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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6 Titanic Construction Works of Communism Are Transforming Nature By G. Krzhizhanovsky Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Hese days, when Soviet men and women are gazing with just pride at the map of their homeland, at the boundless area of the Soviet land inter- sected by the broad, winding Volga; these days, when hundreds of Stalin- gradhydrostroi surveyors are setting their landmarks in the environs of the hero-city and thousands of Kuibyshev- hydrostroi workers are erecting a work- ers’ town on the bank of the great river — in these notable days I recall a winter evening in Moscow in 1920, the eve- ning of December 22, when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, addressing the delegates to the Fighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in the packed auditorium of the Bolshoi Theater, said: “You will hear the report of the State Electrification Commission . . . In my opinion it is a second program of our Party... Only when the country has been electrified, when industry, agri- culture, and transport have been placed on the technical basis of modern large- scale industry, only then shall we be finally victorious . . . If Russia becomes covered by a dense network of electric power stations and powerful technical installations, our communist economic development will become a model for a future socialist Europe and Asia.” And as if in confirmation of these prophetic words uttered by the great founder of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet State, the colored bulbs of a large map on the stage depicting the construc. tion of power stations under the GOEL- RO plan began to sparkle. The Con- gress delegates felt that they were get- ting a glimpse into the future. It seemed a splendid but distant dream. Lenin's words: “Communism is the Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country” became firmly im- planted in the minds of the Soviet peo- ple. Even during Lenin’s lifetime the Kashica Power Station, operating on Moscow Region coal, was built, and con- BER 13, 1950 struction of the Shatura Station, operat- ing on peat, was begun. Led by Lenin's great friend and comrade-in-arms, Jos- eph Vissarionovich Stalin, under his wise guidance, the Soviet people built the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the largest in Europe. By 1935 they had built not 30 large new power plants, as envisaged by the GOELRO plao, but 147. Soviet reality outstripped the bold- est dreams. The Volga — the great Russian river sung by the people, symbol of the might and grandeur of the Russian people! ‘The banks of the Volga have witnessed ti- tanic battles and glorious victories. Here, at Tsaritsyn, which today is Stalingrad, Soviet troops led by Stalin’s genius twice brought illustrious honor to invin- cible Soviet arms. And now the unfad- ing battle glory of the hero-city will be multiplied by new labor glory as the Volga banks are turned into a gigantic construction site. The largest hydroelectric stations in the world will be built on the ancient Russian river: the Kuibyshev Station, with a capacity of about 2,000,000 kilo- watts, and the Stalingrad Station, with a capacity of not less than 1,700,000 kilowatts. A visual idea of the size of the new Volga power giants may be gained from the following comparisons: they will generate more than 10 times as much electric energy as was produced by all the power stations of prerevolu- tionary Russia; their capacity will be almost twice as great as the power ca- pacities envisaged by the historic GOEL- RO plan; the Kuibyshev and Stalingrad stations will annually generate more electricity than all the present-day power plants of Italy, all the power plants of Switzerland and Sweden. The Volga giants will annually sup- ply 20,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy for industrial, agricul- tural, transportation, and municipal pur- poses and for the irrigation of vast ex- panses of steppe. More than half of this power will be supplied to Moscow along tremendous, unprecedented, super high- tension transmission lines. ‘The Kuibyshev and Stalingrad power plants are links in the solution of the important national-economic problem of fuller utilization of the Volga’s colossal power resources — the Greater Volga development. The first steps in this di- rection were made in the prewar years. In 1937 the Moscow Canal, linking the Volga with the Moscow River, was commissioned. By the will of the Bol- sheviks the Moscow Sea and the first Volga hydroelectric station, the Ivan- kovo Station, came into being. At the beginning of the Great Patri- otic War, installations of the Uglich and Shcherbakov hydroelectric. stations were already in operation and were sup- plying Moscow with electric energy. These three stations, erected along the upper reaches of the Volga, were the first in the Greater Volga development. ‘When the war ended, construction of the fourth Volga hydroelectric station was begun. Now a new and majestic stage in harnessing the Volga’s water power resources is commencing. In the middle reaches of the river, below the conflu- ence of the Oka and the Kama, con- struction of the Kuibyshey Hydroelectric Station is to be launched this year. Next year construction of the giant Stalingrad Station will begin on the lower reaches of the Volga. ‘The Kuibyshev plant will go into op- eration at full capacity in 1955, and the Stalingrad plant in 1956. The high level of Soviet science and technology and the splendid specialists trained during the Soviet years make it possible to erect the giant Kuibyshev and Stalingrad stations in the brief span of five years. As was the case in the building of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station years ago, the entire Soviet land, the entire 579 Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6