Today, Magadan is usually imagined as a remote northern city from which people try to move back to the mainland. But a few decades ago, the situation was almost the opposite. People came to Magadan from different parts of the Soviet Union, sometimes for several years, sometimes for the rest of their lives.
The history of the city was closely connected with the development of the Kolyma region and its gold deposits. Magadan itself was officially established in 1939, although the settlement had existed since 1929. Its early development was closely tied to Dalstroy and the forced-labor system. After 1953, that system gradually disappeared, and ordinary workers and specialists increasingly became the people building the region.
During the 1950s and 1960s, geologists and builders arrived in Magadan, along with miners, engineers, and a growing number of doctors and teachers who came to staff the new schools and hospitals. For many of them, the North offered a practical opportunity to earn more quickly than they could on the mainland. Workers received northern wage bonuses and regional allowances, plus extra vacation time, though the exact conditions differed from one part of the region to another. The basic idea was simple: work in the North for several years, save money, solve your housing situation, perhaps buy a car, and then decide whether to return home.
Young specialists came as well. University graduates were sent to local enterprises, student construction brigades arrived during the summer, and young people from different Soviet republics took part in construction projects across the Kolyma region. By the late 1960s, Magadan had become much more than a remote mining settlement. It was an industrial, scientific and cultural center of the Soviet Far East, with schools, shops, cinemas, a theater, sports facilities, museums and scientific institutions. Television reached the city and nearby settlements, and for someone who had arrived thousands of kilometers from Moscow, Magadan could feel surprisingly modern.
The city continued to grow throughout the 1970s. New neighborhoods, schools, shops and enterprises appeared, while the population increased from about 62,000 people in 1959 to more than 92,000 in 1970, around 121,000 in 1979 and roughly 151,500 in 1989. Magadan was far away, but it was not a tiny settlement at the edge of the country. Tens of thousands of people lived there, worked there and built their lives there.
Life in the North was still difficult. Supplies depended heavily on long-distance transportation, and the selection of goods could be very different from what people were used to in the central parts of the Soviet Union. Housing was another problem. Apartments could be provided through enterprises or local authorities, but people could still wait years. For some workers, the possibility of eventually getting housing was one of the reasons to stay in the region.
For a young specialist arriving from another part of the USSR, the calculation could therefore make sense. The climate was harsh and the city was thousands of kilometers from Moscow, but the higher income and various northern benefits could compensate for some of the difficulties. There was work, there were new apartment blocks, schools and cultural institutions, and there were thousands of other people who had also come north looking for a better life.
Then the system began to fall apart.
The problems became increasingly visible in the late 1980s, and after 1991 many enterprises closed or sharply reduced their operations. This was especially destructive for small mining and industrial settlements. When the main enterprise disappeared, it was not only jobs that disappeared. The shops and schools that depended on those jobs often went with them, and sometimes even the heating systems and transport links that had kept a settlement functioning simply stopped.
The population decline was enormous. Between 1989 and 2002, the population of Magadan Oblast excluding Chukotka fell from roughly 385,000 to about 182,000 people. In just thirteen years, the region lost more than half of its population. Some settlements almost disappeared completely. Belichan, for example, went from 1,214 residents in 1990 to just five people in 2003.
Magadan itself did not disappear. In fact, it became even more important because people leaving smaller settlements often moved there. It was the largest city in the region and offered the best access to jobs, services and transportation. By January 2025, about 96,000 people lived in Magadan, out of roughly 135,000 residents in the entire region. Around 71 percent of the region's population was concentrated in the city.
Old photographs make the change particularly striking. Magadan in the late 1970s and 1980s looks like a city that is still growing: new apartment blocks, construction sites, buses, schools, shops and young families. Many of those people eventually left. Some stayed for several years before returning to the mainland, while others remained until retirement. For some, the Kolyma was a difficult place where cold, distance and isolation made everyday life exhausting. For others, it was the place where they found their first serious job, received their first apartment, made lifelong friends, met a future husband or wife and raised their children.
For decades, people traveled thousands of kilometers north because the region offered opportunities they could not find at home. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the climate, distance and isolation remained, but many of the advantages that had attracted people there disappeared. Magadan survived, but the network of towns and settlements around it became much smaller. For a lot of the people who once lived there, it's now mostly the last big city before the long road back to the mainland.
