ABSTRACT
The idea of a waterway linking the White and Baltic Seas was born in the times of Peter I. Its realization, however, would have demanded tremendous means and human effort, for the route of the canal would stretch across the poorest lands of Russia's North. The small Karelian villages of ten or twenty houses with tiny allotments along a single street, surrounded by impenetrable forests. A Solovetsky newspaper mentions the expedition of one Professor Sovietov, who in 1926 started prospecting work: This new northern waterway will pass from the White Sea along the route of Lake Onega-Povenets Bay and beyond via the Svir river. A resolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Labour and Defense Council and Stalin's order to build a 227 km canal in 20 months and without a cent of foreign exchange. According to official figures in the book The Stalin Canal (1934), 100,000 people worked on the construction site; contemporary publicists mention 500,000.
