The great construction projects of communism and Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature. Great construction projects of the Soviet Union

Komsomol construction sites in the USSR,

1) one of the ways to organize construction and redistribute labor in the national economy.

2) National economic facilities, the responsibility for the construction of which was assumed by the Komsomol. They also had ideological significance: they were supposed to serve as an example of a communist attitude towards work. The status of Komsomol construction was given to construction projects to ensure timely and high-quality completion of their construction at the lowest cost. The most significant national economic objects received the status of All-Union Komsomol shock construction projects. They were located mainly in hard-to-reach and sparsely populated areas. The list of Komsomol construction projects was approved by the Bureau of the Komsomol Central Committee on the basis of proposals from party, trade union and Komsomol bodies, ministries and departments and in agreement with the State Planning Committee of the USSR and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Komsomol construction sites were staffed with labor through the so-called public appeals of youth and military personnel being transferred to the reserve, carried out by the Komsomol Central Committee, as well as through temporary voluntary Komsomol youth construction teams. Komsomol construction sites practiced their own methods of labor organization. Komsomol headquarters operated (worked under the leadership of the Komsomol construction committee), which included young workers, foremen and specialists, representatives of economic and trade union bodies, Komsomol activists of installation and specialized organizations, subcontracting units. The headquarters, together with trade union organizations, held a competition among Komsomol youth groups. “Komsomol searchlight” posts were created in brigades and at construction sites to fight for strengthening labor discipline, saving construction materials, and efficient use of equipment. A “Chronicle of Shock Construction” was kept, in which the names of young workers and specialists, Komsomol and youth groups who made a significant contribution to the implementation of construction plans were entered.

The first Komsomol construction project was the construction of the Volkhov hydroelectric power station. In the 1920-30s, Selmashstroy (Rostov-on-Don), Tractorostroy (Stalingrad), Uralmashstroy, the construction of the Ural-Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the first stage of the Moscow Metro, the Akmolinsk-Kartaly railway were declared Komsomol construction projects , development of oil fields in the Volga-Ural oil and gas province, etc. In the 1950-70s, the All-Union Komsomol shock construction projects included the construction of the Bratsk, Dneprodzerzhinsk, Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power stations, nuclear power plants, the Ufa-Omsk, Omsk-Irkutsk oil pipeline, and the Bukhara-Ural gas pipelines. , Saratov - Gorky, the Abakan - Taishet railway line, the Baikal-Amur railway, the first stages of a number of plants (Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Pavlodar aluminum, Angarsk and Omsk oil refineries, West Siberian and Karaganda metallurgical), etc. All-Union Komsomol shock construction projects in 1959 114 industrial and transport enterprises were built in the year (154 in 1962, 135 in 1982, 63 in 1987). The principles of labor organization adopted at Komsomol construction sites were also used in the development of virgin lands in Kazakhstan, Altai, and the Novosibirsk region. In connection with the dissolution of the Komsomol in September 1991, the organization of Komsomol construction projects ceased.

V. K. Krivoruchenko.

One of the most hidden and vile myths in the USSR, now praised by admirers, was the glorification of the supposed participation solely by the forces of free and ideological Komsomol communists in industrialization or another, most often unnecessary "the great construction of communism", in fact, they used millions of armies of slaves - ZeK: in the construction of any object - civil, military, cultural, where the tasks of the Communist Party were carried out without sparing free labor and the lives of prisoners.

At the construction site of Moscow State University. Photo:pastvu.com

“Cheap labor” from prisoners was widely used in the first half of the last century - during the Gulags.

ABOUT high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment There are many stories and legends. One of the stories says that in the apartment of the writer Vasily Aksenov there is a scrawled inscription “built by prisoners.” They also say that prisoners posed for sculptors who sculpted bas-reliefs. The convicts actually built a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, as well as Moscow State University building. The scale of attracting labor from correctional institutions was such that it made it possible to use prisoners for the construction of not only industrial and military, but also civilian facilities.

Since 1934, all forced labor camps and colonies were transferred to the control of the main directorate of labor settlement camps and places of detention of the NKVD of the USSR. In the Gulag system, departments with specific economic tasks were created: the main directorate of the camp timber industry (GULLP), the main directorate of camps of mining and metallurgical enterprises (GULGMP), the main directorate of railway construction camps (GULZhDS), the main directorate of airfield construction (GUAS), the main directorate of camps industrial construction (Glavpromstroy), the main department of hydraulic engineering construction camps (Glavgidrostroy) and so on.

One of the activities of Glavpromstroy was housing and cultural construction. It was the forces of the prisoners of the Glavpromstroy camps that built the high-rise buildings on Kotelnicheskaya embankment and Sparrow Hills. The finishing work of the main building of Moscow State University was carried out by prisoners of the Vysotny camp - 368 people, 208 of them women.

Workers at the construction site of the White Sea Canal, 1930-1933. Photo: Laski Diffusion/ East News

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One of the many terrible pages carefully hidden by the communists throughout the 70 years of its short history of the Union:

Nizhny Tagil Drama Theater them. Mamin-Sibiryak on the avenue, of course, Lenin. Built by whom? Conscious Komsomol members? Of course, the architect and some of the builders were builders, but how many Zekas died there at this and other construction sites?

“This inscription was walled up on March 15, 1954, not under the thunder of orchestras and the noise of the crowd, but it will tell posterity that this theater was not built by the forces of Komsomol brigades, as the chronicles will claim, but was created on the blood and bones of prisoners - slaves of the twentieth century. Hello! to the coming generation, and may your life and your era not know slavery and the humiliation of man by man.

Hello prisoners
I. L. Kozhin
R. G. Sharipov,
Yu. N. Nigmatulin.
15.III 1954

According to Lev Samuilovich Liebenshtein, who in the 50s worked at a house-building plant and supervised the construction of buildings on Teatralnaya Square, prisoners deprived of the right to correspondence walled up bottles with their letters under one of the columns. No one knows what is written in them...

P.S. This link with the photo “unexpectedly disappeared”, we took care of it: source:http://tagildrama.ru/hidden-partition/127-poslanie-potomkam
Nothing, this letter and the description of the use of ZEK slaves are widely known, the communists will not be able to silence their crimes:

"When Vera Avgustovna Lothar-Shevchenko worked at the drama theater, its building was still under construction. It was built by Tagillaga prisoners, who were brought to work every morning and taken back in the evening. The construction site, as required, was fenced with barbed wire, and there were fences in the corners towers on which sentries with rifles carefully monitored the movements of prisoners.

However, in March 1954, prisoner builders managed to wall up a sheet of iron with a message to the “coming generation.”

Two years later it was found during the renovation of the floors, but times were different - the 20th Congress of the CPSU was held, so the text of the message was preserved. Here's what the prisoners wrote:

“This inscription was walled up on March 15, 1954, not under the thunder of orchestras and the noise of the crowd. But she will tell her posterity that this theater was not built by Komsomol brigades...

Has Vera Augustovna seen this construction site? Of course I saw it. Both this and other construction projects in Nizhny Tagil. The labor of prisoners, “slaves of the twentieth century,” was widely used in Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk, and hundreds of other cities of the USSR.

It was also used in Akademgorodok in the early years, from 1959 until the mid-60s, when foreigners began to come to us, incl. and high-ranking persons. Therefore, Academician Lavrentyev began to ask Colonel Ivanov, head of the Sibacademstroy Construction Department, to abandon the use of prisoners in construction, or at least use them at construction sites where foreigners could not see them.

Nikolai Markelovich Ivanov always said in response that he had a huge shortage of workers, he could not do without prisoners, and if Academician Lavrentiev put a spoke in his wheels, he would not be able to guarantee the implementation of the plan.

The matter came to a hearing in the district committee of the CPSU, where, of course, Academician Lavrentyev did not come, but his deputy B.V. Belyanin and the head of the UKS Kargaltsev. The conversation usually took place in a raised tone. I myself was present a couple of times, since it was the implementation of construction plans that was discussed.

