Chapter 290
Unlike the dirty, miserable and poor labor camps imagined, the conditions in the Solovetsky concentration camp seemed very good from the outside, because it was summer and the island was almost entirely green, with coniferous forests and potato fields mixed together, covering the entire prison island.
The island not only has fast-growing forests planted in the concentration camp, but also reclaimed fields. In addition, it has its own farm, which raises hundreds of dairy cows and even more deer. In addition, there is a small paper mill and a cannery with a high output. Of course, the cannery here only produces canned fish.
There are nearly a thousand prisoners in the entire concentration camp, including less than three hundred male prisoners and the rest are female prisoners. The reason for this situation is that in the Soviet-German War that just ended not long ago, all the young and strong male prisoners were sent to the front line, and now no one knows whether they are dead or alive.
It can be said responsibly that no matter how comprehensive the legal system of a country is, places like prisons are bound to harbor filth and corruption. This is inevitable. Yuri does not need to make any judgment. He only needs to look at the fat and rosy-cheeked gatekeepers to know how comfortable their lives are.
However, as the saying goes, it is rare to be ignorant. It is one thing to know in your heart, but it is another to actually investigate and even deal with it. At present, Yuri has just taken over this part of the work. He has no intention of rectifying the prison system of the whole Soviet Union. Moreover, this part of the work is under the dual leadership of the Executive Bureau and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Executive Bureau is mainly responsible for the work in the production field, and as for other work, it is still the Ministry of Internal Affairs that is in charge. He is not interested in reaching out to Comrade Beria.
Ignoring the fawning warden, after landing, Yuri went directly to the office building of the concentration camp, which was the famous monastery in later generations.
Affected by the war, the prison system in the Soviet Union is in a state of chaos, especially the management of prisoners, which is almost abandoned. The Ministry of Internal Affairs does not know which prisoners on the roster are in custody, which have died, and which have been released. The reason for this is that during the war, prisons and concentration camps in various places were managed by the General Political Department, and a large number of prisoners were gathered together according to the region and sent directly to the front line for exhibition, but the corresponding roster was not recorded.
Now that the war is over, it will definitely take some time to resume work in this area.
In the office, Yuri checked the concentration camp's own backup roster. After verifying with the warden, he found that of the prisoners he had looked up in Moscow, only one was still in the concentration camp, and the rest had disappeared.
The surviving guy was named Ferolov, Alexander Alexandrovich Ferolov, a geologist, oil exploration expert, and oil extraction expert, and he had once been a professor at Moscow Petroleum University.
Ferolov had been in prison since 1933 because he said something he shouldn't have said.
In 1929, when the Soviet Union began to implement its first five-year plan, the Soviet oil industry was facing a very bad situation. On the one hand, in the "oil-carbon dispute" at the time, the Soviet Union attached much more importance to coal than to oil, and on the other hand, the Baku oil fields were severely damaged during the civil war.
The Baku oil fields were looted by the White Bandits. Tens of thousands of oil miners and experts were killed and countless oil wells were destroyed. As a result, the annual output value of 10.3 million barrels before the October Revolution was reduced to only 3.9 million barrels in 1920 after the revolution.
Subsequently, for a full decade, the production capacity of the Baku and Grozny oil fields was never restored.
During the First Five-Year Plan, the then Planning Commission set a goal of 45 million barrels of oil production per year by the end of the First Five-Year Plan. Initially, the oil sector believed that this plan was unattainable, but in 1931, it took only two years to achieve this goal. Comrade Stalin, who attached great importance to oil strategy, personally commended the patriots who made outstanding contributions to the Soviet oil industry at the end of that year and reported this outstanding achievement nationwide.
At that time, there were already signs of exaggeration in the Soviet Union. With the appearance of this notice and commendation, the Planning Commission immediately revised the goals of the First Five-Year Plan. Since the oil sector was able to achieve the goals within two years, the annual oil production target should be doubled during the entire First Five-Year Plan period.
As an oil expert, Filolov put forward his own point of view at the time. He believed that the Soviet oil industry was still relying on the old foundation of the old Russian era. The easier it was to develop now, the more difficult it would be to develop in the future. Therefore, the new plan was impossible to achieve.
