Talk:Volga

message: The Volga was also once called the Rha in anc times.  Trekphiler 04:19, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Previous name

message: 'Rasa' in Lithuanian language means a dew and 'Vilga' means to moisten or to damp...and 'Rusenti, Rusne' means to flow (like Baltic tribe 'Prussians' comes from 'Parusne, prusne' and even a word to bath 'prausti' comes from this root). It's obvious that both Lithuania and Rus or Russia mean the people who lives on the banks of rivers ('Lietuva' directly means the river's channel and 'lietis' means to flow or to pour, and 'lietus' means the rain)
No sources are given. Possible original research. 193.111.133.174 (talk) 23:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cognates in Baltic languages?

message: More information and pictures added about the volga's part in wwii. 76.179.164.79 (talk) 07:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: The Volga In Stalingrad

message: No map? Lotsofissues 01:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, this definitely needs a map Fuzzbox 13:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: The current comment about the Germans in the Volga River region implies that Catherine targeted them through her so called "invitation".  In fact, the Manifesto is addressed to all foreigners.  I have modified that sentence to reflect this.
Jerry Frank 205.206.215.65 17:07, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Catherine and the Germans 

message: Why doesn't the introduction state that is has the biggest volume in Europe? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.165.20 (talk) 02:52, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: volume?

message: I checked also the Imperial Russia statistics from 1913 and Volga is there under the title
WATERWAYS AND CANALS described in details.
Lenght 3.463 versts (3.695 km) of which lenght for floating (upper course) 114 versts (121.7 km), for shipping 3.349 versts (3.373.4 km), and for steamships 3.048 versts (3252.2 km).
Volga basin: general lenght of rivers, lakes, and canals serving as ways of communications:
Volga 76.883 versts (82.034 km) of which navigable 16.658 versts (17.774 km), lenght navigable
on rafts 38.194 versts (40.753 km), navigable for steamers 13.405 versts (14.303 km).  
 
Now lenght is now given as 3694 km (2295.85 miles) from its spring located near old village church of Volgoverhovje in Valdai hills to its main source´s mouth at Caspian Sea.
Flows to Lake Sterzh which forms with Lake Vselug and Lake Peno 206 metre a.s.l. the upper part
of Volga water reservoir above the Peno settlement where Velikije Luki - Bologoje railway line
crosses Volga by railway bridge. The lower Volga water reservoir continues to Selishtshe dam. Below the Selishtshe dam at Skakulino Soblago - Torzhok railway line crosses Volga in railway bridge. At Selizharevo River Selizharovka from Lake Seliger is the first notable tributary.
Near Mihalevo village stream surface is 184 metre a.s.l. little more down stream near Petrushtshevo village the surface is 176 metre a.s.l. Just down of the confluence of its tributary Tudovka River on the rapid the surface is 170 metre a.s.l. Volga flows through the first notable town Rzhev where the third railway line, the Lihoslavl - Rzhev - Vjazma railway crosses Volga in railway bridge. Below Staritsa near Matjukovo village the surfage is 133 metre a.s.l. Nera Novokurovo village is the first anchorage place where the surface is 128 metre a.s.l. Next anchorage place is Besjedy where the surface is 125 metre a.s.l. Above Tver there are anchogage places at Putulovo, Datshnyj and Krasnovo. At Tver the St. Petersburg - Moscow main railway line crosses Volga in railway bridge. From the north in the centre of Tver important tributary River Tversta have its confluence with Volga. Just below Tver at Pasynkovo river harbour the surface is 124 metre a.s.l. Usually this point is given as the most northern navigable point at Volga (for Ocean going merchant vehicles). The Ivanov water reservoir, 124 metre a.s.l. starts from Gorodnja anchorage place and continues to Dubna dam. This was formely known as Moscow Inland Sea. The Volga - Moscow Canal starts from Dubna. Down of Dubna the surface is 113 metre a.s.l. to Uglitsh dam and forms Uglitsh water reservoir.
All these places have also earlier Karelian names and to this point Volga was known as Valgia (White) River. In Tver (Tihvi > Tihveri > Tjhverj > Tver) Oblast Valgia streams through former
lands of Valdai Karelians, Rzhev ( Wild Forest Karelians) and Tver Karelians who settled these 
areas before the Slavic immigration from the Ilmajärvi (Ilmen Lake) direction.
JN
Volga River Steamers
Formerly tens of thousands of burlaki, or Volga boatmen, 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. Horses are still extensively used along the three canal systems . The first steamer "Volga" visited to Samara in 1846. In 1858, the Nizhny Novgorod Machine Factory produced the first Russian steam dredger. The amount of suspended matter brought down by erosion is correspondingly great . All along its course the Volga is eroding and destroying its banks with great rapidity; towns and loading ports have constantly to be shifted farther back .
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 .  In 1870, the first Russian open hearth furnace was built Nizhny Novagrad at the factory, followed by a two-decked steamship Perevorot just a year later. In 1913, it produced a dry bulk cargo ship Danilikha. The factory built 489 ships between 1849 and 1918. 
The largest fleet of any of Soviet rivers is that on the Volga, where in 1926 there were 1604 steamers with indicated horse power of 300595.The Internal Waterways Steamship Co. had at its disposal on January 1, 1927, 2,020 steamers 
The Batashevs’ «steamers» were on a par with the world-famous ones produced by Berdov, and were installed on the majority of Volga steamships.
In 1913  the Romanovs boarded the steamer Mezhen at Nizhniy Novgorod to sail down the Volga river for their 500th Anniversary tour.
Other steamers were the 'Lastochka' or swallow.  Maxim Gorky, the writer, worked as a cook on a Volga steamer in his youth and thus
the Volga river enters Russian literature: stories where A young officer encounters a beautiful stranger on board a Volga steamer.
During the Seige of Leningrad, one indomitable tug crossed the river towing barges of men, food and ammunition, constantly under the
the fire of the German guns. The tug made many journeys until it was too damaged to continue.  In the post=war years, new steamers of the
Josef Stalin type were built and worked the river. A few survive. Today, the river is worked by diesel cruise boats and tugs.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.76.183 (talk) 15:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some additions 

