This insightful volume offers a radical reassessment of the infamous "Gulag Archipelago" by exploring the history of Vorkuta, an arctic coal-mining outpost originally established in the 1930s as a ...prison camp complex. Author Alan Barenberg's eye-opening study reveals Vorkuta as an active urban center with a substantial nonprisoner population where the borders separating camp and city were contested and permeable, enabling prisoners to establish social connections that would eventually aid them in their transitions to civilian life. With this book, Barenberg makes an important historical contribution to our understanding of forced labor in the Soviet Union and its enduring legacy.
The Infrastructure stability on permafrost is currently an important topic as the Arctic countries are developing climate change adaptation and mitigation programs. Assessing the sustainability of ...infrastructure facilities (especially in urban environments) is a difficult task as it depends on many parameters. This article discusses the city of Vorkuta, which is located in the northwest of Russia. This city differs from many others built on permafrost because most of buildings were built according to Principle II (The Active Method) of construction on permafrost with thawing soil prior to construction. Assessments of the engineering and geocryological conditions, basic principles of construction in the city, and reasons for building failures, were carried out within this study. The research is based on publications, open data about buildings, and visual observations in Vorkuta. About 800 buildings are in use in Vorkuta in 2020 (43% of what it was 50 years ago). According to the analysis, about 800 houses have been demolished or disconnected from utility lines over the past 50 years (about 250 of these are still standing, pending demolition). Since 1994, the construction of new residential buildings has almost stopped. Therefore, buildings that have been in use for over 50 years will account for 90% of the total residential housing stock by 2040. The effects of climate change in the city will depend primarily on the principle of construction employed and on the geocryological conditions of the district. Buildings constructed according to Principle I (The Passive Method) were found to be more vulnerable due to a decrease in permafrost bearing capacity. The impact of increasing air temperature on some of the buildings built on bedrock (the central part of the city) and some built on thawing soil will be minimal, as other factors are more significant.
Paul Kellogg uses the story of Vorkuta, a notorious camp in the Gulag internment system, as a frame with which to re-assess the Russian Revolution. In particular, he turns to the contributions of ...Iulii Martov, a contemporary of Lenin, and his analysis of the central role played in the revolution by a temporary class of peasants-in-uniform. Kellogg explores the persistence and creativity of workers' resistance in even the darkest hours of authoritarian repression and offers new perspectives on the failure of democratic governance after the Russian Revolution.
The Global Climate Observing System and Global Terrestrial Observing Network have identified permafrost as an 'Essential Climate Variable,' for which ground temperature and active layer dynamics are ...key variables. This work presents long-term climate, and permafrost monitoring data at seven sites representative of diverse climatic and environmental conditions in the western Russian Arctic. The region of interest is experiencing some of the highest rates of permafrost degradation globally. Since 1970, mean annual air temperatures and precipitation have increased at rates from 0.05 to 0.07 °C yr−1 and 1 to 3 mm yr−1 respectively. In response to changing climate, all seven sites examined show evidence of rapid permafrost degradation. Mean annual ground temperatures increases from 0.03 to 0.06 °C yr−1 at 10-12 m depth were observed in continuous permafrost zone. The permafrost table at all sites has lowered, up to 8 m in the discontinuous permafrost zone. Three stages of permafrost degradation are characterized for the western Russian Arctic based on the observations reported.
Shrinking cities – places which need to ‘narrow down’ the too spacious settings – pose challenges to the mainstream urban planning which naturalizes growth and direct approaches advocating it. While ...shrinking cities are located worldwide, responses to the phenomenon are place-specific depending on the knowledge and resources of decision-makers, as well as the discourses of the desired spatial development. In this sense, it is still not precisely clear why and how urban planning changes under conditions of shrinkage. Since the beginning of the 1990s, many Russian cities began to lose population. Excluding the oil and gas provinces, the Russian Arctic has become a ‘showcase’ of the country’s population exodus. Our contribution is based on empirical evidence from Vorkuta (Komi Republic, Russia) an Arctic city with around 54 thousand people which is among the fastest shrinking cities of the country. Due to the simultaneous need for improving housing conditions, dealing with negative physical effects of shrinkage, and high maintenance costs of housing and infrastructure the local stakeholders had to come up with a new approach toward planning – the so-called ‘controlled shrinkage’ that helped reduce sprawl and fragmentation.
