Stalin’s Horrific Plan for Great Northern Railway Cancelled within Weeks of His Death by His Successors

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 2 – At a time when Moscow is praising Stalin and whitewashing his crimes, when Russian officials are suggesting Stalin’s giant projects are something that should be emulated, and when Putin is trying to build a railway across the Russian North, the NeMoskva portal provides a useful correction and even critique.

            Sergey Tashevsky, a commentator for that portal, tells the horrific story of Stalin’s  plan to build the Great Northern Railway from Salekhard to Igarka using tens of thousands of GULAG prisoners, a 1200 km project that became known as “the Way of the Dead” (nemoskva.net/2026/05/02/mertvaya-doroga-salehard-igarka/).

            Under discussion for most of Stalin’s time in office, this project was officially launched in January 1949 without any of the preparatory investigations of the ground and permafrost that were needed but with Stalin’s assurance that there would always be plenty of workers because he wanted to use GULAG inmates to construct this line.

            The line was not completed, but it left in its wake thousands of graves and enormous amounts of steel and other construction equipment. But it was such a failure that less than three weeks after Stalin died on March 5, 1953, his successors shut the project down completely, recognizing as Putin and company don’t seem to how awful Stalin’s “giant” plans were.