Murmansk
MURMANSK
MURMANSK, an ice-free Russian port on the Barents Sea, became important in World War I with the completion by prisoner-of-war labor of a railway from there to Petrograd (later Leningrad). After the 1917 Russian Revolution the Allies landed a guard in Murmansk to protect their stockpiles of military goods. In 1918 some 720 U.S. military engineers helped to improve and maintain the new railroad. In World War II the "Murmansk run" was the most perilous route for convoys delivering lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union. In July 1942 only thirteen of the thirty-six merchantmen in Convoy PQ 17 reached Murmansk.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herring, George C., Jr. Aid to Russia, 1941–1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.
Van Tuyll, Hubert P. Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union, 1941–1945. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
R. W.Daly/a. r.
See alsoArchangel Campaign ; Merchantmen, Armed .