The position of the district committee secretary was very unenviable. He could not ignore the opinion of Academician Lavrentiev, but he also could not force Colonel Ivanov to give up free labor - prisoners. Let me remind you that the facilities of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building in those years were built with the massive use of prison labor, and the Construction Department "Sibakademstroy" was subordinate to this very ministry..." http://www.proza.ru/2014/01/23/152

Photos from the construction of the drama theater in Nizhny Tagil

Construction of the Drama Theatre. Photo from 1953. The first work on the construction of the drama theater began in 1951. On December 3, 1951, they began laying the walls of the Drama Theater. By the spring of 1952, the ground floor was ready.

Behind the drama theater. View from the current traffic police station on Lenin Ave. On the right is part of the fire tower building behind the dramatic
theater Photo from 1953. http://historyntagil.ru/cards/9_old_tagil_50_open.htm

Such a memory is only in one theater, built by Tagillag prisoners. It was a real death camp.

One of the large camp formations on the territory of the Urals during the war and post-war period, Tagillag NKVD - these are dozens of camp centers with appalling working and living conditions for prisoners, terrible penal camps in Vinnovka and Serebryanka, numerous mass graves, thousands of unknown victims of hunger, disease, physical violence; These are the fates of Russians, Poles, Latvians, Soviet Germans, residents of the Central Asian republics, prisoners of war from special camps No. 153 and 245. Typhus was rampant in the camps, people died from vitamin deficiency, scurvy, dysentery, and froze from the terrible cold in dugouts and barracks. The prisoners of Tagillag, despite hunger, cold, illness, moral and physical humiliation, built the city and its industrial facilities, restoring the country. Here is just a short list of construction sites where prison labor ranged from 50 to 100%: NTMZ open-hearth furnaces No. 4 and 5, blast furnace No. 3, shaped foundry and rolling shops, blooming; sinter plant, Verkhne-Vyyskaya dam, Severo-Lebyazhinsky quarry, VZhR club, mine management building; coke batteries No. 3 and 4, rectification shop and other coke production facilities; cement, slate and brick factories; Hoffmann furnaces No. 3 and 4 at the refractory plant; streets of residential buildings in the city; tankodrome and access roads at Uralvagonstroy; Chernoistochinskaya dam; the second stage of the Goroblagodatsky mine and much more.

And now Stalin was gone, but the prisoners remained, and slave labor was in demand during the construction of the drama theater, they tried to completely erase their memory from our history, and the labor exploits of slave prisoners were attributed to Komsomol members and communists, exalting and strengthening the ideological dogmas of the totalitarian regime .

Tagillag ceased to exist in 1953, but did not leave the city, leaving behind a “rich legacy” - more than a dozen correctional labor camps and many special commandant’s offices. Nizhny Tagil became a gloomy symbol of the entire totalitarian regime - a city of prisons and camps, inhabited by people with a crushed past, deprived of a future. http://kp74.ru/nizhnetagilskij-teatr-dramy.html

Do you remember very well the huge map of the Soviet concentration camps that covered the Land of the Soviets? No? Have you already “forgotten” or didn’t know or suspect at all?

But such "thoughtful necessary" construction projects for the Soviet government, where countless thousands of lives were spread rot, did not begin under Dzhugashvili, he was just a faithful continuer of the work of the main ghoul of the USSR - Lenin:
One of the first construction projects took place under the direct leadership of Lenin. And it is not surprising that nothing is known about it: all materials related to Algemba - the first attempt of the young Soviet government to acquire its own oil pipeline - were classified for a long time.
In December 1919, Frunze's army captured the Emben oil fields in Northern Kazakhstan. By that time, more than 14 million pounds of oil had accumulated there. This oil could be the salvation for the Soviet republic. On December 24, 1919, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense decided to begin construction of a railway through which oil could be exported from Kazakhstan to the center, and ordered: “Recognize the construction of the Alexandrov Gai-Emba broad-gauge line as an operational task.” The city of Alexandrov Gai, located 300 km from Saratov, was the last railway point. The distance from it to the oil fields was about 500 miles. Most of the route ran through waterless salt marsh steppes. They decided to build the highway at both ends simultaneously and meet on the Ural River near the village of Grebenshchikovo.

Frunze's army was the first to be sent to build the railway (despite his protests). There was no transport, no fuel, or enough food. In the conditions of the waterless steppe there was nowhere to even place soldiers. Endemic illnesses began and developed into an epidemic. The local population was forcibly involved in the construction: about forty-five thousand residents of Saratov and Samara. People almost manually created an embankment along which rails were later to be laid.

Lenin began to look for an alternative solution. At first it was proposed to produce wooden pipes. The experts just shrugged: firstly, it is impossible to maintain the necessary pressure in them, and secondly, Kazakhstan does not have its own forests, there is nowhere to get wood. Then it was decided to dismantle sections of existing pipelines. The pipes varied greatly in length and diameter, but this did not bother the Bolsheviks. Another thing was confusing: the collected “spare parts” were still not enough even for half the pipeline! However, work continued.

Lenin demanded to understand the reasons for the sabotage. But there was no trace of any sabotage. Hunger, cold and disease exacted a terrible toll among the builders. In 1921, cholera came to the construction site. Despite the courage of the doctors who voluntarily arrived at Algemba, the mortality rate was appalling. But the worst thing was different: four months after the start of construction of Algemba, already in April 1920, Baku and Grozny were liberated. Emba oil was no longer needed. Thousands of lives sacrificed during construction were in vain.

It was possible even then to stop the pointless activity of laying the Algemba. But Lenin stubbornly insisted on continuing construction, which was incredibly expensive for the state. In 1920, the government allocated a billion rubles in cash for this construction. No one has ever received a full report, but there is an assumption that the funds ended up in foreign accounts. Neither the railway nor the pipeline were built: on October 6, 1921, by Lenin's directive, construction was stopped. A year and a half of Algemba cost thirty-five thousand human lives.

The use of free labor was welcomed and encouraged by caring communist rulers; remember, a valiant page from the aircraft industry, sharashkas for scientists appeared much earlier in 1928-29. - the legendary Soviet fighter "Ishachok", created, of course, by ZeK.
The leaders of the OGPU came up with a brilliant idea: why not, instead of sending those arrested to Solovki, force them to build airplanes and engines in prison conditions, under the watchful eye of state security guards? “...Only working conditions in a militarized environment can ensure the effective activity of specialists in contrast to the corrupting environment of civilian institutions.”,” Deputy Chairman of the OGPU Yagoda later wrote in a letter to Molotov.
The first prison design bureau in the history of aviation was organized in December 1929. It was located “at the place of residence” of prisoners - in Butyrka prison. Two work rooms were equipped with drawing boards and other necessary drawing supplies. The new organization was given a high-profile title - Special Design Bureau.

In November 1929, a Special Design Bureau (OKB) was created in Butyrka Prison. In January of the following year, the OKB was transferred to aircraft plant No. 39, where they began to create the Central Design Bureau (TsKB). On the territory of the plant there was a wooden one-story hangar No. 7, adapted for housing for prisoners. 20 prisoners lived and worked there under guard. The team was small, but very highly qualified. The core of the designers consisted of employees of the Department of Marine Experimental Aircraft Manufacturing (OMOS, previously headed by D.P. Grigorovich), who shared the fate of their boss: A.N. Sedelnikov (former deputy head of the department), V.L. Korvin (manager of production) and N G. Mikhelson (head of the drawing bureau). Together with Polikarpov, his colleagues E.I. Mayoranov and V.A. Tisov ended up at the Central Clinical Hospital. In addition to them, the OKB included a prominent small arms specialist A.V. Nadashkevich (creator of the PV-1 aviation machine gun), former director of pilot plant No. 25 B.F. Goncharov, statistical testing engineer P.M. Kreyson, assistant director of plant No. 1 I.M. Kostkin and others. Grigorovich was appointed chief designer of the design bureau, but virtually all the main design issues were resolved collectively. Communication between the prisoners and the production departments of the plant was provided by free engineer S.M. Dansker. The “wreckers” were given a difficult task - to urgently design a single-seat fighter of a mixed design with an air-cooled engine. - “If you don’t do it in a month, we’ll shoot you”

In less than two months, the small OKB team designed a new fighter. The prison administration prohibited model blowing and other types of tests in the laboratories of TsAGI (which was managed by A. Tupolev, who later became a “prisoned specialist” of TsKB-29), MVTU, and the Air Force Academy. The designers could only rely on their experience and the materials that they were allowed to receive from certain organizations...

