Thousands of inmates of Stalin’s gulag labour camps died building a road across the far-flung Russian region of Kolyma, where winter temperatures, on average, hold at –38° Celsius. The route became known as the 'Road of Bones'. It was built to connect an archipelago of forced labour camps to the port of Magadan, the remote region’s main link to the rest of the country, to which prisoners were brought by boat. The road would bring over a million prisoners to work in the area’s gold, tin and uranium mines, and for many the journey across Kolyma’s vast landscape of harsh beauty would be their last.

Today, an updated version of the route, the R504 Kolyma Highway, stretches from Yakutsk, the capital of the far eastern Yakutia region, heading 2000 kilometers east to the Magadan port. After Stalin’s death in 1953, the camps were closed. But workers, drawn by the promise of high wages, came to the desolate region, founding settlements in the area. The region is so remote that its new residents referred to the rest of Russia as ‘the mainland‘. Now, they are increasingly leaving the area, no longer wishing to live in one of the most inhospitable environments known to mankind. Their settlements, scattered along the length of the 'Road of Bones', are fading. Along with them fades the memory of the prisoners of the past. The scale and severity of the suffering of the camps becomes increasingly hard to fathom. In Putin’s Russia, a handful of people work to preserve that memory. But for many, it is overshadowed by a government-led campaign hailing Stalin’s victories in the Second World War. Meanwhile the remnants of the prison camps, the walls and beams and barbed wire, sink further and further into the snow.

Road of bones to the gulag, haunted still

It is rare for Western journalists to be allowed to report from inside the self-declared republic. The criteria used by its communications ministry to grant permits are unclear. But such permits do, apparently, exist. A report from the so-called People’s Republic, with words by Der Spiegel’s Christian Esch.

At Stanytsia Luhanska, the border crossing dividing the breakaway territory from areas controlled by Kyiv, pensioners struggle across a broken bridge over the Donets river. Suitcases, baby strollers and coffins are carefully carried over its bombed-out surface. It’s the only crossing for many miles, connecting the 1.5 million residents of the Luhansk People’s Republic to families, friends and business partners on the other side of the former front line. In Luhansk itself, the smaller of the two main cities of the Donbass coal mining region, shops are largely empty, and the main hotel, bullet holes still visible in its windows, sees few guests. The city suffered heavily from fighting in the summer of 2014.

A trip to the pro-Russian pseudo-state of Luhansk

Ahead of a new round of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, a dispatch from the one bright spot in the long-embattled grey zone separating Ukraine from the breakaway lands of the east. With words by Tom Vennink for De Volkskrant.

A weapon rests up against a muddy bunker wall. A soldier sits apart from his rifle. Per a new agreement, this tiny strip of the frontline has been designated a safe zone, and troops have been pulled back. But it’s a shaky peace. On the edges of the safe zone, mortar shells explode and the irregular heartbeat of war continues to echoe through the snow-covered hills. At the Stanytsia Luhanska crossing point, 70 kilometres away, a once bombed-out bridge has just been restored, another possible portent of peace.


In Ukraine, two kilometres of hope

A dispatch from the far eastern Russian region of Yakutia, with words by New York Times Moscow bureau chief Neil MacFarquhar.

The region, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, is often known as the Kingdom of Winter and 90% of its surface is covered with permafrost — permanently frozen ground — sometimes as much as 10 feet deep. This ground is now thawing underfoot. The Arctic, including much of Siberia, is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world, with average temperatures in Yakutsk, the regional capital, rising more than 2.5 degrees Celsius in recent decades, from -10 to -7.5. As the permafrost thaws, land sinks and transforms the terrain into an obstacle course of hummocks and craters, or sinks further into swamps and lakes. Houses slip and fall, animals are forced to change centuries-old hunting and migration patterns, and floods increasingly wreak havoc on the land. Some villages are threatened with being completely flooded, and indigenous peoples are more at risk than ever. Even in the capital, Yakutsk, subsiding ground has damaged around 1,000 buildings.

Russian land of permafrost and mammoths is thawing

A dispatch from the world’s largest freshwater lake, with words by New York Times Moscow bureau chief Neil MacFarquhar.

The expanding presence of Chinese businesses around Russia’s Lake Baikal is the source of deep resentment among local residents, who are initiating a growing stream of petitions, protests and court cases aimed at blocking Chinese projects in the area. Beijing is just a two-hour flight away from the lake’s pristine waters, which freeze over in winter, creating an icy playground for tourists on skates and sledges, compared to the six hours it takes Moscow’s residents to fly. Even a Chinese pop song, “On the Shore of Lake Baikal,” describes taking one’s romantic partner to the lake, and has inspired countless visits.

