Vorkuta, Russia. The coldest city in Europe (lowest temperature ever recorded at -52 C)

32 comments
  1. Highly recommend [A Day In Russia’s Most Depressing Town](https://youtu.be/VvUODcWlb7g) to see an outlook on one of the bleakest towns in Russia, which would be completely isolated from the rest of the world if it wasn’t for the railway built by gulag prisoners in the 1940s. There are no roads leading to Vorkuta.

    It is situated well above the Arctic Circle and winters are long and extremely rigid, regularly touching -40 and -50 C.

    Vorkuta was founded to take advantage of the large coal fields in the area. However, now that the coal industry has fallen into times of disrepair, more and more are escaping from Vorkuta. The current population is not even 50,000 – down from an all-time high of 115,000.

  2. Btw, author of this photo is Lanasator from Instagram. Go check her out, she has tons of interesting photos of abandoned (and not) places there.

  3. To actually find this place. Vorkuta is a bit to the east this is a “suburb goulag”
    [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Zapolyarnyi,+Komijsko,+Rusko,+169936/@67.496556,63.7260541,909m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x448776fbe781002f:0xb5ce715e47b134cb!8m2!3d67.4953572!4d63.7299246](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Zapolyarnyi,+Komijsko,+Rusko,+169936/@67.496556,63.7260541,909m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x448776fbe781002f:0xb5ce715e47b134cb!8m2!3d67.4953572!4d63.7299246)

    Following the railway line down south you can see quite a few remains of other goulags.

  4. The coal industry is in decline, the city is slowly dying. You can buy a 3-room apartment there for just a 50000 roubles (less then 1000$)

  5. Sergei, they are saying on the news that temperature at your place are -52C.

    That can’t be it is -5C, I just checked.

    No, I am sure, they just repated that outside temperature in Vorkuta is -52C.

    Oh, you mean outside…

  6. Is this where Santas workshop is? They could convert the town to “Christmasville” , build an airport and cover the place with blinking colorful lights. Market it to westerners as Santas secret ~~goulag~~ workshop and put fake little elves and workshop scenes in the abandoned mines. Add some snow tubing/etc and turn it into a real destination.

  7. This isn’t Vorkuta. This is one of the three mining settlements north east of Vorkuta which has been abandoned and had its inhabitant move back into Vorkuta.

    When the mining activity slowed down, people started deserting that settlement and with fewer people it wasn’t worth it to run the expensive utilities, so I think the local gov had the remaining people move down to the actual city of Vorkuta. That’s why this looks like it was abandoned so long ago.

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