The great construction sites of communism - that's what everyone was called global projects Soviet government: highways, canals, stations, reservoirs.
One can argue about the degree of their “greatness”, but there is no doubt that these were grandiose projects of their time.
"Magnitogorsk"
Russia's largest Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works was designed in the late spring of 1925 by the Soviet institute UralGipromez. According to another version, the design was carried out by an American company from Clinwood, and the US Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, became the prototype of Magnitogorsk. All three "heroes" who stood at the "helm" of the construction of the plant - the manager Gugel, the builder Maryasin and the head of the trust Valerius - were shot in the 30s. January 31, 1932 - the first blast furnace is launched. The construction of the plant took place in the most difficult conditions, while most of the work was carried out manually. Despite this, thousands of people from all over the Union hurried to Magnitogorsk. Foreign specialists, primarily Americans, were also actively involved.
Belomorkanal
The White Sea-Baltic Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea and Lake Onega and provide access to the Baltic Sea and the Volga-Baltic waterway. The canal was built by the forces of Gulag prisoners in record time - less than two years (1931-1933). The length of the canal is 227 kilometers. It was the first construction in the Soviet Union, implemented exclusively by prisoners, which may be why the Belomorkanal is not always ranked among the "great construction projects of communism." Each builder of the White Sea Canal was called a "prisoned canal soldier" or abbreviated as "ze-ka", from which the slang word "zek" came from. Campaign posters of that time they said: “Your term will melt from hot work!” Indeed, many of those who made it to the end of construction alive had their deadlines reduced. On average, the death rate reached 700 people a day. “Hot work” also influenced nutrition: the more the “ze-ka” worked out, the more impressive the “rations” received. Standard - 500 gr. bread and seaweed gruel.
Baikal-Amur Mainline
One of the largest railway lines in the world was built with huge interruptions, starting from 1938 and ending in 1984. The most difficult section - the North-Musky Tunnel - was put into permanent operation and only in 2003. The initiator of the construction was Stalin. Songs were composed about BAM, laudatory articles were published in newspapers, films were made. The construction was positioned as a feat of youth and, of course, no one knew that prisoners who had survived after the construction of the White Sea Canal were sent to the construction site in 1934. In the 1950s, about 50 thousand prisoners worked at BAM. Each meter of BAM is worth one human life.
Volga-Don Canal
An attempt to connect the Don and the Volga was made by Peter the Great in 1696. In the 30s of the last century, a construction project was created, but the war prevented its implementation. Work resumed in 1943 immediately after the completion of Battle of Stalingrad. However, the date of commencement of construction should still be considered 1948, when the first earthworks began. In addition to volunteers and military builders, 236,000 prisoners and 100,000 prisoners of war took part in the construction of the canal route and its facilities. In journalism one can find descriptions of the most terrible conditions in which prisoners lived. Dirty and lousy from the lack of the opportunity to wash regularly (there was one bath for all), half-starved and sick - this is how the disenfranchised "builders of communism" actually looked. The canal was built in 4.5 years - and this is a unique period in the world history of the construction of hydraulic structures.
Plan for the transformation of nature
The plan was adopted at the initiative of Stalin in 1948 after a drought and a raging famine of 46-47. The plan included the creation of forest belts, which were supposed to block the hot southeast winds - dry winds, which would change the climate. Forest belts were planned to be located on an area of 120 million hectares - that's how much England, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium occupy together. The plan also included the construction of an irrigation system, during which 4,000 reservoirs appeared. It was planned to complete the project before 1965. More than 4 million hectares of forest were planted, and the total length of forest belts was 5,300 km. The state solved the country's food problem, while part of the bread began to be exported. After Stalin's death in 1953, the program was curtailed, and in 1962 the USSR shook again. food crisis- bread and flour disappeared from the shelves, shortages began with sugar and butter.
