The city of Norilsk lies 320km north of the Arctic Circle in the frigid tundra of Siberia. It is the second largest city north of the Arctic Circle (after Murmansk), and the northernmost city in the world with a population over 100,000. It also holds an unenviable spot among the ten most polluted cities on earth thanks to the massive nickel mining operation in the area.

Due to pollution, not a single tree grows within 45km of the largest of four nickel smelters, Nadezhda¹, and it’s estimated that Norilsk contributes 1% of all sulphur dioxide released into the earth’s atmosphere.

The city itself was built with Gulag labour under the direction of Joseph Stalin, and in true Stalinist fashion, the cityscape is dominated by massive apartment blocks spaced along wide boulevards.

In 1953-54, prison labourers assigned the task of building the city staged what has become known as the Norilsk uprising. The “uprising” was actually unarmed, so the term settled upon by the authorities was “mass insubordination”. While dissent was common in the Gulag system, the uprising in Norilsk was the largest such rebellion under Stalin’s iron-fisted rule.

Many thousands of prison labourers died in the extremely harsh conditions while building the city: Norilsk is covered by snow between 250 and 270 days a year with temperatures as low as -58°C having been recorded.

After reading all this, you’re probably about ready to book your next holiday to this lovely utopia. Not so fast. Norilsk is closed to foreigners without a really good reason to go, and travel to the city is restricted even among Russian nationals. The reason for this could be to cover up the massive scale of pollution, or it could have something to do with the many ICBM silos nearby. Any other theories?

There’s more information about Norilsk at Wikipedia.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings, Structures

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The main feature of the power station is a dam 245 m high and over a kilometre long. Construction was completed in 1978, though spring floods caused moderate damage in three of the ten following years. However, the accident on 17 August 2009 was much more serious, with at least 73 people having died, a large oil spill into the river, and severe damage to several turbines and other parts of the facility, leading to a total shutdown.

While some operations could restart in the near future, complete repairs could take 4 years and cost over a billion dollars. Youtube has a video of the accident¹ and English Russia has a couple of sets of photos of the aftermath: 1, 2.

The power station near the dam distributed 6400 MW of power to 2 double sets of lines (clearly visible on the high resolution images) which head north through wide sections of cleared forest before dividing into east and west routes.

The Eastern route heads to the town of Sayanogorsk which is most affected by the loss of power.

Following the cables and pylons north of town they eventually run to one of the world’s largest aluminum smelters. It is unfortunately partially obscured by cloud, but you can zoom in to see trains, storage tanks and assorted industrial buildings.

This smelter consumed up to 30% of the power generated by Sayano–Shushenskaya, and will see a long-term 50% drop in production as limited power can be diverted to it from other sources.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings, Structures

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The station’s callsign is “UVB-76″, but is known amongst enthusiasts as “The Buzzer”, and the sound it transmits has been on an almost continuous loop since it was first observed in 1982.

No one knows for sure what the purpose of the signal is, and in 27 years the buzzing has only been interrupted on 3 occasions.

At 21:58 GMT on Christmas Eve 1997, 15 years after it was first observed, the buzzing abruptly stopped; to be replaced by a short series of beeps, followed by a male voice speaking Russian who repeated the following message several times:

“Ya — UVB-76. 18008. BROMAL: Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 742, 799, 14″.

On September 12th 2002 another voice was heard, this time so distorted that only part of the message could be recognised:

“UVB-76, UVB-76. 62691 Izafet 3693 8270″.

Finally, on February 21st 2006, a third message² was transmitted which said:

“75-59-75-59. 39-52-53-58. 5-5-2-5. Konstantin-1-9-0-9-0-8-9-8-Tatiana-Oksana-Anna-Elena-Pavel-Schuka. Konstantin 8-4. 9-7-5-5-9-Tatiana. Anna Larisa Uliyana-9-4-1-4-3-4-8.”

The names used in the message are used in some Russian spelling alphabets, and although some people speculate that UVB-76 is a specialised Numbers Station, used to transmit encoded messages to spies, the messages have never been decoded, and the actual purpose of this station remains unknown.

There’s more information about the mysterious UVB-76 at WIkipedia. Thanks to Best of Wikipedia.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings, Weirdness

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In mathematics, a hyperboloid is a quadric (”a D-dimensional hypersurface defined as the locus of zeros of a quadratic polynomial”) defined by, er… this complex-looking equation. Basically it’s a type of three dimensional surface that is most commonly seen as the shape of power station cooling towers.

The first ever hyperboloid structure was a water tower that was built for the All-Russia exhibition of 1896. The design consists of straight beams in a lattice arrangement, meaning tall towers could be built with minimal wind resistance.

Today seven of Shukhov’s towers remain standing in Russia, including the 160-metre-high Shukhov radio tower in Moscow which was built between 1919 and 1922 during the Russian Civil War. Currently under threat of demolition, the tower is at the top of UNESCO’s ‘Endangered Buildings’ list, and fans have begun a campaign to save it.

The 128 metre Shukhov Tower on the Oka River is the only original surviving hyperboloid electricity pylon, which was a part of a 110kV powerline built between 1927 and 1929. Because of the lattice-style design it’s barely visible in our thumbnail image, but if you click through to the map you’ll be able to see the shadow of the latticework.

