Gulag prisoners built this town during WW2, it grew into a USSR mining centre of over 10,000 people; before the end of the Soviet era brought its decline in 1996

Far beyond Russia’s major cities, in the remote upper Kolyma region of the Russian Far East, a settlement once stood as a small but important part of the Soviet Union’s industrial machine. Kadykchan was built during World War II around coal deposits, with prisoners from the Gulag system among those forced to construct the settlement and its mining infrastructure. Decades later, thousands of people lived there. Today, its empty apartment blocks, public buildings and roads remain as a stark reminder of a Soviet town that could not survive the economic system that created it.

Kadykchan emerged in the 1940s, when the Soviet Union was fighting World War II and desperately needed fuel and raw materials. Coal was discovered in the wider area in the years before the settlement was built, and the deposits became the foundation for mining activity in one of the country's most remote regions.

The work was carried out under the Gulag system, the vast network of forced-labour camps that operated across the Soviet Union. Kadykchan was among the settlements in the Kolyma region where prisoners were used for mining and construction. The harsh environment made ordinary development difficult.


The coal was not simply extracted for its own sake. Kadykchan's mines became part of a regional energy system, supplying coal to the major power stations. The settlement therefore grew around a straightforward Soviet industrial equation: coal underground, workers above it and electricity generated for the wider region.

From forced labour settlement to a functioning Soviet town

Kadykchan's story changed as the Soviet industrial system matured. What began as a settlement associated with forced labour eventually became a community of miners and their families.

The town developed schools, shops, apartment buildings and cultural facilities. It was no longer merely a place where workers descended into mines. It had the infrastructure of a permanent community, including a school, clinic, House of Culture and centrally heated residential buildings.

Its population also illustrates how dramatically Kadykchan expanded. Census figures show 3,378 residents in 1970 and 4,764 in 1979. A 1986 figure records 10,270 people, although later census data show a substantially lower figure of 5,794 in 1989.

By the late Soviet period, the settlement represented a familiar model of Soviet industrial development: establish a resource industry in a remote location, provide housing and public services for workers, and build an entire community around the enterprise.

That model worked as long as the industry remained economically viable.

Then the Soviet system began to unravel

Kadykchan's decline cannot be explained by a single event. Its vulnerability was built into its economic structure.

The settlement depended heavily on coal mining, meaning that when the Soviet economic system began breaking apart, Kadykchan had few alternatives. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, coal production in the region became increasingly unprofitable. One of the local mines closed in 1992.

For residents, the disappearance of the mines meant more than losing an employer. In a company town, the mine effectively supported the entire community. When the industrial foundation weakened, the economic reason for maintaining a settlement in such a remote and difficult environment weakened with it.

That made Kadykchan an example of a much larger post-Soviet phenomenon: settlements created around single industries suddenly found themselves without a sustainable economic purpose after the centrally planned economy collapsed.

1996 became the turning point

By 1996, Kadykchan was already facing the consequences of the post-Soviet economic upheaval. Then came another decisive moment at its remaining mine.

An incident at the mine that year killed six workers. The mine was subsequently closed, and authorities began supporting the relocation of residents to other places. The closure removed what remained of the town's economic foundation.

People who had spent decades building their lives around the mines now had little reason, and increasingly little means, to remain in a settlement where employment had disappeared. Residents left, while parts of the town were gradually shut down.

The scale of the change is visible in the population figures. Kadykchan had recorded thousands of residents during its Soviet-era peak; by the 2002 census, only 875 remained. By 2007, the population had fallen to roughly 200–300. The 2010 census recorded no residents.

A town that disappeared but did not vanish

What makes Kadykchan particularly striking is that the town did not simply disappear from the landscape. Its physical remains survived.

Photographers and visitors have documented abandoned apartment buildings, schools, public facilities and everyday objects left behind as residents departed. The buildings provide an unusual visual record of ordinary Soviet life: places designed for children, workers and families are now surrounded by the forests and harsh climate of the Kolyma region.

In that sense, Kadykchan is more than a ghost town. It is the physical afterimage of an economic system. The coal is still underground. The roads and buildings are still there. What disappeared was the reason for the town to exist.