<...>Amnesty the following designers - former saboteurs sentenced by the OGPU board to various social protection measures [what is the term! — D.S.], with their simultaneous awarding:
a) the chief designer for experimental aircraft construction, Dmitry Pavlovich Grigorovich, who repented of his previous actions and with a year’s work proved his repentance in practice - a diploma from the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and a monetary reward of 10,000 rubles;
b) chief designer Nadashkevich Alexander Vasilyevich - a diploma from the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and a cash bonus of 10,000 rubles;
c) former technical director of plant No. 1 Ivan Mikhailovich Koskin - a cash reward of 1000 rubles;
d) Kreyson Pavel Martynovich - a cash reward of 1000 rubles;
e) Corwin-Kerber Viktor Lvovich - a cash reward of 1000 rubles;
f) grant an amnesty to all engineers and technicians sentenced by the OGPU to various social protection measures for sabotage and now working conscientiously in the Central Design Bureau.

Among the arrested aviation specialists were not only aircraft manufacturers, but also engine designers: A.A. Bessonov, N.R. Brilling, B.S. Stechkin... On October 25, 1929 he was arrested N. N. Polikarpov - outstanding aircraft designer r, who became famous in the 30s. as the creator of first-class fighter aircraft. He was accused of participating in a counter-revolutionary sabotage organization and, like other comrades in misfortune, was sent to Butyrka prison.
Polikarpov's biographer V.P. Ivanov cites in his book a letter from the designer to his wife and daughter, written by him shortly after his arrest: " ...I worry all the time about how you live, how your health is, how you are coping with our common misfortune. It’s not worth even remembering, I’m completely heartbroken by this. Occasionally at night or early in the morning I hear the sounds of life: a tram, a bus, a car, the bell for matins, but otherwise my life flows monotonously, depressingly. Outwardly, I live okay, the cell is dry, warm, now I eat lean food, buy canned food, eat porridge, drink tea or, rather, water. I read books, walk 10 minutes a day... St. Pray for me. Nicholas, light a candle and don’t forget about me..."
Fully - HISTORY OF AVIATION AND SPACE ENGINEERING IN RUSSIA
http://voenoboz.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=109%3A2011-03-09-17-32-27&catid=34%3A2011-02-14-00-01-20&Itemid=28&showall=1
http://topos-lite.memo.ru/vnutrennyaya-lubyanskaya-tyurma
"Repressions in the Soviet aviation industry" http://www.ihst.ru/projects/sohist/papers/sob00v.htm
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Death Canal - White Sea-Baltic , sung by the best writers and poets of the USSR, all these bitter, demyans0, poor and other lickers of communist criminals.

The initiator of the construction of the White Sea Canal was Joseph Stalin. The country needed labor victories and global achievements. And preferably - without extra costs, since the Soviet Union was experiencing an economic crisis. The White Sea Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea with the Baltic Sea and open a passage for ships that previously had to go around the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. The idea of creating an artificial passage between the seas was known back in the time of Peter the Great (and the Russians have been using the portage system along the entire length of the future White Sea Canal for a long time). But the way the project was implemented (and Naftaliy Frenkel was appointed head of canal construction) turned out to be so cruel that it forced historians and publicists to look for parallels in slave states.

The total length of the canal is 227 kilometers. On this waterway there are 19 locks (13 of which are two-chamber), 15 dams, 49 dams, 12 spillways. The scale of construction is amazing, especially considering that all this was built in an incredibly short period of time: 20 months and 10 days. For comparison: the 80-kilometer Panama Canal took 28 years to build, and the 160-kilometer Suez Canal took ten.

The White Sea Canal was built from start to finish by prisoners. The convicted designers created drawings and found extraordinary technical solutions (dictated by the lack of machines and materials). Those who did not have an education suitable for design spent day and night digging a canal, waist-deep in liquid mud, urged on not only by supervisors, but also by members of their team: those who did not fulfill the quota had their already meager ration reduced. There was only one way: into concrete (those who died on the White Sea Canal were not buried, but were simply poured haphazardly into holes, which were then filled with concrete and served as the bottom of the canal).

The main tools for construction were a wheelbarrow, a sledgehammer, a shovel, an ax and a wooden crane for moving boulders. Prisoners, unable to withstand the unbearable conditions of detention and backbreaking work, died in the hundreds. At times, deaths reached 700 people per day. And at this time, newspapers published editorials dedicated to the “reforging by labor” of seasoned recidivists and political criminals. Of course, there were some additions and fraud. The canal bed was made shallower than was calculated in the project, and the start of construction was pushed back to 1932 (in fact, work began a year earlier).

About 280 thousand prisoners took part in the construction of the canal, of whom about 100 thousand died. Those who survived (one in six) had their sentences reduced, and some were even awarded the “Order of the Baltic-White Sea Canal.” The entire leadership of the OGPU was awarded orders. Stalin, who visited the opened canal at the end of July 1933, was pleased. The system has shown its effectiveness. There was only one catch: the most physically strong and efficient prisoners earned a reduction in their sentences.

In 1938, Stalin, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, raised the question: “Did you correctly propose a list for the release of these prisoners? They leave work... We are doing a bad job disrupting the work of the camps. The release of these people, of course, is necessary, but from the point of view of the state economy it is bad... The best people will be released, but the worst will remain. Isn’t it possible to turn things around differently, so that these people stay at work - give awards, orders, maybe?..” But, fortunately for the prisoners, such a decision was not made: a prisoner with a government award on his robe would look too strange ...
"Killer construction projects of the 20th century" http://arman71.livejournal.com/65154.html, photo from "Death Channel" https://mexanic2.livejournal.com/445955.html
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Immediately after the death of the mass murderer Stalin, all the “great construction projects of communism” had to be curtailed,

A little from allin777 in Unfinished construction projects of Stalinism.
Draft resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers “On changes to the 1953 construction program”
21.03.1953
Top secret
Project On changes to the 1953 construction program

Considering that the construction of a number of hydraulic structures, railways, highways and enterprises, provided for by previously adopted Government resolutions, is not caused by the urgent needs of the national economy, the Council of Ministers of the USSR decides:

1. Stop construction of the following facilities:

B) railways and roads -

Railway Chum—Salekhard—Igarka , ship repair shops, port and village in the Igarka region ;

From a letter from L.P. Beria to the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on changes to the 1953 construction program

Work completed as of January 1/1953 in millions of rubles:

Railway Chum—Salekhard—Igarka, ship repair shops, port and village in the Igarka region - 3724.0

GARF. F. 9401. Op. 2. D. 416. Lll. 14-16. Certified copy.

TOTAL: The construction projects in which it was invested were liquidated6 billion 293 million rubles and thousands of livesSoviet prisoners.
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In one material it is impossible to list all the countless construction projects and the sacrifices of Soviet prisoners made on them in the name of achieving the mythical and never built communism.

