Building empires takes money. And building industrial empires takes diamonds, not just for cash, but for the machines and tools that need them to operate. In a remote corner of Siberia, the Mir diamond mine was responsible for funneling diamonds into building the USSR - and it left behind a pit that stretches almost a mile across the surface of the Earth.
Mirny [is] a city of 37,000 that sits smack dab in the middle of, well, seemingly nowhere. Begun in 1955, the pit is now 1,722 feet deep and 0.78 miles in diameter. Stalin initially ordered construction of the mine to satisfy the Soviet Union’s need for industrial-grade diamonds.
Mir Diamond Mine, Mirny, Eastern Siberia, Russia