HUGE SOVIET PLAN

Evening Star, Issue 22893, 26 February 1938, Page 2

HUGE SOVIET PLAN

VOLGA REGION SCHEME A huge programme of railroad, highway, canal,, and.” power-plant building under the management of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs (the Secret Police Department) has been announced (writes Harold Denny from Moscow to the ‘ New York Times’). It includes construction of the largest water-power project in . the world as part of a broad scheme for improving the Volga region—a project that will dwarf the famous dam and hydro-elec-tric plant on the Dnieper Rivets built’ under the direction of the late Colonel Hugh L. Cooper, of New York. In these gigantic tasks, some of which' are already well under way, the N.K.V.D. Commissariat will use conT, ict labour, by . which means it has accomplished many of the Soviet Union’s greatest and most difficult building feats, notably the doubletracking of . the 1,300-mile eastern sections of the transiberian railroad, the Baltic-White Sea Canal, and the Mos-cow-Volga Canal. A certain proportion of these convicts find their . :ay to freedom through such works, however. Trade schools are operated in connection with them, and it has hectfme the custom to free convicts as a reward for exceptionally good work. This was done following completion of the canals mentioned, and 10,000 convict workers _ on the transiberian railroad have just been ordered to be released.

The Volga improvement scheme includes the building of a great dam and hydro-electric station near Quibishec, formerly Samara, within the next five or six years. The. power, station is to produce 2,500,000 kilowatts of electrical energy—four times the capacity of the Dnieper station. This plant will supply power to industries both in the Ural Mountain region and Moscow. The dam will serve also to counteract droughts, which from time to time destroy crops on the left bank of th* Volga. Irrigating canals will carry Volga water to these lands, enabling them to grow 3,000,000 tons more wheat annually. Work already is in progress on two big dams at Uglitch and Rybinsk, which will raise the level of the Volga several feet. I/arge .power stations are to be built in connection with them, also. Dams on the Volga and Sheksna Rivers will form a huge water ■reservoir between the Sheksna and Mologa Rivers 20 times as big as the “ Moscow Sea ” formed in connection with the Moseow-Volga Canal.' Another big reservoir will he built at the junction of the Kama. Pechora, and Vychegda Rivers. Near Solikamsk a kilowatt hydro-electric station will be constructed, which will provide power for the Ural industries. Having completed the transiberian double-tracking, the N.K.V.D. has been commissioned to undertake construction of a new railway line, but its location has not been disclosed. Other railway lines have been built by the N.K.V.D. in connection with its work of developing coal mines beyond th* Arctic Circle in Siberia to supply ships of the Great Northern Sea route and , industries of the - Far North.