No other country in the world has undertaken such an extensive program of construction of new canals and restoration of old ones, as has the Soviet Union. The Soviet waterways and the newly constructed and reconstructed canals, in particular, play both an economic and a strategic role. They not only provide additional navigable waterways and thus enlarge the transportation network, but they also now connect five seas—the Baltic, the White, the Black, the Sea of Azov, and the Caspian—on the European periphery of the Soviet Union. Thus, there exists an efficient inner waterway system, which permits the rapid transit of small naval vessels from one sea to another, since all the new and reconstructed navigable canals have a uniform depth of 3.65 meters (slightly over 12 feet). This allows 5,000-ton vessels to cruise freely and crisscross the entire European part of the country, and to sail at will to any of the five seas surrounding the area.
The economic reasons for enlarging the canal system—this seemingly obsolete method of transportation—are multiple. First, the Soviet Union’s highways do not even approach those of the United States or any of the Western European countries. Waterways, therefore, are the second most important method of transportation in the Soviet Union after railroads, which presently carry the major bulk of the country’s cargoes. In the second place, waterways provide a cheaper means of transportation than highways, and require less maintenance than railroads or highways. All this has resulted in the construction of many canals, large and small, not only in the last 25 or 30 years, but also during Tsarist times. Some canals were built at the time of Peter the Great in the 18th century, some later. The most surprising thing is that, while in other countries the importance of canal transportation is gradually waning and being replaced by other more modern means (with the exception, perhaps, of the Rhine River traffic), the importance of the Soviet water-way systems is constantly increasing.
Among the latest plans and projects, the most widespread attention is drawn to the plan to reverse the flow of the rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean. The plan calls for directing their flow south into the Volga River and the Caspian Sea. This plan is known as the Pechora-Vychegda-Kama project. An even more ambitious plan is to unify all the inland waterways of the European part of the country, and to create one vast waterway system which will connect all the major rivers in this section by a system of canals.
To supplement these two ambitious plans, still another project was devised to connect the Black Sea with the Baltic Sea.
The creation of the unified inland waterways began with the completion, in 1933, of the first of these modern canals, the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal. Twenty months were required to complete its 19 locks, 15 dams, and dozens of dikes. The total length of the canal, which permits river traffic between Leningrad on the Baltic Sea and Archangel on the White Sea, is 141 miles. Its importance lies in the fact that the route between these two ports of the Soviet Union is now shorter by 2,500 miles, since the cargoes, instead of being routed around Scandinavia, are now shipped directly by means of inland waterways.
No less important was the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, which connected the capital of the country with the Volga River, the major waterway of the Soviet Union. The construction of this canal, completed in 1937 after almost five years of work, as well as the construction of various auxiliary structures on the canal, such as dams and hydroelectric power installations, permitted the waters of the Moscow River to rise, allowing larger vessels to sail into the port of Moscow.
By using the Moscow-Volga Canal, and the obsolete but still navigable Mariinsky Canal, which connected the Volga River with the Baltic Sea, ships were able to sail from Moscow to Leningrad, and from there to the White Sea port of Archangel, using the Baltic Sea-White Sea Canal.
The third modern canal, called the Volga- Don Canal, was completed in 1952. It joined the waters of the majestic Volga River with those of the “Quiet Don.” The construction of this canal has made it possible for ships to sail from Moscow to all five seas.
The Volgo-Balt Canal. The Volga River- Baltic Sea Canal, called the Volgo-Balt Canal for short, is actually the 150-year-old Mariinsky Canal. Despite having been rebuilt in 1896, the canal was so narrow and shallow that river vessels had to unload their cargoes at the entrance to the canal and transfer them onto smaller boats or barges.
Reconstruction of the canal, completed in mid-1964, now permits uninterrupted sailing of large ships between the five seas bordering the Soviet Union. It is three times as long as the Volga-Don Canal. The system stretches from Lake Onega in the north to the Rybinsk Reservoir in the south, where it joins the Volga River. The waterway leaving Lake Onega uses a canal to the Vytegra River, follows the river for some distance reaching the water divide and goes into the Kovzha River until it reaches the Byeloe Lake, from which it follows the course of the Sheksna River and finally reaches the Rybinsk Reservoir.
