![]() ![]() “The story of Stenka Razin, a 17th century river pirate turned Robin Hood who led a peasant rebellion, is known to nearly everyone here in the Volga region. “The Volga provides everything - work, pleasure, it feeds people, and it’s incredibly beautiful.” “Life without the Volga is unimaginable,” said the retired engineer, 69. ![]() As she rode a ferry past golden birch forests to her dacha, Galina Kudryavtseva looked at the waters of the mighty Volga River with the love of a child for her mother. Talking with the people who live on its banks gives a sense of the hopes, dreams and disappointments of Russia today. Like the Mississippi in America, it defines Russia’s spiritual heartland. A wide variety of ethnic groups have made their home in the Volga basin including Tatars, Germans and Kyrgyz.ĭavid Holley wrote in the Los Angeles Times: The “Mother Volga, a river of history, folklore, song and art, is far more than Europe’s longest waterway. Many cities of importance are located on it: Yaroslavl, Nizny Novgorod (formally Gorky), Kazan, Volgograd (once Stalingrad) and Astrakhan. Before steamboats were invented, huge gangs of serfs pulled barges upstream with ropes. Between the 9th and 12th century, Vikings used it to transport goods between Scandinavia and northern Russia and Persia and Constantinople. The Volga has been an important trade routes since Viking times. and the Geographer Ptolemy described it around 150 A.D. The Greeks discovered that the Volga flowed into the Caspian Sea in the 2nd century A.D. In Russian Volga means "holy" and often times the river is referred to as Matushka, or mother. Over a forth of Russia's population lives within the river's half million square mile drainage basin, an area twice the size of Texas. ![]() The Volga has the largest drainage basin of any European river and carries nearly two thirds of Russia's waterborne cargo and provides electricity and irrigation water. Petersburg, Moscow, the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Navigable nearly its entire length, it is the country's main commercial waterway, providing connections between the Baltic Sea, St. Draining two thirds of European Russia and nearly a third of Europe and known to Russians as "Mother Volga," it is of great importance and economic value to Russia. The Volga River is the longest river in Europe. ![]()
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