Volzhskaya HPP
The construction of the largest hydroelectric power plant in Europe began in the summer of 1953. Next to the construction site, in the tradition of that time, the Gulag was deployed - the Akhtubinsky ITL, which employed more than 25 thousand prisoners. They were engaged in laying roads, laying power lines and general preparatory work. They, of course, were not allowed to directly work on the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Sappers also worked at the facility, who were engaged in clearing the site for future construction and the bottom of the Volga - the proximity to Stalingrad made itself felt. About 40 thousand people and 19 thousand various mechanisms and machines worked at the construction site. In 1961, having turned from the "Stalingrad HPP" into the "Volzhskaya HPP named after the 21st Congress of the CPSU", the station was put into operation. It was solemnly opened by Khrushchev himself. The HPP was a gift for the 21st Congress, at which Nikita Sergeevich, by the way, announced his intention to build communism by 1980.
Bratsk HPP
The construction of a hydroelectric power station began in 1954 on the Angara River. The small village of Bratsk soon grew into a large city. The construction of the hydroelectric power station was positioned as a shock Komsomol construction site. Hundreds of thousands of Komsomol members from all over the Union came to the development of Siberia. Until 1971, the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant was the largest in the world, and the Bratsk Reservoir became the world's largest artificial reservoir. When it was filled, about 100 villages were flooded. The tragedy of "Angara Atlantis", in particular, is dedicated to the penetrating work of Valentin Rasputin "Farewell to Matyora".
Great construction sites
The party and the country set about the difficult task of fulfilling the "five-year plan," as the plan came to be called for short. A constellation of construction sites has sprung up both in old industrial areas and in promising new areas where there was little or no industry before. There was a reconstruction of old factories in Moscow, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, in the Donbass: they were expanded and equipped with new imported equipment. Completely new enterprises were built, they were conceived on a large scale and based on the most modern technology; construction was often carried out according to projects ordered abroad: in America, Germany. The plan gave priority to branches of heavy industry: fuel, metallurgical, chemical, electric power, as well as engineering in general, that is, the sector that would be called upon to make the USSR technically independent, in other words, capable of producing its own machines. For these industries, gigantic construction sites were created, enterprises were built with which the memory of the first five-year plan will forever be associated, about which the whole country, the whole world will talk: Stalingrad and Chelyabinsk, and then Kharkov tractor plants, huge heavy engineering plants in Sverdlovsk and Kramatorsk, automobile plants in Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow, the first ball-bearing plant, chemical plants in Bobriky and Berezniki.
The most famous among the new buildings were two metallurgical plants: Magnitogorsk - in the Urals and Kuznetsk - in Western Siberia. The decision to build them was made after long and bitter disputes between the Ukrainian and Siberian-Ural leaders, which began in 1926 and dragged on until the end of 1929. The former emphasized that the expansion of already existing metallurgical enterprises in the south of the country would require lower costs; the second - the prospects for the industrial transformation of the Soviet East. Finally, military considerations tipped the scales in favor of the latter. In 1930, the decision took on a large-scale development - the creation in Russia, along with the southern one, of a "second industrial base", a "second coal and metallurgical center". Kuzbass coal was supposed to serve as fuel, and ore was to be delivered from the Urals, from the bowels famous mountain Magnetic, which gave the name to the city of Magnitogorsk. The distance between these two points was 2 thousand km. The long trains had to shuttle from one to the other, carrying ore in one direction and coal in the opposite direction. The question of the costs associated with all this was not taken into account, since it was a question of creating a new powerful industrial region, remote from the borders and, therefore, protected from the threat of attack from outside.
Many enterprises, starting with the two colossi of metallurgy, were built in the bare steppe, or, in any case, in places where there was no infrastructure, outside or even far from settlements. Apatite mines in the Khibiny, designed to provide raw materials for the production of superphosphate, were generally located in the tundra on the Kola Peninsula, beyond the Arctic Circle.
The history of great construction projects is unusual and dramatic. They went down in history as one of the most amazing achievements of the 20th century. Russia lacked the experience, specialists, and equipment to carry out work of this magnitude. Tens of thousands of people began to build, practically relying only on their own hands. They dug the earth with shovels, loaded it onto wooden wagons - the famous grabarki, which stretched back and forth in an endless line from morning to night. An eyewitness says: “From a distance, the construction site seemed like an anthill ... Thousands of people, horses and even ... camels worked in clouds of dust.” First, the builders huddled in tents, then in wooden barracks: 80 people in each, less than 2 square meters. m per soul.
