People calmly descended from the stern and left the burning ship. There was no sense in hurrying: when the fire reached four hundred tons of TNT, the explosion would not only blow up the port, but also destroy all life in the area …
Dalstroy must fail
On November 13, 1931, by decree of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR No. 516, the State Trust for Road and Industrial Construction was organized in the Upper Kolyma region - Dalstroy. This trust was created for the purpose of prospecting and mining gold ore in the Far East, and, of course, prisoners worked for it.
For the transportation of the necessary cargo and "workforce" Dalstroy was allocated several ships, in particular: the Dutch steamer "Amelo", renamed "Dalstroy", "Vyborg" and "General Vatutin". The further fate of these three ships is so mysterious that it fundamentally changes all ideas about the prisoners of the Gulag as people broken by fate …
On July 24, 1946, Dalstroy was stationed in the port of Nakhodka. The team was in suspense, captain V. M. Bankovich was constantly on the bridge. Everyone was nervous, and there was something: explosive ammonal was loaded in bulk in the forward hold of the steamer, and in the second hold the prisoners carried TNT packed in bags. All this deadly cargo was destined for the Magadan gold mines.
Suddenly someone shouted: "Fire in the first hold!" The captain of "Dalstroy", without hesitation, gave the command to flood the bow hold, increase the pressure in the fire main and start extinguishing the fire (hoses were kept ready from the very beginning of loading), but this did not help - the fire flared up more and more, and the flame had already begun to approach bags of TNT. Realizing that it was useless to continue fighting the fire, Bankovich gave the command to evacuate the ship and, as is customary, was the last to leave the bridge. Thanks to his foresight, many of the team members managed to survive.
A few minutes later there was a powerful explosion. The captain was killed by a shrapnel in the back of the head; from a few lingering sailors, they did not even find the remains, and hundreds of prisoners and guards crowding near the ship turned into a bloody mess. The five-ton anchor "Dalstroy" was later discovered half a kilometer from the coast; from the steamer itself, as well as from the nearby warehouses, practically nothing remained …
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The investigation began. All the surviving members of the team were arrested and interrogated. By chance, one of the operatives found the following inscription in the Dalstroy office's restroom: "Soon Dalstroy must fail." A piece of plywood with this inscription was cut out and attached to the case. Very soon the word "sabotage" sounded on the sidelines of the investigation department …
However, it was not possible to accuse the sailors of the villainous plan. Very little time passed - and again the tragedy: ammonal caught fire on a barge, which was brought in tow from the steamer "Orel". In addition, a day later, the ammonal, which arrived in the train, burned down - they did not even have time to unload it. After these incidents, the team was released, finding everyone innocent. But the version about the interconnectedness of all these events only strengthened - the operatives began to search for saboteurs.
Double punch
After the tragedy in Nakhodka, the leaders of the Far Eastern Shipping Company decided that the crews of the steamers General Vatutin (Captain S. V. Kunitsky) and Vyborg (Captain P. M. Plotnikov) would be responsible for the transportation of explosive cargo.
On December 19, 1947, the steamer General Vatutin dropped anchors in the port of Nagaevo. Nearby, among other ships, the Vyborg had been waiting for unloading for several days.
The witnesses told about what happened next. The captain of the ship “Soviet Latvia” PS Chigor told reporters in an interview: “The port was working at full capacity, when suddenly a strong, dull explosion was heard on the bow deck of“General Vatutin”. He opened the hatches of the first hold and from there poured thick smoke, flames burst out. In all likelihood, Captain S. V. Kunitsky discovered the fire in time. Taking advantage of the constant readiness of the ship's engine, he backed up and began to move towards the exit from the port. Before it was necessary to turn around, but there was neither time nor space for this. Moving astern, "General Vatutin" nearly collided with the tanker "Sovneft". The captain stopped the reverse gear in time and began to work at a low speed forward until the ship buried its nose in the ice. Meanwhile, a fire continued to rage in the bow of the ship,until there was an explosion of colossal force."
In a few minutes, an even more powerful explosion rocked the nearby Vyborg …
The port of Nagaevo was no longer there. What was not destroyed by the explosion was washed into the ocean by a powerful tidal wave. Not even a ruin remains of the port administration building; the existence of General Vatutin was reminded only by melted pieces of metal scattered along the shore; in the place where the Vyborg was a minute ago, several masts stuck out of the water alone. Dozens of ships that were on that terrible day in the roadstead or at the berths were damaged of varying severity.
Blow up the Kolyma …
Among the archival documents, journalists found a certificate stating that during the disaster in Nagayevo, the entire crew of General Vatutin (fifty people) died, on the Vyborg, except for Captain P. M. Plotnikov, twelve sailors died. Two sailors from the steamer "Minsk" were missing, one from "Kim", two from "Sovneft", two from "Soviet Latvia". More than twenty port employees were injured and injured. There is only no information about how many prisoners died during this disaster.
For many of those who were able to survive, but were on the shore, troubles were just beginning. Bloodied, in tattered clothes, people crawled through the snow in a forty-degree frost, and there was no one to help them. Many of the wounded died long before they were taken to the hospital.
There are very few echoes of this tragedy in archival documents. Apparently, the investigators came to the conclusion that all these explosions were indeed the result of a deliberate sabotage, and in order not to advertise the existence of such riots and even an outright struggle of the GULAG prisoners against the regime, the case was hidden in the farthest box.
The saboteurs were never found. But the fact that they existed is confirmed by journalist Mikhail Izbenko, who went on board the ship General Vatutin as a trainee and signed off from the ship just a week before that terrible tragedy. In the newspaper “Dalnevostochny seamak” on January 20, 1993, the journalist wrote the following: “After the explosion in Nagayevo, the convicts in the Vanino port boasted to the sailors that, they say, we sent with“General Vatutin”our present to the Kolyma Chekists on their holiday on December 20. “We wanted to blow up the entire Kolyma,” they used to say.
The version of deliberate sabotage has a right to exist. Do not forget that it was 1947 - a time when almost all the camps were oversaturated not only with civilians, but also with prisoners who went through the entire war and for various reasons ended up behind bars, or rather, behind barbed wire. Soldiers-liberators, soldiers and officers, who received decades of hard labor instead of medals and honor from their homeland, could well harbor anger. Having gone through severe practice, former partisans and sappers made explosive devices from improvised means and installed them on steamers that they no longer considered their own. And explosions thundered all over Kolyma, people died, guilty and innocent, but the memory of these terrible events was buried somewhere deep in the archives …