Slaughter buildings of the twentieth century. Great construction projects of the Soviet Union Communications, telecommunications, data processing

The situation in Russia today is radically different from what we had 15 years ago, in 2000. The level of industrial production increased by about 65% and almost reached the already Soviet levels (90% of the 1991 level)

The development of agriculture has allowed us to fundamentally close the issue of food security. There is visible progress in other segments:

A list of plants, factories, bridges and ports built over the past decades can be found on Rukspert and on the Made-with-our project:

Today, I want to take a very brief look at the largest facilities under construction to show what good news we should expect in the coming years. Just in case, I’ll immediately note that today I will not write about all construction sites, but only about those that seem to me the most interesting:

1. Astronautics

The new cosmodrome currently under construction in the Amur Region includes two launch pads and a city for maintenance personnel. The cosmodrome will make it possible to launch launch vehicles of the Soyuz family and, in the future, Angara, including in manned versions. It is assumed that after 2020 Russia will cease to be dependent on the use of Baikonur, which has remained on the territory of Kazakhstan, in all aspects of space programs. First of all, this concerns manned cosmonautics and the launch of heavy launch vehicles. The cost of creating the spaceport is estimated at 300 billion rubles. The construction is the largest in Russia, 6.5 thousand people are already involved in the construction of various objects of the cosmodrome, and it is planned to increase this number to 10 thousand. The first launch from this cosmodrome is planned for the end of 2015.

Nuclear-powered spacecraft are being actively developed. A number of tests have already been successfully completed. Nuclear engines will make it possible to lift many times more cargo from the ground compared to the old chemical counterparts. This will greatly help us with expeditions to the Moon, Mars and other objects of the solar system.

The deployment of the Gonets low-orbit satellite communications system is nearing completion. The first launch of a satellite into the system was made in early 1996, the completion of the deployment of the system in the second stage format is planned for 2015, while the quality of communication services will be much higher than originally planned. The system must have at least 12 active satellites at a manufacturing and launch cost of about 0.5 billion rubles for each satellite. Taking into account the previously decommissioned 10 satellites and two planned spare vehicles, as well as the cost of developing several modifications, both of the satellites themselves and of ground-based receivers

2. Seaports

Ports are still missing.

Work continues on the naval base in Novorossiysk. Many feared a freeze on work after the return of Crimea, but so far the military harbor for submarines, on the contrary, is being built at an accelerated pace. By 2010, 13.5 billion rubles had already been allocated for it, and in total, by 2020, it was planned to allocate 92 billion rubles.

Relatively close, 140 kilometers away, the large port of Taman is being built, this is a port under construction in the Krasnodar Territory. The planned volume of investments in its construction is 200 billion rubles. Types of activity - transshipment of goods for export.

Port Olya in the Astrakhan region will become our gateway to the Caspian Sea. The first stage of the port is already in operation, by 2020 it is planned to increase the cargo turnover to 10 million tons per year.

The port of Sabetta on the Yamal Peninsula should become one of the largest ports in the Arctic. From this port, we will be able to ship liquefied natural gas along the Northern Sea Route to both Europe and the Pacific region. Last December, an airport was also opened in Sabetta with a runway capable of receiving all types of aircraft.

The rapid development of the strategically important port in Ust-Luga (near St. Petersburg) continues. The project is planned to be fully completed by 2016, after which we will be able to regain most of the transit that now goes through the Baltic countries. It is also worth mentioning the large marine transshipment complex "Bronka", which began to be actively developed in connection with the approaching completion of the construction of the port in Ust-Luga.

There is another expansion of the Vostochny port, which is located in the Far East, not far from the city of Nakhodka, which is the end point of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The structure of OJSC "Vostochny Port" includes two production and transshipment complexes. The first is the only specialized coal complex in Primorsky Krai with a system of conveyor equipment and a wagon unloading station. The planned cost of the expansion is 13.613 billion rubles, commissioning - in 2017.

3. Railways

There are so many new railways being built now that it makes no sense to list all the branches. There is no one railway "superproject" now, there are a large number of large construction projects throughout Russia.

From interesting. Reconstruction of the Sakhalin railways with alteration to the domestic gauge. It turns out that our hands did not reach this point, but now we are putting things in order here. By the beginning of the 2000s. the operating part of the Sakhalin railway network had a Japanese gauge of 1067 mm, which made it difficult to share it with the all-Russian road network with a gauge of 1520 mm. The rebuilding is combined with track repairs, as well as the replacement of bridges and tunnels in sections built during Japanese rule, which make up the main part of the road with a total length of 805 km. The road reconstruction project in 2004 was estimated at 16 billion rubles. From 2003 to the beginning of 2015, about 550 km of the road were prepared for a one-time transition to a broad gauge. The implementation of the project will significantly reduce the cost of maintaining the road, as well as open the way for the construction of a bridge or tunnel to permanently connect the island to the mainland. It is planned to complete the alteration of the main track of the railway on Sakhalin by 2021.

The BAM is being reconstructed, preparations are underway for the construction of a tunnel to connect Sakhalin with the mainland. Heavily loaded sections in different regions are expanding and duplicating. The construction of new branches in Siberia is going on very actively.

Development of the infrastructure of the section Tobolsk - Surgut - Korotchaevo

The largest project being implemented in Western Siberia (Ural Federal District). The existing line was not designed for the current and future volume of cargo. The total investment in the project is at least 41 billion rubles, of which 31 billion are allocated by NOVATEK as an advance payment for future transportation from the Purovsky gas condensate processing plant. For 2001-2015 Government Decree provided for 16 billion rubles to be invested in the project.

Another interesting project!! Development of the infrastructure of the section Mezhdurechensk - Taishet

The project to increase the capacity almost abandoned in the 1990s. line in the south of Siberia actually started in 2012 with the commissioning of the new Abakan train fleet worth 1 billion rubles. Until 2014, it was planned to invest almost 10 billion rubles more, although according to other sources, only by the summer of 2013 and only in the construction of new tunnels on the site, 25 billion rubles were invested. The total cost of the project as a result by the time of the planned completion in 2019 should reach 42.9 billion rubles. For 2001-2015 Government Decree provided for 13 billion rubles to be invested in the project. As part of the reconstruction of the site in 2014, a new Mansky tunnel was opened in the Sayan Mountains, worth 7 billion rubles and 2465 meters long - the longest tunnel in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (located 59 meters from the old Mansky tunnel, built in 1961-1963)

The situation with highways is similar. Many new roads are being built, while there is no one "road of the century" - there are several dozen large facilities in different regions of Russia.

Personally, I am closely following the construction of a high-speed road from Moscow to St. Petersburg. However, ring roads are also being built around Yekaterinburg, Moscow (520 km), Tyumen and some other cities, roads are being laid to ports, and a road network is being developed in the Far East.

1. Federal highway Kolyma - Omsukchan - Omolon - Anadyr

The construction of the road, designed to provide Chukotka with a year-round connection with the all-Russian road network, began in January 2012.

2. Nadym - Salekhard (330 km) is being built in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and should for the first time connect Salekhard and several other settlements with the all-Russian road network. Construction is taking place almost on the Arctic Circle in a heavily swampy area with permafrost. It is planned to build 53 bridges on the road. The cost of the road is estimated at 32 billion rubles.

3. Federal highway Yugorsk - Nadym. The road, designed to reduce the distance along permanent roads from the south of the Urals to Yamal by 800-1000 km, has been under construction since 2008. 7.5 billion rubles have already been invested, 65 km of the road have been built (from Yugorsk to the border between Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs) and it is planned to build a bridge across the Ob at a cost of more than 20 billion rubles.

4. Lidoga - Vanino. Highway in the Khabarovsk Territory (over 300 km), designed to connect the area where the largest Far Eastern ports of Vanino and Sovetskaya Gavan are located with the all-Russian network of highways. It has been built since 1999 in mountainous terrain. The cost was estimated at 16 billion rubles in the prices of those years.

5. Highway Kemerovo - Leninsk-Kuznetsky. The first expressway in Siberia. It is located in the most densely populated part of Kuzbass. The total cost of the project is 18.3 billion rubles.

6. The project provides for a major reconstruction of Leningradskoye Highway and Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow from Tverskaya Street to Sheremetyevo Airport. Within the framework of this project, separate projects are being implemented, also related to large ones, in particular, the Alabyano-Baltic tunnel.

7. High-speed highway Moscow - St. Petersburg ((about 700 km.) The construction of the road began in 2010. The total cost of the road was estimated at 500 ... 550 billion rubles in 2011 prices. In general, the construction of the route is planned to be completed by 2018.

8. Western high-speed diameter, St. Petersburg. Intracity highway connecting the southern and northern districts of the city. The total cost of the project is 213 billion rubles.

10. Reconstruction of the highway Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Okha. The project is notable in that it could reduce the cost of a planned bridge or tunnel project on the island. Sakhalin and can be considered as one of its preliminary stages, since it reduces the length of the construction of the necessary road approaches to the bridge from the side of the island by at least 350 km.

