page_title: Volga–Don Canal
section_title: Operation
hierarchical_section_title: Volga–Don Canal / Operation
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Banner wikivoyage per l'Oblast' di Saratov English: Panorama of the Volga–Don Canal in Volgograd
context_page_description: Lenin Volga–Don Shipping Canal is a canal that connects the Volga River and the Don River at their closest points. Opened in 1952, the length of the waterway is 101 km, 45 km of which is through rivers and reservoirs.
  The canal forms a part of the Unified Deep Water System of European Russia. Together with the lower Volga and the lower Don, the Volga–Don Canal provides the most direct navigable connection between the Caspian Sea and the world's oceans via the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
context_section_description: The canal starts at the Sarepta backwater on the Volga River (south of Volgograd; Lock No. 1 and the gateway arch are at 48°31′10″N 44°33′10″E) and ends in the Tsimlyansk Reservoir of the Don River at the town of Kalach-na-Donu. The canal has nine one-chamber canal locks on the Volga slope that can raise ships 88 m (289 ft), and four canal locks of the same kind on the Don slope that can lower ships 44 m (144 ft). The overall dimensions of the canal locks are smaller than those on the Volga River, however they can pass ships of up to 5,000 tonnes cargo capacity. The smallest locks are 145 m (476 ft) long, 17 m (56 ft) wide, and 3.6 m (12 ft) deep. The maximum allowed vessel size is 141 m (463 ft) long, 16.8 m (55 ft) wide and 3.6 m (12 ft) deep (the Volgo–Don Max Class).
  The Volga–Don Canal is filled from the Don river, with three powerful pumping stations that maintain water levels. Water is also taken from the canal and used for irrigation.
  Types of cargo transported from the Don region to the Volga region include coal from Donetsk, Ukraine as well as minerals, building materials, and grain. Cargo transported from the Volga to the Don includes lumber, pyrites, and petroleum products (carried mostly by Volgotanker boats). Tourist ships travel in both directions.
  The Volga–Don Canal, together with the Tsimlyansky water-engineering system (chief architect Leonid Polyakov), form part of an architectural ensemble dedicated to the battles for Tsaritsyn during the Russian Civil War and for Stalingrad during the German-Soviet War. The Russian classical composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote the tone poem The Meeting of the Volga and the Don to celebrate its completion.
  According to the Maritime Board (Morskaya Kollegiya) of the Russian government, 10.9 million tonnes of cargo were carried over the Volga–Don Canal in 2004.
  An alternate (not necessarily comparable) source claims 8.05 million tonnes of cargo was transported through the canal in total in 2006. Most of the cargo was moved from the east to the west. Namely, 7.20 million tonnes were transported through the canal from the Volga/Caspian basin to the Don/Sea of Azov/Black Sea basin, and only 0.85 million tonnes in the opposite direction. Just over half of all cargo was oil or oil products (4.14 million tonnes), predominantly shipped from the Caspian region.
  It was reported in 2007 that in the first 55 years of the canal's operations 450,000 vessels had passed through carrying 336 million tonnes of cargo. Recent cargo volume stood at 12 million tonnes a year.
  In 2016, the core of Belarusian nuclear power plant VVER-1200, which weighed 330 tonnes, was 13 meters high, and 4.5 meters in diameter, was transferred to its destination by exploiting Tsimlyansk Reservoir, the Volga-Don Canal, the Volga–Baltic Waterway, Volkhov River and special rail car.
caption: Panorama of the canal in Volgograd
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