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White Sea-Baltic Canal. Construction History

The White Sea-Baltic Canal is not just a navigable canal connecting the White Sea with Lake Onega. And also not just an important transport facility, giving an outlet from the White Sea through the Volga-Baltic Canal to the Baltic and the Caspian Sea (through the Volga, respectively), but through the Volga-Don Canal to the southern seas. This is a whole story, the beginning of the great camp construction projects of outstanding objects of the Soviet era. During the construction, not only reservoirs and sluices appeared. In the slang speech, from the builders of the channel, new words were added, for example, bullshit and convict. Three periods can be counted in the history of the canal: construction - 30s, reconstruction after the war - 50s and the present. I will try to tell you a little more about them.

For those who did not smoke "Belomorkanal" cigarettes, on the pack of which its location was marked, I present a map. And judging by the request popular in Yandex - Belomorosko-Baltic channel on the map- many people face this question.

The channel did not start from scratch. The White Sea-Onega connection has been known since ancient times, and the first written descriptions of this railroad route date back to the 15-16 centuries. For the first time, the idea of building a navigable canal arose during the Northern War and belonged to Tsar Peter I, but in detail the development of the canal project was undertaken only in the middle of the 18th century. In 1922, on the basis of all the previous materials, a project for the construction of the canal was developed. Two main canal routes were considered - the western option and the eastern one. Both of these options are shown on the map on the right: the western one is yellow, and the eastern one, along which the channel was ultimately built, is blue.

The lengths of both variants were practically the same; they differed in the height of the watershed pool (the western one is higher than the eastern one) and the availability of it with water (the eastern one is poorer in water and needed additional feeding). All structures according to the 1922 project were designed with concrete, locks - single-chamber, their gates - metal double-leaf. As a result, the eastern version was built. The locks were single-chamber, but instead of concrete and iron, wood was used. The cells and gates were wooden. Only by 2009 did all the chambers of the canal sluices become concrete.

Construction of the canal began in April 1930. The term was set aside in 3 years. To speed up the work, the dimensions of the locks and the depth of the canal were also changed. The dimensions of the chambers were planned at 312x20x7 meters, as it was supposed before, and only 133x14.3x4 meters (length, width, depth).

In September 1930, a decree was issued on the possibility of involving prisoners in the construction of the canal - the construction was taken under the control of the OGPU. And away we go.

The labor was manual. Whole camps were working hands. The forest - with an ax, the track - with a shovel.

Nature endowed Karelia not only with rich forests and lakes, but also with rocks: they were blown up and again with their hands.

The construction of the canal also made its mark in jargon folklore. The words bullshit and ammonal were added: "We won't build a canal without bullshit and ammonal." Ammonal is explosive. Tufta is a slang word for Fictitious Labor Accounting Technique. The word zek also appeared. In the original it sounded like an abbreviation for the abbreviation z / k - "Prisoner canal soldier".

White Sea-Baltic Canal named after I.V. Stalin (this name he retained until 1961) was opened in August 1933. According to official data, during the construction period (1931-1933) 10,936 prisoners died. According to other sources - from 50 to 200 thousand people. After the completion of construction, 71 thousand prisoners were employed in the operation of the canal.

During the Great Patriotic War the canal, as a strategically important object, suffered destruction: its southern part was completely destroyed. This happened because during the war the western bank of the canal was captured by the Finns. In 1944, the Soviet side blew up 7 locks in the Povenets area. After the end of the war, the damaged facilities were restored and the canal was re-commissioned in July 1946.

In 1950, a decision was made to overhaul and reconstruct the canal. According to the projects, some locks should be rebuilt, and monuments in honor of the victory in the Great Patriotic War will appear on the canal route.

This is how sluice No. 1 from Lake Onega should have looked.

pylons at the upper chamber of lock # 7 and an obelisk in memory of the fallen at lock # 5.

But the plans never came true. The theme of memory to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War was subsequently implemented on the building under construction. On Belomor, by the mid-1950s, the gates were replaced from wooden to iron ones, the canal was deepened to 5 meters (at the beginning it was 3 meters deep), and by the end of the 1950s, the canal's infrastructure facilities were electrified.

