Kolyma (river)
The Kolyma (Russian: Колыма, IPA: [kəlɨˈma]; Yakut: Халыма, romanized: Xalıma) is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia.
Kolyma
Tundra Yukaghir kulumaa, "river"[1]
Колыма (Russian)
Okhotsky District, Khabarovsk Krai
1,426 m (4,678 ft)
992 m (3,255 ft)[2]
Kolyma Gulf
0 m (0 ft)
2,129 km (1,323 mi)[3]
647,000 km2 (250,000 sq mi)[3]
Kolyma Delta, East Siberian Sea, Russia
Kolymskoye (Basin size: 526,000 km2 (203,000 sq mi)[6])
(Period of data: 1978–2000) 3,254 m3/s (114,900 cu ft/s)[6]
30.6 m3/s (1,080 cu ft/s) (in April 1979)[6]
26,201 m3/s (925,300 cu ft/s) (in June 1985)[6]
The Kolyma is frozen to depths of several metres for about 250 days each year, becoming free of ice only in early June, until October.
History[edit]
In 1640 Dimitry Zyryan (also called Yarilo or Yerilo) went overland to the Indigirka. In 1641 he sailed down the Indigirka, went east and up the Alazeya. Here they heard of the Kolyma and met Chukchis for the first time. In 1643 he returned to the Indigirka, sent his yasak (tribute) to Yakutsk and went back to the Alazeya. In 1645 he returned to the Lena where he met a party and learned that he had been appointed prikazchik (land administrator) of the Kolyma. He returned east and died in early 1646. In the winter of 1641–42 Mikhail Stadukhin, accompanied by Semyon Dezhnyov, went overland to the upper Indigirka. He spent the next winter there, built boats and sailed down the Indigirka and east to the Alazeya where he met Zyryan. Zyryan and Dezhnyov stayed at the Alazeya, while Stadukhin went east, reaching the Kolyma in the summer of 1644. They built a zimovye (winter cabin), probably at Srednekolymsk, and returned to Yakutsk in late 1645.[8]
In 1892–94 Baron Eduard Von Toll carried out geological surveys in the basin of the Kolyma (among other Far-eastern Siberian rivers) on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Barr, 1980). During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 kilometres (16,000 mi), of which 4,200 kilometres (2,600 mi) were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route.
The Kolyma is known for its Gulag labour camps and gold mining, both of which have been extensively documented since Joseph Stalin–era Soviet archives opened. The river gives its title to a famous anthology about life in Gulag camps by Varlam Shalamov, The Kolyma Tales.
After the camps were closed, state subsidies, local industries and communication dwindled to almost nothing. Many people have migrated, but those who remain in the area make a living by fishing and hunting. In small fishing settlements, fish are sometimes stored in caves carved from permafrost.[9] The last Americans to visit the Kolyma during the Soviet era, before perestroika, were the crew of the sailing schooner Nanuk in August 1929, whose visit was captured in a film taken by the Nanuk owner's 18-year-old daughter, Marion Swenson.[10] The first two Americans to visit the Kolyma after the Nanuk's visit were writer Wallace Kaufman and journalist Rebecca Clay, who traveled by cutter from Ziryanka to Green Cape in August 1991.[11] Kaufman and his daughter Sylvan and CPA Letty Collins Magdanz also travelled part of the Kolyma in August 1992, the first American visitors since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both trips were arranged by North-East Scientific and Industrial Center: Ecocenter to try out an ecotourism route which was found to be impractical. In February 2012, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that scientists had grown plants from 30,000-year-old Silene stenophylla fruit, which was stored in squirrel burrows near the banks of the Kolyma river and preserved in permafrost.[12]
Settlements[edit]
Settlements at the Kolyma river include (listed downstream) Sinegorye, Debin, Ust-Srednekan, Seymchan, Zyryanka, Srednekolymsk and Chersky.