The idea to connect the mainland and Sakhalin with the help of an underground tunnel appeared in the Russian Empire in the 19th century. However, due to the economic unprofitability of the project and the lack of funds, the idea was abandoned. They returned to the project only in 1929, already during the Soviet period. In 1930, the first surveys were carried out for the possibility of building a tunnel. Design began after the end of World War II in 1950.
If the Soviet Union and Japan could be connected by a tunnel, then the Land of the Rising Sun would turn into a continental power. Needless to say, the Sakhalin tunnel was never completed. The relevance of this project has not disappeared until now. In 2018, the authorities of the Russian Federation already started talking about the fact that it would be nice to provide transport links with Sakhalin with the help of a bridge, since the current system of ferries and air supply has long been inadequate for transport needs region. Alas, so far the matter has not moved forward. However, today we will not talk about the bridge, but about the tunnel. So let's go back to 1950.
The design of the tunnel and adjacent railways was approved by the USSR Council of Ministers on September 6, 1950. The tunnel was supposed to run from Cape Lazarev on the mainland to Cape Perish on Sakhalin. The length of the structure would be 10 km. Several railway lines ran from Perish throughout Sakhalin. The length of the longest was to be 327 km. On the mainland, it was proposed to connect Cape Lazarev with the help of railway lines with the Selikhin station in the section Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Sovetskaya Gavan. The completion of the first stage of construction was scheduled for 1953. The Sakhalin Tunnel was supposed to be put into operation in 1955. It was assumed that already in the first years, up to 4 million tons of goods per year could be launched through the new line.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Ministry of Railways of the USSR (Ministry of Railways) were supposed to build the Sakhalin Tunnel. By the way, since 1952, the Ministry of Railways came under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. You can often hear that the Sakhalin tunnel was built by convicts. This is not true, or at least not entirely true. By decision of the Council of Ministers, the USSR Prosecutor's Office released about 8,000 prisoners on parole, who were supposed to work as part of the Ministry of Railways until the end of their term of imprisonment. In production, these people did not differ in any way from civilian specialists, except for the fact that they gave a written undertaking not to leave during the construction period. And yes, convicts were paid the same salary as civilians. According to parole, prisoners convicted of serious crimes: robbery, banditry, and premeditated murders did not fall under the parole for participation in the project of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Railways. Thieves-recidivists and inmates of special camps sentenced to hard labor were not allowed to work. By the beginning of 1953, the number of builders was 27 thousand people. In addition to former convicts, military and civilian workers worked on the project.
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The construction of the tunnel was in full swing when Stalin died on March 5, 1953. Some argue that the amnesty of March 27, 1953 put an end to the project. However, according to the memoirs of the head of the Moscow metro construction, Hero of Socialist Labor, Laureate of the USSR Prize in the field of technology and one of the direct participants in the construction of the Sakhalin tunnel, Yuri Anatolevich Koshelev, after the amnesty was announced, yesterday's convicts at the construction site did not at all rush to flee with project. Koshelev recalled that only 200-300 people out of 8,000 construction workers left the project after the amnesty.
The decision of the new Khrushchev government put an end to the Sakhalin tunnel. According to the memoirs of the same Yuri Anatolyevich, for 8 months after the death of the “Leader of the Peoples”, the builders patiently waited for the final decision on the fate of the project. The project team has repeatedly appealed to Moscow with requests and pleas not to stop construction. However, party functionaries, for some mysterious reason, decided in their own way. The project was not stopped or frozen, at the most crucial moment it was simply closed.
In continuation of the topic, read about why Stalin ordered to make education in the USSR paid in 1940.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/260522/63090/