Rudnik settlement in the late 1950s.
Moisey Averbach (CC BY-SA 3.0)The history of Vorkuta began with its first mine, which was built by Vorkutlag prisoners in the early 1930s.
When it was granted the status of a city in 1943, the development spread to the other side of the river and Rudnik became one of its neighborhoods.
Its main inconvenience was the lack of a transport connection with the center: to get to the other side, one had to cross a suspension bridge by foot.
As early as the late 1980s, Rudnik was already being abandoned and, by the early 2000s, it was completely closed down. The residents were given apartments in Vorkuta, but, as we were told, they still sometimes visit their old houses or look at them from the riverbank.
Many of the houses, of course, have already deteriorated and look a bit creepy. The central building with columns in the Stalinist Empire style is the former geological department. In the 1950s, there was a fountain with bear statues, a grand staircase and an obelisk in front of it.
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