10 ms·

A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)

126 points by mitul_45 9y ago

thriftwy 9y ago
In 1955 Soviet Union was already built. The peak of Soviet period is 1965, which is pretty close.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Then there's this consideration: In Europe, most of towns are historic, they're in good places and can take any place in economic system. In America, there are towns dedicated to mining or specialized farming (rubber?), but they quickly get abandoned when mine is exhausted or the output is no longer needed. Soviet Union built quite a few towns in remote northern locations, they were way bigger than feasible for mining - like a general purpose settlement. Guess what, now it's hard to rationalize their existence, but people are stuck there and see it as their home. People aren't very mobile in Russia. I imagine even when diamond mining is over we're going to pretend that this is just another town that can get jobs on its own and it will be held afloat by redistribution. It's going to be pretty miserable place for sure, I imagine.
  - dimitar 9y ago
    It is a major cause of potential social instability. The conflict in Donbass also has a similar interpretation: coal production there peaked in the late 70 and by the 90 it was an endlessly subsidized rust belt, with a significant minority of the population being born outside Ukraine. It is a backwater hopelessly reliant on outside help, with widespread violent crime, alcoholism, drug use and corruption. It is these rust belts that lower the statistics for the whole Eastern Europe. Young people were leaving it in droves long before the current conflict began. The disruption by current separatist governments (commanded and supplied by the Russian Federation) have made the decay much quicker - around half the population has left, with a big part of the people remaining being seniors who cross checkpoints to collect their pensions.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      > it was an endlessly subsidized rust belt BTW, Russia reformed their coal production by closing unprofitable mines and selling the rest. Now producing more coal for less money without subsidies. Ukraine did not and largely kept Soviet mine system intact. > backwater hopelessly reliant on outside help, with widespread violent crime, alcoholism, drug use and corruption You have combined "basket of deplorables" reasoning with divisive Ukrainian nationalism to achieve a new low.
    - WillyOnWheels 9y ago
      I hate GDP statistics but it is generally understood that the Donbass' mining and heavy industry account for about 1/4 of Ukraine's GDP and 10 percent of Ukraine's population. You may think it's a backwater but people actually live and work there.
      - dimitar 9y ago
        Yes, these two oblasts are a great reason not to look solely at GDP figures. It is largely a statistical illusion - a huge part of Ukrainian economy is in the gray sector. However government transfers, budget spending and industry does show up in statistics. The two Donbass oblasts actually scored high on GDP per capita, but had much lower quality of life indicators. A large reason for this disparity in income is government transfers, like the big pension and health benefits provided to mine workers. You also had huge indirect transfers like the government propping up failing enterprises and buying production from the regions industrial oligarchs.
  - asveikau 9y ago
    If you get away from coastal cities you see similar phenomena in the US. I have family that grew up in a coal town in Pennsylvania where coal is long gone. The big employers are mostly fulfilment centers and the primary claim to fame is now its descendants of 19th and 20th century European immigrants enacting discriminatory housing policy towards the new wave of Latino immigrants. A lot has been made about how these people feeling left behind relative to prosperous coastal cities enabled a Trump victory. The trends are of course much older than that.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      Why would Latino immigrants move in if there are no jobs or economic activity? Anyway, I guess Pennsylvania is habitable when the push comes to shove. Vorkuta, Mirny or Norilsk simply aren't. They're more like Mars bases.
      - asveikau 9y ago
        The line that I heard is that they're getting priced out of the New York region and start moving 2-3 hours west. Adjusted for inflation, they probably make a lot less money than a coal worker did there in the 20th century. I'm not sure the numbers are really as high as the outrage from the "older" population either. Also, in terms of "Pennsylvania being livable", careful about painting the whole of Pennsylvania with a wide brush. There's an old like about Pennsylvania: it's Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle.
supahfly_remix 9y ago
Helicopters can't fly over it—the downward force of the air would pull them in. Can someone explain the physics of this? The air above the hold is at the same pressure as that beside the hole, otherwise there would be a constant wind. Also, above a certain altitude helicopters don't rely on ground effects.
- georgecmu 9y ago