Part 1

In December, while scrolling through a map in Google Earth, I came across a strange object. In general, I didn’t specifically look for it, it somehow happened by chance that I singled it out among the surrounding area. Among the steppe expanses of the left bank of the Volga stretches a strange ribbon of structures that are incomprehensible at first glance. It is a broken line consisting of 4 green segments parallel to each other. I immediately thought about ordinary forest plantations along fields and roads, but this did not fit the category of ordinary ones. The width of the structure is about a kilometer, each individual link is completely straight, does not follow the folds of the terrain and ignores roads. There are no roads at all along this line; occasionally small roads only cross it. I won’t bore you with bare text, I’ll show you what I saw.

Somewhat reminiscent of a trench system, only the scale is cyclopean. When I tried to find the ends of this tape, I was even more amazed. The ribbon stretches from north to south, starting near the city of Chapaevsk near Samara, and ends at the village of Vodyanka, exactly on the border of the Saratov and Volgograd regions. With all the bends, the length turns out to be over 600 km and almost nowhere the tape is interrupted or changes in thickness! I found only one gap at 7 km. In the above image, the camera height is 36.6 km, but the line is visible from a height of 100 km. What is it?

In general, I lost peace and began to collect information. Perhaps you know all about this and will laugh at my denseness. But among my friends and colleagues, no one could tell me anything about this building. Maybe among the readers of this post there will be people who knew nothing about this, like me, and I am writing for them.
It was all the more interesting for me because I had driven through this strip on roads many times and taken many photographs in its immediate vicinity, but I had never paid attention to the strange object, in comparison with which the Great Wall of China looks like a light fence.

What I found on the map turned out to be a state protective forest belt in the direction of Chapaevsk - Vladimirovka. Was built as part of the implementation Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated October 20, 1948 No. 3960 “On the plan for shelterbelt forest plantations, the introduction of grass crop rotations, the construction of ponds and reservoirs to ensure high and sustainable harvests in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the European part of the USSR”.
The plan itself was adopted on the initiative and signed by I.V. Stalin and went down in history as “Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature.”
As Wikipedia says about it: “The plan had no precedent in global experience in terms of scale. In accordance with this plan, forest belts were to be planted to block the path of dry winds and change the climate over an area of 120 million hectares, equal to the territories of England, France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands combined. Protective afforestation and irrigation occupied a central place in the plan.”

According to this plan, it was planned to “create during 1950 - 1965 the following large state forest strips:
- State protective forest strip from Saratov to Astrakhan on both banks of the Volga River, 100 meters wide and 900 kilometers long;
- State protective forest strip in the direction of Penza - Ekaterinovka - Veshenskaya - Kamensk on the Northern Donets, on the watersheds of the Khopra and Medveditsa, Kalitva and Berezovaya rivers, consisting of three strips, each 60 meters wide, with a distance between the strips of 300 meters and a length of 600 kilometers;
- State protective forest strip in the direction Kamyshin - Stalingrad, on the watershed of the Volga and Ilovlya rivers, consisting of three strips 60 meters wide each with a distance between the strips of 300 meters and a length of 170 kilometers;
- State protective forest strip in the direction Chapaevsk - Vladimirovka, consisting of four strips 60 meters wide each with a distance between stripes of 300 meters and a length of 580 kilometers;
- State protective forest strip in the direction of Stalingrad - Stepnoy - Cherkessk, consisting of four stripes 60 meters wide each with a distance between stripes of 300 meters and a length of 570 kilometers;
- State protective forest strip in the direction of Mount Vishnevaya - Chkalov - Uralsk - Caspian Sea along the banks of the Ural River, consisting of six stripes (3 on the right and 3 on the left bank) each 60 meters wide with a distance between the strips of 100 - 200 meters and length 1080 kilometers;
- State protective forest belt Voronezh - Rostov-on-Don on both banks of the Don River, 60 meters wide and 920 kilometers long; State protective forest strip on both banks of the Northern Donets River from the mountains. Belgorod to the Don River, 30 meters wide and 500 kilometers long.”

And this is only part of the plan. After the plan was implemented, the territory of the USSR should have looked like this:

In furtherance of this plan, a number of special resolutions were adopted to stimulate the construction and modernization of hydraulic structures. These include the construction of a cascade of hydroelectric power stations on the Volga, the Main Turkmen Canal Amu Darya - Krasnovodsk, the creation of the “Siberian Sea” - connecting the Ob with the Irtysh, Tobol and Ishim using a reservoir with an area of 260 thousand square meters. km (“eight Netherlands”). Then, as part of the same plan, it was planned to build a water supply canal to the Aral Sea or the rivers flowing into it. By the way, work on the Siberian Sea began in 1950, but was suspended in 1951: Stalin doubted the environmental safety of the project, requesting relevant details. He did not wait for them until his death...

These global projects were called by propaganda “Great construction projects of communism” and were clearly depicted as follows:

If you followed the link and read the resolution, you probably noticed how detailed this plan was. Tree and shrub species are recommended for each section of each protective strip. For example, for the strip that I came across in Google Earth, the following were selected: the main ones are oak, birch, ash and small-leaved elm; accompanying - common elm, Tatarian maple; shrubs - yellow acacia, steppe cherry, tamarix, angustifolia oleaster, Tatarian honeysuckle and golden currant. The deadlines for completion, the forces involved in this, and those responsible are indicated.

A separate clause specifies incentives for the implementation of this plan. For example: for the survival rate in the first year after planting of at least 80 percent of the number of planted trees and shrubs on the entire area assigned to the link, an additional 10 workdays are charged for each hectare of forest planting;

To develop and implement the plan, the Agrolesproekt Institute (now the Rosgiproles Institute) was created. According to his projects, four large watersheds of the Dnieper, Don, Volga, Ural basins, and the European south of Russia were covered with forests. The first state forest belt designed by Agrolesproekt stretched from the Ural Mountain Cherry to the Caspian coast, the length is more than a thousand kilometers. The total length of large state shelterbelts exceeded 5,300 km. 2.3 million hectares of forest were planted in these strips.

Once again, nowhere in the world have such large-scale projects to change the landscape and microclimate been carried out, and perhaps never will be implemented. Even in the USSR, where the main burden of implementing this plan fell on the collective farmers, who were paid with workdays, it turned out to be impossible to accomplish all this. But what was done is amazing.

In general, the idea was not new. At its origins stood the great Russian soil scientist V.V. Dokuchaev. He has the honor of creating the Russian-Soviet school of soil science, thanks to which the words “podzol” and “chernozem” became as commonly used as “sputnik”, and which one should be proud of no less than astronautics. Dokuchaev's idea was to create a new, deliberately man-made landscape structure that would increase the overall fertility of the territory and ensure sustainable agricultural yields. It was proposed to create a continuous network of wide forest belts, dividing the treeless steppe into isolated fields. Forest belts would provide an improvement in the microclimate and a significant increase in soil moisture during dry periods compared to the open steppe.
The first strategic plan in history for optimizing steppe environmental management, the Dokuchaevsky Drought Control Plan, is more than 100 years old. This is the first plan for the conscious design of the steppe landscape, developed and began to be implemented in the 80-90s of the 19th century by the “Special Expedition to Test and Account for Various Methods and Techniques of Forestry and Water Management in the Steppes of Russia,” on the initiative of the Free Economic Society. In 1892, the book of the leader of the “Special Expedition” V.V. Dokuchaev, “Our Steppes Before and Now,” was published, which outlined a plan for transforming the nature and agriculture of the steppe for a complete victory over drought.
The Dokuchaevsky plan was agricultural and was aimed at obtaining sustainable yields and preserving soil fertility through mass strip afforestation - the creation of a continuous network of forest belts of various ranks, structure and specific orientation, dividing the territory into rectangular areas and delineating beams and ravines, mass construction of reservoirs and the introduction of a grass field system agriculture. Forest belts were supposed to occupy 10-20% of the total area of steppe territories.

