A closer look
The Soviet Union’s ultimate historical irony was relying on the frozen, half-starved victims of its own political paranoia to keep its most precious cities from freezing to death. Vorkutlag was an absolute nightmare of a penal colony located entirely above the Arctic Circle. Inmates were forced to chisel coal out of the permafrost in temperatures that routinely shattered thermometers. Yet, when the Nazis completely surrounded Leningrad, cutting off all standard supply lines, it was the coal dragged out of the ice by these disposable political prisoners that kept the city's vital factories running.
