The turn of the Siberian rivers and other grandiose but unrealized projects of the USSR. Chinese rivers reversed

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It is no secret that the natural world of the Earth was created with a fair amount of sadism: in some places there are warm and long summers, millions of tons of corn and vegetables could be grown, but there is no water to irrigate the fields. In other places there is even a flood of water, but it’s summer “I was at work one day” and nothing grows except cranberries and cloudberries. But since the Bolsheviks put forward the slogan “not to wait for favors from nature, but to take them is our task,” then in full accordance with it they decided to transform nature. The Karakum, Crimean and other irrigation canals built in the USSR should have faded before the real “project of the century” - the transfer of water from the Ob, Irtysh, and possibly the Yenisei to arid semi-deserts.

Turn project diagram Siberian rivers, Kapitän Nemo, Captain Blood

The project of transferring part of the flow of the Ob and Irtysh to the Aral Sea basin had a long history - it was first put forward by the Ukrainian publicist Yakov Demchenko (1868-1871), in 1948 it was proposed to Stalin by the famous Russian geographer Vladimir Obruchev, in the 1950s - by the Kazakh academician Shafik Chokin. But things started to get serious only in the mid-1960s.

The confluence of the Irtysh and Ob. From here the canal's journey to Central Asia was supposed to begin, 2016

Then the project was taken up by the USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources and it consisted of creating a huge system of canals and reservoirs from the confluence of the Irtysh and Ob to the Aral Sea. Along the way, water from the canal would water not only the southern regions of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but also the regions of Russia suffering from summer droughts - Kurgan, Chelyabinsk and Omsk with their developed grain farming. The canal could also have shipping significance, linking the Siberian and Central Asian rivers, the Aral, Caspian and North Seas into a single transport system. sea route. The length of the main shipping canal (it was supposed to be called “Asia”) was about 2550 km, width from 130 to 300 meters, depth - 15 meters. If Iran had joined the project, it would have been possible to connect this entire transport system to the Persian Gulf basin.

Turgai steppe of Kazakhstan. These arid areas were supposed to be irrigated by the canal from the Ob. , year 2012

The work was carried out by more than 160 organizations of the USSR, including 48 design and survey and 112 research institutes (including 32 institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences), 32 all-Union ministries and 9 ministries of the Union republics. 50 volumes of textual materials, calculations and applied scientific research, 10 albums of maps and drawings were prepared. It was assumed that the cost of the entire project (including the creation of new agricultural enterprises) would be 32.8 billion rubles, and it would pay off in just 6-7 years. In 1976, at the XXV Congress of the CPSU, a decision was made to begin work on the project; the first work on the ground began, which lasted ten years.

They were stopped only after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, when, against the backdrop of a deepening economic crisis, the Soviet government realized that there was no longer any money for such expensive projects. However, the decision was also influenced by environmental considerations - if the Siberian rivers turned south, part of the territories in the north would inevitably be flooded, and in the south they would suffer due to the rise groundwater and the formation of salt marshes, unpredictable climate change at a great distance from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic Ocean. It can be noted for comparison that a similar “project of the century” existed in America - to transfer part of the water flow of the rivers of Alaska and Northwestern Canada to the south to water the arid regions of Canada, the USA and Mexico. It was actively developed in the 1950s, but then was abandoned for approximately the same reasons as in the USSR: too expensive, unpredictable consequences for nature.

Aral region, the canal route from the Ob was supposed to end here, 2013

However, 15 years after the consequences of the collapse of the USSR had settled down, and the economies of the CIS countries began to get back on their feet, words were again heard about the need to return to the project of transferring the waters of Siberian rivers to Central Asia. The presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as the former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, began lobbying for new projects.

Or would the canal go further to the Caspian Sea, through the arid lands of Uzbek Khorezm and the dry riverbed of the Uzboy? , 2016

Connecting with the Caspian Sea somewhere here? alexey-mochalov, 2009

In May of this year, they started talking about the possibility of transferring part of the waters of Siberian rivers to the western regions of China. Head of the Ministry Agriculture Alexander Tkachev then said: “ We are ready to propose a project for the transfer of fresh water from Altai Territory Russia through the Republic of Kazakhstan to the arid Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. In the near future we will hold consultations with colleagues from Kazakhstan on this issue».

When designing this idiocy back in the Soviet years, it was already clear that this was another feeding trough for the Ministry of Water Resources and its structures.

1.The problems of Kazakhstan and Central Asia in the field of water resources are not problems of water shortage, but problems of illiterate water use (exceeding irrigation norms by 2-3 times, discharges to the wrong place, losses up to 70%).

2. The cost of water is very high - it will have to be driven uphill.

3. Consequences of the channel’s activities. The Great Karakum Canal in Turmenia caused a rise in groundwater with subsequent soil salinization at a distance of up to 150 km. If we take into account that much larger volumes were planned and the canal ran along the Turgai trough, where the rocks are salty marine clays, then everything around there will be a solid salt marsh.

Currently in Kazakhstan there is no competent policy in the field of water resources. The Committee on Water Resources employs 34 people, of which 8 people are actually involved in water resources - they just physically don’t have much time to do anything, they only deal with turnover.

There is not a single hydrologist among the Committee staff (my classmate has already left, and he was the last one there). The majority of them are land reclamation specialists, the rest are generally lawyers and economists...

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in the community:

The diversion of the northern rivers, or rather, the transfer of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia, was needed to solve the problem of fresh water shortage in southern regions countries. In particular, it was stated that it was necessary to save the Caspian Sea from shallowing.

The main link in the project of turning the northern rivers to the south was the secret Taiga project. Nuclear scientists had to build a canal between the northern rivers Pechora and Kolva using nuclear explosions. It was assumed that if the experiment was successful, many other canals would be laid in the USSR in this way. Nuclear scientists were an influential force at that time, and they actually lobbied for this project. Thus, two problems were solved: the creation of a canal and nuclear tests.

In order to dig a canal, it was planned to carry out 250 explosions. Moreover, if the project had been implemented, water contaminated with radiation would flow from Perm to Astrakhan, poisoning everything in its path...

It is interesting that the level of the Caspian Sea began to rise sharply - by 32–40 cm per year - for objective reasons not related to human activity. It would seem that the need to turn the rivers back has disappeared. However, one of the largest environmental disasters of the 20th century broke out in the USSR. The Aral Sea, the fourth largest lake in the world, is beginning to dry up. This was due to the fact that the waters of the rivers that fed it (Am**arya and Syr Darya) were actively used to water cotton plantations.

To save the Aral Sea and increase cotton production, the authorities decide to dig a canal... It will cut through the entire country - from Khanty-Mansiysk to the Aral Sea itself. He will transport the waters of the Irtysh and Ob to the dying lake. In addition, they were going to redirect the waters of the Yenisei and Lena to Central Asia.

However, experts noted that in order to drive water from Siberia to the Aral Sea (that is, from the bottom up), a huge amount of energy would be required and this project would bring more losses than profits. In addition, canals 200 m wide will block the natural migration routes of animals... In all rivers of Siberia, the amount of fish will sharply decrease - this threatens small indigenous peoples with starvation. The swamps of Western Siberia will begin to dry out. Finally, these initiatives will lead to water shortages in Altai, Kuzbass, Novosibirsk and Omsk. This project was opposed by the country's intellectual and cultural elite: a number of scientists, writers, etc.

Nevertheless, the authorities were determined to implement it. The Ministry of Water Resources, without waiting for the project to be included in the five-year plan, purchased equipment with the allocated money and began work on turning the rivers ahead of schedule.

