Volga River Totally Explained

Everything about Volga totally explained

The Volga () is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through the western part of Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. In fact, eleven out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including its capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga basin. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga.

Nomenclature

A Russian hydronym "" is akin to the Slavic word for "wetness", "humidity" (влага, волога). The Russian name is transliterated as Volga in English and Wolga in German. Another possibility is that the river's name has Finnic roots derived from Karelian Valkia / Valgia (White) River.
   The Turkic people living along the river formerly referred to it as Itil or Atil (probably the origin of Attila's name). In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as İdel (Идел) in Tatar, Idyll in ancient Chuvash-Bolgar, Атăл (Atăl) in Chuvash, Idhel in Bashkir, and İdil in Turkish. Another version of the same root is represented by Mari Юл (Jul). Under the Mongols, the river was known by its other Turkic name Sarı-su ("yellow water") but Mongols used also their own name Shar mörön ("yellow river").
   Turkic peoples associated Itil's origin with Kama River. Thus, right tributary to the Kama river was named The Black Idel.
   The ancient and modern Mordvin name for the Volga, Рав (Rav) Erzya (Rava) Moksha comes from Merdi (Russian Mordva) mythology where Rav / Rava is the named fairy of the Great Water. Some western sources have suggested that the name reflect the ancient Scythian hydronym *Rhā, supposedly cognate with the ancient Avestan and Sanskrit names Rañha and Rasah for a mythical river supposed to flow around the earth. These words are all connected in their primary meaning of "dew, liquid, moisture".

Description

The Volga belongs to the closed basin of the Caspian Sea. Rising in the Valdai Hills above sea level north-west of Moscow and about south-east of Saint Petersburg, the Volga heads east past Lake Sterzh, Tver, Dubna, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan. From there it turns south, flows past Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd, and discharges into the Caspian Sea below Astrakhan at below sea level. At its most strategic point, it bends toward the Don ("the big bend"). Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is located there.
   The Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the Kama, the Oka, the Vetluga, and the Sura rivers. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which drains an area of about 1.35 million square kilometres in the most heavily populated part of Russia. The Volga Delta has a length of about 160 kilometres and includes as many as 500 channels and smaller rivers. The largest estuary in Europe, it's the only place in Russia where pelicans, flamingoes, and lotuses may be found. The Volga freezes for most of its length during three months of each year.
   The Volga drains most of Western Russia. Its many large reservoirs provide irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Moscow Canal, the Volga-Don Canal, and the Volga-Baltic Waterway form navigable waterways connecting Moscow to the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. High levels of chemical pollution currently give cause for environmental concern.
   The fertile river valley provides large quantities of wheat, and also has many mineral riches. A substantial petroleum industry centres on the Volga valley. Other minerals include natural gas, salt, and potash. The Volga Delta and the nearby Caspian Sea offer superb fishing grounds. Astrakhan, at the delta, is the centre of the caviar industry.

Confluents (downstream to upstream)

Reservoirs (downstream to upstream)

A number of large hydroelectric reservoirs were constructed on the Volga during the Soviet rule. They are:

