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Palimpsest. Kajy-Say.
Driving by the picturesque scenery of the mountains along the southern shore of Issyk-Kul lake, one wouldn’t suspect what was happening here only two generations ago. The nature has concealed any traces of a previously vibrant life, as though trying to fix what was left behind.
With every new visit, here and there, I suddenly see new signs of this forgotten past, each time more clearly and vividly, making me raise new questions and even get slightly frightened. It fills me with utter sadness. I tried to picture these prisoners, civilians. All the pioneers of theuranium mine. What were their names? What did they think about, gazing at the blue waters of the mountainous lake? Did anyone return safely home?
It’s silent here. Only the wind blowing through the ground pipes, moans and groans. These pipes were left here as though buried amongst abandoned mines and trenches.
Their names have been erased. Events have sunk into oblivion. It seems that if it weren’t for these signs, I would not have found the traces that allowed me to begin my story.
I try not to miss anything and listen closely.
I want to say their names.
I do not know it’s overwhelms me more - confusion or pride for the heroic past, anxiety or hope. Is this a dream or reality? Tantum scimus, quantum memoria tenemus - we know only as much as we can store in our memory.
Time brings oblivion in order to accidentally bring us back to the incomplete past.
Kajy-Say is the history of the Soviet nuclear project; it was uranium mining that started the creation of the atomic bomb. And the Kajy-Say mine, which was founded in the 1940s, came to life with the help of the soviet prisoners who mined uranium there and did all the hard work.
The mine employed many different specialists, but in addition to them, prisoners were also used. According to a resolution of the Soviet Union Government in early 1947, one thousand prisoners were sent to work in Rudoupravlenie №8, the name of the enterprise, two batches of five hundred people.
The work of the mine lasted ten years, in 1958 uranium production was completely closed due to low profitability.
An electrical factory for the production of semiconductors was created in the village, products of which were in demand in the defense industry and throughout the Soviet Union. There was a coal mine providing coal for the Issyk-Kul region.
Uranium production left a tailing dam, which locals called tailings ponds and remnants of the first mines, where Kajysayans simply did not go and do not go until now.
There not far away are the abandoned entrances to the mines, supports from guard towers and nameless graves of the first forced uranium miners...
Silent ruins, remnants of the past industrial power, traces of a nowadays irrelevant history...
There is no cemetery in Kajy-Say where the prisoners who worked at the uranium mine are buried and only two for the local civilians.
In antiquity, a palimpsest was a manuscript written on parchment, where the original text was scraped off. In addition palimpsest is the medical name of a special kind of memory disorder, the so-called «patchwork memory».
Most of the prisoners were later moved to another mine in a nearby area.
The list of workers in the mine is not kept by the local administration, all the archives on the nuclear project were classified and removed in 1958.
Now the village of Kaji-sai lives mainly on tourism.
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On December 8, 1944, by the decision of the State Defense Committee of the USSR, a uranium-mining enterprise was established in Central Asia on the basis of the deposits of the Tajik, Kyrgyz and Uzbek SSR. The management of these works was transferred from the Narcomcvetmet to the NKVD. The head of the NKVD and the atomic project of the USSR was Lavrentiy Beria.
Founded in the summer of 1946, the Jila Uranium Deposit, classified as a coal-bearing rock, began exploration in late 1946, and by 1948 it was transferred to Rudoupravlenie №8. That’s how to the story of Kajy-Say began.
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Remains of a mill hopper.
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№62.
Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR №298-131ss.
"On the organization of extraction of A-9 at Issyk-Kul deposits".
Moscow, Kremlin
17 February 1947
Top secret
Oblige the First Main Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (t. Vannikov):
