The Volga (Russian: Волга, pronounced[ˈvoɫɡə]ⓘ) is the longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of 3,531 km (2,194 mi), and a catchment area of 1,360,000 km2 (530,000 sq mi).[3] It is also Europe's largest river in terms of average discharge at delta – between 8,000 m3/s (280,000 cu ft/s) and 8,500 m3/s (300,000 cu ft/s) – and of drainage basin. It is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. The hypothetical old Russian state, the Rus' Khaganate, arose along the Volga c. 830 AD.[8] Historically, the river served as an important meeting place of various Eurasian civilizations.[9][10][11]
The river flows in Russia through forests, forest steppes and steppes. Five of the ten largest cities of Russia, including the nation's capital, Moscow, are located in the Volga's drainage basin. Because the Volga drains into the Caspian Sea, which is an endorheic body of water, the Volga does not naturally connect to any of the world's oceans.
Some of the largest reservoirs in the world are located along the Volga River. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture – Russian literature and folklore often refer to it as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga).
The Russian hydronymVolga (Волга) derives from Proto-Slavic *vòlga 'wetness, moisture', which is preserved in many Slavic languages, vlaga (влага) 'moisture', Bulgarianvlaga (влага) 'moisture', Czechvláha 'dampness', Serbo-Croatian: vlaga (влага) 'moisture', Slovenevlaga 'moisture', Polishwilgoć 'moisture' and Macedonianvlaga (влага) 'moisture', among others.[12]
The Scythian name for the Volga was Rahā,[13] literally meaning 'wetness'. This is related to the Avestan name for a mythical stream, Raŋhā (𐬭𐬀𐬢𐬵𐬁), which means "wet" or "moisture", and was derived from Proto-Indo-European*h₁res- or *h₁ers-).[14] This name can be compared to several Indo-Iranic terms, such as:
Sogdianrʾk (𐽀𐼰𐼸) 'vein, blood vessel' (from Old Iranian *rahaka),[15]
The Turkic peoples living along the river formerly referred to it as Itil or Atil. In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as İdel (Идел) in Tatar, Atăl (Атӑл) in Chuvash, Iźel in Bashkir, Edıl in Kazakh, and İdil in Turkish. The Turkic names go back to the ancient Turkic form "Etil/Ertil", the origin and meaning of which are not clear. Perhaps this form has a connection with the hydronym Irtesh.[23]
The Turkic peoples associated the Itil's origin with the Kama.[24] Thus, a left tributary to the Kama was named the Aq Itil 'White Itil' which unites with the Kara Itil 'Black Itil' at the modern city of Ufa.[citation needed] The name Indyl (Indɨl) is used in the Cherkess language.
In Asia the river was known by its other Turkic name Sarı-su 'yellow water', but the Oirats also used their own name, Ijil mörön or 'adaptation river'. Presently the Mari, another Uralic group, call the river Jul (Юл), meaning 'way' in Tatar. Formerly, they called the river Volgydo, a borrowing from Old East Slavic.[citation needed]
Description
The confluence of the Oka (to the left) and the Volga in Nizhny Novgorod
The Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the Kama, the Oka, the Vetluga, and the Sura. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which flows through an area of about 1,350,000 square kilometres (521,238 square miles) in the most heavily populated part of Russia.[1] The Volga Delta has a length of about 160 kilometres (99 miles) and includes as many as 500 channels and smaller rivers. The largest estuary in Europe, it is the only place in Russia where pelicans, flamingos, and lotuses may be found.[citation needed] The Volga freezes for most of its length for three months each year.[1]
The fertile river valley provides large quantities of wheat and other agricultural produce, and also has many mineral riches. A substantial petroleum industry centers on the Volga valley. Other resources include natural gas, salt, and potash. The Volga Delta and the Caspian Sea are fishing grounds.
