Source:White Sea-Baltic Canal (Belomorkanal) - cruises, locks and waterworks, characteristics and map
The White Sea-Baltic Canal connects Lake Onega with the White Sea.
Thanks to its construction, ships do not need to go around the Scandinavian Peninsula along the northern seas to get from the Gulf of Finland to the White Sea, or, for example, from St. Petersburg to Murmansk.
The White Sea-Baltic Canal is part of the Unified Deep-Water Transport System of the European part of Russia.
The history of the construction of the canal is tragic - it was one of the first great construction projects of the Soviet Union and the first construction project where prison labor was used. At the same time, thanks to Belomorkanal cigarettes, this channel became the most famous in the country.
Map of the White Sea-Baltic Canal
Main characteristics
Length - 227 km, of which 37.1 km are artificial tracks
Guaranteed minimum dimensions of the ship's passage: depth - 4 meters, width - 36 meters, radius of curvature - 500 meters
The number of locks is 19, the dimensions of their chambers are 135 by 14.3 meters
Driving speed on artificial areas – no more than 8 km/h
The average duration of navigation is 165 days.
White Sea-Baltic Canal – structures
19 waterworks were built on the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 7 of which are located on the southern slope and 12 waterworks on the northern slope of the structure
Of the 19 locks, 13 are double-chamber and 6 are single-chamber, that is, a total of 32 lock chambers were built
15 dams to create backwater and regulate flow
5 hydroelectric power stations - Belomorskaya, Vygostrovskaya and Matkozhnenskaya, Ondskaya and Palakorgskaya
12 spillways and other structures. 
White Sea-Baltic Canal - description
The route of the White Sea-Baltic Canal begins at the village of Povenets on Lake Onega and ends at the city of Belomorsk on the White Sea.
The waterway passes through rugged terrain, through flooded small river valleys and numerous lakes with many islands.
Many reservoirs have rocky shallows, and on the northern slope and in the watershed, the bottom and banks are covered with rocks.
All these factors complicate navigation and the slightest deviation from the navigation channel can lead to damage to the vessel.
For this reason, only one-way traffic is allowed in many sections of the canal.
The conditional direction of the current is the direction from Lake Onega to the White Sea .
The entire White Sea Canal route can be divided into Southern slope, where there are seven locks, watershed canal And Northern slope, consisting of 12 gateways.
Southern slope of the White Sea Canal
The southern slope, 10 km long, begins at the village of Povenets, located in the Povenets Bay of Lake Onega. Seven waterworks built nearby form the so-called Povenchansky staircase, along which ships rise to a height of almost 70 meters.
Povenchanskaya staircase. View from the 5th lock all the way to Lake Onega
The first 6 waterworks have two-chamber locks No. 1 - No. 6, the seventh waterworks includes a single-chamber lock No. 7. The distance between the waterworks is small - about 1 km.
A drawbridge was built in the area of lock No. 2; the passage of ships here is regulated using a traffic light. The soil is sandy with boulders, and rocky in places.
At lock No. 2 there is a memorial sign in memory of the innocent victims who died in 1931-1933 during the construction of the canal. 
Monument to the innocent victims of 1931-1933 during the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Gateway No. 2. Website cont.ws
The Museum of the White Sea-Baltic Canal has been opened in the city of Povenets.
Not far from the city on the road to Medvezhyegorsk there is a Memorial Burial Ground, the so-called Mass Grave No. 6 - one of the largest reburials of soldiers of the Karelian Front who died from January 1942 to June 1944 while defending the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
Watershed pool of the White Sea Canal
The watershed pool, 22 km long, is located between locks No. 7 and No. 8. The shipping route here passes through Lake Volo (10 km) and Lake Vadlo (4 km).
This the most difficult section on the canal, the ship's passage here goes around the islands and has turns, and the depth along its axis varies from 4.5 to 15 meters.
Only approaching the northern slope does the channel widen, which favors the divergence of ships.
Northern slope of the White Sea Canal
The route of the Northern slope of the canal passes through several rivers, small lakes and five large lakes:
Between locks No. 8 and No. 9 there is a watershed bluff 11 km long and including Matkoozero 8 km long, the Vologzha River (1 km) and Toros Lake, as well as areas connecting them. Depth differences on the axis of the navigation channel on Matkoozero are from 5 to 17 meters, along the Vologzha River - 4.1-4.5 meters, on Torosozero - 4.5 - 7 meters. Vessel traffic in narrow areas is one-way and their speed is limited
Between locks No. 9 and No. 10 there is a watershed bluff with a length of 86 km, including Lake Telekino, the bed and valley of the Telekinki and Vygozero rivers, which is the largest on the White Sea-Baltic Canal - its length is 50 km and its width is 15 km
Voitskoye Lake is located between locks No. 10 and No. 11, it is a small body of water with a width of 100 meters to 1.5 km
Between locks No. 11 and No. 12 there is a watershed bluff with a length of 34 km, including Lake Shavan, the Onda River and the Parandovsky Reach.
Most difficult section 6 km long - Onda, where the ship's passage is winding and in several places passes through a slot in the rocks
A narrow section 5 km long, difficult for navigation, is located between locks No. 12 and No. 13, there are underwater rocks at the edges of the shipping passage
The Matkonezh basin, with a width of 250 meters to 1 km, is located between locks No. 13 and No. 14. The 19 km long ship passage runs along the flooded bed of the Vyg River
The Vygostrovsky pool is the area between locks No. 14 and No. 15; there is a two-kilometer canal carved into the rocks.