It is curious that in the 30s a project was developed for the construction of a second branch of the canal, accessible for large sea vessels, with a guaranteed depth of at least 6.4 meters. Initially it was supposed to be built by the end of the 30s, but no command was received and the project remained unrealized. It is noteworthy that its implementation required not only an increase in the storage of reservoirs, but also a rise in the Svir level with the flooding of most of Petrozavodsk and coastal villages.

The Kola Canal was to become a kind of continuation of the White Sea Canal, the project of which was also developed, but not implemented. This channel was supposed to connect the Kandalaksha and Kola bays through the Kola Peninsula. The channel was planned to be accessible for sea vessels and was supposed to shorten the route between Leningrad and Murmansk by 1000 kilometers. This waterway would open up cargo access to the central regions of the Kola Peninsula directly in sea vessels. 110 structures were designed on the Kola waterway, including 26 locks, 33 dams, 36 canals, 8 dams and 7 waterways. The difference in level between the highest point of the watershed section of the Kola Canal and the sea level is 147 meters, so the average head at the locks would be 10-13 meters. The duration of navigation on the channel would be 5 months on average.

With the opening of the Volga-Baltic waterway in the 60s, which connected the Volga and Don with the Baltic, the traffic flowing through the Belomorkanal increased. New series of cargo ships were built taking into account the available dimensions of the chambers. In the 1970s, another reconstruction of the canal was carried out. In the course of this reconstruction, the guaranteed depth of the fairway was brought to four meters, and the channel became part of the Unified Deep Water System. The peak of cargo transportation was in the mid-80s.

But in the 90s, with the collapse of shipping companies and transport lines, when they were laid up, thousands of ships were sold or cut, the cargo traffic on the canal dropped incredibly. In the late 90s, the most frequent ships were caravans of cargo ships going from Siberia (Lena, Yenisei, Ob) to work and sell to Europe. But it was a one-way flow. In another, there was almost no cargo.

Since 2002, the canal began transporting oil from the Volga and Kama to the White Sea, where oil was pumped from river tankers to sea tankers. It ended with an oil spill and pollution of the White Sea. The deliberate bankruptcy of the largest river shipping company engaged in oil transportation - Volgotanker (together with YUKOS) - put an end to this.

But passenger shipping began to develop. The first voyage of the motor ship with tourists took place in 2001 and today cruises are offered to the Solovetsky Islands from St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Volga cities. With the development of new oil fields in the North (Varandey), equipment began to be transported from Europe through the Belomokanal. Lines for the transportation of timber to the Segezha PPM are in operation.

I was on the channel twice: in 2001 and in 2010. I suggest you see how the channel looks like today. Let's start with the Povenchanskaya stairs, located in the southern part of the canal, near Lake Onega. Here begins the staircase from the locks - the rise from the lake to the watershed. In 4 hours the ship passes 7 locks following each other. In the photo: a view of Lake Onega and locks No. 1-4. A lighthouse is also visible in the lake at the entrance to the canal. It can be compared to what we planned to do.

And this is a view of the other part of the "staircase", from the side of the lake. Gateways No. 5-7.

Hydroelectric power station at gateway No. 9

Exit to Vygozero - the largest lake on the canal route. View from the southern part.

Vygozero - view from the city of Nadvoitsy.

After hundreds of kilometers of shores, rocks and forests, it is unusual to see such signs of "civilization". Aluminum plant in Nadvoitsy, operating since 1954.

Also Nadvoitsy.

Gateway No. 10 in Nadvoitsy.

Gateway No. 11 was renovated this year. Until that time, he was the last to have wooden walls. Now they have been replaced by such ones, decorated with the inscriptions "Do not lower the hill", "Do not push during maneuvers" and others on this topic.

The motor ship in the roadstead of the Sosnovets village, below the lock No. 15.

Canal route between locks 11 and 13

In the town of Povenets, behind the gateway N2, a church was built in memory of the builders of the canal for the 70th anniversary of the BBK.

There are no hinged road bridges over the canal - the road passes through the gateways:

There is only one railway bridge here, but what a! About the unique drawbridge Shizhensky railway bridge, located in the Belomorsk region,. This is a drawbridge of a retractable-drop-down system. It was commissioned in 1952. There are only two similar structures in the world - one in Canada, and the other - this very bridge in Belomorsk.