The need to create a large-regional program of environmental optimization for the southern forest-steppe, steppe and dry-steppe regions was realized by Soviet scientists a second time (after Dokuchaev’s attempts) in the 30s of the 20th century after another series of signs indicating an ecological imbalance of the territory - terrible dust storms that literally within In a few hours they destroyed crops on hundreds of thousands of hectares and, moreover, the foundation of the foundations - the soil, tearing off in some places the entire arable horizon.

Actually, the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated October 20, 1948 “On the plan for shelter forest plantations...” was dictated by the consequences of the drought of 1946. Drought in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Black Earth Region, the Volga region, in the south of Western Siberia and in Kazakhstan led to famine 1947. According to various estimates, from 0.5 to 1 million people died from hunger.
It was then that the decision was made to extend Dokuchaev’s farming methods to the entire drought-prone zone of the USSR, and thereby put an end to the instability of harvests, and therefore to hunger. The ideologists of this plan were V.R. Williams and L.I. Prasolov. But authorship, naturally, was attributed to whoever needed it.

As the name of the resolution implied, the plan was not limited to the creation of forest belts. Along with them, the resolution provided for the creation of field-protective forest plantations on the fields of collective and state farms on a total area of 5,709 thousand hectares. At the same time, grass crop rotations were introduced on the fields of collective and state farms, ensuring the restoration of soil fertility, and the construction of 44 thousand ponds and reservoirs was envisaged. This is the volume of work planned by the Stalinist plan to remake the nature of the arid steppes.

One of the main objectives of this plan is to transform and improve the water regime of soils by changing the conditions of runoff of melt and rainwater, as well as evaporation from the surface of agricultural fields. Forest strips, creating additional roughness, reduce wind speed and contribute to a more uniform distribution of snow and an increase in snow reserves in open spaces.

In the spring, during the period of snowmelt, and in some cases in the summer, during rains, forest strips will retain surface runoff and transfer it into subsurface runoff, which helps replenish groundwater and increase its level. Reduced wind speeds, as well as clumpy soil structure, will help reduce unproductive evaporation from the soil surface. As a result, the water regime of agricultural fields will change; they will receive significant additional nutrition, due to which an increase in yield will be achieved.

In general terms, the influence of forest plantations and agrotechnical measures on the water regime of rivers in the steppe and forest-steppe zones will be expressed as follows:

1. Spring floods in rivers will be more extended due to the slowdown of meltwater runoff by forest belts. The duration of the flood will increase, the maximum flow rates will decrease and the volume of melt water runoff will decrease.
2. The ground supply of rivers will increase and, accordingly, their water content will increase during low water periods.
3. Water erosion and the damage it causes will sharply decrease: planar soil erosion will decrease and gully erosion will stop.
4. The removal of chemically dissolved substances will decrease.

As happened with all great construction projects in the USSR, the people began to implement the plan with great enthusiasm. In a matter of years, trees and shrubs were planted on millions of hectares of steppes. Dozens of new forest nurseries grew more and more planting material. The upper reaches of ravines and gullies were lined with trees, the mouths of ravines were secured with wattles and hedges, and ponds lined with trees were built in natural hollows. In addition to collective farmers, school students were widely involved. It turned out by chance that my mother also took part in these events as a child. The children collected bags of ripe acorns in oak groves and planted seedlings in future forest belts.

Simultaneously with the establishment of a system of protective forest plantations, a large program was launched to create irrigation systems. To support the life of small rivers, dams with water mills and power plants were built. To solve problems associated with the implementation of the five-year reclamation plan, the Institute of Water Resources Engineers named after V.R. Williams.

The plan provided not only for absolute food self-sufficiency of the Soviet Union, but also for increasing exports of domestic grain and meat products from the second half of the 1960s. The created forest belts and reservoirs were supposed to significantly diversify the flora and fauna of the USSR. Thus, the plan combined the objectives of environmental protection and obtaining high, sustainable yields.

The concept of the plan not only anticipated modern constructions on sustainable environmental development of territories, but also surpassed them. “The world gasped at the greatness and enormity of this plan,” noted writer Vladimir Chivilikhin. It was the world's largest environmental program.

It seemed that in a few more years the plan would be fully implemented, and the country would finally come to abundance. But why is this Great Construction of Communism not being heard now? And we know that instead of exporting grain in the 60s, our country began to import it. What happened?

This cannot be described in a nutshell, the post is already quite long, so I suggest you read the answers to these questions in Part 2.

Part 2. Collapse.

As I already wrote in a previous post, Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature was rushing by leaps and bounds towards a victorious conclusion. But suddenly the implementation of the plan was suspended, then completely curtailed and consigned to oblivion. Even the idiologeme “Great construction projects of communism” began to be used in relation to completely different projects, such as the White Sea Canal, DneproGES, Magnitka...

The collapse of Stalin's plan began almost immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin. The chronology of events can be traced quite well. Already on the 20th of April 1953, Resolution No. 1144 of the USSR Council of Ministers was issued, according to which all work on protective afforestation was suspended. In order to implement this legislative act, forest protection stations were liquidated, the positions of agromeliorators were reduced, plans for artificial forest plantations were excluded from the general reporting of all organizations, and the forest belts themselves were transferred to the land use of collective and state farms.
Many forest belts were cut down, several thousand ponds and reservoirs that were intended for fish breeding were abandoned, 570 forest protection stations were liquidated.
By the way, in the same spring such “Great construction projects of communism” as the Salekhard-Igarka railway, the Baikal-Amur Mainline, the Krasnoyarsk-Yeniseisk tunnel, the Main Turkmen Canal and the Volga-Baltic Waterway ceased to exist.

What was the reason for such an inglorious end to a grandiose plan? And this is where information sources usually stumble. That is, many articles have been written about state forest belts, their benefits and the scale of their construction project. But the explanation for the refusal to build them is crumpled everywhere. The general meaning of the statements: “N.S. Khrushchev is a fool, he ruined a good plan solely due to his stupidity.”

Whether Khrushchev is a fool or not is a topic for another discussion, but this argument seemed weak to me. There must be clear reasons for refusing to transform nature in the USSR. Despite the fact that I could not find any detailed criticism of this plan. That is, everyone was FOR under Stalin, and everyone is still FOR, but the plan was scrapped.

But what intelligible posters they drew

As a result, the answers had to be collected bit by bit, sifting through dozens of articles on the Internet.

Departure from the plan due to the fight against the cult of personality of I.V. Stalin does not stand up to criticism. In the spring of 1953, such words were not used - “cult of personality” in relation to the beloved leader, who rested in the mausoleum.

Stupidity N.S. Khrushchev also does not explain these events at all. The fact is that after Stalin’s death, Khrushchev did not immediately become the sole leader. The events of the spring of 1953 are generally replete with dark spots; the details of what actually happened in Moscow during these months are little known. In any case, in the days when the decision was made to curtail the plan for the transformation of nature, there was a triumvirate at the helm of the USSR - Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev.
The decision to stop a number of large-scale construction projects, including hydraulic engineering ones, was made by L.P. Beria. By the way, after his arrest, the de facto leader of the country became the President of the USSR Council of Ministers G.M. Malenkov, and during his reign the plan was finally buried. N.S. Khrushchev began to come out on top and fight for sole leadership in 1955, when the job was already done.

Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature had to be abandoned because it did not live up to expectations. There was no abundance. Moreover, continuing to implement this plan threatened economic and environmental disasters. This is such a paradox. Yes, the construction of protective forest belts was an effective protection from dry winds, and events in the USA, where in the 30s similar events, albeit carried out on a smaller scale, clearly proved this. But in practice, the implementation of the plan revealed difficulties that could not be overcome.

Firstly, there was an all-Union tree planting pattern that did not suit all conditions. The result of this approach was poor survival rate of trees and large losses of timber. Secondly, there was a directive from the Ministry of Agriculture prohibiting the creation of fields inside forest belts with an area of less than 100 hectares. This norm was also not suitable for all steppe conditions.

