The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present The Pacific Story. In the mounting fury of world conflict, events in the Pacific are taking on ever greater importance. Here is the story of the Pacific and the millions of people who live around this greatest sea. The drama of the peoples whose destiny is at stake in the Pacific war. Here as another public service is the tale of the war in the Pacific and its meaning to us and to the generations to come. Siberia's people, the secret of her strength. That man came out here from Lenin's yard. The foreman, the mine director, pointed to a blond Russian. That man down there came from the Ukraine. From the grain fields of the Ukraine out here to Siberia. That man over there came from the Donetsk base. He came out here to teach these Yakuts out of mine with modern machinery. Five hundred miles inland from the Sea of Akats in the region of Yakuts, men from all over the USSR are working alongside the native Yakuts, the slant-eyed Asiatics, who for centuries have trapped and traded in this frozen wilderness. The European Russians work with them with zeal and enterprise. Those Russians came out here to Soviet Russia, not in chains as I came 40 years ago. They came out here because they wished to come. The Konyin had come to Siberia as an exile. Twenty million Russians came out here to Soviet Asia in the first year after Hitler attacked us in 1941. Twenty million in the first year. More have come since. The slow migration to Siberia, which had begun long ago as a mere trickle, had overnight turned into a flood. The European Russians came bag and baggage to work out their destiny with the Yakuts, the Tunguses, the Lukwari, the Koryaks, the Gilyaks, the Samoyeds. The hardships of Siberia tempered and toughened them, made them strong and resourceful. The Russians mixed with these people and with the pioneers and with the descendants of the exiles who had been sent out here in the days of the Tsars. Today, Soviet Asia is humming with activity. But it is not the blast furnaces, nor the mines, nor the aircraft factories, nor the steel mills that make Soviet Asia strong. It is the people. The people. The people made the cities rise out of the wilderness. First came the trappers and the fur merchants. They penetrated across the thousands of miles of Siberian wilderness, even across the Bering Straits down into Alaska. Then came the Cossacks, who were given large parcels of land on the frontiers in return for military service. Then the exiles. Ah, another one. Poor miserable wretch. Come in, come in. The Bonian was 26 when he was arrested in Moscow in 1905 and locked up in the house of preliminary detention. What are you here for? They, they did not tell me. They just came to my quarters and took me and brought me here to this cell. What's your name? I'm a business. My name is the Bonian. I'm a writer. Have you written against the government? I've written for a newspaper in Paris about our national affairs. Why are you here? I do not know. I am a chemist. And you? I am a professor of history. He had no warrant for my arrest. Nothing. It just took me. Didn't they say why they were taking you? Only that my presence was prejudicial to public order. Yes. They said my presence was incompatible with public tranquility. He did not even give me a chance to let my people know what has happened to me. I, I must get in touch with my people or my friends. Do you want the same thing to happen to them? Can I do nothing? Am I simply to stay here in this cell until I am tried? You will not be tried. You will not even have a hearing. How long have you been here? 15 months, almost 60. And I've been here a year. How long would they keep me locked up here? Last week a girl who had been locked up in this place for two years went insane. Then they took her out. And a young woman who had been here for only two months was sentenced to 20 years in the mines of Kara. Kara? Yes, to Siberia. And you remember Bukharin? The journalist? Yes. They held him here for 18 months in solitary confinement. He slit his throat with a piece of glass. Does no one escape? More die or kill themselves than ever escape. Sit down, Zaponyan. Do not be impatient. By a personal view case of the Tsar, Zaponyan was sentenced to exile in Siberia. And with him, the professor and the chemist. Their destination, Yakutsk. Chained together, the convicts started their long march to Siberia. Among them were physicians and merchants, a nobleman and a bootmaker, an author and a free student, and a Caucasian princess, two government officials, the daughter of the leader of a forbidden society, a lawyer, a geologist, and a baker. Slowly they trudged over the long, long exile road into Siberia. It is getting dark. We cannot stop until we reach the atop. The village is not even in sight. Over this road, many prisoners had gone before, covering about 18 miles a day and arriving at the end of each day's march at the atop of barracks at the edge of a village. Here, here it is. Yes, there with the big wooden wall around it. Hurry, we will not get a bed. There was not space for all in the atop. The lucky ones got benches to sleep on. Every third day they rested. Then they marched again. This is Chelyabinsk. There is the railway station that everyone talks about, and there is the hated prison. This is Omsk. This is where Dostoevsky, the author, was exiled back in 1850. This is Novosibirsk. We are only halfway to our destination. This is Yenisey province. In this province of Choschenskoye, the brilliant lawyer Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is exiled. This is Krasnoyarsk. We are now about 