Volga-Baltic Waterway

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For a medieval trade route, see Volga trade route

Map of the Volga-Baltic Waterway.

The Volga-Baltic Waterway, formerly known as the Mariinsk Canal System, is a series of canals and rivers in Russia which link the Volga River with the Baltic Sea. Its overall length between Cherepovets and Lake Onega is 368 km.

After Peter the Great wrested the Gulf of Finland from Sweden, it was necessary to provide a secure means of river transportation with the Russian hinterland. The earliest Vyshny Volochyok canal system, completed by 1709, was intended to provide for this.

Under Alexander I of Russia, the traditional waterway through Vychny Volochyok was complemented by the Tikhvin canal system (1811) and the Mariinsk canal system (1810), the latter becoming by far the most popular of the three.

The Mariinsk canal system was an outstanding monument of early 19th-century hydrotechnics, which proved to be of vital importance to the national economy. The system started in Rybinsk and passed through the Sheksna River, Lake Beloye, Kovzha River, the artificial Novomariinsky Canal, the Vytegra River to Lake Onega. Thereupon vessels sailed through the Svir River, Lake Ladoga, and the Neva River to the Gulf of Finland.

In 1829, they opened the Northern Dvina Canal, which connects the Sheksna River (one of the Volga's tributaries) through the Kubenskoye Lake with the Northern Dvina, flowing into the White Sea. In the following decades, the system was further expanded, with three more canals - Belozersky, Onezhsky, Novoladozhsky - inaugurated towards the end of the century.

The infamous White Sea-Baltic Canal was constructed by gulag prisoners at enormous cost in the 1930s. Its effectiveness has been questioned, however.

In recent years, the Volga-Baltic Waterway has gained additional importance as a tourist route for boats sailing along the Silver Ring of Russia.