Although quite often references have been made in the Soviet press about the “reconstruction” of the old Mariinsky Canal, it was actually found more practical to create an entirely new waterway approximately along the route of the old canal. It was much cheaper and easier to construct a new canal than to rebuild the old, obsolete one. In the process of the construction of this new canal, a large dam was built at the site of Cherepovets, which created the Cherepovets lake, (140 miles long). This lake spread over the entire valley of the Sheksna River, and in fact engulfed the river, which completely disappeared. In addition, the creation of the Cherepovets lake raised the level of the water to such an extent that Lake Byeloe also profited from it, by having its level raised.
To provide a constant water level, five large reservoirs were constructed along the waterway, the largest of which is the Cherepovets Reservoir. This reservoir is larger than the one created on the Don River at the site of the Tsimlyanskaya hydroelectric power plant. In addition, three major hydroelectric power plants were built on the canal, namely: Vytegra, Belousovskaya, and Cherepovets. The canal itself is 225 miles long, and the whole waterway system between the Volga River and the Baltic Sea is 698 miles long.
During the nine-year job of renovating the canal, 39 old wooden locks were replaced with nine concrete, automatically-operated locks. Five dams were built, as well as 27 dikes and three hydroelectric power plants. The courses of three rivers were straightened, and their channels deepened to allow the passage of ships of larger tonnage. Over 52 million cubic yards of earth were removed and 1.17 million cubic yards of concrete used in the project.
The new canal follows a shorter route than the old Mariinsky Canal. It uses to a considerable extent the newly created artificial lakes, perhaps the largest being the Cherepovets Reservoir. Of the five dams built, four are on the Vytegra River, and one is to the south of the divide. Five artificial lakes along the watenvay have a total surface area of 682 square miles. Certain major additional projects were carried out in connection with the construction of this new waterway. It was necessary, for example, to resettle inhabitants of 217 settlements which were located along the canal and its reservoirs, since these sites were to be flooded.
One of the innovations in the construction of the three hydroelectric power plants on the canal was the building of the Cherepovets plant in the dam itself, underwater. The roof of the plant actually serves as a part of the spillway dam. The three hydroelectric power installations are not of an unusually large capacity, but, apparently, they are what local conditions permitted them to be. The one at Cherepovets has a generating capacity of 80,000 kilowatts, and two smaller ones are each of 15,000-kilowatt capacity.
The Volgo-Balt Canal is 4.5 times longer than the Panama Canal, and twice as long as the Suez Canal.
The practical results of the construction of this new canal are: the ships can cover the distance from Leningrad to Cherepovets in 2½ days instead of the 18 days that it took them to traverse the old Mariinsky Canal, and it is expected that the total turnover of the cargo along this new route will increase seven or eight times over that of the old canal. Furthermore, it is not necessary to unload the cargo from larger ships in the ports of Yaroslavl and Rybinsk, and to reload it on the smaller vessels.
With the completion of the Volgo-Balt Canal in 1964, larger ships can now sail from Leningrad to the Volga River and vice versa, bringing grain to the ports of Leningrad, Karelia, and Murmansk, and taking back apatite or iron ore, and lumber to the central parts of the country. Plans are being developed to organize direct shipments of cargoes from the Volga River region over the newly constructed Volgo-Balt canal system, and the older White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal, to the Arctic Ocean. The only obstacle in this ambitious plan is obsolescence of the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal. Built more than 30 years ago, its walls were made of wood rather than concrete and, consequently, are in very bad shape.
Even before the Volgo-Balt Canal was officially opened in 1964, more than 3,500 ships of various sizes and tonnage had already passed through the completed canal. Among them were 500 ships which, because of their large size and tonnage, were not able to traverse the old Mariinsky Canal. With the completion of the Volgo-Balt Canal, the Cherepovets metallurgical plant received its first shipment of iron ore by water, totalling 50,000 tons.
One of the first large ships to pass through the newly constructed canal was the diesel ship Baltiysky-18, which delivered concentrated apatite ore directly from Murmansk, an Arctic Ocean port, to Baku on the Caspian Sea by means of inland waterways.
