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Things to Do in Magadan Oblast, Russia - Magadan Oblast Attractions

Things to do in magadan oblast.

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• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Magadan Regional Museum of Local Lore

2. Mask of Sorrow

3. Mammoth Sculpture, Vremya

4. Nagayev Bay

5. Holy Trinity Cathedral

6. Ola Museum of Local Lore

7. Memorial Apartment Museum V. A. Kozina

8. Magadan State Drama Theater

9. Memorial to Vladimir Vysotsky

10. Market Urozhai

11. Magadan Municipal History and Culture Museum

12. Sculptural Composition of the Singer and Composer V. A. Kozina

13. Monument to Magadan Founders

14. Dneprovsky Mine

15. Saint George Chapel

16. Culture and Leisure Park

17. Tourist Information Centre of the Magadan Area

18. Magadan State Puppet Theater

19. Modern Art Gallery

20. Monument Cross to Greeks

21. Seymchan Museum of Local Lore

22. Memory Node Monument

23. Sculpture Deer

24. Former Dalstroi MAnagement Building

25. Monument to Eduard Berzin

26. Monument to Yuriy Bilibin

27. Natalka Gold Deposit

29. Monument to the Honorary Citizens of Magadan

30. Monument to Veterans of World War 2

What travelers are saying.

• Mask of Sorrow
• Mammoth Sculpture, Vremya
• Nagayev Bay
• Holy Trinity Cathedral
• Market Urozhai

Explore Magadan

Plan your trip to magadan: best of magadan tourism.

Essential Magadan

Magadan Is Great For

Art & history.

Eat & drink

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Magadan city, Russia

The capital city of Magadan oblast .

Magadan - Overview

Magadan is a port city located on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk in northeastern Russia, the administrative center of Magadan Oblast. Founded in 1929, it is the youngest regional center of the Russian Far East.

The population of Magadan is about 91,400 (2022), the area - 295 sq. km.

The phone code - +7 4132, the postal codes - 685000-685918.

Magadan city flag

Magadan city coat of arms.

Magadan city map, Russia

Magadan city latest news and posts from our blog:.

2 September, 2018 / Magadan - the view from above .

6 December, 2015 / Magadan on a sunny summer day .

8 February, 2010 / Jumping into snow from 5-storey roof video .

History of Magadan

Foundation of magadan.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in connection with the search for new places for the extraction of precious metals, the interest of the Russian government in the development of Chukotka and the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk increased. Several expeditions were sent to the eastern outskirts of the Russian Empire, but no significant gold reserves were discovered.

In 1915, Shafigullin, a lone prospector, found the first gold in Kolyma - a historical region in northeastern Russia encompassing the Kolyma River basin and the northern coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. Kolyma includes the entire territory of the Magadan region and the northeastern districts of Yakutia.

In 1926, the expedition of S.V. Obruchev proved favorable geological conditions for the occurrence of gold in this region. In 1928, the First Kolyma Expedition of Yu. A. Bilibin laid the foundation for a detailed study of Kolyma. Reliable information about economic geography of the region was obtained by the hydrographic expedition of I.F. Molodykh, who recommended the Nagaev Bay as a convenient place for the construction of a sea port. Today, the city of Magadan stands on the eastern coast of this bay, and the Magadan commercial sea port can be found on the northern coast.

The settlement of Magadan on the site of the future city was founded in 1929. In November 1931, when the demobilized soldiers of the Far Eastern Army arrived, the population of the settlement increased from 500 to 2,000 people.

More historical facts…

Magadan - the center of a huge forced labor camp

Miners and geologists needed a constant supply of food and equipment. In 1931, the State Trust for Industrial and Road Construction in the Upper Kolyma region “Dalstroy” was created, the initial task of which was the construction of a road from the sea coast to the mining areas.

In order to ensure the existing and planned work of “Dalstroy” in the territories where the permanent population was previously practically absent, the North-East Forced Labor Camp was established. With the opening of navigation of 1932, the mass transportation of convicts began. In 1932-1933, almost all of them (several tens of thousands) died because of severe frosts as they were not provided with winter clothing and insulated housing.