11. Reconstruction of the highway Ulan-Ude - Turuntayevo - Kurumkan - New Uoyan. Reconstruction of a 725 km long road running along the eastern coast of Lake Baikal from the Trans-Siberian Railway to BAM through popular recreation areas has been under construction since 2003. At the beginning of 2011, 77 km were put into operation. In general, 60 billion rubles are required for the reconstruction of the road.

12. Syktyvkar - Ukhta - Pechora - Usinsk - Naryan-Mar with entrances to the cities of Vorkuta and Salekhard

The project provides for the reconstruction of 55 km and the construction of 1340 km of roads in the extreme north-east of the European part of Russia, mostly in places where there were no year-round roads before, and there are currently no railways on the Usinsk-Naryan-Mar section. Includes construction and reconstruction of 166 bridges and 2 ferries. The total cost of the project is 93 billion rubles.

13. Reconstruction of Dmitrovsky highway in Moscow

14. Vladivostok - Nakhodka - Vostochny port. The new four-lane highway, which is being built in mountainous terrain, is designed to straighten the path between the main ports of Primorye and significantly expand the capacity of the local road network (118 km). The total cost of the project is estimated at 30 billion rubles.

15. North-Eastern chord, Moscow

Intracity highway along with the North-Western Chord (also called the Northern Rocade) The construction was supposed to be completed before 2017. In the north, the road will join at the intersection with the Moscow Ring Road (MKAD) with the Moscow-St. Petersburg express highway under construction, and in the east - with, apparently, the Veshnyaki-Lyubertsy highway included in the project, which was planned to be continued through the territory of the Moscow Region as a road bypassing Noginsk and further along the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod-Kazan highway.

16. North-Western chord, Moscow

Intracity route along with the North-Eastern chord. The 28.8 km highway running from Skolkovskoye to Yaroslavskoye Highway is mostly made up of pre-existing roads that are undergoing radical reconstruction almost everywhere. The road will include a large Alabyano-Baltic tunnel worth 63 billion rubles, which is being built as part of the Bolshaya Leningradka project. In total, within the framework of the project, among other things, it is planned to build 2 bridges, 10 tunnels, 8 flyovers and 35 off-street crossings. A special information site is dedicated to the project.

17. Yuzhnaya rokada, Moscow Intra-city highway, consisting mainly of existing roads, which should be reconstructed and connected into a single whole.

18. Reconstruction of Novorizhskoe highway, Moscow region

19. Southern bypass of Nizhny Novgorod

20. Construction in Yakutia of the republican road Khandyga - Dzhebariki-Khaya - Eldikan (310 km). There is a coal mine in the village of Dzhebariki-Khaya, and the new road will provide year-round export of hard coal, as well as provide transport infrastructure for promising projects for the development of deposits on the Aldan River. The road will adjoin the Kolyma federal highway.

21. A 249 km long road running along the western part of the BAM is designed to connect the city of Bratsk and the entire north-east of the Irkutsk region with the west of the country along the shortest path, bypassing a detour through the Taishet-Tulun road, which strongly deviates south to Irkutsk. As a result, the length of the route should be reduced by 280 km, which, according to preliminary calculations, should ensure the payback of the road in just less than one year. The cost of the project is at least 15 billion rubles in 2012 prices.

22. Highway Tyumen - Nizhnyaya Tavda - Mezhdurechensky - Uray - Nyagan - Priobye. The road with a total length of more than 650 km is being built on the territory of the Tyumen region and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. It is intended to replace the existing winter roads in the vast area between Tyumen and the village of Priobye, from which the Ob River flows meridionally north to the Gulf of Ob. The cost of only one section 71 km long within the framework of the Tyumen - Nizhnyaya Tavda - Mezhdurechensky section within the KhMAO borders is 4,272 million rubles.

23. Fundamental reconstruction of the Selikhino - Nikolaevsk-on-Amur highway. The road will reliably connect settlements in the lower reaches of the Amur River, as well as the international Pacific ports of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur and De-Kastri with the “mainland”.

Huge investments in transport infrastructure will significantly help the regions to establish partnership relations with all regions of the country, and raise the level of survival of the population.

At the moment, the subway in Russia is actively growing in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Single stations are opened in million-plus cities.

In St. Petersburg, by 2018, it is planned to complete work on the 5th section of the Frunzensko-Primorskaya line with the stations "Prospect of Glory", "Dunaiskaya" and "Shushary". Also, a new electric depot, Yuzhnoye, will be opened in Shushary.

In Moscow:

1. Khodynskaya line. A line with six stations has been under construction in Moscow since 2011. The total cost of the project is slightly less than 60 billion rubles.

2. Section Lermontovsky Prospekt - Kotelniki Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line. The site is scheduled to be fully opened in 2015.

3. Section Maryina grove - Dmitrovskoe highway of the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya line. The cost of the first two phases of the project to the Seligerskaya station is 63 billion rubles. In total, it is planned to put into operation three phases of several stations in 2015, 2016 and 2020.

4. The Likhobory Electric Depot is under construction.

5. Section Yugo-Zapadnaya - Salaryevo Sokolnicheskaya line. In December 2014, the first station of the section, Troparevo, was put into operation. The remaining two are scheduled to open in 2015.

6. Kozhukhovskaya line. The backup line of the heavily overloaded eastern part of the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line. Has seven stations. Commissioning is planned for 2017.

7. The construction of the Mitino electric depot is nearing completion.

8. Multifunctional complex of the Brateevo electric depot. The largest depot in Russia is essentially not only a depot, but also a car repair plant.

9. The second and third stages of the Solntsevskaya line - the future part of the Kalininsko-Solntsevskaya line - the Park Pobedy - Solntsevo section with seven new stations are planned to be put into operation in 2016, and three more stations - in 2017.

6. Largest bridges

Already in the summer of 2015, a bridge across the Nadym River in the city of the same name in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug should be completed. This bridge will become part of the transpolar highway, which in the future will run through the entire north of western Siberia.

In Krasnoyarsk, Volgograd and Samara, new bridges will be built across the main rivers of the cities. A bridge across the Kama near the village of Sorochi Gory will be completed, this bridge will become the longest in Russia (Udmurtia). Another bridge across the Kama will be put into operation near the city of Kambarka. This bridge will eventually shorten the route from Moscow to Yekaterinburg by 200 kilometers.

Finally, preparatory work has already begun on the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Strait to the Crimea. The 19-kilometer bridge will have 4 road lanes and 2 rail traffic lanes.

Alabyano-Baltic tunnel, Moscow

A road tunnel being built in Moscow as part of the Bolshaya Leningradka project. The length of the underground part of the tunnel is 1.6 km, 6 traffic lanes are provided. It is being built in extremely cramped conditions - in addition to the difficulties with urban development, the tunnel passes under the existing metro line, the railway line and the collector of the river taken underground in need of reconstruction. Construction has been underway since 2005, the first stage was put into operation in September 2013, the construction was completed in early 2015. The cost of the project is 63 billion rubles in 2011 prices.

New Baikal Tunnel

A single-track tunnel with a length of 6682.05 m with two drainage adits with a length of 1500 and 1747.36 m, parallel to the old Baikal tunnel built in the 1980s, has been built as part of the mega-project for the reconstruction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM-2) since 2014 and should be commissioned in 2017. The tunnel will provide double-track traffic on the section of BAM, Ust-Kut - Severobaikalsk passing through the Baikal Range. The cost of the project is 28.9 billion rubles.

Aviation is another strategically important industry for huge Russia, so special attention is paid to the construction of aviation infrastructure.

Currently, airports are being built and extensively reconstructed in Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Krasnodar.

An underground storage facility "Katarina" is under construction in Germany. Several tanks have already been put into operation, the rest are planned to be completed by 2017. The joint project of the Russian Gazprom and the German company VNG to build a natural gas storage facility in the cavities of a depleted rock salt deposit was launched in 2008. It is planned to build gas storage tanks with a total volume of more than 600 million cubic meters. m, as well as a complex of ground equipment and a connecting pipeline 37 km long

And of course, we are building several gas pipelines at once. The Power of Siberia gas pipeline (to China) is the world's largest construction site of its kind. Its first part - from Yakutsk through Khabarovsk to Vladivostok - will be completed at the end of 2017.

Two oil pipelines with a total length of 750 kilometers, Zapolyarye-Purpe and Tikhoretsk-Tuapse-2, are designed to supply oil to large oil refineries. Let me remind you that every year we process more and more crude oil on our own.

The second stage of the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok gas pipeline is under construction, which is designed to transport gas from the north of Sakhalin to Primorye. The oil pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, passing through the territory of Russia and Kazakhstan, is being expanded twice.

The gas pipeline with a length of about 1,100 kilometers will ensure the transportation of gas from the fields of the Yamal Peninsula.

