The natural world of our planet is uneven. In some parts of the world, the summer is warm and long, there you can grow millions of tons of agricultural products. But there is no water for irrigating the fields, so one can only dream of harvests. In other regions, incredibly high-water rivers flow. But the climate there is so harsh that there can be no question of any kind of agriculture.
But the communists proclaimed the slogan "Our task is not to wait for favors from nature, but to take them!" And they were responsible for their words. The Crimean and Karakum irrigation canals are a clear confirmation of this. But these implemented large-scale projects pale in comparison to the unrealized project - the turning of the Siberian rivers Ob, Irtysh, and possibly the Yenisei into the arid regions of Central Asia.
About the history of the project
It is interesting that such ideas were expressed long before the USSR and even the communist ideology itself. Back in 1714, Prince Cherkassky wrote about the possibility of letting the Amu Darya go along its old channel (before, the great Central Asian river flowed into the Caspian Sea, and not into the Aral Sea). In the 19th century, the expeditions of Baron Kaulbars and General Glukhovsky explored the Uzboy (the old channel of the Amu Darya). These studies became the basis of the book.
Scientist and publicist Yakov Demchenko was involved in the project of transferring part of the Ob and Irtysh waters to the Aral Sea in the second half of the 19th century (and even from his gymnasium times). This was the subject of his thesis, and then the book. In the Soviet Union, it was proposed to turn the Siberian rivers into the Aral Sea even during Stalin's life, at the suggestion of the prominent scientist Vladimir Obruchev. Specific research and calculations on this topic began in the mid-60s.
More than fifty design and survey and research institutes have prepared fifty volumes of texts, calculations and applied scientific research, ten albums of drawings, maps and diagrams for this project. It was assumed that the implementation of the project would cost 32.8 billion rubles, and that these costs would be recouped in 6-7 years. XXV Congress of the CPSU (1976) gave the go-ahead for the start of work on the ground.
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Why did the project "hang" at the initial stage?
Geodetic and hydrological surveys were carried out, but it did not come to direct digging of canals. Repeated examinations have recognized that the real cost of the work will be more than doubled.
The amount of work needed to be done was titanic: to remove more than 6.1 billion cubic meters of soil; to lay about 15 million cubic meters of reinforced concrete, to install 256 thousand tons of metal structures, to build 6 railway bridges and 18 automobile bridges. Along with the financial one, there was also a serious technical difficulty: the water had to not only be driven against the current, but also “forced to flow downhill” for hundreds of kilometers.
Plus another environmental factor. Of course, we are accustomed to thinking about ecology in the last place, but still: such a large-scale project could provoke unpredictable natural and climatic changes. On a vast territory: from the Caspian to the Arctic Ocean. The Great Karakum Canal, which is much smaller in scale, provoked the Aral Sea ecological catastrophe. Another problem identified during the operation of this canal was the salinization and waterlogging of the adjacent land plots, with a large rise in groundwater - due to water seepage into the ground through the walls and bottom of the canal.
Nevertheless, in the first half of the 80s, the transfer of the waters of Siberian rivers to Central Asia was still on the agenda. On the contrary, land reclamation came into vogue at that time, and the project, so to speak, “played with new colors”. The October 1984 plenum of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a new version of the program. It was decided to finally close this project only in 1986, already during the "perestroika".
What could be the "channel of the century"
The length of the canal would be almost 2,500 km. Its width was supposed to be from 130 to 300 m; depth - 15 m. The main option implied the transportation of water from the Ob River, from Khanty-Mansiysk to the mouth of the Irtysh, and then to the upper reaches of the Tobol. Then the water had to flow into the bed of the dry Turgai River. From there - to the Syrdarya basin, and the final point of the Siberian waters route would be the city of Urgench, already on the Amu Darya. On the way, the water from the canal would have been used by arid regions of the Kurgan, Chelyabinsk, Omsk regions and Kazakhstan. In addition to land reclamation, the canal was to become navigable.
In the 21st century, China also wanted Siberian water
In the 2010s, representatives of the PRC appealed to the Russian government with a proposal to discuss the possibility of transferring part of the river water from Altai through Kazakhstan to the northern arid regions of China. It was about a main water pipeline with a length of 1.5 thousand km, with a network of distribution pipelines.
Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev explained in 2016 that this project can be discussed, but only if Russia's interests are fully respected. Including - from an environmental point of view.