Only the convicts brought to Magadan in 1934 were mostly able to survive the first winter. At this time, large-scale construction of the Kolyma road, river ports, airfields, settlements, and the “capital” of the region, Magadan, began. On July 14, 1939, the settlement of Magadan was transformed into a town. This date is considered to be the year of birth of Magadan.

Construction intensified after the Second World War. At that time, the city center took its current form with buildings along the streets Lenina, Portovaya, Gorky, Pushkina. Japanese prisoners of war also worked on the construction of these buildings.

New waves of prisoners passed through Magadan, mostly Soviet prisoners of war released from German camps. They built roads, new gold mines, as well as buildings in Magadan. Not everyone managed to survive in the harsh conditions of the North and hard labor, a lot of them were rehabilitated posthumously.

Magadan in the second half of the 20th century and beyond

In 1951, the maximum number of convicts working in Kolyma was reached (more than 170 thousand people). Since the 1950s, they were gradually replaced by workers and specialists from other regions of the USSR attracted by economic rather than repressive methods (higher wages and other benefits).

In December 1953, Magadan Oblast was formed on the territory of “Dalstroy” and the city of Magadan became its administrative center. In 1954, regular air traffic began between Magadan and Moscow (the flight on the Il-12 aircraft lasted 48 hours).

In 1963, a new general plan of the city was adopted, which provided for an increase in the building area five times. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of Magadan, its population was more than 70 thousand people.

In 1991, the population of Magadan reached its maximum - about 155 thousand people. Over the next 30 years, it decreased by 40%. The main reasons for leaving the city and the region are the lack of job opportunities and career growth, dissatisfaction with the level of salaries, the lack of opportunities for self-realization, and the desire for changes in life.

Magadan - Features

Magadan is the northernmost of the regional centers of the Russian Far East. It is surrounded by small volcanoes (called “sopka” in the Far East) that rise 150-700 meters above sea level. The Magadanka River divides the city into two parts. The historic center is formed by ensembles of buildings constructed according to the designs of Leningrad architects in the neoclassical style in the 1950s.

The origin of the city’s name is still not known exactly. According to one version, it came from the Even word “mongodan” - marine sediments, according to the other - “mongot” - a dried tree, then “mongodan” - a cluster of dried trees.

The golden deer on the coat of arms of Magadan symbolizes such important sectors of the local economy as gold mining and reindeer husbandry. The blue stripe with stylized sea waves shows that Magadan is the sea gate of Kolyma.

This city is located in an area with harsh climatic conditions. Magadan is characterized by a subarctic climate. Winter is long and cold, softened by the Sea of Okhotsk. Summer is short and cool with frequent winds. June is the period of the so-called “white nights” during which natural lighting remains relatively high. Spring begins only at the end of May and winter returns in October. The average temperature in January is minus 15.6 degrees Celsius, in July - plus 13.4 degrees Celsius.

The development of this territory is associated with mineral resources - gold, silver, tin, hydrocarbons, copper, molybdenum, etc. There are large reserves of coal and brown coal, various building materials, volcanic ash, zeolites, mineral springs. Magadan Oblast is one of the main suppliers of gold and silver in Russia.

There are fish processing enterprises, machine-building plants and other industrial enterprises in the city. The Magadan Mechanical Repair Plant manufactures heavy mining equipment and spare parts for it. In the post-Soviet years, important enterprises of the gold mining industry were opened.

In the early 1930s, the road “Kolyma” was built from Magadan. Today, the length of this federal highway is over two thousand kilometers. It passes through the Kolyma districts where precious metals are mined to the villages of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Magadan is not connected by rail with the rest of Russia.

Magadan has the second largest seaport in the north-east of the Russian Federation (after Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky). The international airport “Magadan” named after Vladimir Vysotsky, the largest airport in the north-east of Russia, offers regular flights to Moscow, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

In Magadan, there is the North-Eastern Scientific Center of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which unites the following academic divisions: the North-Eastern Integrated Research Institute, the Institute for Biological Problems of the North, and the research center “Arctic”. In addition, the Magadan Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography is also located here.