Finally, a diversion from the main pipeline to the Komsomolsk Refinery will dramatically increase the capacity of the refinery in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

In total, about a dozen new large transmission lines and substations are currently being built. At the same time, when I say “large”, I mean really large ones - such as, for example, a 220 kV line from Neryungri GRES to Yakutsk, 1200 kilometers long.

Of the interesting, it is worth mentioning the energy bridge under construction from the Zeya hydroelectric power station to China.

Currently, work is underway on the construction of eight large hydroelectric power plants.

The construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Bureya River in the Amur Region is nearing completion. A counter-regulator station for the Bureyskaya HPP is being built on the same river.

Work is underway on the second stage of the Zagorsk pumped storage station. This station will increase the efficiency of the energy system of central Russia. The second phase of the Ust-Srednekamskaya HPP is also under construction.

A complex hydrotechnical unit, with an underground diversion channel and other engineering delights, is being deployed in North Ossetia. A comprehensive modernization of the Saratovskaya HPP and the Zhigulevskaya HPP is underway.

A very interesting project for the construction of a cascade of four HPPs with a total capacity of 240 MW in Kyrgyzstan.

Let me remind you that Russia is the undisputed world leader in the field of nuclear energy, and we are now continuing to increase our advantage. Rosatom sets records for the volume of orders for the construction of nuclear power plants abroad.

Several nuclear power plants are currently under construction in Russia. Baltic NPP in Kaliningrad, Leningrad NPP-2, Novovoronezh NPP-2. The fourth power unit of the Rostov NPP and the fourth power unit of the Beloyarsk NPP are being completed - on fast neutrons of the new BN-800 project. The first bucket of earth was taken out at the site of the future first unit of the Kursk NPP-2.

I don’t even write about foreign projects - in China, Slovakia, India and other countries, only Russian ones today.

Two advanced projects deserve special mention. The pilot complex with the BREST-300 reactor plant will make it possible to dramatically improve the safety and efficiency of nuclear power plants in the near future. The plant for the production of fuel for this reactor is scheduled to be put into operation in 2017, the reactor itself - in 2020. This know-how development in Russia will bring the nuclear industry to a new level of safety.

Another interesting project is the Akademik Lomonosov floating NPP. This ship will be ready by 2016. If the problems with the reliability of the Crimean energy supply are not resolved by that time in one way or another, it may be sent to the coast of Crimea. At the moment, an agreement has been concluded with Ukraine for the supply of electricity through Ukraine to the Crimea until the end of 2015, we will make it in time.

Russia continues to build traditional power plants. In total, in the coming years, it is planned to complete the construction of about 15 thermal power plants, gas turbine power plants, state district power plants and thermal power plants throughout Russia, from Chechnya to Salekhard.

The total capacity of the new thermal power plants will be about 7 gigawatts. To understand the scale: this is more than enough to power, for example, St. Petersburg.

A huge agro-industrial park worth 42 billion rubles is being built in the Stavropol Territory. In the park, farmers of the Southern and North Caucasian federal districts will be able to store, process and sell their products.

Bryansk Meat Company is launching a huge project for the production of cattle meat with a breeding stock of 100 thousand heads. With the help of this project, it is planned to replace 7% of all Russian beef imports.

Velikoluksky pig-breeding complex continues to be built. Now about 500 thousand pigs are being fattened there, while the number of inhabitants is planned to be increased to a million. Within the framework of the same project, a feed mill, a poultry farm and a cattle farm will be built.

This year, the Tambov Bacon pig farms will reach full capacity, the total number of livestock will be half a million pigs. A huge complex for the production of poultry and pork is also being completed in the city of Yelets.

A 200-hectare greenhouse complex is being built in Dagestan to grow sugar beet seedlings and other vegetables. Pay attention - "seedlings". This is to the question of solving the problem of the seed fund. Also in Dagestan, together with the Italians, an agrotechnopark is being built, in which a lot of things will be produced, from seeds to fruit fillers and bioethanol (biofuel).

Another greenhouse complex with an area of ​​240 hectares and a capacity of 70,000 tons of vegetables is being built in the Kaluga region. A complex of comparable size is being built in the Krasnodar Territory.

Five modern complexes with a total capacity of 70,000 tons are also being built in Bashkiria - only they will no longer produce vegetables, but pork. Three pig complexes with a total population of 150 thousand heads are being built in the Chelyabinsk region. In addition to the pig farms, a meat processing and canning factory will be built, and new roads will be laid specifically for the project.

Finally, a powerful agro-complex for the production of turkey meat is being completed in the Rostov Region. This complex is designed to provide the whole of Russia with fresh turkey meat.

Please note: I have only listed the largest agricultural projects above.

With all due respect to the feat of the Soviet workers, the remarks that now we allegedly leave only on old backlogs do not correspond to reality.

A coal-mining complex has already been partially put into operation in Kuzbass. Approximately now, an enrichment plant should start operating there, and by 2016 the enterprise will produce 1.5 million tons of Zh grade oxidizing coal.

In the same place, in Kuzbass, the Pervomaisky coal mine is being built, with a capacity of 15 million tons of D-grade coal. The total coal reserves there are 520 million tons - that is, the reserves will last for more than 30 years.

Finally, the Erunakovskaya-8 mine with a design capacity of 3 million tons of coal per year is being completed in Kuzbass. GZh grade coking coal from this mine is already being supplied to EVRAZ metallurgical plants.

The Elga coal deposit, the largest coal deposit in Russia, is being completed. To understand the scale: this project is many times larger than all three projects in Kuzbass combined. A railway and a power line are brought to the deposit.

In Yakutia, the Inaglinsky coal complex with a capacity of 3 million tons of coal per year is being built. The technical re-equipment of OAO Urgalugol in the Khabarovsk Territory is underway, after completion of the work, the production capacity will increase from 2.5 to 7 million tons. A new processing plant will also be put into operation there.

A huge coal-mining complex is under construction at the Mezhegeyskoye deposit in the Republic of Tyva.

The times when it was possible to make a hole in the ground and immediately let the oil coming from the hole into the pipe are long gone. Now oil is being pumped out of fields that were not even considered deposits in the fifties - since they are something like huge, oil-soaked bricks.

Oil production today is very high technology, including computer technology. Here is what we are building today in this segment.

The Sakhalin-3 field is the third project on the Sakhalin shelf. In fact, these are several oil and gas projects combined together. In the future, gas from Sakhalin-3 should become the main resource base for the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok gas pipeline. The total cost of developing the Sakhalin-3 project will likely amount to hundreds of billions of rubles.

Separately, it should be noted that in the course of exploration work at one of the Sakhalin-3 sites, large reserves of gas condensate and oil were discovered in addition to gas. Thus, the reserves of the newly discovered Yuzhno-Kirinskoye gas condensate field alone are estimated at 680 billion cubic meters of gas, 200 million tons of condensate and 464 million tons of oil.

Oil and gas condensate field im. V. Filanovsky was opened about 10 years ago. The field, located on the shelf of the Caspian Sea, 220 kilometers from Astrakhan, should be put into operation in 2015. Pipelines have already been built that connect this field with the neighboring field named after. Y. Korchagin.

A huge GOK (mining and processing plant) is being built in the Volgograd region on the basis of the Gremyachinsky potash salt deposit. After the launch of the GOK, EuroChem will become the first company in Russia (and the fourth in the world) to produce the entire range of mineral fertilizers. By the way, this is about the dependence of our agriculture on imports.

The construction of the Talitsky GOK continues in the Perm Territory. The development is carried out by the Akron group, the largest producer of mineral fertilizers.

The new production facility is being built at the existing mining and processing complex in the city of Stary Oskol. The capacity of the plant under construction will be 6 million tons of iron ore pellets per year. This should completely cover the needs of the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works, even taking into account the commissioning of the new blast furnace No. 7 Rossiyanka.

Let me remind you that Rossiyanka, which was launched in 2012 (pictured in the post), is the first blast furnace that was built in Russia in 25 years. This furnace should increase the amount of iron smelting in the country by 30%:

http://ruxpert.ru/Large_Russian_projects_(Vladimir_Putin,_2012-2018)

http://www.smt-nlmk.ru/projects/33/

In the Murmansk region, at the apatite-nepheline ore deposit, the second stage of the Oleniy Ruchey mining and processing enterprise is being built. Phosphate fertilizers, phosphorus, aluminum, soda and much more useful for our economy can be extracted from these ores.

Also in the Murmansk region, work is underway in Kirovsk - the Yuksporsky tunnel is being laid there to transport ore from the United Kirovsky mine.

In Buryatia, a mining and processing complex is being built at the Ozernoye deposit, which contains impressive reserves of zinc, lead, cadmium, silver and gold. Only silver will be mined there 120 tons per year. However, the largest gold mining enterprise in Russia will be another mine, the Natalka mine in the Magadan region. The extraction will amount to 13-15 tons of gold per year, while the largest ball mill in the world will operate at the mine. A ball mill is a huge drum into which ore is poured for grinding and special balls or rods made of some solid material. The drum rotates, the rods fall on the ore and grind it into fine dust.

