Jelle Brandt Corstius talks about the construction of the Belomor Canal in the ’30s. Dutch with English subtitles.

See Povenets, Segezha, Nadvoitsy, Sosnovets, and especially Belomorsk, which I think has a museum dedicated to the canal. The area along the canal is as gloomy as it gets, even by Russian standards and is recommneded as part of the Russian Misery Travel (c) concept.