The Geology of Gulag Gold

Gold mining prisoners in the Kolyma Basin.  They are mining placer gold that is found throughout the area.

The Gulag Ore Field or more correctly the Ducat gold/silver deposit that is located in the central part of the Balygychan-Sugoi trough that is a graben shaped depression that is located near the town of Omsukchan, Kolyma that adjoins to its north the Okhotsk – Chukota a marginal continental volcanic belt.

The deposits of gold are centered on a Cretaceous (ca. 120 million year old) volcanic dome consisting of ultra-potassic rhyolites, ignimbrites and tuff that are interlayered with black argillites.  The whole volcanic complex is intruded at depth by a late Cretaceous (ca. 85 million year old) granite that is from 1,200 – 1,300 meters below the surface.

More gold miners at work in the Kolyma Basin

There were pulses of igneous activity that caused hydrothermal activity to occur in the dome that involved large quantities of fractured, porous and highly permeable Cretaceous rhyolite sills and other steeply dipping subvolcanic bodies to be affected covering an area that covered more then 25 square kilometers.

Most of the known mineralization was later to the younger intrusion that includes tin bearing greisen-type that occurs in the contact zones of the granitic plutons. They ore deposits himself were located at a considerable distance from the granite.

Part of the Kolyma Basin is within the Arctic Circle giving it a sub-Arctic climate having very cold winters that can last for up to six months. Most of the area is covered with permafrost and tundra. During the winter temperatures range from -19°C to -38°C with even lower temperatures found in the interior. Besides gold there are also rich reserves of silver, 10, tungsten, mercury, antimony, coal, oil and peat. It has been estimated that the area contains in addition to gold 1.2 billion tons of oil and one point 5,000,000,000 m³ of gas.

This is the area whose mineral wealth was discovered by Yuri Bilibin in the 1920s that was quickly developed into the infamous Gulag prison camps by Stalin in the 1930s. There was also the area Bilibin used as the model for his theory of Metallogeny and Global Tectonics that has gained much traction sense of the world of geology.

Development began in 1932 and of Joseph Stalin the Kolyma Basin became the most notorious place for the Gulag labor camps. It has been estimated that over 1 million people died en route to the area or in the Kolyma’s between from 1932 until 1954. It was Kolyma’s reputation that caused Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ferrite his famous book the Gulag Archipelago. In this book Solzhenitsyn came to characterize it as the “pole cold and cruelty.”

Gold and platinum were found in the Kolyma during the time when industrialization began in the USSR under Stalin’s First Five Year Plan in a period when the need for capital that would finance this economic development.  The Kolyma Basin gold was a perfect fit and development of the basin began in 1932 based on prisoner labor. 

In 1932 construction began on Kolyma Highway into the interior those that become known as the Road of Bones because of the number of people in Paris in its construction. This role eventually came to serve 80 different camps that were not have around the region of the uninhabited taiga. The first director of the Kolyma camps was Eduard Berzin who was the Cheka officer that was removed in 1937 and shot during the period of great purges of the USSR.

Far Eastern Russia geologically is North American plate that also includes Kamchatka Peninsula in northern Hokkaido Island of Japan. This being so it is probable that the gold deposits of this part of Siberia are closely related to those found in the Tintina gold belt of Alaska. It also indicates that most landmasses on Earth are really just one supercontinent with the sole exception being Antarctica.

Gold Occurrences in Paraguay

Map of Paraguay   - CIA

Paraguay is the next area in South America slated for heavy mineral exploration including gold.  Already more then 15 permits have been awarded for the exploration of gold in the country.  Concessions for gold exploration have already been awarded in the southern department of Guaira where several gold nuggets have been already found in the process of exploration.  In addition there are several other interesting areas that are yet to be explored.

In addition to the gold mining prospects there has also been considerable interest in diamonds and platinum group metals combined with nickel.  Most of the companies involved in exploration are still in the prospecting stage.  One of the companies involved in diamond exploration is Toronto-based Rex Diamond (TSX-RXD) that recently asked the government for a six month extension of its license.

The undersecretary also indicated that there are other mid-sized mining companies looking for gold and diamonds throughout the country.  Many of these companies are looking to develop small scale mining operations on their finds.  Meanwhile the Paraguayan Congress is working to overhaul the country’s mining code that will give the authorities and mining industry a greater measure of security for investors and clarify many aspects of the mining code.

Although there has been no recent volcanism in Paraguay there are at least two ancient volcanic provinces in the country to provide heat engines for the depositation of gold.  These are the Alto Paraguay Department where 240 million year old alkaline volcanic rocks underlie younger sediments.  At one point these rocks were explored for their potential uranium and phosphate deposits.

The other area of volcanism is found in a narrow strip along the Parana River these tholetic basalts that belong to the Parana Traps makes up most of the bedrock and underlies younger sedimentary rocks.  These traps also are host to the famous amethyst geodes found in Paraguay and Uruguay.  These volcanics were erupted in the Early Cretaceous as the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean and created minor outcrops seen today in a graben structure seen between Asuncion and Villarrica in the Amambay Department.  Cretaceous volcanism was also responsible for small sodic alkaline intrusions found in the Misiones Department of southern Paraguay.

The rivers that drain suspected gold bearing areas can contain much placer gold that in many cases is of viable commercial mines, but the same placer gold can be used to trace hard-rock gold deposits.  Gold can be found in areas that have undergone volcanism whether it is recent of something that has happened in the geologic past.