saintpiesintrenaty & Socialist ‘boom town’ Soviet Union mining oil in Arctic field By Y. MARTYNOV MOSCOW Treti station, situated on the Pechora railway in the Soviet north country, has a small station building, some dozens of cottages seattered on the fringe of a wood and several tracks hedged in by a forest clearing. Quiet reigns in this backwoods. It does not seem possible that trains stop here. The first impression, however, is misleading. A train of empty tank cars has just left the station. With a rattle it passes the entrance switches and, turning sharply to the right, disappears behind a wall of age-old firs. After a few minutes the forest ends and a typical mining town spreads out before the’ engine driver; the open-work of a head- structure rises over a shaft, a large hill of snow-covered rock, the stone building of a compressor and boiler sections, and numerous houses. : Only coal dust is absent to round out the picture. There is no coal dust here for the simple reason that the shaft does not lead to coal but to oil. Ukhta oil was known long ago. Five centuries back the coastal “in- H-tests held race suicide LONDON A scientist, peering through. a microscope, has seen the possible effects of H-bomb tests on future generations. ; ‘ He is Dr. Roger Pilkington, gene- ticist and anthropologist, whose experiments with fruit flies—they breed so quickly that many gen- erations are born in one year — has led him to the conclusion that the tests may be leading mankind to commit racial suicide. He writes, in the current issue of the British ~journal Family Doctor, that the first two genera- tions of the flies showed no change when exposed to radioactivity. But in later generations, flies were produced with hereditary tumors and defects of limbs and eyes. Some eggs failed to de- velop because of the drastic changes in them. The number of deformities greatly increased with each ‘suc- cessive generation. “We can be reasonably sure that we have not yet subjected humanity to the same amount of extra radiation that my flies had,” he says. “But every new H-bomb test increases the total risk and it cannot be lightly dismissed,” he warns. “Tf radioactivity were to in- crease above a critical limit we should never be able to put things right again. “For one thing, the radioactivity would persist and we could not get rid of it. “Even stopping the tests at that stage would ‘be quite useless. Nor eould we discover until too late that we had overstepped the mark. “Merely testing H-bombs in some distant, desert may perhaps be leading us to commit what ~ some of the experts have bluntly called racial suicide.” habitants of the Pechora greased their cart wheels with “earth tar.” Individual Russian entrepreneurs made several attempts to organ- ize oil prospecting and production but failed. The natural wealth of the Soviet north was developed only in Soviet times. At the end of the twenties an integrated expedition of Soviet geologists found coal and oil here. Now, in the northern taiga, a large industrial district with oil and gas fields, coal mines, factories and well-appointed towns and indus- trial-townlets have sprung up. _* * xs Vasily Sokolov, a young en- gineer, deputy chief of one of the mines at the Ukhta oil field, points to a piece of brown sandstone and says: “Here is our ‘ore. The pores of the sandstone con- tain oil, but it is not so easy to ex- tract this extremely valuable, raw material. Many important products for the national economy are obtained from this heavy, thick oil resemb- ling pitch. It yields the “north- ern axle grease” used on the rail- ways in winter, which does not harden even at very low temper- atures. : Oil mining has a specific nature in Ukhta, the only oil field in the Soviet Union, and one of the few in the world, where oil is extracted through shafts. “We have a lot in common with miners,” says Sokolov. “It is not accidental that we are often call- ed miners.” Indeed their work in many re- spects is like that of miners. Oil is extracted in galleries resembling workings. The drilling rigs bore hundreds of wells into the oil- bearing strata and the gas pressure forces the oil to the mine workings where it is collected in basins. Powerful pumps pump the oil to vast reservoirs on ground level, where it is freed from the remain- ing water, heated, and filled into tank cars. Besides oil the Okhta oil-work- ers produce methane — a natural gas — which ‘is used in producing different kinds of technical soot for the rubber, lacquer and dye- stuff, and chemical industries. : x x * A good view of the large town can be had from the office of Nosa- kov, the field’s chief engineer. Amidst the time-aged wooden structures, which are being forced to the Ukhta river bank, stand the newly - built, large apartment houses whose number is increas- ing yearly. On Oktyabor and Pervomaisky streets, the principal thoroughfares of the town, these buildings form entire blocks. This young socialist town is growing