message: What? nothing about the current health of the river? Nothing is known? sewage? Fish? Industry? No known controversy on pollution?
I was wondering that too.  The article on the Caspian Sea talks about pollution, unregulated waste, and sewage coming into the sea from the Volga but there is no mention of it here.  Very strange.
Fjf1085 (talk) 18:36, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Environmental health of the Volga river 

message: the river is sometimes referred to as "mother Volga" you should make it so that this article to appear in the search when someone tired to search for it  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.235.6 (talk) 04:29, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: mother

message: hopefully someone will add in a section involving the sinking of the "Bulgaria". Current estimates are 120 dead and 2 missing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gizziiusa (talk • contribs) 01:08, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cruiseship tragedy, "Bulgaria" sinking 

message: "The downstream of the Volga, widely believed to have been a cradle of the Proto-Indo-European civilization, was settled by Huns and other Turkic peoples in the first millennium AD,"
Can we be not be a bit more precise than to within a thousand years? If there are no sources fine, but I just thought this was funny as it's spans such a vast period of time. Alexandre8 (talk) 02:01, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Funny historical point 

message: The article says the Volga bends towards the Don near Volgograd. However, looking at a map it seems the both bend away from each other near that point. Am I missing something? --169.231.42.170 (talk) 04:49, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: They bend towards each other between Volgograd and Volgodonsk (with the latter being named after both rivers VolgaDon-sk). There's also a canal at that location that connects the two rivers: Volga–Don Canal. Nakonana (talk) 17:25, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bend toward Don 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: What is the European length and what is the Asian length of the river? Mobile mundo (talk) 17:55, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see any maps that indicate that any part of the river would be in Asia. It appears to be all in Europe. Nakonana (talk) 17:45, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  European length and Asian length 