At the construction of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, for the first time, it was decided to continue construction in the winter. We had to hurry. Therefore, they worked at 20, 30, 40 degrees below zero. In front of the eyes of foreign consultants, sometimes admiring, but more often skeptical about this picture, which they perceived primarily as a spectacle of grandiose chaos, expensive and most modern equipment purchased abroad was installed.
One of the leading participants recalls the birth of the first Stalingrad Tractor Plant in this way: “Even those who saw this time with their own eyes, it is not easy to remember now what it all looked like. It is completely impossible for younger people to imagine everything that rises from the pages of an old book. One of its chapters is called like this: "Yes, we broke machines." This chapter was written by L. Makaryants, a Komsomol member, a worker who came to Stalingrad from a Moscow factory. Even for him, American machine tools without belt transmissions, with an individual motor, were a marvel. He didn't know how to deal with them. And what about the peasants who came from the countryside? They were illiterate - reading and writing was a problem for them. Everything was a problem back then. There were no spoons in the dining room… Bedbugs in the barracks were a problem…”. And here is what the first director of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant wrote in a book published in the early 30s: “In the machine assembly shop, I approached the guy who was grinding the sleeves. I suggested to him: "Measure". He began to measure with his fingers ... We didn’t have a tool, a measuring tool. ” In a word, it was more of a massive assault than systematic work. Under these conditions, acts of selflessness, personal courage, fearlessness were numerous, all the more heroic, since for the most part they were destined to remain unknown. There were people who dived into the icy water to patch up the hole; who, even with a temperature, without sleep and rest, did not leave their work post for several days; who did not descend from the scaffolding, even to have a bite, if only to quickly set the blast furnace in motion ...
Among Soviet authors who today trust paper with their reflections on that period and evaluate it in accordance with their own ideological preferences, some are inclined to attribute the merit of this impulse to the extraordinary stamina of the Russian people in the most difficult trials, while others, on the contrary, to the latent energy lurking in the popular masses and the liberated revolution. Be that as it may, from many memories it is clear that a powerful stimulus for many people was the idea that in a short time, at the cost of exhausting hard efforts, a better, that is, socialist, future can be created. This was discussed at the rallies. At meetings, they recalled the exploits of the fathers in 1917–1920. and urged the youth to "overcome all difficulties" in order to lay the foundation for the "bright building of socialism." At a time when crisis raged throughout the rest of the world, "the youth and workers in Russia," as one English banker remarked, "lived in a hope which, unfortunately, is so lacking today in the capitalist countries." Such collective feelings are not born by spontaneous reproduction. Undoubtedly, to be able to generate and maintain such a wave of enthusiasm and trust is no small merit in itself; and this merit belonged to the party and the Stalinist trend, which from now on completely led it. One cannot deny the validity of Stalin's reasoning when, in June 1930, at the 16th Congress of the CPSU (b), he declared, in fact, betraying his innermost thought, that if it were not for the idea of "socialism in one country", this impulse would not have been possible. . “Take away from him (the working class. - Note. ed.) confidence in the possibility of building socialism, and you will destroy all ground for competition, for labor upsurge, for shock work.”
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Main Turkmen Canal
The year 1950 was marked by the beginning of the great all-Union construction. The main Turkmen Canal was designed with the aim of watering and reclamation of dry lands of Turkmenistan, increasing cotton sown areas, and also with the aim of laying a navigable link between the Volga and the Amu Darya. It was supposed to carry out 25% of the flow of the aforementioned Amu Darya along the dried-up channel of the Uzboy to the city of Krasnovodsk.
The goal is really impressive, especially considering that the length of the projected canal was about 1200 km, width - at least 100 m, depth - 6-7 m. In addition to the main canal, a network of irrigation canals with a total length of 10,000 km, about 2000 three hydroelectric power stations. During the construction, it was planned to use 5000 dump trucks, 2000 bulldozers, 2000 excavators, 14 dredgers. As work force it was decided to use prisoners and local residents. In 1953, there were 7,268 free workers and 10,000 prisoners at the construction site.