Between locks No. 15 and 16 there is watershed pool 10 km long, the ship's passage again passes along the flooded bed of the Vyg River.
After gateway No. 16 begins steep descent to Soroca Bay of the White Sea, where three locks No. 17, No. 18 and No. 19 are located, separated by three tails 1, 3 and 5 km long.
The navigation route of this section passes along the flooded bed of the Shizhnya River.
A single-span drawbridge was built in the area of lock No. 18.
From the watershed bluff to Soroca Bay, ships drop 103 meters.
From the history
The idea of connecting Lake Onega with the White Sea arose under Peter the Great.
In 1702, the famous “Sovereign Road” was built - a clearing six meters wide with a flooring of logs, along which Military ships were dragged from the White Sea to Lake Onego.
Later, several waterway construction projects were proposed. One of them, developed by Professor Vsevolod Timonov in 1900, was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition.
All the proposed projects were not implemented and as Mikhail Prishvin wrote in his book "In the Land of Unfrightened Birds" that only two stones near the village of Maselga with the inscription “Onega-White Sea Canal” remind you of all those events.
In June 1930, a decision was made to begin construction of the canal. According to Stalin's instructions, the waterway was to be built in 20 months without great expense.
The idea of using cheap prison labor belongs to Lieutenant General, one of the leaders of the Gulag, Naftaliy Frenkel.
In the spring of 1932, Genrikh Yagoda and Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of the USSR Katanyan approved the Regulations on the special rights of the head of the Gulag. Kogan L.I. and assistant chief of the Gulag Yakov Rapoport, according to which they were given the right to increase the term of imprisonment in the camps for persons violating the established order and discipline.
Construction work was carried out without the use of modern technology, almost manually, using a shovel, ax and pickaxe, and the building materials were sand, stone and wood. During the entire construction period, more than 250 thousand prisoners were sent to BelBaltLag (White Sea-Baltic forced labor camp), of which, according to official data, about 13 thousand people died.
The organizers of the construction tried to give it a militarized form and used words such as headquarters, company, and the imprisoned builders were called canal army men, by analogy with the Red Army soldiers.
The less the builder produced, the smaller his rations were, and as production increased, the rations increased. The Canal Army soldiers lived in barracks and tents.
In his work “The Gulag Archipelago” Alexander Solzhenits wrote: “It would be fitting for them to lay out six names on the slopes of the canal - the main henchmen of Stalin and Yagoda, the main overseers of the Belomor, six hired killers, recording thirty thousand lives for each: Firin - Berman - Frenkel - Kogan - Rappoport - Zhuk.”
In 1997, mass graves were discovered 12 km from Medvezhyegorsk in the Sandarmokh tract. In this area, more than 9,500 people were shot and buried, mostly repressed people, Canal Army soldiers and Gulag prisoners. A total of 236 burials were found.
In May 1933, the canal was completed and named after I.V. Stalin, which he wore until 1961.
On June 25, the Chekist steamship passed along the route. According to eyewitnesses, Stalin said that the canal turned out to be shallow and narrow (at that time its depth was 3.65 meters), and also described it as meaningless and useless to anyone.
During the Great Patriotic War, the southern part of the structure was severely destroyed, the infrastructure was damaged, 7 locks of the Povenchanskaya Stairs and dam No. 20 were blown up, the village of Povenets was practically destroyed by the flow of water.
After the war, the hydraulic structures were restored and shipping began in July 1946.
The village of Povenets was rebuilt.
The importance of the White Sea-Baltic Canal especially increased in 1964, when the Volga-Baltic Waterway was built.
In the 1970s, the guaranteed navigation depth of the route was increased to four meters and the canal became part of the Unified Deep-Water System of the European part of the RSFSR.
With the construction of the White Sea Canal, many cities in the region developed, including Belomorsk and Povenets, and new settlements appeared.
Interestingly, after 4-5 years, upon completion of the work, it was planned to build a second offshore branch of the route with a guaranteed depth of at least 6.4 meters. All design and survey work was completed, but was never implemented.
Cruises on the White Sea-Baltic Canal
Travel companies organize cruises to Solovki from Petrozavodsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg, passing along the White Sea-Baltic Canal. During the cruise, tourists arrive in the city of Belomorsk or the village of Sosnovets, and then go by boat to the Solovetsky Islands. A trip to Solovki is one of the most interesting cruise routes.
The White Sea-Baltic Canal is a unique hydraulic structure, which is an important water transport artery and at the same time it is a historical monument and a monument to people, a monument to that harsh era.