During this period, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. The economic situation begins to deteriorate, the country has debts unprecedented before. As a result, Gorbachev came to the conclusion that projects such as the reversal of rivers were no longer affordable for the USSR. Then he decided to shut down these initiatives under environmental pretext. This could also bring political benefits: Gorbachev allowed public debate on environmental topics, thus allowing a society in which irritation had accumulated Soviet power, let off some steam. On August 14, 1986, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee decided to postpone the project and limit itself to scientific research in this matter.

How can such beauty suddenly be taken and turned into reverse side? Photo from the official website www.rusgidro.ru

The scope of Russian engineering is wide. One of the striking examples of an idea that seems to an ordinary person The transfer of Siberian rivers from north to south in order to water the arid regions became practically impossible. However, this plan was not implemented due to its technological complexity. And after the breakup Soviet Union he was generally buried, but, as it turned out, not for long. Today, talk about reviving the project is becoming louder.

It all started in 1868, when the Russian-Ukrainian public figure Yakov Demchenko, then still a student, developed a project to transfer part of the flow of the Ob and Irtysh to the Aral Sea basin. In 1871, an enterprising young man even published a book “On the flooding of the Aral-Caspian Lowland to improve the climate of adjacent countries,” but the Imperial Academy of Sciences did not take Demchenko’s work seriously.

The Aral Sea is “drying” along the Irtysh

Almost a century later, the idea of diverting rivers surfaced. Kazakh academician Shafik Chokin returned to this issue. The scientist was concerned about the problem of the gradual drying of the Aral Sea. And his fears were not groundless - the main sources of water in the Aral Sea, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, spread over cotton and rice fields, which took most of the water for themselves. There was a real threat of disappearance of the Aral Sea. In this case, billions of tons of salt powder with a toxic composition could settle over a large area and negatively affect people's lives.

The Kazakh academician was heard; in 1968, the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee instructed the State Planning Committee, the USSR Academy of Sciences and other organizations to develop a plan for the redistribution of river flows. This project, in fact, fit perfectly into the Soviet policy of nature development. Slogans about the conquest of the latter were among the important ideologies of the Soviet government. Man, according to the ideas of that time, should have conquered, overthrown and transformed nature. Unfortunately, government actions in this direction were often accompanied by an absolute lack of understanding of environmental problems and were based solely on economic benefits.

Such large-scale projects were typical of the leading powers. And here's an example: at the same time, in 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson signed a law on the construction of the Central Arizona Canal. The main point of the idea was to irrigate arid regions, as in the case of the USSR.

In the States, its implementation began five years later and was completed. Construction was completed in 1994, and today the Central Arizona Canal is the largest and most expensive canal system in the United States. 18 years and $5 billion later, the canal is open in Phoenix. The Colorado River has swollen 330 miles and now flows through the Southern Desert, helping keep local farmers growing cotton, vegetables and citrus fruits in the surrounding areas afloat. This canal truly became the lifeblood of the region's inhabitants.

Academicians tore off the stop valve

In May 1970, that is, two years after the Central Committee gave instructions to develop a transfer plan, Resolution No. 612 “On the prospects for the development of land reclamation, regulation and redistribution of river flow in 1971–1985” was adopted. Began preparatory work– the specialists were faced with the task of transferring 25 cubic meters. km of water annually by 1985.

A year after Resolution No. 612 was adopted, the Irtysh–Karaganda irrigation canal with a length of 458 km came into operation. In part, he solved the problem of reclamation of a number of Kazakhstani lands.

And work began to boil - for almost 20 years, under the leadership of the Ministry of Water Resources, more than 160 Soviet organizations, including 48 design and survey and 112 research institutes (including 32 from the USSR Academy of Sciences) puzzled over how best to “turn” the rivers .

Together with them, 32 union ministries and 9 ministries of union republics worked on the project. The diligence of hundreds of specialists resulted in 50 volumes of textual materials, calculations and applied scientific research, as well as 10 albums of maps and drawings.

But the rivers were not destined to “turn around”. Society did not support such an initiative; devastating articles were published in the press, which spoke of serious environmental consequences.

For example, a magazine fiction And social thought « New world"organized a large expedition to the Aral Sea region in 1988. It included writers, journalists, environmentalists, photographers and documentary filmmakers. After the trip, the participants drafted an official appeal to the government of the country, in which they analyzed the current situation in Central Asia. It also provided recommendations for solving environmental and social problems without such gross interference with nature.

These protest emotions were supported by expert opinions from the Academy of Sciences. Moreover, a group of academicians (the so-called Yanshin commission) signed a letter to the Central Committee “On the catastrophic consequences of transferring part of the flow of northern rivers” prepared by the outstanding academician, natural scientist and geologist Alexander Yanshin. In 1986, at a special meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, it was decided to stop work. It is believed that it was Yanshin’s commission that had a decisive influence on the USSR leadership’s abandonment of the project.

Rescue from warming

The unfortunate Siberian rivers did not remain quiet for long. In 2002, the then mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, remembered this idea and undertook to bring it to life. He got down to business so zealously that in July 2009, during a visit to Astana, he presented a book under the symbolic title “Water and Peace,” in which he openly spoke out in support of the project to transfer part of the Siberian rivers to Central Asia.

“This is not a turn of rivers, but the use of 5–7% of the enormous flow of the Siberian river in order to provide water to 4–5 regions of our state,” the capital’s mayor said then. In his opinion, Russia has always had an interest in this project, because “water has become a commodity and, very importantly, is a renewable resource.”

In the new millennium, the idea of diverting rivers began to sparkle with new colors - at the beginning of the 21st century, the project began to be considered as a means of combating global warming. Today, experts say that the volume of fresh water supplied to the Northern Arctic Ocean Siberian rivers, growing. There is evidence that the Ob has become 7% more watery over the past 70 years.

Of course, we can be happy for the Ob. But one of the clear consequences of increasing fresh water in the north could be a worsening climate in Europe. As the British weekly New Scientist writes, an increase in the flow of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean will reduce its salinity and ultimately lead to a significant change in the regime of the warm Gulf Stream. Europe is facing serious cold snaps, and redirecting the flow of Siberian rivers somewhere could save it from this. In this regard, the Europeans, not wanting to freeze in winter, joined the Asian countries, in whose souls there is still a glimmer of hope that the Siberian rivers will turn in their direction.

Drought threat

A year after the presentation of Luzhkov’s book - in 2010 - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a statement that the land reclamation system created in Soviet times had degraded, part of it had been destroyed and everything needed to be restored anew. By the way, 2010 turned out to be a difficult and dry year, and the president was concerned about the drought problem. But, judging by the political realities of that time, perhaps Dmitry Anatolyevich was concerned not so much with the energy of the rivers as with Luzhkov himself.

At this time, the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, suggested that the Russian leader return to the project of transferring rivers to the south. Thus, Luzhkov now has a serious like-minded person.

“In the future, Dmitry Anatolyevich, this problem may turn out to be very large, necessary to ensure drinking water the entire Central Asian region,” Nursultan Nazarbayev said at the cross-border cooperation forum between the two countries in Ust-Kamenogorsk.

Medvedev then noted that Russia was ready to discuss options, even including “some previous ideas that at some point were shelved.”

And the “water” issue in the world has been brewing for a long time. For example, the report of US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, presented a couple of years ago, stated that a number of countries in 10 years will experience a real shortage drinking water. According to the Americans, this will not lead to international conflicts, but “water in common pools will be increasingly used as a lever of influence.” “The likelihood of water being used as a weapon or means of achieving terrorist objectives will also increase,” the report says.

The UN predicted problems associated with water shortages even earlier. In December 2003, the 58th Session of the General Assembly declared 2005–2015 the International Decade of Action “Water for Life”.