The Baltiysky-18 covered the 3,550 miles from Murmansk to Baku in 15 days 8 hours, passing through the Barents Sea, White Sea, White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal, the Volgo-Balt Canal, the Volga River to Astrakhan, and finally the Caspian Sea to Baku.
With the completion of the Volgo-Balt Canal, I. E. Voronov, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (R.S.F.S.R.), said that this new inland waterway now permits not only the passage of the Russian ships along its entire length, but will also allow foreign seagoing vessels to enter the system and to sail directly to the Caspian or the Black Sea. The total length of the entire Volgo-Balt waterway from the Rybinsk Sea (reservoir) to the Baltic Sea, including the canal, rivers and lakes is 527 miles.
An interesting proposal was made on the pages of the Soviet monthly magazine, Pri- roda, to increase the water potential of the Volga-Caspian Sea basin, thus permitting larger ships to navigate this inland waterway, as well as to increase the electric power generating capacity of several hydroelectric power plants along the Volga River. The authors proposed to use Lake Ladoga for this purpose, which, as they say, uselessly discharges its excess waters into the Baltic Sea.
According to Priroda, Lake Ladoga, covering a basin of 106,200 square miles, is the recipient of the water flow of many large rivers. It is proposed, therefore, to interrupt this flow and to take part of it into the region of the Syas River; then, by the use of a gradient canal, 75 miles long, bring this water to the Volga River side of the divide, and using several local rivers, plus another gradient canal with a total length of 125 miles, bring this excess water to the Rybinsk Sea, from which the added Ladoga waters will supplement the waters of the Volga River all the way to the Caspian Sea. This new proposal claims that, in addition to providing more electric power output on the Volga River hydroelectric power plants, it will be possible to shorten considerably the distance from the Syas River to Rybinsk. This distance, along the Volgo-Balt Canal system, is 580 miles. By using the proposed navigable waterway, the distance will be only 305 miles, 275 miles shorter than the one now in operation.
Furthermore, this project also indicates that by using the excess water supplies of Lake Onega to supplement the flow of the Volga River, it will be unnecessary to use waters of the northern rivers—Pechora and Vychegda, which will turn from flowing northward into the Volga River complex. According to this magazine, the completed Pechora-Vychegda plan will necessitate flooding about 3.75 million acres which now have extensive forests.
Even though this new plan seems to be a good one, it is unlikely to receive approval, especially since the newly-constructed Volgo- Balt Canal was just put into operation. Implementation of this new plan will indicate that the present canal has become obsolete.
The White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal. With the completion of the Volgo-Balt Canal, the existing White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal, the first major canal built in Stalin’s days, became obsolete. With its deteriorating wooden- walled locks, urgent measures are needed to keep the canal in operating condition. A reconstruction project for this canal has been started, and one of the locks of the Povenets sector of the canal has been renovated and sheathed by reinforced concrete walls. The other 18 locks in this northern waterway, now constructed of wooden logs, will be gradually replaced with the modern reinforced concrete walls. This is especially important with the use of large ships in the Volgo-Balt Canal.
The Black Sea-Baltic Sea Waterway. A new plan, to create a direct inland waterway between ports of the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, is receiving serious consideration judging by the number of articles on the subject which have appeared recently in the Soviet Press. The need for this waterway is evident, if one visualizes the fact that each year thousands of ships are leaving the ports of the White Sea and Baltic Sea for ports of the Black Sea, sailing between 3,750 and 4,500 miles around Europe, through the Straits of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean, the Dardanelles, the Bosporus, and burning tremendous amounts of fuel. Construction of a direct inland waterway between the Black Sea and Baltic Sea will shorten the route to about one- third the distance around Europe.
This inland waterway from the Black Sea will use the existing deep water system on the Dnieper River, which came into existence with the completion of six dams and power plants along the Dnieper River. These are, the Kakhovka, Zaporozhye, Dnieprodzer- zhinsk, Kremenchug, Kanev, and Kiev, which created the aforementioned uniform depth of 3.65 meters all the way from the Black Sea to the mouth of the Pripet River, a distance of 725 miles.
