Belushya Guba Belushya Guba Belushya Guba (, lit. "beluga whale" "bay"), also Belushye, is a work settlement and the administrative center of Novaya Zemlya District of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Gusinaya Zemlya peninsula of the Yuzhny Island of the Novaya Zemlya arctic archipelago. Its population was reported as a decline of more than 20% from It is the main permanent settlement of the island territory of Novaya Zemlya. A large proportion of its population is made up of military personnel associated with the nuclear test sites located on the island. The whole Novaya Zemlya archipelago, including Belushya Guba, is an
Novaya Zemlya lost more than three-fourths of the merchant ships committed to the convoy — more than one fourth of the losses to American shipping in all convoys to northern Russia. The destruction of PQ-17 significantly affected the people dependent on supplies carried by the ill-fated merchant ships. Karlo Stajner, a Gulag prisoner in Norilsk in 1942, wrote “the German cruiser’s attack on Novaya Zemlya and the sinking of the food transports had catastrophic consequences…the population was left without provisions…supplies in the warehouses of Norilsk [were] distributed among the NKVD, the guards, and the few free civilians that lived in the town.”