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Read more of our interview with Dr. Ronald Wixman commenting on the origins and future of Bratsk.

There was absolutely no economic need for that dam. They built Bratsk because they wanted to have the world's largest hydro-electric producing plant in the world. It was status. In this period, the Soviets were into this nation-building and national symbols. They wanted large projects to show the victory of communism.

Now, with the building of a dam like that, they then had to figure out what you'd with it. The answer was to build factories that could take advantage of the electricity. [Bratsk] was one of those multiple brand new Soviet cities like Magadang in the Russian Far East. There's not one church in the city, not one traditional Russian cultural anything. And the only museums they have are the museums of the victory of communism. So it, it's bleak. It's absolutely bleak.

[Today,] it's the foreign companies as an investor in a joint venture, and the Soviet leaders, the former KGB, the former Soviet military leaders, the former communist party leaders who are now the owners of these projects. So the result is the privatization has simply been personalization, and that the workers themselves are actually benefiting very little.
The fuel to heat houses in that environment is incredible. But fuel was free. Hot water was free. What happens now, as they privatize more and more, and now they're going to have to start paying for heating. The mere heating costs to the living quarters will make living in those cities not economically viable. You cannot make those cities economically prosperous without huge subsidies.