Of course, the ruling elite was not limited to the above means. The whole country worked for this construction, which is eloquently evidenced by the figure of 1000 (!) wagons of goods that were delivered here from all over the Union every month.
Immediately after the death of the leader, the construction of the State Customs Committee was stopped at the initiative of Beria. And then it was completely discontinued for reasons of unprofitability. But by that time, more than 21 billion Soviet rubles, or 2.73 trillion modern Russian rubles, had been irretrievably spent on the construction of the facility.
Transpolar highway (building 501-503)
The man of the year (1940, 1943) according to the Times magazine (talking about Stalin, if anything) did not limit his ambitions on a geographical basis. On his initiative, in the post-war period, from 1947 to 1953, a large construction organization with the uncomplicated name "GULAG" worked on a grandiose project - the Transpolar Highway.
The purpose of this construction was to connect the western north (Murmansk, Arkhangelsk) with the eastern north (Chukotka, the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk).
Due to the extremely tight deadlines, construction was carried out in parallel with design and survey work, which could not but affect the quality of the railway track being built. In total, approximately 80 thousand people were involved in the construction, not counting the guards. In 1953, work was stopped, and in 1954 - calculated their cost: about 1.8 billion Soviet rubles.
Sakhalin tunnel (building 506-507)
Another colossal construction site that ceased to exist with the death of Stalin is the Sakhalin Tunnel.
The construction, which started in 1950, was supposed to finish in 1955, according to the plan. With a tunnel length of 10 km, the deadlines were more than tight. From socialism to communism in five-year steps! And the country walked specifically at this construction site with the feet of more than 27 thousand people, all the same prisoners and free workers. And in the spring of 1953, the construction site was closed.
The turn of the Siberian rivers
Let's make a reservation right away: no one was going to turn the river itself. It was only planned to transfer part of the flow of some Siberian rivers, such as the Ob and Irtysh, to the arid regions of the USSR - for agricultural reasons.
The project has become one of the most ambitious projects of the twentieth century. For more than twenty years, 160 scientific and industrial organizations of the USSR worked on it.
The first stage of work involved the construction of a canal with a length of 2500 km, a width of 130 to 300 m and a depth of 15 m. The second stage was a change in the direction of the Irtysh by 180 degrees. That is, the waters of the Irtysh were planned to be directed in the opposite direction with the help of pumping stations, hydroelectric facilities and reservoirs.
Of course, this project was not destined to come true. Common sense prevailed over imperial ambitions - Soviet academicians nevertheless persuaded the country's leadership to leave the Siberian rivers alone.
Nikitin Tower - Travusha 4000 (project)
In 1966, engineers Nikitin (by the way, the chief designer of the Ostankino television tower) and Travush proposed a project for the high skyscraper in the world. Moreover, they planned to build it in Japan. Theoretically, the skyscraper was magnificent: its height was 4 km! The tower was divided into four mesh sections a kilometer long and with a diameter at the base of 800 m. The tower, being a residential building, was supposed to accommodate up to 500 thousand people.
In 1969 project work was stopped: the customers suddenly came to their senses and demanded to reduce the height of the building to 2 km. Then - up to 550 m. And then they completely abandoned the king tower.
Terra-3
Remains of structure 41/42V with the 5N27 laser radar complex of the 5N76 "Terra-3" firing system. Photo 2008
"Terra-3" is nothing more than a project of a zoned anti-missile and anti-space defense system with a beam submunition. It is also a scientific and experimental firing and laser complex. Work on "Terra" has been carried out since the 60s of the last century. Unfortunately, already in the early 70s, scientists began to realize that the power of their lasers was not enough to shoot down warheads. Although she shot down satellites, this cannot be taken away from her. The project somehow came to naught.
Vladimir Semenov- the author of the general plan for the reconstruction of Moscow in 1935 and the founder of an architectural dynasty.