  If a hole is deep enough — and a half-kilometer deep hole qualifies — the earth will warm the air inside it. The deeper the hole, the warmer the air. Warm air rises, and cool air sinks, so with a big temperature difference between in-hole air and aboveground air, you get quite a bit of air movement. Thus, two things are happening. First, the warm air rising from the hole is less dense and gives less lift to helicopter rotors than the cooler air it had been flying through. Since the temperature change is extremely abrupt as the helicopter flies over the hole, the pilot may lose a bunch of altitude before managing to adjust the speed enough (read: increase the spin rate of the rotors) to compensate for the loss of lift. At the same time, the cool air pouring into that hole from all sides is going to create quite a wind shear. If a helicopter loses enough lift to hit the stream of cold air, it could easily be slammed into the side of the borehole before it ever developed enough lift or power to recover. https://oregonexpat.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-helicopter-sucking-hole-in-the-ground/ https://oregonexpat.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-helicopter-...
  - trevyn 9y ago
    Nit: most helis have an automatic governor that keeps rotor RPM relatively constant; the pilot adjusts the blade pitch to control lift, and the throttle is automatically adjusted to compensate for the change in engine load.
  - supahfly_remix 9y ago
    thank you for the explanation.
  - davidwihl 9y ago
    Given the odd local microclimate, I would not want to be on a low and slow approach to runway 6 at the nearby Mirny airport, especially in a slow-to-spool turbojet. I bet the Soviets never published accurate accident data.
willvarfar 9y ago
> These diamonds were all of a uniform size and shape and were dubbed 'Silver Bears'. While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the open market, thus flooding it and bringing down diamond prices. What's the speculation as to their surprising abundance and uniformity?
- ljoshua 9y ago
  I was curious about that particular aspect as well. A little Googling brought me to this rather interesting account of Silver Bears and the market forces at play: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap17.htm http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap17.htm (tl;dr: though unconfirmed a noted diamond expert believed the Soviets had created a diamond cutting machine instead of relying on human cutters, though others disputed the idea.)
  - milcron 9y ago
    It sounds as though they were creating gem-quality synthetic diamonds but kept it on the down-low, and used their Siberian mines as cover.
    - ericfranklin 9y ago
      Even today there are only a couple places in the former Soviet Union that can grow gem-quality synthetic white diamonds. Their production numbers are far less than the output of a single mine, and the results are still rather random. Prior to 2004 or so, the only synthetic diamonds that could be produced commercially were colored and primarily industrial-grade.
      - milcron 9y ago
        Well, I say "gem-quality" because the article did, but it also points out that the diamonds were a greenish color, and incredibly consistent in size and quality. When DeBeers finally got a 20-minute tour of the Siberian mine, far less earth had been excavated than they expected for the number of diamonds that the USSR sold. There are many additional circumstantial details in the article.
EA 9y ago
Google Maps view: https://goo.gl/maps/HufFo7ZMP1T2 https://goo.gl/maps/HufFo7ZMP1T2
ortusdux 9y ago
This mine is the first thing I zoom in on when checking out a new procedurally generated 3d world map service. It is easy to spot because of the nearby Vilyuy Reservoir built to power the mine. Everyone's algorithm can handle mountians, but I've yet to see one that correctly renders this crater. Even google earth shows the mine as flat.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  a new procedurally generated 3d world map service Don't tempt us with interesting details like that and then leave out the name :)
  - traek 9y ago
    S/he gave an example already--Google Earth. Apple Maps also has generated 3D maps.
- mvindahl 9y ago
  Not sure, but maybe Google is just using some readily available set of topological data? The hole, being man-made, would display as flat in the same ways that do the buildings of Mirny. I know for a lot of places, Google use fancy algorithms for extracting information about buildings and trees, and those algorithms never cease to amaze me. Anyway, Mirny is clearly not one of these places.
ocschwar 9y ago
Diamonds. Is there anything they won''t do? They can prop up Stalinism regimes. They can prop up apartheid. They can prop up the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko. So lovely.
jpatokal 9y ago
This is one of many insane places on Koryo's "Abandoned Russia" tours, which have long been on my bucket list: https://koryogroup.com/tours/84 https://koryogroup.com/tours/84 From $7,300/person, but you'll need to wait until next year since this year's kicked off today.
jeffdavis 9y ago
Can someone please explain why a helicopter can't go over the hole but a plane can?
c517402 9y ago
The article says that helicopters can't fly over the mine. But, the end of the runway is close by and the flight path is almost tangent to the edge of the hole. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mirny,+Sakha+Republic,+Russia,+678171/@62.525739,114.0111885,14z/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x5c7cbad695e42b5d:0xe2626d503aba7a8 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mirny,+Sakha+Republic,+Rus...