Main Attractions of Magadan

Monument “Mask of Sorrow” at the observation deck near Krutaya Sopka - a memorial created by Ernst Neizvestny in memory of the victims of political repression and opened in 1996. Until 1957, more than 2 million convicts were brought to Kolyma and Chukotka, about 120-130 thousand of them died in forced labor camps, about 10 thousand were shot.

This 15-meter concrete sculpture in the style of cubism depicts a giant human head. Inside the monument there is a room where the interior of a prison cell is recreated. The place for the memorial was not chosen by chance, there was a transfer point on this hill, where convicts were gathered to be sent to different camps.

Monument “Time” - a metal sculpture of a mammoth almost 4 meters high. It was installed for the 60th anniversary of Magadan Oblast in 2013. Scrap metal was chosen as a building material from what used to be a bunch of clocks. In just a year, a corrosive film covered the metal and the sculpture acquired the color of the natural wool of a mammoth. Portovoye Shosse Street.

Magadan Regional Museum of Local Lore - one of the largest scientific and educational museums in the north-east of Russia. The museum has archaeological and cartographic collections, historical documents and photographs, a large collection of sculpture and painting, decorative and applied arts, zoological and numismatic collections, household items of the indigenous peoples, as well as more than 14 thousand books and 6 thousand material monuments of history and culture. Karla Marksa Avenue, 55.

Natural History Museum . The expositions of this museum are dedicated to the history, flora, fauna, and natural resources of the north of the Russian Far East. Its collection includes over 4 thousand artifacts, including a unique collection of 15 meteorites. Exhibitions of shamanic ritual accessories, old Chukchi sledges, hunting and fishing tools used by the peoples of the North are of particular interest to visitors, as well as a collection of gems (agates, amethysts, tourmalines, jasper). Portovaya Street, 16.

Geological Museum . Here you can see a unique collection of fossils from the Jurassic period and beautiful gems that the Far Eastern land is rich in. The collection of native gold and silver from the Kolyma deposits is of no less interest. Also, visitors will hear a fascinating story about the history of gold mining in Kolyma. Proletarskaya Street, 11.

Gallery of Contemporary Art . Collective and personal exhibitions of local painters, graphic artists, sculptors, bone carvers, photo artists are held here. In this gallery you can also buy some exhibits. It is located on the second floor of the cultural and sports complex “Metallist”. Pushkina Street, 8.

Holy Trinity Cathedral - the largest Orthodox church in the Russian Far East, one of the tallest churches in Russia (over 70 meters), consecrated in 2011. This cathedral is visible from almost anywhere in the city. The prototype of the architectural solution of the cathedral was the old Russian Vladimir-Novgorod architecture. Sobornaya Square, 1.

Magadan also has a music and drama theater, a puppet theater, and a philharmonic society.

Magadan city of Russia photos

Pictures of magadan.

On the outskirts of Magadan

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Movie theater in Magadan

Author: Mekheda Alexander

Holy Trinity Cathedral in Magadan

Author: Gudkov Konstantin

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Cities [ edit ]

• 59.566667 150.8 1 Magadan — the region's capital and largest city by far
• 63.083333 147.05 2 Kadykchan — abandoned coal mining city on the road to Yakutsk
• 59.55 151.283333 3 Ola
• 62.780833 148.153889 4 Susuman — another city on the road to Yakutsk, which has what as close as it can get to tourism infrastructure in this lonely patch of taiga
• 62.524167 149.628333 6 Yagodnoye — mining town close to a lake with some of the best fishing in whole Russian Far East
• 62.511278 155.783722 8 Omsukchan
• 61.917 159.233 9 Evensk

Other destinations [ edit ]

• 61.131263 152.398868 2 Talaya Resort — just outside Magadan, offers skiing (alpine & crosscountry) and snowmobiling

Understand [ edit ]

Magadan Oblast is a region rich in minerals and human suffering. The areas now known as Magadan Oblast and Chukotka were home to the Kolyma Gulag, a network of work-camps the size of France where approximately 500,000-1,000,000 men, women, and children died as a result of overwork, malnutrition, the cold, and human brutality. Anyone interested in the Kolyma gulags, or just more generally in human nature and great literature, should read Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales .

Talk [ edit ]

Russian is likely the only language you will encounter here.

Get in [ edit ]

Magadan Oblast is impressively remote and it is definitely advisable to fly to Magadan , likely from Moscow or much closer Khabarovsk and Vladivostok .

There is no railway connecting to Magadan Oblast and there is only one road, the Kolyma Highway , leading from the west, from Yakutsk . This road dirt or gravel for most of its length, is just over 2025 km long and crosses 3 mountain ranges. As of 2008, the all-season connection from Kyubyume to Ust-Nera was completed, meaning that the road is now passable by 2-wheel drive cars, though few would then be capable of the return trip. When the ice breaks during April and freezes during September river crossings at Yakutsk and Khandyga are only available by helicopter. With the exception of a few mining towns, long sections of the road are uninhabited, and most towns have no police presence. In particular, the 500 km section between Yagodnoye and the outlying settlements of Magadan is home to fewer than 4000 people.

Get around [ edit ]

Most traffic on the Kolyma Highway is mining trucks or trucks carrying building materials to and from Magadan. Hiring a taxi or jeep and driver costs about US$100/day.

See [ edit ]

• Dneprovsky Mine — the best preserved gulag site
• The Mask of Sorrow (in Magadan ) is both a memorial to the victims of Kolyma and an inspired sculpture.

Eat [ edit ]

Drink [ edit ], stay safe [ edit ], go next [ edit ].

Getting out of Magadan Oblast is best done by plane, but it is possible to venture down the Kolyma Highway , a long, lonely road into Yakutia as far as Yakutsk . This route is only really passable in the winter months of November–March and summer June–August, though traffic exists on some sections nearly all year round.

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Top Things to Do in Magadan, Russia - Magadan Must-See Attractions

Things to do in magadan.

• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Budget-friendly
• Good for a Rainy Day
• Good for Kids
• Good for Big Groups
• Good for Couples
• Adventurous
• Hidden Gems
• Honeymoon spot
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Magadan Regional Museum of Local Lore

2. Mask of Sorrow

3. Mammoth Sculpture, Vremya

4. Nagayev Bay

5. Holy Trinity Cathedral

6. Memorial Apartment Museum V. A. Kozina

7. Magadan State Drama Theater

8. Memorial to Vladimir Vysotsky

9. Market Urozhai

10. Magadan Municipal History and Culture Museum

11. Sculptural Composition of the Singer and Composer V. A. Kozina

12. Monument to Magadan Founders

13. Dneprovsky Mine

14. Saint George Chapel

15. Culture and Leisure Park

16. Tourist Information Centre of the Magadan Area

17. Magadan State Puppet Theater

18. Modern Art Gallery

19. Monument Cross to Greeks

20. Memory Node Monument

21. Sculpture Deer

22. Monument to Eduard Berzin

23. Former Dalstroi MAnagement Building

24. Monument to Yuriy Bilibin

26. Monument to the Honorary Citizens of Magadan

27. Monument to Veterans of World War 2

28. cathedral of the annunciation of the blessed virgin, 29. evelina horse yard, 30. teplo pottery studio, what travellers are saying.

• Mask of Sorrow
• Mammoth Sculpture, Vremya
• Nagayev Bay
• Holy Trinity Cathedral
• Market Urozhai

• Bahasa Indonesia
• Slovenščina
• Science & Tech
• Russian Kitchen

Magadan Natural Reserve: Fantastic PHOTOS of remote landscapes

Magadan Region is located on the edge of Eurasia and washed by the Okhotsk Sea. It’s a huge and sparsely populated territory, rugged with mountain ranges and rivers. There are many remote places where no humans have stepped, but there are also many riches of nature: gold, silver, tin and tungsten. In order to protect the flora and fauna, the Magadan Nature Reserve was established in 1982, which is now one of the top 10 largest reserves in Russia (its area is 883,817 hectares).

