Behind the Urals

A small group of foreigners who immigrated to

the Soviet Union during that period were the
true believers in communism.
One of them was John Scott, son of radical
economist Scott Nearing. Scott left the United
States, that was at that time trapped in the Great
Depression, and went to the Magnitogorsk area
of the Urals in 1932.
Magnitogorsk had huge metal deposits and
factories were built to exploit those resources.
The communist regime was sparing no expense
in importing the best foreign machinery and in
attracting experienced engineers from abroad.
Scott was able to participate in the
industrialization of an agricultural society and in
his memoirs he gives the reader a very clear
view of what it was like to live and work in the
Soviet Union of the 1930s.

calls these centers in Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk,

Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Perm, Ufa, Zlatoust,
Berezniki, Solikamsk, Bashkortostan, Orsk and
other areas Stalins Ural stronghold.
Overall this is a unique book in the sense that
the writer participated in one of the greatest
social and economic experiments of the
20th century. Since the book was written in 1942,
at a time when the Soviet Union was still in
danger of military defeat, one wonders if the
analysis of the Ural stronghold was meant to
inform Anglo-American policy makers of the
Soviet Unions economic power and resilience.

After leaving the University of Wisconsin in

1931 [3] Scott migrated to the Soviet
Union September 1932 at the age of 20.[4] He
worked for 5 years in the new industrial
city Magnitogorsk at an iron and steel plant.

The everyday life was brutal. Accommodations

were poor, fuel and food lacking and the work
was very dangerous with people being injured or
killed every day. The main problem was the lack
of trained personnel. All the workers were
peasants who had left their villages in search of
a better life as factory workers. Some were
hostile to the communist regime but the majority
was happy to have left the fields and they spent
their limited free time learning to read and write.
Those who had already mastered the basics
studied engineering.

[5]

In 1938, with regret, he left the mills to

escape arrest by the NKVD only after lengthy

council with a confident who concluded:
"Better leave. This is no place for foreigners
now."[6] The next day his wife Mariya Ivanovna
Kikareva applied for permission to go to the
United States to live, which took four years to
come through, and in 1942 the two moved to
the America.[6]
Scott wrote Behind the Urals: An American

Progress was hampered by the purges of the

1930s and the search for imaginary spies and
counterrevolutionaries.

Worker in Russia's City of Steel about his

experiences in Magnitogorsk, presenting
the Stalinist enterprise of building a huge steel
producing plant and city as an awe-inspiring

An interesting aspect of the book is the analysis

of the industrial centers in the Urals. According
to Scott the decision to invest huge sums in the
Ural industries had primarily a military character
since they would be safe from invaders. He

triumph of collectivism. Scott contributed to

the construction of Magnitogorsk as a welder
working in treacherous conditions. His writing
reflects the painful human price of industrial

accidents, overwork, and the inefficiency of

by a painful and expensive process to work

the hyperindustrialization program, the

efficiently, to obey orders, to mind their own

wretched condition of peasants driven from

business, and to take it on the chin when

the land in the collectivization program and

necessary with a minimum of complaint.

forced into becoming industrial laborers, and

These are the things that it takes to fight a

the harshness of the ideological purges.

modern war.[8]

In Behind the Urals Scott recalls many

These experiences, however, did not

examples of the danger workers faced in

disillusion Scott with Soviet communism which

Magnitogorsk:

he believed was "the source of initiative and

energy which drove work forward."[9]Scott

I was just going to start welding when I heard

expressed a deep sense of pride for his

someone sing out, and something swished

contributions as a welder in

down past me. It was a rigger who had been

Magnitogorsk [10] and was sympathetic to many

working on the very top. He bounced off the

Soviet ideologies. Reflecting back on the poor

bleeder pipe, which probably saved his life.

working conditions, loss of life, and ideological

Instead of falling all the way to the ground, he

purges Scott concluded that "it was

landed on the main platform about fifteen foot

worthwhile to shed blood, sweat, and tears" to

below me. By the time I got down to him,

lay "the foundations for a new society farther

blood was coming out of his mouth in gushes.

along the road of human progress than

He tried to yell, but could not.

anything in the West; a society which would

[7]

According to Scott, Stalin chose to

industrialize Magnitogorsk for several
reasons, and integrated the construction of
Magnitogorsk into a five-year economic plan.
First, Stalin began to emphasize industrial

guarantee its people not only personal

freedom but absolute economic
security."[11] After leaving Magnitogorsk in
1938, Scott spent the next four years in
Moscow as a self-proclaimed "observer".[12]

modernization in favor of agriculture by the

In early 1938 Scott contributed information

mid-1930s. Second, Magnitogorsk was rich in

which appeared in three dispatches from the

iron ore and other minerals. Lastly, and

United States Embassy in Moscow to the

perhaps most importantly, Magnitogorsk lies

State Department.[13] The three dispatches

far from any borders and was less vulnerable

date January 28, February 8, March 10 of

to enemy attack.

1938 and cover an array of topics including

The Russian people shed blood, sweat, and

tears to create something else, a modern
industrial base outside the reach of an invader
Stalin's Ural Strongholdand modern
mechanized army...the population was taught

the forced labor colony in Magnitogorsk,

[14]

activities of Soviet secret police,

[15]

participation in "wrecking" or industrial

sabotage,[16] food stores,[17] and the production

capabilities of the metallurgical plant in

Magnitogorsk.[18] In 1942 Scott moved back to

the United States with his wife and two
children.[19]