This is the first of two articles on the
development of Siberia.

By George Morris

NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA

66 G

o East Young People — to Siberia’
may not sound as inviting to an American as
Horace Greeley’s slogan ‘““Go West Young
Man”’ that once lured many beyond the
Rockies. Nevertheless, hundreds of
thousands of young people are braving the
hardships and streaming to Siberia, populat-
ing its mushrooming cities.

This city of 1,300,000 in the heart of
Siberia’s fast-growing industrial area is typ-
ical of what’s taking place. We watched for
hours the young people and parents with
children in the May Day Parade proudly ex-
tolling the virtues of Siberia and its promise
for a better life. The night before we attended
the ‘‘Mayovka’”’ celebration of the Kom-
somol in nearby Academgorodok, the famed
science center, with some 15,000 cheering
youth, :

Omsk, like Novosibirsk, was a small town
before the revolution; today its residents
also number over a million. Siberia now has
about a dozen cities-with more than a half-
million population and many more which are
approaching that number. The world’s
biggest hydroelectric power stations are
here as are rich minerals, oil, gas, gold and
so on. In fact there is really no limit to what
further prospecting will bring to this area,
which is twice the size of the whole United
States, and whose tremendous rivers contain
unlimited power resources.

Novosibirsk’s significance is not only in
that it is the most populous city in Siberia and
a big center for the production of heavy elec-
trical machinery, aircraft, agricultural
machinery, textile products, construction
materials, etc. It is the ‘‘brain’” center for
Siberia’s development. In addition to
Academgorodok, there are two other major
centers for scientific study, technical-
scientific research and planning; dozens of
branches of institutes specializing in various
fields of science Sat technoieey and 14
higher education establishments. Seventy
thousand persons in the Novosibirsk area are
employed in this vast network of science, and
one fourth of them are scientists, resear-
chers and assistants. It is doubtful if there is
anywhere in the world with such a concent-
ration and mobilization of science for a given
objective.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 22, 1977—Page 4

May 18 marked 20 years since construc-
tion began of Academgorodok. The Central
Committee of the Communist Party and the
Soviet government took the step to launch a
general drive for the development of Siberi-
a’s unlimited resources. That made neces-
sary the establishment of a Siberian division
of the National Academy of Sciences of the
USSR and a chain of affiliates of scientific
institutes in agricultural and many other
fields. Both the rapid expansion of the
Siberian-based scientific progress and the
phenomenal growth of Siberia’s industry are
due in large measure to the scientists’ close
relation to regional production, the produc-
tion workers and the students graduating
from the higher learning establishments.

Very noticeable is the large number of
younger people with Doctors and Candidates
of Science degrees. Youths graduating from
Science courses have an especially favorable
opportunity here to rise in their fields. They
work as assistants to scientists and experts
as early as their last year in school. And
there is no fear of “‘competition’”’: they are
encouraged to show initiative and innova-
tion. The same holds true for all occupations.

In an interview with Dr. Vaniamin V.
Alexeyev, deputy director of science of the
Institute of History, Philology and
Philosophy of the Siberian Department of the
USSR’s Academy of Sciences, I asked how he
explained the large flow of young people to
Siberia. He gave a number of reasons: the
“romanticism’’ of youth to see and travel;
independence from parents; the ease of get-
ting new homes, especially for newly-weds,
in the rapidly rising Siberian apartment
buildings. Also, he observed, wages run
higher. As a rule they are 15% above the
occupational classifications in the European
USSR. In the colder areas and the far east
wages are as much as double the basic rates.
Dr. Alexeyev also stressed the natural desire

of young people to build and see their. ~

achievements.

The 35-million member Young Com-
munist League (Komsomol) has been the
major force in mobilizing young volunteers
to work on the many big projects under way
in the USSR, like Siberia’s Baikal-Amur rail-
road (BAM), the earlier Krasnoyarsk and
Bratsk hydroelectric projects and hundreds
of others. The majority of about 80,000 on
BAM now are Komsomol members.

