Sometime in the 1930s, a line was drawn through the map of North-East Russia. The Soviet government, after discovering the Far East region was rich in natural resources, decided to build the largest network of labour camps ever created in order to extract and convey treasures of gold, silver, tin, uranium and wood. A route was laid through forests, mountains, valleys and deserts, connecting Magadan — a port on the Sea of Okhotsk so remote it has long been called an “island”— with Nizhny Bestyakh, 34km west of Yakutsk.

In 2016, French artist and reporter Marie de La Ville Baugé travelled to Yakutsk via the 2500km Kolyma Highway, also known as the “Road of Bones”, in memory of the victims of Stalinist repression who died building it. Throughout her journey she met grandchildren of former prisoners, workers sent there for good wages during the Soviet Union, truck drivers, wolf hunters and the remaining residents of the coldest inhabitated place in the world. They demonstrated their way of life and the wild beauty of the country — an infinite palette of blue.

I set out on this route as if I were delving into a great history book. I would have liked to take my time in getting to Magadan, crossing the eight time zones that separate it from Moscow and feeling how the North stretches out in real time. Instead I took the plane, like everyone else, and was surprised to discover that the enormous vessel was only half full.

In the last hours of the flight, we passed above Kolyma, with its impressive taiga landscape: white dunes and glaciers striped with pines, intersected here and there by a frozen river. On arrival, shuttle buses greeted us at the airport with slogans like “Magadan, Russia’s golden heart”, “Magadan was, is and always will be” and, more worryingly, “The road to heaven begins with us”.

Magadan