His dacha in the village of NIL, on the banks of the Istra, the architect began to build in 1935. NIL stands for Science. Art. Literature. Semenov, together with fellow architects, was the initiator of the creation of this dacha cooperative.
It took 30 years to build the estate. The house was built from ship timber. At first, the architect sketched the windows and stained-glass windows on huge sheets of paper, applied the sketch to the facade of the building and watched how it turned out. Railings and other supports were made in the form of models of wood, and only then in full size.
The fireplace room was the central room of the house. Here, when it was getting dark outside, all the Semyonovs in full force gathered and listened to entertaining stories about the African adventures of the architect. And on the day of St. Vladimir (July 28), guests were called, for whom a table was served on the large terrace and treated to dumplings with cherries.
In the 60s of the last century, Semenov's granddaughter married Alek-san-dr. Shir-windt and the artist's friends began to come to the estate: Mikhail Kozakov, Andrey Mironov, Mark Zakharov. One day, Mironov and Shirvindt, with a deafening roar, cut through the village on mopeds. Dissatisfied neighbors were initially extremely outraged by this, but recognizing famous actors in the troublemakers, they immediately changed their anger to mercy.
Today, Semyonov's estate, which used to be called the Park of Culture for its beauty, is inhabited by his great-rights. On the well-groomed territory, as before, trimmed lawns and flower beds flaunt. In the house on the terrace, tables are still laid, and in the evenings they gather by the fireplace.
Georgy Golts- Soviet architect and theater artist. In the 30s of the XX century, he built a gateway on the Yauza in Moscow, was the author of the Ustyinsky bridge and the Izogorodok complex, and also designed and built banks, factories and boiler houses. Goltz had a sharp mind and irrepressible energy, for which his friends nicknamed him "A glass of champagne."
In the NIL, the architect got one of the last plots of land above the river, from where a beautiful view of the No-vo-i-e-ru-sa-lim-sky monastery opened.
Construction of the cottage began in 1937. And in the summer of 1938, Goltz's wife and daughter moved into the still unfinished house.
The dacha project has not been preserved. Only sketches of the construction process and sketches remained. The house was built of wood, Goltz's favorite material. The six pillars of the foundation and the stove were made of brick. The roof was covered with shingles, oak tables were placed under the terraces. The log house was bought in a neighboring village, and the boards were sawn from fir trees growing on the site.
The architect at the dacha was engaged in painting, floriculture, went to neighbors for seedlings, to whom he gave advice on construction as a token of gratitude. Goltz's approach to choosing summer clothes was also creative. The artist himself drew patterns for his overalls with many pockets.
Together with the Golts family, his sister and nephews moved to the dacha. The family dined on the balcony, which was called the south terrace, and spent the evenings by the fireplace, where they composed poems and stories.
In 1942, the Germans came to the NIL. The Golts family was evacuated at that moment. During the bombing, the dacha was damaged - fragments from the shell could be seen in its walls for a long time. The house has not been renovated for three years. The artist began the reconstruction, but he died in 1946 and the family made simple repairs in the house. Now Goltz's daughter Nika lives there, who followed in her father's footsteps and also became an architect.
Grigory Senatov— the author of projects for hospital buildings in Moscow. Born in 1885, graduated from the School of Painting. However, he preferred architecture in his work, as it gave a higher and more stable income.
Grigory Senatov became a member of the Soviet Architect cooperative in 1938. His site was on a steep slope. The artist set up a real park on it with lawns, an orchard and flower beds.
The house was made in the form of a cube with a domed roof. Four extensions to it are made from the wooden remains of a building destroyed nearby. The foundation of the building was oak logs.
Senates under the dome equipped a workshop for themselves. All members of his family lived on the ground floor, but living in the house below was inconvenient and uncomfortable. The only spacious room was poorly heated by a stove. Several rooms were added to the house, breaking the symmetry, but this happened in the post-war years.
They came to the dacha in April, carrying with them all things and an au pair. Every year - and this was an obligatory tradition - 80 kilograms of jam were cooked. To do this, a copper basin was polished to a shine, and the stove was placed right in the garden.
