SIBERIAN GOLD GALORE: BUT WOULD LENIN APPROVE?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403310002-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 7, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST"T
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403310002-2
ON PAGE _~. NtW Y'JKK 11MLS
7 April 1987
Karamken Journal
Siberian Gold Galore:
But Would Lenin Approve?
we are victorious on a worm scaic, i
think we shall use gold for the pur-
pose of building public lavatories in
the streets of some of the largest
cities in the world," Lenin wrote in
1921.
"I don't know what this means,"
said Nikolai M. Selyutin, manager of
the Karamken gold mine and concen-
trator here. "But we believe in it."
Perhaps, but Lenin's vision of a
time when the quality of life would no
longer be tied to the value of gold
seems, in this gold-dominated Maga-
dan Province of northeast Siberia, far
off, and getting further.
Pressed by the need for foreign cur-
rency to support a planned moderni-
zation of industry and to make up for
slumping oil revenue, the gold indus-
try is expandin&
How much of an expansion, like al-
most every detail of the gold industry,
is a carefully guarded secret, as a
group of Western reporters found
during a closely supervised visit to
this gold-lode mining complex.
Playing a Cat-and-Mace Game
"Where do you send your refined
gold," a reporter asked, before a de-
scent into a mine shaft.
By BILL KELLER I Without gold, Magadan Province
.. might well still be the exclusive pre-
specw to The K MW Y"t LLER
'serve of Chukchi reindeer herders
KARAMKEN, U.S.S.R. - "Wheq a
nd ether indiaaneaia nwnniam
"To the central part of the coun-
i try," replied Mr. Selyutin, a good-na-
.tured engineer who seemed faintly
amused at the cat-and-mouse game.
"What city?"
"To the central part of the coun-
try," he repeated
"How many workers do you
have?"
"Enough to work profitably."
When asked for production figures,.
Mr. Selyutin simply laughed, flashing
a row of gold caps.
The Soviet Union, the second larg-
est gold producer after South Africa,
publishes no statistics on gold, or on
most other metals for that matter.
Western researchers have been com-
puting various estimates based on
scattered information about produc-
ing centers and about sales on the in-
ternational gold market.
Shock Absorber for the Economy
The gold reserves are a vital shock
absorber for the Soviet economy,
especially now when lower oil prices
have cut into export earnings.
M 228M =I'M Me i
he Joint Economic Committee ol
It was the goldfields of the Kolyma
River, discovered in the late 1920's,,
that drew geologists to this area. It,
was gold that made the region a kugi
cal, if cruel, site for Stalin's notorious
labor camps from the 1930's to the
mid-1950's. From the camps, ordi-
nary convicts and political prisoners
were marched to work in the gold pits
at temperatures of more than 50 dos
grees below zero.
Gold is believed to be one reason
Magadan Province has been closed to
most foreigners. The recent visit here
was the first ever by a group of non-
Communist journalists.
Aleksandr D. Bogdanov, provincial
party chief, estimated that mining ac-
counted for two-thirds of the prov-
ince's 2 billion rubles ($3 billion) in
annual industrial output. The prov-
ince also yields silver, tin and tung-
sten, but mostly gold.
"Almost the entire economy of the
province is based on gold," said
Tatyana M. Malinovskaya, a party of-
ficial in the northern gold town of
Bilibino.
Her, at the nine-year-old Karamken
complex, about 50 miles north of the
city of Magadan, visitors pass
'through a guarded turnstile and into a
dressing room where they don a
miino)r's cold wveaather uniform of blue.
parkusand hard haatts. Then down sev
oral flights of stairs to collect bat-
tery-powered lamps, and out the door
to a metal shed that serves as the
depot for the mine train.
Placer and Lode Deposits
In Siberia, gold is either bulldozed
or dredged from surface gravel de-
posits known as placers or, as in the
case of Karamken, dug from deep
lode mines. The placers were the first
to be mined starting in the 1930's, and
as they became played out, the indus-
try has been increasingly blasting
'into bedrock.
A 12-minute ride on an East Ger-
man mine trolley, clattering down a
narrow, concrete-lined shaft takes
the miners two miles into the moun-
tain. The air, pumped in through con-
duits, is cool and fresh, but not Un-
comfortably cold.
The mountain is criss-crossed by
horizontal tunnels on six levels. On
the upper levels, miners use com-
pressed air guns to dig holes for dyna-
mite, then blast and dig the ore, and
spill it down chutes into waiting ore
cars in the lowest tunnel
The ore itself is unremarkable to
the eye, the gold so thinly dispersed
that it hardly glitters. There are no
nuggets to be pocketed.
Work Goes On Around the Clock
Miners work around the clock, in
four six-hour shifts - first a blasting
crew, then several hours of preparing
the shaft, and finally two diggft
shifts.
At the concentrator near the mouth
of the mine, lumps of ore are fed into
a crushing mill and ground to powder..
The powder is mixed with water, and
the gold and silver are separated
chemically.
Miners earn 700 rubles (about
$1,000) a month, a high salary by
Soviet standards because of a pre-
mium paid in this remote region.
Lenin's dictum notwithstanding,
the lives of workers here are becom-
ing more dependent on gold, not less.
Next year the mine here is scheduled
to join other Soviet industries in "self-
financing," which means that the
mine administration will keep a
share of the profits to spend as local
managers see fit on housing, new
equipment and amenities, for work-
ers, things that now come from the
budget of the Ministry oif Nonferrous
Metals in Moscow. .
But then, Lenin himself conceded
that, pending the world revolution
that would render gold into toilets,
Russia should get as much of the stuff
as it could. In a metaphor that seems
especially suited to the tundra of
northeast Siberia, he said, "When You
live among wolves. You must howl
like a wolf."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403310002-2