Bystrinsky GOK is being built in the Trans-Baikal Territory. The reserves of the deposit, from which the ore will be supplied to the plant, amount to 2.7 million tons of copper and 236 tons of gold. Let me remind you that each ton of gold now costs about 2.5 billion rubles. It's a lot.

In 2016 and 2018, Nornickel plans to launch two more trains of the Talnakh concentrator. After the reconstruction, the volume of ore processed at the factory will double, the quality of the concentrate will also increase.

Finally, work continues on a major Rosatom project to mine uranium in Buryatia. In 2016, the facility should provide the country with 500 tons of uranium, and by 2019, production will more than triple, to 1,800 tons.

An incredible amount of building materials is produced in Russia, ranging from bricks to climate control systems. However, only projects with a volume of 10 billion rubles or more are included in the list of large projects. This is a very serious bar that only cement plants can break in the segment of the building materials industry.

You can get acquainted with the tape of the opening of factories for the production of other materials, for example, on "Sdelanounas".

So, five cement plants are now being built, in different regions of Russia. The largest of them promises to be the Asia-Cement plant in the Penza region, its capacity will be 4 million tons of cement per year. Together, these five plants will give the country 13 million tons of cement annually.

It's a lot. To understand the scale: about 13 million tons of cement per year are produced by such countries as Poland, Great Britain and Canada.

In the comments on previous posts about construction, some irresponsible readers were indignant at the fact that all construction projects were supposedly going on only in the European part of Russia. I answer the unfair reproach: not all. A lot of facilities are being built, for example, in the Far East, which is now considered by the Kremlin to be one of the country's most important federal districts.

Specifically for the forest: in the city of Amursk, Khabarovsk Territory, a center for deep wood processing is being built. The first object of the project - a plant for the production of peeled veneer with a capacity of 300 thousand square meters per year - has already been launched. In total, by 2018 it is planned to put into operation capacities for 8 million square meters of products.

Also, a huge timber industry park is being built in the city of Asino, Tomsk Region, this is our joint project with the Chinese. In total, 5 thousand people will work in the park, the capacity of logging units will be 3.5 million cubic meters of wood per year. The other day, on February 11, the first of 10 factories of the park was opened, veneer is produced there.

20. Metallurgy

First of all, it should be pointed out that metallurgy is a serious matter. Therefore, major projects should include not only the construction of new plants, but also the modernization of existing ones.

So, in the summer of 2014, at the Lysvensky plant in the Perm Territory, they began to build a workshop for the production of cold-rolled steel. The cost of only the first stage of the project will be 13 billion rubles, the workshop will start operating in 2016.

The technical re-equipment of the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant in the Nizhny Novgorod Region is underway. This plant was founded in the time of Elizabeth Petrovna and is one of the oldest in Russia. At the plant, the expansion of wheel-rolling production continues, as well as the modernization of complexes for the production of pipes of small and medium diameter.

The construction of a unique rolling complex for the production of aluminum semi-finished products used in the aerospace industry is underway at the Kamensk-Uralsky Metallurgical Plant. Just in case, I will repeat once again that projects in metallurgy are usually very large in scale. So, this rental complex alone costs as much as 25 Sukhoi Superjet-100 aircraft.

In the same Kamensk-Uralsk, the Sinarsky pipe plant is being modernized. Another large pipe plant (Volgorechensky) is expanding in the Kostroma region.

Near the city of Kovrov, Vladimir Region, a new steel-rolling plant is being built. The plant's capacity will be 1.2 million tons of rolled metal annually.

A new pipe and steelmaking complex is being created on the basis of the Chusovoy Metallurgical Plant. After the commissioning of the second phase of the project, the capacity of the plant will produce 450-500 thousand tons of seamless pipes per year.

A new sheet-rolling shop is being built at the Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant (in the Chelyabinsk Region). As part of the project, the 2800 rolling mill will be put into operation.

The Boguchansky aluminum smelter is being built not far from the Boguchanskaya HPP. It is assumed that the plant will become the main consumer of electricity from this HPP - such a combination of HPP and the plant is logical, since the cost of electricity is very important in the production of aluminum. The project is large: the production capacity of the plant will be 600,000 tons of aluminum per year.

Another aluminum plant, with a capacity of 750,000 tons, is being built in the Irkutsk region.

Finally, the Tulachermet-Stal casting and rolling complex is being built in the Tula region. The complex will produce high-quality rolled metal for mechanical engineering, shipbuilding and the defense industry.

What is good oil? The fact that in addition to gasoline and diesel fuel, a lot of useful things can be done from it. Well, gasoline with diesel fuel, too, of course, can be done - while, importantly, fuel prices are not subject to such strong fluctuations as crude oil.

In 2011, Russia adopted a large program for the construction and modernization of oil refineries. In the course of modernization only until 2020, 124 installations of secondary processes should be reconstructed and built.

It is important to note that in oil refining, the size of plants is often an order of magnitude larger than in the same metallurgy. This is a very serious business. Here is what is being built in this segment right now.

Russia's largest polyethylene production plant is being completed in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The plant has been under construction for a very long time, but in December 2014, the press reported that construction would soon be completed.

In the city of Budyonnovsk (Stavropol Territory), Lukoil is building a huge gas chemical complex that will process raw materials from the North Caspian.

The largest liquefied natural gas production complex in the European part of Russia is being set up in the Smolensk region. With the help of this gas, remote settlements will be supplied to which there is no point in pulling gas distribution networks.

A large oil refining and petrochemical complex is being built in Nizhnekamsk (Tatarstan). The project is of great strategic importance: it will improve the quality of Russian export oil of the Urals brand by combating the impurities it contains. Part of the complex is already in operation - for example, in March 2014, TANECO launched a new combined hydrocracking unit on it.

In the Khabarovsk Territory, the Komsomolsk and Khabarovsk oil refineries are being reconstructed. Oil refineries are also being reconstructed in Moscow, Omsk and Novokuibyshevsk in the Samara region.

Unfortunately, the meager enumeration of the reconstructed factories does not give an idea of ​​the real scale of the work being done. Since we have begun measuring the size of projects in aircraft, I will point out that it is planned to invest about 250 billion rubles in the creation of ultra-modern production in Novokuibyshevsk. For this money, you can buy a fleet of new aircraft, comparable in size to the entire fleet of our huge Aeroflot.

In Nizhnekamsk, which I have already mentioned, a complex for deep processing of heavy oil residues is being built, these residues will be used to make bitumen and vacuum gas oil.

The reconstruction of the production of the Angarsk petrochemical company continues. The reconstruction of the Tuapse oil refinery is underway. By the way, after the reconstruction, the Tuapse plant will become the largest in Europe in deep oil refining, and the refining depth will increase from 56% to 99%.

The second stage of the oil refinery is being built in the village of Yaya, Kemerovo Region. A complex for the production of various types of acrylic acid is being built on the territory of the Monomer plant in the city of Salavat (Bashkortostan).

A complex for the production of class 5 diesel fuel with a capacity of 1.8 million tons is being built at the Volgograd oil refinery. One of the most powerful soft hydrocracking units in the world will operate as part of the complex.

In Astrakhan, Gazprom is expanding the production of Euro-4 class diesel fuel. Finally, the Antipinsky oil refinery is being completed: the plant will produce fuel according to Euro-5 standards, while the depth of oil refining will increase from the current 60% to 94%.

22. Aviation

Work is underway on the fifth generation fighter, which has not yet received a final name and is now known as the T-50, I-21 and PAK FA. At the moment, flight tests of prototypes are underway. On the export version of the fighter, FGFA, we are working together with India.

I already wrote about the MS-21 (Yak-242) - this family of medium-haul aircraft will have to replace the Tu-134, Tu-154 and partly the Tu-204. At present, thanks to the life-giving sanctions, work on the MS-21 has intensified sharply. There is already a significant volume of orders for these airliners.

Work continues on the Tu-204SM, a deep modernization of the Tu-204. The updated avionics will reduce the crew to two people, while the aircraft will be able to manage one and a half times shorter runway.

At the Aviastar plant in Ulyanovsk, the Il-476 is being made, in total it is planned to build more than 100 aircraft of various modifications.

23. Largest ships and vessels

By December 2017, the world's largest nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika will be launched in St. Petersburg, its capacity will be an incredible 60 megawatts.

The construction of submarines continues at an accelerated pace. Three Yury Dolgoruky-class submarines, three Project 8851 Yasen-M cruisers, and one cruiser named Khabarovsk are currently under construction, details of which have not yet been disclosed to the general public. Also, the construction of a research submarine of project 09852, which will be engaged mainly in scientific activities, is underway.

Submarines of project 636.1 and 636.3 are being built in large quantities, two submarines of project 677 are being completed.

The construction of nine frigates of projects 11356 and 22350 is underway. These are multi-purpose ships of the far sea zone, they are named after the names of the admirals: "Admiral Grigorovich", "Admiral Essen" and so on. These are large ships, the cost of each is from 10 to 18 billion rubles.

