Danube–Black Sea Canal
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Danube–Black Sea Canal | |
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Location | Constanța County |
Country | Romania |
Specifications | |
Length | 95.6 km (59.4 mi) (Main branch: 64.4 km (40.0 mi)) (Northern branch: 31.2 km (19.4 mi)) |
Maximum boat length | 296 m (971 ft) (main branch) 119.4 m (392 ft) (northern branch) |
Maximum boat beam | 22.8 m (75 ft) (main branch) 11.4 m (37 ft) (northern branch) |
Maximum boat draft | 5.5 m (18 ft) (main branch) 4 m (13 ft) (northern branch) |
Locks | 4 (2 on main branch + 2 on northern branch) |
History | |
Date completed | May 1984 (main branch) October 1987 (northern branch) |
Geography | |
Start point | Danube at Cernavodă |
End point | Black Sea at Agigea and Năvodari |
Beginning coordinates | 44°20′46″N 28°01′23″E / 44.346°N 28.023°E |
Ending coordinates | 44°06′00″N 28°38′17″E / 44.100°N 28.638°E |
Branch(es) | Poarta Albă-Midia Năvodari Canal (northern branch) |
Official River Code | XV.1.10b |
The Danube–Black Sea Canal (Romanian: Canalul Dunăre–Marea Neagră) is a navigable canal in Romania, which runs from Cernavodă on the Danube river, via two branches, to Constanța and Năvodari on the Black Sea. Administered from Agigea, it is an important part of the waterway link between the North Sea and the Black Sea via the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal. The main branch of the canal, with a length of 64.4 km (40.0 mi), which connects the Port of Cernavodă with the Port of Constanța, was built in 1976–1984, while the northern branch, known as the Poarta Albă–Midia Năvodari Canal, with a length of 31.2 km (19.4 mi), connecting Poarta Albă and the Port of Midia, was built between 1983 and 1987.
Although the idea of building a navigable canal between the Danube and the Black Sea is old, the first concrete attempt was made between 1949 and 1953, when the communist authorities of the time used this opportunity to eliminate political opponents, so the canal became notorious as the site of labor camps, when at any given time, between 5,000 and 20,000 detainees, mostly political prisoners, worked on its excavation. The total number of prisoners used as labor force during this period is unknown, with the total number of deaths being estimated at several tens of thousands. The construction works of the Danube–Black Sea Canal were to be resumed 20 years later, in different conditions.
Geography
The course of the canal follows mostly the course of the former river Carasu,[1] originally a tributary of the Danube. Therefore, hydrographically it also has the function of conveying the runoff from a 1,031 km2 (398 sq mi) drainage basin to the Black Sea.
The main branch extends from
At Poarta Albă the canal bifurcates into two branches. The main canal goes to the south, towards the Port of Constanța Sud Agigea. It passes near the settlements of Murfatlar, Cumpăna and Agigea. On its reach it is joined on the northeast bank by tributaries Valea Seacă and Lazu and on the southwest bank by the Siminoc, Șerplea, Potârnichea and Agigea.[1]
The northern branch, the Poarta Albă–Midia Năvodari Canal, goes towards the Port of Midia. It passes near Nazarcea, Lumina, Ovidiu and Năvodari. On its reach it is joined by tributaries Cocoș, Nazarcea and Valea Adâncă.
Motivation
The main reasons for the building of the canal were to circumvent the Danube Delta which is difficult to navigate, shorten the distance to the Black Sea and several issues related to the loading and unloading of ships.[2]
In its delta, the Danube is divided into three main branches, none of which is suited to optimal navigation:[2] the Chilia branch is the deepest, but its mouths were not stable, which made navigation dangerous; the Sulina branch is not deep enough for maritime ships and it also used to be isolated from the railroad system; the Sfântu Gheorghe branch is shallow and sinuous.
