Socialism, said Lenin, was the power of the Soviets plus electrification. For the meteorologist Aleksej Feodos’evich Vangengejm, Socialism was, instead, the Soviets plus renewable energy. A sort of “Green Party” or “Five-Star Movement” activist of the USSR.
Definitely a pioneering scientist, creator of a mammoth company as the “Unified Hydrometeorological Service” of the USSR, ahead of the times, Vangengejm had planned to supply electricity not in the traditional way but with a “forest” of wind turbines that went from the Bering Strait and from Kamchatka to the shores of the Black Sea. An eco-monster claiming to be “ecological progress”.
Very bright student, Vangengejm had begun to get noticed dealing with pluviometry, hygrometry and barometric pressure. In the First World War he was the head of the meteorological service in Galicia and his knowledge in battle were fundamental: predict rain and wind was needed to make effective and precise the attacks with deadly gases.
With his “forest” of wind turbines, futuristic proposals for the thirties: yet finally Vangengejm was captured and interned in the first Gulag of the Stalinist era.
The charges against him? He was guilty of the Hydrometeorological Service sabotage, of intentionally incorrect predictions in order to damage the crops, destruction of the station network to prevent drought (previously built by himself). Also because of him, thus, the Soviet Great Famine of 1932-1933.
Tired of poor weather service and wrong forecast? In the USSR these scoundrels were sent in the Gulag.