and developing rapidly. “You see that derrick there?” asks Nosakov, pointing to a rickety structure. “It marks the ‘boundary of the new history of the Ukhta oil field. ‘ Thirty years ago there was nothing here but a single forsaken hut. And now, just look!” Ukhta is the administrative and cultural centre of a vast industrial area. It has a splendid palace of culture, a nice park, an hotel, the first automatic telephone station in the Komi ASSR, two secondary technical schools (oil extraction and railway), dining rooms, stores, children’s institutions, ‘hospitals, ten general-education schools, dif- ferent community service estab- lishments, a water main and sewer- age system. - ; The oil field’s power plant fur- nishes light to the town and to the adjacent workers’ communities. It has a comfortable ‘bus service which connects the town with the oil fields, some of which are situ- ated at a distance of over 65 miles. From an outpost, Ukhta is be- coming one of the most modern and attractive towns in the So- 29 viet Union. _Krushchev, Bulganin at embassy party This picture shows Nikita Krushchev, secretary of the Soviet Communist party (left) and Premier Nicolai Bulganin, drinking a toast with Mrs. Bohlen, wife of U.S. amr bassador Charles Bohlen, at the Fourth of July party held by the U.S. embassy in Moscow: ACHIEVEMENTS OUTLINED China will double output in 5 years Details of China’s First Five-Year Plan, disclosed at the opening meeting ° National Congress here, electrified the thousind deputies and brought them chee? e their feet again and again. The plan is startling because it gives the first bird’seye view of the spee which China is advancing toward socialism and industrialization. though less obvious, is the under- lying confidence of China’s lead- érs in the ability of the human race to preserve peace. This is a plan for peace and breathes peace in every phrase. Following are some of the high- lights of the report given by Vice- Premier Li Fu-chun. 1 The period covered by the plan is from the beginning of 1953 to the end of 1957. Dur- ing that period industrial out- put will rise 98 percent and output of modern industry will rise 104 percent. Symptomatic of the speed of socialist take-over here is that by the end of the plan, state, co-ops and joint state- private concerns will produce 87.8 percent of the industrial value, while private capital- ism will produce the remain- ing 12 percent, mainly on ful- filling state contracts. The plan gives actual figures of A Soviet technician is shown here instructing Chinese workers in the operation of newly-installed Soviet machinery. By ALAN WINNINGTON output in major industries | Steel will be trebled, power more than doubled, coal al- most doubled, and power gen- erators multiplied by seven. One instance of the confidence of the Chinese people in peace is the fact that they gave actual loca-! tions of two new iron and steel plants to be built at Wu- han and Paotow. No. 1 automo- bile plant will be finished dur- ing the plan, and No. 2 start- ed, together with a tractor WINNINGTON plant, two heavy machine building plants and 39 textile mills, These are some of the 694 major projects, including 150 which the Soviet Union is helping to ‘build and which form the core of in- dustrialization. 3 PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 15, 1955 — The plan outlines lines of advance to PEKING D d with cable: But just as DO" main hee Tet building socialist industl¥s. yp veloping cooperatives in rant ture and~handicrafts, and f forming private industtY plie commerce gradually concerns. Wages will rise by one rural spending powers agt! nd into i nird 22 thir cost «gapt? t the § 16s parable proportion. A po! time one-third of rur are expected to have tives. “One of the most importast J art jects in the whole plan 3s al house’ x oto” the © the > to hae of a comprehensive scheme ' yello¥ ess “China’s Sorrow’—the ~~~ River. : phe _ Vice-Premier Li indicated scope of the huge plan vert the “Sorrow” in of giant projects plants. and hy the plan’s end there million elementary sch reservoirs, dro-€& BY Education is not neglect a to to a sie irrig® ¥e jects! wi oleh —70 percent of school aE ren—unimaginable formely: | wil Students in higher e be 127 percent higher. u Li Fu-chun said that 4 vast projects were only } y with a government working class and such : e under © advance was impossibl talism. ; They would change into a rich, strong and ple and would ‘bring DEY Cog to the struggle for world Pla. It would take 15 years form China into a socl® dustrialized country 50 years to create a tion of socialist industr t He paid great tribute tO” a given by the Soviet Peoples’ Democracies. Ti ‘ i Li. warned that stay of P only be built on the b ity to state heavy in scale farming and private ownership 0 op? ae lization. dustlys duca «ese the CPM ar p happy * haPtred iC a e to Hane list, es an rope ia ] ; C0 alis™ i jae" transf0 ft the me4 production and commerce: ; p pace?