On this, the acquaintance with the White Sea-Baltic Canal can be considered successful. The following stories will be about Belomorsk and the Solovetsky Islands.

The construction of the canal connecting Lake Onega with the White Sea was one of the large-scale projects I of the Soviet five-year plan. The idea of building such a waterway appeared in the Russian Empire more than once. During the war with the Swedes, Peter I ordered the construction of a road named Osudareva, cutting through glades and laying logs along which troops and carts went for 10 days from the White Sea to Onega. More than Osudarev, the road was not used for military purposes, and over the 300 years that have passed since those times, practically nothing has remained of it. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the projects of the canal were considered by the government of the Russian Empire three times, and each time the construction was postponed due to the high cost. And the Russian Empire was one of the richest countries in the world!

There were no obstacles for the Bolsheviks. If the Leader said that the canal is needed, then it will be built! Nathan Frenkel suggested using the Solovetsky prisoners in the construction of the canal, and later other camps. The decision to start construction was made in 1930, a Special Committee was created, the head of the GULAG M. Berman and G. Yagoda were appointed supervisors of the construction. The same "rationalizer" N. Frenkel supervised the construction of the Baltic-White Sea waterway.

The canal builders faced a task that could not be solved in any other state, except. The canal had to be built without foreign exchange, without the use of machines and mechanisms, without unnecessary costs for the maintenance of workers and use improvised means as building materials. And he allocated only 20 months for the construction.
In July 1931, the construction project was submitted for consideration, a month later they began to mark on the ground. In September 1931, work began, one hundred thousand GULAG prisoners were brought to the construction site, 60% of whom could be accommodated in barracks, the rest in tents and hastily put together temporary huts. Both male and female prisoners participated in the construction. There were very few supervisors for such a number of "contingent", on average, 40-60 people. The fulfillment and overfulfillment of the plan was followed by one of the strongest feelings - the feeling of hunger.

Whoever does not work well, does not fulfill the plan, the ration is cut off, from the usually put a pound of bread and a bowl of seaweed mash per day, they will give barely half. For the foremost construction workers, the ration was increased accordingly. The list of 15 violations that could lead to serious punishment also contributed a lot to order. And the prisoners were nicely renamed as prisoners of the canal army, simply z / k. During the entire construction period, the prisoners moved about 21 million cubic meters of soil, laid 40 kilometers of roads, moved a section of the railway, and cut down all the surrounding forests. Stones, peat, timber, earth were used as building materials; there were no additional supplies. All work was done by hand: shovels, picks, crowbars, chisels, hand saws, stretchers and wheelbarrows - this is all that the builders of the Belomorkanal had. Slave labor of people deprived of all rights, labor at the limit of physical and mental strength. If the pyramids were built in this way in Ancient Egypt, then their construction would have ended a thousand years earlier than happened in history.

The canal builders died from exhausting labor, cold, malnutrition, injuries; according to official figures, 12,318 people out of 124,000 prisoners who took part in the construction died in 20 months. But, already in May 1933, Genrikh Yagoda reported on the completion of the construction. In a fantastically short period of time, more than a hundred complex hydraulic structures were built: 15 dams, 19 locks, 12 waterways, 51 dams on a 227-kilometer stretch of the canal.

The navigable depth was 3.6 - 4 meters, with a width of 36 meters. After the canal was put into operation, 12.5 thousand people were released and reinstated, and almost 60 thousand more had their term reduced. When Kirov and Voroshilov in July 1933 on a boat passed through the canal, Stalin was disappointed, the canal seemed to him narrow, shallow and, in general, unnecessary. It was not possible to reduce the travel time from the Baltic Sea to the White Sea, the passage of 19 locks took too much time, and not every ship could pass through it, it turned out to be too small. During the Great Patriotic War, the channel had to be blown up so that the Finns would not get it. After the war, the White Sea Canal was restored, several hydroelectric power plants were built, and in 1970 it was deepened and reconstructed. In Soviet times, the channel was used quite actively, especially in the mid-80s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, traffic on it was significantly reduced. Nowadays, the canal along its entire length is served by the White Sea - Onega Waterway Administration. This is one of the tourist routes, and there are monuments to the builders on its banks.