At the time when the decision to build the canal was taken, it was officially announced that these works would also serve a secondary purpose, that of land reclamation, with the drainage of marshes in the area.[2] Also during the construction period, the Danube–Black Sea Canal was advertised as a fast and direct connection between the Soviet Volga–Don Canal and Central Europe.[2]
Dimensions
The 64.4 km (40.0 mi) main branch reduces the distance by boat from Constanța to Cernavodă by ca. 400 km (250 mi).[3][4][5][6] It has a width of 90–150 m (300–490 ft) and a depth of 7 m (23 ft);[3][4][6] the northern arm has a length of 31.2 km (19.4 mi), width of 50–75 m (164–246 ft) and a depth of 5.5 m (18 ft).[3] The radius of its sharpest bends is 3 km (1.9 mi) for the main branch, and 1.2 km (0.75 mi), for the northern branch.[3][6]
The waterway passes through the towns of Medgidia and Murfatlar, both of which have been turned into
In its final phase, the canal took over nine years to construct; 381,000,000 m3 (1.35×1010 cu ft) of soil were excavated[3] (greater than the amount involved in building the Panama and Suez canals),[7] and 5,000,000 m3 (180,000,000 cu ft) of concrete were used for the locks and support walls.[3]
History
Precedents
The earliest plans for building this canal were drawn in the late 1830s. The 1829
This gave the Austrians the idea to dig a canal to connect the Danube with the Black Sea at the shortest point before the Delta, between
In its place, a new Brăila–Istanbul route was established. However, by 1844, the depth of the Sulina branch had decreased to 7–9 feet, from 13–14 feet in 1836, due to lack of dredging by the Russian authorities which controlled the passage. The Austrian government made a new attempt to cut a canal, sending the military engineer Colonel Baron Karl von Bigaro to prospect the land. But the idea had to be abandoned again due to technical problem, first of all due to the unfitness of the port of Constanța for large international trade.[10]
In 1850, the Moldavian scholar
The Crimean War of 1854–1856, added a military and strategical dimension for this plan. The British and French allies landed at Varna in the summer of 1854, followed by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Wallachia and Moldavia and the advancement of Ottoman and Austrian ones. In 1855, the French government put forward an initiative, and the Ottomans approved it, for the cheapest solution: build a strategic road between Cernavodă and Constanța. Engineer Charles Lalanne was put in charge of these works, that started in the summer of 1855 and were finished by the year's end. According to the newspaper Zimbrul of Iași, the work was performed by 300 physically strong men of moderate character selected in Moldavia and Wallachia.[13]
The building of the road did not eliminate, however, the need for a canal, and the Austrian government renewed its persuading efforts. According to
The construction plans for the canal took a different turn with the signing of the
As the
In 1927, the Romanian engineer
First attempt (1949–1953)
The idea of starting the construction of the Danube–Black Sea Canal seems to have been suggested to Romanian leader
On May 25, 1949, the
In October 1949, the authorities established a General Directorate to oversee both the works and the penal facilities, answering directly to the national leadership. Its first head was
On July 18, 1953, the project came to a discreet halt[5][11][17][20] (according to some sources, the closure had been ordered by Stalin himself, as early as 1952).[11] From 1959, part of the works built between 1949 and 1953 was used for the Mircea Vodă irrigation complex, later developed into the Carasu irrigation system, while another part of the excavations was capitalized during the construction of the northern branch of the canal, 30 years later.[3]
Forced labor and repression
Part of a series on the |
Socialist Republic of Romania |
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Prison camps sprang up all along the projected canal route in the summer of 1949 and were quickly filled with prisoners brought from jails from throughout the country. These first arrivals were soon joined by newly arrested people who were sent to the canal in ever increasing numbers. By 1950 the forced
The construction effort surpassed the resources available to the Romanian economy in the 1950s. The canal was assigned inferior machinery, part of which had already been used on the Soviet
Sums allocated for prisoners' health, hygiene and nutrition declined dramatically over the years. Food rations were kept to a minimum, and prisoners would often resort to hunting mice and other small animals, or even consuming grass in an attempt to supplement their diet.[17]
