Russia plans a large-scale revival of the White Sea Canal

22 2021 June 23

The Russian authorities are planning to carry out a major reconstruction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. At the same time, despite criticism for the use of prison labor in the course of its construction, the idea of attracting convicts is still being discussed today.

The creation of a canal connecting the White Sea and Lake Onega started in 1931 and was completed already in 1933. The need to build it was dictated by the Soviet leadership's understanding of the inevitability of a big war. In this regard, there was a need to form the Northern Fleet, for which it was necessary to transfer vessels of large and medium displacement from the Baltic to the White Sea. This could only be done with the help of a canal, which was the impetus for the "grandiose construction".

It is worth noting that the strategic importance of the White Sea Canal, which was pretty "battered" during the Great Patriotic War and then restored, remains to this day. It has 5 hydroelectric power plants, cargo and tourist ships, and all this provides more than 1000 jobs for the local population. However, the potential of Belomorkanal is much greater.

For a multiple increase in cargo transportation along this waterway, it must be expanded, ensuring the passability of modern large-tonnage vessels. In addition, one should not forget that the development of the canal is inextricably linked with the development of the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic region.

Measures for the reconstruction of the Belomorkanal were included in the individual program of social economic development of the Republic of Karelia until 2024. At the same time, local authorities are asking to include it in the Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2035, which will make it possible to consider the channel as part of a large system.

Regarding the numerous convictions regarding the use of forced labor of prisoners in the 30s, it is worth noting that at that time this was a forced measure and in no way related to the “bloodthirstiness” of the authorities.

Initially, the channel's project was estimated at a fantastic 535 million rubles. The Soviet Union did not have such a sum then. The labor of the prisoners made it possible to reduce the aforementioned amount to 60 million rubles. At the same time, the creation of the White Sea Canal ultimately played a crucial role in the country's defense during the Great Patriotic War.

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Petr Vladimirovich

+3

22 June 2021 11: 53

The word "prisoners" is used four times in the short article. In my humble opinion, an overkill ...
1. Rum rum
  
  +8
  
  22 June 2021 21: 13
  
  I agree with you.
  They got tired of this "labor of prisoners" in the Soviet Union, the impression is that hard labor was invented by Stalin personally, centuries before his birth and not in Russia yet.
  Liberators damn it.
Monax

+2

22 June 2021 11: 57

I wonder how this will be done? Parallel branch or extension of an existing channel?
1. Just a cat
  
  +2
  
  22 June 2021 12: 04
  
  Ukrainian migrant workers ... 10 years of work as a shovel on the canal in exchange for citizenship. the sea has been dug and the canal will be dug.
  1. Alexey Kartashov
    
    0
    
    22 June 2021 13: 52
    
    what is it to waste time on trifles? prisoners-prisoners ...
    1. Just a cat
      
      0
      
      23 June 2021 19: 45
      
      it is necessary to feed the convicts ... they are at least criminals, but their own.
  2. Digital error
    
    0
    
    23 June 2021 18: 27
    
    Quote: Just Cat
    Ukrainian migrant workers
    
    Tse are brotherly people, then what for sho?
    1. Just a cat
      
      0
      
      23 June 2021 19: 49
      
      ... thought the Buddhist and did not step on the cockroach
Vladimir Telnov

+1

23 June 2021 10: 20

I propose to put Lyokh Navalny and his comrades on a felling site; for the White Sea-Baltic Canal, he will need a lot of forest, and he is well familiar with those regions. As they say, where he was born, he came in handy there! And no FSIN will achieve that educational moment as work for the good of the Motherland!
1. Rum rum
  
  +1
  
  23 June 2021 14: 29
  
  +5 And all the plankton there.
  Let them do at least something useful in their lives.
  Comrades!
  Give us the second Belomor channel!
  (this is not humor or sarcasm)
  1. Digital error
    