The motto of the Jesuit Order "By any means" in the Soviet Union during the reign of "with comrades" became, apparently, a guide to action and state ideology. The lives of people passed through his terrible bookkeeping as a consumable that, after use, had to be written off.

"Belomor" History of construction, White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1933 USSR, Documentary film

Now you go captain
Now you drive ships here
But you didn’t tell the Urkagans
Thank you never for that.
Inna Goff

The most famous of all channels in Russia, thanks to the immortalscigarettes, the White Sea-Baltic waterway remains, nevertheless,the most unknown.

It still remains a mystery how all this was possible:
no mechanisms, no concrete: crushed stone, sand, logs and ... 300 thousand
prisoners, of which 100 thousand died. Died up to 700 per day
human. For the survivors, Belomor is a camp where one could meet
former Minister of the Provisional Government Nekrasov and simple
a baker arrested for resembling Nicholas II. Wherein
The White Sea Canal is the most massive propaganda campaign of the socialist era. Needless to say.
The giant neighbor Suez is 67 kilometers shorter, and it took 10 years to build it. WITH
We managed the Belomor in 20 months!

Osudareva's road
The idea of building a canal was "promoted" by Peter I. In 1702 he
cut through a clearing six meters wide, the famous "Osudareva road", along
which from the White Sea to Lake Onego dragged warships.
And in 1798, the government received a project to build a canal for
signed by three merchants. The route almost coincided with the current route.
The government became interested in the project and sent for research
the best specialist - General de Voland. However, having examined the area,
he rejected the idea: there are too many rocks, waterfalls and others
obstacles ...

Outpost on the border with fascism
The idea was realized only in the 30s. White Sea-Baltic Canal
became one of the links in the Stalinist plan for the reconstruction of the water
transport. On February 18, 1931, the USSR Labor and Defense Council adopted
decision to start construction of the White Sea-Baltic waterway. That's what
written about him in the famous collection edited by Maxim Gorky,
which was dedicated to a great project:
“The channel will cut through Karelia from Lake Onega to the White Sea. Karelia was
and will be an outpost of the Union of Soviet Republics on the border with the fascist
Finland ".

And bells-bells, ringing -
And I won't go to work, for the life of me:
Let the iron locomotive work -
And what the fuck did he bring me into this wilderness ?!

Special conditions
The technicians and engineers who were to build the canal were assembled according to
different prisons where they were hid in cases of "sabotage".
After they, who were sitting with criminals, were unexpectedly transferred to
Lubyanka and were given a job in their specialty, they, of course, caught fire
enthusiasm. This is how the "Special Design Bureau" was created.
The specialists were confronted with the fact: the deadlines are given the minimum (indication
Stalin was - "quickly and cheaply"), the relief and natural conditions -
the hardest, there are no building materials nearby. The engineers had to
turn on all your fantasy. The main building materials are
wood, stone and sand.
Moreover, there was almost no equipment at the construction site: tools - a shovel, yes
wooden wheelbarrow. You can still find cars abandoned in the forest to this day,
of which there were 70 thousand at the construction site.

And the bells-bells, doo-doo,
And I won't go to work today:
Let checkers, dynamite and ammonal torn -
And the hell the White Sea channel surrendered to us!

Reforging
The first builders were the prisoners of the Solovetsky camp, and later on
echelons went north from all over Soviet Union... Were among
arrivals and criminals, and dispossessed, and "political", accused of
the notorious 58th article.
The work on the canal was called “reforging”. "Reforging" - this was the name and
local newspaper. Among the builders were the singer Ruslanova and the creator
the first jazz orchestra Teplitsky, and scientists - Losev, Likhachev ...
It is not surprising that in Bear Mountain - the "capital" of construction - there were
concert hall and symphony orchestra.
True, of the 300 thousand prisoners who participated in the construction,
killed about 100 thousand, but, as they say, the forest is cut - the chips fly. All
the channel route is marked with crosses in the set. There are no coffins for the dead
was supposed to. The place of burial was also not supposed to be indicated in the documents.
So they lie, no one knows where, but everywhere along the route of the canal ...

Thieves' life - keldims and train stations,
And as if to the abyss - the best years ...
But in thirty-third, with the end of the channel,
I decided to forget the underworld forever.