Four large ammonia production complexes are being built in different parts of Russia. Yesterday I was asked to compare the scale with the Olympics in Sochi - well, these four complexes together cost about half of the Olympic Games that we won.

However, in fairness, it should be noted that the Olympic Games cost us far less than it seemed to liberal journalists:

http://ruxpert.ru/Myths_about_the_Olympics_in_Sochi

A large methanol production plant is being built in the Sverdlovsk region. A plant of pure polymers is being built in Kabardino-Balkaria - which, by the way, will become part of the agro-industrial cluster being created in the republic.

A very important industry, I will write a little more about it.

Organized on the basis of the famous plant. Klimov, after the completion of the second phase of the import substitution program, Petersburg Motors will produce 600 helicopter engines per year. Also in St. Petersburg, the well-deserved Obukhov Plant and four more enterprises of the Almaz-Antey concern are being transferred to a new site. Together with Siemens, a plant for the production of large gas turbines is being built in the Leningrad Region.

The Chinese Great Wall is building an impressive plant for the production of Haval cars in the Tula region.

A plant for the production of automobile tires "Bridgestone" is being built in Ulyanovsk.

In Vladivostok, a cluster of automotive production is developing - there the emphasis is on the production of cars of Korean and Japanese brands.

KnAAPO, Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant named after Yuri Gagarin, a key manufacturer of Su aircraft, are being modernized.

In the Bolshoy Kamen Bay (between Vladivostok and Nakhodka), a huge shipyard "Zvezda" is being built. They will make ships with a displacement of up to 350,000 tons.

Two plants of the Almaz-Antey Air Defense Concern are being built in Nizhny Novgorod and Kirov. There, as you might guess, modern air defense systems will be mass-produced.

The modernization of Izhora Plants is nearing completion. After modernization, the production volume will double: the enterprise will produce 4 nuclear reactors per year.

An auto cluster is being built near Kaliningrad - 21 plants will be built at neighboring sites. Five plants will be full-cycle plants, and 16 more plants will produce a variety of auto components.

Here I see no reason to talk in detail about construction sites. Journalists cover such projects in sufficient detail, and, perhaps, few people in Russia doubt that a huge number of new houses - skyscrapers, shopping malls, high-rise residential areas - are being built in our country.

Let me remind you, by the way, that last year we overtook the pace of construction of the RSFSR.

A powerful hydropower plant is being built in the Omsk Region, designed to regulate the water level on the Irtysh River. The hydroelectric complex will make the water supply of Omsk more reliable, as well as improve working conditions for river transport.

Just in case, let me remind you that I wrote in detail about hydropower in one of the previous posts in the series - several hydroelectric power plants and one pumped storage power plant are now being built in Russia.

28. Communication, telecommunications, data processing

The Russian Post is creating a network of automated sorting centers. Work continues on the introduction of the UEC, a universal electronic card. 4G LTE networks are developing. Television is moving to digital format.

Now in Russia about 20 technoparks are being developed - places where entrepreneurs are given especially good conditions for the development of high-tech business. I see no point in listing all twenty, I will mention only one - the Khimgrad technopolis in Kazan.

Khimgrad specializes in the chemical industry and everything connected with it - from oil to medicine. A large number of “residents” are already working there, in the foreseeable future it is planned to increase the number of residents to 200 enterprises.

To write about science, you need either to have special knowledge or to carefully understand the issue. Therefore, I will just briefly list the main major projects.

In St. Petersburg, the PIK Neutron Reactor is expected to be put into operation soon. In Dubna, near Moscow, work is underway on the NICA collider. We are doing a lot of work together with foreign scientists - among them it is worth mentioning the FAIR accelerator, the European XFEL laser and the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor.

An oceanarium is being built in Vladivostok, which should become one of the largest in the world.

You can read about projects in the field of space and nuclear energy in the previous posts in the series - I will only note that there are a good amount of them.

A large number of different medical centers are now opening in Russia - however, each individual center costs relatively little, it does not reach the size of a large chemical plant.

Of the really large projects, we have a medical center in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region, it is designed to accommodate 18,000 (!) inpatients. The center will specialize specifically in oncology. Doctors expect that this center will significantly reduce the level of cancer mortality in Russia.

Also in Russia, a program is underway to build several dozen perinatal centers, modernize maternity hospitals and children's hospitals. 24 perinatal centers have already been built.

In terms of ecology, it is worth highlighting the program for the destruction of stockpiles of chemical weapons. This is a very expensive undertaking.

32. Sports facilities

Several truly large stadiums are being built in the country, as well as several large resorts. It is clear that every small city has its own stadium, but only truly large-scale projects, such as a stadium for 45 thousand spectators in Rostov-on-Don, get into the list of large ones.

Separately, I note that the implementation of the program "500 pools" continues. By the autumn of 2014, the first 50 pools had already been built under this program.

Russia is a large country, so our territories are often developed for a specific project. A familiar example is the Olympic Games in Sochi, for which the infrastructure of the region was seriously updated. A huge number of roads, bridges, tunnels, a power station and so on and so forth were built. The Olympics have passed, but the entire infrastructure has remained.

Another example is the APEC summit in Vladivostok, for which Vladivostok received, in particular, two very important bridges for the city: the Golden Bridge and the Russian Bridge.

A dozen more projects of this kind are currently being implemented. Of these, one can single out, for example, the Northern Latitudinal Way, a comprehensive project for the development of the Arctic zone of Russia. Also very interesting is the project for the integrated development of the Lower Angara region, which should turn several districts of the Krasnoyarsk Territory from the taiga wilderness into habitable places.

Large resources are now being invested in Ufa, the Kaliningrad region, the Kuril Islands, Murmansk and several other important regions. There is a powerful development of ports and transport hubs, some of which I have already listed earlier.

Finally, a lot of work is to be done in the Crimea - the entire infrastructure will be reconstructed there, from the airport in Simferopol to the famous Artek children's center. Also, both the bridge, which I wrote about above, and the underwater electric cable will be laid across the Kerch Strait to the Crimea.

Let me summarize

I will finish the review with the words of the great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev:

The Russian people created the most powerful state in the world, the greatest empire. From Ivan Kalita, Russia consistently and stubbornly gathered and reached dimensions that stagger the imagination of all the peoples of the world.

CThe construction of grandiose structures is always associated with huge material costs and human losses. But many of the great construction projects of the Soviet Union were bloody in the full sense of the word. And if almost everyone knows about the construction of the White Sea Canal, then the word "Algemba" can only say a lot to historians. And the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), which is still called the “Komsomol construction site” in many textbooks, was built by no means only by Komsomol members.

Algemba: About 35,000 people died!

The most cruel ruler of the Soviet Union is traditionally considered Stalin, who violated the precepts of Ilyich. It is he who is credited with the creation of a network of camps (GULAG), it was he who initiated the construction of the White Sea Canal by the forces of prisoners. The fact that one of the first construction projects took place under the direct supervision of Lenin is somehow forgotten. And no wonder: all the materials related to Algemba - the first attempt of the young Soviet government to acquire its own oil pipeline - were classified for a long time.

In December 1919, the Frunze army captured the Emba oil fields in northern Kazakhstan. By that time, more than 14 million poods of oil had accumulated there. This oil could be a salvation for the Soviet republic. On December 24, 1919, the Council of the Workers' and Peasants' Defense decided to start construction of a railway through which oil could be transported from Kazakhstan to the center, and ordered: "Recognize the construction of the Alexandrov Gai-Emba broad-gauge line as an operational task." The city of Alexandrov Gai, located 300 km from Saratov, was the last railway point. The distance from it to the oil fields was about 500 versts. Most of the way ran through waterless saline steppes. It was decided to build the highway from both ends at the same time and meet on the Ural River near the village of Grebenshchikovo.

Frunze's army was the first to be thrown into the construction of the railway (despite his protests). There was no transport, no fuel, no sufficient food. In the conditions of the waterless steppe, there was nowhere even to place soldiers. Endemic diseases began, which developed into an epidemic. The local population was forcibly involved in the construction: about forty-five thousand residents of Saratov and Samara. People practically manually created an embankment along which the rails were to be laid later.

In March 1920, the task became even more complicated: it was decided to pull the pipeline in parallel with the railway. It was then that the word "Algemba" was first heard (from the first letters of Aleksandrov Gai and the name of the deposit - Emba). There were no pipes, like everything else. The only plant that once produced them has long been standing. The remains were collected from warehouses, they were enough for 15 versts at best (and it was necessary to lay 500!). Lenin began to look for an alternative solution. At first it was proposed to produce wooden pipes. Specialists just shrugged their shoulders: firstly, it is impossible to maintain the necessary pressure in them, and secondly, Kazakhstan does not have its own forests, there is nowhere to get wood. Then it was decided to dismantle sections of existing pipelines. The pipes varied greatly in length and diameter, but this did not bother the Bolsheviks. Another thing was embarrassing: the collected "spare parts" were still not enough even for half of the pipeline! However, work continued.