In November, the family returned to the city and always with regret. They dreamed of insulating the house so that they could live in it even in the cold.
Nowadays, jam is not rolled up at this dacha and noisy companies do not gather at the table. However, the appearance of the house remained the same.
Viktor Vesnin- the author of the Palace of Culture of the ZIL automobile plant in Moscow, the building of the Film Actor Theater, DneproGES and many other monumental structures. However, in contrast to all these structures, the architect built his dacha near Moscow from wood.
A house in the form of a log house with a glazed veranda was built in 1935 in the village of NIL. Vesnin was one of the initiators of the creation of the NIL cooperative and its first chairman.
The dacha was furnished with antiques, paintings were hung on the walls. The architect was not fond of gardening, he only strengthened the steep slope of the site with props.
At the dacha, Vesnin dressed in a velvet blouse. He laid out porcini mushrooms on a table in the garden, and was engaged in painting. The artist's wife had excellent vocal abilities, and the estate regularly hosted concerts and poetry evenings. By the way, the Semenovs were the neighbors of the Vesnins in the dacha, but their plots were separated by a ravine.
In 1950, Viktor Vesnin died and his wife sold the dacha. Its new owner was fellow architect Mikhail Wrangel. But even now this old house is called "Vesnin's dacha".
Vyacheslav Vladimirov- one of the brightest representatives of the architectural trend of the 30s of the last century. In 1942, Vladimirov died in the war. The dacha in the Nile is one of the few surviving buildings of the architect.
The Vladimirovs and their spouses came up with the dacha project together. Construction of the house began in 1935. However, at the same time, the architect received an order for a project for a resort complex on Elbrus, and construction stalled. Before leaving for the front, Vladimirov did not manage to finish the construction. After the war, the house was completed by his widow Tamara.
The architect was very fond of flowers: until now, the entire dacha is planted with phloxes and roses, which are grown by his daughter and granddaughter.
From the very beginning, the dacha was conceived as modest, as opposed to the noisy city life of the architect. Vla-di-mir, a ringleader in noisy companies of filmmakers and architects, a frequenter of tennis courts in Gagra, fled here from the city hubbub. From there he went to the front.
The only way to get to the NIL was by train, which traveled only four times a day. From the railway station to the dacha they traveled on foot.
Since then, almost nothing has changed there. The holiday village is still quiet and modest, practically unaffected by newfangled buildings.
Construction in the Soviet Union was large-scale, as were the ambitions of this state. Nevertheless, no one ever thought about the human fate in the USSR on a large scale.
Algemba: About 35,000 people died!
The most cruel ruler of the Soviet Union is traditionally considered Stalin, who violated the precepts of Ilyich. It is he who is credited with the creation of a network of camps (GULAG), it was he who initiated the construction of the White Sea Canal by the forces of prisoners. The fact that one of the first construction projects took place under the direct supervision of Lenin is somehow forgotten. And no wonder: all the materials related to Algemba - the first attempt of the young Soviet power to acquire its own oil pipeline - have been classified for a long time.
In December 1919, the Frunze army captured the Emba oil fields in northern Kazakhstan. By that time, more than 14 million poods of oil had accumulated there. This oil could be a salvation for the Soviet republic. On December 24, 1919, the Council of the Workers 'and Peasants' Defense decided to start construction railway, through which it would be possible to export oil from Kazakhstan to the center, and ordered: "Recognize the construction of the Alexandrov Gai-Emba broad-gauge line as an operational task." The city of Alexandrov Gai, located 300 km from Saratov, was the last railway point. The distance from it to the oil fields was about 500 versts. Most of the way ran through waterless saline steppes. It was decided to build the highway from both ends at the same time and meet on the Ural River near the village of Grebenshchikovo.
Frunze's army was the first to be thrown into the construction of the railway (despite his protests). There was no transport, no fuel, no sufficient food. In the conditions of the waterless steppe, there was nowhere even to place soldiers. Endemic diseases began, which developed into an epidemic. The local population was forcibly involved in the construction: about forty-five thousand residents of Saratov and Samara. People practically manually created an embankment along which the rails were to be laid later.