Canal Army prisoners

The White Sea prisoners gave birth to many words and expressions that we
we still use it. The most famous of them is "zek". His appearance
connected with the White Sea Canal. The ending "a" ("zeka") appeared right there
after the prisoners began to be called "canal army".
In 1932 Mikoyan visited the construction site. It was to him that he allegedly turned
the head of the GULAG Lazar Kogan and shared his linguistic doubts:
- Comrade Mikoyan, what should you call them? "Comrade" is not yet the time. Prisoner
- It's a shame. Lagernik is colorless. So I came up with the word - "canalist".
What do you think?
“Well, that's right,” Mikoyan replied.
True, despite the ingenuity, the offensive word "prisoner" from
official documents have not disappeared. So they began to dignify the prisoners -
"Prisoner canalist". Abbreviated as "zek".

And bells-bells are links-links,
And I'm too lazy to go to work today:
Let the iron saw work -
My mother did not give birth to me for work!

Dangerous mix
After the completion of the construction of the canal, another one entered the language of the Gulag.
word - "ammonal". It meant bread that was given to prisoners in
the form of soldering. Ammonal is actually an explosive mixture. And the prisoner's
the tribe called the ration "ammonal", because the bread that was fed
the canal army, in appearance really resembled ammonal, was disgusting
taste and color. Eating such food resulted in terrible
upset stomach and terrible diarrhea (the stomach "exploded" that
accompanied by appropriate sounds). Ammonal entered the famous
a proverb born on a great construction site: “Without bullshit and ammonal,
would build the White Sea Canal. "

A thief will never become a laundress
But you can't make your back bend;
Eh, don't dirty your hands with a dirty wheelbarrow -
We'll have a smoke sometime!

Blat and bullshit above the Central Committee
Well, with ammonal it's clear, but what about "bullshit"? The convicts deciphered it
words like this: "Technique of Accounting Fictitious Labor" or deception, substitution of something
a real fake.
The canal is 227 kilometers long, the system of which includes complex
hydraulic structures, in less than two years in normal form
it was impossible to dig! And it was necessary to report. And then the responsible
for the construction "they charged bullshit": they ordered to dig a canal much smaller,
than it was envisaged by the project. The average channel depth was about 5
meters, and therefore, until the 50s, it was practically not used for
shipping. However, this did not prevent the construction management from obtaining
awards for valiant labor. As they used to say in those distant Soviet
times - "Blat and bullshit above the Central Committee" ...

We are not slaves
On August 2, 1933, a festive meeting was held at the 19th gateway on the occasion of
opening the channel.
Old-timers recall that on the opening day, Komsomol members were brought here, and
real builders - convicts - were locked up in barracks.
Indeed, it was impossible to lay the laurels of victory on lousy heads
prisoners! Belomorkanal is a Komsomol construction site.
And then a riot arose in the camp - the only one in history
construction. Yes, such that the rally had to be curtailed. Did not riot
because of a hunger ration or the brutality of the guards, but from resentment. Of these people
failed to completely break and turn into dumb animals: they
could still be proud of the creation of their own hands ...

Shirmach sticks out on the White Sea Canal,
Pushing the car, banging the kayla,
And the fraera is doubly richer than steel -
Who can feel them with an experienced hand ?!

"Small and narrow"
Soon the first ship "Chekist" with members of the Karelian
governments that accepted the job. A dredger was moving right behind him
and completed the flaws.
Then, taking with him Kirov, Voroshilov and Yagoda, along the Belomorkanal
Stalin himself went on a journey. They say the leader remained a construction site
dissatisfied. “The channel turned out to be shallow and narrow,” he allegedly said.
Stalin was right: the canal really turned out to be narrow - with difficulty
two large motor ships diverged. And there was generally a turn around
impossible.

Without bullshit and ammonal, the White Sea Canal would not have been built!

Protracted construction
During the war, just before the enemy approached, the locks were blown up. The most
the explosion that sounded on December 11, 1941 had dire consequences. V
that day, the water rushed down to Lake Onega and flooded half of the city
Povenets. However, already in June 1946, the canal was restored, and immediately after
400 ships were transferred to him, received on reparations from Germany. And then
many years of reconstruction began. It is no coincidence that they say that the channel has been commissioned
was in 20 months, and then under construction for another 60 years.