message: The article currently says "This infrastructure has been designed for vessels of a relatively large scale (lock dimensions of 290 by 30 metres (951 ft × 98 ft)"
Hmmm presumably the locks are 290 metres long, and 30 meters wide -- but how deep are they?  Those locks are about as long as those on the St Lawrence Seaway, and about as long as those on the Yangtze.  A decade or so ago Chinese chauvinists were describing the Yangtze locks as among the largest in the world, but they were less than half the depth of the Seaway locks.  Mississipi locks are also only about three or four metres.
In addition, reading between the lines, I gather all the rapids, waterfalls, or just plain shallow sections of the river have been eliminated, by damming.  But surely the river once had navigational hazards?
I have worked on the Mackenzie River, navigable from its source, Great Slave Lake, to its mouth, it does have the Sans Sault Rapids and The Ramparts (Mackenzie River).  Surely there were similar impediments on the Volga?
The map of the drainage basin shows a very narrow neck, north of Volgograd/Stalingrad.  That suggests the river itself narrowed, and may have dropped significant elevation.  Geo Swan (talk) 06:20, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:   Navigation 

message: While reading the etymological information I came across a reference to the book "The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World" (by JP Mallory - 1997), and since I have this book I decided to look up the reference. Suffice to say, the book does not say what is claimed in the article text. Here's what the source actually says about the Volga: (page 346)
"There are numerous regional terms for ‘wet’ but a few may be assigned to Proto-Indo-European. A root *h1res- or *h1ers- means ‘dew’ in Lat rōs, Baltic (e.g. Lith rasà), and Slavic (e.g, OCS rosa) but it tends to mean something moister in the other languages (in Avestan it supplies the name of the river Volga, Raŋha, while in Sanskrit it provides rása- ‘liquid, moisture’, and in Albanian it gives resh ‘rains’)."
This article by contrast has this sentence being referenced from that book:
"The Slavic name is a loan translation of earlier Scythian Rā (Ῥᾶ) "Volga"". This is clearly not what the source says, it doesn't mention anything about "Rā" or the Scythian language. It only says that in Avestan the Volga is called the "Raŋha". It does not say that this is the origin of the Russian word Volga, or that it is a translation.
Looking back at how this section of the article was created, it is a complete mess. Multiple users simply came in and changed the etymological information while offering no evidence or citations. Sometimes they left the original references standing while changing the text to say something completely different to what is in the reference.
This is the edit that seems to have added the reference to The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European; , but even then the text did not match what it says in the book.
I have no idea where this reference to "Scythian Rā" comes from, but I don't think it's in that book. So I will change it to have a citation needed tag. In general the nomenclature section needs a big clean up to see if all these etymologies actually have proper referencing. --Hibernian (talk) 05:13, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, correction. I was confusing the books The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006) with the Encyclopedia Of Indo-European Culture (1997), both by the same authors. I checked the later book, and it does indeed reference "Rā" being the Scythian name for the river. However it does not say that the Slavic/Russian name is a "loan translation", it only says that those are the ancient names of the Volga in Scythian and Avestan. So I have removed that claim, unless it can be properly cited. --Hibernian (talk) 05:38, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  About the etymology 

message: Why is this section blank? Seems a standard include for major ecological/geographical regions.  I also support earlier comments requesting a section about the environmental health/pollution of the Volga. As one of the major rivers and river systems of the world, this article would benefit greatly with these sections included.  I hope someone with more knowledge of the subjects is willing to help here. Maybe there is existing information to be translated and included in the English version. Thank you for your time and for considering my comments. 2601:184:302:6DC0:A8C1:DA7F:423E:CD09 (talk) 03:10, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flora and fauna? Pollution? 

message: In Volga#Name section name Araxes seems to be supported by two articles from just one author, Olbrycht, Marek Jan (Krakow, 2000), discussing Scithian migrations who was probably either misunderstood, or mistaken (missed actual Araxes river in Caucassus on maps, and assumed from available context Araxes could be Volga). Those articles were taken as WP supporting sources for the claim that Araxes used to mean Volga in this section. If someone with better access to those sources than me (I could access only summaries) can confirm this, the misleading claim (that Araxes was Greek for Volga) should be removed from Volga article, unless some other supporting evidence could be found. 
The river Aras exists in Caucasus (also known as the Araks, Arax, Araxes, or Araz) and also several settlements are still called Araks; it looks those names are not ancient and mostly forgotten, but in current everyday use. See also Diff at Talk Scithia. Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 15:33, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name Araxes supposedly ancient Greek for Volga