Khalmer-Yu (, ) is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

, a former

urban-type settlement Urban-type settlement, abbreviated: ; , abbreviated: ; ; ; ; . is an official designation for lesser urbanized settlements, used in several Central and Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern European countries. The term was primarily used in the So ...

Komi Republic The Komi Republic (; ), sometimes simply referred to as Komi, is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia situated in the northeast of European Russia. Its capital city, capital is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Syktyvka ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, disestablished in 1995. Its main occupation was

coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

of high-quality coke coal in

Pechora coal basin The Pechora coal basin (Печорский угольный бассейн) is located in the Extreme North of European Russia. In covers over 90,000 km2 in Komi Republic and Nenets Autonomous Okrug of the Arkhangelsk Oblast. The basin is ass ...

. It was administered by Gornyatsky district council of

Vorkuta Vorkuta (; ; Nenets languages, Nenets for "the abundance of bears", "bear corner") is a coal-mining types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin a ...

."Valley of Life (about Khalmer-Yu settlement)"
archived article from a June 1983 issue of ''Zapolyarye'' ("Trans-Arctic Cycle") from article cycle dedicated to 40th anniversary of Vorkuta Khalmer-Yu ruins

It was named after the . The name is translated from

Nenets language Nenets (in former work also Yurak) is a pair of closely related languages spoken in northern Russia by the Nenets people. They are often treated as being two dialects of the same language, but they are very different and mutual intelligibility ...

as "River in the Death Valley", because the place was used a

burial grounds A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many death, dead people are burial, buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ...

by the indigenous population.

History

Coal in the area was discovered in the early 1940s. Industrial mining started in 1957. Initially the settlement, together with the surrounding coal fields belonged to

Nenets Autonomous Okrug The Nenets Autonomous Okrug (; ) also known as Nenetsia ( ) is a federal subject of Russia and an autonomous okrug of Arkhangelsk Oblast. Its administrative center is the town of Naryan-Mar. It has an area of and a population of 42,090 ...

. However mining was carried out by Vorkutugol (Воркутуголь, "Vorkutcoal")

combine Combine may refer to: Machinery * Combine harvester, or combine, a machine to harvest grain crops * Seed drill, or combine seeder, a machine to plant seeds Company structure * Corporate group, an industrial business group in Western democrac ...

. Therefore, eventually was transferred to

Komi ASSR The Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (; ), abbreviated as Komi ASSR (Komi and ), was an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR within the Soviet Union, established in 1936 as successor of Komi-Zyryan Autonomous Oblast. In 1991, it b ...

in November 1959. In 1993 it was decided to shut down mining operations and to liquidate the settlement by 1995. The last inhabitants were forcibly removed with the help of

OMON OMON is a system of military special police units within the Armed Forces of Russia. It previously operated within the structures of the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD). Originating as the special forces unit of the So ...

Proving ground

In the early 2000s it became part of a military

proving ground A proving ground is an installation or reservation in which technology such as weapons, military tactics and automobile prototypes are experimented with or tested. Proving grounds can be operated by government bodies or civilian industries. The ...

Pemboy (Пембой) as a result of the restoration of the aviation proving ground Khalmer-Yu which existed since the 1960s 15–20 km northeast of the settlement.lelik1970 - "Панцири" в Воркуте
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References

Ghost towns in Russia Proving grounds Populated places disestablished in 1995 1995 disestablishments in Russia Former urban-type settlements of Komi {{coord, 67, 56, 38, N, 64, 44, 29, E, display=title