By the end of 1920, construction began to suffocate. Typhus claimed several hundred people a day. Guards were posted along the highway, because local residents began to pull apart the sleepers. Workers generally refused to go to work. Food rations were extremely low (especially in the Kazakh sector). Lenin demanded to understand the causes of sabotage. But there was no sabotage in sight. Hunger, cold and disease collected a terrible tribute among the builders. In 1921, cholera came to the construction site. Despite the courage of the doctors who voluntarily arrived at Algemba, the mortality rate was appalling. But the worst thing was different: four months after the start of the construction of Algemba, already in April 1920, Baku and Grozny were liberated. The Emba oil was no longer needed. Thousands of lives sacrificed to the construction site turned out to be in vain.

It was possible even then to stop the senseless activity of laying the Algemba. But Lenin stubbornly insisted on the continuation of construction, which cost the state fabulously expensive. In 1920, the government allocated a billion rubles in cash for this construction. No one has ever received a full report, but there is an assumption that the funds settled in foreign accounts. Neither the railway nor the pipeline was built: on October 6, 1921, the construction was stopped by Lenin's directive. A year and a half of Algemba cost thirty-five thousand human lives.

Belomorkanal: 700 deaths a day!

The initiator of the construction of the White Sea Canal was Joseph Stalin. The country needed labor victories, global achievements. And preferably without extra costs, since the Soviet Union was going through an economic crisis. The White Sea Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea with the Baltic Sea and open a passage for ships that previously had to go around the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. The idea of ​​creating an artificial passage between the seas was known as early as the time of Peter the Great (and the Russians have been using the portage system along the entire length of the future White Sea Canal for a long time). But the method of implementing the project (and Naftaly Frenkel was appointed head of the canal construction) turned out to be so cruel that it forced historians and publicists to look for parallels in the slave-owning states.

The total length of the canal is 227 kilometers. There are 19 locks (13 of which are two-chamber), 15 dams, 49 dams, 12 spillways on this waterway. The scale of construction is amazing, especially considering that all this was built in an incredibly short time: 20 months and 10 days. For comparison: the 80-kilometer Panama Canal took 28 years to build, and the 160-kilometer Suez Canal took ten.

The White Sea Canal was built from beginning to end by the forces of prisoners. Convicted designers created drawings, found extraordinary technical solutions (dictated by the lack of machines and materials). Those who did not have an education suitable for designing spent day and night digging a canal, waist-deep in liquid mud, driven not only by overseers, but also by members of their brigade: those who did not fulfill the norm were reduced to an already meager diet. This was one road: into concrete (the dead were not buried on the White Sea Canal, but simply fell asleep at random in pits, which were then filled with concrete and served as the bottom of the canal).

The main tools of labor in the construction were a wheelbarrow, a sledgehammer, a shovel, an ax and a wooden crane for moving boulders. The prisoners, unable to withstand the unbearable conditions of detention and overwork, died by the hundreds. At times, the death rate reached 700 people a day. Meanwhile, the newspapers printed editorials devoted to the "reforging by labor" of hardened recidivists and political criminals. Of course, it was not without postscripts and eyewash. The canal bed was made shallower than it was calculated in the project, and the start of construction was retroactively postponed to 1932 (in fact, work began a year earlier).

About 280 thousand prisoners took part in the construction of the canal, of which about 100 thousand died. The remaining survivors (every sixth) had their sentences reduced, and some were even awarded the Order of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. The heads of the OGPU in full force were awarded orders. Stalin, who visited the opened canal at the end of July 1933, was pleased. The system has shown its effectiveness. There was only one snag: the most physically strong and hard-working prisoners earned a reduction in terms.

In 1938, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Stalin raised the question: “Did you correctly propose a list for the release of these prisoners? They leave their jobs… We are doing a bad job of disrupting the work of the camps. The release of these people, of course, is necessary, but from the point of view of the state economy, this is bad ... The best people will be released, and the worst will remain. Is it possible to turn things around in a different way so that these people stay at work - give awards, orders, maybe? .. ”But, fortunately for the prisoners, such a decision was not made: a prisoner with a government award on a robe would look too strange …

BAM: 1 meter - 1 human life!

In 1948, with the start of the construction of the subsequent “great construction projects of communism” (Volga-Don Canal, Volga-Baltic waterway, Kuibyshev and Stalingrad hydroelectric power stations and other facilities), the authorities used an already proven method: they built large forced labor camps serving construction sites. And it was easy to find those who would fill the vacancies of the slaves. Only by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of June 4, 1947 "On criminal liability for theft of state and public property" hundreds of thousands of people got into the zone. The labor of convicts was used in the most labor-intensive and "harmful" industries.

In 1951, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S.N. Kruglov reported at the meeting: “I must say that in a number of sectors of the national economy, the Ministry of Internal Affairs occupies a monopoly position, for example, the gold mining industry - it is all concentrated here; the production of diamonds, silver, platinum - all this is entirely concentrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; asbestos and apatite mining - entirely in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. We are 100% involved in the production of tin, 80% of the specific weight is occupied by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for non-ferrous metals ... ”The minister did not mention only one thing: 100% of radium in the country was also produced by prisoners.

The greatest Komsomol construction project in the world - BAM, about which songs were composed, films were made, enthusiastic articles were written - did not begin at all with a call to youth. The construction of the railway, which was supposed to connect Taishet on the Trans-Siberian Railway with Komsomolsk-on-Amur, was sent in 1934 to the prisoners who built the White Sea Canal. According to Jacques Rossi's "Handbook of the Gulag" (and this is currently the most objective book on the camp system), about 50,000 prisoners worked at BAM in the 1950s.

Especially for the needs of the construction site, a new camp for prisoners was created - BAMlag, the zone of which stretched from Chita to Khabarovsk. The daily ration was traditionally meager: a loaf of bread and a stew of frozen fish. There were not enough barracks for everyone. People died from cold and scurvy (in order to delay the approach of this terrible disease for a while, they chewed pine needles). For several years, more than 2.5 thousand kilometers of the railway were built. Historians have calculated: each meter of BAM is paid for by one human life.

The official history of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline began in 1974, during the Brezhnev era. Echelons with young people were drawn to BAM. The prisoners continued to work, but their participation in the "construction of the century" was hushed up. And ten years later, in 1984, a “golden crutch” was driven in, symbolizing the end of another gigantic construction site, which is still associated with smiling young romantics who are not afraid of difficulties.

These construction projects have a lot in common: both the fact that the projects were difficult to implement (in particular, BAM and the Belomorkanal were conceived back in tsarist Russia, but due to lack of budgetary funds they were shelved), and the fact that the work was carried out with minimal technical support, and the fact that instead of workers slaves were used (otherwise it is difficult to name the position of the builders). But perhaps the most terrible common feature is that all these roads (both land and water) are many kilometers of mass graves. When you read dry statistical calculations, Nekrasov's words come to mind: “But on the sides, all the bones are Russian. How many of them, Vanechka, do you know?” www.stroyplanerka.ru/AuxView.aspx

Material taken: “100 famous mysteries of history” by M.A. Pankova, I.Yu. Romanenko and others.

To realize the full scale of what is happening, you need to see it.

It would seem a bridge and a bridge. But in fact, the construction of the Crimean bridge is a giant living mechanism that literally buzzes 24 hours a day in almost any weather. Almost 10 thousand people, more than 500 pieces of equipment - from giant cranes to ordinary dump trucks and asphalt pavers. Thousands of tons of concrete, metal and reinforcement, hundreds of thousands of huge bolts, nuts and electrodes. This is all the Crimean bridge, which everyone in Crimea calls the construction site of the century.

So, the construction of the bridge in all details in the photo below.

Source aquatek-filips You know or not, but the Crimean bridge will be the longest in Russia at the moment - its total length is 19 km. Construction is being carried out simultaneously from two sides - from the side of the Taman Peninsula and from the side of Kerch.

Most of the bridge will pass on concrete supports installed in the Kerch Strait, a small part across the island of Tuzla and almost near Kerch itself there is a navigable section, over which two giant metal arches have already been installed - a railway and a car. At the same time, this is the highest point of the bridge.

The location of the navigable part near Kerch is due to the peculiarities of the Kerch Strait, which is very shallow and problematic for navigation. The fairway, in fact, is here alone and it is located just almost near Kerch itself.

So, let's go from the very beginning of the bridge from the Crimean side to its highest point.

2. This is what the “beginning” of the bridge looks like from the Crimean side today. The first support of the coastal part is still being prepared: the foundation and the reinforcing cage for pouring concrete are ready.

3. Each subsequent support is higher and higher, and quite noticeably. The fact is that due to the proximity of the navigable part to Kerch, the future road should take up quite sharply in order to rise to the 35-meter height of the arched part. Ready-made concrete supports. Between them, temporary auxiliary supports made of metal structures are visible, which are used for sliding bridge spans and their subsequent installation.

