Word: samara
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Russia is nothing new. And Russians know all about U.S. aid that comes too late. They are especially familiar with this phenomenon in old Samara, now called Kuibyshev, new capital of Russia...
...Samara was founded at the easternmost bend of the Volga River in the 16th Century, during the reign of the weakling Theodore, son of Ivan the Terrible. It was to be a fortress against the wandering tribes of the steppe. At first its citizens were mostly Cossacks, but in the 19th Century there was a great influx of Poles and Germans-particularly from Danzig...
...Samara was a fine spot for a fort, perching on terraced heights at the juncture of the Volga and Samara Rivers; but it was a terrible place to live. Freezing weather comes by mid-October. The average January temperature is 9° Fahrenheit. Some years the sharp-toothed winds are so persistent that snow will not stay on the ground. Droughts follow, and famines follow the droughts...
...Joseph Stalin could not let this immediacy dazzle his eyes and stop his mind. He had to chop his way out of a thicket of decisions-about Moscow's de fense, about moving the Government to old Samara, now called Kuibyshev, about defending the Donets Basin, about the Volga, the Urals, the Far East, about Russia's present and Russia's future...