Exploring Vorkuta - Russian Ghost Town in Arctic | The Most Depressing Town in Russia

I was born in the Vorkuta. In my teens, it was beautiful place, I really love the city. So painful to see how depressed the city is now.

The only pro of Vorkuta is that you can buy a nice fully furnished apartment with year round central heating for around $500.

Thanks, Man. As someone from tropical Malaysia, this video is infinitely fascinating!

I was born in Russia, but adopted when I was really young I supposedly spent my first 2 years as a baby growing up here, although I have no memory from such a young age. Very interesting to learn some of the history of the town, and it's current state. Really sucks to see how depressing it appears today.

Nature is merciless in this part of world yet Russians have lived and worked here, hats off to them.

"In my life... He and us are not so different. We are all soldiers without an army, betrayed, forgotten, abandoned in vorkuta, we are all brothers." -Viktor Reznov

I was born there. I was there like 2 years ago, stayed for 3 months. Its very sad to see my hometown in such a state, though its not dangerous or something. Just a quite, forsaken place people leave. Love the weather and the nature.

Fun fact of the day: those pipes that went over the road like a street light are residential water pipes. Since the temp is below freezing more than above freezing, the ground is too hard for excavation, so pipes have to be heavily insulated in order to be ran above ground... I married a plumber lol

I was born in Vorkuta in 1981 and lived there 16 years. All my childhood and my teen age was there. Of course it was a great time. I leaved Vorkuta in 1997. Now when i see any video about my city i almost cry and be sad. Thank you

I loved the dog shelter, and the kind people who operate it, despite difficult living conditions of their own. It was cool that you shared this.

God bless this young woman who cares for these beautiful animals. I hardly saw a handful of people.

I've been living and teaching in Inta, a 33k inhabited town south of Vorkuta. The place is not as depressing as the one depicted in the video. People were friendly, eager to talk with you about the outside world, many are actually ecological conscious and they are proud of their region. Similar issues are shared by Vorkuta and Inta: the unemployment due to the closing of coal mines and the abandonment by the central state. The history of the place, intertwined with the Gulag prisoners coming from the four corners of USSR, is a difficult subject to address nowadays, the work being done by the Memorial organisation, now closed by the Kremlin for ideological reasons.

That Die Hard poster is so surreal. Really connects the abandoned building to reality. People lived there relatively recently.

If you can survive in that town, you have defeated depression in this life and many lives to come.

How nice the piano was working…. It’s was so haunting. Those keys hadn’t been touched in some odd 20-30 years and might never be played again. All those books that were collected by someone with certain ideas just to be abandoned. It’s just so many little things that make me go crazy seeing abandoned locations everytime because of all the stories never told and peoples hopes dashed in literal physical form. Just shows how quickly humans can lose it all too :”)

The snow filled/covered buildings, actual art!, so beautiful.

Single industry cities like this one and the others across the former USSR were directly inspired by the "company towns" in the US like Gary, Indiana and even Detroit. And today, since the '90s, when the companies that sustained those towns began to collapse, those company towns have also faced depopulation and large scale abandonment. The US and USSR were never so different after all.

Honestly, this is one of the most fascinating videos I have ever seen on YouTube. I'm in a big city in Australia, so this is the exact opposite of what I see daily. I would love to visit. I hope the people who left have happy memories of Vorkuta.

Random Die Hard poster in abandoned ice covered apartment. This is amazing. There are very few abandoned buildings where I live because they get torn down, or they are so boarded up for safety reasons that you can't get in. Even when you can get in, there's nothing there. Everything has been taken. I think it's amazing that you can find furniture, books, household objects and movie posters relatively well preserved (probably due to the cold). You are also very brave to dare that foot bridge and enter some of these buildings. The bridge is in a deplorable state and unsafe to walk on [proceeds to cross it.] Best wishes to the people of Vorkuta.

My favorite part of your videos is the conversations you have with people you meet on the way.