MINGECHAURSKAYA GES IN PARTIAL OPERATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00809A000700160232-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 232
• Publication Date: February 15, 1954
• Content Type: REPORT

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/08: CIA-RDP80-00809A000700160232-5
COUNTRY USSR
SUBJECT Economic - Electric power
HOW
PUBLISHED Daily newspapers, book
WHERE
PUBLISHED USSR
DATE
PUBLISHED 1952-10 Jan 1954
.......... ..... ......... ~.... > . .... ...............
CD NO.
DATE OF
DATE DIST. /S Feb 1954
SUPPLEMENT TO
REPORT NO.
umbers in parentheses refer to appended sources.7
On 10 January 1954, it was reported that the first phase (two turbogener-
ators) of the Mingechaurskaya GES hydroelectric power station in the Azerbay-
dzhan SSR had gone into operation and was supplying current.(l) Completion
of installation and testing of the first turbogenerator had been previously
reported on 4 December 1953.(2)
The directives of the 19th Party Congress stipulate that the Mingechaur-
skaya GEE must be completed during the '.fth Five-Year Plan. Every effort is
being made to complete the entire hydraulic center a year ahead of schedule.
By the end of 1954, all six aggregates /urbogenerators7 are to be in operation.
High-voltage electric power transmission lines have already been strung
from Mingechaur to the industrial centers of the republic -- Baku, Sumgait,
Kirovabad, and Dashkesan.
At the end of 1953, the water in the reservoir was 56 meters deep at the
dam and the reservoir was 65 kilometers long. In 1954 after the spring floods,
the reservoir will be 75 kilometers long and 13 kilometers wide. Work on the
dam is continuing with an eye to- completion before spring so that the Minge-
chaur Reservoir will. be able to bold all of the Kura River's flood waters.(l)
I. Islam-Zade. chief of Minvorhaureesstroy, stated that thn volume of the
Mingechaur Reservoir, indicated on maps of the Transcaucasue as "Mingechaurskoye
More," is 16 billion cubic meters.(3) The reservoir will cover hundreds of
envere kilometers of the Samukhskaya Dolina (valley).(4) More than 1,100
kolkhoz farms were relocated in spring 1953 before the reservoir was filled.
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CLASSIFICATION CONFIDENTIAL
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
INFORMATION FROM
FOREIGN DOCUMENTS OR RADIO BROADCASTS
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More than 300 plants in the USSR have supplied the construction project
with equipment, machinery, and construction materials. All of the union re-
publics and many oblasts and autonomous republics have contributed-0) Plants
in Novorossiysk, Vol'sk, and Bryansk have supplied cement; metallurgical
plants in the Urals, the Donbass, and Uzbekistan have shipped metal; the Kra-
matorsk Plant imeni Stalin and the Leningrad Plant imeni Stalin have provided
turbines; and the Leningrad "Elektrosila" Plant supplied generators. Crane
equipment arrived from Krasnoyarsk and Leningrad, dump cars from Kaliningrad.
Plants in Minsk, Gor'kiy, Moscow, and Kutaisi shipped motor vehicles, while
the machine building and ship repair enterprises of Baku supplied special
cable products.(l)
Among the builders are representatives of 20 nationalities who came to
the construction site from various parts of the country. Many of them helped
to build the Tsimlyanskaya GES, Ust'-Kamenogorskaya GES, and other structures.
Specialists and skilled workmen from other republics taught young Azerbay-
dshanis skills not previously known in the republic.(3) Construction of the
Mingechaur Hydraulic Center has produced thousands of highly skilled workers.
An average of almost 1,200 persons a year have learned new professions or
raised their qualifications in special courses.(l) Among those who have
achieved -pecial prominence are Nikolay Alekseysevich Lopatin and Avdey Avdeye-
vich Svontsov,(3) chief and chief engineer, respectively, of the Mingechaur
Office of the "Gidromekhanizatsiya" Trust, who, together with Platonov, chief
engineer of the "Gidromekhanizatsiya" Trust, devised a method of building
the earthen dam without using scaffolding. By building the dam without scaf-
folding, more than 10,000 cubic meters of lumber were saved, about 800 workers
were freed for other work, and a great deal of time was saved.(l)
A large quarry supplies the construction needs of the dam.(3) In Jan-
uary 1954, there were 30 large excavators, including 22 walking excavators,
in operation at the quarry (1), and 10-12 trains an hour were delivering
gravel and sand from the quarry-0) This is the first time in the history
of Soviet hydraulic construction that a high-pressure earthen dam is being
built, not from the type of earth normally used for such dams, but from sand
and gravel. Reinforced concrete structures with a total volume of one million
cubic meters are being built in the dam proper.(3)
Creation of the Mingechaur Hydraulic Center will make it possible to
improve greatly the supply of inexpensive hydroelectric power for Azerbaydzhan
SSR, industry to irrigate the Kura-Araksinskaya Plain, and to eliminate annual
floods which result in heavy agricultural losses.(3) Four irrigation canals
will originate at the reservoir. One of them, the Verkhne-Karabakhskiy Canal,
will receive water from the reservoir via a tunnel through the mountain. This
canal is scheduled to go into operation in 1954.(1) In 1952, it was stated
that a network of large canals would irrigate 1.3 million hectares of new land
in the Mil'skaya, Muganskaya, and Shirvanskaya steppes of the Kura -Araks inskaya
Plain, and that the hydraulic center would improve conditions for navigation
on the river, eliminate swamps, and relieve areas suffering from malaria.(5)
The Mingechaur Hydraulic Center is expected to provide inexpensive hydro-
electric power for the petroleum industry, which is he leading branch of in-
dustry in the Azerbaydzhan SSR, and to open oppui,unitiec for electrification
of agriculture. Electric traction will be used in railroad transportation.
The Kura Steamship Line will operate the year around. There will be suffi-
cient electric power for industrial and food enterprises to expand production
not only in the principal cities of the republic but also in Nukha, Geokchay,
Agdam, Yevlakh, Bards, Kasum-Ismailovskiy, and Stepanakert.
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 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/09/08: CIA-RDP80-00809A000700160232-5
The hydraulic center, named for the small ancient settlement of Mingechaur,
is being built where the Kura, the main waterway of the Transcaucasus, pours
into a canyon formed by the mountains of the Boz-Dag chain. Settlements for
the builders of the aydraulic center were created on either bank of the river
at the foot of Boz-Dag. Over 5 years ago they were combined into the new
city of Mingechaur. The city has three intermediate schools, six kindergartens
and three nurseries, a medical center, an FZO school, an outdoor motion picture
theater, and a Palace of Culture.(l)
1. Moscow, Pravda, 10 Jan 54
2. Moscow, Gudok, 5 Dec 53
3. Moscow, Izvestiya, 10 Jan 54
4. Leningradskaya Pravda, 2 Jul 53
5. Moscow, Velikiye Stroyki Kommunizma (Great Construction Projects of
Communism) by M.M. Davydov, 1952
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