1938: Siberia

In 1914 there were less than 11,000,000 people in all Siberia, a land about as large as North America. Now there are 25,000,000. Nearly the whole population formerly lived on the narrow belt of land along the Trans-Siberian railroad, especially in the cities that had arisen where the railroad crossed the northward rivers. To the south were the dry steppes; to the north, the vast, cold forests.

During two 5-year plans the steppes have been encroached upon by tractors and dry-farming methods of enthusiastic pioneers, of men who came for better wages, and of kulak exiles. The gold mines, producing almost 10,000,000 ounces, have reached a figure little behind that of South Africa. The recent development of the south Ural iron mines has collected a large community at Magnitogorsk, while 1,400 miles to the east, in the upper Ob valley, Stalinsk and Novosibirsk are the nuclei of another large community devoted to the mining of coal. There are blast furnaces at each end of the 1,400 miles while many trains run in each direction to bring coal and iron together. In the Stalinsk-Novosibirsk area there is probably now almost a million in population.

Transportation also extends north. During some three months of the summer the Arctic Ocean is kept open by icebreakers; ships sail between Murmansk and Vladivostock. On the Yenesei River, 2,000 miles of navigable water is plied by about 50 steamers, and the many pine logs floating northward down the river have made a saw-mill center at Igarka, the natural Arctic port just within the Arctic circle. At Igarka live 15,000 apparently happy people, provided with fresh milk from 400 cows, with cabbages and root vegetables raised in the short summer, and tomatoes, lettuce and spinach grown in greenhouses.

A new railroad is being extended into Mongolia (Ulan Bator), highways are being extended, and air-planes connect Moscow with Urumchi and Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan); all of these increasing the cotton supplies and the political influence of the U.S.S.R. Since 1931 the Russians have gradually made Transbaikalia into a great barrack-arsenal, having now 400,000 superior troops, at least 100 planes of the first line, large stores of ammunition, food (it is said) to last a year, and about 100 submarines in the coastal waters. During 1938 the fortifications on the coast were strengthened, and at Changkufeng (see U.S.S.R.; Army; Foreign Policy) the soldiers fought well. Nevertheless the Siberians would not welcome interruption of their rapid material progress by a war.