The creation of industrial oak forests in general was the most adventurous part of Stalin's plan. In fact, the experience of creating forests, especially in the conditions of the south and southeast, was very limited. However, in June 1949, on the proposal of the Main Directorate of Field Protective Forestry and the USSR Ministry of Forestry, a decision was made to create industrial oak forests in the Astrakhan, Volgograd and Rostov regions on an area of 100, 137 and 170 thousand hectares, respectively (subsequently, industrial oak forests were also created in the Stavropol region).
It soon became clear that the economic effect of creating oak forests of industrial importance can only be achieved on black soil, and in other conditions oaks do not take root well. By 1956, just over 15% of oak crops remained.

In general, even now there is still a heated discussion about the role of Academician T.D. Lysenko with his nesting method of planting trees is a failure of the plan. Many defend him, many accuse him. Since I am a complete amateur in this matter, I will not take anyone’s side and I suggest that those interested turn to specialists, whose articles are full on the Internet.

Crop rotations on farms were often arranged in such a way that the protective forest belt, planned along the arrow of the axial direction of the winds, turned into a corridor “along which the wind begins to blow with great force ... dry winds will walk as it pleases.”

Newspapers cheerfully reported at the beginning of 1953: ...The Soviet people named the grandiose plan for transforming the nature of our Motherland by the name of its creator - Stalinsky. The strip crosses five districts of the Stalingrad region. The attack on drought in these areas began with the planting of a protective forest belt - the first of eight huge green barriers, the planting of which was provided for by Stalin's grandiose plan for the transformation of nature.
Five years have passed since then. And now the first green bastion already exists. It was created by the hands of Komsomol members and youth of the Stalingrad region. Komsomol members of the tractor plant in Stalingrad, and then the youth of Kamyshin, Gorodishchensky, Dubovsky and Balykleysky districts took patronage for the creation of a state protective forest belt. They called it "the track of youth." The young patriots gave their word to complete the planting of the green barrier not in 15 years, as envisaged by the plan, but in three and a half years! ...
Even before the start of the main work, the boys and girls of Stalingrad and Kamyshin produced more than 30 thousand different tools and 30 tractor trailers for the sponsored forest protection stations. A large army of pioneers responded to the call of Komsomol members. Schoolchildren collected and transferred tens of tons of seeds of tree and shrub species to forest protection stations.

But you won’t be satisfied with children’s and youthful enthusiasm. In 1953, a poor harvest brought the country to the brink of famine. Reserves for grain production were almost exhausted. The new leaders of the USSR agreed that the food situation was critical. This problem should have been solved first. Something had to be done. Therefore, the decision was made to begin new reforms.

Life in the village was extremely difficult. By the beginning of the 50s. flight from the countryside, despite the presence of a passport regime in the cities, became a mass phenomenon: in just four years - from 1949 to 1953, the number of able-bodied collective farmers on collective farms (excluding the western regions) decreased by 3.3 million people. The situation in the countryside was so catastrophic that a draft was prepared to increase the agricultural tax in 1952 to 40 billion rubles. was not accepted.
The situation was very bad in terms of grain harvests. For example, in October 1952, Malenkov, speaking at the 19th Congress of the CPSU, announced that the grain problem in the USSR had been solved, since the harvest had reached 130 million tons. In August 1953, the same Malenkov stated that this figure was inflated because it was based on biological statistics.

These lively statistics still please the eyes of gullible readers. This is what “History of the Socialist Economy of the USSR” says: The measures taken led to an increase in grain yields by 25-30%, vegetables - by 50-75%, herbs - by 100-200%...
...It was possible to create a solid feed base for the development of livestock farming. The production of meat and lard in 1951 increased by 1.8 times compared to 1948, including pork by 2 times, milk production by 1.65, eggs by 3.4, and wool by 1.5. "

So, they planted acorns in the ground, and after two years, pork production doubled. Not forest belts, but some kind of cornucopia.

The reality was sadder. As we have seen, this plan, and most importantly its practical execution, had shortcomings. Their main reason was insufficient accounting and understanding of the characteristics of steppe ecosystems and the steppe biome. In fact, the premise that afforestation guarantees the stability of the steppe landscape turned out to be erroneous. Ecology was not sufficiently developed and could not seriously influence the implementation of the plan. Also, a negative role was played by the fact that the plan, developed mainly for the European steppes, was implemented without any special changes throughout the steppe zone, i.e. in other conditions.
The result was a certain stabilization of the ecological situation, but this could not stop the transition of the entire steppe ecosystem, so to speak, to a “lower level.” For example, it was never possible to restore the previous soil fertility. In other words, the steppe nature began to function at a lower level, which did not make it possible to obtain such generous production as before.

But the remnants of forest belts that have survived to this day continue to play their field-protective role.
The irrigation component of the nature transformation plan created a much bigger problem. Huge amounts of money, which the peasants so desperately needed, were spent on its implementation, but the effect was negative. Miscalculations in planning, stereotyped decisions, low qualifications at all levels of execution led to very serious consequences, as a result of which the actual yield decreased.

Since we are talking about forest belts, I will not touch on irrigation systems. I suggest that you familiarize yourself separately with how things were, for example, in Tambov region.

The fate of the Karakum Canal is also indicative in this regard. Such large-scale hydraulic structures truly transform nature. Residents of Volgograd, for example, can observe the Volga becoming shallower every year, and residents of Saratov can see sterlets, which remain only on the city’s coat of arms.

In general, the grandiose project, which was absolutely necessary in essence, contained a number of voluntaristic decisions related to the neglect of natural laws.
The reasons for the failure of the plan, among which were dominated, on the one hand, by resource insufficiency, on the other, by the unacceptably low quality of work, which are determined by its impracticability at the level of socio-economic, scientific and technical development at which the country was in the 1930s-50s .

The post again turned out to be voluminous, so I’ll have to write another one to finish the topic. In it I plan to talk about the current life of state protective forest belts and, in general, about the mark that Stalin’s plan for transforming nature left in the history of our country.

Part 3

Part 3. Legacy.

Concluding the series of posts about state protective forest belts, today I want to talk about what remains today from Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature.
While I was looking for material on the topic, I suddenly discovered an interesting fact. Residents and guests of Moscow can see a unique monument to this plan. The design of the Paveletskaya (ring) metro station is dedicated to him. Apparently, this monument is now becoming an artifact, since few people know about it (judging by myself: I quite often end up on the metro at this station, and have never paid attention to it). Wikipedia bewilderedly reports that the station's panels depict banners with the names of cities in the Volga region. Mosaics on this theme are located in the ground lobby. And above the escalator there is a huge panel framed by banners on which are written the cities between which the strips were planned.

That is, each banner is dedicated to a specific stripe. You can find out more about this or at the station itself.

Now let's move directly to the stripes.

1. State protective forest strip from Saratov to Astrakhan on both banks of the Volga River, 100 meters wide and 900 kilometers long;
Along the left bank of the Volga, this strip now runs from the city of Engels to the south to the border of the Saratov region with the Volgograd region. The condition of this section of the strip is good.

This strip runs straight through the city of Engels. In the photo below it is the green wall in the background.

There is nothing remarkable in appearance; up close you don’t feel the global scale of the project.
Unfortunately, the remaining strip is only about 120 km long, and nowhere south of the Saratov region. not visible.

As for the right bank of the Volga, there is no strip as such. You can find its fragments between Saratov and Volgograd. It looks very much like the strip has been logged.

2. State protective forest strip in the direction of Penza - Ekaterinivka - Veshenskaya - Kamensk on the Northern Donets, on the watersheds of the Khopra and Medveditsa, Kalitva and Berezovaya rivers, consisting of three strips, each 60 meters wide, with a distance between the strips of 300 meters and a length of 600 kilometers;

The strip has been preserved entirely and is in excellent condition. Today it is even longer than planned.

