. Some, when they kill a man, say to him: 'Forgive me, brother!'"

The village is named after the neighboring village of Fevralskoye, founded by settlers in the late 19th century. It's about two kilometers away, but walking there is not recommended—a female bear roams nearby; she recently chased a cyclist. The roads in the village are wide, built of poorly fitted concrete slabs. Locals say they were laid out for future growth—a city was planned here, but it never happened. Fevralsk is surprisingly full of fences—and half-naked men smoking on their balconies in the summer—thoughtful, in no hurry. I've never seen a woman on a balcony.

A pole in the center of the village is adorned with announcements: a 90s disco, a flower-laying ceremony at the monument to those killed in the Great Patriotic War, and a recruiting poster for a new war. In the grocery store, there's a "basket of kindness"—a supermarket cart filled with energy bars, packs of wet wipes, and instant coffee. A sign announces that it's for "boys in the North-Eastern Front." The cart itself was installed by a volunteer weaving camouflage nets for soldiers. There are probably such women in every village like this—quiet, gray-haired, ready to work painstakingly all day long.

The library is holding a lecture for elementary school students entitled "Animals in War."

"What animals helped during the Great Patriotic War?" the presenter asks.

"Dolphins!" the boy with the short hair shouts.

“Cats!” the girl joins in.

- Pony!

Schoolchildren carrying posters about the dangers of smoking trudge across the concrete slabs of the street. They are accompanied by two middle-aged women wearing Pioneer ties. The girls tease a classmate, endlessly repeating the same phrase:

– Vanechka, do you speak English?

In the entryway of a Khrushchev-era apartment building, two teenagers are playing war. One is skinny and icy, wearing a cap emblazoned with the words "Lone Wolf." The other is large and freckled, with gilded double-headed eagles emblazoned on his cap and T-shirt. Blood oozes from his bruised ankle, and he holds a plastic Kalashnikov assault rifle.

"It shoots bullets 80 meters!" the boy boasts, placing a protective hand on his friend-enemy's neck.

The trash cans are covered with short messages: "Down with the bourgeoisie. To hell with power. Where are the roads? Where is the money? Where is the work?" A nearby unfinished brick building is covered in red paint with a hammer and sickle, and below it, the statement: "Lenin is alive!"

"Ow, that hurt!" children's screams echo through the empty windows, accompanied by the crash of hurled stones. I climb inside, facing the screams and general laughter. I turn into a concrete corridor and barely manage to avoid a brick. Around the corner, a group of boys appears. Seeing an adult, they deftly leap out the window. The beaten boy runs away with the others, his pitiful cries now audible from the street, gradually fading.

Ulak

A girl carrying a large bag steps into a reserved seat carriage at Tynda station. She has broad cheekbones and frightened eyes, as if expecting a blow at any moment. She takes her seat at the edge, as if it were someone else's. On the adjacent berths rest two moon-faced, almost identical women with powerful arms, resembling living stone idols. Their features are so laconic that it's impossible to guess their age—they're either in their late forties or early sixties. They gaze at the new passenger with majestic, serene expressions. Finally, one asks briefly:

- Elga?

The girl perks up, nods, and soon tells the stone women about her journey across Russia to the Elga coking coal deposit—the largest in Russia—to work as a maid in a hotel for shift workers:

"First from Moscow to Irkutsk, then to Tynda. The people beyond Irkutsk are scary! I couldn't sleep for a week because I wasn't used to it."

“On the way back, you’ll just have to sleep the whole way,” the worker next door grins good-naturedly.

Having satisfied herself that her audience isn't as terrifying as the one "beyond Irkutsk," the girl chatters on incessantly. Her conversation wanders in circles, always returning to her husband, who remains in Moscow. This is the first time she's been away from him for so long—a week's journey to the Far East, then two months of work, then a week back... Her father and brother used to work in Elga, but she's still afraid—what if she can't cope and has to return at her own expense?

The stone women also go to work at the hotel. They make noodles and, in a measured voice, like an ancient epic, tell their future colleague what awaits her.

"There were three searches along the way. They confiscated phones right away. Ten hours in a shift truck, and that's even if the road isn't washed out. It'll shake so hard your spine will fall apart. One woman with kidney stones was just brought in and sent straight to the hospital."

The girl is delighted to finally have met her family. Night is approaching, but the light in the compartment remains on—it's full of shift workers, staying up, drinking tea, and hurrying to chat in their last free hours.