The plan, therefore, foresees further use of the Pripet River to the mouth of the Yaselda River, which flows into the Pripet near the city of Pinsk. To use the Pripet as a major waterway, with depths similar to the Dnieper, it will be necessary to construct ten dams on the Pripet, and at the same time straighten the course of this meandering river, which will be navigable for a distance of 73 miles. The water divide between the Yaselda (in the Pripet River basin) and the Shchara (in the Neman River basin) will be cut by the 43- mile Dnieper-Neman Canal.
Finally, the Neman River sector of the waterway will be made into a deep water route with a uniform depth of 3.65 meters by the construction of six dams along the river. In addition to creating the deep waterway, the dams will alleviate the danger of annual floods, and will assist in draining the marshlands in the Lithuanian Republic and in the Kaliningrad region of the R.S.F.S.R. One of the six dams has already been constructed at Kaunas, and the Kaunas hydroelectric power plant, with a capacity of 90,000 kilowatts, is already in operation. Next to be completed will be the dam and the Birshtonskaya hydroelectric power plant, with a generating capacity of 600,000 kilowatts, which is to be followed with the remaining four dams and electric plants: Sovetskaya, Druskenikskaya, Grodnenskaya, and Mostovskaya. The total length of the entire waterway between the port of Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea and the mouth of the Dnieper River in the Black Sea will be 1,500 miles. The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic alone will benefit from this project to the extent that about 12,350 acres of marshlands will become useful cultivated areas. To raise the level of the water in the Shchara River, two dams with locks must be built there.
This plan, when completed, will lead to two other subsidiary plans, namely: to use the existing irrigation canal in the south, branching off from the Dnieper River as navigation canal joining the Black Sea-Baltic Sea system with the Sea of Azov. Furthermore, it is considered economically feasible to construct a canal connecting the mouth of the Dnieper River with the Danube River, thus providing waterway connection with that European river. All in all, the entire waterway will have 12 major hydroelectric power plants, with a total generating capacity of four million kilowatts, i.e., equalling the gigantic Bratsk plant in Siberia.
North Crimean Canal. The construction of this important canal was decided upon in 1956, with the idea of bringing the waters of the Dnieper River to the sun-drenched, dry, but fertile lands of Northern Crimea. The main purpose in this decision was to obtain water from the Kakhovka Reservoir on the Dnieper for the southeastern regions of the Crimea, and to irrigate at least 125,000 acres of land. In addition, when the canal is completed, an additional 875,000 acres of Sovkhoz and Kolkhoz farm lands will benefit from this water. Plans called for the construction of the Krasnoznamensky (Red Banner) Canal first. It is to run from Kakhovka through the regions of the Southern Ukraine to Kalanchak, a regional center of the Kherson Region, and from there to cross the Perekop Isthmus and enter the Crimea. The canal is supposed to extend to the city of Kerch, at the easternmost point of the Crimea. Its total length will be 267 miles. The first 143 miles of it will be a gradient canal, while the remaining sector will be served by four pumping stations.
The construction of the first station of the Krasnoznamensky Canal was started almost immediately, and by the year 1959, 56 miles of the 102-mile canal have been completed. By the end of 1960, the North Crimean Canal branched off from the main Krasnoznamensky Canal. According to the plans, the first sector of the canal, which is to be navigable, terminates at Dzhankoy in North Crimea, where a large reservoir will be created.
A canal, 25 miles long, will connect the main North Crimean Canal with the Sea of Azov, thus providing a link with the Don and the Volga Rivers. The next stage will provide water to the city of Feodosiya in the southeastern corner of the peninsula with the aid of the pumping stations. A large reservoir will be built at Feodosiya, thus providing the city with sufficient water. The last sector of the canal will bring water to Kerch and the neighboring industrial regions.
By the time the canal reaches Kerch, it will be serviced by four pumping stations; in addition, nine large reservoirs will be constructed along the way. The pumping stations will raise the water 242 feet. When the Krasnoznamensky and the North Crimean canals are completed, they will irrigate 1,472,000 acres of fertile but dry lands of the Southern Ukraine and Northern Crimea, and will bring water to more than 2,470,000 acres. It will be possible to use vessels of up to 4,000 tons displacement along the entire canal route. These ships will carry iron ore from Krivoy Rog to the metallurgical plants at Zhdanov on the Sea of Azov, and coking coals from the Donbass to Krivoy Rog and other industrial regions in the neighborhood.