3,000 miles from St. Petersburg. Just south of here, at Minyushinsk, is where Prince Alexander Kropotkin and Martinov the naturalist were exiled. Yarkutsk. From here we must go by sledge with dogs or reindeer. Nerskinsk. We are only a thousand miles from Yarkutsk. Yarkutsk, Yarkutsk, we are at the end of our march. This is our place of exile. Yarkutsk on the Lena River, almost as far north as Fairbanks, Alaska, was called the People's Prison. A village of dreary log huts on the wilderness. Here Alexander Pushkin, the great Russian writer, and many other notables had been exiled. The Bornyan and the others among the exiles learned the language of the Yarkutsk and made friends of them. You are not like the police chief. No, we do not believe in the same thing. You dress the same. These are the only clothes we have. The police chief and the officials of the Taurus government cheat us. They do? We work all season to catch ermine and sable and mink and squirrel and martin. Then the tax collectors come and take all we have and give us cheap talico and poor vodka and worthless glass buttons. How often do they come? Two and sometimes three times a year. Everything we do is for them. Can you help us? Yarkutsk was a thousand miles from a railroad. In the summer, boats moved up the Lena River to the village. And in winter, the frozen river was used as a road. The main traffic was in furs. But gradually the talents of the exiles found other things in this wilderness. Today I went exploring in the Lena River basin around Yarkutsk. I collected some interesting specimens. Some of them were bits of ore which show what riches abide in this soil. And some tell the story of this country. The story of the ages that have gone before and the peoples who have lived here. These little journeys of exploration are all that relieve the horror of this unbearable loneliness. There is no hope. Nothing but the day to day struggle to keep alive. What the exiles suffered in Yarkutsk, they suffered in varying degrees in other prison posts in Siberia. In Yarchinsk and Kara, they worked in the mines, hewing out the frozen soil. In Chelyabinsk, in Petrovsk, in Nishinsk, they endured the bitterness of Siberian exile. But they came to understand the value of this great frozen country and what it could mean to an enterprising government. Robonovs! The revolution swept through the land from European Russia across the thousands of miles of wilderness to Yarkutsk, to Vladivostok, to the shores of the Pacific. One encounter revolution. For the exiles in Siberia, who had been isolated principally because they were against the government of the imperial Russians, it meant a new and brighter day had dawned. Their chains were broken. Violent conflict raged in Soviet Asia, one faction against another. And the Soviets against the Japanese, who had landed in the maritime province with some 70,000 men. At last, in the early 20s, the Japanese were gone. The Soviets set about putting their house in order. European Russians started migrating eastward. They are coming with a hundred of thousands. Now we can develop our industries out here. Our industries, yes. But they must have more funds. We must develop our industries to make the weapons to defend Soviet Asia. Unless they have enough food, they can have no industries. Each of us is dependent on the others. Siberia is rich in gold and pearls and timber. We have other great resources yet untouched. All these we can lose if we are not able to feed the hundreds of thousands who are coming out here. Along with our industrial development, we must have a great agricultural development. That means that our entire development of Soviet Asia must of necessity be slow. Slow perhaps, but it must be balanced. Suddenly, the settlement of Soviet Asia became an immediate necessity. The Japanese had created an incident at Bukton and were invading and occupying all Manchuria across the river from Soviet Asia. Soviet Asia must be converted into a fortress to withstand both onslaught and siege. There is everything in Soviet Asia to make it strong. We must develop these resources, build cities, railroads, highways. We must construct military installations, air bases, shipyards. We must raise an army whose sole duty it is to defend the Soviet Far East. And we must here on these plains raise the food to feed them. This meant people, more immigrants. It meant farmers. It meant that experienced farmers from the fields of European Russia must be brought out to Soviet Asia. The government will move me and my family out there? Those folk Russian farmers in the Ukraine. Yes. The decree has been issued by Stalin. All those who migrate to Soviet Asia within the next six months will be given transportation and housing and supplies. It will be hard starting from the beginning in that new country. The government will do everything to help you. The government is very anxious that you succeed. Yes. And you will not have to give part of your crop to the state for five years. And if you are not yet able then to contribute, this will be extended to ten years. Farmers left their lands in European Russia and headed eastward. The great plains of Soviet Asia were opened up to agriculture. And meantime, industrial cities were springing up out of the wilderness, growing not by accident at a given point, but growing according to plan at the points where there would be the most value. The people, the enterprising, far-seeing people of Soviet Asia were breaking the ground at a thousand places. Our research experts found these deposits here at Yakutsk. Tuponyan, the exile, had become Tuponyan, the mine director. This is copper we