Yagodnoe is an urban-type settlement, the administrative center
of the Yagodninsky district and the corresponding urban district of
the Magadan region of Russia.
Population - 3098 people.
(2020). The status of an urban-type settlement - since 1953.
It is located on the left bank of the Debin River at the confluence
of the Yagodny stream, 80 km southeast of Susuman
and 335 km north of Magadan (528 km by road).
The
Kolyma highway passes through Yagodnoye. The village of Senokosny is
located 4 km to the north-east.
In 1934, road workers settled on the site of the
future settlement. "Everywhere, at every step, berries and berries
... We have met such an abundance of berries for the first time,"
wrote N. Kutuzov, one of the first prospectors of the route.
The settlement began to be built by prospectors together with road
workers as a base on the way into the depths of the Kolyma region.
Located on the Yagodny brook, among untouched larches, birches,
poplars, protected from all sides by hills, the village lives up to
its name.
Then the foothills and valleys of streams were
covered with dense forest (in 1 village park of culture and
recreation the trees of that pristine taiga were preserved), and in
summer there were a lot of lingonberries, black and red currants,
raspberries, and in the surrounding valleys - blueberries. There is
a berry here and now.
Only the nomad camps of the Yakut
nomads reminded of the indigenous people in this area. In late 1934
- early 1935, a small group of civilians - mining specialists -
arrived at the site of the present settlement. Some came at the call
of the party, others - on a Komsomol ticket. At the same time, the
settlement of Kolyma by prisoners began. They were basically the
first involuntary builders and residents of the village.
The
village of Yagodnoye grew and became prettier thanks to geological
discoveries. The planned construction of the village began in the
second half of 1935. By the beginning of 1936, the first street
appeared - Centralnaya. Above, on a twenty-meter terrace, in a
clearing, three log barracks were built. The street on which they
stood was named Nagornaya.
By the beginning of 1938, on the
banks of the Debin, approximately where the motor depot is now
located, a vitamin factory appeared, producing an extract from the
needles of dwarf pine. Both free and prisoners were obliged to drink
it as a remedy for scurvy. There were no other antiscorbutic drugs
in Kolyma at that time, just as there were no vegetables and fruits
containing vitamins necessary for the body.
In May 1937, the
construction of a bridge across the Kolyma near the village of Debin
(63 km to the south-east) was completed. The bridge provided regular
traffic between Magadan and Yagodnoye.
In the late 1930s, a
narrow-gauge railway was built, connecting the villages of
Ust-Taskan and Elgen-Ugol. It was used to deliver fuel for the
Tuscan thermal power plant, which provided electricity to the North,
South and South-West mining departments.
On the site of the
microdistrict along Transportnaya Street in the 1940-50s, there was
a horse base. Horses were then the main "technique" in mining
operations and the most reliable mode of transport. On the current
street Sportivnaya stood the barracks of the paramilitary guard - a
military town. The first store opened in Yagodnoye in 1936, and a
secondary school was built in the 1940s. It was located in a
building where, until recently, there was a regional department of
internal affairs (this year it burned down).
The primary
school was located nearby, in the building that later housed the
music school and the district archive.
The Great Patriotic
War became a serious test for the inhabitants of the Northern Mining
Administration (now Yagodninsky District).
This is evidenced
by the memoirs of ND Strizhenko, at that time a senior geologist at
the Vodopyanov mine (located in the village of Khatynny): “During
the war, we mined tons of gold. We realized that this was a weapon,
that by mining gold, we were participating in a holy war, making a
significant contribution to the defeat of the enemy. In 1943, the
American capitalists sent a delegation of experts - experts in gold
deposits, headed by Vice President Wallace - to the Kolyma. They
wanted to make sure if the Land of the Soviets could pay them off
for military supplies under Lend-Lease. The delegation visited the
Chay-Urya valley (Susuman region). I was then one of the
representatives of the Dalstroy delegation. By the size of the
gold-bearing valley and the samples taken, the guests realized that
there is a lot of gold in Kolyma: tens, hundreds of tons. We made
sure that no losses will be incurred. The supply of weapons,
foodstuffs, and materials was extremely important for defense. This
was our participation in the defeat of the enemy. "
At the
Berelekh motor depot, where one of the authors of these lines worked
as a machine shop foreman in the early 1950s, I also heard the
following legend:
After a message was received at the Maldyak
mine that an American delegation was coming, the metal was not
surveyed for two days. They opened the deck on one of the devices
only when foreign guests arrived. And when they saw the Kolyma gold,
they just shook their heads, smiled, waved their hands and wrote
something down in notebooks. In general, the Americans were
incredibly surprised.
