Volga-Don Canal

The 101 km long Volga-Don Canal ( Volga-Don Shipping Canal "VI Lenin" ) is an artificial waterway in Russia ( Eastern Europe ).

Lock 13 of the Volga-Don Canal

Location of the Volga-Don Canal in Eastern Europe

The canal connects the Volga and Don , thereby enabling shipping between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea . In the east it begins a little south of Volgograd (1925 to 1961 Stalingrad) on the Volga (coordinate 48 ° 31 ′ 39.7 ″ N , 44 ° 33 ′ 15.7 ″ E ) and leads - through the junction of the Volga plate in the north and the Jergeni hill in the south - towards the west into the Zimljansker reservoir built on the Don (coordinate 48 ° 37 ′ 21.8 ″ N , 43 ° 32 ′ 20.9 ″ E ). A European main watershed runs through the apex of the canal . 48.527701 44.55436748.622731 43.539133

To the west of the reservoir, ships can enter the Sea of Azov via the Don , from where they can reach the Black Sea via the Kerch Strait . The ships finally reach the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus , the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles .

Work on the canal began before World War II, but was temporarily suspended at the time of the Great Patriotic War . The construction was carried out entirely by workers from the Gulag system, with around 15,000 perishing (due to malnutrition, exhaustion, etc.). From 1951, huge MAZ-525 dump trucks were also used to move the land masses. The canal, inaugurated on July 27, 1952, has 13 locks. On the Volga side it overcomes 88 meters in altitude (nine locks), on the Don side 44 m. Its target depth is 3.60 m, but it is reduced to 3.35 m in the area of the Kochetovsk lock. The 101 km long canal allows ships up to about 5000 t carrying capacity to pass through. This is less than the standard dimensions of the Volga ships.

Three pumping stations were built for the water supply, which pump the water to the highest point of the canal. The canal also plays an important role in supplying water to the surrounding agricultural areas.

The canal has an annual cargo capacity of 16.5 million tons. After President Putin's speech on the State of the Union in 2007, a second canal will increase capacity to better develop the areas on the Caspian Sea. The central central belt asteroid (2360) Volgo-Don was named after the Volga-Don Canal.

Web links

Commons : Volga-Don Canal - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Keyword-like information on the Gulag prison camps assigned to the channel on the Memorial website

↑ Russia to propose founding consortium to build Volga-Don canal -1

^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 5, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1975 VD ₃ . Discovered 1975 Nov. 2 by TM Smirnova at Nauchnyj. "

Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap

[1] Keyword-like information on the Gulag prison camps assigned to the channel on the Memorial website

[2] Russia to propose founding consortium to build Volga-Don canal -1

[3] Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 5, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1975 VD ₃ . Discovered 1975 Nov. 2 by TM Smirnova at Nauchnyj. "