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Inside the Amazing Permafrost Ice Tunnels Built by Exiled German Genius in Cold War
Siberia Times ^ | 7 January 2018 | Olga Gertcyk1

Posted on 01/30/2018 11:36:17 AM PST by nickcarraway

Will no-one save Gustav Backmann’s unique Arctic fish freezer designed to maintain a temperature of between -12C to -14C all year round?

The tunnels go deep inside the permafrost in Novy Port, a subterranean labyrinth that is a relic of a former age and a triumph of supreme German engineering in the most inhospitable conditions.

In area, at 7,000 square metres, these tunnels and chambers cover a larger space than Donald Trump’s White House in Washington DC.

They are all underground, hewn out of the solid frozen ground by labourers, like Backmann, forcibly exiled here deep in the Soviet era.

Built in the 1950s, this intriguing monument remains the world’s largest permafrost store built by manual labour.

The purpose was to preserve newly caught fish before processing and export to western Europe, then a key earner for the Soviet state.

It is a freezer on a grand scale, and all natural.

In charge of building this ambitious operation was an ethnic German, Gustav Backmann, who had been exiled aged 30 from Leningrad - now St Petersburg - in 1942, even as the siege of the city was underway.

Few may know his name now, but he was the scion of a prominent tsarist-era ethnic German family in St Petersburg, who found himself exiled as a worker to an Arctic fish plant in Novy Port at the mouth of the giant Ob River.

Soon he became a technician, then the engineer in charge of building this giant storage freezer.

Under his watchful eye, day and night shifts of 15 to 20 men carved spacious horizontal shafts in permafrost soil as tough as rock.

Ice picks went blunt from constantly hammering the hard permafrost.

Novy Port settlement historian Andrey Ogorodnikov explained: ‘People worked in three shifts and spent ten years pecking through permafrost.

‘Everyone was involved, women and men alike.’

Most of the work was completed in 1956, three years after Stalin’s death.

Some of these underground ice-walled passageways were 140 metres long, and the complex acted as a safe and reliable storage facility.

With three entry points, one is still in use today, although its future is in doubt because of the cost of repairing Beckmann’s creation; the entrance is threatened by coastal erosion.

Antonina Teymi, a fish processing specialist, said: ‘The average temperature inside is about -12C. Fish is kept here in a perfect condition.’

In 2008 this remarkable complex called `Merzlotnik was awarded the status of a memorial of regional significance on the Yamal peninsula, but local budgets didn’t allow for badly needed repair works.

In 2016, another attempt was made to fix problems with two descents inside the ice caves, but a budget deficit prevented work going ahead.

Vyacheslav Zhedulev, deputy head of the Department for Agriculture, Trade and Food in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous region, said: ‘We will make sure that all kinds of work, both urgent and planned, are carried out in a timely way.

‘The permafrost storage will live.’

Yet no major repair works have been conducted so far.

Vesti Yamal reported last year: ‘It will either be washed away, or it’ll melt. The unique permafrost storage in Yamal in on the verge of destruction.’

Gustav Beckmann’s father Jullius had been a glass factory owner, and also a noted entomologist.

After the Russian Revolution, he was assigned to work in the Zoological Museum in Leningrad, where his collection of insects was stored.

His widow, two sons and daughter Margit were all exiled to Siberia because of their German ethnicity.

Margit was a hydro biologist working at Lake Baikal.

In 1967, Gustav Backmann was permitted to leave the Arctic and went to live in Kherson, in Ukraine.


TOPICS: History; Local News; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: germany; gustavbackmann; icetunnels; novyport; russia; siberia; tunnels
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1 posted on 01/30/2018 11:36:17 AM PST by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

2 posted on 01/30/2018 11:39:31 AM PST by gunsequalfreedom
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To: nickcarraway
‘Labourers’ is a polite euphemism for slaves.
3 posted on 01/30/2018 11:43:11 AM PST by SpaceBar
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To: gunsequalfreedom

Cozy and well-lit, but it smells like fish.


4 posted on 01/30/2018 11:46:54 AM PST by Jeff Chandler (Democrats call Americans "Deplorables" and illegal aliens "Dreamers".)
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To: gunsequalfreedom
Perfect place for some bit-coin mining CPU farms. :)
5 posted on 01/30/2018 11:47:33 AM PST by YouPosting2Me
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To: nickcarraway

Does Al Gore know about this?


6 posted on 01/30/2018 11:51:40 AM PST by WayneS (An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. - Winston Churchill)
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To: nickcarraway

That took an incredible amount of labor. It’s something I would expect Kim Jong Un of North Korea to do; endless, seemingly pointless hard labor.

What was the incentive for the other Germans to do it?
Were they prisoners? No OSHA in those days. No Labor Unions, No counseling for PTSD either, claustrophobics were on their own.


7 posted on 01/30/2018 11:58:41 AM PST by lee martell
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To: lee martell

Zhey weh nacht prissonahs... zhey koult liv any time. But!, wheh voult zhey goh?


8 posted on 01/30/2018 12:16:30 PM PST by ichabod1 (People don't want to believe it be what it is but it do.)
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To: SpaceBar
Image and video hosting by TinyPic

9 posted on 01/30/2018 12:21:10 PM PST by SunkenCiv (www.tapatalk.com/groups/godsgravesglyphs/, forum.darwincentral.org, www.gopbriefingroom.com)
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To: gunsequalfreedom

It’s a remarkable curiosity, but I don’t know why you would want to spend significant resources maintaining it.


10 posted on 01/30/2018 12:21:12 PM PST by colorado tanker
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To: ichabod1

Must have been used for that scene in “Logan’s Run.”


11 posted on 01/30/2018 12:21:20 PM PST by EQAndyBuzz (Death of the MSM - "Because it is my show and I don't want to do that." Jake Tapper)
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To: gunsequalfreedom

Where is the ‘genius’ part? I missed that.


12 posted on 01/30/2018 12:22:16 PM PST by steve86 (Prophecies of Maelmhaedhoc O'Morgair (Latin form: Malachy))
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To: nickcarraway

Why do they point out it’s the size of “Donald Trump’s White House”? Did he build a whole new one?


13 posted on 01/30/2018 12:55:06 PM PST by Moonmad27
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To: gunsequalfreedom

Great way to protect the fish from fallout.


14 posted on 01/30/2018 1:09:12 PM PST by Rebelbase
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To: gunsequalfreedom

The only way to traverse that hallway is via ice skates


15 posted on 01/30/2018 1:18:22 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (My cat is not fat, she is just big boned........)
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To: gunsequalfreedom

Those kind of floors require zambonis to clean them........LOL!


16 posted on 01/30/2018 1:22:51 PM PST by Hot Tabasco (My cat is not fat, she is just big boned........)
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To: EQAndyBuzz
"I have to kill and freeze you."
"Why?"
"Because it's my job!"
17 posted on 01/30/2018 1:29:54 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: BenLurkin; EQAndyBuzz

I totally remember that.

That, and Jenny Agutter’s boobs in the scene 2 minutes before.


18 posted on 01/30/2018 1:38:22 PM PST by T-Bone Texan (Death To Traitors. I'll Bring The Rope.)
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To: EQAndyBuzz
First thing I thought of...

"Fish, and plankton, and sea greens, and protein from the sea. It's all here. Ready! Fresh as harvest day!"

19 posted on 01/30/2018 2:05:49 PM PST by TigersEye (A Russian Bot is a Russian Bot to his last dying day!)
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To: Jeff Chandler

Frigid and smells like fish... like my ex-wife...


20 posted on 01/31/2018 6:52:03 AM PST by Augie
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