The reserve consists of four remote areas that are not connected to each other. There are no roads or settlements. It is possible to reach them either by rivers or by the Sea of Okhotsk (check out how to drive in such roadless areas here ). 

The symbol of the Magadan reserve is the Steller’s sea eagle, which is found only in the Russian Far East and sometimes appears in Asian countries. 

But, besides that, there are more than 180 species of rare birds in the Magadan reserve, with entire bird colonies making it their home! 

At the moment, 40 mammal species are registered in the reserve. Among them are brown bears, hares and muskrats. 

On Matykil Island, one of the Yam Islands in Shelikhov Bay, one can find the northernmost reproductive rookery of Steller sea lions in Russia. It’s only possible to see these sea animals in summer, because the Sea of Okhotsk freezes up in winter. Sea lions are observed and watched with hidden cameras. 

The Yam Islands are actually an amazing sight: it’s an archipelago of small islands-rocks, where there is practically no plant life. These rocks are home to bird colonies, one of the largest in Russia (scientists counted at least 6 million birds).

Each area of the Magadan reserve has not only different relief (there are tundra, rocks, swamps, forests), but also different weather; although, if you look at the map, it seems that they are not far from each other (Wrong! They are very far apart!). 

The Magadan Nature Reserve is a very cozy place for bears; they live there in great numbers. There are a lot of salmon in the Okhotsk Sea, which they love and no people who could bother them. 

The Koni Peninsula is probably the most mysterious and the most rocky part of the reserve. It turns out that people lived there about 1,500 years ago - archaeologists have found the remains of 6 ancient settlements along the coast (it is believed that the ancestors of the Koryaks lived there). 

And here’s the surprise - people still live there! These are two lighthouse employees at Cape Taran, which was built in 1958. In their spare time, they explore the rocky shores and grow vegetables. 

Although it is difficult to visit the Magadan Nature Reserve, it is not impossible. The employees have developed several sea routes for tourists who want to see with their own eyes all the beauty of the harsh Okhotsk Sea. The visit center of the reserve is located in the city of Magadan, the capital of the region, at a distance of 100 to 650 km from reserve territories.   

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Dneprovsky Gulag Camp, Magadan | Russia Travel Guide

By Koryo Tours

Dneprovsky Gulag Camp, Magadan

Dneprovsky Gulag Camp

Dneprovsky Gulag Camp Introduction Getting to the Gulag Camp Staying at the Gulag Camp

Dneprovsky Gulag Camp is an old abandoned gulag camp in Russia. 

The period of the Gulag is one of the darkest chapters in the history of the world.

At its peak., this was a vast system of labour camps stretching all the way across the most giant country the world has ever seen, from the steppes of Central Asia to the wild frozen north, and from Vilnius to Vladivostok across the breadth of the country. 

To write about the whole Gulag system would, of course, take up more space than allowed here. Those interested can be referred to the great Russian writers Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, or to more recent historians such as Anne Applebaum, for excellent books on this tragic subject.

Across the Kolyma Region lay dozens of camps. When the system was abolished, most of them were abandoned, apart from those that were actually economically viable to operate with freed labour, some convicts who stayed on (having nowhere else to go, many had been disowned by their families), or itinerant workers in the region anyway.

Gradually though, even these camps faded and these days the extraction of minerals is done mainly by machine (you can see gold dredging machines in the Kolyma Rover today if you drive through this area.

Dneprovsky was one of the camps operational at that time. It was populated by a combination of political and legal criminals (so some people there for violent offences, some there for thought crimes). It was mainly engaged in the mining and processing of tin ore.

The Dneprovsky camp was apparently finally abandoned in 1955 as the ore they dug from the mines was of low grade anyway and there was no way to keep the site viable. 