Yakovlev Vladimir Vsevolodovich recalled:
“The construction of a canal called “Belomorstroy” hung like a nightmare over the hundreds of thousands of prisoners who were herded in 1931-33 into the remote taiga along its route, ingeniously drawn by Peter the Great, who personally traveled around Karelia and chose its most successful option using the long Vygozero, located on the watershed between the White Sea and Lake Onega. The inclusion of Vygozero in the canal route significantly reduced the volume of rock and earthworks, since the lake itself, together with a number of small lakes and partly the bed of the Povenchanka River in its upper reaches, became the natural channel of the canal for 190 kilometers, and the flow of Vygozero’s water resources ensured sluicing on both sides of the watershed. By order of Stalin, the canal was built within 20 months and commissioned exactly on time on June 20, 1933. The absence of any mechanization of work shifted the entire burden of construction onto the shoulders of the prisoners. A sledgehammer and a wedge, a crowbar and a pick made 2514 thousand cubic meters of rock work. Shovel and wheelbarrow completed 21 million cubic meters of excavation. For every cubic meter of crushed rock, for every cubic meter of excavated earth, the prisoners paid with sweat, blood, loss of ability to work, with their lives; they built on the bones of their colleagues in misfortune. Eleven or more hours a day, around the clock in two shifts where there was lighting in the winter, and in the summer work was going on everywhere on the canal route. Due to the tight deadlines for construction, prisoners were driven to work in any frost and they froze during the day at work and at night while sleeping in tents. Summer did not bring relief due to clouds of midges and mosquitoes. Despite good rations, prisoners died in the thousands, filling unknown graves along the entire route, the graves becoming a silent reproach to the ruthless system, the generation that brought the country to such cruelty. Nekrasov’s “railroad” was a mere trifle with the collective grave of prisoners that was the canal route. That is why the prisoners, even at the cost of removing them from Solovki, with their terribly cruel regime, managed to avoid ending up in Belomorstroy.”
Why was this small and narrow canal, absolutely unsuitable for navigation, built so quickly and at such a cost? Maybe to increase cargo turnover, or to export timber and minerals, or to develop the region? Not at all. The correct answer flashes for just a few seconds from 43:17 to 43:37 and from 44:27 to 44:44 in the film poster “White Sea-Baltic Waterway” of 1933, only this answer must be seen and understood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv0GGbU1ErY
Initially it was assumed that the channel would be used once. But it didn’t work out in one go, so the canal was used a little more: twice in 1933, then once each in 1938 and 1939, and finally for the last time in September 1941. In December 1941, the locks on the Povenets stairs of the canal were blown up, as a result of which the gushing water washed Povenets into Lake Onega. On December 7, 1941, Povenets, or rather what was left of it, was captured by the Finns.
“One of the measures to strengthen the offensive power of the Red Armed Forces was the creation in 1933 of the Northern Red Sea Fleet with the aim of covering Europe from the north. The Northern Fleet was given part of the ships of the Baltic Fleet, the most important class of which, for offensive operations on communications so vital for England, there were submarines. The Baltic Fleet is the most numerous and powerful of all the red fleets, since it was completely preserved in the civil war, in the new post-revolutionary borders it completely lost its offensive power, squeezed in the patch between Kronstadt and Leningrad and deprived of operational space in the Baltic and Gulf of Finland. The question arose about the way to transfer ships from the Baltic to the expanses of the Arctic Ocean. Large ships, accompanied by destroyers, were able to carry out this transition under the guise of maneuvers around the Scandinian Peninsula without calling at foreign ports to replenish fuel reserves. The main offensive force, submarines , they could not make such a journey without calling at intermediate ports. Transporting them by rail was unthinkable. For the passage of them and other small auxiliary vessels from the Gulf of Finland to the Arctic Ocean, and only for this purpose, the White Sea-Baltic Canal was built. And submarines reached Lake Onega along the Neva and the bypass canal of Ladoga and Svir. The canal, the fate of which later was of no interest to anyone, was built by hundreds of thousands of slaves, tens of thousands gave their lives for it, and all this only so that it would truly function only once, to transport weapons of destruction to the North."
The canal had not yet been completed, but already on April 3, 1933, the passage from the Baltic began of the destroyers "Uritsky" and "Kuibyshev" (or "Rykov"?), patrol ships "Uragan" and "Smerch", submarines "Dekabrist" (D- 1) and "Narodovolets" (D-2). In June they came to Povenets, where they stood for more than a month, waiting for the completion of the canal construction.
Admiral V.I. Platonov, then still a young sailor, on one of the locks in a group of prisoners building a canal, saw pilot Vygozer I.B. Kovunovich, his former boss and teacher, who had recently served as the chief mate of the Comintern in Italy and returned in USSR. “He was wearing a tunic made from prison clothes, gathered at the waist with an elastic band, wide, navy-style embroidered trousers and canvas low shoes. hair." Ilya Borisovich eagerly examined the warships, his gaze slid along the navigation bridges, apparently, he hoped to see one of his former colleagues. The old sailor's face seemed to glow with happiness, either from the fact that he saw warships again, or or from the knowledge that it was not in vain that he gave the best years of his life to the fleet. Who knows?"
On July 20, the expedition entered Soroca Bay. On July 21 they greeted Stalin. After this, the expedition remained in Soroka to wait for the arrival by rail of everything that had been dismantled in Leningrad. Then, under its own power, the expedition went north and on August 5 arrived at the port of Murmansk. The operation to drag ships from Kronstadt to Murmansk was called EON-1 (Special Purpose Expedition No. 1). This is how the core of the Northern Fleet was created.
In September 1933, in the same way, the second expedition (EON-2) was dragged from Kronstadt to Murmansk, consisting of the destroyer Karl Liebknecht, the submarine Krasnogvardeets (D-3) and the patrol ship Groza. The commander of EON-1, Z. A. Zakupnev, a couple of years later was accused of treason and shot. After him, K.I. Dushenov was appointed commander of the Northern Military Flotilla. In 1938, four more submarines Shch-1, Shch-2, Shch-3, Shch-4 were dragged along. That same year, Dushenov was arrested and executed in 1940. In 1939, four new squadron destroyers and nine submarines of the Shch-421, Shch-422, Shch-424, M-171, M-172, M-173, M-174, M-175 and M-176 models were ferried. Chief of Staff V.I. Platonov wrote that dragging Project 7 destroyers through the canal turned out to be a very difficult task. The draft and length of these ships confused even experienced specialists. The Special Purpose Underwater Expedition (EPRON, which is in Oranienbaum) was called to escort the ships; it was led by F.I. Krylov. A special wooden floating dock was built to pull the destroyers through. On September 17, 1941, eight more submarines K-3, K-21, K-22, K-23, S-101, S-102, L-20, L-22, arriving from Leningrad, were dragged along the canal.