126 points by mitul_45 9y ago

thriftwy 9y ago

In 1955 Soviet Union was already built. The peak of Soviet period is 1965, which is pretty close.

thriftwy 9y ago
Then there's this consideration: In Europe, most of towns are historic, they're in good places and can take any place in economic system. In America, there are towns dedicated to mining or specialized farming (rubber?), but they quickly get abandoned when mine is exhausted or the output is no longer needed. Soviet Union built quite a few towns in remote northern locations, they were way bigger than feasible for mining - like a general purpose settlement. Guess what, now it's hard to rationalize their existence, but people are stuck there and see it as their home. People aren't very mobile in Russia. I imagine even when diamond mining is over we're going to pretend that this is just another town that can get jobs on its own and it will be held afloat by redistribution. It's going to be pretty miserable place for sure, I imagine.
- dimitar 9y ago
  It is a major cause of potential social instability. The conflict in Donbass also has a similar interpretation: coal production there peaked in the late 70 and by the 90 it was an endlessly subsidized rust belt, with a significant minority of the population being born outside Ukraine. It is a backwater hopelessly reliant on outside help, with widespread violent crime, alcoholism, drug use and corruption. It is these rust belts that lower the statistics for the whole Eastern Europe. Young people were leaving it in droves long before the current conflict began. The disruption by current separatist governments (commanded and supplied by the Russian Federation) have made the decay much quicker - around half the population has left, with a big part of the people remaining being seniors who cross checkpoints to collect their pensions.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    > it was an endlessly subsidized rust belt BTW, Russia reformed their coal production by closing unprofitable mines and selling the rest. Now producing more coal for less money without subsidies. Ukraine did not and largely kept Soviet mine system intact. > backwater hopelessly reliant on outside help, with widespread violent crime, alcoholism, drug use and corruption You have combined "basket of deplorables" reasoning with divisive Ukrainian nationalism to achieve a new low.
  - WillyOnWheels 9y ago
    I hate GDP statistics but it is generally understood that the Donbass' mining and heavy industry account for about 1/4 of Ukraine's GDP and 10 percent of Ukraine's population. You may think it's a backwater but people actually live and work there.
    - dimitar 9y ago
      Yes, these two oblasts are a great reason not to look solely at GDP figures. It is largely a statistical illusion - a huge part of Ukrainian economy is in the gray sector. However government transfers, budget spending and industry does show up in statistics. The two Donbass oblasts actually scored high on GDP per capita, but had much lower quality of life indicators. A large reason for this disparity in income is government transfers, like the big pension and health benefits provided to mine workers. You also had huge indirect transfers like the government propping up failing enterprises and buying production from the regions industrial oligarchs.
- asveikau 9y ago
  If you get away from coastal cities you see similar phenomena in the US. I have family that grew up in a coal town in Pennsylvania where coal is long gone. The big employers are mostly fulfilment centers and the primary claim to fame is now its descendants of 19th and 20th century European immigrants enacting discriminatory housing policy towards the new wave of Latino immigrants. A lot has been made about how these people feeling left behind relative to prosperous coastal cities enabled a Trump victory. The trends are of course much older than that.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Why would Latino immigrants move in if there are no jobs or economic activity? Anyway, I guess Pennsylvania is habitable when the push comes to shove. Vorkuta, Mirny or Norilsk simply aren't. They're more like Mars bases.
    - asveikau 9y ago
      The line that I heard is that they're getting priced out of the New York region and start moving 2-3 hours west. Adjusted for inflation, they probably make a lot less money than a coal worker did there in the 20th century. I'm not sure the numbers are really as high as the outrage from the "older" population either. Also, in terms of "Pennsylvania being livable", careful about painting the whole of Pennsylvania with a wide brush. There's an old like about Pennsylvania: it's Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle.

supahfly_remix 9y ago

Helicopters can't fly over it—the downward force of the air would pull them in. Can someone explain the physics of this? The air above the hold is at the same pressure as that beside the hole, otherwise there would be a constant wind. Also, above a certain altitude helicopters don't rely on ground effects.