In connection with such sentiments, the transfer of water may benefit the Russian authorities for two reasons. The first is, of course, their transfer to needy regions - of course, for a lot of money. Secondly, assistance to the Aral Sea will contribute to the entry of Vladimir Putin’s presidency into the annals of world history. Thus, according to Viktor Brovkin, a specialist in modeling climate processes at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, if Vladimir Putin wanted to respond to the US Mars project with something equally ambitious, the construction of a canal from Siberia to the Aral Sea would be perfect for this .

"Superchannel"

So what is the “Turn of Siberian Rivers” project today? Experts are unanimous - they have already seen all this somewhere. You can recall the construction of a water pipeline from the Great American Lakes to Mexico City or Chinese project saving the Yellow River, which is drying up in the north, at the expense of the full-flowing southern Yangtze River.

Yuri Luzhkov proposed building a water intake station near Khanty-Mansiysk and extending a 2,500 km canal from it from the confluence of the Ob and Irtysh to the south, to the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which flow into the Aral.

It is planned to dig a “super canal” 200 m wide and 16 m deep. The Ob will lose about 27 cubic meters per year. km of water (approximately 6–7%) of its annual flow (its entire discharge is 316 cubic km). The amount of water entering the Aral Sea will exceed more than 50% of the water that previously entered it. In general, the bulk of the water will be sent to the Chelyabinsk and Kurgan regions, as well as to Uzbekistan. There are plans to bring the canal to Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. In the future, water intake from the Ob should increase by 10 cubic meters. km - these millions of liters, as Yuri Luzhkov noted, will go to dehydrated Uzbekistan.

It seems that work has already begun, because back in 2004, Soyuzvodoproekt director Igor Zonn, in an interview with the British weekly New Scientist, said that his department was starting to revise previous plans for transferring the flow of Siberian rivers. For this, in particular, materials will have to be collected from more than 300 institutes.

In June 2013, the Ministry of Regional Development of Kazakhstan presented a general development plan for the country, developed jointly with one of the branches of the Kazakh Research and Design Institute of Construction and Architecture JSC (KazNIISA). The authors proposed turning the course of the Irtysh and directing the waters to the territory of Kazakhstan. Such a sip of water, according to them, will only be beneficial for the Kazakhs. The project document was to enter into legal force on January 1, 2014. Three decades were allotted for implementation.

Believe in nobility Russian authorities For some reason it doesn't work. It catches your eye obvious benefit large-scale project. The economies of Central Asian states, in particular Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, depend exclusively on cotton. They are now the largest consumers of water per capita in the world. Countries themselves have made their situation worse by implementing incompetent and environmentally destructive economies. The Cotton Monopoly is a prime example of this.

The Amu Darya and Syr Darya are strong, full-flowing rivers; together they carry more water than, for example, the royal Nile. But their water does not reach the Aral Sea, part of it goes into the sand, and part into irrigation systems with a length of about 50 thousand km. At the same time, local irrigation systems need repair and modernization; due to their deterioration, up to 60% of the water simply does not reach the fields.

"What we have? In Russia there are uncontrollable floods, and in Central Asia there is an ecological disaster in the Aral Sea; water reserves here will only decrease every year. Can Russia help? Maybe. But we have our own interests. This is not charity - we are talking about benefits for Russia,” said Yuri Luzhkov in 2003 in an interview with Arguments and Facts. But the question is: will Asia be able to afford such a turnaround?

Expert opinions vary. Some shout about dire consequences, others talk about opening horizons.

According to environmentalists, the diversion of Siberian rivers will most likely result in a disaster. Director of the Russian branch of the World Fund wildlife(WWF) Igor Chestin confirmed to Interfax several years ago that in the coming decades, Central Asia will indeed face an acute shortage of water, but this problem cannot be solved with the help of Siberian rivers. The program director of Greenpeace Russia, Ivan Blokov, shares the same opinion.

Those skeptics again...

Let's try to figure out what consequences may arise for Russia if the project is implemented. According to the head of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Dobretsov, “the turn threatens the Ob River basin with an environmental disaster and socio-economic disaster.”

Ecologists put forward different hypotheses, but here are the main adverse consequences that the new “turn” will cause: agricultural and forest lands will be flooded by reservoirs; groundwater will rise throughout the entire canal and may flood nearby settlements and roads; Valuable fish species in the Ob River basin will die, which will complicate the life of the indigenous peoples of the Siberian North; the permafrost regime will change unpredictably; the salinity of the waters of the Arctic Ocean will increase; the climate and ice cover in the Gulf of Ob and the Kara Sea will change; the species composition of flora and fauna in the areas through which the canal will pass will be disrupted.

They also doubt the economic benefits of building the canal. For example, according to Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, there is a very small probability that this project will become economically acceptable. According to his calculations, the construction of the main canal will require at least $300 billion. And in general, sectors of intensified water use will soon develop on the world market: water-saving and water-efficient technologies, as well as methods for ensuring high quality water in natural objects. And for countries such as Russia and Brazil, which have large reserves of fresh water, it is more profitable not to trade this natural “good.”

But the problem is that, unlike water, money has a different nature and a different power of influence. It is unlikely that the authorities will be afraid to flood Russian lands a little if the end result promises mountains of gold. In the current realities, this can play into the hands of Russia, which can heroically save Europe from cold winters, at the same time strengthen its influence in Asia and write itself into history. At what cost this will be done is a separate question, but looking back at the Olympics and Crimea, it seems that the Kremlin will not stand behind the price.

Why did the USSR change its mind about turning Siberian rivers August 15th, 2016

30 years ago, on August 14, 1986, it was announced that the project for transferring water from Siberian rivers to Central Asia would be terminated. Against the backdrop of the deepening crisis of the Soviet economy, the then Asian republics of the USSR were offered to be content with a more rational use of the rivers available in the region. But decades later, talk about the Ob’s turn to the south began again more than once.

It is no secret that the natural world of the Earth was created with a fair amount of sadism: in some places there are warm and long summers, millions of tons of corn and vegetables could be grown, but there is no water to irrigate the fields. In other places there is water - even if it floods, it’s summer “ one day I was at work"and nothing grows except cranberries and cloudberries. But since the Bolsheviks put forward the slogan “ not to wait for favors from nature, but to take them is our task“, then in full accordance with it they decided to transform nature. The Karakum, Crimean and other irrigation canals built in the USSR should have faded before the real “project of the century” - the transfer of water from the Ob, Irtysh, and possibly the Yenisei to arid semi-deserts.

Scheme of the Siberian rivers turning project, Kapitän Nemo, Captain Blood
The project of transferring part of the flow of the Ob and Irtysh to the Aral Sea basin had a long history - it was first put forward by a Ukrainian publicist Yakov Demchenko(1868-1871), in 1948 it was proposed Stalin famous Russian geographer Vladimir Obruchev, in the 1950s - Kazakh academician Shafik Chokin.

But things started to get serious only in the mid-1960s.

The confluence of the Irtysh and Ob. From here the canal's route to Central Asia was supposed to begin, uritsk , 2016

Then the project was taken up by the USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources and it consisted of creating a huge system of canals and reservoirs from the confluence of the Irtysh and Ob to the Aral Sea. Along the way, water from the canal would water not only the southern regions of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but also the regions of Russia suffering from summer droughts - Kurgan, Chelyabinsk and Omsk with their developed grain farming. The canal could also have shipping significance, connecting the Siberian and Central Asian rivers, the Aral and Caspian Seas and the Northern Sea Route into a single transport system. The length of the main shipping canal (it was supposed to be called “Asia”) was about 2550 km, width from 130 to 300 meters, depth - 15 meters. If Iran had joined the project, it would have been possible to connect this entire transport system to the Persian Gulf basin.

