NEW SOVIET CANAL

Evening Star, Issue 22816, 26 November 1937, Page 1

NEW SOVIET CANAL

MADE A SHOW-PLACE MOSCOW TO THE VOLGA When the Soviet regime dobs something well it frequently does it superlatively well (writes Harold Denny from Moscow to the ‘ New York Times ’). Recently diplomats and foreign correspondents were permitted to inspect the Soviet’s greatest construction project—the Moscow-Volga Canal. The canal is now open for regular operation, though few craft are using it as The foreign guests—accompanied by Foreign Office officials, Mmo Maxim Litvinoff, wife of the Foreign Commissar, and their daughter —motored to Dmitrov, 50 miles up the canal from Moscow, and hoarded a trim doubledecked Diesel-motored vessel named Levanevsky. It was a handsome and delightful little ship with observation decks fore and aft, a panelled smoking room on the upper deck, and two panelled cafes below. Both these cafes were stocked with tho best Russian food and drink. Waiters served a buffet lunch all day at tables set up on the open decks. The gastronomic entertainment was equivalent to that _ given at official Foreign Office receptions ashore. TOASTED IN CHAMPAGNE. The vessel churned along at about 15 miles an hour to the Volga, which was reached in raid-evening. The guests toasted the famous old river in Soviet champagne. This cruise gave a vivid impression both of the gigantic engineering problems that Soviet engineers had had to solve and of a desire to make this the most beautiful canal in the world, just as the Moscow subway builders lavished decorations on the .underground stations. The Suez Canal, though longer than the Moscow-Volga’s 80 miles, does not compare with it, for it is simply a sea-level ditch without looks. The engineers of the Moscow-Vo.lga Canal had to create stairs of locks to lift ships 133 ft to surmount a plateau. In some ways the Mcscow-Volga surpasses the Panama Canal. Though Soviet engineers did not have to contend with anything so treacherous as the Gaillard Cut, they had to cross the Sestra River, lying athwart the canal route and of a lower level than the canal. This they did by building throe big concrete tunnels under the canal, conducting the unruly Sestra '-through them, ■' V " “The' finish- of some of the. siosc^S ; -- Volga Canal structures .is inferior to that of those of the Panama Canal. On_ the other hand, the Soviet has striven to make its structures really beautiful, often with marked success. NEATLY SHORED UP. The whole canal, which is broad enough to accommodate two or more of tho largest river boats abreast, is neatly shored up with small stones. Tho hanks above the shoring are sodded in terraces. Even little landscaped resting places with seats have been placed at intervals along the hanks. The control towers of the lock near Dmitrov are crowned with bronze carvels. Leaving them behind, the Levanevsky sailed past the barracks, roost of which were now without the convict labourers who had built, the canal. Some of tho army of 100,000 convicts were still at work under guards, finishing the final details of building the sightly villages that will line the canal. Near the Volga the ship passed through a lock. Across the gates stretched a huge red banner with the inscription, “Hail the Great Stalin 1” The lock was manipulated quietly and efficiently, and in a few minutes the ship had descended 28ft. . Tho guests were conducted through the pumping station, which is a handsome colonnaded building set amid flower beds and fountains. It was scrupulously clean within. At Ivankovo the vessel passed into the Moscow Sea between twin statues of Lenin and Stalin 80ft high, _on which sculptors were still working. This sea was artificially formed by raising the Volga 56ft by means of an enormous concrete dam. Steel gates, raised and lowered by a huge travelling crane, control the overflow which cascades into a new bed leading into tho main channel of tho Volga further down. A great hydro-electric station stands at one end of the Volga dam. The clean water of the Volga is kept pure on the way to the capital._ Ships accumulate refuse in storage bins instead of discharging it into the canal, and none even throws cigarette ends overboard.