The construction of the White Sea Canal, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, went down in the history of our Motherland as one of the greatest tragedies it experienced in the 20th century. Suffice it to say that the work on its construction was, in essence, the first Stalinist project, the implementation of which was carried out by the forces of the Gulag prisoners. Despite the scale of the propaganda activities carried out at that time, the truth about the creation of the channel was carefully concealed, and in subsequent years it owed its fame mainly to the cigarettes of the same name, which were extremely popular in the Soviet Union. Information about how many unknown builders died during the construction of the White Sea Canal is not available to this day.
General information about the object
Before proceeding to the presentation of his story, let's clarify some details related to the topic of interest to us. The full name of the engineering structure in question is the White Sea-B altic Canal, but the people called it the White Sea Canal or, in short, the LBC. BeforeIn 1961, it bore the name of Stalin, who was the main initiator and, as they wrote at that time, the "inspirer" of its construction.
The length of the canal by the time the work was completed was 227 kilometers, and the greatest depth was 5 m. 19 locks were installed along its entire length. The purpose of its construction was to connect Lake Onega with the White Sea in the interests of domestic shipping, which, in turn, provided access to the B altic, as well as to the Volga-B altic waterway. Work on its construction was carried out in the period from 1931 to 1933. and were implemented within 20 months.
Peter's plan realized in the 20th century
Surprisingly, the beginning of the history of the construction of the White Sea Canal was laid by Tsar Peter I. In 1702, by his decree, a six-meter clearing was cut through which the ships participating in the Northern War were dragged from the White Sea to Lake Onega. Its route almost completely coincides with the route of the canal dug through more than three centuries. In the XVIII and XIX centuries. there were other attempts to create a navigable route in the area, but they all failed for various reasons.
In practice, the construction of the White Sea Canal (a photo of this structure is given in the article) was carried out only in Soviet times and was, in the words of Stalin's propagandists, "the pride of the first five-year plan" (1928-1933). At the beginning of 1931, Stalin set the country the task of digging a canal 227 km long in the difficult forest regions of the North in 20 months. For comparison, it is appropriate to cite the following historicaldata: the construction of the 80-kilometer Panama Canal took 28 years, and the famous Suez Canal, which is 160 km long, was built within 10 years.
Construction turned into hell
Their main difference is that during the many years of work carried out by the Western powers, the death rate among workers did not exceed the natural medical norm, while those who died during the construction of the White Sea Canal numbered in the thousands. Only according to official data, during 1931, 1,438 people died for various reasons, which should be understood as diseases, hunger and overwork. The following year, their number increased to 2010, and in the year of completion, 8870 prisoners died. It is easy to calculate that even the official statistics of those years generally recognized 12,318 people as victims of the shock rates, while, according to the surviving builders, this number is many times underestimated.
A characteristic feature of the "construction of communism" was that practically no currency was allocated from the state budget for work, and all material support was entrusted to the OGPU. As a result, since the spring of 1931, endless trains of prisoners have been going to the construction area. Human losses were not counted, and the punitive authorities immediately replenished the required amount of free labor.
Construction leaders and their rights
Lazar Kogan, who was then the head of the Gulag, was entrusted with the construction, and prominent party curators becamefigures of the Stalinist regime - Matvey Berman and the future People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda. In addition, the name of the head of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, Nathan Frenkel, entered the history of the construction of the White Sea Canal.
A flagrant manifestation of the lawlessness of the Stalin period was the decree issued in the spring of 1932 granting special powers to the head of the GULAG, L. I. Kogan, and his deputy, Yakov Rapoport. According to this document, they were given the right to single-handedly increase the term of imprisonment for persons who were in the camps. The reason for this was considered various violations of the regime, a list of which was given in the resolution, but it was also indicated there that such a punishment could be imposed for other misconduct. Decisions to extend the term were not subject to appeal. This document deprived the performers of the last legal rights.
Success achieved at the cost of human suffering
The entire history of the construction of the White Sea Canal is a tragic tale of the suffering and death of a huge number of innocent Soviet people. According to the surviving documents, in May 1932, out of 100 thousand people who took part in the work, only a little more than half (60 thousand) were placed in barracks, while the rest had to huddle in huts, dugouts or hastily built temporary buildings. In the harsh northern climate, such conditions for keeping workers caused massive diseases and extremely high mortality, which, as noted above, was not taken into account by the country's leadership.
It is characteristic that in the complete absence of construction equipment and the necessary material support in such cases, during the construction of the White Sea Canal, the prisoners were shown production rates that significantly exceeded the average all-Union indicators of those years. Thanks to this “success”, achieved at the cost of incredible human suffering, G. G. Yagoda, already 20 months after the start of construction, reported to I. V. Stalin about its completion. The unusually short time it took to complete such a large-scale project became a worldwide sensation and made it possible to present it as another victory for the socialist state.