Starting in summer 1949, the commander of the Canal security troops was lieutenant colonel Augustin Albon.[27] According to the 2006 report of the Tismăneanu Commission, Albon employed torture methods against the detainees, and personally killed many of them.[28] Other security officers who used often cruel and deadly methods with the prisoners were senior lieutenant Liviu Borcea, at the Midia Camp; captain Petre Burghișan, at the Galeș and Peninsula camps; lieutenant Chirion at Peninsula; captain Nicolae Doicaru , director of the Securitate's Regional Directorate Constanța; and sergeant Grigore Ion Iliescu.[28][29]
The prisoners were dispossessed farmers who had attempted to resist
According to Marius Oprea, the death rate among political prisoners at the canal was extremely high; for instance, in the winter of 1951–52, there were one to three detainees dying every day at the Poarta Albă camp, near Galeșu village.[22] The Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania presented an estimate of several thousand deaths among the political prisoners used in the project, significantly higher than 656 officially recorded by an official report from 1968.[21] Journalist Anne Applebaum had previously claimed that over 200,000 had died in its construction,[33][dubious ] as a result of exposure, unsafe equipment, malnutrition, accidents, tuberculosis and other diseases, over-work, etc.,[34] while political analyst Vladimir Socor had estimated the number of deaths to be "considerably in excess of 10,000".[17] According to Andrei Muraru, a historian and adviser to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, the project became known as The Death Canal (Canalul Morții).[25] It has also been called "a cesspool of immense human suffering and mortality".[35] Investigations conducted by the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Romania (AFDPR) Constanța, based on death records from the villages found along the Canal route, indicate 6,355 "Canal workers" (a euphemism for detainees) died during the 1949–1953 period.[36]
In parallel, authorities left aside sectors of employment for skilled workers, kept in strict isolation from all others,
After the cessation of works, in 1953, the canal camps remained in existence for another year, and their prisoners progressively relocated, to similar conditions at other work sites in Northern Dobruja.[5][11][17] Penal facilities on the canal site were shut down in mid-1954.[17]
Trial
Blame for the debilitating and unsuccessful works was eventually placed on a group of alleged
Three people were executed (the engine driver Nichita Dumitrescu, and the engineers Aurel Rozei-Rozenberg and Nicolae Vasilescu-Colorado); others were imprisoned for various terms.[5][11][30] Defendants in a second group, around the engineer Gheorghe Crăciun, were sentenced to various harsh penalties (including three life imprisonments).[5][11] Torture was applied by a Securitate squad led by Alexandru Nicolschi, as a means to obtain forced confessions.[11]
Construction (1973–1987)
In June 1973, the project, with a completely new design,
The general designer of the works of the navigable canal and of the Port of Constanța Sud was the Design Institute of Road, Water and Air Transport (IPTANA) from Bucharest, while the Institute of Hydroelectric Studies and Design (ISPH) designed the works for the Danube and Cernavodă areas.[38] New and large machinery, produced inside Romania, was introduced to the site.[4] The southern arm was completed in May 1984, with the northern arm being inaugurated in October 1987.[4][5]
The cost of building the canal is estimated to be around 2 billion dollars, and was supposed to be recovered in 50 years. However, as of 2005, it has an yearly income of only a little over 3 million euros.[39][unreliable source?]
In 2018, more than 32.9 million tonnes of cargo were carried over the Danube–Black Sea Canal (an increase of 4.7% compared to the previous year).[38]
In art
For much of the 1950s, the Danube–Black Sea Canal was celebrated in agitprop literature (notably, in Geo Bogza's 1950 reportage Începutul epopeii, "The Beginning of the Epic", and in Petru Dumitriu's Drum fără pulbere, "Dustless Road"),[2][5] music (Leon Klepper's symphonic poem Dunărea se varsă în mare, "The Danube Flows to the Sea"),[2] and film (Ion Bostan's 1951 Canalul Dunăre-Marea Neagră, o construcție a păcii – "The Danube–Black Sea Canal, a Construction of Peace"). During the 1980s, the song "Magistrala Albastră" ("The Blue Freeway"), performed by Dan Spătaru and Mirabela Dauer and using the Canal as its setting, was frequently broadcast in official and semi-official contexts.[37]
During the period of
Inmates of the labor camps
This is a partial list of notable inmates of the Danube–Black Sea Canal labor camps; the symbol † indicates those who died there.
