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> the rapid growth of their electrical grid and large-scale engineering projects (hydroelectric dams, airports, nuclear power, etc) in the post-1945 era was quite rapid. Some of the large construction projects, were built with slave labor. Not all of course, but many where. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gulag_camps. "The Road of Bones" is famous as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway And while science and engineering was promoted later, during Stalin's time, a lot of intellectuals were purged https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge --- In the 1920s and 1930s, 2,000 writers, intellectuals, and artists were imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and concentration camps. After sunspot development research was judged un-Marxist, twenty-seven astronomers disappeared between 1936 and 1938. [...] Official figures put the total number of documentable executions during the years 1937 and 1938 at 681,692,[1][92] in addition to 136,520 deaths in the Gulag;[3] whereas the total estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million --- |