And jingle bells are ringing
And people abroad say
That the White Sea waterway is over -
Give now, comrade Stalin, to rest!

Unenviable fate
The channel's fate is not enviable today. Freight flows have dried up. In Belomorsk,
which is proudly called a port, in addition to one and a half cranes and one
flooded barge, at the berth there was only one dry-cargo ship "Volgo-Balt"
assigned to Taganrog.
In the old days, the locks were filled 28 times, and the queue of ships stretched for
kilometers ...
And the point is not that Belomor is bad - there are no more customers. No one
after all, it does not detract from the merits of a "complex hydraulic structure": 19
locks, 15 dams, 49 dams. The total length is 227 kilometers. Shortening the path
from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg 4 times, the Belomorkanal remained
record holder.

I tore it up, lads, I got this reference from the channel,
What hard work I have obtained!
And again the thug's life tied me up,
And again - theft, crime, correctional house ...

For your information: the total length of the canal is 227 kilometers. 97 kilometers
of the total length falls on flooded rivers, 80 - on regulated
lakes, 48 - on an artificial channel (the channel itself) and 1.7
kilometers - to the sea channel dug in the bottom of the White Sea.

While you were growing up wore a sailor suit
And he did not know the hardships of life,
From Povenets to Belomorsk
We gave you a channel.
Inna Goff

The history of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal is tragic. The Belomorkanal became one of the first great construction projects in the country of the Soviets and the first great construction site where prison labor was used. The most famous of all channels in Russia, thanks to the immortal cigarettes of the same name, the White Sea-Baltic Channel remains, nevertheless, the most unknown ..

The idea of building a canal was born in ancient times. In 1702, Peter I cut through a six-meter wide clearing, the famous "Osudarev's road" - its traces were visible even at the beginning of the last century - along which they built a deck of logs and along them, in ten days from the White Sea to Lake Onego, military ships were dragged ... In 1798, the Pudozh merchant Bakinin applied for the construction of a canal from Lake Onega to the Onega River through Vodlozero. He hoped to recoup the costs by cutting down valuable larch forests in the area. Almost at the same time, a project from Petrozavodsk was received, signed by three merchants and the director of the Olonets plant, an Englishman, Adam Armstrong.

The route of the canal ran from Povenets on Lake Onega to the village of Soroka (present-day Belomorsk) - that is, it almost coincided with the current route. The government became interested in the project and sent to find the best specialist - General de Volan, the builder of the Mariinsky canal system. However, having examined the area, he rejected the project: there are too many rocks, waterfalls and other obstacles ... There were proposals in the middle of the 19th century, and in 1900 Professor V.E. Timonov was even awarded gold medal of the Paris exhibition. But as a reminder of all these events, according to Mikhail Prishvin, who visited these parts in 1906 and wrote a book about the trip "In the Land of Unafraid Birds", there were only two stones left near the village of Maselga with the inscription: "Onega-White Sea Canal."

By order of J.V. Stalin, the 227 km long canal was to be built in twenty months - from September 1931 to April 1933 (for comparison: the Panama Canal 80 km long was built for 28 years, the Suez Canal 160 km long - 10 years). It should also be taken into account that no currency was allocated for the construction of the Belomorkanal, the OGPU had to ensure the construction of the canal without unnecessary material costs. People didn't count. Echelons of prisoners continuously entered the "great construction site". The loyal Stalinists were instructed to manage the construction of the canal ... "(L. Rasskazov The Role of the Gulag in the Pre-War Five-Year Plans. Economic History: Yearbook. 2002. - M .: Rosspen, 2003. S. 269-319). The future Stalinist People's Commissar Genrikh Yagoda and the head of the Gulag Matvey Berman became the supervisors of the construction. Lazar Kogan is appointed the head of construction. Another famous "Solovetsky figure", Nathan Frenkel, also became famous on the White Sea Canal.

Chief of works of Belmorstroy Frenkel and other construction managers.

In the spring of 1932, Genrikh Yagoda, then still deputy chairman of the OGPU, and his accomplice, deputy prosecutor of the USSR Supreme Court Katanyan, approved the “Statute on the Special Rights of the Head of the GULAG, Comrade Kogan L.I. and assistant to the head of the GULAG comrade. Jacob Rapoport. on the construction of the White Sea-Baltic waterway, carried out by the forces of prisoners. " In accordance with the Regulations, they were given the right, in an administrative order, to single-handedly increase the term of imprisonment in camps for persons who violate the established order and discipline. The list included 15 specific violations. At the same time, it was allowed to apply such a measure for other offenses. It is important to emphasize that the decision to increase the term of imprisonment was not subject to appeal.

