- published: 26 Feb 2011
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Magadan (Russian: Магада́н; IPA: [məɡɐˈdan]) is a port town and the administrative center of Magadan Oblast, Russia, located on the Sea of Okhotsk in Nagayevo Bay in the Gulf of Tauisk and serving as a gateway to the Kolyma region. Population: 95,925 (2010 Census preliminary results); 99,399 (2002 Census); 151,652 (1989 Census).
Magadan was founded in 1929 on the site of an earlier settlement from the 1920s.[citation needed] During the Stalin era, Magadan was a major transit center for prisoners sent to labor camps. From 1932 to 1953, it was the administrative center of the Dalstroy organization—a vast and brutal forced-labor gold-mining operation and corrective labor camp system. The town later served as a port for exporting gold and other metals mined in the Kolyma region. Its size and population grew quickly as facilities were rapidly developed for the expanding mining activities in the area. Town status was granted to it on July 14, 1939.[citation needed]
On an official visit in May 1944, U.S. Vice-President Henry Wallace failed to understand the true nature of Magadan. The watchtowers had been temporarily taken down and the prisoners were locked up, while a model farm had been set up for his inspection. He took an instant liking to his secret policeman host, admired handiwork done by prisoners, and later glowingly called the city a combination of Tennessee Valley Authority and Hudson's Bay Company. Eight years later he apologized for not understanding the true situation.
Magadan Oblast (Russian: Магада́нская о́бласть, tr. Magadanskaya oblast; IPA: [məgɐˈdanskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ]) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) in the Far Eastern Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Magadan. Population: 156,996 (2010 Census).
The oblast borders in the north with Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, in the east with Kamchatka Krai, in the south with Khabarovsk Krai, and in the west with the Sakha Republic.
Magadan Oblast was established in 1953 in what had popularly been known as Kolyma. As a result of considerable raw resources, especially gold, silver, tin, and tungsten deposits, mining activities and road building had been developed during the Stalin era in the 1930s and 1940s under the coordination of Dalstroy and its forced labor camps. Upon Stalin's death, Dalstroy was disbanded and the regional administration took over many of its former responsibilities.
From then on, paid labor replaced most of the convict-based manpower, attracted by the region's rapid economic expansion, especially the gold-mining interests.