Nature in the Way: Turning 'Tracts' into Throughfares in the Soviet North, 1925-1935

• In Event: Empire in the Way: Controlling and Liberating the Narratives of the Russian North

Abstract

The centuries-long Russian imperial effort to gain control over the north using road and rail networks was still in play after the Bolshevik Revolution. Bogs, nomadic peoples, and “glukhogo ropota” by the peasant forced laborers provided significant challenges to the engineers who were tasked with linking population centers from Arkhangelsk to Murmansk. This paper will use official reports and engineering documents from the St. Petersburg Scientific-Technical Archive to trace how the technocratic approach of the NEP period would be replaced by the frenetic forced enthusiasm of the early Stalin era.

Author

• Tracy Nichols Busch, Ferris State U