The capital of a disappearing world (long-term project)

Vorkuta is the fourth largest city beyond the Arctic Circle, the easternmost city in Europe. The main city area is surrounded by a dense ring of workers' settlements. Almost as soon as Vorkuta was founded, it became home to one of the largest Gulag camps, to which prisoners from all over the world were exiled. By 1951 there were 73,000 people in the camp, including foreigners. That is why the city was given a second, unofficial name “capital of the world.” Vorkuta's population is rapidly shrinking — it ranks first in the country in terms of the rate of population decline. While in the 1990s more than 110,000 people lived here, now it has a population of less than 60,000. The villages built beside the mines were the first to die out. Nowadays, most of them look like ghost towns. People leave their houses and apartments, throwing away furniture and other items that are too expensive to transport from this remote corner of Russia. They leave their personal histories and their former lives behind them in Vorkuta.