Word: siberias
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Astronomers throughout most of the world got that frustrated feeling last week over a bit of news that plodded, with maddening deliberation, out of Russia. According to V. O. Fesenkov, chairman of the Meteorite Committee of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Science, a ""minor planet" landed on eastern Siberia last Feb. 12. The fragments of iron, nickel and cobalt were said to have smashed through the soil, penetrated the bedrock, and left several dozen craters-the biggest one 75 feet in diameter...
...What hit Siberia was probably a wandering meteorite, rather than a "minor planet" belonging to the sun's very orderly family. If it had fallen anywhere else, the world's astronomers would have pounced on it before the crater was cold. They could only hope that Soviet scientists were making accurate, if tardy observations...
...Russian, and the people are in no mood to attend them. Related a refugee: "On June 13, 1946, I was in Vilna† and saw, with my own eyes, 3,000 men being transported from the central prison camp to the central station. They were to be shipped to Siberia. After seeing faces like theirs, you don't feel like going to an operetta in the evening." In Tallinn, every five years, the people used to gather for Laulupidu (singing festivals), with 15,000 singers and 3.000 orchestra members (see cut). Now, there are no more Laulupidu; Estonians explain...
...fear of Siberia is everywhere. The stories that circulate, though possibly exaggerated, are significant. One example: "Varkuta is the name of the place you are sent to. It is a town, or rather a prison camp, the Russians opened in 1943 behind the Urals. There are coal mines covering 4,000 square miles, a total of 1,500,000 slave workers in the pits. The region is subArctic. The ground is so hard frozen that those who die cannot be buried, but are left lying on the tundra, where the wolves and other wild animals take care of them...
...beneficiary need fear that one square mile of his territory will be annexed, no alien secret police will stalk him by day and by night, no occupying army will consume his meagre food, no convoys of prisoners will be deported to Siberia...