Magnitogorsk became a legend of the war. Because it produced the steel for half of the tanks and one third of the artillery used to defeat the Nazis, people began referring to the mills as “Hitler’s grave.” But Magnitogorsk never stopped running on a wartime mentality. The ultimate bosses, the ministers in Moscow, measured success in sheer quantity. Never mind that other countries were beginning to produce modern steel alloys that brought the weight of a refrigerator down to a hundred pounds, not four hundred; never mind that pollution got so bad that the clouds of poison above the city
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