Far North Construction Trust Expedition. Collection of photos.

Due to the Great Depression in the West in the early 1930s, the ratio of gold prices to industrial equipment was unusually favorable in order to buy machines and equipment that was necessary for Soviet Russia, which had begun industrialization.
Dalstroy (Far North Construction Trust) was created in 1931 by the OGPU (predecessor of the NKVD) in order to manage road construction, the mining of gold, exploration and production of other strategically important minerals in the Magadan-Chukotka region of the north of Russian Far East (Kolyma). Work in extreme northern conditions was carried out by civilians employed by Dalstroy as labor force and prisoners from various forced labor camps (near 80 Gulag camps) scattered across a vast territory subordinate to the trust.
This collection includes photos of wildlife nature and researcher's daily life, mining and gold panning, equipment (including foreign) and native peoples. According to the costumes one of the photos depicted the Oroch women. The Oroch (self-designation - Nani) is a Tungusic language spoken people which settled in the eastern Siberia. In the early 1930s, the Orochi National District was created, but then was cancelled and merged with the Sovetsk District 'due to a shortage of native population'. There are three ethnic groups with similar names: Oroch, Oroqen and Orok people. This photo is signed as 'Oroqen' on the back side but most likely it's photograph's mistake.
Provenance: Private collection of geologist and one of the early discoverers of gold in Kolyma Sergei Rakovsky (1899-1962), who served at Dalstroy for many years.