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The 'Kolyma River' () is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia. It
rises in the mountains north of Okhotsk and Magadan, in the area of and
empties into the East Siberian Sea, a division of the Arctic Ocean, at . The length of the Kolyma is 2,129 km. The area of its basin is 644,000 sq km.
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.

Contents

History

See also

Bibliography

External links

History

In 1892-1894 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. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 km, of which 4,200 km 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 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''.

See also

The Kolyma article which provides additional information about the Gulag.

Bibliography

★ Shalamov, Varlam Tikhonovich (1994) ''Kolyma tales'' [Kolymskie rasskazy], Glad, John (transl.), Penguin twentieth-century classics, Harmondsworth : Penguin, ISBN 0-14-018695-6

★ William Barr, Baron Eduard Von Toll's Last Expedition. Arctic, Sept 1980.

External links

★ Information and a map of the Kolyma's watershed