The history of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal is a history of suffering huge amount Soviet people. By May 1, 1932, 100 thousand workers were employed in the construction of the canal, of which 60 thousand were housed in barracks. The rest lived in tents and other temporary buildings. Without modern technology, without sufficient material support, the management of the construction site has achieved "for many objects ... production rates exceeding the unified all-Union standards" 27.

In May 1933, G.G. Yagoda reported to I.V. Stalin about the readiness of the White Sea Canal. In July of the same year, I.V. Stalin, K.E. Voroshilov and S.M. Kirov take a boat trip along a new man-made waterway. And in August, a landing of 120 writers and journalists is sent to the White Sea Canal to get acquainted with the miracle of the socialist economy. They talk with the prisoners, who, of course, praise the party and the great leader for the opportunity given them to atone for their guilt with shock work at a great construction site, with the leaders of the construction of the facility, and take walks along the canal.

As a result of this trip, 36 writers (among them Maxim Gorky, V.P. Kataev, V.V. Ivanov, V.M. Inber, A.N. Tolstoy, M.M. Zoshchenko and others) published a book about the history of construction Belomorkanal and the heroic work of its creators and dedicate it to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The writers told the readers of the Soviet country about the unusually high rates of growth of the socialist economy, about the shock work of production workers on the construction of the canal, about the flawed European-American capitalism, about the heroic efforts of the Chekists to organize work and "reforge" prisoners. Nothing is said only about the cruelty of the order, about hunger, about the cold, about the death of thousands of people, the humiliation of their human dignity. Nevertheless, many authors, as well as editors L. L. Averbakh and S. G. Firin, were subsequently arrested. After 1937, almost the entire edition of the book was removed from libraries and destroyed at the direction of Glavlit.

The worker's drummer's ration was 500 grams of bread a day and a bowl of seaweed gruel.

During the construction of the canal, the administration used various methods to increase the efficiency of the work performed: competition between teams, labor collectives, locks. The general days of records were announced. This was also facilitated by a sophisticated propaganda campaign to praise the state penitentiary policy ...

Dance of the prisoners.

The transport route of the White Sea-Baltic Canal has a length of 227 km with access canals from Lake Onega to the White Sea, of which 37.1 km are artificial routes. The conventional direction of the current is the direction from Lake Onega to the White Sea, all navigation signs (buoys, lighthouses
) are equipped in accordance with this regulation. The canal begins near the village of Povenets in the Povenets Bay of Lake Onega. Povenets is immediately followed by seven gateways located on short distance from each other (the so-called "Povenchanskaya staircase"). Together, these locks form the southern slope of the canal. Between the seventh and eighth sluices is the watershed of the canal. In the north, the channel flows into the Sorokskaya Bay of the White Sea, and the city of Belomorsk is located at the mouth of the channel. On the banks of the channel are located the following large settlements: Povenets, Segezha, Nadvoitsy, Sosnovets, Belomorsk.

During the first navigation, 1.143 thousand tons of cargo and 27 thousand passengers were transported. In 1940, the traffic volume was about a million tons, which was 44% bandwidth... The peak of cargo transportation along the canal was in 1985. Then 7 million 300 thousand tons of cargo were transported along the White Sea-Baltic waterway. Such traffic volumes remained for the next five years, after which the intensity of navigation along the canal decreased significantly. At the beginning of the 21st century, the volume of cargo transportation along the canal began to grow gradually, but still they remain much lower than before. For example, in 2001 the canal transported 283.4 thousand tons of cargo, in 2002 - 314.6 thousand tons.