    -1
    
    23 June 2021 18: 41
    
    Quote: Rum Rum
    they will do at least something useful in their life
    
    It seems to me that if it were not for them and others like them (non-systemic opposition), then the retirement age would have been raised to 70 years, and VAT to 30%.
    Google what Tiberius Gracchus wanted, how it ended for him and for the Roman Empire. Someday the textbooks of modern history will be rewritten again - this has always been the case
    1. Rum rum
      
      +1
      
      23 June 2021 21: 27
      
      Non-systemic opposition? These balabols?
      Are you kidding me right?
2. Digital error
  
  -1
  
  23 June 2021 18: 28
  
  Quote: Vladimir Telnov
  put on a felling with comrades
  
  When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained speechless. I was not a communist. When they imprisoned the Social Democrats, I said nothing. I was not a social democrat. When they came for the union members, I didn't protest. I was not a union member. When they came for the Jews, I was not indignant. I was not a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to intercede for me.
  1. Rum rum
    
    +2
    
    23 June 2021 21: 01
    
    You are replacing concepts with a beautiful quote.
    About the terrible communists and the Gulag, you will powder the brains of youngsters.
    
    And for one about the labor army of Tedy Roosevelt, about the famine in the states with a good harvest. About American concentration camps for US citizens of German origin (approximately 350000 people). I am generally silent about the atomic bomb.
    About the betrayal of an ally after the Second World War.
    
    About Comrade Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, how he starved five million Bengalis to death in the 30s.
    
    Also about the fact that in the United States at the moment, there are almost three million people in prisons (Stalin never dreamed of such numbers in a nightmare) and most of these prisons are private enterprises (this is a profitable business - prison labor).
    1. Digital error
      
      -2
      
      23 June 2021 21: 15
      
      Quote: Rum Rum
      this profitable business is the labor of prisoners
      
      That's just it. And it can be tempting in terms of "no money, but you hold on." Why did you raise your pension age? Do you read the news?
      
      The director of the Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments, Alexander Kalashnikov, proposed replacing migrant workers with convicts at many construction and industrial sites.
      
      https://rg.ru/2021/05/20/direktor-fsin-predlozhil-zamenit-migrantov-zakliuchennymi.html
      
      Quote: Rum Rum
      You replace concepts with a beautiful quote
      
      What concepts did I change? And what have the impudent Britons and America to do with it? Argumentation in the style of "and you have blacks hanging" may be curious, but not for me
      1. Rum rum
        
        +1
        
        23 June 2021 21: 22
        
        Execution of punishment should be a monopoly of the state, not a private shop.
        I see nothing against if the prisoners work for the good of society, and not for a private pocket. The number of convicts in Russia and the United States is not comparable.
        
        You here hinted at the felling, such as "bloody gebnyu" and the quote was compared with Nazism.
        Is not it?
        
        Digital error
        
        -1
        
        23 June 2021 21: 35
        
        Quote: Rum Rum
        Is not it?
        
        Not this way. It is necessary to remember the totalitarian lessons and allow the opposition to govern the country in proportion to the number of votes cast for it, instead of pushing it into jail and not allowing it to go to the elections. The general "approvals" have already passed - it ended badly, and for many "they came" - to take the same Letov ...
        
        Rum rum
        
        +3
        
        23 June 2021 22: 02
        
        Totalitarian lessons? You liberals have already zadolbali this totalitarianism!
        
        You and Putin are a totalitarian and despot, although his real rating is much higher than in your crap crap (even they admit it), and he was elected by direct vote, and not by some murky electors.
        
        Democracy is the rule of the majority (universal approval), not the dictatorship and blackmail of the minority.
        
        There was no totalitarianism: but there were internal party squabbles (moderate - Trotskyists), involved in a tough restoration period after: the First World War, the intervention and the civil war (look what Tedi Roosevelt did, and he is a crap crap). Yes, I forgot about the pre-war spy mania (everyone had it then - once again about the Germans in the states). You will mix criminals there (and there were quite a few of them, after the shocks).
        
