Stalin's deadly railway to nowhere

[klr]

Joseph Stalin's deadly railway to nowhere
By Lucy Ash Radio 4's Crossing Continents

In the Russian Arctic lies buried an unfinished railway built by prisoners of Stalin's gulags. For decades no-one talked about it. But one woman is now telling the story of the thousands who suffered there - and there is talk of bringing back to life the abandoned railway itself.

The snowdrifts come up to our waists and the wind stings my face, but Lyudmila Lipatova, a sturdy woman in her 70s, does not seem to notice and hands me a shovel.

"This is the place", she says. "Now let's start digging!"

After a bit, my spade hit something metallic. We scrape away the snow and examine the rusty rails. Along the side of one piece of track I notice some writing: the acronym ZIS followed by Zavod Imeni Stalina, Factory - named after Joseph Stalin.

We are in a nondescript neighbourhood on the outskirts of Salekhard, the capital of the Yamal Nenets Autonomous Region.

Founded in 1595 as a Cossack and missionary outpost, the city is one of the oldest in the Russian Far North. Apart from Rovaniemi in Finland, it is the only city in the world to straddle the Arctic Circle.

The city museum boasts a 10,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth, nicknamed Lyuba. She made headlines around the world when she was discovered in 2007 by a nomadic reindeer herder.

But Salekhard is notorious for another reason - its Gulag past.

Lyudmila and I had uncovered a tiny section of one of Joseph Stalin's cruellest and most ambitious projects - the Trans-Polar Mainline.

It was his attempt to conquer the Arctic - part of what he called his Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature.

The scheme was supposed to link the eastern and western parts of Siberia with a 1,000-mile (1,609km) railway stretching from the city of Inta, in Komi Autonomous Republic, through Salekhard to Igarka, on the Yenisei River.

...

Full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18116112

[Atheist-Lite]

Joseph Stalin's deadly railway to nowhere
By Lucy Ash Radio 4's Crossing Continents

In the Russian Arctic lies buried an unfinished railway built by prisoners of Stalin's gulags. For decades no-one talked about it. But one woman is now telling the story of the thousands who suffered there - and there is talk of bringing back to life the abandoned railway itself.

The snowdrifts come up to our waists and the wind stings my face, but Lyudmila Lipatova, a sturdy woman in her 70s, does not seem to notice and hands me a shovel.

"This is the place", she says. "Now let's start digging!"

After a bit, my spade hit something metallic. We scrape away the snow and examine the rusty rails. Along the side of one piece of track I notice some writing: the acronym ZIS followed by Zavod Imeni Stalina, Factory - named after Joseph Stalin.

We are in a nondescript neighbourhood on the outskirts of Salekhard, the capital of the Yamal Nenets Autonomous Region.

Founded in 1595 as a Cossack and missionary outpost, the city is one of the oldest in the Russian Far North. Apart from Rovaniemi in Finland, it is the only city in the world to straddle the Arctic Circle.

The city museum boasts a 10,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth, nicknamed Lyuba. She made headlines around the world when she was discovered in 2007 by a nomadic reindeer herder.

But Salekhard is notorious for another reason - its Gulag past.

Lyudmila and I had uncovered a tiny section of one of Joseph Stalin's cruellest and most ambitious projects - the Trans-Polar Mainline.

It was his attempt to conquer the Arctic - part of what he called his Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature.

The scheme was supposed to link the eastern and western parts of Siberia with a 1,000-mile (1,609km) railway stretching from the city of Inta, in Komi Autonomous Republic, through Salekhard to Igarka, on the Yenisei River.

...

Full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18116112

For a few dollars more...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX4gALZD ... re=related[/youtube]

[JimC]

The Fat Controller would have made it work...

[redunderthebed]

The Fat Controller would have made it work...

You'd have to thaw the cunt out every morning with an oxytorch.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hero Projects were hot in the USSR. Digging a canal from the Volga to the Baltic cost thousands of lives and I'm not sure it ever actually was used. Draining the Pripet Marshes, giving the Sovs hundreds of square miles of new farm land to mismanage, altered the environment in the area and is deemed one of the great ecological disasters of the 20th century. (Bonus, Chernobyl is there.)

Command economies, where the boss say, "do it", and you do it.

[Atheist-Lite]

Hero Projects were hot in the USSR. Digging a canal from the Volga to the Baltic cost thousands of lives and I'm not sure it ever actually was used. Draining the Pripet Marshes, giving the Sovs hundreds of square miles of new farm land to mismanage, altered the environment in the area and is deemed one of the great ecological disasters of the 20th century. (Bonus, Chernobyl is there.)

Command economies, where the boss say, "do it", and you do it.

They're all command economies. The difference is becoming less and less with time.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hero Projects were hot in the USSR. Digging a canal from the Volga to the Baltic cost thousands of lives and I'm not sure it ever actually was used. Draining the Pripet Marshes, giving the Sovs hundreds of square miles of new farm land to mismanage, altered the environment in the area and is deemed one of the great ecological disasters of the 20th century. (Bonus, Chernobyl is there.)

Command economies, where the boss say, "do it", and you do it.

They're all command economies. The difference is becoming less and less with time.

You don't know what that term means, obviously.

[Atheist-Lite]

Hero Projects were hot in the USSR. Digging a canal from the Volga to the Baltic cost thousands of lives and I'm not sure it ever actually was used. Draining the Pripet Marshes, giving the Sovs hundreds of square miles of new farm land to mismanage, altered the environment in the area and is deemed one of the great ecological disasters of the 20th century. (Bonus, Chernobyl is there.)

Command economies, where the boss say, "do it", and you do it.

They're all command economies. The difference is becoming less and less with time.

You don't know what that term means, obviously.

There is no choice for the vast majority. They do what they are told or they become a economic casualty, one way or another. It could get much worse with the way things are going, I see what you mean.