The camp was administered by the Joint State Political Directorate from 1932 to 1934, the NKVD from 1934 to 1946 and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union) from 1946 until its closure in 1962.

E.K Hoffman [ru], a wealthy entrepreneur, wanted to develop the area for coal mining but couldn't due to insufficient funds.

The Vorkuta camp was established by Soviet authorities a year later in 1932 for the expansion of the Gulag system and the discovery of coal fields by the river Vorkuta, on a site in the basin of the Pechora River, located within the Komi ASSR of the Russian SFSR (present-day Komi Republic, Russia), approximately 1,900 kilometres (1,200 mi) from Moscow and 160 kilometres (99 mi) above the Arctic Circle.

Most of Leon Trotsky's followers and supporters were either deported to camps in Siberia, executed or exiled by Joseph Stalin as a part of the Great Purge which started in August 1936.

Ivan Khoroshev, who made a report on the uprising and strike, wrote: “In the mid and late 1930s, the Trotskyists in Vorkuta were a very patchwork group; some of them still called themselves Bolshevik-Leninists.” Khoroshev estimates that the “genuine Trotskyists” numbered “almost 500 at the Vorkuta mine, close to 1,000 at the camp of Ukhta-Pechora, and certainly several thousand altogether around the Pechora district.” This report wouldn't reach the West until 1961.

[17] Government forces, led by Deputy Narkom and Obkom Second Secretary Vazhnov, engaged in several encounters with the rebels, with casualties on both sides.

[18][19][20] For a week following the initial strike the camp administration apparently did nothing; they increased perimeter guards but took no forceful action against inmates.

The mines were visited by State Attorney of the USSR, Roman Rudenko, Internal Troops Commander, Ivan Maslennikov, and other top brass from Moscow.

The next day, on August 1, after further bloodless clashes between inmates and guards, Derevyanko ordered direct fire at the mob resulting in the deaths of at least 53 prisoners and injuring 135 (many of them, deprived of medical help, died later) although estimates vary.

Russian human rights organization Memorial estimates that of the 40,000 people collecting state pensions in the Vorkuta area, 32,000 are former Gulag inmates or their descendants.

[24] Vorkuta's climate is influenced both by its distance from the North Atlantic and the proximity to the Arctic Ocean, bringing cold air in spring.

During World War II, the Noble family tried to leave Germany but were denied by the Gestapo, and the factory was taken over by the East German government.

It was a grueling combination of slow but continuous starvation, exhausting work, killing cold, and abject monotony that destroyed many a healthier man than I.

When I went to the camp hospital later, my friends brought me bread saved from their own rations.” Nobles release, “Early in June, I was eating my cabbage soup in the stolovaya [cafeteria] when the nevalney, my barracks master, rushed in excitedly.

We were divided into work brigades each with different assignments: clearing snow where the smithy was to be built, preparing the site for the instrumentalka or toolshop, sawing planks for the buildings.

Buca wrote about the labor in Vorkuta: “The hard work in the arctic cold and the poor food wore away our energy and our health.

When work brigades returned to the camp and formed up at the gate you could see only rows of yellow-grey faces, rimmed with snow and ice, their eyes leaking tears which froze on their cheeks.

Buca had conflicts with guards in Vorkuta writing “I was sitting, naked, on the concrete floor of the lavatory corridor in Zamarstynov Prison in Lvov, waiting for my clothes to be disinfected, when an NKVD officer came in.

Scholmer was accused of being an agent of the Gestapo and of the American and British Secret Services in May 1949, In April 1949, Schölmerich was arrested by the Ministry of State Security (Soviet Union) (MGB) in East Berlin for his opposition to Stalinism and imprisoned in its central pre-trial detention centre.

[32] Konstantin Waleryanovich Flug was a student at Baumann University of Technology, he was arrested in 1932 possibly because he wrote an essay about "terror" which came into the possession of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) through a friend.

Konstantin was convicted in 1933 by a remote judgment according to Articles 58–8, 10 and 11 by a special court of the OGPU to ten years of warehouse detention in an improvement labor camp.

Hennig wrote: "Our decision to stop work is motivated by the firm conviction that great injustice has been committed against us, that our human dignity has been trampled underfoot contrary to the constitutional right of the personality, that we have fallen victim to the arbitrariness of the organs of the MGB and MWD.

The administration installed by the popular enemy Beriya still prevents us from bringing the truth about our situation to the attention of the highest Soviet organs.

We don't want to wash until the evening," we consider, "and tie a cloth over the padded ear caps to avoid frostbite as much as possible" "The morning soup is the purest water, the porridge burnt and inedible".

Jöris was discharged from the concentration camp in late 1933 and on behalf of the party emigrated to Moscow, there he had a disillusionment and break with the communist worldview.

After Jöris was sent back to East Berlin he was arrested once more and convicted by a Soviet military tribunal to 25 years of forced labor and Punishment as a political prisoner in Vorkuta, shafts 9 and 10.

He continued being critical of the government and the politics of East Germany and in 1951 he was arrested by the Stasi and put in a pre-trial detention in the Greifswald prison, a few days later Krikowski was handed over to the Soviet organs and transported to Schwerin.

Mjutel was convicted by a special committee at the NKVD according to the so-called letter paragraph ASA (anti-Soviet agitation) he and his brothers were sentenced to five years in camp.

Mjutel worked on the Pechora railway between Ukhta and Koschwa, he was imprisoned in Vorkuta for a total of 8 years and wasn't released until 1946 because of the War, later he was kept in the camp "until further notice".

Aleksei was sent to Vorkutlag not because he was a political dissident or criminal, but because of his love affair with dictator Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana, which concluded in 1943 when Kapler was sentenced to five years on fabricated charges of anti-Soviet agitation.