Turgai steppe of Kazakhstan. These arid areas were supposed to be irrigated by the canal from the Ob. varandej , year 2012

They were stopped only after coming to power Mikhail Gorbachev, when, against the backdrop of a deepening economic crisis, the Soviet government realized that there was no more money for such expensive projects. However, the decision was also influenced by environmental considerations - if the Siberian rivers turned south, part of the territories in the north would inevitably be flooded, and in the south they would suffer due to the rise of groundwater and the formation of salt marshes; unpredictable climatic changes could occur at a great distance from Caspian Sea to the Arctic Ocean. It can be noted for comparison that a similar “project of the century” existed in America - to transfer part of the flow of water from the rivers of Alaska and Northwestern Canada to the south to water the arid regions of Canada, the USA and Mexico. It was actively developed in the 1950s, but then was abandoned for approximately the same reasons as in the USSR: too expensive, unpredictable consequences for nature.

The Aral Sea region, the route of the canal from the Ob was supposed to end here, varandej , year 2013

Or would the canal go further to the Caspian Sea, through the arid lands of Uzbek Khorezm and the dry riverbed of the Uzboy? varandej , 2016

Connecting with the Caspian Sea somewhere here? alexey-mochalov, 2009

In May of this year, they started talking about the possibility of transferring part of the waters of Siberian rivers to the western regions of China. Head of the Ministry of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev then said: “ We are ready to propose a project to transfer fresh water from the Altai region of Russia through the Republic of Kazakhstan to the arid Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC. In the near future we will hold consultations with colleagues from Kazakhstan on this issue».

When designing this idiocy back in the Soviet years, it was already clear that this was another feeding trough for the Ministry of Water Resources and its structures.

2. The cost of water is very high - it will have to be driven uphill.

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The diversion of the northern rivers, or rather, the transfer of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to Central Asia, was needed to solve the problem of shortage of fresh water in the southern regions of the country. In particular, it was stated that it was necessary to save the Caspian Sea from shallowing.

It is interesting that the level of the Caspian Sea began to rise sharply - by 32-40 cm per year - for objective reasons not related to human activity. It would seem that the need to turn the rivers back has disappeared. However, one of the largest environmental disasters of the 20th century broke out in the USSR. The Aral Sea, the fourth largest lake in the world, is beginning to dry up. This was due to the fact that the waters of the rivers that fed it (Amu Darya and Syr Darya) were actively used to water cotton plantations.

During this period, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. The economic situation begins to deteriorate, the country has debts unprecedented before. As a result, Gorbachev came to the conclusion that projects such as the reversal of rivers were no longer affordable for the USSR. Then he decided to shut down these initiatives under environmental pretext. It could also bring political benefits: Gorbachev allowed public debate on environmental issues, thus allowing a society that had accumulated irritation with the Soviet regime to let off some steam. On August 14, 1986, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee decided to postpone the project and limit itself to scientific research on this issue.

