Empire Building and Frontier in Siberia and the Far North

The Soviet Union was the resource state par excellence. From the days of its founding under Vladimir Lenin, Communist Party officials, economic planners, and scientists and engineers engaged a series of projects intended to tame nature, overcome the forces of national self-determination, and incorporate the periphery of the vast multi-national nation into a powerful empire. This empire would be able to withstand what came to be called “hostile capitalist encirclement,” but only if its vast open spaces of land—that the urban leaders saw as empty of people—was settled by like-minded workers and party members. They promoted a series of large-scale nature transformation, construction, transportation infrastructure, resource extraction, and other industrial efforts that would simultaneously fill empty spaces on the periphery and the interior with devoted newcomers, and remake local people and indigenes into conscious, modern Soviet citizens.