Forty Thousand Against The Arctic

Smolka, H.P.: 1938 Hutchinson London, hardcover 288 pages, with photos and folding-out map. Interesting account of the way of life in the northern reaches of Siberia. An amazing human story of the last pioneers; 40,000 men and women living in modern towns, with factories, airplanes, orchards next door to polar beers and reindeer. H.P. Smolka’s Forty Thousand Against the Arctic is a vivid, pro-Soviet reportage of the 1930s Soviet drive to conquer and industrialize the Arctic, blending first‑person travel writing with accounts of aviation, polar stations, and life in the far north, complete with photographs and a folding map. While engaging as adventure and exploration literature, it has been criticized as sympathetic propaganda that downplays the brutality of Stalin’s gulag system and presents the USSR’s “Polar Empire” in an overly laudatory light. In good condition