Volga-Don Canal

Lenin Volga-Don Shipping Canal ( _ru. Волго-Донской судоходный канал имени В. И. Ленина, abbreviated ВДСК, "VDSK") is a canal which connects the Volga River and the Don River at their closest points. The length of the waterway is 101 km (45 km through rivers and reservoirs).

The canal forms a part of the Unified Deep Water System of European Russia. Together with the lower Volga and the lower Don, the Volga-Don Canal provides the most direct navigable connection between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Azov, and thus the world's oceans.

History

As the lower course of the Don approaches the lower course of the Volga near today's Volgograd, the idea of connecting the two rivers by an artificial waterway goes back a long way in history. The first recorded canal work was done by the Ottoman Turks in 1569.

After taking of Azov in 1696 Peter the Great decided to build the canal, but because of lack of resources and other problems this attempt was abandoned in 1701 without success. In 1701 Peter initiated the second attempt (so-called "Ivanovsky Canal") under administration of Knyaz Matvey Gagarin. Instead of connecting the lower course of the Don with the lower course of the Volga near the today's canal, Ivanovsky Canal connected the upper course of the Don, in today's Tula Oblast. Between 1702 and 1707, 24 sluices has been constructed, and in 1707 about 300 ships passed the canal, under remarkably difficult navigation conditions. But in 1709 because of financial difficulties of Great Northern War the project has been stopped. In 1711 according to the Treaty of the Pruth Russia left Azov and Peter the Great has lost all interest to the canal. Today this construction does not exists. [ru icon [http://www.skitalets.ru/books/star_puti/index.htm Plechko L.A. Old water routs, Moscow, 1985] ] [ [http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/brokgauz_efron/43688/%D0%98%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9 Ivanovsky Canal] ru icon]

Later on, several more projects for connecting the two rivers appeared, but were never carried out.

The actual construction of the today's Volga-Don Canal, designed by Sergey Zhuk's Hydroproject Institute, began prior to the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, which would interrupt the process. In 1948–1952 the construction was completed. Navigation was opened June 1, 1952. During this period, the canal and its facilities were predominantly built by prisoners, who were detained in several specially organized corrective labor camps. By 1952, the number of convicts occupied on the site topped 100,000.

Upon completion, the Volga-Don Canal became an important link of the Unified Deep Water Transportation System of the European part of the USSR.

Operation

The canal starts at the Sarepta backwater on the Volga River (south of Volgograd) and ends in the Tsimlyansk Reservoir of the Don River at the town of Kalach-na-Donu. The canal has nine one-chamber canal locks on the Volga slope, which can raise ships 88 m, and four canal locks of the same kind on the Don slope, which can lower ships 44 m. The overall dimensions of the canal locks are smaller than of those on the Volga River, however, they can make way for ships with up to 5,000-tonne cargo capacity. The smallest locks are 145 m long,17.0 m wide and 3.6 m deep; maximum allowed vessel size is 140 m long, 16.6 m wide and 3.5 m deep ( Volgo-Don Max Class )

The Volga-Don Canal gets its water from the Don River, which is pumped into it by three powerful pumping stations. Its water is also used for irrigation purposes.

Types of cargo that used to be transported from the Don region to the Volga region included coal from Donetsk, mineral building materials, and grain. Cargoes from the Volga to the Don included lumber, pyrites, and petroleum products (carried mostly by Volgotanker boats). Tourist ships traveled both ways.

The Volga-Don Canal, together with the Tsimlyansky water-engineering system (chief architect Leonid Polyakov), represent an architectural ensemble, dedicated to the battles for Tsaritsyn during the Russian Civil War and for Stalingrad during the Great Patriotic War. The Russian classical composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote the tone poem "The Meeting of the Volga and the Don" to celebrate its completion.

According to the Maritime Board ("Morskaya Kollegiya") of the Russian Government, 10.9 million tons of cargo were carried over the Volga-Don Canal in 2004. [ [http://www.morskayakollegiya.ru/morsk/morskie_i_rechny/rechnoj_transpor/ Морская коллегия: Речной транспорт] (Maritime Board: River Transport) ru icon]

It was reported in 2007 that over the first 55 years of the canal's operations, 450,000 vessels had passed through, and 336 million tons of cargo had been carried. Recent cargo volume stood at 12 million tons a year. [ [http://transportrussia.ru/2007-07-12/reaver/evrazia.html «Водный мир» для Евразии] ("Eurasia's 'Water World'"), "Transport Rossii", No. 28 (472) 12 July, 2007. ru icon]

Future

As of 2007, Russian authorities are considering two options for increasing the throughput of the navigable waterway between the Caspian basin and that of the Black Sea. One option, often labeled "Volga-Don 2" ( _ru. Волго-Дон-2, "Volgo-Don-2"), is to build a second parallel channel ("second thread") of the Volga-Don Canal, equipped with larger, convert|300|m|ft long locks. This plan would allow for an increase in the canal's annual cargo throughput from 16.5m ton to 30m ton. The other option, which seems to have more support from Kazakhstan [ [http://www.inform.kz/showarticle.php?lang=eng&id=164835 Nazarbayev insists on Eurasian canal construction] Kazinform, 22-May-2008] (who would be either canal's major customer), is to build the so-called Eurasia Canal along a more southerly route in the Kuma-Manych Depression, which is currently used by the much shallower Kuma-Manych Canal. Although the second option would require digging a much longer canal than Volga-Don, it would provide a more direct connection between the Caspian and the Sea of Azov; it would also require fewer locks, as the ground there is lower than in the Volga-Don area. [ [http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Energy/Analysis/2008/02/07/analysis_russia_kazakhs_eye_rival_canals/5702/ Analysis: Russia, Kazakhs eye rival canals] ]

References