As Chinese flock to Siberia’s Lake Baikal, local Russians growl

Glimpses of a wedding in the Russian republic of Chechnya, a mountainous Muslim region in the country’s south, where tradition reigns supreme. With words by Andrew Kramer.

“The bride just wants this day to be over… It’s not accepted for the bride even to smile,” said one of the wedding’s attendees. In keeping with local tradition, the bride spent the ceremony standing silently in a corner, where she is greeted by the groom’s relatives and guests.

Chechnya fought two wars for independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union. After the wars, Chechens turned to religion to piece together shattered communities. At the wedding, old men sat at long tables, exchanging news. In the background, plum and pear trees were in bloom.

Disparate scenes from a Chechen wedding

A portrait, shot on assignment for the New York Times, of a Kazakh Muslim hired to work as a guard at one of the many indoctrination camps in China’s Xinjiang region. Baimurat, 39, said he witnessed prison-like conditions in the camps, where the Chinese government has detained as many as a million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities. 

The rapid increase in the number of detainees has led the Chinese government to recruit guards from among the same ethnic minority groups as the detainees themselves, such as Baimurat. He later fled with his family to Kazakhstan, where he shared his story with the New York Times, offering a rare, firsthand glimpse into the workings of Xinjiang’s security state.

He needed a job. China gave him one: Locking up his fellow Muslims.

A dispatch from Kazan, the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, where the Muslim Tatar population fears Moscow’s centralization drive is harming local culture. With words by Jesper Gormsen.

In the 1990s, the fluid and formative days after the fall of the Soviet Union, Tatar activists fought for local autonomy and even adopted their own constitution, which made teaching the Tatar language compulsory in schools. Now, after a lightning-fast legislative move by Moscow, Tatar language classes have been reduced from five hours a week to an optional two, and local parents plan to sue. The idea of Russia as a federation is losing ground, with everything increasingly measured in loyalty to the Kremlin. The Muslim Tatar community is on the sharp edge of this trend.

See the full story at Dagbladet Information

In Russia, a Muslim minority fears a loss of heritage

Once a vast prison ground for political exiles, the banks of the Ket River in western Siberia are now home to a string of solitary settlements whose residents find freedom in the river’s stark isolation.

At a remote riverside weather station, two families had recently made their home, exchanging urban comforts for the liberty of a life in the wild, away from the world. Further upriver, Old Believers, dissenters from the Russian Orthodox Church, had put down their roots. Persecuted in both Tsarist and Soviet times, the community scattered across the country, settling in its most secluded corners. The Ket River’s isolation, for them, meant protection.

The river was not always so cut off. After a canal was built in the 19th century, the Ket linked two of Russia’s biggest river basins, the Ob and Yenisey, and the commercial and industrial hubs along their shores. For a time, the small and serpentine Ket was a crucial transport corridor. But when the Trans-Siberian railway launched, west-to-east traffic on the Ket River – the farmers and traders and Tsarist troops – began to dwindle. Fewer and fewer travelers needed the Ket.

For some, this offered the promise of personal freedom. Historically, though, Ket's isolated location made it perfect grounds for a prison, one that relied more on endless miles of emptiness than on walls or barbed wire. Hundreds of thousands were deported to the area by Joseph Stalin, himself once its prisoner in pre-revolutionary times. After the deportations were stopped, many chose to leave. Many others chose to stay.

At the logging settlement of Katayga, worshippers met for mass. In the absence of a priest, who did not make the six hour journey by river and road to Katayga that day, mass was led by Marina Prosukina. The religious duties she performed are normally reserved exclusively for men. But such strict rules could not withstand the remoteness of Ket. And so, along the river, another kind of freedom was formed.

See the essay published in The New York Times

Once a vast prison ground for political exiles, the banks of the Ket River in western Siberia are now home to a string of solitary settlements whose residents find freedom in the river’s stark isolation. At a remote riverside weather station, two families had recently made their home, exchanging urban comforts for the liberty of a life in the wild, away from the world.

The River Between

In a string of remote villages scattered across the Siberian taiga, residents wait all year for the arrival of the Saint Lukas medical train. Its dozen carriages, equipped with everything from X-ray and ultrasound machines, to a blood test lab and dental surgery, bring specialized medical care to Russia’s far-flung corners, where the country’s struggling healthcare system does not stretch.