In March 1920, the task became even more complicated: it was decided to pull the pipeline in parallel with the railway. It was then that the word "Algemba" was first heard (from the first letters of Aleksandrov Gai and the name of the deposit - Emba). There were no pipes, like everything else. The only plant that once produced them has long been standing. The remains were collected from warehouses, they were enough for 15 versts at best (and it was necessary to lay 500!).
Lenin began to look alternative solution. At first it was proposed to produce wooden pipes. Specialists just shrugged their shoulders: firstly, it is impossible to maintain the necessary pressure in them, and secondly, Kazakhstan does not have its own forests, there is nowhere to get wood. Then it was decided to dismantle sections of existing pipelines. The pipes varied greatly in length and diameter, but this did not bother the Bolsheviks. Another thing was embarrassing: the collected "spare parts" were still not enough even for half of the pipeline! However, work continued.
By the end of 1920, construction began to suffocate. Typhus claimed several hundred people a day. Guards were posted along the highway, because local residents began to pull apart the sleepers. Workers generally refused to go to work. Food rations were extremely low (especially in the Kazakh sector).
Lenin demanded to understand the causes of sabotage. But there was no sabotage in sight. Hunger, cold and disease collected a terrible tribute among the builders. In 1921, cholera came to the construction site. Despite the courage of the doctors who voluntarily arrived at Algemba, the mortality rate was appalling. But the worst thing was different: four months after the start of the construction of Algemba, already in April 1920, Baku and Grozny were liberated. The Emba oil was no longer needed. Thousands of lives sacrificed to the construction site turned out to be in vain.
It was possible even then to stop the senseless activity of laying the Algemba. But Lenin stubbornly insisted on the continuation of construction, which cost the state fabulously expensive. In 1920, the government allocated a billion rubles in cash for this construction. No one has ever received a full report, but there is an assumption that the funds settled in foreign accounts. Neither the railway nor the pipeline was built: on October 6, 1921, the construction was stopped by Lenin's directive. A year and a half of Algemba cost thirty-five thousand human lives.
Belomorkanal: 700 deaths a day!
The initiator of the construction of the White Sea Canal was Joseph Stalin. The country needed labor victories, global achievements. And preferably - without extra costs, because Soviet Union experienced economic crisis. The White Sea Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea with the Baltic Sea and open a passage for ships that previously had to go around the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. The idea of creating an artificial passage between the seas was known as early as the time of Peter the Great (and the Russians have been using the portage system along the entire length of the future White Sea Canal for a long time). But the method of implementing the project (and Naftaly Frenkel was appointed head of the canal construction) turned out to be so cruel that it forced historians and publicists to look for parallels in the slave-owning states.
The total length of the canal is 227 kilometers. On this waterway there are 19 locks (13 of which are two-chamber), 15 dams, 49 dams, 12 spillways. The scale of construction is amazing, especially considering that all this was built in an incredibly short time: 20 months and 10 days. For comparison: the 80-kilometer Panama Canal was built for 28 years, and the 160-kilometer Suez Canal - ten.
The White Sea Canal was built from beginning to end by the forces of prisoners. Convicted designers created drawings, found extraordinary technical solutions (dictated by the lack of machines and materials). Those who did not have an education suitable for designing spent day and night digging a canal, waist-deep in liquid mud, driven not only by overseers, but also by members of their brigade: those who did not fulfill the norm were reduced to an already meager diet. This was one road: into concrete (the dead were not buried on the White Sea Canal, but simply fell asleep at random in pits, which were then filled with concrete and served as the bottom of the canal).
The main tools of labor in the construction were a wheelbarrow, a sledgehammer, a shovel, an ax and a wooden crane for moving boulders. The prisoners, unable to withstand the unbearable conditions of detention and overwork, died by the hundreds. At times, the death rate reached 700 people a day. Meanwhile, the newspapers printed editorials devoted to the "reforging by labor" of hardened recidivists and political criminals. Of course, it was not without postscripts and eyewash. The canal bed was made shallower than it was calculated in the project, and the start of construction was retroactively postponed to 1932 (in fact, work began a year earlier).