As with all the camps in Kolyma, Dneprovsky was not turned into a memorial or museum. 

It was just left, for decades.

Over that time, a lot of the camp infrastructure decayed and collapsed, under the weight of multiple feet of snow every winter, and many millions of gallons of water melting over it every summer.

However, it takes decades for trees to grow in this region so a lot of things that would have been swallowed by forest elsewhere still stand out.

The mine entrance, buildings, guard towers, fences, and much more still stand and can be visited when at Dneprovsky.

A guided hike of around 3 hours around the perimeter is essential. It is treacherous ground with loose shale leading up a long path up to the edge of the camp, but the view from the top shows the extent and isolation of this sad place. If you book a tour (and you must, it's almost impossible to get here otherwise) then someone will come with you to guide you and watch out for any cuddly bears that might want to bother you (bears, of course, are all over Russia, they are not hugely dangerous unless bothered, but be on the safe side!)

Aside from the aforementioned sites, there is also a cemetery to visit here (prisoners buried facing the wrong way, against whatever religions they may have followed) and with numbers rather than names on the graves.

A small building that was used to turn empty tins of food into trays for baking bread is interesting, it is the one next to the enormous pile of rusted flattened tins.

A trip to a Gulag site is essential for anyone visiting Kolyma and going along the road of bones to understand the history of the region, the role of the Dalstroy organisation, why the people were here, what they were doing, and the legacy that this carries on into the present day and beyond. 

This is one of the main reasons to visit this part of Russia.

People can be dismissive about ‘Dark Tourism’ of course, but it is more than just thrill-seeking; it is educational and emotional, and there is no better site than the Dneprovsky Gulag camp to learn and feel something about the place. 

Getting to the Gulag Camp

Along the Road of Bones from Magadan city, the turn-off nearest Dneprovsky is a little over 265km.

In a 4x4 this would be around 4 hours, in a Kamaz Truck, this would be 5 or so hours.

The next 20km through the marsh and trees will be a very bumpy 60-90 mins but this is necessary for getting to the site, there is only the memory of a track and the way is simply uncomfortable.

They didn’t build highways to the camps after all!

There is no easy way to get to Dneprovsky, prepare yourself for a tough place by riding tough to get there! 

Staying at the Gulag Camp

There are no facilities other than a river which you can use for water, washing, and refrigerating supplies.

Take camping equipment and food with you.

In summer the place is absolutely swarming with mosquitoes. They are the big and aggressive Russian ones so they bite hard but they carry no disease.

Take repellant of the highest grade you can find, and a mosquito hat/net for your face and head.

They are a pest but they relax when the temperature drops and if you’re overly bothered by them just remember where you are; you get to leave, so many didn’t, and they had mosquitoes biting them too.

Interested in a tour to Russia?  Travel to Russia  with the  Russia travel experts,  Koryo Tours 

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THE 15 BEST Things to Do in Magadan

Things to do in magadan.

• 5.0 of 5 bubbles
• 4.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• 3.0 of 5 bubbles & up
• Budget-friendly
• Good for a Rainy Day
• Good for Kids
• Good for Big Groups
• Good for Couples
• Adventurous
• Hidden Gems
• Honeymoon spot
• Good for Adrenaline Seekers
• Things to do ranked using Tripadvisor data including reviews, ratings, photos, and popularity.

1. Magadan Regional Museum of Local Lore

2. Mask of Sorrow

3. Mammoth Sculpture, Vremya

4. Nagayev Bay

5. Holy Trinity Cathedral

6. Memorial Apartment Museum V. A. Kozina

7. Magadan State Drama Theater

8. Memorial to Vladimir Vysotsky

9. Market Urozhai

10. Magadan Municipal History and Culture Museum

11. Sculptural Composition of the Singer and Composer V. A. Kozina

12. Monument to Magadan Founders

13. Dneprovsky Mine

14. Saint George Chapel

15. Culture and Leisure Park

16. Tourist Information Centre of the Magadan Area

17. Magadan State Puppet Theater

18. Modern Art Gallery

19. Monument Cross to Greeks

20. Memory Node Monument

21. Sculpture Deer

22. Monument to Eduard Berzin

23. Former Dalstroi MAnagement Building

24. Monument to Yuriy Bilibin

26. Monument to the Honorary Citizens of Magadan

27. Monument to Veterans of World War 2

28. cathedral of the annunciation of the blessed virgin, 29. evelina horse yard, 30. teplo pottery studio, what travellers are saying.