Kuybyshev Reservoir – the largest in Europe by surface

Saratov Reservoir

Volgograd Reservoir

Human history

   The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia). He calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains.
   The downstream of the Volga, widely believed to have been a cradle of the Proto-Indo-European civilization, was settled by Huns and other Turkic peoples in the first millennium AD, replacing Scythians.
   Subsequently the river basin played an important role in the movements of peoples from Asia to Europe. A powerful polity of Volga Bulgaria once flourished where the Kama river joins the Volga, while Khazaria controlled the lower stretches of the river. Such Volga cities as Atil, Saqsin, or Sarai were among the largest in the medieval world. The river served as an important trade route connecting Scandinavia, Rus', and Volga Bulgaria with Khazaria and Persia. Khazars were replaced by Kipchaks, Kimeks and Mongols, who founded the Golden Horde in the lower stream of Volga. Later the Empire broke into the Khanate of Kazan and Khanate of Astrakhan; subsequently they were conquered by Russians in the 16th century.
   During the Russian Civil War, both sides fielded warships on the Volga. In 1918, the Red Volga Flotilla participated in driving the Whites eastward, from the Middle Volga at Kazan to the Kama and eventually to Ufa on the Belaya River.
    In modern times, the city on the big bend of the Volga, currently known as Volgograd, witnessed the Battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in human history. In the battle, the Soviet Union and the Nazi German forces where deadlocked in a stalemate battle to hold the rivers edge. For whoever held both sides of the river could move valuable troops and war machines to defeat the other side. The volga was (and still is) a vital transport route between the Caspian Sea and Northern Russia. With this, Hitler's Germany would have been able to move supplies, guns, and men into the most north of Russia and easily defeat any resistance. Also, in long term, holding the volga could have greatly helped Germany because of the need to shuttle cargo back and fourth from Germany to (a german ocupied) Russia. For this reason, many amphibious assaults where bought about in an attempt to remove the other side from the banks of the river. In applicable battles, The Soviet Union was the main offensive side, while the German troops used a more defensive stance, though in most of the fighting head on head, with no clear offensive or defensive side.
   The Russian people's deep feeling for the Volga often finds echoes in their songs and literature (see The Volga Boatmen's Song for one conspicuous example). As stated above, since Imperial Russia the volga has been a very important trade route for Russia. The volga's status as a trade route was an important factor in Hitler's desire to take Stalingrad. In the later Soviet Era, up to the modern times, oil is one of the main cargo transported out of Russia on the Volga.

Ethnic groups

The indigenous population of Upper course of Volga were Finnic (Valtai, Rehevä and Tihveri) Karelians, known also by the Russians as Wild Forest and Tver Karielas followed by Meri Russian Merya, that were later partly assimilated to Russians. Other Finnic ethnic groups are Maris and Mirdes / Merdis Russian Mordvins of middle Volga. Turkic populations appeared in the 600s and assimilated some Finnic and Indo-European population at the middle and lower Volga, later they were transformed to Christian Chuvash and Muslim Tatars; also to Nogais, which were supplanted to Daghestan later. Mongolian Buddhists Kalmyks resettled to Volga in the 17th century.
The Volga region is home to a German minority group, the Volga Germans. Catherine the Great had issued a Manifesto in 1763 inviting all foreigners to come and populate the region, offering them numerous incentives to do so. This was partly to develop the region but also to provide a buffer zone between the Russians and the Mongol hordes to the east. Because of conditions in German territories, the Germans responded in the largest numbers. Under the Soviet Union a slice of the region was turned into the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to house many of the Volga Germans. Others were executed or dispersed throughout the Soviet Union prior to and after World War II.

Navigation

The Volga is of great importance to inland shipping and transport in Russia: all the dams in the river have been equipped with large (double) ship locks, so that vessels of considerable dimensions can actually travel from the Caspian Sea almost to the upstream end of the river. Connections with the Don River and the Black Sea are possible through the Volga-Don Canal. Connections with the lakes of the north (Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega), Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea are possible through the Volga-Baltic Waterway; and a liaison with Moscow has been realised by the Moscow Canal connecting the Volga and the Moskva rivers. This infrastructure has been designed for vessels of a relatively large scale (lock dimensions of 290 x 30 meters on the Volga, slightly smaller on some of the other rivers and canals) and it spans many thousands of kilometers. A number of formerly state-run, now mostly privatized, companies operate passenger and cargo vessels on the river; Volgotanker, with over 200 petroleum tankers, is one of them.
Until recently access to the Russian waterways was granted to foreign vessels on a only very limited scale. The increasing contacts between the European Union and Russia have led to new policies with regard to the access to the Russian inland waterways. It is expected that vessels of other nations will be allowed on the Russian rivers soon. (Source: NoorderSoft Waterways Database)

Further Information

Get more info on 'Volga'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://volga_river.totallyexplained.com">Volga River Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.