Russia's Road of Bones: The Eastern Highway That's Literally Built on Corpses

this video is brought to you by squarespace whether it's your new profession or just a lifelong passion start your journey to website glory with squarespace check out their awesome all-in-one platform through the link in the description below more on them in just a bit [Music] this is a road with a dark secret a road that was very much built on pain and misery the story of r504 kalima highway commonly referred to as the road of bones is sometimes a difficult one to hear where the horrors of the soviet gulag system are really truly revealed the vast highway isn't particularly popular in fact it connects settlements that are about as out of the way as you could possibly get what makes this road different is the horror that lies just beneath the surface it is a road that is quite literally formed over the bones of the thousands who died constructing it as i said this is a road with a dark secret [Music] the 2031 kilometer r-504 kalima highway snakes across the russian far east from the port down of magadan on the sea of okhotsk to the small provincial town of nizhny best yacht further west a place that has a record low temperature of a bone chilling minus 64.4 celsius that's -84 fahrenheit while magadan is certainly an important town where shipbuilding and fishing are the major industries its population is little more than 90 000. nishni bestiak is even smaller with just 4 000 inhabitants and acts as more of a transit terminus between roads than really anything else but it does lie directly across the lena river from the larger city of yakutsk with the population of just over three hundred thousand in many ways the two towns that lie at either end of the road of bones are fairly non-descript let me put it this way they're not exactly places people go for a holiday and yet the road that connects them has gained infamy for how it was built the road of bones is today most commonly used by foreign adventurers and hardened truck drivers who know better than to ever turn off their engines during the horrifically cold siberian winter just last year a teenage motorcyclist froze to death on the road after following google maps down a side road that simply led nowhere this is a place where you shouldn't mess around especially in winter the road is a mixture of paved highways dusty tracks and rickety bridges that may or may not be in one piece in 2008 it was granted federal road status and received a new diversion further north much of it is now relatively well maintained but older sections are still accessible for a hardy or suicidal traveler this is an area of the world with some breathtaking beauty to it the vast emptiness will likely either be the perfect tonic for the madness of our crazy world or send people completely crazy because of the isolation it's a place of extremes and is certainly not for everybody okay so i've parked on enough about beauty and extremes let's get to the crux of it shall we the story of the road of bones begins all the way back in the 1930s a time of murderous distrust and purges throughout the soviet union it was also when stories of forced labor camps located deep in siberia known as gulags began to emerge just a quick tidbit before we move on the word gulag is commonly associated with just the physical camps themselves but the word was actually far more wide-ranging and can be used to describe the entire system and the government agency in charge the coup lags have been in use since the 1920s and played a key role in the political and social repression that was seen across the soviet union these camps thought to number hundreds at their peak along with countless smaller colonies remained in place until shortly after stalin's death in 1953 and the numbers associated with them are simply horrifying an estimated 18 million people moved through the camps with roughly 1.6 million dying from starvation exhaustion disease and murder this is a time that russia acknowledges without fully acknowledging in recent years there has been a growing ambition to reframe the dark days of the soviet union and by reframing we mean twisting the truth until the upcoming generations have very little idea of what is true and what is not even the beast deal joseph stalin appears to be getting a makeover with the russian government eager to paint him as a national hero rather than a tyrant who was responsible for anywhere between 6 and 9 million deaths those who found themselves in the hellish gulags could have been sent for a wide variety of reasons but just about everybody in the soviet union had something to fear political and military purges could see highly decorated generals dragged into the labor camps alongside peasants and ethnic minorities simply saying the wrong thing or being the victim of a grudge held by somebody else was enough for a trip to the gulag along with the kind of prison sentence that might not officially been life but with the conditions and work requirements being as they were many simply didn't make it out alive which is exactly what the soviet regimes were banking on now just before we find out more about the road of bones i want to thank today's video sponsor who makes this possible squarespace now more than ever people are being more creative with their time they're launching new businesses or websites blogs things like that and when you're on the internet the world really is yours and squarespace is a perfect partner to help you fashion it into whatever you like squarespace is the platform to use when you're ready to get started on the next web project you've been thinking about are you looking to get in and out quick without thinking too much about what your website should look like well absolutely use one of squarespace's beautiful templates to make a website that's fresh and for you or maybe you're more of a hands-on person you've got lots of opinions and ideas about what exactly your site should look like while squarespace gives you all the 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during the 1920s and 1930s we've already done a video on the first soviet five-year plan so i'm not going to go into a ton of great detail here except to say that the soviet union embarked on perhaps the most ambitious industrialization leap that the world has ever seen this involved new factories ports and roads intended to increase manufacturing productivity by over 300 something stalin hoped would modernize the nation enough to be able to compete with the rest of europe much of the plan it didn't come to fruition but the progress was still astonishing perhaps the most important factor was that it allowed the soviet union to develop a series of factories that would eventually play an enormous role in defeating the nazis during world war ii but if you fancy deep diving into the absurdly brilliant madness of the soviet union do take a look at our video on the first soviet five-year plan now one of the key elements of industrialization was to improve transportation links throughout the soviet union the trans-siberian railway had been finished in 1916 and acted as a vital artery across the country however it wasn't nearly enough and the government set about constructing or improving roads across the largest