The first sector of the canal to Dzhankoy in the Crimea was completed late in 1965. Originally the completion of the whole canal to Kerch was scheduled for 1965, but apparently numerous snags and unforeseen delays have slowed down the construction, because the Soviet press announced that the canal would only be completed by the year 1970.
The Dnieper River-Krivoy Rog Canal. There are several other canals in the area which are of local importance. Of these, perhaps the most important is the Dnieper River-Krivoy Rog Canal, 34.5 miles long, and almost as important—the Severnyi Donets-Donbas Canal. The first canal, which brings water from the Dnieper River to the region of the Krivoy Rog iron ore deposits, also supplies water to the industrial enterprises of the area and irrigates no less than 45,000 acres of collective farm lands. This canal starts at the Kakhovka reservoir on the Dnieper River and ends at the outskirts of Krivoy Rog. It took from 1957 to 1960, to complete the canal, which is 105 feet wide, and 11 feet deep.
The Severnyi Donets River-Donbas Canal. This canal was constructed for the purpose of supplying the Donets coal basin with sufficient water. This region, so abundantly supplied with fabulous deposits of coal, has always felt the lack of sufficient supplies of water which had been brought in from various sources by a system of water pipes, reservoirs, and other means. The canal, started in 1957, fully solved the problem of water shortage in the region. Its construction presented innumerable natural obstacles on the way from the Severnyi Donets River to Donbas. To offer a good picture of this rather unique structure, it would be sufficient to say that this canal is longer than the Volga-Don Canal, the Kiel Canal, or the Panama Canal. It was necessary to build four pumping stations to bring the water up to the required 777-foot height. In its entire course the canal has 59 miles of open bed, six dams, 15 miles of covered steel tubes through which the water is pumped at a certain pressure, and 19 bridges.
The Kara-Kumy Canal. It is still difficult to evaluate the enormous role this new canal is playing in the hot, dry, sandy Kara-Kumy Desert of Soviet Central Asia. The canal brings water from the Amu-Darya River all the way to the city of Ashkhabad, the capital of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, a distance of 513 miles. The construction of the canal was started in 1953, and was completed in 1962. It was built in three stages. The first sector of the canal, completed in 1957, extends from the Amu-Darya River to the Murgab River oasis, a distance of 250 miles. The second stage, finished at the end of 1960, goes from Murgab to the Tedzhen River, a distance of 87 miles. Finally, the third sector of the canal, completed in 1962, is between Tedzhen and Ashkhabad.
This canal not only brought life to the enormous dry areas of the Kara-Kumy Desert, but also joined the waters of the Amu- Darya River, flowing into the Aral Sea, with those of the Murgab and Tedzhen rivers, which, curiously, flow nowhere. These two rivers empty into the desert and completely disappear beneath its sands. The lands along the canal are being gradually brought to life. It is expected that no less than 370,500 acres of new lands will become productive, and this acreage eventually will be increased by additional cultivated areas in the Murgab and Tedzhen oases, bringing the total area to 1,472,000 acres. Several water reservoirs have been constructed along the canal, the largest of which is Khauz-Khanskoe reservoir. The waters brought to the dry lands of southwestern Turkmenistan will bring to life an area of more than 1,235,000 acres. This is the only dry subtropical region in the entire Soviet Union, where already many tropical varieties of fruits are grown, such as olives and dates. When the canal is extended all the way to the Caspian Sea, the area will be an important cotton growing region of the country.
To realize the importance of the Kara-Kumy Canal, several facts should be mentioned. The canal is located in the Turkmen Soviet Republic, the hottest and driest region in the country. Its precipitation rate, 120 to 150 mm. a year, is the lowest in the Soviet republics. Before the canal was constructed, only one-tenth of the available agricultural lands were cultivated, a total of 1,037,000 acres. Plans, however, call for using all 9,890,000 acres of the good lands eventually. Completion of the canal from the Amu-Darya River to Ashkhabad does not mean that all problems connected with bringing water to this sundrenched region are solved. There is still a major problem of water loss on the way to its destination. The loss is mainly attributed to evaporation and percolation, and is a problem which the best brains of the republic are trying to solve.