We will talk about an old project, notorious at the dawn of perestroika, for the construction of a gigantic continental-scale water conduit through which water from the Ob would flow through the dry steppes and semi-deserts of the south of Western Siberia, Northern Kazakhstan into the Aral Sea and into the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. This story - the story of the project, or rather even the design concept, and not the never-built canal itself, of course - is quite interesting in some ways. Usually the talk was about building a giant canal through which it would be possible to transport cubic kilometers of river water on a continental scale (according to the most daring projects - up to 200 cubic kilometers per year). Of course, “the turn of the northern rivers” is a journalistic cliche. During the Brezhnev era, plans for a complete turn of the northern rivers of the European part of the USSR into the Caspian Sea and Northern Kazakhstan were actually discussed. But technically it is more correct to talk about “transfer of part of the flow of Siberian rivers to moisture-deficient areas of Central Asia”. It was this phrase that was used in Soviet times as the official name of the project.
The need to create such a watercourse seemed obvious. Indeed, in one part of the continent there is (seemingly) an obvious excess of water, which flows into the Arctic Ocean without any obvious benefit to humanity. In another part of the continent there is a severe lack of it. The full-flowing rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya flowing from the high mountains are completely dismantled for irrigation; the rapidly growing population literally has nothing to drink. These parts of the continent are relatively close to each other (especially if you look around the globe), so why not transfer some of the water to where it is lacking?
For the first time this nice idea came to the mind of the Ukrainian journalist Yakov Demchenko (1842-1912). In fact, all his life this resident of the Cherkassy province worked on the development of his grandiose project of watering Central Asia with the waters of northern rivers. He outlined the first draft of the project in a school essay, and then wrote a book "About the flood[So! - M.N.] Aral-Caspian Lowland to improve the climate of adjacent countries". It was published in two editions, in 1871 and 1900, but did not attract much attention from specialists. 1 We must pay tribute to the author: several years ago, Russian troops first entered the Amu Darya basin, there were no Russian colonists there yet, and he had already begun to discuss the development of the rural industry of this region. And “ahead of his time.”
The Bolsheviks, as is known, considered the entire territory of the country as a single production complex, the resources of which required the most rational organization. Everything that was available on the territory of the country had to be subordinated to the single task of maximizing the development of productive forces. Including water resources: water must be where it is needed now or will be needed in the near future. Of course, this approach was not invented by the Bolsheviks: projects of similar movement of “irrationally” distributed water over the surface of the earth were carried out in many countries.
And already in 1933, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky formulated the principle of territorial redistribution of waters in the European part of the USSR. The development of this direction was interrupted by the war. But after the “main results” were achieved in regulating the Volga juice, i.e., a system of reservoirs was created, the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in 1966 adopted a program for the widespread development of land reclamation throughout the country.
It was to be carried out by the USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Management (Ministry of Water Resources), specially created in 1965. This amazing institution was comparable in wealth and influence to the famous “atomic” Ministry of Medium Machine Building, and in terms of the number of employees researchers- with the Academy of Sciences. As Mikhail Zelikin, the author of a book about the history of the “anti-rotation struggle,” writes, “on his [the ministry’s] balance sheet were earth-moving equipment of the highest productivity purchased for foreign currency…. Digging canals was, essentially, the only goal and purpose of the Ministry of Water Resources. This goal was best met by the project of turning the northern and Siberian rivers to the south.” 2 The Ministry of Water Resources “part-time” carried out excavation work under contracts of the Ministry of Defense.
The entire subsequent Soviet history of the “turn of the rivers” was determined mainly by the departmental interests of this ministry. This is important to note, because those fundamental features of the project, which turned the public so against it at the “dawn of Perestroika,” were determined precisely by its departmental nature.
The Ministry of Water Resources was interested in only one thing: maximizing the volume and budget of construction work that would be ordered to it. The Ministry of Water Resources did not try to calculate and justify neither the social, nor the environmental, nor even the economic consequences of the implementation of these plans. Later this even put them in a comical position. In the early 1970s, the Ministry of Water Resources proposed the creation of a canal system to save the level of the Caspian Sea. However, in 1978, even before work began on the site, sea levels began to rise. Then the Ministry of Water Resources came up with proposals for diverting the future “excess” water in the Caspian Sea. It was not for nothing that the writer Sergei Zalygin directly called this organization a mafia. The Ministry of Water Resources brought the prospects for the development of land reclamation to the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture. although it seems to be supposed to act as their customer. At the same time, no one in the Ministry of Water Resources was responsible for their activities either before the court or before the government.
And here we note the second feature of that “classic” river transfer project of the 1970s: essentially, it was about changing the entire system of large watercourses and reservoirs of the European and West Siberian parts of the USSR. This ministry took on the mission of changing the direction of river flows, relocating huge masses of people - not only migrant workers, but also those whose houses would fall into flood zones, and a large-scale transformation of the nature of the entire country. The gigantic plans were too large to allow for detailed consideration of even short-term consequences. The Soviet leadership, in principle, was happy with this: the Ministry of Water Resources occupied some specific place in the organization of government of the country. The management needed large construction projects. The Ministry of Water Resources provided them. Thus, rice and cotton growing developed rapidly in Central Asia. Cotton was needed not only and not so much by light industry, but by numerous ammunition manufacturers. In conditions of extensive development of nature, the use of effective, economical water supply and water conservation technologies turned out to be inappropriate. Nobody was interested in this. Public supporters of the “transfer of part of the flow”, even in the 2000s, and their leader was Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, shied away from discussing methods of saving water resources as simply inappropriate.
On July 24, 1970, a joint resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers appeared “on the prospects for the development of land reclamation, regulation and redistribution of river flow in 1971 - 1985.”. Systematic work has already begun to prepare feasibility studies (TES) for river diversion projects. Moreover, the entire program consisted of two logical parts: the transfer of the northern rivers of the European part of the USSR to the south to raise the level of the Caspian Sea (in those years it was falling), and the transfer of water from the rivers of Western Siberia (in fact, one river - the Ob) to the southwest for meeting the water needs of cotton growing in Uzbekistan. The design work was carried out as a complex, and the initial attacks by the “public” were aimed specifically at canal construction projects in the European part of the country.
As for the project of “transferring part of the Ob flow,” its fundamental justification was not difficult: the extensive development of monoculture agriculture in Central Asia led to growing water shortages. This was largely caused by the organizer of the reclamation system - the Ministry of Water Resources. According to various estimates, only 5-8% of the canals had the necessary waterproofing, while the rest were (and still are) simply deep ditches in which water goes into the ground. Together with the volume of evaporation, no more than half of the water removed from natural watercourses reaches the final consumer - cotton plants. But... the canal builders only took into account the volume of excavated soil. After the extensive development of agriculture caused disturbances in the ecosystem and created a danger for the population of the territories, officials turned the problem to their advantage, finding a justification for continuing their activities: the environmental problems that had arisen had to be urgently solved!
Then, in the 1970s, no one had yet talked about the Aral problem. The Amu Darya and Syr Darya were “dismantled” by irrigation structures, and by the early 1980s the area of the Aral Sea had sharply decreased. But they started talking about this only in the late 1980s, when a lot of articles appeared in the central publications of the RSFSR, journalists visited the Aral Sea, and Karakalpakstan, due to pollution caused by the swelling of the silt of the dried up sea bottom, came out on top in the world in terms of infant mortality rate up to 1 year 3 . In the “classical” period of the project, its necessity was justified solely by the needs of agriculture. There was no talk of “saving the Aral Sea,” which was already discussed at the end of this grandiose plan, at that time. Is it because it is more natural to use the water of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to save it?
Things almost came to direct field surveys, laying a canal and began earthworks. The volume of water offered for transfer was constantly increasing. Thus, it was calculated that at the current rate of development of cotton growing in the basins of rivers flowing into the Aral Sea, in 1980. all available water will be used, by 1990 there will be a shortage of 5 km 3 per year, and by 2000 - already 44 km 3. But the Ministry of Water Resources proposed to postpone plans for the reconstruction of old lands and old reclamation systems to the beginning of the 21st century, because the construction of a canal for the sake of “only” 44 km 3 could be considered unjustified by the country’s leadership. According to new calculations, the deficit in 2000 would have been 82.3 km 3, and the maximum option would have involved the withdrawal of more than 200 km 3 of Siberian water annually. 4 Almost the entire Ob would have to be “directed” to the south.
The hydraulic structures projects in both the “European” and “Siberian” parts of the country were carried out with high quality engineering (150 different institutions were involved!). But their economic and environmental justification was carried out hastily, with errors and caused sharp criticism from specialists. Environmental criticism (the tone of which changed from a cautious “don’t make mistakes” to “don’t touch it!”) in the pre-perestroika period stimulated the development of public discussions that already touched on other topics.
Opponents of the Ministry of Water Resources' construction programs were primarily employees of departmental and scientific institutions in the capitals. They knew how such decisions were made at that time and decided to play on the contradictions between various departments and the tendency of officials to rely on the opinion of “experts” from the academic environment when making strategic decisions. Opponents of the Ministry of Water Resources set themselves the goal of discrediting the scientific foundations of the project and demonstrating the deliberate fallacy of its economic justification.
Thus, “well-wishers” specially studied the abstracts of doctoral dissertations of the leaders of the “transfer” project, found gross errors and assumptions in them, and made sure that members of the commissions in which these dissertations were presented for defense knew about this. Mathematicians specially developed a model of changes in the level of the Caspian Sea, showing that the Ministry of Water Resources gave an erroneous forecast. This was done specifically so that senior government officials would make a negative decision on the project. In November 1985, the Bureau of the Mathematics Department of the Academy of Sciences adopted a special resolution, the name of which began with the words “On the scientific inconsistency of the forecasting methodology...”. The authors of the text of the resolution knew that officials would not read it, but they would remember the biting title of the resolution. 5
In fact, the campaign against "transport projects" was not originally the broad public campaign that it is now sometimes portrayed as. But it was historically the first public examination of a large “national” project. Only at the second stage of the struggle, by 1986, when the opponents of the Ministry of Water Resources had many trump cards in their hands (in particular, negative reviews on the project of 5 branches of the Academy of Sciences - despite the fact that the President of the Academy of Sciences A. Alexandrov himself was a supporter of the project!), the fight The “public” began to get involved. 6
It was at this time that environmental social movements and protests began throughout the USSR. In fact, the open and unstoppable “dismantling of the Soviet system” began with a public discussion of the problems of “ecology” - and it was then and during the course of these protests that the name of this scientific discipline acquired its modern immense meaning and became synonymous with the “environment” in general.
One of the leaders of the “academic opposition” to the river diversion project was academician Sergei Yashin, head of the “temporary scientific expert commission.” Among the “creative intelligentsia,” one of the clear leaders was the writer Sergei Zalygin, editor-in-chief of Novy Mir. When opponents of the Ministry of Water Resources “came out” to him, it was not difficult for him, a hydraulic engineer by profession, to understand what they were talking about we're talking about. Yanshin and Zalygin back in the 1960s. together they opposed the Nizhneob reservoir project 7 and had sufficient authority to publicly speak out against the “ministerial mafia,” as Zalygin openly called it. In addition, Glasnost was beginning, and public discussion of departmental abuses very quickly became a popular public topic.
Work on the project was stopped in August 1986 by a joint resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers and the CPSU Central Committee “On the cessation of work on transferring part of the flow of northern and Siberian rivers.” The resolution made direct reference to protests from “wide circles of the public” (Glasnost had begun!) and indicated the need to study the environmental and economic aspects of this project. It is surprising that the Ministry of Water Resources, with all its departmental research institutes, laboratories and analytical support, could not provide a convincing response to harsh criticism from not only ecologists (to whom the CPSU Central Executive Committee could have afforded to not pay much attention until recently), but also economists. The well-known economist Academician Aganbegyan presented data on an accurate calculation of the cost of construction, according to which the construction would require at least 100 billion rubles. against the 32-33 billion “requested” by the Ministry of Water Resources. And the very economic necessity of such a large-scale construction could not be convincingly substantiated either (let me remind you that they were not talking about saving the Aral Sea at that time). The Ministry of Water Resources tried to bargain, “lowering” the proposed transfer volumes - not 100 km 3 per year, but at least 2.2 km 3 per year ... but still, “different times have come,” and to the monstrous ministry, and with it, to the ministries interested union republics had to give in. Zalygin’s famous, very pathetic article “The Turn” in the first issue of Novy Mir in 1987 was already a reflection of the experience gained. Then it seemed like forever.
What were the environmental arguments of the opponents?
- the withdrawal of part of the flow of the Ob River will lead to unpredictable changes in the ice regime and climate of the northern seas (especially the Kara Sea), which will entail global climate changes;
- unpredictable changes in the entire system of reservoirs and watercourses of the Western Siberian Lowland with its largest swamp system in the world;
- shifting the border of the permafrost zone (which is especially important in this area with its hundreds of kilometers of pipelines stretched across permafrost and roads filled in permafrost);
- damage to the fisheries of the entire region, including the probable degradation of valuable commercial species (Atlantic salmon);
- rise of groundwater throughout the canal;
- change (degradation) of the animal world along the entire length of the canal due to disruption of migration routes, capital construction in previously sparsely populated areas;
- with a decrease in soil moisture in the middle Ob basin, the development of peat fires is possible;
- acceleration of soil salinization in target areas of water transfer, entailing the complete withdrawal of saline fields from agricultural use;
- flooding of large areas by reservoirs.
Later, the following were added to this group of arguments, in case of any plans to revive the project:
- the water of the Irtysh and Ishim is heavily polluted due to the degradation of water treatment systems in Kazakhstan, and it is impossible to “transfer” water of such low quality;
- China is increasing water withdrawal from the upper reaches of the Irtysh to uncertain volumes, so it is impossible to predict the real level and regime of the main inflow of the Ob-Irtysh.
In general, “unpredictability” - keyword ecologists. Of course, even if we add to these arguments the fact that the degradation of “fish stocks” threatens the traditional way of life of the indigenous peoples of the North, although for the majority of the Russian population such an argument is unfortunately unconvincing. They started talking about this project again in the late 1990s. Now the main argument of the project’s supporters imitated a tough business calculation: there is a catastrophic shortage of water in Central Asia. Water resources The regions are distributed extremely unevenly, and Uzbekistan, with its monoculture cotton-growing agriculture, overpopulated Fergana Valley and constant “water” border disputes with Kyrgyzstan, needs water most of all. The population growth of Uzbekistan is approximately 3% per year, the increase in water consumption is tens of percent annually. The water of the main watercourses - the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya - has long been “dismantled” for watering cotton fields. So, the state will receive an eternal source of income! Water trading is the business of the 21st century! And it was proposed to “divert” only 5-6% of the flow from the Ob - it seems that this is an insignificant volume of water “uselessly” flowing into the Arctic Ocean. This, however, is a typical “magic of numbers”: as academician Yablokov wrote, “the Ob has no excess water... The withdrawal of even 5-7% of water from the Ob can lead to negative long-term changes. The full extent of environmental damage caused by such construction cannot be accounted for.” 8
And here's to support in in working condition outdated worn out reclamation systems Central Asia it is planned to supply water from Siberia. How exactly? Two options for the “Grand Canal” route are being discussed: “northern” and “southern”. Both options were developed by the designers of the Ministry of Water Resources.
The northern option involves the construction of a large water intake on the Ob below the mouth of the Irtysh, from which the canal goes south, crosses the Tyumen, Chelyabinsk and Kurgan regions (solving the problems of water supply to these territories), crosses the Turgai plateau in Northern Kazakhstan (it was also planned to create a large reservoir here), heading almost due south, then exits near the city of Dzhusaly to the Syr Darya and stretches to the Amu Darya. The canal does not go to the Aral, but it is assumed that the Aral will receive Siberian water through the newly flooded channels of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. This watercourse should be 2550 km long. The Ministry of Water Resources at one time “underestimated” its estimated cost by 67 billion rubles. The technical difficulties of the hydrobuilders of the Ministry of Water Resources did not frighten them. To lay a canal in some places, for example, it would be possible to use “industrial nuclear explosions” (in the early 1980s such construction technologies were tested in the Komi Republic and in the Perm region), and it was supposed to be raised to raise water to higher elevations in northern Kazakhstan by a system of powerful pumps (as a side note, it can be noted that to power them, one or two power plants would have to be built in the Southern Urals).
In Soviet times, it was assumed that the canal would be navigable, and therefore its depth should have reached 15 m, and its width - up to 250 - 300 m. But these are completely monstrous fantasies. It would be possible to make the watercourse underground by laying several giant pipes equipped with pumping stations.
The second, “southern” option involves the construction of a water intake station near the city of Kamen-on-Obi, laying a waterway along the Burlinskaya Lowland along the border of the Altai Territory and the Novosibirsk Region; then - a giant aqueduct over the Irtysh (an option is to connect the canal with the Irtysh, which then should actually flow into the canal with Ob water and change its flow), and the water leaves in the same direction. There is already experience in the construction of such a structure - this is the Irtysh - Karaganda canal, opened in 1968 and now supplying water to Northern Kazakhstan.
The second option looks somewhat more realistic (if in in this case you can put it this way), but the first one is much larger.
It is clear that the population of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, or more precisely, the leadership of these states, are most interested in the implementation of the project. According to some experts, public discussion of the prospect of building large canals is more “profitable” in the domestic political sense than comparable investments in the reconstruction of the existing reclamation system and its rationalization - although this is exactly what both ecologists and economists have been calling for since the early 1980s! At the same time, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, with the help of dams built or developed back in Soviet times, control the flow of the main rivers of the main consumer of water in the region - Uzbekistan (only about 15% of the Syr Darya flow and 7.5% of the Amu Darya flow are formed on its territory). They write that the leaders of border regions “agree” on unscheduled and unscheduled releases of water from reservoirs, and thus a difficult-to-control corruption water market operates in the region.