The Volga–Oka region has been occupied for at least 9,000 years and supported a bone and antler industry for producing bone arrowheads, spearheads, lanceheads, daggers, hunters knives, and awls. The makers also used local quartz and imported flints.[25]
During classical antiquity, the Volga formed the boundary between the territories of the Cimmerians in the Caucasian Steppe and the Scythians in the Caspian Steppe.[21] After the Scythians migrated to the west and displaced the Cimmerians, the Volga became the boundary between the territories of the Scythians in the Pontic and Caspian Steppes and the Massagetae in the Caspian and Transcaspian steppes.[22]
Between the 6th and the 8th centuries, the Alans settled in the Middle Volga region and in the steppes of Russia's southern region in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.[26]
The area around the Volga was inhabited by the Slavic tribes of Vyatichs and Buzhans, by Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian, Baltic, Hunnic and Turkic peoples (Tatars, Kipchaks) in the first millennium AD, replacing the Scythians.[27][unreliable source?] Furthermore, the river played a vital role in the commerce of the Byzantine people. The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia). He calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains. Between 2nd and 5th centuries Baltic people were very widespread in today's European Russia. Baltic people were widespread from Sozh River till today's Moscow and covered much of today's Central Russia and intermingled with the East Slavs.[28] The Russian ethnicity in Western Russia and around the Volga river evolved to a very large extent, next to other tribes, out of the East Slavic tribe of the Buzhans and Vyatichis. The Vyatichis were originally concentrated on the Oka river.[29] Furthermore, several localities in Russia are connected to the Slavic Buzhan tribe, like for example Sredniy Buzhan in the Orenburg Oblast, Buzan and the Buzan river in the Astrakhan Oblast.[30] Buzhan (Persian: بوژان, romanized: Būzhān; also known as Būzān) is also a village in Nishapur, Iran. In late 8th century the Russian state Russkiy Kaganate is recorded in different Northern and Oriental sources. The Volga was one of the main rivers of the Rus' Khaganates culture.[31]
Construction of Soviet Union-era dams often involved enforced resettlement of huge numbers of people, as well as destruction of their historical heritage. For instance, the town of Mologa was flooded for the purpose of constructing the Rybinsk Reservoir (then the largest artificial lake in the world). The construction of the Uglich Reservoir caused the flooding of several monasteries with buildings dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. In such cases the ecological and cultural damage often outbalanced any economic advantage.[33]
During the Russian Civil War, both sides fielded warships on the Volga. In 1918, the Red Volga Flotilla participated in driving the Whites eastward, from the Middle Volga at Kazan to the Kama and eventually to Ufa on the Belaya.[34]
During the Civil War, Joseph Stalin ordered the imprisonment of several military specialists on a barge in the Volga and the sinking of a floating prison in which the officers perished.[35][36]
During World War II, the city on the big bend of the Volga, currently known as Volgograd, witnessed the Battle of Stalingrad, possibly the bloodiest battle in human history, in which the Soviet Union and the German forces were deadlocked in a stalemate battle for access to the river. The Volga was (and still is) a vital transport route between central Russia and the Caspian Sea, which provides access to the oil fields of the Absheron Peninsula. Hitler planned to use access to the oil fields of Azerbaijan to fuel future German conquests. Apart from that, whoever held both sides of the river could move forces across the river, to defeat the enemy's fortifications beyond the river.[37] By taking the river, Hitler's Germany would have been able to move supplies, guns, and men into the northern part of Russia. At the same time, Germany could permanently deny this transport route by the Soviet Union, hampering its access to oil and to supplies via the Persian Corridor.
For this reason, many amphibious military assaults were brought about in an attempt to remove the other side from the banks of the river. In these battles, the Soviet Union was the main offensive side, while the German troops used a more defensive stance, though much of the fighting was close quarters combat, with no clear offensive or defensive side.
Many different ethnicities lived on the Volga river. Numerous were the Eastern Slavic Vyatchi tribes which took a decisive role in the development of modern Russians.[38][39] Among the first recorded people along the upper Volga were also the Finnic Mari (Мари) and Merya (Мäрӹ) people. Where the Volga flows through the steppes the area was also inhabited by the Iranian people of the Sarmatians from 200 BC.[40][41] Since ancient times, even before Rus' states developed, the Volga river was an important trade route where not only Slavic, Turkic and Finnic peoples lived, but also Arab world of the Middle East met the Varangian people of the Nordic countries through trading.[42][43] In the 8th and 9th centuries colonization also began from Kievan Rus'. Slavs from Kievan Rus' brought Christianity to the upper Volga, and a portion of non-Slavic local people adopted Christianity and gradually became East Slavs. The remainder of the Mari people migrated to the east far inland. In the course of several centuries the Slavs assimilated the indigenous Finnic populations, such as the Merya and Meshchera peoples. The surviving peoples of Volga Finnic ethnicity include the Maris, Erzyas and Mokshas of the middle Volga. Also Khazar and Bulgar peoples inhabited the upper, middle and lower of the Volga River basin.[44]
Apart from the Huns, the earliest Turkic tribes arrived in the 7th century and assimilated some Finno-Ugric and Indo-European population on the middle and lower Volga. The Turkic ChristianChuvash and MuslimVolga Tatars are descendants of the population of medieval Volga Bulgaria. Another Turkic group, the Nogais, formerly inhabited the lower Volga steppes.