No sooner do these projects get under way
than the construction of apartment houses
begins. In the case of BAM many new towns
rose along the projected path of the 2,000-
mile railroad, some of which crossed the
permafrost territory in Yakutia. Already
those new towns have schools, stores,

childcare centers, cultural establishments
and hospitals. Many young people who came
from the west remain to populate. the new
towns or live in the existing cities. The shor-
ter summers and long, cold winters don’t
seem to bother them after the initial hard-
ships.

During the conversation with Dr.
Alexeyev, I spoke of the construction project

under way in Alaska where oil companies .
want a pipeline to go from the arctic shore oil |:

deposits to the southern part. I recalled how
the native Eskimo peoples protested and
demonstrated against the invasion of oil
company ‘civilization’ and the seizure of
their lands much as was done in the bloody
drive westward in mainland U.S. And, ac-
cording to much of the publicity on pipeline
construction in Alaska, the fears of the na-
tive peoples were more than justified: pros-
titution, narcotic addiction, extremely high
prices and crime were the first fruits for the
peoples on the western side of the Bering
Strait.

“Oh, there is nothing like that here,”’
exclaimed Dr. Alexeyev. ‘‘The peoples of the
autonomous republics, like the Yakuts,
Buriats and others on whose terri-
tory BAM and other new structures and in-
dustries are built, welcome them most en-
thusiastically.”” He noted that the Soviet Un-
ion’s nationalities policy for the past 60 years
has put relatively greater efforts to develop
the lands of the many non-Russian peoples
kept in backwardness and illiteracy under
ezarism. Illiteracy was wiped out long ago in
those areas. ‘‘Yakutia has a highly de-
veloped institute,” he observed. Many of the
national peoples are in the sciences,
technological and intellectual fields, and
many others are nationally famous artists.

Dr. Alexeyev opened one of the two books
he had written on the electrification of
Siberia. He came to a table which listed the
number of each of the 51 nationalities that
took part in the construction of the famed
‘Bratsk hydroelectric station in 1960. Of the
28,000 workers 22,000 were Russians; the rest
were Ukrainians, Belorussians, Tatars,
Buryats, Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Yakuts and so
on. His study shows the same on the still big-
ger Krasnoyarsk project. The cities that
grew out of these giant projects are as multi-
racial as Asia.

Intermarriage is developing a population. |
that can only be described as ‘‘Soviet.”” At |
the May Day Parade we saw faces ranging |
from the nordic white to the dark brown-o! |
Central Asia and southern Caucuasus to the”
Asian of the Kazakhstans and the Yakuts. |

Most impressive was the trip to the Sibe- |
rian Heavy Electrical Machinery plant |
where 5,000 workers turn out mostly hy-
drogenerators and turbogenerators for
power stations running to a capacity as high
as 500,000 kilowat power eath. Ahalfdozenof |
the leading workers in the plant union com- |
mittee described to me their work that |
earned them the Red Banner of Labor. They |
made the generators for the Bratsk hy- |
droelectric power station that has a four |
million kilowat capacity, second largest in |
the Soviet Union. As I went through the plant
that began production in 1953, I saw the tre-
mendous machines these workers were turn- |
ing out, running in one case to a height of |
three stories. |

The achievements of thse workers
dramatized how rapidly Siberians are ac-
quiring skill and getting in stride with the
scientific-technological revolution. Forty-
five percent of the workers are women; 19 |
percent are youth. A high percentage have
worked at the plant since its éarly days.

The pattern of union organization in the |
works is exactly as it is in the many other
plants I visited in the Soviet Union. Eleven’ |
commissions of the plant union committee
handle the major union and socio-economic |
problems of the workers and their families.

- Their wages, averaging 187 rubles a month, |

are about 15% above the base rates in the
European parts of the country. Judging by
the description of their conditions, the union
seems well organized. There are six plant
restaurants which serve hot meals at 60
kopeks. There are childcare centers, pioneer
camps, a cultural club, a young technicans
club, libraries, a sports center, vacation re- —
sorts in Siberia and in the Caucasus. These
workers have acquired both the skill to pro- |
duce very complex machines and to make |
better lives for themselves through their un- |
ion.

The Bratsk hydroelectric power