– It’s in Berkakit monument "The BAM and the tunnel here," one practically shouts. "A boulder shaped like a bear, with a hole in it in the shape of a rail. The sculptor is a genius! They drove a rail up the bear's ass. That's how the BAM guys conquered the bear wilderness."

At the stations, passengers get out to smoke. The girl calls her relatives every time.

"I've been living with my husband for seven years," she tells her companions. "But still no children. So, there won't be any..."

The endless taiga flies past, and the fragile community in the compartment, formed in a matter of hours, seems strangely stable and cozy. The stone women promise nothing, but their very appearance inspires confidence. It smells of noodles, and cup holders clank, and someone coughs hysterically behind the wall. Soon it will be time to leave this warm little world and squeeze into the dreaded shift bus, but with each passing hour, the girl seems more and more confident.

"I shouldn't have gotten married right after school," she says quietly, for no apparent reason. "I didn't study..."

She falls silent for a moment and finishes, quietly, as if to herself:

- Now I will study.

It's past midnight when the train stops at Ulak station. The shift workers, one after another, walk onto the platform and disappear into the darkness. The carriage immediately fills with others like them, returning home after their shifts. They immediately go to bed. They're no longer in the mood for conversation.

Komsomolsk-on-Amur

"This city shouldn't have existed. It was built in the wrong place, in the wrong way, by the wrong people. A city in defiance. A city that defied fate and did everything its own way."

Dmitry Matyukhin, a young Komsomolsk resident and employee of the Pedagogical University, began leading tours of his hometown in 2022. The war "helped"—"after the start of the Soviet Military District, people stopped traveling abroad and began traveling more within the country." Now tourists travel not only to the Trans-Siberian Railway but also to the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). Dmitry tells them that the Amur Shipyard was originally planned for construction near Khabarovsk. But in 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, and the Kwantung Army was stationed dangerously close to the Trans-Siberian Railway. Therefore, in 1932, two decisions were made: to move the plant north, near the village of Permskoye, and to build the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM).

The Komsomol members traveling to Khabarovsk learned after arriving that the most difficult part of their journey was only just beginning. They would have to wait for the Amur River to open up and then sail on, building a new city in the taiga almost from scratch, suffering from midges in the summer and bitter cold in the winter—Komsomolsk-on-Amur, located south of Moscow, still suffers from the harsh climate. equated to the regions of the Far North.

Prisoners worked side by side with Komsomol members—the young city quickly became the "camp capital" of the Khabarovsk region. No songs were composed about the prisoners, no majestic monuments were erected to them, and even now, memorial plaques dedicated to the famous people who served time here are composed with bashful evasiveness. For example, about someone who ended up in the camps for "cause Leningrad writers" poet Nikolai Zabolotsky said that he "have worked at the facilities of the Lower Amur ITL Directorate."

Exhausted, enslaved people built a city that embodied the Soviet dream, the kind of postcard-perfect views that could be proudly shown to foreigners. The cottages on Shcheglova Lane, built in the late 1940s and reminiscent of American suburbs, even won at the All-Russian architectural competition. But in all this splendor, the memory of the bones that underlay it was revealed. It was hushed up, but it didn't disappear, seeping into the collective unconscious. Many years later, already in the new century, the owner of a cafe in House with a spire – the city's most famous building, also built by prisoners – I sometimes began to imagine a disembodied shadow approaching this majestic example of Stalinist Empire style. A woman would shout at it, "Get out of here! Get out!" The shadow would obediently disappear, only to reappear.

The postcard-perfect future ended even before the collapse of the USSR. In the late 1980s, Komsomolsk-on-Amur became known as the crime capital of the Far East.

"The whole city was mafia," Dmitry recalls. "There was a gangster's den in every courtyard, a den in every block."

Bandits controlled the entire life of city residents. They not only forced people to vote for their preferred candidate in elections, but could also organize people to clean the streets or even do morning exercises. Komsomolsk residents applied with complaints not to the prosecutor's office, but to the "public reception rooms" of the organized crime groups, at the entrance to which a Russian flag was patriotically fluttering.

This stopped in the early 2000s. In 2001, the bandits threw Molotov cocktails were fired at the "Charodeyka" café, whose owner refused to pay them. Eight people were killed. Afterwards, Yevgeny Vasin, the head of the "Obshchak" organized crime group and the city's most notorious crime boss, was arrested. He died shortly afterward in a Khabarovsk pretrial detention center, officially of heart failure. Two of his accomplices, Sergey Lepeshkin и Anatoly Gavrilenko, were found hanging from shoelaces in their cells.