From a strategic point of view, the canal provided an opportunity to link the White and Baltic Seas. Already in 1933, the White Sea Canal made it possible to create reliable protection northern borders of the state. Until that time, the north-Arctic coast was practically not guarded by anyone and was not protected from a possible invasion. The first ships to pass along the new waterway were warships. The White Sea-Baltic Canal is a promising route for tourist ships. The guaranteed minimum dimensions of the passage are: depth 4 m, width 36 m, radius of curvature of 500 m. The dimensions of the chambers of all locks are 135x14.3 m. The speed of movement of vessels on artificial sections of the canal is limited to 8 km / h. In conditions of limited visibility (less than one kilometer), the movement of vessels along the channel is prohibited. The average navigation time on the channel is 165 days.

This is not just a navigable canal connecting the White Sea with Lake Onega. And also not just an important transport facility, giving an outlet from the White Sea through the Volga-Baltic Canal to the Baltic and the Caspian Sea (through the Volga, respectively), but through the Volga-Don Canal to the southern seas. This is a whole story, the beginning of the great camp construction projects of outstanding objects of the Soviet era. During the construction, not only reservoirs and sluices appeared. New words were added to the slang speech from the canal builders, for example, "bullshit" and "zek". Three periods can be counted in the history of the canal: construction - 30s, reconstruction after the war - 50s and the present. I will try to tell you a little more about them.

For those who did not smoke "Belomorkanal" cigarettes, on the pack of which its location was marked, I present a map. And judging by the query popular in Yandex - the White Sea-Baltic channel on the map - many are faced with this question.

Construction of the canal began in April 1930. The term was set aside in 3 years. To speed up the work, the dimensions of the locks and the depth of the canal were also changed. The dimensions of the chambers were planned at 312x20x7 meters, as it was assumed before, and the steel was only 133x14.3x4 meters (length, width, depth).

In September 1930, a decree was issued on the possibility of involving prisoners in the construction of the canal - the construction was taken under the control of the OGPU. And away we go.

The labor was manual. Whole camps were working hands. The forest - with an ax, the track - with a shovel.

White Sea-Baltic Canal named after I.V. Stalin (this name he retained until 1961) was opened in August 1933. According to official data, during the construction period (1931-1933), 10,936 prisoners died. After the completion of construction, 71 thousand prisoners were employed in the operation of the canal.

During the Great Patriotic War, the canal, as a strategically important object, suffered destruction: its southern part was completely destroyed. This happened because during the war the western bank of the canal was captured by the Finns. In 1941, the Soviet side blew up 7 locks in the Povenets area. After the end of the war, the damaged facilities were restored and the canal was re-commissioned in July 1946.

This is how sluice No. 1 from Lake Onega should have looked.

... pylons at the upper chamber of lock # 7 and an obelisk in memory of the fallen at lock # 5.

But the plans never came true. The theme of memory to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War was subsequently implemented on the Volga-Don Canal under construction. On Belomor, by the mid-1950s, the gates were replaced from wooden to iron ones, the canal was deepened to 5 meters (at the beginning it was 3 meters deep), and by the end of the 1950s, the canal's infrastructure facilities were electrified.

It is curious that in the 30s a project was developed for the construction of a second branch of the canal, accessible for large sea vessels, with a guaranteed depth of at least 6.4 meters. Initially it was supposed to be built by the end of the 30s, but no command was received and the project thus remained unrealized. It is noteworthy that its implementation required not only an increase in the storage of reservoirs, but also a rise in the Svir level with the flooding of most of Petrozavodsk and coastal villages.

With the opening of the Volga-Baltic waterway in the 60s, which connected the Volga and Don with the Baltic, the traffic flowing through the Belomorkanal increased. New series of cargo ships were built taking into account the available dimensions of the chambers. In the 1970s, another reconstruction of the canal was carried out. In the course of this reconstruction, the guaranteed depth of the fairway was brought to four meters, and the channel became part of the Unified Deep-Water System of the USSR. The peak of cargo transportation was in the mid-80s.

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And this is a view of the other part of the "staircase", from the side of the lake. Gateways No. 5-7.

Hydroelectric power station at lock No. 9.

Exit to Vygozero - the largest lake on the canal route. View from the southern part.

Vygozero - view from the city of Nadvoitsy.

After hundreds of kilometers of shores, rocks and forests, it is unusual to see such signs of "civilization". Aluminum plant in Nadvoitsy, operating since 1954.

Also Nadvoitsy.

White Sea-Baltic Canal. Construction History

"Belomor" History of construction, White Sea-Baltic Canal, 1933 USSR, Documentary film

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