During the purges of 1937 , the majority of OGPU personnel who were involved in the White Sea Canal construction , including Genrikh Yagoda , the head of the OGPU , were imprisoned or executed . At the same time , many copies of '' The I.V. Stalin White Sea - Baltic Sea Canal '' volume were destroyed although copies in private libraries were sometimes spared . Copies that remained bore physical depictions of the purges of the persons named within them when their names were scribbled out . The once publicly emphasized and celebrated construction project began to slip from public memory as its history was relegated and removed
purges of 1937
Great Purge
The I.V. Stalin White Sea – Baltic Sea Canal