The Daily Alaska empire., 1937-05-27
FORMER EMPIRE REPORTER TELLS
 OF SOVIET PROGRESS


 North Pole aerial exploration by Soviet Rus ve again turned the eyes of the world toward t tivities of that country and the strides it is maki rticularly in it's Arctic development. Calvin nte former Empire reporter and news broadcas W with the China Press in Shanghai and forei for the New York Times, gives an esting and enlightening account of Soviet advanC Siberia in a recent article in the Times. Reporter White writes:
 Many Americans think of Soviet Russia as a strange land half world away, yet actually the USSR mainland is only fifty-four miles from United States territory. That is the dis tance across ice-filled Boring Strait, which separates Alaska from Siberia, where the SovietS are at work transforming vast wilder ness into new center of population.
 A scant hundred miles from the golden sands of Nome" is Point Anadyr, one of the key posts in the development of the U.S.S.R. North The bleak Diomedes Islands one Rus sian, the other American, lie only twenty miles apart in Boring Strait Far to the southwest is Attu Island, most westerly of United States possessions and nearer Khabarovsk, capital of the Soviet Far Eastern area than to any. American settlement
 The Russian development on the Pacific and in the Arctic is going forward at such pace that Khabarovsk, few years ago an out post in the wilderness with only few hundred souls, now has population of 9O000. Vladi- vostok which roughly corresponds to Seattle as supply city for the Far North has grown to population of quarter of a million, while the number Of people in European and Asiatic Siberia combined is more than 10,000000.
 The natural resources of Siberia are tre- 10Cf lad tive world in gold production, and a large part ot the precious metal came from the extreme northeast. The Fungus coal basin in Arctic Siberia has an estimated reserve of 400 000- 100000 tons, while the oil deposits in that tion and in the interior to the southward are said to be sufficient to supply the entire Soviet Union
 Once holding complete supremacy in the field of fur trading, Russia is again wing for that place and has rich and little-eXploited territory in Siberia. Fishing off the Kamchat- ka coast rivals that of Alaska for abundance and high quality of product
 The Soviet development of Siberia properly began with the opening of the Northern Sea route from Vadivostok to Murmansk near Finland and the most northery ice-free port in the world The ice-breaker Sbriakov blazed the way in 1892 with her journey around Wrangell Island and past Nome to the Pa cific, and the following year three cargo ves- sels sailed to the mouth of the Lena River from Archangel and established permanent town there to serve as a seaport for the vast country drained by the river.
 Sixty-five freighters were sent over the Northern Sea Route last summer and nine teen permanent stations have been established along the way.
 Those who read Rex Beach's Iron Trail" which chroncled the construction of the Cop per River Railway in Alaska will retain the vivid picture of the drama and hardship of railroad building in the Far North. Identical scenes were enacted in Siberia last year. as the double tracking of the Transsiberian Rail- way neared completion. paralleng line was laid down along the entire route of the Europe-to-ASia road and several hundred miles of spur lines are now in various stages of construction Day and night shifts have been driving the steel rails farther on, work ing in temperatures that sometimes touched 50 degrees below, sometimes 1l5 above. Des- pite the many difficulties encountered the double tracking of the main lirse was complet- ed on schedule at the first of this year
 Four new all-weather highways will also span Siberia and link it with European U.S.SR. One hundred feet wide and paved with concrete, nearly 400 miles of these super travel lanes are being built under bomb-proof snow sheds. Two hundred miles of these sheds have also been constructed over the new railway tracks Visualzing the possibility of war in the East, the side walls of these snow sheds are protected by sloping embankments of earth forty feet wide at the base
 The development of air service between Siberia and Moscow has been given equally great attention In 1897 weekly schedules are bein0 maintained between posts in the extreme northeast and the cities of European Russia. Besides these means of transportation, canals are being dug to link the great rivers of Asia and Europe.
 The science and technique of mining in the North have been developed to high degree by Americans, and the Soviets have shown themselves to be frankly eager to learn these methods Last year four Siberian mining gineers and representatives of the Amtorg Trading Company made an inspection trip through Alaska, studying its quartz and placer mines Three years ago John Littepage Alaska mining engineer was called to Moscow to serve as technical adviser to the mining