This project found “new life” in the Russian public space in 2002. An influential politician, Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, sent to Russian President Putin a “Problematic note on the issue of mutually beneficial use of excess and flood waters of Siberian rivers to bring into economic circulation suitable lands for irrigation in Russia (in the south of Western Siberia) and Central Asia.” The main argument in favor of resuscitating the project is now the economic calculation of future profits from the sale of clean fresh water to Central Asia (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). According to Luzhkov’s calculations, even if the cost of a liter of irrigation water is 30 cents, Russia’s annual profit will be no less than $4.5 billion!
Again, scientists came out sharply “against”, and along with them - this was not the case in Soviet times - the leadership of the “threatened” regions, in particular, the governor of the Omsk region, Leonid Polezhaev. Oil and gas companies also did not approve of this project. In 2003, this project was discussed, then journalists’ interest in it faded, but it was revived by the publication of Yuri Luzhkov’s book “Water and Peace” in the fall of 2008. This book predicted: wars of the 21st century. there will be wars for water. And therefore, it is now necessary to use it as a strategic raw material. And for this it is necessary to return to the Soviet project, especially since the documentation is, in general, already ready. True, neither the calculation of the cost of construction, nor even a reasonable methodology for calculating future profits was proposed - because the world water market had not yet formed at the time the book was published.
A summary of Luzhkov's justification for the project sounded like this: (I quote a speech at the conference “Water Project for the Regions of Russia” in Moscow on March 27, 2009): In 3 years, all costs for such an operation, for this construction, are paid off. This must be done in a wide variety of interests - primarily economic - we sell water; a country that has 24% of water resources can and should sell these resources. 9
Luzhkov then “got into the trend”: in Central Asia there was a period of discussion of the Large Construction Programs. They talked about a project to restore the watercourse in the Amu Darya by delivering water from Pakistan through Afghanistan via a 2,600 km long gravity canal. Another project was announced in Tashkent in November 2008. This is the “Trans-Asian Development Corridor”: the Siberia-Aral canal stretches to the port of Turkmenbashi on Caspian Sea. A waterway from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf is being built through Iranian territory. Thus, the Arctic Ocean (Kara Sea) and the Indian Ocean will be connected by a single transport route, and in addition to it, the Eurasia canal is being built from the Caspian Sea to the Sea of Azov along the Kuma-Manych depression. Expressways and railways will be built in parallel with the canals allowing sailing from Egypt to Khanty-Mansiysk.
This is an example of a neocolonial project, when the problems of the population of “remote territories” (“dry” Southern Urals, “waterless” Northern Kazakhstan) are taken, as it were, to be solved for them. And the “locals” can only adapt to the perspective that opens up before them. The promised money from the “sale of water” will be received by the state or someone on behalf of the state.
The charm of all such projects is the scale that takes your breath away: undoubtedly, such a construction project will be visible from space, like the canal of Mars. The complexity of the political, social and economic problems that such construction poses to humanity also appears to be unparalleled. And the most obvious of them: who will finance all this? On what terms? As the specialist wrote then, “experts admit that paid water use is an unlikely idea in Central Asia due to the high risks of social and political upheavals in all countries without exception” 10 - even if we talk about relations “only” between neighboring countries of the region.
When Yuri Luzhkov ceased to be mayor, there was no one in Russia to raise this topic. But, despite the sad anecdotal nature of the history of that project, perhaps it is not finished yet. IN Large Projects there is something irresistibly attractive to some powerful people.