The use of hyperboloid structures wasn’t limited to Russia however – in Spain the 158 metre Pylons of Cádiz, completed in 1960, remain as a fantastic example of this method of construction. Here the method was chosen because at the time the Spanish had no way of transporting large steel beams, and Francisco Franco’s regime prohibited the import of anything that was up to the job.

Here’s a KML file of all of the 7 remaining Shukhov towers (or on a map) and there are many other hyperboloid structures in various guises around the world. Wikipedia also has more on Hyperboloid structures, as well as Vladimir Shukhov himself.

Locations: Russia, Spain / Categories: Monuments, Towers

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However on closer examination of the satellite shot, as well as the ground level pictures posted to English Russia, it looks that this plane is highly unlikely to have crashed!

Whilst it is sitting at the end of a paved clearing (which could maybe be a very short runway), the aircraft is facing the wrong direction to have simply overshot an attempted landing. Furthermore, the lack of damage to the exterior suggests it probably didn’t come down in the forest, as the trees would have torn at the wings.

Which leaves us with the question of who put this plane here, and why?

Locations: Russia / Categories: Aircraft

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At 220 metres, it is only half of its planned height of 400 metres, which would have made it one of the tallest towers in the world. It was also planned to include a revolving restaurant – something to rival the 540 metre high Ostankino Tower in Moscow.

Although construction began in 1983, by the end of the decade it had ground to a halt, much to the dismay of investors, but to the infinite joy of thrill seeking base jumpers¹, made easier by the lattice-work of metal to climb inside. By 2000, the number of people tragically dying from the tower forced the authorities to weld the doors shut.

Today it remains, rather eerily over the city, as these photos show.

Thanks to Rudi.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Towers, Weirdness

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Although it seems ludicrous, building “Ice Roads” over lakes, rivers or seas, is at times preferable to carving a road on land, as you can get long continuous straights on the ice, which hilly tree-covered land just doesn’t offer. However in this case it appears to be the only existing way across the river.

Driving across frozen water in a 2 tonne truck is of course slightly dangerous. Depending on the country, the ice only needs to be about 20cm thick for authorities to allow trucks onto the surface, and speeds may be limited to a painfully slow 16mph. Luckily our particular truckers don’t have far to go, unlike the men who drive the 568 kilometre Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road each year.

Ice road truckers were made famous by the TV show of the same name, and the green light has apparently been given to make a fictional film based on the series in 2008. I’ve not seen the TV show, but I hear it’s much more exciting than boring footage of lonely truckers driving at 16mph across vast empty frozen lakes.

Read more about ice roads at Wikipedia.

Thanks to pooms.

Locations: China, Russia / Categories: Movie Locations, Other Vehicles, Watercraft

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The buildings are all exactly the same size (around 30m long), are identically spaced, and point in an identical direction. They’re likely to be impossible to see from the ground due to the dense forest, but the perimeter is marked by a road all the way round. Some of the buildings are missing however – several appear to have recently collapsed, and others have become completely overgrown.

There’s a small branch railway that services this place from a depot in the nearest village, Semrino, and the nearest village with a Russian Wikipedia page is Susanin, just to the south. None of this information turned up any answers unfortunately.

Alexei, our multi-lingual author of Google Sightseeing Italiano who also speaks Russian, investigated further and turned up this contact page which describes the area as an active army “reserve” – which he says means a strategic reserve stock of food, arms or anything else that might be required in case of emergency…

Despite the general state of repair of the place, Alexei informs us that it’s still very much active and is under 24 hour armed surveillance!

Thanks to ilya and Alexei.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings

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One of the most heavily contested sites within Stalingrad was Mamayev Kurgan, a hill overlooking the city. It is here where the USSR dedicated a memorial to the Soviet victory, the centrepiece of which is an absolutely enormous statue – “The Motherland Calls!” (”Rodina Mat’ Zovyot!”), which at the time of its dedication in 1967 was the largest sculpture in the world.

Since then Stalingrad, USSR, has become Volgograd, Russia, but this monumental memorial still dominates the skyline. The 52 metre figure is made of concrete, and her 33 metre sword is stainless-steel, making the sculpture 85 metres from tip to toe (not including the plinth, which adds another 16 metres). Here’s a ground-level shot which you absolutely have to see to believe!

The Motherland Calls! was designed by Yevgeny Vuchetich (who also designed Berlin’s Soviet War Memorial) and she was erected as part of a series of sculptures commemorating the Soviet victory in the Eastern Front of World War II (another of which, Kiev’s Mother Motherland, we’ve previously featured¹).

This massive engineering task was orchestrated by Nikolai Nikitin who was also responsible for the previously featured Moscow State University, Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science and Ostankino Tower – which are all ridiculously enormous too!

More info about the Battle of Stalingrad, Volgograd, Mamayev Kurgan and The Motherland Calls!, as always, at Wikipedia. Or check out a tour of Mamayev Kurgan at the official site (in English).

Locations: Russia / Categories: Monuments

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This is actually one of several cathedrals dedicated to Our Lady of Kazan¹, and this one was completed in 1811, and was modelled after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Here’s the obligatory Wikipedia page, which unfortunately sounds like it’s been automatically translated from Russian.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings, Monuments

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