M56 Kolyma highway (Russia)

Federal Highway M56
Федеральная автомобильная дорога M56
Kolyma Highway
Route information
Length:	2,031 km (1,262 mi)
Major junctions
West end:	Nizhny Bestyakh
East end:	Magadan
Highway system
Russian Federal Highways

The R504 Kolyma Highway (Russian: Федеральная автомобильная дорога «Колыма», "Federal Automobile Highway 'Kolyma'"), part of the M56 route, is a road through the Russian Far East. It connects Magadan with the town of Nizhny Bestyakh, located on the eastern bank of Lena River opposite Yakutsk. At Nizhny Bestyakh the Kolyma Highway connects to the Lena Highway.

The Kolyma Highway is also known as the Road of Bones, because the skeletons of the forced laborers who died during its construction were used in many of its foundations. Locally, the road is known as Trassa (Russian: Трасса – "The Route"), or Kolymskaya trassa (Russian: Колымская трасса – "The Kolyma Route"), since it is the only road in the area and therefore needs no special name to distinguish it from other roads.

The Dalstroy construction directorate built the Kolyma Highway during the USSR's Stalinist era. Inmates of the Sevvostlag labour camp started the first stretch in 1932, and construction continued with the use of gulag labour until 1953.

The road is treated as a memorial, as the bones of the people who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road. As the road is built on permafrost, interment into the fabric of the road was deemed more practical than digging new holes to bury the bodies of the dead.

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Wikipedia