LITERATURE AND COMMENTARY

1 Koshelev A.P. About the first project for the transfer of Siberian waters to the Aral-Caspian basin // “Questions of the history of natural science and technology”. 1985, no. 3.

2 Zelikin M.I. History of evergreen life. M.: Factorial-Press. 2001. P. 68.

3 Yanshin A. The Aral must be saved // Social sciences and modernity. 1991. No. 4. P. 157-168.

4 Morozova M. Western Siberia- Aral region: revival of the “project of the century”? // East. 1999. No. 6, p. 92 -105.

5 A. Zelikin directly talks about this calculation.

6 So, for example, the following words of the popular “political scientist” S. Kara-Murza are an outright lie: If we try to briefly express the fundamental demand of the opponents of the program, it turns out to be completely absurd. It looks like this: “Don’t touch the northern rivers!” Not a specific one was rejected technical project(place of crossing the watershed, diagram of canals and reservoirs, etc.), namely the very idea of “transforming nature”. In essence, the question was posed to the utmost fundamental: “Don’t touch Nature!” Moreover, this extreme fundamentality turned precisely into extreme absurdity because it touched water and sounded almost literally like “Don’t touch the water!” The organizers of the campaign were allegedly outraged by the very idea of moving water in space. How is it possible to take water from the Ob and move it to the South! Like, God directed the Ob to the North, so don’t touch it. And this ban sounded so totalitarian that the question of a quantitative measure never arose in it. They say you want to take too much from the Ob, take less. The ban was absolute, but no one asked: but going to the well, pulling out a bucket of water and taking it home - isn’t that the same as taking and transferring water? Where is the limit on the number and distance you impose on transfer? No, they weren’t allowed to talk in that way.” (From the book “Soviet Civilization”, quoted here: http://meteocenter.net/photo/water.htm).

7 According to this project, it was planned to build a dam in the Gulf of Ob and flood the tundra massifs of the coast of the lower Ob. The purpose of construction was to “improve the climate” of the region, improve transport accessibility of the lower Yenisei (it was planned to continue the railway track along the giant dam). Oil exploration geologists sharply opposed the project. Preliminary work was carried out to survey the area, but in 1961 the project was finally closed.

8 Yablokov A.V. Obi doesn't have excess water// "Bereginya" 2002, No. 11-12. http://www.seu.ru/members/bereginya/2003/02/5-6.htm.
The text of A. Yablokov’s letter to Prime Minister M. M. Kasyanov and fragments of activist correspondence of that time are here: http://www.enwl.net.ru/2002/calendar/12224102.PHP

9 TVC channel report dated March 27, 2009 “Yuri Luzhkov proposed a solution to the problem of drinking water shortage in some Russian regions.”

10 Igor Kirsanov. The Battle for Water in Central Asia (2006) // http://www.fundeh.org/publications/articles/48/

Flight to Mars, collider, construction of the Palace of the Soviets. It was smooth on paper, but in reality it turned out to be impossible. We recall the most ambitious projects of the USSR, which never came to fruition.

On October 23, 1984, at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, a program for turning the Siberian rivers was approved. This grandiose project of transforming nature was to become one of the largest in human history. However, in the end the project never took place and after a few years work on it was stopped. The river turning project became one of the last grandiose projects in the history of the USSR, of which quite a lot accumulated during its existence. Some of them were image-bearing and were intended to symbolize the triumph of the human mind over nature, while others had some practical benefit and application. But not all of them were eventually implemented. We found out the most ambitious Soviet projects that remained on paper.

Photo: © wikipedia.org

The Palace of the Soviets was to become the main pearl of Stalin's perestroika of Moscow and the main of all Stalin's high-rise buildings. It should have turned out to be a real Tower of Babel. It was assumed that the building of the Palace of Soviets would become the most tall building in the world, surpassing even the famous New York skyscrapers. The height of the palace was supposed to reach almost 500 meters.

To imagine how this building was planned, we must take into account that the project developers expected that in normal weather conditions it would be visible at a distance of several tens of kilometers, and the modern Ostankino TV tower is only 45 meters higher than the planned building. The high-rise building was to be crowned with a huge statue of Lenin.

Initially, the palace was planned to be built on Vorobyovy Gory, but later it was decided to place the main building of Moscow State University there. Especially for the construction of the Palace of the Soviets, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the main pre-revolutionary unfinished construction, was blown up.

Construction of the building began in 1932 and continued until the outbreak of war. During this time, the first construction manager, Mikhailov, was shot. By the beginning of the war, the foundation was completely completed and work began on the main entrance of the building.

However, with the beginning of the war, there was no longer time for image. Construction work was stopped, and later they began to completely dismantle what had already been built. The first stage of the war was unsuccessful, and any resources were used. The constructed part of the building was dismantled for anti-tank hedgehogs for the defense of Moscow and the repair of war-damaged bridges.

After the war, construction was never resumed; the project was purely for image purposes, and spending already limited resources on it in a war-ravaged country was considered inappropriate. Already under Khrushchev at the end of the 50s, the project was returned to again. They planned to rework it into a slightly less pretentious one, but in the end they decided to abandon it completely. Instead of the cyclopean Palace of the Soviets, a swimming pool was built.

The Great Transformation of Nature

Stalin's plan to plant huge numbers of trees in certain places in order to change the climate in a more favorable direction and increase productivity. The plan was extremely ambitious and designed for a quarter of a century; the initiative belonged to Stalin personally, and therefore it received the informal name “Stalin’s plan.”

At that time, it was an unprecedented plan for the transformation of nature. According to the initiators, it was necessary to plant wide strips of trees along a number of the largest rivers in the USSR. Forest plantations were supposed to reach several thousand kilometers in length and have total area almost 4 million hectares.

The main goal of the plan was to change the climate to a more favorable one. Such large-scale forest protection belts were supposed to prevent the occurrence of hot winds and sandstorms, which had an impact on Negative influence for agriculture. At the same time, artificial reservoirs were built in large quantities to create a more advanced reclamation system.

Work on the state program began in 1949 and was designed for 25 years. Specifically for the implementation of the program, a special department was created - “Agrolesproekt”, which developed and supervised forest planting programs.

It was expected that once the plan was implemented, agricultural productivity would increase sharply due to an improved climate. In addition, for the same purpose, various progressive farming methods were simultaneously introduced: fertilizers, selection of particularly productive seeds, and the introduction of grass rotation.