Description of the channel in 1935:
And here’s what the Povenchanskaya canal staircase actually looked like in 1935:
"... I examined Povenets and, first of all, the locks of the White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Stalin, which originates from Lake Onega near the village of Povenets and passes through Karelia to the White Sea with a total length of 227 kilometers.
The dry bed of the Povenchanka River with a pile of giant ice age boulders was impressive. Its straightened bed upstream was used for the canal route, and the lower reaches before it flowed into the lake were drained. The first lock approached the shore of the lake, the entrance to which was framed by two obelisks.
I walked along the bank of the lock to the next chamber and was struck, as it seemed to me, by the dilapidation of the structure, although only two years had passed since the opening of the canal. The walls of the lock chamber, made of logs, were replete with fountains of water, briskly pouring into the lock through the grooves between the logs. The wooden walls could not hold back the pressure of soil water, and this was in the summer, during the dry season. What happens in the fall during the rainy season, in the spring when the snow melts, how much water seeps through the walls, disrupting the speed of the sluicing process?! The sluice gates, made exclusively of wood with wooden shields for draining water, which were presented by propaganda as a world achievement in the practice of sluice construction, were not in the best condition. Water flowed through them quite abundantly, which raised doubts about the possibility of maintaining the difference in water levels on the sluice stairs. If the canal's structures looked like this two years after its construction, then what happened to the canal another six years later, when it was captured by the Finns in 1941? Probably by that time all the canal structures had completely failed and the canal ceased to exist? And in vain they blamed the Finns for blowing up the canal structures. Actually, there was nothing to destroy. After the war, the canal structures were restored in iron and reinforced concrete and the canal began to function, but it is unlikely that even now it has any peaceful economic significance, since it stands far away and is not in the direction of cargo flows. The canal did not have any national economic significance even before the war; at most a day a small steamboat or tug with a barge passed along it in one direction. And the canal was built not for the development of cargo turnover, but for exclusively military purposes, and only for one time of its use, which is why the incredibly short time frame for its construction was given, excluding the quality of construction - the future of the canal, its durability, was of no interest to anyone, as long as it would sooner do."
In October 1941, mining of the canal began. Locks No. 1-5 were blown up on December 6th. On December 7, the Finns entered Povenets, on the same day lock No. 6 was blown up. On December 8, dam No. 20 was blown up. On December 11, lock No. 7 was blown up. The Povenchanskaya staircase was destroyed, water poured into Lake Onega, Povenets was practically destroyed.
How it was seen on Finnish newsreels. The first video contains footage of Medvezhyegorsk and Povenets. The water in Povenets rose by one and a half meters, the air temperature in these days of December was -40*C. The second video shows the destruction of the Stalin Canal as a result of the explosion of the locks on the Povenchanskaya Stairs.
For the first time, the idea of building a shipping canal connecting the Baltic and White Seas arose during the Northern War and belonged to Peter I, who launched an active struggle to return Russia to the Baltic, lost after the events of the “Time of Troubles” at the beginning of the 17th century.
With the founding of St. Petersburg in 1703, the transfer of Russia's foreign trade relations to the Baltic and the decline in the role of the North in the country's economy, interest in waterways from the center of the country to the White Sea faded for some time. However, from the end of the 18th century, as capitalist relations developed in Russia, the problem of developing water communications in the North, in particular the construction of a canal between the basins of the Baltic and White Seas, became increasingly relevant, one after another, hydraulic engineering projects began to appear, proposed by entrepreneurs and engineers , administrative figures. So, back in the 1790s. The government received two statements on this issue: one from Petrozavodsk industrialists Zhdanov, Rybakov, Filippov and the head of the Olonets Mining Plants A.V. Armstrong, another from the Pudozh merchant Bakanin. Petrozavodsk residents supported the construction of a canal along the Maselsky portage, across the river. Povenchanka, Narrow Lakes and the river. Telekinka with access to the river. Nizhny Vyg or river Sumu, and the Pudo resident is for the Vodlinsko-Onega option. The government became interested in the project proposals and sent in 1800 to find the best specialist - engineer, General de Volan, builder of the Mariinsky canal system. He and a party of land surveyors walked along all the indicated routes, wrote up their descriptions, made the first sketches of the canal diagram and, unfortunately, rejected the projects: there were too many rocks, waterfalls and other obstacles... With the death of Emperor Paul I, research stopped altogether.
In the early 1870s. The Olonets provincial zemstvo was actively involved in resolving the issue of building the White Sea-Baltic Canal, which repeatedly, with the support of Governor G.G. Grigoriev submitted relevant petitions to various government authorities. As a result, the Ministry of Railways in 1886–1887. organized an expedition under the leadership of hydraulic engineer A.F. Zdzyarsky, the result of which was the project of constructing a canal according to the “eastern option” (River Povenchanka - River Telekinka - Lake Vygozero - River Nizhny Vyg). In 1900, the gold medal of the Paris Exhibition was awarded to the project of a canal from Lake Onega to the White Sea by Professor V. E. Timonov. However, all the projects and proposals of entrepreneurs, merchants, engineers and scientists to create a through route to the sea remained in the archives for many years due to lack of funds.