• Mask of Sorrow
• Mammoth Sculpture, Vremya
• Nagayev Bay
• Holy Trinity Cathedral
• Market Urozhai

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Russia Dispatch

It’s 50 Below. The Past Is a Horror Show. You’d Dream of Escaping Too.

Best known as the most feared and frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Magadan struggles to keep its residents from fleeing. The ice cream isn’t enough to keep them.

An overview of Magadan and the Nagaev Bay, Russia. Credit... Emile Ducke for The New York Times

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By Andrew Higgins

• Dec. 31, 2019

MAGADAN, Russia — Like many young people in Magadan, a frigid northern Russian city more than 3,600 miles from Moscow, Dinat Yur is fed up with living in a place where winters drag on for six months and the average annual temperature is below freezing.

“I really dream of leaving this place,” said Mr. Yur, a 29-year-old cook. “I can’t wait.”

Born and raised in a city proud of its resilience against climatic and all other odds, Mr. Yur has for the moment found his calling in a defiantly contrarian occupation for a place so cold: He makes ice cream.

As the temperature in Magadan dipped the other week to well below freezing — on its way to minus 50 Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit) once winter really sets in — he was hard at work mixing milk, sugar and a raspberry mush imported from Italy to produce a summery swirl of frozen gelato.

Eating his confections outside during winter, Mr. Yur conceded, is not a good idea — they quickly turn to teeth-cracking chunks of ice — but “everyone here likes to sit at home in front of the TV with some ice cream.”

Russia’s curious love affair with ice cream has long been a subject of theorizing about how a country plagued by such terrible weather and other miserable conditions manages to keep going, prevailing over seemingly unsurmountable hurdles.

Particularly popular in Russia is a story, probably apocryphal, about a visit to Moscow in the winter of 1944 by Winston Churchill that has Britain’s wartime leader noticing Muscovites eating ice cream on a snowy street from his car window and declaring “such a people will never be conquered.”

Moscow, however, has winters that usually hover in the 20s Fahrenheit — meaning that Magadan is pushing the limits of this against-the-odds spirit.

Burdened by its Stalin-era beginnings as the gateway to a string of brutal labor camps in nearby Kolyma — where tens of thousands were executed and more than 100,000 died from disease and hunger — the city is trying to rebrand itself cheerily as the “golden heart of Russia,” a reference to vast reserves of gold buried in nearby mountains.

Built on an icy bay overlooking the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan, Magadan is Russia’s version of Dawson City, the Canadian town created by the Klondike Gold Rush at the end of the 19th century. Only Russians never rushed to Magadan; they were dragged there.

Arctic Ocean

St. Petersburg

The only recent rush has been to the exit.

Young people particularly are making a run for it, a stampede that the city’s mayor, Yuri Grishin, has been working to slow. He points to a new sports complex now under construction, a rash of restaurant openings and fresh licks of paint for buildings in the center of town as possible encouragement for people to stay put.

After years of dramatic decline that slashed the population by more than 40 percent, the mayor said the number of residents has now “more or less stabilized” at around 91,000.

But among those who have moved away are the mayor’s own three grown children. One now lives in Moscow.

The mayor doesn’t understand. Why would anyone trade Magadan for the capital, where “they will live in a tiny apartment and spend three hours a day in traffic jams,” he asked.

Aside from its bleak weather and even bleaker history, Magadan is, if truth be told, no worse — and in some respects better — than many provincial Russian towns. It has the same crumbling concrete apartment blocks, the same colonnaded theater building, the same central square formerly named after Lenin and the same street slogans celebrating victory in the Great Patriotic War, as Russia refers to World War II.

