Once dubbed a "cursed black planet" in camp inmates' songs, the river is now a lifeline for a shrinking community.

Under Soviet rule, the authorities used to fly in fruit to make sure residents had a balanced diet. Now with no more state subsidies, local industries, or ships in the port -- infrastructure that made life possible in this remote corner -- those who still live here relish what the river offers: fish.

Just the names of the local species are enough to tantalise the tastebuds -- sturgeon, Siberian white salmon, broad whitefish, Arctic grayling, cisco and burbot with its butter-soft liver.

"For the neighbourhood, this river is its daily bread," said Valery Gizatulin, a 45-year-old fisherman at the Markhayanova fishing concession which in Soviet days hosted a large fish factory.

"There used to be good infrastructure around this area. Now only fishing and hunting remain for locals."

Eight time zones east of Moscow, residents here call the rest of Russia "the mainland" -- it is so difficult to reach that this region might as well be an island.

Gizatulin gulps down a shot of vodka and forks up a generous chunk of steaming hot fried sturgeon: "The river provides us with a livelihood, it gives us fish, money, everything. Otherwise, we would not have survived here."

In the nearby regional centre of Chersky, bread costs three times more than in Moscow. Apples and onions cost US$5 or more per kg. Local fish is sold at just US$2 per kilo.

"Our staples, fish and (reindeer or moose) meat, are real life-savers," Gizatulin said.

The fisherman guides visitors into what looks like the eerie realm of the Snow Queen: a maze of ice-covered underground corridors cut in the Arctic permafrost.

The temperature down there is a steady minus 16 Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit). The tunnels used to be a huge fridge, big enough to accommodate 250 tonnes of fish for the factory.

Now the fishermen catch just a fraction of this amount, but still store it in the natural freezer.

FADED GLORY

A tough, blue-collar town, what little glory Chersky may once have had is now thoroughly faded.

In Soviet days, it was not only a major supply route for northern Siberia, it was also the main lifeline to support the Soviet Union's Arctic expeditions and was Moscow's main military outpost in the area.

Its airport had daily flights to Moscow and the regional capital Yakutsk, and up to 25 giant barges and tankers were anchored off its busy port daily, waiting to be unloaded. People were compensated for the hardships with wages several times higher than in Moscow.

But Chersky's heyday was over soon after the 1991 overnight collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since then, the population has fallen almost four-fold to around 3,000, most of the cranes at its port are rusting and at the airport, when the occasional small plane makes a landing it bumps along a gravel runway where the tarmac has crumbled.

The town looks like a war zone. Many apartment blocks were demolished or set on fire after the residents left and the buildings developed huge cracks in their walls, caused by the permafrost thawing beneath the foundations.

Mounds of rubble, mangled metal constructions, wrecked military installations and plundered storage facilities dot the area surrounded by the wild Arctic tundra.

Chersky is the centre of the Nizhnekolymsky district in northeastern Yakutia, an area almost three times the size of Belgium but populated by no more than 5,000 people.