The construction of the canal apparently did not stop at Ashkhabad. Plans call for continuing the canal all the way to the Caspian Sea, and then the total length of this fully navigable canal will be about 812 miles. To provide a gradient from the Amu-Darya River to the Caspian Sea, it will be necessary to build an additional dam on the Amu- Darya, to widen the river bed, and to enlarge the Khauz-Khanskoe Reservoir. The canal from Ashkhabad will stretch along the Kopet-Dagh mountain system westward for a distance of about 238 miles. It will split near the Kazandzhik railroad station. One branch of the canal will go south to the dry subtropical areas of the republic, bordering Iran. The other branch will stretch to Nebit-Dag, the republic’s oil industry center, and then it will continue to the port city of Krasnovodsk on the Caspian Sea.
To link the canal with the Caspian Sea in the region of Cheleken, a mouth will be made deep enough to permit ships to come all the way from the Baltic Sea and continue their voyage through Central Asia to Afghanistan.
There are certain problems connected with the operation of the canal, some expected, and some unexpected. The expected problem is the constant danger of the canal being plugged by the constantly shifting sands of the desert. The unexpected danger presented itself in the form of weeds and plankton, which started to multiply in the canal with alarming speed. To combat this dangerous growth, certain species of fish which thrive on weeds and plankton were introduced.
Other Canals in Soviet Central Asia. Many regions in Soviet Central Asia are dry lands and deserts, traditionally lacking in water, although some areas would be fertile if water could be brought to them. This availability of good soils has prompted numerous projects to bring water from a few rivers in the region. One of the most interesting projects is the high altitude Ishkashim Canal in the Pamirs, which is 16 miles long, and situated at an altitude of 11,100 feet above sea level, in the Takjik Republic.
There are two great river basins in Central Asia, the main arteries being the Amu-Darya River and the Syr-Darya River. Along the Amu-Darya River, which is especially abundant in water resources, are no less than 24,700,000 acres of arable land, not yet put to use. It is estimated that it would be possible to irrigate about 14,720,000 acres of land in this region. The second arable region is located along the Syr-Darya River.
Among several irrigation canal systems in the region, perhaps one of the most important ones is the Amu-Darya-Bukhara Canal, 134 miles long, now under construction.
There are three other large irrigation projects in progress in Soviet Central Asia. They are the Central Fergana, the Golodnaya (Hungry) Steppe, and the Chu River Canal with the Orto-Tokoy Reservoir is also of the major construction category. The basin of the Syr-Darya River also permits an increase of the cultivated lands with the creation of irrigation canals and reservoirs. Furthermore, the southern part of the Central Asian region recently added some lands under cultivation by blocking the Surkhan-Darya River to create a large reservoir. This water will be used to irrigate the lands in the Shirabad Steppe. At the end of 1964, the Syr-Darya was blocked by a huge dam at the Chardary settlement, creating a large reservoir.
There are several older canal systems in the Soviet Central Asia, the most prominent being the Fergana Canal in the Fergana Valley of the Uzbek Republic and the Golodnaya Steppe (Hungry Steppe) canal system in the basin of the Syr-Darya River, mainly in the Uzbek, Turkmen, and Tadjik republics. These two systems are principally for irrigation purposes.
The Main Turkmen Canal. Stalin’s death caused the abandonment of his last great project to connect the waters of the Amu-Darya River with the Caspian Sea. This canal was to be, perhaps, the most ambitious of the Stalin era canals, which would have cut through the arid deserts of the Ust-Urt Plateau. The canal was to be navigable and was to irrigate the dry lands of the region, creating numerous settlements, villages, and fields of cotton, as well as orchards. The starting point of the canal was to be at Takhia-Tash on the Amu- Darya, but the whole project was abandoned soon after the death of Stalin.
