Measures 9" x 11 ½", 72 pp., published by the Party and NKVD Committees managing the canal's construction. Circulation mere 6,000 copies, for distribution only at the construction sites, not for the general population. Contains full-page photo portraits of Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Ezhov, Khrushchev, and smaller photo portraits of other Party and NKVD functionaries leading construction of specific objects of the canal, as well as photos of those objects.

In very good to excellent condition. The cover shows mild to moderate wear and would probably benefit from reinforcing its sp

Measures 9" x 11 ½", 72 pp., published by the Party and NKVD Committees managing the canal's construction. Circulation mere 6,000 copies, for distribution only at the construction sites, not for the general population. Contains full-page photo portraits of Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Ezhov, Khrushchev, and smaller photo portraits of other Party and NKVD functionaries leading construction of specific objects of the canal, as well as photos of those objects.

In very good to excellent condition. The cover shows mild to moderate wear and would probably benefit from reinforcing its spine. The internal pages, printed on heavy-stock coated paper, are in excellent condition, showing mild wear to the bottom right-hand corner, most likely from repeated turning of the pages by the readers, and an occasional faint water stain. No wear too obvious or detractive, the text and illustration photos are as crisp and clear as the day they were printed.

The article on pp. 1-2, The Pride of Stalin's Second Five-Year Plan, is a reprint of the editorial published in the Pravda the day before. This is what it says about the hundreds of thousands of GULAG prisoners who built the canal. "The canal was built by Soviet construction workers who had grown and hardened in socialist labor." "With the help of the honest Soviet workers, members and non-members of the Bolshevik Party, the glorious builders of the canal, inspired by Comrade Stalin, repelled all underhanded attempts of sabotage by the enemies of the people." And one more pearl of Orwellian double-speak: "The construction became a school of life for many thousands of people who would probably have perished in a capitalist environment. Right next to a city with a multimillion population worked people considered to be socially dangerous, for whom the capitalist world knows only prisons with bars on the windows." That's it. The rest of the editorial is about the wisdom and leadership of Stalin who made the canal a reality.

Reality check! The Moskva-Volga Canal was one of the most publicized of the Soviet 1930's industrial projects, both in USSR and abroad. It was also one of the deadliest. Its death toll far surpassed even the Belomor (White Sea - Baltic) Canal project which was completed in 1932 by a workforce of 160,000 convict laborers of whom about 25,000 died during its construction. The Moskva-Volga Canal project maintained a workforce of about 200,000 Gulag prisoners at any given time. As the Nazis were approaching Moscow in 1941, all the NKVD records pertaining to the prisoners were evacuated to Ulyanovsk (Lenin's birthplace) but were ordered to be burned right on the wharf there. Local historians estimate the death toll to be between 700,000 to about 1,500,000. To provide a frame of reference, the construction began in 1932 and finished in 1937. For a detailed literary account see Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

Please note that the pen in our photo is for size reference.
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