Look first at the map and spot the Kolyma river -- not too far from the Bering Strait, and know that the Russian Gulag system of slavery and misery is graphicaly described in the Preface to Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" -- wich begins with these three paragraphs ...
"In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream -- and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were reported in so fresh a state, the correspondent reported, that those present broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.
The magazine no doubt astonished its small audience with the news of how successuflly the flesh of fish could be kept fresh in a frozen state. But few, indeed, among its readers were able to decipher the genuine and heroic meaning of this incautious report.
As for us, however -- we understood instantly. We could picture the entire scene right down to the smallest details: how those present broke up the ice in frenzied haste; how, flouting the higher claims of ichthyology and elbowing each other to be first, they tore off chunks of the prehistoric flesh and hauled them over to the bonfire to thaw them out and bolt them down."
A stark reminder of life under the USSR