        Digital error
        
        0
        
        23 June 2021 22: 44
        
        Quote: Rum Rum
        Democracy is the rule of the majority (universal approval),
        
        Most are not "universal" And no one spoke about the diktat of the minority. You, dear, either did not understand, or are substituting concepts
        Let's try to get my point across again. For simplicity of calculations, let us imagine that the number of voters in the Russian Federation is 120 million people, and the number of State Duma deputies, taking into account the senators of the Federation Council and other "servants of the people", is 600 people. Dividing the first number by the second we get 200. If such a number of voters want to walk the streets not on their feet, but on their hands, then their interests should be represented by one representative in the State Duma or Federation Council. Yes, he will be in the minority and will not be able to influence the adoption of the corresponding federal law. But - society will know that such an idea is quite in demand, and therefore a compromise is needed - for example, you can allow these people to walk on their hands only on city squares only on Saturdays only from 000 to 12 o'clock. In other words, these people need to be heard and you need to somehow negotiate with them so that there is no confusion.
        But this is difficult and you still need to be able to. Another thing is to build a "vertical of power", and to define the rest in the "twenty-fifth column of liberals"
        
        Rum rum
        
        +2
        
        23 June 2021 23: 35
        
        Quote: DigitalError
        Another thing is to build a "vertical of power", and to define the rest in the "twenty-fifth column of liberals"
        
        The vertical of power ensures the normal functioning of the state.
        Marginals - to ignore. Borzoi marginals, and liberals - you correctly said in "columns", and with these slender columns for felling.
        
        You forgot to tell us about the substitution of concepts about the "blue" dictate.
        Or about BLM? In normal countries.
        
        Your 200000 is how much as a percentage of the population of Russia, and even spread over the area, eh?
        Let these clowns get at least 5%.
        And yes, compromises are reached by equals. But what if 99% of the population does not want to see those who walk on their hands? What then?
        Then sit still and don't push yourself out.
        So it has been at all times.
        
        As I understand it, have we closed the topic of totalitarianism?
        
        Digital error
        
        0
        
        24 June 2021 14: 14
        
        Quote: Rum Rum
        Your 200000 is how much as a percentage of the population of Russia
        
        How many people arranged the Maidan (were physically in the square) in 2014? And how much is this% of the population of Ukraine? And what is the result for Ukraine? Was it impossible to compromise in time? The participants in these events had no time for statehood, I am sure that they themselves are not happy now. But wasn’t such an outcome supposed to have been foreseen by the statesmen and agreed in time? And who represented the interests of the "Maidans" before they became such in parliament?
        
        Quote: Rum Rum
        99% of the population does not want to see those who walk on their hands?
        
        Well, even for the amendments to the Constitution, the CEC issued only about 80%, and 20% is a lot (see above). I believe that the results of the expected elections would surprise you if there were independent candidates, voting one day, not in September, but in November, and only by turnout.
        However, you have the right to be mistaken, and I am not imposing anything on you - so, I am having fun
        
        Rum rum
        
        +2
        
        23 June 2021 22: 08
        
        About the opposition:
        Who needs these clowns?
        The pile-up is just a hyper and a criminal. They did not touch him for a long time so as not to stink. (Two conditions - not a pound of raisins) He just went too far and the conditions turned into real.
        A non-systemic synonym for the word - balobols and empty-throats.
        And who is Letov, I do not know at all.
        Also some kind of marginal clown?
Jacques sekavar

+1

24 July 2021 10: 56

The GULAG was the result of the class, civil and Great Patriotic War. The prisoners of the GULAG caused damage to the state and the state forced them by their labor to at least to some extent compensate for the harm caused. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the GULAG: White Guards, clergymen (the church was the largest owner of capital in the empire and, like any owner, fiercely and mercilessly fought for its property with the Soviet regime), thousands of traitors who deliberately sided with the Nazis, millions of prisoners and deserters, marauders and bandits who plundered and who killed the number and cruelty of which can be judged by the surge in crime after the Khrushchev amnesty.
The White Sea Canal is a small part of the water transport routes, the priority is the Baltic-Caspian route, which requires huge capital investments and remains unmanageable today.