The Volga was turned into a machine by the Soviets. Then the machine broke down.

Since almost all Volga cities and towns — and Moscow, through the canal — ultimately use this river for water supply, this pollution comes with huge water treatment costs. “The worse the Volga water, the higher the cost of making it drinking water,” Deming points out. Given that there are 60 million people in the Volga River Basin, which accounts for about half of Russia’s industry, and a considerable part of agriculture, the costs add up.

A recent analysis report prepared by Carbon Brief, a British climate media agency, placed the Soviet Union and Russia at the third Historically, greenhouse gas emissions ranked first in the world. A national assessment report compiled by Russian climate scientists in 2014 stated that in the face of man-made climate change, the country’s annual average temperature is rising twice as fast as the global average. The report also pointed out that this trend is expected to continue. The effects of climate change, partly driven by the industrial development of the Soviet Union, have been manifested throughout Russia, from the degradation of permafrost to the desertification of the southern part of the country, which is dominated by agriculture in the south. The large-scale industrial development that gave birth to the Great Volga River and is powered by its waters has also led to global climate change problems-now it has threatened water shortages for millions of people living in towns along the Volga River.

In 2010, when I visited the last node of the waterfall, the Cheboksasko Reservoir, about 370 miles east of Moscow, I saw algae blooming, making the water look like a witch’s beer.

When I visited, the nearby city of Cheboksary is the capital of the Chuvash Republic, one of the several ethnic republics in Russia. It is tree-lined, quiet and welcoming. I attended a press conference organized by RusHydro, the owner of the waterfall, which has been lobbying the government to raise the water level in the reservoir. Many years later, it is still located 5 meters below RusHydro’s desired location, because the Cheboksarskoe Reservoir is where the Great Volga Project finally stumbled after a glorious four years.

By the mid-1980s, with volumeMikhail Gorbachev decided that the Soviet Union could do more press freedom and transparency, allowing citizens to discuss and even criticize their government’s decisions. Therefore, the irreversible environmental damage to the Volga River has gradually become a part of widespread public discussion. A book about this river published in 1989 called for the people behind the construction of reservoirs that caused “the water of life on the Volga River to become stagnant water, and we can’t do anything about it.” “Bag the Volga River all over the world-Matuska [mother-river] She has been tamed many times and still calls herself a son, and those who tamed her also condemned her for her long-term, terrible and painful disease,” the book reads.

“Whose land is destroyed, whose water is polluted, so that others can make money?”