The Volga region is home to a German minority group, the Volga Germans. Catherine the Great had issued a manifesto in 1763 inviting all foreigners to come and populate the region, offering them numerous incentives to do so.[45] This was partly to develop the region but also to provide a buffer zone between the Russians and the Mongols to the east.[citation needed] Because of conditions in German territories, Germans responded in the largest numbers. Under the Soviet Union a slice of the region was turned into the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Flora and fauna
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Navigation
The Volga at VolgogradIn some locations, the Volga has a rocky west bank.
The Volga, widened for navigation purposes with construction of huge dams during the years of Joseph Stalin's industrialization, is of great importance to inland shipping and transport in Russia: all the dams in the river have been equipped with large (double) ship locks, so that vessels of considerable dimensions can travel from the Caspian Sea almost to the upstream end of the river.
This infrastructure has been designed for vessels of a relatively large scale (lock dimensions of 290 by 30 metres (951 ft × 98 ft) on the Volga, slightly smaller on some of the other rivers and canals) and it spans many thousands of kilometers. A number of formerly state-run, now mostly privatized, companies operate passenger and cargo vessels on the river; Volgotanker, with over 200 petroleum tankers, is one of them.
In the later Soviet era, up to the modern times, grain and oil have been among the largest cargo exports transported on the Volga.
[46] Until recently access to the Russian waterways was granted to foreign vessels on a very limited scale. The increasing contacts between the European Union and Russia have led to new policies with regard to the access to the Russian inland waterways. It is expected that vessels of other nations will be allowed on Russian rivers soon.[47]
^ abcdefScheffel, Richard L.; Wernet, Susan J., eds. (1980). Natural Wonders of the World. United States of America: Reader's Digest Association, Inc. p. 406. ISBN0-89577-087-3.
^Walker, Joel (2007). "Iran and Its Neighbors in Late Antiquity: Art of the Sasanian Empire (224–642 C.E.)". American Journal of Archaeology. 1 11 (4): 797. doi:10.3764/aja.111.4.795. ISSN0002-9114. S2CID192943660.
^McNeese, Tim (2005). The Volga river. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. pp. 14–16. ISBN0791082474. OCLC56535045.
^Brunner, C. J. (1986). "ARANG". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on 12 August 2022. Retrieved 13 August 2022. Middle Persian Arang/Arag renders Avestan Raŋhā, which is cognate with the Scythian name Rhâ (*Rahā) transmitted by Ptolemy
^Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italian Languages, s.v. "rōs, rōris" (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 526-7.
^Nourai, Ali. 2013. An Etymological Dictionary of Persian, English and Other Indo-European Languages. Index of Words in Different Languages, vol. 1, p. 130.
^Lebedynsky, Iaroslav. Les Sarmates: Amazones et lanciers cuirassés entre Oural et Danube. Paris: Editions Errance, 2002.
^Akhmetyanov R. G. Brief Historical and etymological dictionary of the Tatar language. - Kazan: Tat. publishing house, 2001. p. 76. ISBN5-298-01004-0 (In tatar: Әхмәтьянов Р. Г. Татар теленең кыскача тарихи-этимологик сүзлеге. — Казан: Тат. кит. нәшр., 2001. б. 76. )
^"In all, Soviet dams flooded 2,600 villages and 165 cities, almost 78,000 sq. km. – the area of Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Jersey combined – including nearly 31,000 sq. km. of agricultural land and 31,000 sq. km. of forestland". Quoted from: Paul R. Josephson. Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology and the Transformation of the Natural World. Island Press, 2002. ISBN1-55963-777-3. Page 31.
^Korotenko, K. A.; Mamedov, R. M.; Mooers, C. N. K. (2000). "Prediction of the Dispersal of Oil Transport in the Caspian Sea Resulting from a Continuous Release". Spill Science & Technology Bulletin. 6 (5–6): 323. doi:10.1016/S1353-2561(01)00050-0.
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