are mining here. And in this basin we are also mining silver and lead and nickel. Long before the Russian revolution, the exiles of Yakutsk had known these treasures were in the ground. Now they are being taken out and fashioned into implements and weapons. And there are even greater riches here than we are now mining. This, this is a state fur farm. I am in charge of it. This Russian came from Europe. This is the headquarters of the trapping collectors. I am in charge of it. This Russian also came from Europe. This is the headquarters of the reindeer collective. I am in charge of it. Under the hands of these people, the Siberia of yesterday was transformed. And yet even they could not dream of what lay ahead. By 1941, millions of Russians had migrated to Soviet Asia. As Americans migrated to the Wild West, the Russians migrated to their Wild East. Yet even millions spread out over the vastness of Soviet Asia were not enough. But most important, the pattern had been set. Instead of developing health and scatter according to the whims and enterprise of individuals, Soviet Asia developed according to a great plan. The plan was to make Soviet Asia self-supporting and strong. June 21, 1941. Hitler's powerful Panzer divisions today struck across the Russian border in a surprise attack on the Soviet. The Nazis are driving ahead into Russia and the Soviets are making a detainment but unsuccessful. Before the furious onslaught, the Russians fell back. Behind the lines in the great Soviet industrial centers, the Russians worked to carry out Stalin's famous scorched earth order. Comrades, here is the order. To the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain, not one gallon of fuel. Now let's just get this machinery loaded. Every small piece of it right up with it. Move it up on the car. Take it up. Their industrial plants were uprooted in European Russia and the regions endangered by the Nazis. Massive machinery was loaded on trains and with the machinery were loaded the workers. Everything is loaded on this train and ready to move eastward. Very well. All right, brakemen, give the signal. Take it away and we will start loading the next train. After the railroad that had been so laboriously laid eastward to the Uros and beyond to the great spaces of Soviet Asia, the trains moved, heavily laden with the transplanted industry. That was the greatest migration in all the history of man. Russians from every part of the Soviet in Europe flooded out here with every train load. On the railroad line a thousand miles away they came here to Yakutsk by truck and by wagon and many walked. These people mixed with us Russians who had been here for long and they mixed with our native Asiatics, the Gileaks, the Koryaks, Yakutsk and all the others. And soon they were building new homes and new schools and expanding our mining operations here at Yakutsk. The Ponyin and the other exiles who had learned about this country in the long years before now were the leaders. Throughout the thousands of miles from the Uros to the Pacific, the wilderness teemed with new activity. We are draining this marsh so that we can build a shipyard here. It will be strategically located so that it has access to steel from the new mills and yet be protected from attack from the open sea. We are cutting a corridor through this forest. Transportation is essential through this region and we are cutting the way for our railroad and our highway. They will have this bridge built in record time. It will link two vital regions that make Soviet Asia stronger both economically and from a military point of view. The dynamite is placed under the logs and ice but I do not know if this jam can be blasted out. Because the logs and ice are all frozen together? Yes. There's almost one solid man. You are new out here in Siberia. Are all the men clear? Yes. They are waiting for the blast. Set it off. Set it off. The jam is broken. The logs are going down the river. I didn't think it could be done. We do hear what we must do. Against the blizzard and the biting cold of the Siberian winter, the millions of Western Russians struggle, killing a civilization out of the wilderness. In the scorching heat of the summer they work, fighting fires and mosquitoes, never stopping in their enormous plan of development and construction. The ground here always frozen? The surface starts out in the summertime. But below the surface the ground is still frozen. There is no drainage so the water stays on the surface. I hardly notice it. How long have you been out here Mr. Daponyan? Well nearly 40 years. 40 years. We have need of young engineers like you out here. I feel so insignificant. It is like having a whole new world to build. Everything is here to work with. But they must do the building. In another generation, Soviet Asia may have a population as large as that of the United States. I can see it coming. I have seen these cities and valleys grow. From these we will move out into the back country until all of the communities are linked together. That is the job of you younger men. You will be the one. As the millions of European Russian workers and farmers poured into Soviet Asia, the Soviet Western Front blazed. Fighting alongside the Russians at Leningrad and Smolensk, before Stalingrad and Moscow, were whole divisions of the men of Soviet Asia. Before the war, I belonged to the special Red Banner Far Eastern Army. I left Western Russia and joined the Far Eastern Army for duty in Soviet Asia because the pay was higher. When I had finished my service in the Far East, they encouraged me to stay there. If you wish to go into a profession out here, the