The group disintegrated.

"Moscow came and shut everything down," Dmitry Matyukhin succinctly describes the end of the criminal empire. "Now it's shrunk to the level of the mafia, like in all cities."

In the post-Soviet era, the city lost more than a quarter of its population. It remains impressive – not so much for its landmarks as for the sheer scale of its design. Like Bratsk, on the opposite, western edge of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, it seems built not by humans for humans, but by giants for their own kind, indifferent to the minutiae of life. It's no wonder that Komsomolsk-on-Amur's central avenue, named after the First Builders, is legendary for being designed to accommodate airplanes. It's hard to imagine such a grandiose project being built for automobiles.

Komsomolsk-on-Amur remains an industrial center with a distinct military focus, building warships and assembling Sukhoi fighter jets. Its residents often contrast themselves with the intelligentsia of Khabarovsk:

"A Komsomolsk resident is more sullen, more silent. But more sincere," Matyukhin says. "Because behind all these antics, behind the politeness, behind the civilization, you can't tell what someone thinks of you. A Khabarovsk resident can hate you—and smile in your face. But a Komsomolsk resident will immediately say that he hates you. And maybe even more."

But even among such stern people, there are eccentrics who are in love with art. In the city since 1985 have worked Knam is Russia's oldest private theater. Its first actors worked at an aircraft factory during the day and performed in plays in the evenings. Their labor of love didn't bring them much income, but they still managed to survive even during the poverty-stricken 1990s. Knam's first international tour almost fell through—the French paid for tickets from Moscow to Paris, but they had no money to get to the capital. The owner of the Charodeika café, which hadn't yet burned down, unexpectedly donated money. Then one day, the actors were invited to perform in a New Year's play, and once there, it became clear that the main audience member was Yevgeny Vasin. The head of the Obshchak organized crime group sat in the front row with his wife. Around twenty rows, there was no one else, and the "guys in black" loomed in the gallery. The play began, and the audience was eerily silent. Finally, Vasin understood the joke and burst out laughing, and the others immediately joined in. The performance was a success, and yet the actors, having barely finished playing, quickly ran away.

"I felt the city needed this theater," recalls Tatyana Frolova, founder of Knam. "That's why the city kept us."

In the 2000s, the KNAM group toured all over the world, from Brussels to Singapore, but always returned to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, to a tiny theater that could seat 26 spectators.

Another independent theater, Merak, lasted only a couple of years – in 2019, its founder Yulia Tsvetkova accused She was convicted of distributing pornography in connection with her management of the feminist website "The Vagina Monologues." She was forced to emigrate.

When in 2020 арестовали Following the election of popular Governor Sergei Furgal, mass protests swept across the Khabarovsk Krai. They also occurred in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. They weren't dispersed, but the pragmatic Komsomolsk residents were quicker than the residents of Khabarovsk to realize the futility of this undertaking. By 2024, only one woman had participated in the picket. When the Furgal supporters' movement have made into the register of extremists, she also fell silent.

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the actors of the Knam Theatre, like many creative people, left the country.

“On February 24, when this war began, I immediately felt that everything was over forever,” recalls Tatyana Frolova, speaking with the Teatralii project, said, "It's as if a bomb had hit the theater building at 15 Pervostroiteley Street, and there's no life there anymore." 

In a farewell address to the audience, members of the troupe have been named The war is "a crime not only against the citizens of Ukraine, but also against the citizens of Russia and the future of our country." They moved to Lyon, France, but throughout Europe, they continue to perform in Russian, with subtitles or simultaneous translation.

"We're heroes in France," smiles Tatyana, who for the first time in her life has begun earning a steady income through her art. "They really love Russian culture here. And almost everyone is enchanted by Russia."

Although her dreams of returning to her homeland turn into nightmares, she still searches in vain for coffee in Lyon that could compare to what she drank in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

But there were also those who remained in the city and even benefited somewhat from the new circumstances.

"My relatives are happy," Frolova says. "They say, 'Tanya, what are you talking about? Everything's so great! Our president is the president of the world. We'll get there soon and we'll be swimming in your fountains.'"

A club has opened in the former theater space. It hosts concerts, poetry readings, and rap performances. The new owners finally completed a European-style renovation—Knam was always short on funds for this. Dmitry Matyukhin has been able to earn money by offering tours, and renowned local historian Vladimir Zuev is writing a book about fallen soldiers who were born in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Another local historian, Anton Yermakov, headed the local branch of the Civil Initiative party. He joined after the 2024 presidential elections, in which candidate Boris Nadezhdin ran with a cautiously stated but clearly anti-war platform.

