Stalin’s failed GULAG: The Trans-Polar Railway (Construction No. 501)

The Trans-Polar is also referred to variously as Dead Road, and Stalinbahn, is an incomplete railway in Northern Siberia. The railway was a project of the Soviet Gulag system that took place from 1947 until Stalin’s death in 1953. Construction was coordinated via two separate Gulag projects, the 501 Railroad beginning on the River Ob and 503 Railroad beginning on the River Yenisey, part of a grand design of Joseph Stalin to span a railroad across northern Siberia to reach the Soviet Union’s easternmost territories. The purpose of the railway was threefold: to facilitate the export of nickel from neighboring Norilsk; to provide work for thousands of post-war prisoners; to connect the deep-water seaports of Igarka and Salekhard with the western Russian railway network. With the Soviet industry relocated to western Siberia during World War II, it was seen as a strategic advantage to use the northward-flowing river systems to deliver supplies to Arctic Ocean ports. Salekhard was on the Ob River, d