When departing from Paveletsky station by train, you will cross this strip in the area of the station. Ekaterinivka, Saratov region.
But, most likely, this strip will not impress you in any way - it looks like ordinary forest plantings.

In this photo you can see this stripe in the background, going beyond the horizon.

3. State protective forest strip in the direction Kamyshin - Stalingrad, on the watershed of the Volga and Ilovlya rivers, consisting of three strips 60 meters wide each with a distance between the strips of 300 meters and a length of 170 kilometers;

The same “route of youth” planted by Komsomol members, about which newspapers wrote in 1953, has been preserved along its entire length. Kamyshin’s condition is good, the closer to Volgograd, the more unimportant. In some places there are traces of deforestation, but for the most part the trees bend on their own, drying out.

4. State protective forest strip in the direction Chapaevsk - Vladimirovka, consisting of four strips 60 meters wide each with a distance between the strips of 300 meters and a length of 580 kilometers;

I found this stripe in photographs from space at the very beginning. The strip is perfectly preserved. Moreover, Saratov residents exceeded the plan, extending it to the borders of the region another 50 kilometers.

In the photo below the stripe runs in the background. In the distance on the left you can see the beginning of 4 forest strips after the break by the railway.

I apologize for such awkward photos. I didn’t shoot stripes at all and they ended up in the frame along the way.

5. State protective forest strip in the direction of Stalingrad - Stepnoy - Cherkessk, consisting of four stripes 60 meters wide each with a distance between stripes of 300 meters and a length of 570 kilometers;

There is only a southern section of this strip from the river. Manych to Cherkessk. The condition of this area is average. I found no traces of this band either in Kalmykia or in the Volgograd region.

6. State protective forest strip in the direction of Mount Vishnevaya - Chkalov - Uralsk - Caspian Sea along the banks of the Ural River, consisting of six stripes (3 on the right and 3 on the left bank) each 60 meters wide with a distance between stripes of 100 - 200 meters and length 1080 kilometers;

Today, little remains of this protective strip. Along the territory of the Orenburg region, the strip is still visible, but there are many bald spots and empty areas. And on the territory of Kazakhstan, especially south of Uralsk, the stripes disappear. It's a sad sight.

7. State protective forest belt Voronezh - Rostov-on-Don on both banks of the Don River, 60 meters wide and 920 kilometers long;

8. State protective forest strip on both banks of the Northern Donets River from the mountains. Belgorod to the Don River, 30 meters wide and 500 kilometers long.

It is difficult to trace these stripes in photographs; they are small in width and blend into the landscape. So it’s difficult for me to judge their condition today.

This is how things stand with stripes today. It appears that forest belts are the worst preserved in the southeast of the region. The area is too poorly suited for forest plantings.
Nevertheless, these forest belts played their positive role. When the USSR became interested in the next global project - plowing virgin lands, they protected the European part of Russia from dust storms as best they could. Otherwise, the arable layer from the disfigured steppes would have covered many cities.

Separately, I would like to say about those who are cutting down forest belts today for the construction of cottages. Here is a clear example of people who cannot see beyond their own nose. Who will need their fucking houses when the water leaves these places, everything around will be covered with dust and the area will turn into a desert.

Of course, forest belts cannot be abandoned. There are projects for their restoration and development, for example, the Green Wall of Russia project. But in fact, a lot depends on each of us. In the comments to the first post in this series, people wrote about the mass planting of forests by the population of China. The Chinese are great, I want to be happy for them.

But I would like our land to be alive and blooming, and not a lifeless desert. If, of course, we want our Motherland to prosper. And so that our children remember us with gratitude for the preserved and restored nature, and not curse us for our disregard for our land. We don't have another one.
So I suggest getting out into nature in the spring, and not cutting down trees for firewood for barbecues, but planting new ones for the joy of yourself and your descendants.

CThe construction of grandiose structures is always associated with enormous material costs and human losses. But many of the great construction projects of the Soviet Union were bloody in the full sense of the word. And if almost everyone knows about the construction of the White Sea Canal, then the word “Algemba” can say a lot only to historians. And the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), still called “Komsomol construction” in many textbooks, was not built only by Komsomol members.

Algemba: About 35,000 people died!

Stalin is traditionally considered the most cruel ruler of the Soviet Union, who violated the behests of Ilyich. It was he who is credited with creating a network of camps (GULAG), and it was he who initiated the construction of the White Sea Canal by prisoners. They somehow forget that one of the first construction projects took place under the direct leadership of Lenin. And it is not surprising: all materials related to Algemba - the first attempt of the young Soviet government to acquire its own oil pipeline - were classified for a long time.

In December 1919, Frunze's army captured the Emben oil fields in Northern Kazakhstan. By that time, more than 14 million pounds of oil had accumulated there. This oil could be the salvation for the Soviet republic. On December 24, 1919, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense decided to begin construction of a railway through which oil could be exported from Kazakhstan to the center, and ordered: “Recognize the construction of the Alexandrov Gai-Emba broad-gauge line as an operational task.” The city of Alexandrov Gai, located 300 km from Saratov, was the last railway point. The distance from it to the oil fields was about 500 miles. Most of the route ran through waterless salt marsh steppes. They decided to build the highway at both ends simultaneously and meet on the Ural River near the village of Grebenshchikovo.

In March 1920, the task became even more complicated: it was decided to build a pipeline in parallel with the railway. It was then that the word “Algemba” was heard for the first time (from the first letters of Aleksandrov Gai and the name of the deposit - Emba). There were no pipes, like anything else. The only plant that once produced them has been standing for a long time. The remains were collected from warehouses; at best, they were enough for 15 miles (and it was necessary to lay 500!). Lenin began to look for an alternative solution. At first it was proposed to produce wooden pipes. The experts just shrugged: firstly, it is impossible to maintain the necessary pressure in them, and secondly, Kazakhstan does not have its own forests, there is nowhere to get wood. Then it was decided to dismantle sections of existing pipelines. The pipes varied greatly in length and diameter, but this did not bother the Bolsheviks. Another thing was confusing: the collected “spare parts” were still not enough even for half the pipeline! However, work continued.

By the end of 1920, construction began to choke. Typhoid killed several hundred people a day. Security was posted along the highway because local residents began to take away the sleepers. The workers generally refused to go to work. Food rations were extremely low (especially in the Kazakh sector). Lenin demanded to understand the reasons for the sabotage. But there was no trace of any sabotage. Hunger, cold and disease exacted a terrible toll among the builders. In 1921, cholera came to the construction site. Despite the courage of the doctors who voluntarily arrived at Algemba, the mortality rate was appalling. But the worst thing was different: four months after the start of construction of Algemba, already in April 1920, Baku and Grozny were liberated. Emba oil was no longer needed. Thousands of lives sacrificed during construction were in vain.

White Sea Canal: 700 deaths a day!

The initiator of the construction of the White Sea Canal was Joseph Stalin. The country needed labor victories and global achievements. And preferably - without extra costs, since the Soviet Union was experiencing an economic crisis. The White Sea Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea with the Baltic Sea and open a passage for ships that previously had to go around the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. The idea of creating an artificial passage between the seas was known back in the time of Peter the Great (and the Russians have been using the portage system along the entire length of the future White Sea Canal for a long time). But the way the project was implemented (and Naftaliy Frenkel was appointed head of canal construction) turned out to be so cruel that it forced historians and publicists to look for parallels in slave states.

BAM: 1 meter - 1 human life!

In 1948, with the beginning of the construction of the subsequent “great construction projects of communism” (the Volga-Don Canal, the Volga-Baltic Waterway, the Kuibyshev and Stalingrad hydroelectric power stations and other objects), the authorities used an already proven method: they built large forced labor camps that served the construction sites. And finding those to fill the vacancies of slaves was easy. Only by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of June 4, 1947, “On criminal liability for theft of state and public property,” hundreds of thousands of people were brought into the zone. Prison labor was used in the most labor-intensive and “harmful” industries.

