Bible Encyclopedias
Volga

Fisheries

The network of shallow and still limans or "cut-offs" in the delta of the Volga and the shallow waters of the northern Caspian, freshened as these are by the water of the Volga, the Ural, the Kura and the Terek, is exceedingly favourable to the breeding of fish, and as a whole constitutes one of the most productive fishing grounds in the world. As soon as the ice breaks up in the delta innumerable shoals of roach (Leuciscus rutilus) and trout (Luciotrutta leucichthys) rush up the river. They are followed by the great sturgeon (Acipenser huso), the pike, the bream and the pike perch (Leucioperca sandra). Later on appears the Caspian herring (Clupea caspia), which formerly was neglected, but has now become more important than sturgeon; the sturgeon A. stellatus and "wels" (Silures glanis) follow, and finally the sturgeon Acipenser giildenstadtii, so much valued for its caviare. In search of a gravelly spawning-ground the sturgeon go up the river as far as Sarepta (250 m.). The lamprey, now extensively pickled, the sterlet (A. ruthenus), the tench, the gudgeon and other fluvial species also appear in immense numbers. It is estimated that 180,000 tons of fish of all kinds, of the value of considerably over £1,500,000, are taken annually in the four fishing districts of the Volga, Ural, Terek and Kura. Seal-hunting is carried on off the Volga mouth, and every year about 40,000 of Phoca vitulina are killed to the north of the Manghishlak peninsula on the east side of the Caspian.

Ice Covering

In winter the numberless tributaries and subtributaries of the Volga become highways for sledges. The ice lasts 90 to 160 days, and breaks up earlier in its upper course than in some parts lower down. The average date of the break-up is April 11 th at Tver, and 14 days later about Kostroma, from which point a regular acceleration is observed (April 16th at Kazan, April 7th at Tsaritsyn, and March 17th at Astrakhan).

Traffic

The greater part of the traffic is up river, the amount of merchandise which reaches Astrakhan being nearly fifteen times less than that reaching St Petersburg by the Volga canals. The goods transmitted in largest quantity are fish, metals, manufactured wares, hides, flax, timber, cereals, petroleum, oils and salt. The downriver traffic consists chiefly of manufactured goods and timber, the latter mostly for the treeless governments of Samara, Saratov and Astrakhan, as well as for the region adjacent to the lower course of the Don. Dredging machines are kept constantly at work, while steamers are stationed near the most dangerous sandbanks to assist vessels that run aground. The following table shows the principal river ports, with the movement of shipping in an average year :- Formerly tens of thousands of burlaki, or porters, were employed in dragging boats up the Volga and its tributaries, but this method of traction has disappeared unless from a few of the tributaries. Horse-power is still extensively resorted to along the three canal systems. The first large steamers of the American type were built in 1872. Thousands of steamers are now employed in the traffic, to say nothing of smaller boats and rafts. Many of the steamers use as fuel mazut or petroleum refuse. Large numbers of the boats and rafts are broken up after a single voyage.

History

The Volga was not improbably known to the early Greeks, though it is not mentioned by any writer previous to Ptolemy. According to him, the Rha is a tributary of an interior sea, formed from the confluence of two great rivers, the sources of which are separated by twenty degrees of longitude, but it is scarcely possible to judge from his statements how far the Sla y s had by that time succeeded in penetrating into the basin of the Volga. The Arab geographers throw little light on the condition of the Volga during the great migrations of the 3rd century, or subsequently under the invasion of the Huns, the growth of the Khazar empire in the southern steppes and of that of'Bulgaria on the middle Volga. But we know that in the 9th century the Volga basin was occupied by Finnish tribes in the north and by Khazars and various Turkish races in the south. The Sla y s, driven perhaps to the west, had only the Volkhov and the Dnieper, while the (Mahommedan) Bulgarian empire, at the confluence of the Volga with the Kama, was so powerful that for some time it was an open question whether Islam or Christianity would gain the upper hand among the Slav idolaters. But, while the Russians were driven from the Black Sea by the Khazars, and later on by a tide of Ugrian migration from the north-east, a stream of Sla y s moved slowly towards the north-east, down the upper Oka, into the borderland between the Finnish and Turkish regions. After two centuries of struggle the Russians succeeded in colonizing the fertile valleys of the Oka basin; in the 12th century they built a series of fortified towns on the Oka and Klyazma; and finally they reached the mouth of the Oka, there founding (in 1222) a new Novgorod - the Novgorod of the Lowlands, now Nizhniy-Novgorod. The great lacustrine depression of the middle Volga was thus reached; and when the Mongol invasion of 1239-42 came, it encountered in the Oka basin a dense agricultural population with many fortified and wealthy towns - a population which the Mongols found they could conquer, indeed, but were unable to drive before them as they had done so many of the Turkish tribes.

This invasion checked but did not stop the advance of the Russians down the Volga. Two centuries elapsed before the Russians covered the 300 m. which separate the mouths of the Oka and the Kama and took possession of Kazan. But in the meantime a flow of Novgorodian colonization had moved eastward, along the upper portions of the left-bank tributaries of the Volga, and had reached the Urals.

With the capture of Kazan (1552) the Russians found the lower Volga open to their boats, and eight years afterwards they were masters of the mouth of the river at Astrakhan. Two centuries more elapsed before the Russians secured a free passage to the Black Sea and became masters of the Sea of Azov and the Crimea; the Volga, however, was their route. During these two centuries they fortified the lower river, settled it, and penetrated farther eastward into the steppes towards the upper Ural and thence to the upper parts of the Tobol and other great Siberian rivers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. P. Semenov's Geographical and Statistical Dictionary (5 vols., St Petersburg, 1863-85) contains a full bibliography of the Volga and tributaries. See also V. Ragozin's Volga (3 vols., St Petersburg, 1880-81, with atlas; in Russian); N. Bogolyubov, The Volga from Tver to Astrakhan (Russian, 1876); H. Roskoschny, Die Wolga and ihre Zufiitsse (Leipzig, 1887, vol. i.), history, ethnography, hydrography and biography, with rich bibliographical information; N. Bogusla y skiy, The Volga as a Means of Communication (Russian, 1887), with detailed profile and maps; Peretyatkovich, Volga Region in the 15th and 16th Centuries (1877); and Lender, Die Wolga (1889). (P. A. K.; J. T. BE.)