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Magnitogorsk
A steel city built from nothing in the southern Urals between 1929 and 1932, one of the flagship projects of the First Five-Year Plan. Tens of thousands of workers, including forced laborers, lived in primitive conditions while constructing a massive steel complex modeled on Gary, Indiana. By 1932, Magnitogorsk was producing 9% of Soviet steel. The city became a symbol of Soviet industrialization and was extensively photographed and publicized internationally as evidence of socialist achievement. American engineer John Scott's memoir "Behind the Urals" (1942) described conditions that combined genuine industrial achievement with appalling living standards and arbitrary violence.