In 1951, USSR Minister of Internal Affairs S.N. Kruglov reported at the meeting: “I must say that in a number of sectors of the national economy the Ministry of Internal Affairs occupies a monopoly position, for example, the gold mining industry - it is all concentrated in our country; the production of diamonds, silver, platinum - all this is entirely concentrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; mining of asbestos and apatite is entirely carried out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. We are 100% involved in the production of tin, 80% of the share is occupied by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for non-ferrous metals...” The minister did not mention only one thing: 100% of radium in the country was also produced by prisoners.

The world's greatest Komsomol construction project - BAM, about which songs were composed, films were made, and enthusiastic articles were written - did not begin with a call to youth. In 1934, the prisoners who built the White Sea Canal were sent to build the railway, which was supposed to connect Taishet on the Trans-Siberian Railway with Komsomolsk-on-Amur. According to Jacques Rossi’s “Handbook of the Gulag” (and this is the most objective book at the moment about the camp system), about 50 thousand prisoners worked at BAM in the 1950s.

Especially for the needs of the construction site, a new camp for prisoners was created - BAMlag, the zone of which extended from Chita to Khabarovsk. The daily ration was traditionally meager: a loaf of bread and frozen fish soup. There weren't enough barracks for everyone. People died from cold and scurvy (in order to at least briefly delay the approach of this terrible disease, they chewed pine needles). Over the course of several years, more than 2.5 thousand kilometers of railway were built. Historians have calculated: every meter of the BAM is paid for by one human life.

The official history of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline began in 1974, during the Brezhnev era. Trains with young people reached BAM. The prisoners continued to work, but their participation in the “construction of the century” was kept silent. And ten years later, in 1984, the “golden spike” was driven in, symbolizing the end of another gigantic construction project, which is still associated with smiling young romantics who are not afraid of difficulties.

The above-mentioned construction projects have a lot in common: the fact that the projects were difficult to implement (in particular, the BAM and the White Sea Canal were conceived back in Tsarist Russia, but due to a lack of budgetary funds they were shelved), and the fact that the work was carried out with minimal technical support, and the fact that slaves were used instead of workers (it is difficult to describe the position of the builders otherwise). But perhaps the most terrible common feature is that all these roads (both land and water) are many kilometers long mass graves. When you read dry statistical calculations, Nekrasov’s words come to mind: “And on the sides, all the bones are Russian. How many are there, Vanechka, do you know?” www.stroyplanerka.ru/AuxView.aspx

Material taken: “100 famous mysteries of history” by M.A. Pankova, I.Yu. Romanenko and others.

The great construction projects of communism - this is what all the global projects of the Soviet government were called: highways, canals, stations, reservoirs.
One can argue about the degree of their “greatness,” but there is no doubt that they were grandiose projects of their time.

"Magnitka"

The largest Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works in Russia was designed in the late spring of 1925 by the Soviet institute UralGipromez. According to another version, the design was carried out by an American company from Clinwood, and the prototype of Magnitogorsk was the US Steel plant in Gary, Indiana. All three “heroes” who were at the helm of the construction of the plant - manager Gugel, builder Maryasin and head of the trust Valerius - were shot in the 30s. January 31, 1932 - the first blast furnace was launched. The construction of the plant took place in the most difficult conditions, with most of the work carried out manually. Despite this, thousands of people from all over the Union rushed to Magnitogorsk. Foreign specialists, primarily Americans, were also actively involved.

White Sea Canal

The White Sea-Baltic Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea and Lake Onega and provide access to the Baltic Sea and the Volga-Baltic waterway. The canal was built by Gulag prisoners in record time - less than two years (1931-1933). The length of the canal is 227 kilometers. This was the first construction in the Soviet Union carried out exclusively by prisoners, which may be why the White Sea Canal is not always considered one of the “great construction projects of communism.” Each builder of the White Sea Canal was called a “prisoner of the canal army” or abbreviated as “ze-ka”, which is where the slang word “zek” came from. Propaganda posters of that time read: “Hard work will melt away your sentence!” Indeed, many of those who reached the end of construction alive had their deadlines reduced. On average, mortality reached 700 people per day. “Hot work” also influenced nutrition: the more work the “ze-ka” produced, the more impressive the “ration” he received. Standard - 500 gr. bread and seaweed soup.

Baikal-Amur Mainline

One of the largest railways in the world was built with huge interruptions, starting in 1938 and ending in 1984. The most difficult section - the North Musky Tunnel - was put into permanent operation only in 2003. The initiator of the construction was Stalin. Songs were written about BAM, laudatory articles were published in newspapers, films were made. The construction was positioned as a feat of youth and, naturally, no one knew that prisoners who survived the construction of the White Sea Canal were sent to the construction site in 1934. In the 1950s, about 50 thousand prisoners worked at BAM. Every meter of BAM costs one human life.

Volga-Don Canal

An attempt to connect the Don and Volga was made by Peter the Great in 1696. In the 30s of the last century, a construction project was created, but the war prevented its implementation. Work resumed in 1943 immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. However, the start date of construction should still be considered 1948, when the first excavation work began. In addition to volunteers and military builders, 236 thousand prisoners and 100 thousand prisoners of war took part in the construction of the canal route and its structures. In journalism you can find descriptions of the most terrible conditions in which prisoners lived. Dirty and lousy from the lack of opportunity to wash regularly (there was one bathhouse for everyone), half-starved and sick - this is what the “builders of communism”, deprived of civil rights, actually looked like. The canal was built in 4.5 years - and this is a unique period in the world history of the construction of hydraulic structures.

Nature Transformation Plan

The plan was adopted on the initiative of Stalin in 1948 after the drought and raging famine of 46-47. The plan included the creation of forest belts that were supposed to block the path of hot southeast winds - dry winds, which would allow climate change. The forest belts were planned to be placed on an area of 120 million hectares - that is the amount occupied by England, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium combined. The plan also included the construction of an irrigation system, during the implementation of which 4 thousand reservoirs appeared. The project was planned to be completed before 1965. More than 4 million hectares of forest were planted, and the total length of forest belts was 5,300 km. The state solved the country's food problem, and part of the bread began to be exported. After Stalin's death in 1953, the program was curtailed, and in 1962 the USSR was again rocked by a food crisis - bread and flour disappeared from the shelves, and shortages of sugar and butter began.

Volzhskaya HPP

Construction of the largest hydroelectric power station in Europe began in the summer of 1953. Next to the construction site, in the tradition of that time, the Gulag was deployed - the Akhtubinsky ITL, where more than 25 thousand prisoners worked. They were engaged in laying roads, laying power lines and general preparatory work. Naturally, they were not allowed to directly work on the construction of the hydroelectric power station. Sappers also worked at the site, who were engaged in demining the site for future construction and the bottom of the Volga - the proximity to Stalingrad made itself felt. About 40 thousand people and 19 thousand various mechanisms and machines worked at the construction site. In 1961, having turned from the “Stalingrad Hydroelectric Power Station” into the “Volzhskaya Hydroelectric Power Station named after the 21st Congress of the CPSU,” the station was put into operation. It was solemnly opened by Khrushchev himself. The hydroelectric power station was a gift for the 21st Congress, at which Nikita Sergeevich, by the way, announced his intention to build communism by 1980.

Bratsk hydroelectric power station

The construction of a hydroelectric power station began in 1954 on the Angara River. The small village of Bratsk soon grew into a large city. The construction of the hydroelectric power station was positioned as a shock Komsomol construction project. Hundreds of thousands of Komsomol members from all over the Union came to explore Siberia. Until 1971, the Bratsk hydroelectric power station was the largest in the world, and the Bratsk reservoir became the world's largest artificial reservoir. When it was filled, about 100 villages were flooded. Valentin Rasputin’s poignant work “Farewell to Matera” is in particular dedicated to the tragedy of the “Angarsk Atlantis”.