Intensive construction of Yagodnoye
began in the early 1950s. In 1952, a two-story hotel and a
kindergarten were built, in 1954 - a House of Culture with an
auditorium for 360 seats, a lecture hall, and a library.
In
the early 60s, beer and non-alcoholic and meat and dairy factories
began to produce products in the village (their shops were
transported from the village of Pishchevoy).
In the late 60s and early 70s, the Yagodninsky plant of building
materials started operating. In the early 60s, a new building of the
regional communications center was built on the site of the burned
down post office. At that time it was - after the House of Culture -
the most beautiful building in Yagodnoye. In 1969, Oktyabrskaya and
Lesnaya streets appeared.
One of the most beautiful buildings
in our village is the Fakel cinema. When it was being built, there
was a lot of controversy about what it should be, and largely thanks
to the taste of the then director of the K cinema, I. Sukhov, we see
the cinema as it is today.
The House of Pioneers in Yagodnoye
appeared in 1955; K.A.Stryapchaya became its director.
In
1965, the Yagodninsky Construction Department was assigned category
I. The annual volume of construction and installation work performed
by the department exceeded five million rubles. The head of the YSU
was V.V. Morozov, and the chief engineer was G. T. Timoshin.
In the 70s, the mass introduction of small-scale mechanization tools
began in construction. This made it possible to increase labor
productivity in finishing work and to commission more than five
thousand square meters of housing (150-200 comfortable apartments)
per year. The department built housing and production facilities in
the villages of Elgen and Taskan, in the villages of Debin, Upper
At-Uryakh, named after Kalinin, named after M. Gorky, Odinokiy,
Shturmova and others.
In 1971, by November 7, a new secondary
school for 1230 places was commissioned in the district center.
The first large-panel industrial facility on the territory of
the district and the region was the building of the mechanical
assembly shop at the Yagodninsky mechanical repair plant.
The
construction of a new school can rightfully be called a people's
building. They did not have time to hand it over by the beginning of
the school year, so residents of the village working at enterprises,
institutions and organizations of the regional center were involved
in the work. The school was commissioned with incomplete work, the
basement premises were completed in subsequent years, but classes in
the new school building began almost on time - with a week's delay.
Two houses were built for small families - along Transportnaya and
Kolymskaya streets, a hostel on Novaya, 9 (seven-story building).
The latest construction projects in Yagodnoye are residential
buildings in the 60 years of the USSR quarter, on Stroiteley Street
and Kolymskaya Street.
In recent years, a public organization
"Search for the illegally repressed" has been operating in
Yagodnoye, which is looking for people who suffered during the
Stalinist repressions, studying the history of the region and the
region, in which there were many bright, bright, and bitter, tragic
pages.
Some enterprises, institutions and organizations
continue to work in the village, children study in schools.
Museum of Memory of Victims of Political Repression
On October
30, 1994, the local historian Ivan Panikarov created the Museum of
Memory of Victims of Political Repression in the village. The
exposition and archive of the museum includes about four thousand
photographs of former prisoners, veterans of Kolyma, remnants of
camps; three hundred exhibits - tools and items of prisoners'
everyday life, their personal belongings, originals of cases, camp
newspapers, drawings and paintings of prisoners made in camps,
letters to relatives written from captivity. The museum has a
library, which contains about 500 books about repressions, about the
war, about the history of the Magadan region.