The Volga River

This story examines the mother river of Russia and one of the most important water system in Russia, Europe and the world. We will try to focus on scientific, cultural& historical and environmental importance of the river.

The Volga River is the stem of the Volga watershed ,which covers 1,360,000 square kilometers, and is 3531km long. And almost half of the population in Russia lives in the river basin which is around 65million to 70million. As you can identify on this map, the Volga river watershed covers the Capital Moscow and around 40% of Russian European territory. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_River).

The stem of Volga River starts from  Valdai Hills  northwest of Moscow and discharges to the Caspian Sea. Along the banks of the Great Volga River and its tributaries lies a lot of important Russian political, population, economic and industrial center such as Moscow, Volgograd, Saratov, Ryazan and etc. Also, its not a international river because almost all of the watershed is within the Russian border. And historically speaking, the Russian Empire and the USSR also claims full sovereignty. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_River).

This image shows the monthly stream flow in cubic meter per second from 1879 to 2010 at the downstream of Volga river------- Volgograd. Although some data are missing during the Soviet era, the trend is obvious that the streamflow is decreasing year by year. I do believe this is due to the industrial development done during the 5-year-plans and baby boom after WWII.

This chart shows the average monthly Max and Min temperature in Volgograd. From this map we can tell the summer is mild while the winter is cold there, due to its high altitude.

This graph shows the average precipitation at Volgograd. As it's shown on the graph, the precipitation is quite fairly distributed. The summer and winter have relative high precipitation but the spring and autumn are not down by far.

This is a image of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral at Tsaritsyn (Nowadays Volgograd) in 1917, prior to the Russian Civil War. As you can tell from the image, a city with a cathedral of such size can't not be small. And indeed, it's one of the most important industrial hubs at the down stream of Volga River and southern Russia, the supplies produced there supported the Russian army's fight on the Ottoman front during the WWI. And in the next few years, it remained a military hot zone since both the Red Army and the White Army fought to control it. After the Soviet victory in 1919, the city's name was changed to Stalingrad in 1925 to commemorate Joseph Stalin's contribution to the victory there.

In 1942,in order to control the downstream of Volga River and subsequently Caucasus's oil fields, the Nazi Germany attacked Stalingrad. And after a year long fighting, the Soviet was victorious. The Battle of Stalingrad remains one of the bloodiest battle in human history, with about 35 million casualty combined.

Animals in the Volga river

In the volga river there are lots of animals, about 400 vertebrates, 127 fishes and 260 species of birds including swans,ducks,herons,trens,and ibis. Also, 850 aquatic invertebrates, 430 different plants and more than a thousand species of insects can be found in the Volga river. It is also the only place in Russia where flamingos and pelicans can be found. Here is a picture of wildlife in the Volga river. Huge sturgeon fish can be found in the Volga River too.

The Volga river is home to the world most important nesting grounds for water birds. The Beluga sturgeon is the largest fish found in the Volga. Below here is a picture of the Sturgeon fish. European catfish is the biggest predator of the Volga. It Grows up to 250pounds. Below there is a picture of the European catfish, among some more fishes that you can get in the Volga river such as: Russian "Gherekh",Corsar fish.

The pollution in the Volga River is traumatising, 40,000 cubic yards of the river is mixed in with raw sewage carelessly dumped into the Volga every year. The River contains 45% of Russian industries waste along with 3,000 factories dumping 10 billion cubic yards of contaminated waste. All that waste contains things like heavy metals, oil products, polycydie, aromatic hydrocarbons, bilphenols, dioxides and other chemical compounds. Because of all the pollution in the river servere consequences are forming in the air above it, caused by the sulfur, hydrocarbons and other chemicals in the industrial waste. In 2007 data had shown that 90% of fish in the Volga River had became mutant and then in 2008 numbers had increased to 100% of some species of fish. After finding that out, in 2009 environmentalist announced the risks of grave environmental problems.    

Since the Volga River is the biggest contributor to the Caspian Sea and those factors we mentioned prior, its health is tightly connected with not only people living alongside the banks, but also the Countries surround the Caspian Sea. I hate to say the truth that maybe during the Soviet era, the protection and conservation can be done better as the USSR is a consolidated country instead of separate states. But luckily as the President of Russia Confederation Dmitry Medvedev said in 2011, " I propose that we hold a comprehensive discussion on all of these matters, and I stress once more that we must do this because the Volga River area is home to almost half of our population. For all the problems they face, these are very beautiful places. I had the chance to see this for myself once more yesterday. We have the most magnificent nature of course, but we must make every possible effort to keep it that way. This is the job of the Government and the regions represented here today." ,we are taking some actions to help the river sustain its health.