What happens
The Pacific Story presents a program on Siberia and the people who settled there, focusing on the secret of the region's strength. European Russians migrate east to work alongside the native peoples, the Yakuts and others, in the frozen wilderness of Soviet Asia. The program traces the region's history, from the Cossacks and the exiles of the Tsars to the migrations that followed the German attack in 1941. It describes how settlers built mines, farms, railroads, and industrial cities according to a national plan, and how Siberian soldiers fought on the Western Front. The broadcast presents the people of Soviet Asia as the source of the region's progress, from the Uzbek cotton growers to the Buryat Mongols and the Yakut miners.
Siberia and Soviet Asia, Russia, from the Tsarist era through the Second World War, including Yakutsk and the Lena River region.
Characters: Napoleon, the Pornian
Listen for: The account of exiles marching to Siberia and the migration of millions of Russians east after the German invasion of 1941.
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.