government will pay you a bonus. But I am a farmer. If you wish to farm out here, the government will subsidize you until you are well established and then you will be permitted to sell your crops in the open market. Under this arrangement, great members of Red Army men from Western Russia settled in Siberia. They worked for the development of Soviet Asia and periodically they reported for training. Meantime, the tribesmen of Soviet Asia were formed into their own units of the Red Army. I am a Kazakh. There are three million of us in the Republic. In the last war, we rebelled against the Tsar when the government tried to force us into labor battalions. Now we have our own Kazakh units in the Red Army, entire divisions, and we fight gladly for Soviet Russia. When the Nazis attacked, these troops were mobilized and rushed to the Western Front. The crack Red Army troops from the Far East, along with units of the Kygis, Yakuts, and Tunguses of Soviet Asia, are among the Russian forces who have stopped the Nazis' call before Moscow. These troops from the great frozen tundra of Siberia have distinguished themselves on the Western Front and are now playing the important part of the... Meantime, back in the frontier country that had become their home, boom towns were rising. Yes, Magnitogorsk is now a great city. I remember when it was only a village. Today our blast furnaces burn off thousands of tons of metal each day. The population of Magnitogorsk now runs into the hundreds of thousands, and where the icy wind whistled over the solitude of the lonely village, now there is the sound of modern locomotive. This is Sverdlovsk, the most important railroad tranter in this region. We call it the Soviet Chicago. From here in the Urals, the massive trains roll out to Soviet Asia to the Pacific. But no longer is equipment and produce taken to Soviet Asia. Today, Spedlovsk sees the long heavy trains bringing to Western Russia the equipment and produce from Soviet Asia. Behind all this fabulous development are the people, the Russians who came out into this new country as exiles, or to escape tyranny and persecution, and the tribes who have been roaming this unbelievable vastness since the Stone Age. The people are harnessing Siberia's resources. I am an Uzbek. Our Uzbek Republic is in Central Asia, 3,000 miles from the Pacific. Once we depended on the little rain that came to our desert to help us grow our fruits and melons and cotton. Now we have built dams in the irrigation system. Now, as the sun melts the snow in the mountains far away, the rivers bring the water down to us. The irrigation systems water our land. The water has enabled the Uzbeks to grow more and better cotton. And to handle the cotton, mills and factories have been built. Today, in this desert country, an industrial center is growing up. I am a Buryat Mongol. Our Buryat Republic is on the border of Mongolia in far eastern Soviet Asia, 1,200 miles from the Pacific. For years, we were nomads, 300,000 of us. We roamed the pasture lands with our fur. Now, we have learned to work with machinery. Those of us who still are nomads roam only in summer. We settle down in villages in winter. Today, at Ulan-Uda on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the Buryat Mongols have one of the great locomotive works of Soviet Asia. I am a Yakut. And this is our capital here at Yakutsk, 500 miles from the Sea of Okhotsk. I learned all I know of mining from that light-haired Russian down there. In the mine, the blond-haired Russian from the Donetsk Basin directs the operation. Under the direction of exports like that man from the Donetsk Basin, great numbers of the Yakutsk have gone into the mine. And great numbers of them have learned the Russian language, as we have learned their language. It is one of the most amazing things out here, Mr. Teponyin. We learned their language, which is related to the Turkish family of languages, in order to learn to live with them when we came out here so many years ago. And they learned Russian not only to get along with us, but so that they could speak with the people of the other tribes, like the Gileaks and the Samoyeds and the Tonguses. I noticed that even the Yakut children speak Russian. Everything is taught in the school, along with Yakut. And our newspapers are printed in both Yakut and Russian. And to encourage learning and culture, we have here in Yakutsk a library of 550,000 books. How different this must be from the place you came to 40 years ago. Yes, yes, it is different. We have here in this outpost of Yakutsk just about everything that every modern city has. Hospitals, a fire department, a radio station, museums, schools. But these are only the outward things. The things you see, what is behind them, that is what is important. And that is the people and their determination to be safe and strong. You have been listening to the Pacific Story presented by the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations as a public service to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross currents of life in the Pacific Basin. For a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send ten cents in stamps or coins to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. To repeat, for a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send ten cents in stamps or coins to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. The Pacific Story is written and directed by Arnold Marklis. The original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Palusso. Your narrator, Gain Whitman. This program came to you from Hollywood. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
