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The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment area of . «Река Волга» , Russian State Water Registry It is also Europe's largest river in terms of average discharge at delta – between and – and of drainage basin. It is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. The hypothetical old Russian state, the Rus' Khaganate, arose along the Volga . Historically, the river served as an important meeting place of various civilizations.
The river flows in Russia through , and . Five of the ten largest cities of Russia, including the nation's capital, Moscow, are located in the Volga's drainage basin. Because the Volga drains into the Caspian Sea, which is an Endorheic basin body of water, the Volga does not naturally connect to any of the world's oceans.
Some of the largest in the world are located along the Volga River. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture – Russian literature and Russian folklore often refer to it as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga).
The Scythian name for the Volga was , literally meaning 'wetness'. This is related to the Avestan language name for a mythical stream, (), which means "wet" or "moisture", and was derived from Proto-Indo-European or ).J.P. Mallory & D.Q. Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, s.v. "dew" (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997), 158-9. This name can be compared to several Indo-Iranic terms, such as:
The Ancient Greek author Herodotus recorded two more ancient Iranic names of the Volga:
The living along the river formerly referred to it as or Atil. In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as () in Tatar language, () in Chuvash language, in Bashkir language, in Kazakh language, and in Turkish language. The Turkic names go back to the ancient Turkic form "/", the origin and meaning of which are not clear. Perhaps this form has a connection with the hydronym Irtysh River.Akhmetyanov R. G. Brief Historical and etymological dictionary of the Tatar language. - Kazan: Tat. publishing house, 2001. p. 76. (In tatar: Әхмәтьянов Р. Г. Татар теленең кыскача тарихи-этимологик сүзлеге. — Казан: Тат. кит. нәшр., 2001. б. 76. )
The Turkic peoples associated the Itil's origin with the Kama. Thus, a left tributary to the Kama was named the 'White Itil' which unites with the Ufa River 'Black Itil' at the modern city of Ufa. The name () is used in the Cherkess language.
In Asia the river was known by its other Turkic name 'yellow water', but the Oirats also used their own name, or 'adaptation river'. Presently the Mari people, another Uralic languages group, call the river (), meaning 'way' in Tatar language. Formerly, they called the river , a borrowing from Old East Slavic.
The Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the Kama, the Oka River, the Vetluga, and the Sura. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which flows through an area of about in the most heavily populated part of Russia. The Volga Delta has a length of about and includes as many as 500 channels and smaller rivers. The largest estuary in Europe, it is the only place in Russia where , , and Nelumbo nucifera may be found. The Volga freezes for most of its length for three months each year.
The Volga drains most of Western Russia. Its many large reservoirs provide irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Moscow Canal, the Volga–Don Canal, and the Volga–Baltic Waterway form navigable connecting Moscow to the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. High levels of chemical pollution have adversely affected the river and its habitats.
The fertile river valley provides large quantities of wheat and other agricultural produce, and also has many mineral riches. A substantial petroleum industry centers on the Volga valley. Other resources include natural gas, salt, and potash. The Volga Delta and the Caspian Sea are fishing grounds.
During classical antiquity, the Volga formed the boundary between the territories of the Cimmerians in the Caucasian Steppe and the Scythians in the Caspian Steppe. After the Scythians migrated to the west and displaced the Cimmerians, the Volga became the boundary between the territories of the Scythians in the Pontic and Caspian Steppes and the Massagetae in the Caspian and Transcaspian steppes.
Between the 6th and the 8th centuries, the Alans settled in the Middle Volga region and in the steppes of Russia's southern region in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
The area around the Volga was inhabited by the Slavic tribes of Vyatichs and Buzhans, by Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian, Balts, Huns and Turkic peoples (Tatar language, Kipchaks) in the first millennium AD, replacing the Scythians. Furthermore, the river played a vital role in the commerce of the Byzantine Empire. The ancient scholar Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions the lower Volga in his Geography (Book 5, Chapter 8, 2nd Map of Asia). He calls it the Rha, which was the Scythian name for the river. Ptolemy believed the Don and the Volga shared the same upper branch, which flowed from the Hyperborean Mountains. Between 2nd and 5th centuries Balts were very widespread in today's European Russia. Baltic people were widespread from Sozh River till today's Moscow and covered much of today's Central Russia and intermingled with the East Slavs. The Russian ethnicity in Western Russia and around the Volga river evolved to a very large extent, next to other tribes, out of the East Slavic tribe of the Buzhans and . The Vyatichis were originally concentrated on the Oka River. Furthermore, several localities in Russia are connected to the Slavic Buzhan tribe, like for example Sredniy Buzhan in the Orenburg Oblast, Buzan and the Buzan River in the Astrakhan Oblast. Buzhan (; also known as Būzān) is also a village in Nishapur, Iran. In late 8th century the Russian state Russkiy Kaganate is recorded in different Northern and Oriental sources. The Volga was one of the main rivers of the Rus' Khaganates culture.
