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[THE MOSCOW–VOLGA CANAL: A CONTEMPORARY SOVIET ACCOUNT] Volga idet v Moskvu: [O str-ve kanala Volga-Moskva] [i.e. The Volga Goes to Moscow: [On the Construction of the Volga-Moscow Canal]

Lopatin, P.

Item #2865

Moscow: Mosk. rabochiy, 1938. [4], 220 pp., frontispiece, 2 color maps: ca. 70 black-and-white ills, plans, schemes. In original publisher’s quarter cloth binding with gilt-stamped design of the Palace of Soviets above stylized waves and gilt-lettered title on the upper board. Boards rubbed at the edges, small stain on the frontispiece and the title page, but otherwise very good.

Scarce. First edition. Text in Russian. Edited by YA. Chernyak. Binding and double title page design in color by the Soviet graphic artist and book designer Grigory Bershadsky (1895-1963). Trained in Astrakhan and at the Odessa Art School, he became a prominent book illustrator, working with major Moscow and Kharkov publishers. His notable projects included Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Flying Proletarian (1925) and books from the Lives of Remarkable People series.

A rare illustrated account of the Moscow–Volga Canal by the Soviet popular-science writer Pavel Lopatin (1898-1962), published a year after the canal's opening and at the height of the Terror that consumed its builders. The edition preserves a full-page portrait of Stalin as frontispiece, often removed by owners after 1956 and lacking in many surviving copies.

The Moscow–Volga Canal was the largest hydraulic project of the Second Five-Year Plan, built between 1932 and 1937 to bring Volga water to Moscow. The project included 286 major structures, including locks, dams, pumping stations, reservoirs, and hydroelectric stations, and created the Ivankovo Reservoir, known as the “Moscow Sea.” The canal opened on 15 July 1937, constructed largely by prisoners of Dmitlag, one of the largest Gulag camp complexes. It was renamed the Moscow Canal in 1947 and remains a major source of Moscow’s water supply.

The edition comprises ten chapters, a chronology of the canal’s construction, and a glossary of technical terms. The opening chapters describe the completed waterway from Kalinin to the Khimki River terminal in Moscow, including the newly created “Moscow Sea,” the Ivankovo dams, locks, pumping stations, and the imposing twenty-five-metre granite figures of Lenin and Stalin. Later chapters turn to Moscow’s historic water shortage, the earlier construction of the Suez and Panama Canals, and the engineering and architectural challenges of the project, from quicksand and excavation to concrete laboratories and the monumental design of the locks. The final chapter takes the form of a projected voyage set “a few years” in the future, from Soroka on the White Sea to Rostov aboard the motor ship Sergo Ordzhonikidze, travelling along a Volga–Don Canal. The imagined route passes a completed Palace of Soviets (never built) and a four-hundred-metre tower crowned by a hundred-metre stainless-steel figure of Lenin.

Interestingly, the men who actually directed the canal project are largely absent from the narrative. Yagoda and Firin, who directed the project, are omitted entirely, while M. D. Berman is named as head of construction only months before his arrest and execution in 1939. The achievement is instead attributed to Nikolai Yezhov (head of NKVD), whom Lopatin credits with the “heroic, truly shock work” of the NKVD. Yezhov himself was arrested in 1939 and executed in 1940 on charges of espionage. Another important section openly addresses the use of forced labour, stating that prisoners constituted the canal’s mass labour force while presenting their employment as an opportunity provided by the socialist state to “return to the ranks of citizens of the Soviet country.”
The book features over 70 black-and-white illustrations, maps (including two color), and technical diagrams documenting the canal and its construction. The images depict the concrete Volga dam, Lock No. 5, pumping stations, lock gates and control towers, the Klyazma (Pirogovo) Reservoir, the Alexandrov railway bridge, and construction work including excavators, hydraulic monitors, dredgers, and concrete testing. Two full-page views show the twenty-five-metre granite figures of Lenin and Stalin (the latter demolished in 1961). The edition also features two color maps, capturing the alternative routes considered before the Dmitrov line was chosen and “Moscow – port of five seas.”

Overall, a scarce contemporary account of one of the Soviet Union’s most ambitious engineering projects, published at the height of the Stalinist purges.

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at Harvard University, Columbia University, New York Public Library, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin, University of California, and US Berkeley.

Status: On Hold