Google Maps users make horrifying discovery deep inside Russia
Eagle-eyed Google Maps users have discovered a horror site in the depths of Russia labelled “the most depressing place ever”.
Internet sleuths have made a horrifying discovery in the depths of Russia they’ve labelled the “most depressing place ever”.
An eerie indentation on Google maps marks the spot of a former Gulag correctional labour camp in Krasnoyarsk Krai, The Sun reports.
Found at 69°24’19°N 87°38’57°E, images show the hollowed ground where deconstructed buildings lie in piles of grey rubble.
An eagle-eyed online detective made the connection after seeing the ghostly image on Reddit.
They wrote: “It is indeed the Norillag labour camp.
“You can even see the mining facility connected to the camp further west. Good catch OP [original poster]!”
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One person who recognised the history behind the horror site commented on a photo of a nearby street east of the Gulag.
They wrote: “That’s one of the most depressing places I’ve ever seen.”
Norillag, the Norilsk Corrective Labour Camp, was one of Russia’s abysmal Gulags, where prisoners were made to build the complex and dig for copper and nickel.
Eventually, workers were hauled into other activities which underpinned the economic function of the area, such as fishing and reconstructing the home where Stalin lived in exile.
It operated from June 25, 1935 to August 22, 1956 with estimates more than 400,000 inmates worked there throughout its history – 300,000 of them political prisoners.
Norillag began with just 1,200 inmates but amid Stalin’s push to identify and divide any nonconformists during the Great Purge, numbers grew increasingly high.
The forced-labour camps were set up by the order of Vladimir Lenin before reaching their peak once Joseph Stalin took power until the early 1950s.
It is believed the Gulag system had more than 30,000 camps with more than three per cent of the Soviet population imprisoned or in internal exile.
Thousands perished in inhumane conditions in the notorious Gulag system.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, prisoners revolted against the Gulag across 69 days which led to more than 1,000 deaths.
It was abolished in 1957 when most of the Gulag system was done away with.
This story originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission
