Malaya Dudkinskaya Adit

Malaya Dudkinskaya Adit is an abandoned system of underground mine workings in Ufa, in the Republic of Bashkortostan. It runs under the slope on which the Zelyonaya Roshcha (Green Grove) neighborhood stands, not far from the Ufa exhibition grounds (VDNKh). The total length of the passages is about 2.6 kilometers, making it one of the longest artificial underground systems in the city.

History

A gypsum deposit on the slope above the Ufimka River was discovered in the middle of the 19th century, long before the Zelyonaya Roshcha neighborhood was built. Gypsum and flagstone were mined here: according to some sources work stopped in the early 1950s, according to others it continued until the 1980s. The adit takes its name from the nearby village of Dudkino, of which only the name of the underground workings has survived to this day.

After mining stopped, the workings were never reinforced or sealed off, so over time they began to gradually collapse and turned into a place that occasional visitors come to see for its underground chambers and tunnels rather than for any working mine.

Legends and testimonies

A number of urban stories are tied to the Dudkinskaya Adit. According to one of them, three miners died in the workings in the early 20th century. A later and better-known story concerns the death in 1983 of six students from an automotive transport college, who suffocated from carbon monoxide after breaking safety rules while descending into the tunnels. Since then visitors have reported encountering the ghosts of the dead students inside the adit, and according to a popular urban legend their bodies are still said to lie somewhere in the tunnels, untouched by decay.

Other stories include one about a boy who got lost in the underground passages and came back to the surface with grey hair and unable to speak, as well as a legend about an entire secret underground city with a metro and a reservoir supposedly built beneath Ufa in Soviet times. None of these stories are confirmed, but they are part of what makes the adit known beyond Bashkortostan.

Current state

Today the adit is abandoned and unsafe to enter. In 2018 a major collapse occurred inside it, which local residents link to the echo of a distant earthquake. The workings are divided by rockfalls into three sections, and the passage between the first and second is only possible through one of these collapses. The ceilings in places rest on rotten wooden beams and can give way at any moment. Inside visitors find rusted metal parts, construction debris, and an underground lake that looks more like a large puddle. The entrance itself is a narrow, muddy crawl space; it has repeatedly been bricked up or barred with an iron grille, but the way into the adit keeps being reopened.

Getting there

The Dudkinskaya Adit is located in Ufa, next to the VDNKh exhibition grounds and the Zelyonaya Roshcha neighborhood. It can be reached on foot: from VDNKh, head down to the ferry crossing over the Ufimka River and continue along paths on the slope. An alternative is to walk from the same crossing along the Ufimka riverbank, following a road or trail. The start of the route is at approximately 54.7257°N, 56.0217°E, and the entrance to the adit itself is near 54.7236°N, 56.0279°E.