In 1931, at the direction of I.V. Stalin by a group of engineers led by S.Ya. Zhuk developed a project for the route of the White Sea–Baltic Canal: r. Povenchanka - r. Telekinka - lake Vygozero - r. Nizhny Vyg, and for its implementation the construction organization “Belomorstroy” was created, which in 1932 became subordinate to the NKVD of the USSR. Construction was carried out mainly by Gulag prisoners. The prisoners who worked at the construction site were called “canal army men.” By May 1, 1932, 100 thousand workers were employed in the construction of the canal. During the construction of the canal, mainly local, non-scarce building materials were used: wood, stone, soil, peat. The supervisors of the construction were the future Stalinist People's Commissar Genrikh Yagoda and the head of the Gulag, Matvey Berman, and the construction manager was Lazar Kogan.
During the construction of the main canal structures, 390 thousand m 3 of concrete was laid, 920 thousand m 3 of wooden rack structures were cut down, and earthworks and rock work were completed in the amount of 21 million m 3.
On August 3, 1933, the canal was put into permanent operation. The first ships to sail along the new waterway were warships. The White Sea-Baltic Canal is famous not only for its scale, but also for the history of its construction: every meter of it was built at the cost of human lives. The canal became not only one of the main construction projects of the first Soviet five-year plan, but also the first construction in the USSR that was carried out entirely by prisoners.
During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. the canal, as a strategically important object, suffered destruction: its southern part was completely destroyed; The infrastructure of the canal (in particular lighthouses) and the village was severely damaged. Povenets. In 1944, the Soviet side blew up seven locks forming the so-called “Povenchanskaya Stairs”. After the end of the war, the damaged facilities were restored, and in July 1946 the canal was put back into operation. In February 1950, the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR on the overhaul and reconstruction of hydraulic structures of the White Sea-Baltic Canal was adopted, and work immediately began on the gradual electrification of its structures and mechanisms. By 1957, work on the electrification of waterworks on the northern slope of the canal was largely completed, and in 1959, all coastal and floating situation lights were switched to electric power. Until 1961, the White Sea-Baltic Canal bore the name of Stalin.
The canal became the first link in the implementation of the program for the development of inland waterways in Russia. It connected the White Sea with Lake Onega, which is part of the Baltic basin, and shortened the route from the Baltic to the White Sea by 4,000 km.
The total length of the White Sea–Baltic Canal is 227 km (of which 37.1 km are artificial paths), the complex of canal structures includes 19 locks (of which 13 are double-chamber, 6 are single-chamber), 15 dams, 49 dams, 19 waterways for regulating pools , 33 canals, five hydroelectric power stations, one pier and a number of other objects.
The conditional direction of the current is considered to be the direction from Lake Onega. to the White Sea, all navigational signs (buoys, lighthouses) are equipped in accordance with this rule. The canal begins at the village. Povenets in Povenets Bay of Lake Onega. The route goes along the Southern (Onega) slope (10 km), where through seven locks located at a short distance from each other (the so-called “Povenchanskaya Stairs”), it rises to a height of 70 m of the watershed section (22 km). The watershed pool includes a group of lakes Volo, Katko, Uzkiye and Vadlo, connected by channels by raising the level of the lakes from 2 to 4 m, by constructing a watershed canal with a length of 6 km. The watershed pool is fed by the regulated lakes Khizhozero and Verkhnee Velozero. The northern (White Sea) slope of the canal, formed by the backwater of lakes Matko, Toros, Vygozero, Nadvoits, the Telekinki and Nizhny Vyg rivers and diversion canals, descends 103 m through 12 locks to the Soroka Bay of the White Sea. The city of Belomorsk is located at the mouth of the canal.
The canal's hydraulic structures, original in design, were the pinnacle of wooden hydraulic construction. The walls of the chambers of some sluices, the guide rails, as well as the sluice gates and cylindrical valves of the water supply galleries were made of wood.
Using retaining spillway dams, the levels in lakes and formed pools are raised to 6 m, creating favorable conditions for the passage of all types of vessels.
The importance of the White Sea-Baltic Canal especially increased after the commissioning of the modern Volga-Baltic Waterway in 1964. The canal's capacity and the actual volume of cargo transportation have increased several times.
Due to the need to provide conditions for the transportation of goods by large-tonnage fleets, including the river-sea class, in the 1970s. A set of measures was carried out both at hydraulic structures and on shipping routes: the marks of the walls of the lock chambers were raised, the profile of a number of earthen structures was strengthened, dredging and straightening of limiting areas were carried out. As a result, the guaranteed depth was 4 m and the canal was included in the Unified deep-water system of the European part of the country for transit shipping.
Since 1976, without stopping navigation, the White Sea-Onega State Basin Administration of Waterways and Shipping has been reconstructing the canal on its own, replacing the wooden structures of the walls of the lock chambers with reinforced concrete ones.
The White Sea-Baltic Canal gave a powerful impetus to the economic and cultural development of the region. The creation of the canal gave birth to the city of Belomorsk, as well as other cities in the region from the White Sea to Lake Onega. After the canal began operating, industry developed in this region of Russia, mainly woodworking and pulp and paper. New cities and settlements also grew - Medvezhyegorsk, Segezha, Nadvoitsy. The town of Povenets became a large port, and the city of Belomorsk became an important industrial center.