It also has three movie houses, two indoor public swimming pools, a well-deserved reputation for camaraderie and a huge new Orthodox cathedral with glittering golden domes, an indispensable feature of urban planning in the age of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Another plus is climate change, which is making winters somewhat milder. It did not start snowing heavily this year until late November.

But thoughts of escaping, either by eating Italian gelato or getting on a plane, are so ever-present that a local sociologist diagnosed Magadan as suffering from “delayed life syndrome” — a psychological condition that detaches inhabitants’ hopes and ambitions from their current life and punts them into the future.

“People think they are just here temporarily and that they will only live fully once they leave,” said Andrei Grishan, 31, the founder and editor of an online local news portal, Vesma Today. Recently married, he and his new wife both said they want to leave at some point.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Magadan had 155,000 people. They were a mix of locally born residents — many of them descendants of former gulag prisoners, guards or administrators — and outsiders attracted by salaries that had for years been far higher than in the rest of the country. That was thanks to the “northern bonus,” a Soviet-era premium offered to anyone willing to work there.

But for many people in Magadan, the end of the Soviet Union meant economic ruin. The slashing of Soviet-era subsidies sent Magadan salaries tumbling. As factories closed and services withered, some free-market zealots in Moscow suggested that the city be put out of its misery and shut down.

Mr. Putin, though, has done the opposite, stressing the importance of keeping remote northern outposts alive, no matter the cost. His calculations include security, patriotic pride in Russia’s reach, and economics: Most of Russia’s natural resources lie beneath the ice and snow of places like Magadan and the nearby wilds.

The federal government subsidizes daily flights to and from Moscow and is funding new roads, the new sports complex and high-speed internet lines. Government subsidies also help keep the interest rate on mortgages in town much lower than in warmer parts of Russia.

Since 2016, Moscow has been offering free land in Magadan and other sparsely populated regions of the Russia n Far East. Four hundred people have taken up the offer in the Magadan region, but nearly all are locals, not would-be settlers from the outside as the Kremlin had hoped.

While Magadan is blessed with rich supplies of gold, silver and other natural resources, conditions are so harsh that some economists still question whether it makes sense to keep it as a city rather than just a transit center for contract workers heading for the mines.

But giving up on Magadan as a functioning urban center would effectively return it to its original role when it was founded in 1929 — a grim seaport through which geologists and then gulag laborers passed on their way to the gold mines of Kolyma. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of “The Gulag Archipelago,” described this particular outpost of the gulag as “the pole of cold and cruelty.”

When Mr. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994 after years of exile in Vermont , he made Magadan his first stop, explaining upon his arrival from Alaska that he had “come to bow to the land where many hundreds of thousands of our countrymen, who were executed, are buried.”

Even today, residents still refer to the rest of Russia as “the mainland,” a sign of how isolated the city feels. To lift flagging spirits, municipal buses are emblazoned with a defiant statement of the city’s will to survive: “Magadan was, is and will be.”

The phrase borrows, inauspiciously, from a less-than-successful Soviet-era slogan once plastered across the country: “Lenin lived, lives and will live!”

Because of the flight of young people, Magadan now has a severe shortage of able-bodied workers. The mayor said the city needed 20,000 more people to do construction and other work and is making do in the meantime by bringing in workers on short-term contracts.

“It upsets me that people have this stereotype of Magadan as a big prison camp,” the mayor said. The city, he added, is “repositioning itself as a bright, colorful and happy place.”

Mr. Yur, the ice-cream maker, is not convinced. He tries to take a holiday each summer somewhere in Asia, which is much closer than Europe and most of Russia. But returning home to Magadan is always a trial.

“When I come back here,” he said, “I slip into a deep depression.”

Andrew Higgins is the Moscow bureau chief. He was on the team awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting, and led a team that won the same prize in 1999 while he was Moscow bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. More about Andrew Higgins

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