What happens
This episode of The Pacific Story, broadcast on 1943-07-25, examines Soviet Asia, the Siberian region across the water from the United States. It opens at a warship launching in a new industrial city, where a visitor is told that the region now produces its own steel and coal. The narration traces Siberia's history, from its conquest and its exiles to the Japanese intervention after the First World War. It then describes the Soviet plan to move industries east, build railways and factories, and make Siberia economically and militarily self-sufficient. Owen Latimore provides commentary on Siberia's development in the closing section.
Soviet Asia (Siberia), the Russian Far East and Kamchatka, from the Tsarist era through the early 1940s, with the Pacific coast and nearby Japan as background.
Characters: Owen Latimore
Listen for: The description of Siberia's industrial growth, the account of the Japanese intervention after World War I, and Owen Latimore's closing commentary on how the region is developing.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.