Dnieprostroi.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20678, 15 October 1932, Page 14

Dnieprostroi.

The official opening of the Dnieprostroi dam and hydro-electric plant, announced in tho cable news during the week, marks the completion of one of the most ambitious projects of the Five Year Plan and of perhaps the largest hydro-electric undertaking in the world. " Socialism," Lenin used to say, " is " the Soviet power plus electrifica"tion"; and it is this almost mystical faith in olectricity, so noticeable in modern Russia, which in part accounts for the spectacular dimensions of the Dnieprostroi scheme. It is to generate 756,000 horse-power, as against Niagara's 430,000, while its output will he 3,000,000 kilowatts a year, sufficient to serve 70,000 square miles and a population of 16,000,000. Yet ' the present number of potential consumers in the Dnieprostroi area is not more than a million. But the Soviet Government is making strenuous efforts to develop tho region industrially; und according to oflicial figures some 500 million roubles has already been spent on new plant. Even so, most foreign mid inuny Russian exports are convinced that the money spent on Dnieprostroi could more usefully havii been spent elsewhere, particularly as there is still a desperate shortage of capital in Russia. Though there were far-reaching plans, in the reign of the last Tsar and even as far back as the reign of Catherine the Great, to turn to account the energy of the Dnieper rapids, all were abandoned, because the region, which consists of thinly populated and arid sleppe, .seemed ununited foi intensive iudiislrial or agricultural development. ITerr Theodor Sieherl, a German who has had unusual opportunities of studying hydro-electric de-

vclopment in Kussia since the revolution, is particularly severe, on Dnieprostroi: «.

Wliv, then, was Dnieprostroi constructed? Views cliffor on the point. Some think that: the central authorities, who had not done an much as they might have done for Ukraine, wanted to Rive this dependency a pretty plaything. Others, whose opinion I share, hold that the temptation to build "the !>r.-ai-cst uater-|>o\ver station in the world " ivm irresistible to the leaders of the Soviet (lovernment. Dnieprostroi is an imposing achievement; and. indeed, Pniepicstroi apart, (lie liolsheviks have achieved remarkable tiling* in the domain of electrification. . . . All the same, the foreign observer cannot avoid the impression that the work lias been less thriftily done than in countries where a tree economy prevails.

It: can he said in support of ilerr tficbert's view that at least one other Soviet, hydro-electricity undertaking has been more spectacular than economic. In 1922 the construction was begun of a power-station at Tages, to supply Tidis with electricity. Apart from the fact that there was no manufacturing- industry in Tidis, electricity could have been generated much more cheaply by using petrol from the neighbouring oil-wells of Baku. The Tages station was opened in UJ27, having i-o.st .10,000,000 roubles instead of the estimated ij,000,000, and so far has operated at a. heavy Joss. It cannot be said, however, that over-enthusiasm for hydro-electric development is a failing peculiar to the Kussians.