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In keeping with Soviet mentality, the concepts tend to exceed the norm, and the phrase "gigantic work" figures constantly in the propaganda. Three great river systems, each larger than the Mississippi River itself, drain Siberia, but their estuaries, emptying into the polar sea, are still frozen when their tributaries are thawing, thus causing a backing up of waters which turns areas larger than Texas into impenetrable swamp. One of the great Siberian concepts is to reverse the direction of these rivers and cause them to flow south into the Aral and Caspian Seas. Another ambitious project, only partly successful, was the effort last year to plant an area of "Virgin Land" the size of the two Dakotas with corn and wheat to feed the new population.
Third Base. But one gigantic project about which the Soviet people hear little is the secret industrial activity in what Khrushchev calls "our third powerful base." This is a huge region 1,000 miles deeper into Siberia than the Kuznetsk basin, where a score of towns has sprung up in the past ten years. In the area of Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, all kinds of factories, many of them finishing and precision industries, are reportedly being established. But the clue to what actually goes on in this area is provided by the number of powerful hydroelectric stations being built. One hydroelectric plant on the Angara River, which empties into Lake Baikal, by 1960 will produce 8 billion more kilowatts per year than the Grand Coulee, the U.S.'s biggest power complex. Electric power is a basic ingredient of atomic production, and if the Soviet Union has atomic industries comparable in size with the AEC plants at Oak Ridge, Hanford and Savannah, Russian specialists believe that they are probably hidden in the wild, rugged country hereabouts.
It is to this far Irkutsk-Baikal region that most of the new immigrants from the West are bound. But beyond Lake Baikal coal mines are operating full force, and on the shores of the Pacific oil is being won. Sovietskaya Gavan is being built into a port to rival Vladivostok. Where salmon fishing and gold mining were once the only activities, yet one more industrial complex is being created. But production is less important here than people. In the great empty spaces along the borders of Siberia and Red China, a new, active population will function as a protective ring, as well as source of manpower, for the secret industries of Irkutsk-Baikal. Said Nikita Khrushchev at the recent 20th Party Congress: "In the next ten years we must convert Siberia into the biggest base of the Soviet Union."