The Irtysh-Karaganda Canal. In 1956 the first plans for this canal were prepared, which called for supplying water to many Soviet farms in the area, as well as to the railroad stations along the Omsk-Ekibastuz line. The project was approved in 1958, providing construction from the settlement of Ermak on the Irtysh River to Ekibastuz and Karaganda, a total length of over 310 miles. It also proposed extending the Karaganda Canal farther to Lake Balkhash, and another branch to Temir- Tau, a new metallurgical center of the Kazakh Republic. The actual construction of the canal has met many snags and red tape delays and it is doubtful that it will be completed in 1967, as was originally planned.
This canal will be a major construction project, since it will be necessary to lift the river waters 1,500 feet by the use of 25 pumping stations to take it to Boto-Kary Lake. The canal will be 60 to 120 feet wide at the water surface, and from 16 to 32 feet wide at the bottom of the waterway, with depths ranging from 13 to 20 feet. When the canal is finished, it will have 14 large reservoirs along its course to Karaganda. The Irtysh-Karaganda Canal will also permit the irrigation of cultivated lands along the canal.
Virgin Land Water Mains. The Virgin Lands of the Soviet Union, possessing excellent soils, lack the main ingredient for successful farming—good supplies of fresh water. There are many lakes in the region of the Tselinnyi (Virgin) Kray, but very few rivers. The large Ishim River is abundant in water in spring during the snow thaw, but most of the time, especially in summer, the river is very shallow.
Plans were developed to use the spring flood waters of the Ishim River to supply numerous Soviet and collective farms in the region with sufficient supplies of water. These plans call for the construction of two major water pipelines: the Ishim water pipeline, over 621 miles long, and the Bulaevsky pipeline, 810 miles long. These major construction projects will bring water to the Sovkhozes, Kolkhozes, and settlements in an area of almost 9,890,000 acres. The Ishim River pipeline will begin at the Oktyabrskiy Sovkhoz on the Ishim River. To provide an uninterrupted supply of available water, a large dam is to be built on the Ishim River, creating the Sergeyevskoe Reservoir. The Bulaevsky water main will begin at the Krasnaya Gorka settlement on the Ishim River, and will supply water to the eastern half of the North Kazakhstan Region.
The Manych Canal. Construction on this canal was started before World War II, and it followed the flow of the Western Manych River from the point where the river enters the Don, to the Manych-Gudilo Lake. Two dams were built along the canal. One dam created the large Veselovskoe Reservoir, 62 miles long and about two miles wide, and the other formed the large Proletarskoe Reservoir. To obtain more water for this navigable canal, the Nevinomyssky Canal was built, bringing water from the Kuban River via the Egorlyk River. Construction of this canal is to be continued further along the Eastern Manych and the Kuma River, thus allowing uninterrupted navigation from the Sea of Azov to the Caspian Sea.
Such is the picture of the Soviet canal systems, completed or under construction. The use of the canals and other waterways in the Soviet Union, however, has its limitations. It should not be assumed, for example, that the Soviet Union’s waterways, and the canals, in particular, can be used year-round. The geographic location of the major part of the country in comparatively high latitudes makes it evident that the rivers and canals freeze for a considerable period during the winter, and are, therefore, useless. These periods of freezing vary from north to south, and it would be helpful to have some idea of the time period involved for the various rivers, especially those, included in the unified waterway system.
Freezing Periods of the Selected Rivers in the U.S.S.R. |
||
Dnieper |
(lower reaches) |
80 days |
|
(near Kiev) |
98 days |
Volga |
(near Gorky) |
140 days |
|
(near Astrakhan) |
100 days |
Pechora |
(low reaches) |
200 days |
Zapadnaya Dvina |
|
129 days |
Sevenaya Dvina |
|
188 days |
Ob |
|
220 days |
Yenisei |
(near Krasnoyarsk) |
168 days |
Lena |
(upper reaches) |
220 days |
|
(lower reaches) |
275 days |
But, whether the inland waters are frozen or flowing, the sheer magnitude of the Russian canal program bespeaks a compelling requirement to relieve a transportation inadequacy that imposes severe economic and strategic limitations on the Soviet Union.