Word: siberias
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...Siberia. The Russian name originally meant sleeping land, and so it has been since the beginning of history. For millenniums, men came and went in this vast expanse and scarcely left a mark. Ancient hunters in animal skins tracked the mammoth through the taiga-the deep silent forests of pines and birches. Nomadic tribesmen pushed up from the south, grazing their cattle and roaming on. Then the thunder of horses reverberated across the steppes, bearing the predatory banners of Genghis Khan. Chinese prospectors ranged northward to comb the wilderness for ginseng roots, the source of miraculous cures. The land echoed...
This is the new Siberia, an eastern El Dorado whose riches promise to make the Soviet Union of the 21st century the wealthiest nation on earth. Since the first oil well gushed forth in Tyumen province in 1960, Siberia has been found to contain the largest gas and oil reserves of any country in the world. Almost every day brings new discoveries. Geological maps are outdated as soon as they are printed. Scientists now believe that the entire region, equivalent in size to all of North America, is like a giant raft floating...
...Siberia also has the world's largest deposits of iron ore and coal, virgin forests as large as all of Europe, half the world's gold production and diamond deposits matching those of South Africa. Half a dozen great rivers, all flowing north into the Arctic Ocean, may one day provide hydroelectric power across the Bering Strait for Canada and the U.S. It is not so wild a dream. Already the Russians have built the world's largest dams on the Yenisei and Angara rivers at Krasnoyarsk and Bratsk, and a third one is going...
...promise of Siberia is still largely promise, however. The vast land is far from tamed. Although sleek new Yak 40 minijets now dart from city to city and the Trans-Siberian Railroad provides a 6,000-mile spinal column from Moscow to the Pacific, riverboats and horse-drawn sleds still provide the lifelines from one wooden village to the next. In many places bears are more plentiful than people, and hunters frequently have to eject them from the food-stocked little huts that are established as survival stations...
...exploit the newly discovered treasures of Siberia, the Soviets have undertaken what may be the greatest construction effort in history. A quarter of all Soviet development capital is now going into building pipelines, highways, railroads and entire cities all across Siberia. The scheduled cost of Siberian development in the present five-year plan (1971-75) is $100 billion, and economists say that the figure will increase in the next plan. Soviet authorities used to bar foreigners from the area for security reasons, but the costs of development are so staggering that Moscow is now actively courting foreign investment and technological...