The level difference on the northern slope of the canal is used to generate electricity by the Vygsky cascade of hydroelectric power stations, consisting of five stages: Ondskaya, Palokorgskaya, Matkozhnenskaya, Vygostrovskaya and Belomorskaya hydroelectric power stations. The cascade power is 240 MW, the average annual output is 1310.5 million kWh. The energy of the Vygsky hydroelectric power station cascade is used at aluminum and pulp and paper mills.
During the first navigation through the canal, 1 million 143 thousand tons of cargo and 27 thousand passengers were transported. In 1940, traffic volume was about a million tons, or 44% of the canal's capacity. The peak of cargo transportation through the canal occurred in 1985. Then 7 million 300 thousand tons of cargo were transported along the White Sea-Baltic waterway. Such volumes of traffic remained over the next five years, after which the intensity of shipping along the canal decreased significantly. At the beginning of the 21st century. The volume of cargo transportation along the canal began to gradually increase, but still it remains much lower than before and today amounts to about 500 thousand tons/year. Since 2012, a new river-sea class three-deck cruise ship “Rus the Great” has been plying the canal, built specifically to fit the dimensions of the canal’s lock chambers and capable of exiting into the White Sea and mooring directly on the Solovetsky Islands.
Guaranteed minimum dimensions of the ship passage: depth 4 m, width 36 m, radius of curvature 500 m. The dimensions of the chambers of all locks are 13.5 x 14.3 m. The speed of vessels in artificial sections of the canal is limited to 8 km/h. In conditions of limited visibility (less than one kilometer), vessel movement through the canal is prohibited. The average duration of navigation on the canal is 165 days.
On the basis of the canal there is a historical and cultural complex “White Sea–Baltic Canal”, which is a system of hydraulic structures, residential and administrative buildings, and memorial sites associated with the construction of the canal.
The White Sea Canal route is maintained by the Federal State Institution “Administration of the White Sea-Onega Basin of Inland Waterways”, located in Medvezhyegorsk. Almost a thousand specialists work on the channel.
D.V. Kozlov, K.D. Kozlov
Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, connecting the White Sea and Lake Onega, began in 1931 on the initiative of Joseph Stalin. To build the canal, the so-called Special Committee for the Construction of the Baltic-White Sea Waterway was established under the Council of Labor and Defense. It was decided “when determining the cost of work... to take into account the possibility of involving criminal labor in this work.” In this regard, “when designing the construction, much attention was paid to reducing the cost of all structures and minimizing the consumption of scarce imported materials.” According to Stalin's instructions, the 227-kilometer-long canal was to be built in twenty months, from September 1931 to April 1933.
Construction was carried out mainly by Gulag prisoners, whose total number was about 280 thousand people.
Each forced construction worker was called a “prisoner canal soldier,” abbreviated z/k, from which the slang word “zek” came.
The Gulag unit on the canal was called the White Sea-Baltic Camp ("BelBaltLag"). Most of the prisoners were transferred to the new camp mainly from the Solovetsky special purpose camp.
During the construction of the canal, hand tools were used: shovels, picks, crowbars, chisels, hand saws, stretchers and wheelbarrows. Stones, peat, wood, and earth were used as building materials; there were no additional supplies.
The main means of influencing and stimulating prisoners was the so-called “pot” - unequal nutrition. The less the prisoner worked, the less food he received. Those prisoners who did not comply with the norms received a “penalty ration.” During the construction of the canal, the administration used various methods to increase the efficiency of the work performed: competition between teams, labor collectives, and locks. General days of records were announced.
The construction was overseen by Deputy Chairman of the OGPU Genrikh Yagoda and Head of the Gulag Matvey Berman. The construction of the canal from 1931 to 1933 was led by Naftaliy Frenkel. It is he who is credited with the idea of using cheap prison labor to work on large national economic construction projects.
In the spring of 1932, a provision was introduced according to which the managers of the canal construction were given the right, administratively, to individually increase the term of imprisonment in the camps for persons violating the established order and discipline. The list included 15 specific violations. At the same time, it was possible to use such a measure for other offenses. The decision to increase the prison term was not subject to appeal.
In May 1933, Yagoda reported to Stalin about the readiness of the White Sea Canal. On June 25, 1933, the Chekist steamship passed along the entire canal from beginning to end. In July of the same year, Joseph Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov and Sergei Kirov took a boat trip along the new man-made waterway. The channel received the name of Stalin.
On August 2, 1933, the construction of the White Sea-Baltic waterway was completed, and the official opening of the first shipping navigation took place on August 30, 1933.
According to official data, during the construction of the canal in BelBaltLag, 1,438 prisoners died in 1931 (2.24% of the number of workers), in 1932 - 2,010 people (2.03%), in 1933 - 8,870 prisoners (10.56%) due to hunger in the country and the rush before the completion of construction. According to other sources, from 50 thousand to 200 thousand people died at the construction of the White Sea Canal.
In connection with the completion of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic waterway, the USSR Central Executive Committee decided to early release a significant number of prisoners who had special merits in construction. 12,484 prisoners were released, and sentences were reduced for 59,516 prisoners.
After completion of construction at the White Sea-Baltic Combine, 71 thousand prisoners were employed in the operation of the canal.
