International

Stranded in a Sleepy Little Far East Town

By Gregory Feifer

Published May 8, 2008 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

At least half of Tynda's 70,000 residents have moved away since the end of communism.

In the 1970s and '80s, Soviet authorities turned a tiny settlement in the country's Far East into a city that would serve as the hub of a major new railway network, but the project collapsed during the end of communism.

NPR's Gregory Feifer was stuck there for a day after his plane took off without him, and sent this "letter from nowhere."

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International

Gregory Feifer

Gregory Feifer reports for NPR from Moscow, covering Russia's resurgence under President Vladimir Putin and the country's transition to the post-Putin era. He files from other former Soviet republics and across Russia, where he's observed the effects of the country's vast new oil wealth on an increasingly nationalistic society as well as Moscow's rekindling of a new Cold War-style opposition to the West.

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