We present new high-precision
40Ar/
39Ar ages on feldspar and biotite separates to establish the age, duration and extent of the larger Siberian Traps volcanic province. Samples include basalts and ...gabbros from Noril'sk, the Lower Tunguska area on the Siberian craton, the Taimyr Peninsula, the Kuznetsk Basin, Vorkuta in the Polar Urals, and from Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals. Most of the ages, except for those from Chelyabinsk, are indistinguishable from those found at Noril'sk. Cessation of activity at Noril'sk is constrained by a
40Ar/
39Ar age of 250.3
±
1.1 Ma for the uppermost Kumginsky Suite.
The new
40Ar/
39Ar data confirm that the bulk of Siberian volcanism occurred at 250 Ma during a period of less than 2 Ma, extending over an area of up to 5 million km
2. The resolution of the data allows us to confidently conclude that the main stage of volcanism either immediately predates, or is synchronous with, the end-Permian mass extinction, further strengthening an association between volcanism and the end-Permian crisis. A sanidine age of 249.25
±
0.14 Ma from Bed 28 tuff at the global section and stratotype at Meishan, China, allows us to bracket the P–Tr boundary to 0.58
±
0.21 myr, and enables a direct comparison between the
40Ar/
39Ar age of the Traps and the Permo–Triassic boundary section.
Younger ages (243 Ma) obtained for basalts from Chelyabinsk indicate that volcanism in at least the southern part of the province continued into the Triassic.
The territory of the municipality of the city district "Vorkuta" is referred to the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation in the Komi Republic. It is not necessary to talk about some specific ..."Arctic" ethno-national policy in that municipality, different from the model of the national scale. Therefore, ethno-national policy is analyzed in general for the whole Republic, and then its features are revealed in the municipality "Vorkuta," which is the part of the Russian Arctic. The analysis of the list of regulating and strategic documents reflecting the specifics of the matter, together with an extensive existing infrastructure, allows to conclude about the formation of a regional model of ethnic policy in the Komi Republic. In addition, the incoordination of a number of documents is noted, as well as some inconsistencies of ethno policy to federal standards. Ethno policy in municipality "Vorkuta" is generally carried out in the framework of a regional trend. Standard maintenance includes various municipal programs and plans. The conclusion about the need to improve the conceptual foundations of the Arctic vector of ethno policy has been made.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from permafrost-affected terrestrial
ecosystems have received little attention, largely because they have been
thought to be negligible. Recent studies, however, have ...shown that there are
habitats in the subarctic tundra emitting N2O at high rates, such as bare
peat (BP) surfaces on permafrost peatlands. Nevertheless, the processes behind N2O
production in these high-emission habitats are poorly understood.
In this study, we established an in situ 15N-labeling experiment with two
main objectives: (1) to partition the microbial sources of N2O emitted from BP surfaces on permafrost peatlands and (2) to study the fate of
ammonium and nitrate in these soils and in adjacent vegetated peat (VP) surfaces showing low N2O emissions. Our results confirm the hypothesis that
denitrification is mostly responsible for the high N2O emissions from
BP. During the study period, denitrification contributed ∼ 79 % of the total N2O emissions from BP, whereas the contribution from
ammonia oxidation was less (about 19 %). Both gross N mineralization and
gross nitrification rates were higher in BP than in VP, with high C/N
ratios and a low water content likely limiting N transformation
processes and, consequently, N2O production in the latter soil type. Our results show that
multiple factors contribute to high N2O production in BP surfaces
on permafrost peatlands, with the most important factors being the absence of plants, an
intermediate to high water content and a low C/N ratio, which all affect
the mineral-N availability for soil microbes, including those producing
N2O. The process understanding produced here is important for the
development of process models that can be used to evaluate future
permafrost–N feedbacks to the climate system.
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