4. And in the distance, the newly installed arches of the navigable part and the partially assembled road approach can be seen. In the photo it seems that the rise is quite steep. Maybe it's because of the shooting angle?

5. Marine supports are already completely ready.

6. And the spans of the automotive part are almost completely mounted on them. It remains to install only a few spans adjacent directly to the navigable arch and spans over the coastal part.

The railway part, as well as the supports for it, have not yet been installed. They will be built in the second place at the place where the technical bridge is now installed to ensure the construction (most of the pictures were taken from it, all the equipment, building materials, change houses of workers are located and technological transport is moved).

7. View from below at the car span.

8. The remaining few spans. Supports under them finish casting in the surface part. In the upper left corner - advance. A structure in the form of a beveled ski, which is attached in front of the superstructure in order to facilitate crawling onto the supports when sliding.

9. The process of welding huge pipes used as piles to move the main construction platform.

10. The process is quite interesting. Above the place where pipes need to be welded, a temporary plywood booth is installed - a “green house”. This is done in order to protect the welder from the weather.

11. Here, next to the shower from the remains of huge pipes.

12. The farther out to sea, the more massive the concrete supports. To climb up and down, use temporary closed stairs. Going down them, of course, is not very convenient, judging by how the worker does it.

13. Preparation for pouring the last support in front of the shipping arch. Red shields are formwork, inside of which concrete is poured.

14. View of the technological bridge from the main construction platform.

15. And this is a look in the opposite direction - just at the navigable spans. On the left is the automobile part, on the right is the railway. Both arches weigh more than 6 thousand tons each, they were collected on the shore from the Kerch side and then floated by sea to the installation site, where they were lifted to a height of 35 meters with the help of special cranes, installed on supports. From below, the arches, by the way, are different.

17. At the time of the installation of the arches, navigation along the Kerch Strait was stopped. At the same time, ships are already passing under the bridge in the usual manner. In the right foreground, temporary piles for the construction platform are visible. It is self-propelled and transfers itself, as necessary, to piles previously driven into the bottom of the strait.

18. Extreme support for the arch from the Taman side. People are very tiny against its background... In the background you can see a construction platform from the Taman side. From Kerch (where the picture was taken) is the same.

19. The fittings that are used to fill the supports are almost as thick as the arm of an adult.

20. A worker returns from pouring a support.

21. View of the construction platform almost from sea level.

22. View from sea level to the support of the arched part. Its height is 35 meters and in order to go upstairs, you need to overcome a metal staircase blown by all the winds. Just the other day, an elevator was installed here, but sometimes you still have to climb the stairs.

23. Looking down from the upper fulcrum of the arched part.

24. Construction platform from above. It is equipped with two huge Liebher cranes, which lift and move all the necessary materials both to the top of the platform and to the bottom, where the concrete is being poured.

25. The surface of the railway arch. So far without sleepers and rails.

26. The first car on the car arch.

27. Below is the pouring of the connecting part of the support of the arched part.

28. Reinforcing mesh. How much metal is there?

29. This is how temporary scaffolding for high-altitude work on supports looks like.

30. Places of attachment of various elements of the arch. The inscription "09/30/2017" and the signature - a mark of technical supervision on the acceptance of this bolted joint. Each bolted joint is checked for the tension of the bolts, if everything is fine, the representative of the technical supervision puts his signature and the date of acceptance (and also marks this joint in the assembly map he has and puts his signature on the act).

31. All connections are coated with a special anti-corrosion layer, because the bridge will constantly be exposed to an aggressive environment - the Kerch Strait is famous for its storms and hurricane winds.

Construction in the Soviet Union was large-scale, as were the ambitions of this state. Nevertheless, no one ever thought about the human fate in the USSR on a large scale.

Algemba: About 35,000 people died!

The most cruel ruler of the Soviet Union is traditionally considered Stalin, who violated the precepts of Ilyich. It is he who is credited with creating a network of camps (GULAG), it was he who initiated the construction of the White Sea Canal by the forces of prisoners. The fact that one of the first construction projects took place under the direct supervision of Lenin is somehow forgotten. And no wonder: all the materials related to Algemba - the first attempt of the young Soviet government to acquire its own oil pipeline - were classified for a long time.

In December 1919, Frunze's army captured the Emba oil fields in northern Kazakhstan. By that time, more than 14 million poods of oil had accumulated there. This oil could be a salvation for the Soviet republic. On December 24, 1919, the Council of the Workers' and Peasants' Defense decided to start construction of a railway through which oil could be transported from Kazakhstan to the center, and ordered: "Recognize the construction of the Alexandrov Gai-Emba broad-gauge line as an operational task." The city of Alexandrov Gai, located 300 km from Saratov, was the last railway point. The distance from it to the oil fields was about 500 versts. Most of the way ran through waterless saline steppes. It was decided to build the highway from both ends at the same time and meet on the Ural River near the village of Grebenshchikovo.

Frunze's army was the first to be thrown into the construction of the railway (despite his protests). There was no transport, no fuel, no sufficient food. In the conditions of the waterless steppe, there was nowhere even to place soldiers. Endemic diseases began, which developed into an epidemic. The local population was forcibly involved in the construction: about forty-five thousand residents of Saratov and Samara. People practically manually created an embankment along which the rails were to be laid later.

In March 1920, the task became even more complicated: it was decided to pull the pipeline in parallel with the railway. It was then that the word "Algemba" was first heard (from the first letters of Alexandrov Gai and the name of the deposit - Emba). There were no pipes, like everything else. The only plant that once produced them has long been standing. The remains were collected from warehouses, they were enough for 15 versts at best (and it was necessary to lay 500!).

Lenin began to look for an alternative solution. At first it was proposed to produce wooden pipes. Specialists just shrugged their shoulders: firstly, it is impossible to maintain the necessary pressure in them, and secondly, Kazakhstan does not have its own forests, there is nowhere to take wood. Then it was decided to dismantle sections of existing pipelines. The pipes varied greatly in length and diameter, but this did not bother the Bolsheviks. Another thing was embarrassing: the collected "spare parts" were still not enough even for half of the pipeline! However, work continued.

By the end of 1920, construction began to suffocate. Typhus claimed several hundred people a day. Guards were posted along the highway, because local residents began to pull apart the sleepers. Workers generally refused to go to work. Food rations were extremely low (especially in the Kazakh sector).

Lenin demanded to understand the causes of sabotage. But there was no sabotage in sight. Hunger, cold and disease collected a terrible tribute among the builders. In 1921, cholera came to the construction site. Despite the courage of the doctors who voluntarily arrived at Algemba, the mortality rate was appalling. But the worst thing was different: four months after the start of the construction of Algemba, already in April 1920, Baku and Grozny were liberated. The Emba oil was no longer needed. Thousands of lives sacrificed to the construction site turned out to be in vain.

It was possible even then to stop the senseless activity of laying the Algemba. But Lenin stubbornly insisted on the continuation of construction, which cost the state fabulously expensive. In 1920, the government allocated a billion rubles in cash for this construction. No one has ever received a full report, but there is an assumption that the funds settled in foreign accounts. Neither the railway nor the pipeline was built: on October 6, 1921, the construction was stopped by Lenin's directive. A year and a half of Algemba cost thirty-five thousand human lives.

Belomorkanal: 700 deaths a day!

The initiator of the construction of the White Sea Canal was Joseph Stalin. The country needed labor victories, global achievements. And preferably - without extra costs, since the Soviet Union was going through an economic crisis. The White Sea Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea with the Baltic Sea and open a passage for ships that previously had to go around the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. The idea of ​​creating an artificial passage between the seas was known as early as the time of Peter the Great (and the Russians have been using the portage system along the entire length of the future White Sea Canal for a long time). But the method of implementing the project (and Naftaly Frenkel was appointed head of the canal construction) turned out to be so cruel that it forced historians and publicists to look for parallels in the slave-owning states.

The total length of the canal is 227 kilometers. On this waterway there are 19 locks (13 of which are two-chamber), 15 dams, 49 dams, 12 spillways. The scale of construction is amazing, especially considering that all this was built in an incredibly short time: 20 months and 10 days. For comparison: the 80-kilometer Panama Canal was built for 28 years, and the 160-kilometer Suez Canal - ten.

The White Sea Canal was built from beginning to end by the forces of prisoners. Convicted designers created drawings, found extraordinary technical solutions (dictated by the lack of machines and materials). Those who did not have an education suitable for designing spent day and night digging a canal, waist-deep in liquid mud, driven not only by overseers, but also by members of their brigade: those who did not fulfill the norm were reduced to an already meager diet. This was one road: into concrete (the dead were not buried on the White Sea Canal, but simply fell asleep at random in pits, which were then filled with concrete and served as the bottom of the canal).