The canal united the waterways of the northwestern and then central parts of the USSR with the navigable rivers of the White Sea basin - the Northern Dvina, Onega, Mezen. The canal route, 227 kilometers long, runs from the village of Povenets on Lake Onega to the city of Belomorsk on the White Sea. This structure is still considered one of the unique: a canal with an average depth of 5 meters includes more than 100 complex hydraulic structures: 15 dams, 19 locks, 49 dams, 12 spillways and other devices.
The creation of this transport route made it possible to eliminate the need to deliver the natural resources of the Kola Peninsula and Karelia to processing points by a long, roundabout route, bypassing the Scandinavian Peninsula, and made it possible to begin the widespread exploitation of forest, mineral ore, fish and other natural resources of this region.
During the Great Patriotic War, the canal, as a strategically important object, suffered destruction; its southern part was completely destroyed. After the war, the damaged facilities were restored and the canal was reopened in July 1946, and work began on electrifying its structures and mechanisms in the 1950s.
Today the canal is the largest hydraulic and transport structure, part of a single deep-water system in the European part of Russia.
In 1976, the first stage of large-scale reconstruction of the White Sea Canal began. By 1983, 13 sluice chambers on rock foundations had been reconstructed, 27 of 38 sluice gates (hydraulic retaining wall or overpass) had been rebuilt, and 7 pairs of riveted sluice gates had been replaced with all-welded gates. When the canal was deepened, new working and repair gates with increased traction were installed, and the locks of the sluice chambers were improved.
In November 2011, it was announced that the Russian government would build the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
The history of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal is tragic. The White Sea Canal became one of the first great construction projects in the country of the Soviets and the first great construction project to use prison labor. The most famous of all the canals in Russia, thanks to the immortal cigarettes of the same name, the White Sea-Baltic Canal remains, nevertheless, the most unknown.. The following is a story about how this canal was built..
The idea of building a canal was born in ancient times. In 1702, Peter I cut a six-meter wide clearing, the famous “Osudarev Road” - its traces were visible even at the beginning of the last century - along which they built a deck of logs and along them, in ten days, military ships were dragged from the White Sea to Lake Onego . In 1798, the Pudozh merchant Bakinin applied for the construction of a canal from Lake Onega to the Onega River through Vodlozero. He expected to recoup the costs by cutting down valuable larch forests in the area. Almost simultaneously, a project arrived from Petrozavodsk signed by three merchants and the director of the Olonets plant, the Englishman Adam Armstrong. The canal route ran from Povenets on Lake Onega to the village of Soroka (present-day Belomorsk) - that is, it almost coincided with the current route. The government became interested in the project and sent the best specialist to find it - General de Volan, the builder of the Mariinsky canal system. However, after examining the area, he rejected the project: there were too many rocks, waterfalls and other obstacles... There were proposals in the middle of the 19th century, and in 1900 Professor V. E. Timonov was even awarded gold medal at the Paris Exhibition. But as a reminder of all these events, according to Mikhail Prishvin, who visited these parts in 1906 and wrote a book about the trip, “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds,” only two stones remained near the village of Maselga with the inscription: “Onega-White Sea Canal.” 
According to the instructions of I.V. Stalin, a canal 227 km long was to be built in twenty months - from September 1931 to April 1933 (for comparison: the Panama Canal, 80 km long, took 28 years to build, the Suez Canal, 160 km long, took 10 years). It should also be taken into account that no currency was allocated for the construction of the White Sea Canal; the OGPU had to ensure the construction of the canal without unnecessary material costs. People didn't count. Echelons of prisoners continuously arrived at the “great construction site.” The construction of the canal was entrusted to the faithful Stalinists..." (L. Rasskazov. The role of the Gulag in the pre-war five-year plans. Economic history: Yearbook. 2002. - M.: Rosspen, 2003. P. 269-319). The curators of the construction were the future Stalinist People's Commissar Genrikh Yagoda and the head Gulag Matvey Berman. Lazar Kogan is appointed head of construction. Another famous “Solovetsky figure”, Nathan Frenkel, also became famous at the White Sea Canal. 
In the spring of 1932, Genrikh Yagoda, then still deputy chairman of the OGPU, and his accomplice, deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court of the USSR Katanyan, approved the “Regulations on the special rights of the head of the Gulag, comrade L. I. Kogan, and the assistant head of the Gulag, comrade Yakov Rapoport.” during the construction of Belomoro -Baltic waterway, carried out by the forces of prisoners." In accordance with the Regulations, they were given the right to administratively unilaterally increase the term of imprisonment in the camps for persons violating the established order and discipline. The list included 15 specific violations. At the same time, it was possible to use such a measure for other offenses. It is important to emphasize that the decision to increase the prison term was not subject to appeal. 
History of the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal is the story of the suffering of a huge number of Soviet people. By May 1, 1932, 100 thousand workers were employed in the construction of the canal, of which 60 thousand were housed in barracks. The rest lived in tents and other temporary buildings. Without modern technology, without sufficient material support, the construction management achieved “for many objects... production standards exceeding the uniform all-Union standards”27. In May 1933, G.G. Yagoda reported to I.V. Stalin about the readiness of the White Sea Canal. In July of the same year, I.V. Stalin, K.E. Voroshilov and S.M. Kirov took a boat trip along the new man-made waterway. And in August, a landing party of 120 writers and journalists is sent to the White Sea Canal to familiarize themselves with the miracle of the socialist economy. They talk with prisoners, who, of course, praise the party and the great leader for giving them the opportunity to atone for their guilt by hard work on a great construction site, with the leaders of the construction of the facility, and take walks along the canal.
