From Novosibirsk to Komsomolsk

The odds on war between Japan and Russia before the end of 1942 shortened last week. From Chungking came word that the Japanese were speedily building defenses in Inner Mongolia, had already withdrawn some provincial-government departments behind the Great Wall. Allied Intelligence unearthed Jap plans to conscript native troops, to reinforce the army on the Manchukuoan-Siberian frontier.

The vital question of whether the Soviet Union can fight successfully on two fronts depends upon the untested efficiency of one of the world's great arsenals, Siberia. If the Russians perform a military miracle in the east, it will be because of an industrial and agricultural miracle already performed.

Boom Land. Bigger than the U.S. and European Russia combined, Siberia is the world's latest and greatest boom land. Between 1925 and 1939, 3,000,000 people (mainly young) moved there, raising the population to 20,000,000.

In 1917, Novosibirsk (2,000 miles east of Moscow) was a primitive country town of 70,000. Today it is a thriving city of 500,000, known as the "Chicago of Siberia." Siberian iron and steel production (chief centers: Novosibirsk, Komsomolsk and Stalinsk) is estimated to be already as large as Japan's, and new mills are going up in scores of localities. According to Maurice Hindus (TIME, April 27), one of the few men outside the Soviet Union who was right about Russia's western front, "Komsomolsk . . . the steel city in the Far East . . . is a roaring ammunition plant and one of the mighty military fortresses."

In recent years, the Russians have begun to extract oil from Cambrian rock, imbedded in thousands of square miles of Siberia. They also have regular oil wells in the Urals and east of the Volga. From these sources, Russia, according to Hindus, got 5,500,000 tons of oil in 1938--more than Germany is getting from all its synthetic plants.

Siberia still lacks sufficient railroads, and the Trans-Siberian is dangerously near the Manchukuoan border and Japanese bombers. But long ago the Russians began building a parallel line from Taishet 2,000 miles east to the sea.

Breadbasket. After the German Panzer divisions romped across the Ukraine, millions of Russians would have starved had not the Soviet Union previously converted Siberia into a second breadbasket. Through scientific farming, peasants are now growing wheat as far north as the 67th degree. In the Novosibirsk area, one of the richest in Siberia, cultivated acreage jumped from 3,500,000 in 1913 to over 10,000,000 in 1933. On each of the 6,000 collective farms in this region there is an average of three dairies, with 8.5 head of livestock per family.

Most of the farmers, particularly in eastern Siberia, have served in the Red Army. Well schooled in the science of guerrilla warfare, they have turned their farms into fortresses, and sleep with rifles by their pillows.

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