Vorkuta was the largest center of gulag camps in European Russia, October 2007
2006-2008. The Urals expand over a distance of 2500 kilometers. In the Urals a single step can take you into Asia. Is there something that sets us apart from those on the other side?
I start from Yekaterinburg, the biggest city of the Urals, with 1.300.000 inhabitants. This is where the Tsar's family was executed by the Bolsheviks. Pervouralsk is a border-monument: it symbolizes the end of Europe and the beginning of Asia.
Vorkuta extends to an isolated part of the tundra. In the 1930s it was the largest gulag center in European Russia. Today it is inhabited by ex-convicts, their families, the people that worked in the city during the Soviet era, and the local Nenets tribe.