Taking ten two-week-long trips a year, each along a different route, the 17 doctors and nurses of the Saint Lukas train see up to 150 patients a day, or around 15,000 patients per year. Even in the snowy conditions of a Siberian winter, people queue up from the early hours of the morning to secure their appointment with a doctor on the train. It is one of five such trains, funded by the Russian government.

In the tail end of the Saint Lukas, a carriage has been converted into a mobile church in honor of the priest, who worked as a doctor in the Second World War, after whom the train is named.

Diagnosis

Isolated in the west Siberian plain is the village of Aidara, only reachable by navigating the winding Ket river. The next biggest settlement is about three hours away. The village’s roughly 150 inhabitants consist mainly of Russian Orthodox Old Believers.

Old Believers see themselves as the preservers of original Orthodox traditions. They separated from the main church in protest against religious reforms conducted in the 17th century. As they experienced persecution in Tsarist Russia, and were forced to conceal their religious practices under Soviet rule, Old Believers have tended to settle in more remote and isolated locations.

Today, several big families in Aidara keep their unique traditions alive, and some of their religious services can last all night. Otherwise, the community is kept busy with agricultural work, as it is almost entirely self-sufficient in terms of food. A helicopter delivers whatever else is needed, along with the mail, every two weeks. On mail days, the inhabitants gather at the landing spot, awaiting their moment of contact with the outside world.

See the essay published in National Geographic

Isolated in the west Siberian plain is the village of Aidara, only reachable by navigating the winding Ket river. The next biggest settlement is about three hours away. The village’s roughly 150 inhabitants consist mainly of Russian Orthodox Old Believers. Old Believers see themselves as the preservers of original Orthodox traditions. They separated from the main church in protest against religious reforms conducted in the 17th century.

Aidara

Looking out across Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, from the top of its skyscrapers, there’s little trace to be seen of the two independence wars that killed almost 150,000 people and left the city in ruins over a decade ago.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the mountainous republic’s Kremlin-installed leader, is rebuilding the city with great pomp and glamour. Billions of dollars are being pumped in from Moscow and as long as Kadyrov keeps a lid on the region’s separatist and extremist tendencies, he has free rein.

Behind the glittering facades of modern-day Grozny lies its leadership’s human rights record, which is far from pristine. Under Kadyrov’s rule, opposition movements have been silenced, activists have been killed, the media brought into line and any public dissent has been quashed. Numerous Chechens have been disappeared, according to reports by civil rights groups, and anti-gay purges have recently returned.

Chechnya is now a state within a state, where strict laws based on local traditions and the current regime’s interpretation of Islam are at odds with the Russian mainstream. It is a deceptively calm place.

Looking out across Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, from the top of its skyscrapers, there’s little trace to be seen of the two independence wars that killed almost 150,000 people and left the city in ruins over a decade ago. Ramzan Kadyrov, the mountainous republic’s Kremlin-installed leader, is rebuilding the city with great pomp and glamour. Billions of dollars are being pumped in from Moscow and as long as Kadyrov keeps a lid on the region’s separatist and extremist tendencies, he has free rein.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Transnistria, a narrow strip of land along Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine, is at times only a few kilometers wide. Although legally part of Moldova, it claims independent status, and has its own government, army and currency.

Not recognized as a sovereign state by any other nation, Transnistria was established when the Soviet Union collapsed. As nation states sprang up to replace the Soviet republics of old, the largely Russian-speaking population east of the Dniester River faced inclusion in a newly-established Moldova. Fearing a loss of rights and status, the population declared itself independent, and Transnistria was formed, its coat of arms still bearing the hammer and sickle of Soviet days. The move sparked a short but violent war in 1992, which only ended after Russian forces intervened and a ceasefire was agreed.

Though the fighting stopped, its underlying questions were never resolved. The conflict froze in place, and around 1,400 Russian troops remain on the ground to this day.

Transnistria, a narrow strip of land along Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine, is at times only a few kilometers wide. Although legally part of Moldova, it claims independent status, and has its own government, army and currency. Not recognized as a sovereign state by any other nation, Transnistria was established when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Transnistria

Emile Ducke is a German documentary photographer based in Moscow, Russia. A regular contributor to 

, he has documented the effects of melting 

 of Stalin’s forced labour camps in the Russian Far East, and captured 

 of traditional life in Chechnya. In longer-term projects, he has focused on the challenges faced by communities in some of Russia’s most remote areas, with photo-essays published by the 

 among others. He has been selected a World Press Photo 6x6 visual storyteller, named one of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers to watch, and awarded the n-ost prize for reporting on Eastern Europe. Emile speaks German, English, and Russian.

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