Russia “Has Growing with Siberia”: Soviet Power in the Battle Against Nature and Territory for Resources

Abstract

The conceptualization of industrialization of the northern territories was the core of primary resources development in the Siberian North. The industrial standard was best implemented in the North of Western Siberia to create the West Siberian oil-and-gas complex. By the beginning of the 1980s, 66% of oil and gas condensate production, and 63% of natural gas in the USSR. The North of Siberia’s industrial development led to the expansion of the environment and reduced natural space. The paper analyzes land management in the Russian North in the late 1920s–mid-1930s. Land management was based on the class principle, and it acquired radical forms of land redistribution. By 1934, due to the poor peoples’ resistance, collectivization was not successful. In 1934–1935, some modes for the Far North development were formed: the dominance of economic organizations, the main northern sea route (Gravsevmorput) creation, the deployment of a network of economic and industrial stations. The research shows that the socialist colonization under the Stalinist leadership was “reverse colonization.” During this process, the authorities provided the territory of the region with cheap labor. The Stalinist regime managed to achieve such a structure of the population, where from 20 to 40% of the permanent personnel employed in the main sectors of the region's economy were special settlers. In comparison, the Gulag’s prisoners who built the “Dead Road” accounted for more than 85% of the number of builders. The role of Dalstroy in the development of the North-East of Russia is also considered. Dalstroy operated on a huge territory of 2.8 million square kilometers. In 25 years, it has done a colossal amount of work—only their geological exploration covered more than 1.9 million square kilometers. The volume of state capital investments in Dalstroy for its activity from 1932 to 1956 amounted to 13.7 bil. rub in estimated prices. Thus, as the result of the abovementioned processes, significant social and economic infrastructure has been created in the North-East of the country.