Joseph Stalin's deadly railway to nowhere

BBC News ^ | 6 June 2012 | Last updated at 19:23 ET | Lucy Ash

[Olog-hai]

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. …

Lyudmila (Lipatova) and I had uncovered a tiny section of one of Joseph Stalin's cruelest and most ambitious projects—the Trans-Polar Main Line. It was (Stalin's) 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 (1,609-km) railway stretching from the city of Inta, in Komi Autonomous Republic, through Salekhard to Igarka, on the Yenisei River. …

The labor force was almost entirely made up of "enemies of the people"—prisoners convicted of "political" offenses. Gulags 501 and 503 were created specially for the railway, and every 6-8 miles (10-12 km) along the track, there were camps. Prisoners built their own wooden barracks, but the unlucky ones in the front units had to take shelter in canvas tents. …

According to some estimates, 300,000 prisoners were enslaved on the project and nearly a third of them perished in the process. But Lyudmila says that the real death toll and exact number of camps and prisoners are not known since no accurate records were kept.

By the time Stalin died in 1953, over 370 miles (600 km) had been built, but it was never completed. … The tracks sank back into the tundra. The railway to nowhere, with its huge cost in human lives, became known as the Dead Road. …

[PhilDragoo]

Now comes the boy-king whistling his esses, whispering to Medvedev of flexibility before fascism.

Anita Dunne swooned over Mao, and Frank Marshall Davis extolled the glorious Red Army.

Ayers not only did not repent of his little bomb episode, hiding behind women.

He also forecast eliminating twenty-five million who would resist the revolution.

Which we'll suffer if boy-king gets the greenlight.

The new trilateral: Putinburg, Beijing, the Red House.

Hurry, November.

Khrushchev denounced Stalin but was replaced by Brezhnev for pursuing detente with Kennedy.

Clinton broke with the Technicolor Catastrophe but is back--perhaps The Beard was looking at unemployment.

PRESIDENT GAGA HAS CASHED HER CHEQUE

[Fred Nerks]

Phil, you sure do have a way with words...!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2893282/posts?page=41#41

[daisy mae for the usa]

That’s art. Really good!

[Hugin]

You are right. It was the White Sea, not the Black Sea.

[cunning_fish]

>>>>>>>>>>>Goddamn that is one bigass country in landmass. How are these idiots ever going to defend every inch of that 50 years from now given their imploding birthrate?>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well, they have a world’s second largest illegal alien population of more than 10 million people from Cenrtal Asia, China and Vietnam and these people are breeding like rabbits on welfare.

[Elle Bee]

sort of like an Obama high speed rail project

.

[Elle Bee]

sort of like an Obama high speed rail project

.