The main tools of labor in the construction were a wheelbarrow, a sledgehammer, a shovel, an ax and a wooden crane for moving boulders. The prisoners, unable to withstand the unbearable conditions of detention and overwork, died by the hundreds. At times, the death rate reached 700 people a day. Meanwhile, the newspapers printed editorials devoted to the "reforging by labor" of hardened recidivists and political criminals. Of course, it was not without postscripts and eyewash. The canal bed was made shallower than it was calculated in the project, and the start of construction was retroactively postponed to 1932 (in fact, work began a year earlier).

About 280 thousand prisoners took part in the construction of the canal, of which about 100 thousand died. The remaining survivors (every sixth) had their sentences reduced, and some were even awarded the Order of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. The heads of the OGPU in full force were awarded orders. Stalin, who visited the opened canal at the end of July 1933, was pleased. The system has shown its effectiveness. There was only one snag: the most physically strong and hard-working prisoners earned a reduction in terms.

In 1938, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Stalin raised the question: “Did you correctly propose a list for the release of these prisoners? They leave their jobs… We are doing a bad job of disrupting the work of the camps. The release of these people, of course, is necessary, but from the point of view of the state economy, this is bad ... The best people will be released, and the worst will remain. Is it possible to turn things around in a different way so that these people stay at work - give awards, orders, maybe? .. ”But, fortunately for the prisoners, such a decision was not made: a prisoner with a government award on a robe would look too strange …

BAM: 1 meter - 1 human life!

In 1948, with the start of the construction of the subsequent “great construction projects of communism” (Volga-Don Canal, Volga-Baltic waterway, Kuibyshev and Stalingrad hydroelectric power stations and other facilities), the authorities used an already proven method: they built large forced labor camps serving construction sites. And it was easy to find those who would fill the vacancies of the slaves. Only by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of June 4, 1947 "On criminal liability for theft of state and public property" hundreds of thousands of people got into the zone. The labor of convicts was used in the most labor-intensive and "harmful" industries.

In 1951, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S.N. Kruglov reported at the meeting: “I must say that in a number of sectors of the national economy, the Ministry of Internal Affairs occupies a monopoly position, for example, the gold mining industry - it is all concentrated in our country; the production of diamonds, silver, platinum - all this is entirely concentrated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; mining of asbestos and apatites - entirely in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. We are 100% involved in the production of tin, 80% of the specific weight is occupied by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for non-ferrous metals ... ”The minister did not mention only one thing: 100% of radium in the country was also produced by prisoners.

The greatest Komsomol construction project in the world - BAM, about which songs were composed, films were made, enthusiastic articles were written - did not begin at all with a call to youth. The construction of the railway, which was supposed to connect Taishet on the Trans-Siberian Railway with Komsomolsk-on-Amur, was sent in 1934 to the prisoners who built the White Sea Canal. According to Jacques Rossi's Guide to the Gulag (and this is currently the most objective book on the camp system), about 50,000 prisoners worked at BAM in the 1950s.

Especially for the needs of the construction site, a new camp for prisoners was created - BAMlag, the zone of which stretched from Chita to Khabarovsk. The daily ration was traditionally meager: a loaf of bread and a stew of frozen fish. There were not enough barracks for everyone. People died from cold and scurvy (in order to delay the approach of this terrible disease for a while, they chewed pine needles). For several years, more than 2.5 thousand kilometers of the railway were built. Historians have calculated: each meter of BAM is paid for by one human life.

The official history of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline began in 1974, during the Brezhnev era. Echelons with young people were drawn to BAM. The prisoners continued to work, but their participation in the "construction of the century" was hushed up. And ten years later, in 1984, a “golden crutch” was driven in, symbolizing the end of another gigantic construction site, which is still associated with smiling young romantics who are not afraid of difficulties.

These construction projects have a lot in common: both the fact that the projects were difficult to implement (in particular, BAM and the Belomorkanal were conceived back in tsarist Russia, but due to lack of budgetary funds they were shelved), and the fact that the work was carried out with minimal technical support, and the fact that instead of workers slaves were used (otherwise it is difficult to name the position of the builders). But, perhaps, the most terrible common feature is that all these roads (both land and water) are many kilometers of mass graves. When you read dry statistical calculations, Nekrasov's words come to mind: “But on the sides, all the bones are Russian. How many of them, Vanechka, do you know?

(The material is taken from: “100 famous mysteries of history” by M.A. Pankov, I.Yu. Romanenko and others).

The great construction projects of communism - this is how all the global projects of the Soviet government were called: highways, canals, stations, reservoirs.
One can argue about the degree of their “greatness”, but there is no doubt that these were grandiose projects of their time.

"Magnitogorsk"

Russia's largest Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works was designed in the late spring of 1925 by the Soviet institute UralGipromez. According to another version, the design was carried out by an American company from Clinwood, and the US Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, became the prototype of Magnitogorsk. All three "heroes" who stood at the "helm" of the construction of the plant - the manager Gugel, the builder Maryasin and the head of the trust Valerius - were shot in the 30s. January 31, 1932 - the first blast furnace is launched. The construction of the plant took place in the most difficult conditions, while most of the work was carried out manually. Despite this, thousands of people from all over the Union hurried to Magnitogorsk. Foreign specialists, primarily Americans, were also actively involved.

Belomorkanal

The White Sea-Baltic Canal was supposed to connect the White Sea and Lake Onega and provide access to the Baltic Sea and the Volga-Baltic waterway. The canal was built by the forces of Gulag prisoners in record time - less than two years (1931-1933). The length of the canal is 227 kilometers. It was the first construction in the Soviet Union, implemented exclusively by prisoners, which may be why the Belomorkanal is not always ranked among the "great construction projects of communism." Each builder of the White Sea Canal was called a "prisoned canal soldier" or abbreviated as "ze-ka", from which the slang word "zek" came from. Campaign posters of that time read: “Your term will melt from hot work!” Indeed, many of those who made it to the end of construction alive had their deadlines reduced. On average, the death rate reached 700 people a day. “Hot work” also influenced nutrition: the more the “ze-ka” worked out, the more impressive the “rations” received. Standard - 500 gr. bread and seaweed gruel.

Baikal-Amur Mainline

One of the largest railway lines in the world was built with huge interruptions, starting from 1938 and ending in 1984. The most difficult section - the North-Musky Tunnel - was put into permanent operation and only in 2003. The initiator of the construction was Stalin. Songs were composed about BAM, laudatory articles were published in newspapers, films were made. The construction was positioned as a feat of youth and, of course, no one knew that prisoners who had survived after the construction of the White Sea Canal were sent to the construction site in 1934. In the 1950s, about 50 thousand prisoners worked at BAM. Each meter of BAM is worth one human life.

Volga-Don Canal

An attempt to connect the Don and the Volga was made by Peter the Great in 1696. In the 30s of the last century, a construction project was created, but the war prevented its implementation. Work resumed in 1943 immediately after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. However, the date of commencement of construction should still be considered 1948, when the first earthworks began. In addition to volunteers and military builders, 236,000 prisoners and 100,000 prisoners of war took part in the construction of the canal route and its facilities. In journalism one can find descriptions of the most terrible conditions in which prisoners lived. Dirty and lousy from the lack of the opportunity to wash regularly (there was one bath for everyone), half-starved and sick - this is how the disenfranchised "builders of communism" actually looked. The canal was built in 4.5 years - and this is a unique period in the world history of the construction of hydraulic structures.

Plan for the transformation of nature

The plan was adopted at the initiative of Stalin in 1948 after a drought and a raging famine of 46-47. The plan included the creation of forest belts, which were supposed to block the hot southeast winds - dry winds, which would change the climate. Forest belts were planned to be located on an area of ​​​​120 million hectares - that's how much England, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Belgium occupy together. The plan also included the construction of an irrigation system, during which 4,000 reservoirs appeared. It was planned to complete the project before 1965. More than 4 million hectares of forest were planted, and the total length of forest belts was 5,300 km. The state solved the country's food problem, while part of the bread began to be exported. After Stalin's death in 1953, the program was curtailed, and in 1962 the USSR was again shaken by a food crisis - bread and flour disappeared from the shelves, and there were shortages of sugar and butter.

Volzhskaya HPP

The construction of the largest hydroelectric power plant in Europe began in the summer of 1953. Next to the construction site, in the tradition of that time, the Gulag was deployed - the Akhtubinsky ITL, which employed more than 25 thousand prisoners. They were engaged in laying roads, conducting power lines and general preparatory work. They, of course, were not allowed to directly work on the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Sappers also worked at the facility, who were engaged in clearing the site for future construction and the bottom of the Volga - the proximity to Stalingrad made itself felt. About 40 thousand people and 19 thousand various mechanisms and machines worked at the construction site. In 1961, having turned from the "Stalingrad HPP" into the "Volzhskaya HPP named after the 21st Congress of the CPSU", the station was put into operation. It was solemnly opened by Khrushchev himself. The HPP was a gift for the 21st Congress, at which Nikita Sergeevich, by the way, announced his intention to build communism by 1980.