No good figures are available for the cost of the project, or for the number of people involved. Some indication of the project’s size, however, is given by a 1950 Central Intelligence Agency report, which estimated that between 330,000 and 460,000 people were employed in it. Most of these – 255,000 to 361,000 – worked in mining in the Soviet Union (80–120,000) and in Eastern Europe (175–241,000); 50–60,000 worked in construction, 20–30,000 in production, and 5–8,000 in research.1 The CIA estimated that about 10,000 technically qualified people – engineers, geologists, research scientists, and
...more
