With its bust of Lenin, its palace of culture and its KGB offices,
Pyramiden
is a vestige of Soviet utopia, although
Russia clings to this abandoned mining site
in the Arctic, which has become a strategic priority for the Kremlin.
It's called Pyramiden and it's an abandoned mining site (Tripadvisor).
Russia hopes to become the leading military and economic power in that region, based on the financial income from the northwest passage, a maritime route between Europe and Asia that opens with the retreat of the ice.
At the same time that the Russians have a fleet of nuclear icebreakers in the frozen waters of the north, Moscow maintains one foot in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard (Spitzberg), a demilitarized zone well inside the polar circle.
Russia is holding on to this abandoned Arctic mining site (Tripadvisor).
If the sovereignty of Svalvard was attributed to Norway (currently a member of NATO), the Treaty of Paris of 1920 provides that all signatory states (including the USSR at that time) can engage in economic activities in the area.
Since 1931
, in the town of Barentsburg, a Russian community extracted coal from the mines of the Arktikugol company.
In Pyramiden, activity
ceased in 1998
due to lack of performance and the miners left.
Lenin's bust intact (Tripadvisor).
At first glance, it is
a ghost town.
There are no inhabitants except a handful of Russians who have a very Soviet-style hotel and polar bears with whom one can come face to face.
Ghost town but intact
But if everything is obsolete,
nothing is destroyed
.
The buildings, built to last, are only cracked by decades of harsh winters.
The rails of the funicular, which took the mine cars down, continue on the pyramid-shaped mountain that overlooks the town.
Nothing is destroyed.
The buildings, built to last, are only cracked by decades of harsh winters (Tripadvisor).
In the buildings
it is as if the occupants had left surreptitiously
, ready to return at any moment.
In the administration offices, jars with minerals are lined up in display cases and calendars are stuck to the walls.
In the KGB ones
, with armored doors
, the miners' tokens are spread out on the tables.
In the classrooms, there are children's drawings pinned up with thumbtacks and
the teacher's mug sits on his platform
.
All buildings are habitable and impeccable inside (Tripadvisor).
"Pyramiden is as important as the ghost mining towns of Grumant and Barentsburg. It is not just a place of historical memory. That town is not abandoned, it has been temporarily put on hold," says the deputy director of the Russian Scientific Research Institute of the Arctic and Antarctica in St. Petersburg Yuri Ugryumov.
In the years 1960 - 1980, Pyramiden had up to 1,200 Russians (AFP).
In the years 1960-1980, Pyramiden had
up to 1,200 Russians
.
Being sent there was considered a reward for a miner, explains a guide.
Located on the western side of the Iron Curtain, the town was considered an ideal Soviet city, self-sufficient with its pig farms and important with its palace of culture,
a 300-seat cinema
, swimming pool, gym and hospital.
The town was considered an ideal Soviet city (Tripadvisor).
Today, Russia develops tourism and research.
Arktikugol launched its tourism company, and glaciologists, hydrologists and oceanographers carry out scientific studies.
"There is hope here for an interesting future," says Ugryumov, also head of the Russian Arctic expedition in the archipelago.
Source: AFP Agency and others.
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