◆ SpookStack

Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : clA- RDP83- 00415R006800050005-6 fields, protecting the fertile black soil in the steppe and mixed _ forest-and- steppe districts of the European part of the USSR. These state forest zones will be reinforced by an equally powerful and reliable “green shield’ consisting of countless windbreaks in the collective and state farm fields. ‘The all-conquer- ing strength of the Stalin plan lies in that it leads to stable and steadily in- creasing crop yields. The realization of the Stalin plan will ensure the most ra- tional co-ordination of the planting of a, variety of crops and the development of different branches of farming, and the speediest progress of agriculture on the basis of enlarged socalist reproduction. The realization of the great Stalin plan for transforming nature is being advanced a stage further by the titanic construction on the Volga and in Cen- tral Asia. A recent decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR calls for the construction of two titanic hydro- electric stations on the Volga in the neighborhoods of Kuibyshev and Stal- ingrad. Suffice it to say that these two stations will supply mote than 10 times the amount of electric power generated by all the stations of prerevolutionary Russia and will surpass the combined volume of electric power now supplied by all the power stations of Italy, all the power stations of Switzerland and Swe- den. The scale of these great construction jobs of the Stalin era may be judged by the fact that the construction of the Stalingrad hydroelectric system on the Volga and of the main canal will in- volve the removal of more than 600,- 000,000 cubic meters* of earth and the use of more than 7,000,000 cubic meters of concrete and fetro-concrete. No less than 10,000 cubic meters of concrete will be poured out daily! Only a people engaged in building a communist society can prove equal to this scale and pace of construction. The Kuibyshev Hydroelectric Station will begin full capacity production in 1955, and the Stalingrad Station — in 1956. They will supply about 20,000,- 000,000 kilowatt-hours of cheap electric power annually; a considerable propor- tion of this power will be used directly for irrigating and watering a vast ter- ritory of 14,000,000 hectares in the *1 cubic meter—=35.314 cubic feet. OCTOBER 13, 1950 RESERVOIR SITE. Tractor-drawn exca- vators at work on the site of the reser- voir of the Trudovik Collective Farm, Rostov Region. Volga area and Trans-Caspian lowland. The Soviet people will convert these vast areas into rich granaries; these are huge tracts surpassing in fertility the famous Nile soils. Large livestock farms will be called into being in the regions where thou- sands of kilometers are now occupied by deserts and semi-deserts ; the semi-desert Trans-Caspian lowland, the waterless Volga, Sarpinsk and Nogaisk steppes will receive adequate amounts of water from the Stalingrad reservoir and will be converted into thriving producers of grain and industrial crops, into districts of large-scale livestock farming and horticulture. The age-old dream of the local peasants about water in the desert will become a reality. The irrigation and aquation of the southern Volga area and the Trans-Cas- pian lowland combined with forest shelter-belts will not only create favor- able conditions for plant and animal husbandry in the desert and semi-desert districts ; it will also improve the climate of these regions, and especially of the Trans-Caspian lowland which is one of the main sources of the dry winds af- fecting the Volga area. Equipped with electric tractors, com- bine harvesters, and other modern ma- chines, the state and collective farms will raise crops the like of which were never known in world agriculture. The extensive use of electric power in agri- culture, the use of electric plowing, and the mechanization of arduous processes will raise the productivity of farm la- bor. Electrification of production on the collective farms will lighten the labor of the collective farmers and make their life still more cultured and pros- perous. It will advance the Soviet coun- try a long step forward toward its goal of producing an overwhelming abun- dance of products. But this does not by far exhaust the plans of the builders of communism. A decision adopted by the Council of Min- isters of the USSR on September 12, 1950, provides for the construction in the course of seven years of the world’s greatest canal, the 1,100-kilometer-long Main Turkmenian (Amu-Darya-Krasno- vodsk) Canal, which will make it pos- sible to water about 7,000,000 hectares in the Kara-Kum and change nature in this desert. One thousand two hundred kilometers of irrigation canals and aqueducts and a 1,000-kilometer stretch of large pipe- lines reaching from the Main Turkmen- ian Canal and the Takhya-Tash Dam, will make possible the irrigation and reclamation of 1,300,000 hectares of Jand for agriculture, and satisfaction of the full demand for drinking water and the demand for water for industry and railway transport. Magnificent prospects are opened be- fore agriculture in Central Asia. Along with this, the Government has decided to introduce a new system of irrigation under which the numerous permanent irrigation canals will be re- placed by temporary aqueducts. Only the main canals will function perma- nently, the temporary aqueducts being dug every year after autumn and spring sowing and filled in before the harvest. This makes it possible to extend the ir- tigated area, to utilize further mechani- zation on the irrigated territories, and to effect a more economical use of the water. The new system of irrigation has al- ready been adopted in the old irrigated cotton growing areas, and it will be used in the new irrigated districts after the Kuibyshev and Stalingrad Hydro- electric Stations are put into operation. All the Soviet people are co-operating in this historic construction in the land of socialism, subduing the forces of na- ture and placing them at the service of their beloved Motherland. 587 Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6