As a result of this trip, 36 writers (among them Maxim Gorky, V.P. Kataev, V.V. Ivanov, V.M. Inber, A.N. Tolstoy, M.M. Zoshchenko, etc.) published a book about the history of construction White Sea Canal and the heroic work of its creators and dedicate it to the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The writers told the readers of the Soviet country about the unusually high growth rates of the socialist economy, about the hard work of production workers on the construction of the canal, about the inferiority of European-American capitalism, about the heroic efforts of the security officers to organize work and to “reforge” prisoners. Nothing is said only about the cruelty of the regime, about hunger, about the cold, about the death of thousands of people, the humiliation of their human dignity 
During the construction of the canal, the administration used various methods to increase the efficiency of the work performed: competition between teams, labor collectives, and locks. General days of records were announced. This was facilitated by a sophisticated propaganda campaign praising the state penitentiary policy... 
The most typical propaganda video was the feature film “Prisoners” about the quick and miraculous transformation of criminals into advanced builders of a new society. According to the recollections of one of the prisoners, during the construction of the White Sea Canal, early-released “advanced workers” often spoke, who “from a piece of paper” read statements similar to the following:
“I stole all my life, never got out of prison, and thanks to the Soviet government, thanks to Comrade Stalin, who taught me to work honestly and become a useful person. I decided to stay in my native brigade for another month to prove to all the bastards, enemies of the people, that none of their sabotage will prevent us, the working class, from successfully carrying out the plan and completing the great construction of communism - our native White Sea Canal! I urge everyone not to lose their vigilance and expose the saboteurs who are lurking here and wanted to thwart our plans. Long live Comrade Stalin! Long live our construction manager, Comrade Rapoport!
During the Great Patriotic War, the canal as a strategically important object underwent destruction: its southern part was completely destroyed. The canal infrastructure (in particular lighthouses) and the village of Povenets were also severely damaged. This happened because during the war the western bank of the canal was captured by the Finns. In 1944, the Soviet side blew up 7 locks of the Povenchanskaya Stairs. After the end of the war, the damaged facilities were restored and the canal was put back into operation in July 1946. Through navigation along the entire length of the canal was restored on July 28. In the 1950s, after the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR on the overhaul and reconstruction of the BBK hydraulic structures was adopted on February 2, 1950, work began on the gradual electrification of the canal’s structures and mechanisms. In 1953, electricians were included in the staff of the waterworks; by 1957, work on the electrification of the waterworks on the northern slope of the canal was basically completed, and in 1959, all coastal and floating situation lights were switched to electric power. The importance of the White Sea-Baltic Canal especially increased after the commissioning of the modern Volga-Baltic waterway in 1964. The canal's capacity and the actual volume of cargo transportation increased several times. In the 1970s, another reconstruction of the canal was carried out. During this reconstruction, the guaranteed depth of the shipping channel was increased to four meters, and the canal became part of the Unified Deep-Water System of the European part of the RSFSR. Continuous modernization and reconstruction of the canal continues today. The creation of the BBK gave birth to Belomorsk, as well as other cities in the region from the White Sea to Lake Onega. After the canal began operating, industry developed in this region of Russia, mainly woodworking and pulp and paper. New cities and settlements also grew - Medvezhyegorsk, Segezha, Nadvoitsy. The town of Povenets became a large port, and Belomorsk became an important industrial center. 
The transport route of the White Sea-Baltic Canal has a length of 227 km with approach canals from Lake Onega to the White Sea, of which 37.1 km are artificial tracks. The conditional direction of the current is considered to be the direction from Lake Onega to the White Sea; all navigational signs (buoys, lighthouses) are equipped in accordance with this rule. The canal begins near the village of Povenets in Povenets Bay of Lake Onega. Immediately after Povenets there are seven locks located at a short distance from each other (the so-called “Povenchanskaya staircase”). Together these locks form the southern slope of the canal. Between the seventh and eighth locks is the canal's watershed. In the north, the canal flows into the Soroka Bay of the White Sea, and the city of Belomorsk is located at the mouth of the canal. The following large settlements are located on the banks of the canal: Povenets, Segezha, Nadvoitsy, Sosnovets, Belomorsk. 
During the first navigation, 1.143 thousand tons of cargo and 27 thousand passengers were transported. In 1940, traffic volume was about a million tons, representing 44% of capacity. The peak of cargo transportation through the canal occurred in 1985. At that time, 7 million 300 thousand tons of cargo were transported along the White Sea-Baltic waterway. Such volumes of traffic remained over the next five years, after which the intensity of shipping along the canal decreased significantly. At the beginning of the 21st century, the volume of cargo transportation along the canal began to gradually increase, but it still remains much lower than before. For example, in 2001, 283.4 thousand tons of cargo were transported through the canal, in 2002-314.6 thousand tons. 
From a strategic point of view, the canal provided an opportunity to connect the White and Baltic Seas. Already in 1933, the White Sea Canal made it possible to create reliable protection of the northern borders of the state. Until this time, the North Arctic coast was practically unguarded and was not protected from possible invasion. The first ships to sail along the new waterway were warships. The White Sea-Baltic Canal is a promising route for tourist ships. Guaranteed minimum dimensions of the ship passage: depth 4 m, width 36 m, radius of curvature 500 m. The dimensions of the chambers of all locks are 135x14.3 m. The speed of vessels in artificial sections of the canal is limited to 8 km/h. In conditions of limited visibility (less than one kilometer), vessel movement through the canal is prohibited. The average duration of navigation on the canal is 165 days. 
