Pechora

The Pechora River with the Pechora State District Power Station in the background

Pechora lies on the Pechora River in the Komi Republic, and is often used as the gateway for Yugyd Va National Park.

Understand

Modern-day Pechora is home to a little less than 40,000 people (2018), which makes it the fourth-largest town in a republic that is larger than Sweden!

A gulag was operated here under the name Pechorlag (Печорлаг) during the 1940s and 50s. At its height in the early 40s, over 100,000 prisoners were imprisoned in this forced labor camp. There is a small memorial house of prayer at the site.

In 1949, the villages at this section of the Pechora River grew enough to be merged and granted "city" status. Pechora's population ballooned in the decades following, owing to its location making it a river and rail transport hub for the region an onwards to remote Nenetsia and Yamalia. In the 1970s, the construction of the Pechora State District Power Station made Pechora the "energy capital" of the Komi SSR. The city fell on hard economic times in the 1990s, and its population declined by a third of what it was in 1991, but it has stabilized, in no small part thanks to the discovery of oil reserves in the region.

Get in

By plane

There are a limited number of flights from the regional capital, Syktyvkar.

• 1 Pechora Airport (Аэропорт Печора). PEX  ^IATA (updated May 2023)

By train

Trains on the route to Vorkuta and Labytnangi stop at Pechora, coming from major Russian cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, etc.

• 2 Pechora railway station. (updated May 2023)

By car

As of 2020, there is no year-round access from the more populous parts of the country. The construction of the Ukhta-Pechora-Usinsk-Naryan-Mar highway is underway. You can only leave the city either along an unimproved road along the Kadzherom-Rybnitsa-Zelenoborsk-Malaya Pera dirt road, or by using the Pechora-Vuktyl car ferry.

By boat

Monument to Rusanov

Get around

As of 2020, there are 6 bus routes within the town.

See

• 1 Monument to V.A. Rusanov. A monument to the great Russian Arctic explorer and geologist who explored the Pechora River region and reputedly proclaimed that a city would rise on the beautiful spot where this town did develop. He disappeared, presumably in the east of the Kara Sea after passing through the Matochkin Strait of Novaya Zemlya. (updated May 2020)
• 2 House of Prayer (Chasovnya) (Часовня Всех святых в земле Коми просиявших). Memorial chapel at the gravesite of Pechorlag. (updated May 2020)
• Monument to Maxim Gorky
• Monument S.M. Kirov

House of Prayer at the Pechorlag gravesite

• Monument to labor-glory of geological prospectors
• Monument to the MI-8 Helicopter
• Monument to the Steam Locomotive Series “LV”

Do

Sablya Reserve, southeast of Pechora: Aranets Swamp with the Sablinsky Ridge in the background