About 280 thousand prisoners took part in the construction of the canal, of which about 100 thousand died. The remaining survivors (every sixth) had their sentences reduced, and some were even awarded the Order of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. The heads of the OGPU in full force were awarded orders. Stalin, who visited the opened canal at the end of July 1933, was pleased. The system has shown its effectiveness. There was only one snag: the most physically strong and hard-working prisoners earned a reduction in terms.
In 1938, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Stalin raised the question: “Did you correctly propose a list for the release of these prisoners? They leave their jobs… We are doing a bad job of disrupting the work of the camps. The release of these people, of course, is necessary, but from the point of view of the state economy, this is bad ... They will be released the best people and stay the worst. Is it possible to turn things around in a different way, so that these people remain at work - to give awards, orders, perhaps? .. ”But, fortunately for the prisoners, such a decision was not made: a prisoner with government award on the robe...
BAM: 1 meter - 1 human life!
In 1948, with the beginning of the construction of the subsequent “great construction projects of communism” (Volga-Don Canal, Volga-Baltic waterway, Kuibyshev and Stalingrad hydroelectric power stations and other facilities), the authorities used an already proven method: they built large forced labor camps serving construction sites. And it was easy to find those who would fill the vacancies of the slaves. Only by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of June 4, 1947 “On criminal liability for theft of state and public property”, hundreds of thousands of people got into the zone. The labor of convicts was used in the most labor-intensive and "harmful" industries.
In 1951, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S.N. Kruglov reported at the meeting: “I must say that in a number of industries National economy The Ministry of Internal Affairs occupies a monopoly position, for example, the gold mining industry - it is all concentrated in our country; the production of diamonds, silver, platinum - all this is entirely concentrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; mining of asbestos and apatites - entirely in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. We are 100% involved in the production of tin, 80% of the share is occupied by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for non-ferrous metals ... ”The minister did not mention only one thing: 100% of radium in the country was also produced by prisoners.
The greatest Komsomol construction project in the world - BAM, about which songs were composed, films were made, enthusiastic articles were written - did not begin at all with a call to youth. The construction of the railway, which was supposed to connect Taishet on the Trans-Siberian Railway with Komsomolsk-on-Amur, was sent in 1934 to the prisoners who built the White Sea Canal. According to Jacques Rossi's Guide to the Gulag (and this is the most objective this moment book about the camp system) about 50,000 prisoners worked at BAM in the 1950s.
Especially for the needs of the construction site, a new camp for prisoners was created - BAMlag, the zone of which stretched from Chita to Khabarovsk. The daily ration was traditionally meager: a loaf of bread and a stew of frozen fish. There were not enough barracks for everyone. People died from cold and scurvy (in order to delay the approach of this terrible disease for a while, they chewed pine needles). For several years, more than 2.5 thousand kilometers of the railway were built. Historians have calculated: each meter of BAM is paid for by one human life.
The official history of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline began in 1974, during the Brezhnev era. Echelons with young people were drawn to BAM. The prisoners continued to work, but their participation in the "construction of the century" was hushed up. And ten years later, in 1984, a “golden crutch” was driven in, symbolizing the end of another gigantic construction site, which is still associated with smiling young romantics who are not afraid of difficulties.
These construction projects have a lot in common: and the fact that the projects were difficult to implement (in particular, BAM and the Belomorkanal were conceived back in tsarist Russia, but due to a lack of budgetary funds they were shelved), and the fact that the work was carried out with a minimum technical support, and the fact that slaves were used instead of workers (otherwise it is difficult to name the position of the builders). But perhaps the scariest common feature- the fact that all these roads (both land and water) are many kilometers of mass graves. When you read dry statistical calculations, Nekrasov's words come to mind: “But on the sides, all the bones are Russian. How many of them, Vanechka, do you know?
(The material is taken from: “100 famous mysteries of history” by M.A. Pankov, I.Yu. Romanenko and others).