“The Miracle of the Socialist Economy”
The propaganda campaign launched during the years of the construction of the White Sea Canal, upon completion of the work, reached a new level and was significantly expanded. The beginning of its next stage was a boat trip made in July 1933 by I. V. Stalin, S. M. Kirov and K. E. Voroshilov along the newly built waterway. It was widely covered in the press and served as a pretext for the next mass event, which pursued purely ideological goals.
In August of the same year, a delegation consisting of one hundred and twenty prominent figures of Soviet literature - writers, poets and journalists - arrived at the White Sea Canal to get acquainted with the "miracle of the socialist economy". Among them were: Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Alexei Tolstoy, Valentin Kataev, Vera Inber and many others whose names are well known to modern readers.
Laudatory odes of writers
On their return to Moscow, 36 of them jointly wrote a laudatory book - a real panegyric dedicated to the construction of the White Sea Canal, already named after Stalin by that time. On its pages, in addition to the enthusiastic reviews of the authors themselves, there was a retelling of conversations with prisoners - direct participants in the work. All of them, in unison, praised the party and personally Comrade Stalin, who provided them with an excellent opportunity to expiate their guilt before the Motherland through hard work.
Of course, there was no mention of the many thousands of victims of this inhuman experiment carried out by the country's leadership on its citizens in the book. Not a word was said about the cruelty of the orders established by the leadership, about hunger, cold and humiliation of human dignity. The truth about the construction of the White Sea Canal became public knowledge only after in 1956, at the XX Congress of the CPSU, its General Secretary N. S. Khrushchev read out a report exposing Stalin's personality cult.
Cinema in the service of Soviet propaganda
In expressing their loyal feelings, Soviet filmmakers did not lag behind writers. In the mid-1930s, when the hype around the completion of the construction of the White Sea Canal reached its climax in the press, the film “Prisoners” was released on the screens of the country, which was, in fact, a crudely fabricated propaganda video. It talked about the unusually beneficial effect on ex-convicts of being in "places not so remote" and howyesterday's criminals quickly turn into advanced builders of socialism. The leitmotif of this "movie masterpiece" was the words repeated many times from the screen: "Glory to Comrade Stalin - the inspirer of all victories!"
Under enemy fire
During the Great Patriotic War, the canal that connected the White Sea with Lake Onega was an important strategic object, and for this reason, throughout its entire length, it was regularly subjected to massive bombing and artillery shelling of the enemy. Its southern part has undergone special destruction. Damage was caused to infrastructure facilities located near the village of Povenets, as well as lighthouses located near it.
The main culprits of this destruction were the Finns, who seized at the beginning of the war a vast territory that stretched along the western bank of the canal. In addition, as a result of the operational situation that developed in 1941, the Soviet command was forced to give an order to blow up seven locks that made up the so-called Povenchanskaya stairs.
Post-war restoration of the canal
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, a new stage in the history of the White Sea Canal began - the construction and restoration of everything that was destroyed by enemy fire and our own demolition workers. As in previous years, the work was carried out at an accelerated pace, but due to the fact that the country could no longer allocate human resources without limitation (many workers were required to restore other objects destroyed by the war), they stretched until 1957of the year. During this period, not only the previously built and war-affected structures were raised from the ruins, but new ones were also erected in large volumes. Thus, the post-war years can be considered as a separate, second in a row, period of the construction of the White Sea Canal.
Work carried out in subsequent years
The economic significance of this facility, which became the brainchild of the first five-year plan, has increased significantly after the operation of the modern Volga-B altic waterway began in 1964. The volume of traffic, which has increased many times over, required urgent measures to be taken to increase the capacity of the waterway. For this reason, in the 70s, its comprehensive reconstruction was carried out, which also entered the history of the construction of the White Sea Canal as a separate stage. Documentary evidence of that time allows us to present the amount of work done.
Suffice it to say that after their completion, a four-meter depth of the ship's passage was guaranteed throughout its entire length. In addition, the involvement of significant human resources in the work gave impetus to the emergence of several new cities on the banks of the canal, the largest of which was Belomorsk, and the development of woodworking and pulp and paper industries in them.
Conclusion
Decades have passed since the Soviet Union showed the world its "economic miracle" built on human bones. To the sounds of victorious fanfare, it was called a symbol of the triumph of socialism built in a country led by the "father of nations" -I. V. Stalin. Over the past years, many books have been written about this gigantic construction site, both by adherents of Bolshevism and its opponents, but nevertheless, a lot of its history has remained hidden from us.
It is not known, for example, what is the real amount of capital investment required for the construction of the canal, and how rationally the allocated funds were spent. But the main thing is that it will hardly ever be possible to give an exact answer to the question of how many people died during the construction of the White Sea Canal. Mortality was a negative indicator, and therefore many tragic cases were not documented.