With just this one sentence, Filolov became a "destroyer" of the Soviet oil industry and was thrown directly into prison.
However, his prediction was confirmed soon afterwards. In 1933, when the First Five-Year Plan ended, the development task of the oil industry was not completed. Not only was it not completed, it was still far from the goal. Therefore, in the Great Purge launched in the following years, the oil industry was also the hardest hit area, and many oil experts were purged.
That’s right. As a time traveler, Yuri’s first project is to explore new oil fields and realize the oil industry development goal proposed by Comrade Stalin at the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: to concentrate all efforts on building a “second Baku”.
Yuri didn't have a precise location in his memory for the main oil producing areas in the Soviet Union. He only knew that there was the Tyumen Oilfield. After all, the name was too familiar to him in his previous life. Since it was the Tyumen Oilfield, it must be in Tyumen Oblast, which is Western Siberia, and it seems that in addition to Tyumen, there is a larger oilfield there.
As a project designed to please Comrade Stalin, Yuri did not even need to actually put the oil fields there into construction. It was enough to initially explore the reserves and confirm that there was a large amount of oil available for exploitation underground. After all, the Soviet Union did not have the conditions to exploit crude oil in Western Siberia. The technical conditions were not met. Moreover, the international oil price of $3 per barrel was not worth it for the Soviet Union to invest a lot of manpower, material and financial resources in the construction of new oil fields under very difficult economic conditions.
Besides, compared with the development of oil fields, isn't diamond mining more attractive? Yuri's work plan includes two huge diamond mines waiting to be discovered.
When Ferolov
According to the records in the roster, Ferolov just turned 60 this year, but the wrinkles on his face are already as numerous as dry tree bark, and obvious age spots can be seen on his temples and sides of his face.
He walked in from the door with a hunched back, his hands stirring restlessly in front of his lower abdomen. Although his face was facing where Yuri was sitting, his eyes were sideways, always looking at the upper left corner of the roof, as if there was something very interesting there.
"Please sit down, Comrade Alexander Alexandrovich," Yuri said, standing behind the warden's desk. He looked the old man up and down and pointed to the sofa next to him.
Firolov seemed stunned for a moment, not sure whether it was because he was called "comrade" or because someone asked him to sit down.
"This is General Yuri Arkhipovich Kulyokov from Moscow," the prison warden shouted at the door. "He is the representative of Comrade Stalin."
The warden is naturally the most powerful person in this prison, but in the entire Soviet administrative system, he is still a little bit inferior to Yuri. Not to mention, in this era when information is not very smooth, he probably doesn't even know the difference between the People's Commissariat of Defense and the members of the People's Commissariat.
However, within the Soviet system, it was easy to solve the problem of job titles. For senior leaders like Yuri who came from Moscow, a "representative of Comrade Stalin" could solve all problems.
After the warden said this, Ferolov looked even worse. His back was almost bent like a shrimp, and his legs, which were in torn linen pants, were trembling. Perhaps for a man like Ferolov, it was never a good thing when people from Moscow came to him. They either asked him to explain some trivial problems or wanted to transfer him to a place with worse conditions.
Yuri saw what he was thinking, and took the initiative to come out from behind the desk, approached him, and said, "Don't worry, Comrade Alexander Alexandrovich. The purpose of my visit this time is because of an article you published twelve years ago."
As he said this, he reached into the lining of his military uniform, took out a folded document from the pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to Ferrolov.
The document is an academic article published in early 1932. The main content of the article is the geological structure of the West Siberian Basin and the possible rich oil resources on its basement surface based on its geological structure characteristics.
The reason why Yuri found Ferolov was because of this article.
Although the Executive Bureau had been set up and seemed to have no shortage of manpower, Yuri knew it very well. He knew that if the work of the various departments of the Executive Bureau was to be carried out smoothly and achieve results in a short period of time, a large number of professional and technical personnel must be added. Otherwise, relying solely on those prisoners of war and soldiers, nothing could be accomplished.