nation on earth much of this was down to a need to move goods quickly and easily but with the far east revealing itself to be rich in minerals the soviet government were eager to provide links that could reach deep into the wildness where gulags were often located where prisoners toiled to excavate gold silver tin and uranium as well as felling trees for lumber construction on the rotor bones began in 1932 under the direction of dao stroy a company formed the year before to oversee road construction and mining in the far east which worked out magadan initially the company used paid civilian labor but it quickly became very apparent that few people would choose that sort of existence instead daostro created a vast number of gulags across the region which were steadily filled over time they also played a key role in the transportation of convicts who would typically travel along the trans-siberian railway to vladivostok before taking a ship up to magadan where they were sent to individual camps the number of convicts in the camps under daostro's control grew steadily over the years from 11 000 in 1932 to 190 000 in 1940. it then fluctuated during the war but at its height in 1952 when nearly 200 000 people were housed there it's thought that as many as 80 individual subcamps fell under the notorious serbian slag gulag branch in the area with many providing labor for the construction of the road of bones it took the best part of 20 years to complete the route from magadan to nizhny brestiak with construction ending in 1952. conditions could range from the mildly hellish to the truly terrible this part of russia experiences wild swings in temperature from a summer average of 25 degrees celsius to minus 40 celsius in the winter and inmates were expected to work through it all with barely enough food to keep them going sadly we know little about how the road was constructed and saved with a few images taken evidence of what went on remains light but we can presume that with so much free labor on offer and considering the time in remoteness almost everything was done by hand and incredibly slowly now it's impossible to give accurate numbers of those who died during the construction of the road but estimates lie between 250 000 and a million people and this is where things become really unpleasant you see this part of russia is covered in permafrost meaning that the ground below the surface continually lies below zero celsius freezing points and with so many people dying during construction it was seen as easier to simply inter the bodies directly in the road than attempting to build graves the name road of bones isn't some allegory it's a road that literally contains the bones of those who died while building it [Music] today the road remains a harsh place to travel best described by a local proverb calmer calmer enchanted planet winter lasts 12 months and all the rest is summer as i mentioned earlier truck drivers passing along it in winter dare not turn off their engines for fear that they might not be able to turn it back on the likely death sentence in the harrowing cold of winter it's such an issue that the russian authorities have made it illegal to pass a stopped vehicle without first checking whoever inside is okay one side road that leads off the road of bones eventually arrives at the small town of oymayakon where in 1933 it recorded the lowest temperature ever seen in a continuously inhabited area minus 67.8 celsius or minus 90.4 fahrenheit the road passes through areas that define the word isolation and it can be hundreds of miles between settlements another measure to try and address the dangers of traveling on the road has been the installation of shipping containers along the route which are heated and contain communication devices a place where stranded motorists can warm up and call for help petrol stations and rest stops vary in frequency but every 250 kilometers 155 miles seems to be about average the remnants of the past are fading now but if you look carefully you can still see the remains of what is left of the gulags along the way but many mass graves have never been found or should i say they've never really been looked for the story of this part of russia feels very similar to many others a world away from the glitz and glamour of moscow and saint petersburg towns like sanegori are once vibrant albeit small settlement to house workers constructing the nearby kolima hydroelectric facility are now on their last legs with only a dwindling population still hanging on it's even worse in towns like kadekchan and spania which have now been completely abandoned the last resident of kadachan died three years ago and it joined a growing number of settlements in the area that are now just eerie concrete shells of past glories [Music] in november 2020 a grim discovery was made near the siberian town of kurensk the skull and several bones thought to be around 100 years old appeared on a highway in the irkutsk region news of the find quickly traveled around social media with many making an immediate comparison to the infamous road of bones could this be yet another road built over the bodies of the dead any answers maybe but probably not initially it was explained that a company who was resurfacing the road had managed to inadvertently scoop up bones along with the sand they were transporting which lay close to a cemetery another theory was that the sand had been transported from a nearby ravine which was said to contain a mass grave russian authorities are currently investigating the find which now includes the remains of three separate bodies while it may be unlikely that something quite like the road of bones exists here it's certainly not impossible the appearance of bones from around the time of the russian revolution and the subsequent civil war in which between six and nine million people lost their lives highlights a ghostly specter that still very much remains in russia [Music] in many ways this might possibly be the most tragic mega project we've ever covered the construction of such a vast road through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet is commendable but ha was done simply nightmarish few of us will ever travel along or even see the road of bones but it's important that we never forget what happened there and indeed across many parts of the soviet union while the gulags and the millions of prisoners may have been there under the guise of mining minerals and building roads in reality they were there because the powers that be hoped that they would never return and a tragically high number never did their remains were simply incorporated into the dusty track that would one day be called the r504 kalima highway the road of bones so i do hope you found that video interesting if you did please do click that like button below please don't forget to subscribe if you've got a suggestion for a future mega projects video please use the comments below also if you'd like to support this show please support our fantastic sponsor squarespace who i'm linking to below and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 275,544

Rating: 4.9203224 out of 5

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Id: Ci0ooAfJfcg

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021