georgecmu 9y ago
If a hole is deep enough — and a half-kilometer deep hole qualifies — the earth will warm the air inside it. The deeper the hole, the warmer the air. Warm air rises, and cool air sinks, so with a big temperature difference between in-hole air and aboveground air, you get quite a bit of air movement. Thus, two things are happening. First, the warm air rising from the hole is less dense and gives less lift to helicopter rotors than the cooler air it had been flying through. Since the temperature change is extremely abrupt as the helicopter flies over the hole, the pilot may lose a bunch of altitude before managing to adjust the speed enough (read: increase the spin rate of the rotors) to compensate for the loss of lift. At the same time, the cool air pouring into that hole from all sides is going to create quite a wind shear. If a helicopter loses enough lift to hit the stream of cold air, it could easily be slammed into the side of the borehole before it ever developed enough lift or power to recover. https://oregonexpat.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-helicopter-sucking-hole-in-the-ground/ https://oregonexpat.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-helicopter-...
- trevyn 9y ago
  Nit: most helis have an automatic governor that keeps rotor RPM relatively constant; the pilot adjusts the blade pitch to control lift, and the throttle is automatically adjusted to compensate for the change in engine load.
- supahfly_remix 9y ago
  thank you for the explanation.
- davidwihl 9y ago
  Given the odd local microclimate, I would not want to be on a low and slow approach to runway 6 at the nearby Mirny airport, especially in a slow-to-spool turbojet. I bet the Soviets never published accurate accident data.

willvarfar 9y ago

> These diamonds were all of a uniform size and shape and were dubbed 'Silver Bears'. While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the open market, thus flooding it and bringing down diamond prices. What's the speculation as to their surprising abundance and uniformity?

ljoshua 9y ago
I was curious about that particular aspect as well. A little Googling brought me to this rather interesting account of Silver Bears and the market forces at play: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap17.htm http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap17.htm (tl;dr: though unconfirmed a noted diamond expert believed the Soviets had created a diamond cutting machine instead of relying on human cutters, though others disputed the idea.)
- milcron 9y ago
  It sounds as though they were creating gem-quality synthetic diamonds but kept it on the down-low, and used their Siberian mines as cover.
  - ericfranklin 9y ago
    Even today there are only a couple places in the former Soviet Union that can grow gem-quality synthetic white diamonds. Their production numbers are far less than the output of a single mine, and the results are still rather random. Prior to 2004 or so, the only synthetic diamonds that could be produced commercially were colored and primarily industrial-grade.
    - milcron 9y ago
      Well, I say "gem-quality" because the article did, but it also points out that the diamonds were a greenish color, and incredibly consistent in size and quality. When DeBeers finally got a 20-minute tour of the Siberian mine, far less earth had been excavated than they expected for the number of diamonds that the USSR sold. There are many additional circumstantial details in the article.

EA 9y ago

Google Maps view: https://goo.gl/maps/HufFo7ZMP1T2 https://goo.gl/maps/HufFo7ZMP1T2

ortusdux 9y ago

This mine is the first thing I zoom in on when checking out a new procedurally generated 3d world map service. It is easy to spot because of the nearby Vilyuy Reservoir built to power the mine. Everyone's algorithm can handle mountians, but I've yet to see one that correctly renders this crater. Even google earth shows the mine as flat.

anigbrowl 9y ago
a new procedurally generated 3d world map service Don't tempt us with interesting details like that and then leave out the name :)
- traek 9y ago
  S/he gave an example already--Google Earth. Apple Maps also has generated 3D maps.
mvindahl 9y ago
Not sure, but maybe Google is just using some readily available set of topological data? The hole, being man-made, would display as flat in the same ways that do the buildings of Mirny. I know for a lot of places, Google use fancy algorithms for extracting information about buildings and trees, and those algorithms never cease to amaze me. Anyway, Mirny is clearly not one of these places.

ocschwar 9y ago

Diamonds. Is there anything they won''t do? They can prop up Stalinism regimes. They can prop up apartheid. They can prop up the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko. So lovely.

jpatokal 9y ago

This is one of many insane places on Koryo's "Abandoned Russia" tours, which have long been on my bucket list: https://koryogroup.com/tours/84 https://koryogroup.com/tours/84 From $7,300/person, but you'll need to wait until next year since this year's kicked off today.

jeffdavis 9y ago

Can someone please explain why a helicopter can't go over the hole but a plane can?

c517402 9y ago

The article says that helicopters can't fly over the mine. But, the end of the runway is close by and the flight path is almost tangent to the edge of the hole. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mirny,+Sakha+Republic,+Russia,+678171/@62.525739,114.0111885,14z/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x5c7cbad695e42b5d:0xe2626d503aba7a8 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mirny,+Sakha+Republic,+Rus...