FORTY THOUSAND AGAINST THE ARCTIC

'Russia has embarked upon a great scheme of indus-
trialization, navigation and aviation in the Arctic. We are
building towns and ports in the Polar regions, factories,
mines, vegetable plantations, aerodromes, schools and hos-
pitals. People believe that the Arctic is waste land, incap-
able of development, useless to mankind, a frozen desert.
They are utterly wrong. The cold is no obstacle against
human habitation. Usually the winter temperature in the
Arctic does not fall below 40 minus. Such temperatures are
quite usual in other parts of Russia, long recognized as
industrial centres; the Ukraine, the Urals, The lowest
temperatures do not occur in the Arctic at all, the pole of
greatest cold lies only 90 miles away from the Okhotsk Sea
in the Far East. The climatic characteristic of the Arctic
is the cool summer. But this is bearable. Even plants find
that the continuous sunshine which prevails day and night
during the Polar summer compensates them for the chill
in August, Beautiful flowers grow in the Arctic—violets,
marguerites, forget-me-nots, they grow even bigger than
here, because their growth is not arrested overnight. The
same applies to our cabbage plantations. We get larger
cabbage leaves in the Arctic than on the Volga. The people
in our Polar towns eat fresh vegetables, which they grow
themselves in the open air in hotbeds and hot-houses:
tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, cauliflower. Now we are
experimenting with wheat and oats. Our geographic posi-
tion demands that we should look north. The whole
northern coast of Asia is ours. It is our only independent
coastline. We own half the Polar basin, half of all the shores
of the World's Arctic Sea, 6000 miles of it. There is coal,
oil, gold; silver, platinum, nickel and plenty of other valu-
able metals underneath the ice, precious tin, delicious fish
and excellent timber—we are going to get them* Our
largest rivers flow north into the icebound sea, the Obi,
Yenisei and Lena. They are the longest rivers of Asia,
among the longest of the world. We are going to take

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