Subsequently, the river basin played an important role in the movements of peoples from Asia to Europe. A powerful polity of Volga Bulgaria once flourished where the Kama joins the Volga, while Khazaria controlled the lower stretches of the river. Such Volga cities as Atil, Saqsin, or Sarai were among the largest in the medieval world. The river served as an important trade route connecting Viking Age, Finnic peoples areas with the various Slavic tribes and Turkic, Germanic peoples, Finnic and other people in Old Rus', and Volga Bulgaria with Khazars, Persia and the Arab world.
Khazars were replaced by Kipchaks, Kimeks and Mongols, who founded the Golden Horde in the lower reaches of the Volga. Later their empire divided into the Khanate of Kazan and Khanate of Astrakhan, both of which were conquered by the Russians in the course of the 16th century Russo-Kazan Wars. The Russian people's deep feeling for the Volga echoes in national culture and literature, starting from the 12th century Lay of Igor's Campaign. The Volga Boatman's Song is one of many songs devoted to the national river of Russia.
Construction of Soviet Union-era dams often involved enforced resettlement of huge numbers of people, as well as destruction of their historical heritage. For instance, the town of Mologa was flooded for the purpose of constructing the Rybinsk Reservoir (then the largest artificial lake in the world). The construction of the Uglich Reservoir caused the flooding of several monasteries with buildings dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. In such cases the ecological and cultural damage often outbalanced any economic advantage."In all, Soviet dams flooded 2,600 villages and 165 cities, almost 78,000 sq. km. – the area of Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Jersey combined – including nearly 31,000 sq. km. of agricultural land and 31,000 sq. km. of forestland". Quoted from: Paul R. Josephson. Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology and the Transformation of the Natural World. Island Press, 2002. . Page 31.
During the Civil War, Joseph Stalin ordered the imprisonment of several military specialists on a barge in the Volga and the sinking of a floating prison in which the officers perished.
During World War II, the city on the big bend of the Volga, currently known as Volgograd, witnessed the Battle of Stalingrad, possibly the bloodiest battle in human history, in which the Soviet Union and the German forces were deadlocked in a stalemate battle for access to the river. The Volga was (and still is) a vital transport route between central Russia and the Caspian Sea, which provides access to the oil fields of the Absheron Peninsula. Hitler planned to use access to the oil fields of Azerbaijan to fuel future German conquests. Apart from that, whoever held both sides of the river could move forces across the river, to defeat the enemy's beyond the river. By taking the river, Hitler's Nazi Germany would have been able to move cargo, , and men into the northern part of Russia. At the same time, Germany could permanently deny this transport route by the Soviet Union, hampering its access to oil and to supplies via the Persian Corridor.
For this reason, many amphibious military assaults were brought about in an attempt to remove the other side from the banks of the river. In these battles, the Soviet Union was the main offensive side, while the Wehrmacht used a more defensive stance, though much of the fighting was close combat, with no clear offensive or defensive side.
Apart from the Huns, the earliest Turkic tribes arrived in the 7th century and assimilated some Finno-Ugric and Indo-European population on the middle and lower Volga. The Turkic Christians Chuvash people and Muslims Volga Tatars are descendants of the population of medieval Volga Bulgaria. Another Turkic group, the Nogais, formerly inhabited the lower Volga steppes.
The Volga region is home to a German minority group, the Volga Germans. Catherine the Great had issued a manifesto in 1763 inviting all foreigners to come and populate the region, offering them numerous incentives to do so. This was partly to develop the region but also to provide a buffer zone between the Russians and the Mongols to the east. Because of conditions in German territories, Germans responded in the largest numbers. Under the Soviet Union a slice of the region was turned into the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
Connections with the river Don and the Black Sea are possible through the Volga–Don Canal. Connections with the lakes of the North (Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega), Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea are possible through the Volga–Baltic Waterway; and commerce with Moscow has been realised by the Moscow Canal connecting the Volga and the Moskva River.
This infrastructure has been designed for vessels of a relatively large scale (lock dimensions of on the Volga, slightly smaller on some of the other rivers and canals) and it spans many thousands of kilometers. A number of formerly state-run, now mostly privatized, companies operate passenger and cargo vessels on the river; Volgotanker, with over 200 , is one of them.
In the later Soviet Union, up to the modern times, grain and oil have been among the largest cargo exports transported on the Volga. Until recently access to the Russian waterways was granted to foreign vessels on a very limited scale. The increasing contacts between the European Union and Russia have led to new policies with regard to the access to the Russian inland waterways.
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