"Here in Komsomolsk, [at the signature drive for Nadezhdin], there were lines," Anton recalls. "Of course, there were fewer than in Moscow or Khabarovsk, but I saw people coming, both adults and young people. People were saying: we need to end it, we need peace. And I thought: if such a party nominated him, we should open a branch here."

For the elections of Nadezhdin not allowed - according to the official version, due to the fact that more than 5% of the signatures for the candidate were invalid. On June 17, 2025, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation eliminated The Civil Initiative party was disqualified due to the insufficient participation of its candidates in elections over the past seven years. Lawyers are attempting to appeal this decision, but Yermakov is under no illusions – even though he is, in his own words, a "local madman," he is still a Komsomol member and no longer believes in utopias.

Soviet harbor

The wooden hut at the last station on the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) passenger railway, "Sovetskaya Gavan Sortirovochnaya," stands on the outskirts of the village of Vanino. The town of Sovetskaya Gavan is less than ten kilometers from here, but it's a forty-minute ride by minibus. The road winds through the hills, skirting the bay's inlets, which cut deep into the land. This harbor was once called the Imperial. The navigator Voin Rimsky-Korsakov admiringly писал, that something like this "is hard to find anywhere in the world. All the world's fleets could easily fit here in complete peace from all winds and bad weather." In 1856, the frigate "Pallada" was sunk here, on which traveled Writer Ivan Goncharov. After the Revolution and the Civil War, the harbor became Soviet, and remained so. The town of the same name also seems frozen in the Soviet era. This is a kingdom of identical Khrushchev-era buildings, under which fishermen catch smelt, as if they hadn't left for the past half-century. The past here is more alive than the present.

“Previously, Sovetskaya Gavan was a city of ship repairers, shipbuilders, and military personnel of all branches of the armed forces. lamented Former city mayor Pavel Borovsky told the EastRussia portal, "Now all of this is gone, there's practically no military presence, the factories have long since closed, but the city still celebrates its main holidays—Navy Day and Fisherman's Day."

Here they even dream mainly about the past.

"I want to return to the world of kind, simple, and sincere people," writes commentator Ivan Yukhmanov under a video about the city. "Every Soviet citizen has their own Sovetskaya Gavan. After many years of wandering, we will definitely return there, and we will repair it, and perhaps even build something new."

Today, the Sovetsko-Gavansky district has fewer than 36 residents; since the collapse of the USSR, their number has almost halved.

There are few signs of the new times. Two churches have sprung up in the city, a scattering of Pyaterochka stores have opened, and on the movie theater poster, beneath the "Coming Soon" sign, next to a spy comedy and a cartoon about a cat, hangs a recruiting poster in a similar style: "YOU ARE NEEDED BY YOUR MOTHERLAND."

In the museum—an old house on Lenin Street—visitors are greeted in the foyer by photographs of the families of fallen soldiers and an exhibition of collectible badges, "Journey to Cartoonland." An entire room is dedicated to the SVO, but the cartoon theme continues there as well. A huge, lopsided Cheburashka in a khaki uniform stands by the window. A sign announces that the slogan "Zacheburashim" (For Cheburashim) is now popular at the front.

A living woman sits next to a long-eared doll, rhythmically weaving camouflage nets. Cabinets are filled with "trophies from the front lines"—drone fragments, a Ukrainian soldier's diary, a UNHCR plaid blanket. Letters to soldiers, stylized as the soldiers' triangles of the Great Patriotic War, lie on a table. But the main eye-catcher in this utterly cluttered room is a large white poster, "We Remember, We Are Proud," glued together from scraps of drawing paper. It bears 68 portraits of local residents who died in a distant war raging seven thousand kilometers from Sovetskaya Gavan. Young and old. Those committed and those not so committed. Those who signed contracts to escape debt—and for a prison pardon. Posing for a photograph with weapons—and a man who had no photograph at all, a crude 3D reconstruction in its place. All of them, so different, were finally needed by their homeland.

The opposite hall is closed to visitors—schoolchildren have been brought there. They are being told about some battles. Perhaps past, perhaps present—the sounds are muffled, impossible to discern. A noise is heard—the lecture is over, everyone stands. Heavy chords resound. The children sing "The Holy War" in a discordant chorus.