However, this ambitious plan was never fully realized. After Stalin's death, active work on it began to decline, and at the end of the 50s it was finally curtailed. Khrushchev was a supporter of extensive farming and planned to increase productivity through the development of virgin lands, which ultimately led to the opposite results.

In some places, forest belts continued to be planted, but not on the scale envisaged by the original plan, and in the late 80s these activities stopped.

Main Turkmen channel

Another epic construction project of the Stalin era, which remained unfinished. It was supposed to take part of the water from the Amu Darya and send it along the canal to Krasnovodsk. The canal was supposed to revive and make territories in the Karakum and Karakalpakstan favorable for development.

Construction began in 1950 and was scheduled to be completed in 1957. More than half of the 12 thousand people who built the canal were prisoners of the camps. The length of the canal was supposed to reach 1200 kilometers. For comparison: the famous White Sea Canal, the pride of the first five-year plan, had a length of 227 kilometers.

Along the entire length of the canal, a complex system of locks, dams and artificial reservoirs was envisaged, as well as the construction of several hydroelectric power stations. To organize construction, it was brought to Railway and built from scratch new town Takhiatash, intended for civilian canal builders.

Huge amounts of money were spent on construction, but in the end it was never completed. Immediately after Stalin's death, construction was temporarily suspended at the suggestion of Lavrentiy Beria, who pointed out that it was too expensive for the budget. Party comrades supported Beria's proposal, and after his overthrow, construction of the canal was resumed, but in a completely different way.

Instead of the already partially built Turkmen Canal “from scratch,” construction began on the Karakum Canal, which followed a more southern route, bypassing Uzbekistan.

OGAS

The attempt to create a single global computer network that would take over control of the entire Soviet planned economy never achieved its goal. Since the late 50s in the USSR, thanks to the initiatives of the head of the computer center of the Ministry of Defense Kitov and academician Glushkov, attempts were made to interest the Soviet leadership in the project of creating a global computer network that would accurately regulate the processes of a planned economy.

Glushkov managed to interest Kosygin in the project, who gave preliminary approval to the project for automating the management of the Soviet economy. The project of the National Automated System of Accounting and Information Processing (OGAS) provided for the creation of both an industry and a territorial network automated systems control with large computer centers. A huge network would receive data from all Soviet enterprises, immediately analyze it and point out inaccuracies in planning. If it started working, a huge and extensive bureaucratic apparatus would no longer be required.

However, the system was never implemented for three reasons. Firstly, it was extremely expensive, although potentially profitable, because its implementation made it possible to save billions of rubles a year. Secondly, and this was the main problem, it threatened the interests of the State Planning Committee and many organizations subordinate to it, which employed tens of thousands of people who instantly became redundant. Thirdly, the initiators of this reform came at a bad time. Brezhnev and the “inner circle” of the Politburo were extremely negative towards any reforms and innovations and sabotaged even the modest Kosygin reform, let alone the epic-scale implementation of OGAS.

At the same time theoretical works over OGAS continued until the collapse of the USSR and were stopped only in connection with the transition to a market economy.

Manned flight to Mars

The Soviet Union managed to win two significant categories in the space race, launching the world's first artificial satellite and sending the first man into space. But there was still a third nomination: a manned flight to one of the planets. Even before Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, the date for the first manned flight to Mars had already been set - December 1971.

Two groups of designers, Maksimov and Feoktistov, worked independently on this ambitious project.

The projects they developed were called TMK - heavy interplanetary ship. Feoktistov’s project was more complex and larger-scale: a ship with a nuclear reactor was planned to be launched into Martian orbit, it was equipped with sufficient complex system life support. Maksimov’s project was much simpler and did not involve entering Mars orbit.

Since work on the projects began even before the first flight into space, and the duration of this flight exceeded a year, the designers had to improvise, since no one then knew for sure how space would affect humans.

However, this program was never destined to be completed. Having learned that the Americans were concentrating all their efforts on a manned flight to the Moon, in accordance with Khrushchev’s slogan “catch up and overtake,” the Mars program was curtailed in favor of the lunar one, but it was no longer possible to catch up and the Americans managed to get to the Moon first. And in the 70s and 80s, the trend was orbital space stations, not manned flights to other planets, so the Mars program was never resumed.

Collider

Construction of the Acceleration and Storage Complex began in the city of Protvino in 1983. It was planned to build a ring tunnel more than 20 kilometers long at a depth of 20 to 60 meters. At the same time, it was planned to install special halls with equipment and vertical shafts every one and a half kilometers along the entire length of the ring.

Of course, the tunnel had to be equipped with ventilation, lighting, etc. things. Work on the construction of the UNK began in 1983, simultaneously with the creation of the Large Electron-Positron Collider in Europe, while the Soviet collider was stronger in its design capacity.

But if the Europeans completed their tunnel by the end of the 80s, then in the USSR, due to economic difficulties and political upheavals, there was always a lack of funds for the ambitious project. By the beginning of the 90s, only a small part of the tunnel had been completed (about 3 km, although equipped with everything necessary). In 1994, construction was completely stopped due to lack of funds.

Theoretically, the project could have been completed later, but after the commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, this became pointless.

"Buran"

The Energia-Buran space program cannot be fully called unrealized, since the space transport did make one flight and, according to formal criteria, it took place. But it is impossible to call it fully accomplished. IN best case scenario, the potential of this program was realized by 0.001% of what was planned.

More than a million people involved in the project, one and a half thousand enterprises working on it, a decade and a half of preparation and billions of rubles spent (trillions by today's standards) - clearly expected a little more than one 205-minute flight.

"Buran" was in many ways an analogue of the American "Shuttle" and was created in response to it. The Soviet version of the reusable spaceship there was one significant difference: it was designed for unmanned flights. Takeoff, landing and other flight elements were completely controlled by the on-board automatic control system, while the Americans had to involve a crew for this.

Special runways at the cosmodromes were created specifically for this program, and the world's largest cargo aircraft, the An-225, was developed from scratch to deliver Buran to the cosmodrome.

Work on the program began in 1976, and Buran made its only flight at the end of 1988. Due to changes in the political situation, the collapse of the USSR and a severe economic crisis, the program was curtailed in the early 90s. The only spacecraft that flew into space died at the beginning of the 2000s when the roof collapsed in the hangar where it was gathering dust.

Turn of Siberian rivers

One of the last grandiose projects of the USSR, approved in October 1984. The project involved redirecting the flow of the great Siberian rivers to Asian regions in need of water.

Part of this large-scale project was the construction of a giant Siberia-Central Asia shipping canal, the length of which would exceed 2.5 thousand kilometers, and industrial nuclear explosions were also used for its construction. Another part of the project is turning the Irtysh River back and redirecting part of it through Kazakhstan to Central Asia.

It is difficult to even imagine what consequences the implementation of this project would lead to and what climate changes would follow in the future, but it is obvious that this would be the largest project for transforming nature in human history. The main beneficiaries, of course, would be the Central Asian republics.

As a result, the project remained on paper, and in 1986, after a campaign in the press, it was canceled. It's not the best anyway financial position The USSR was aggravated by the “prohibition law”, the war in Afghanistan and the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and only the preliminary cost of the project was estimated at more than 30 billion rubles (1/10 of all budget expenditures for the year) and, of course, would have increased if it had been implemented at practice.

There was a noisy campaign in the press that criticized the project from an environmental point of view. These arguments carried weight against the backdrop of the recent nuclear disaster that frightened society, and it was curtailed, although, most likely, the main reason for its cancellation was that it placed an unbearable burden on the Union budget. After the collapse of the USSR, the project was mentioned several times, but the matter never went beyond words.

Evgeniy Antonyuk

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