- Emanoil Bârzotescu
- Arsenie Boca
- Szilárd Bogdánffy
- Matei Boilă
- Fortunát Boros †
- Ioan Gh. Botez †
- Barbu Brezianu
- Radu Câmpeanu
- George Matei Cantacuzino
- Ion Caraion
- Ion Cârja
- Radu Ciuceanu
- Andrei Ciurunga
- Alexandru Claudian
- Vladimir Constantinescu
- Corneliu Coposu
- Gheorghe Cristescu
- Dimitrie Cuclin
- Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu
- Gheorghe Eminescu
- Constantin Galeriu
- Șerban Ghica
- George Ivașcu
- Pyotr Leshchenko
- Petru Manoliu
- Leonard Mociulschi
- Alexandru Nicolici †
- Emil Pălăngeanu †
- Gherman Pântea
- Ovidiu Papadima
- Aurel Popa
- Pavel Popa
- Ștefan Radof
- Toma Spătaru
- Nicolae Scarlat Stoenescu
- Franț Țandără
- Richard Wurmbrand
- Sabina Wurmbrand
See also
- Danube–Bucharest Canal
- Bystroye Canal
- Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant
- Mass killings under communist regimes
- Tineretului Statue
Notes
- ^ a b c Zaharia, L.; Pișota, I. (2003). "Apele Dobrogei" (PDF). Analele Universității București: Geografie (in Romanian): 116–117.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Nicolas Spulber, "The Danube – Black Sea Canal and the Russian Control over the Danube", in Economic Geography, vol. 30, no.3 (July 1954), pp. 236–245
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "The history of the Danube–Black Sea Canal" (PDF). iptana.ro. pp. 339–353. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
- ^ a b c d e f g Tibor Iván Berend, An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 155–156
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Adrian Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc ("On the Shoulders of Marx. An Incursion into the History of Romanian Communism"), Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2005, Chapter 9.4, pp. 300–307
- ^ a b c d e f United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Inland Transport Committee TRANS/SC.3/2003/3
- ^ David Turnock, "The Danube – Black Sea Canal and its impact on Southern Romania", in Geo Journal 12:1 (1986), pp. 65–79
- ^ Petrescu, pp. 136–137
- ^ Petrescu, p. 138
- ^ Petrescu, pp. 138–139
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Valentin Hossu-Longin, "Procesul Canalului Morții" ("The Trial of the Death Canal") – in Ziua, March 11, 2006 Archived from the original on January 21, 2008
- ^ Petrescu, p. 139
- ^ a b Petrescu, pp. 139–140
- ^ a b Petrescu, p. 141
- ^ Adrian Bucurescu – Tragicul Canal Dunăre – Marea Neagră – România Liberă, March 12, 2010
- ^ Roxana Roseti – Canalul Dunăre-Marea Neagră. Imagini inedite de la inaugurarea de acum 30 de ani – EVZ Special, 27 Mai 2014 [1]
- ^ . Retrieved November 27, 2021.
- ^ Treptow, 1996, p. 523
- ^ Gabriel Stegărescu – Paradoxurile istoriei: În România stalinistă, un spion rus fură identitatea unui legionar – Historia [2] Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Tismăneanu, pp. 139, 300
- ^ ISBN 978-973-50-1836-8, pp. 253-261
- ^ a b Iancu, Mariana (September 9, 2017). "Poveștile cumplite din abatorul terorii Peninsula. Lăgărul comunist de muncă unde moartea era o binecuvântare" [Horrific stories from the Peninsula slaughterhouse of terror. The communist labor camp where death was a blessing]. Adevărul (in Romanian). Retrieved August 11, 2021.
- ^ Gombos, Stelian. "Temnițele și închisorile comuniste din România – câteva referințe despre numărul lor, activitatea, volumul de încarcerare, capacitatea și dispunerea lor geografică..." Historia (in Romanian). Retrieved September 12, 2022.
- ^ "Unfinished Canal". Time. August 24, 1953. Archived from the original on 2013-08-25. Retrieved January 16, 2021.
- ^ a b Mutler, Alison (August 8, 2020). "Buried In A Casino Wall, A Dark Secret From Romania's Communist Past". www.rferl.org. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved September 12, 2022.
- ISBN 1-59420-065-3.
- ^ Iancu, Mariana (January 2019). "Augustin Albon, torționarul care a inventat "stâlpul infamiei": "Cu gamela să săpați Canalul, bandiților"" [Augustin Albon, the torturer who invented the "pillar of infamy": "Dig the Canal with your canteens, bandits"]. Adevărul (in Romanian). Retrieved August 13, 2021.
- ^ a b "Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România – Raport Final" (PDF), www.wilsoncenter.org (in Romanian), Bucharest, p. 180, 2006
- ^ Bălan, Camelia (August 12, 2013). "Cine au fost torționarii din Dobrogea" [Who were the torturers from Dobruja]. Ziarul de Constanța (in Romanian). Retrieved August 13, 2021.
- ^ a b Joseph Gordon, Eastern Europe: Romania (1954), pp. 299–301 Archived 2007-06-15 at the Wayback Machine, at the American Jewish Committee
- ^ The Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance Archived 2007-07-03 at the Wayback Machine, page for Room 17, Forced Labor
- ^ Tismăneanu, p. 36
- ISBN 9780767900560.
- ^ Sherrer, Hans. "Gulag: A History". forejustice.org.
- ISBN 0-19-511993-2
- ^ Stănescu Vol. III, p. 280
- ^ a b c Cristina Arvatu, Ilarion Țiu, "Basmele Canalului" ("Fairy Tales of the Canal") Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine, in Jurnalul Național, September 26, 2006
- ^ a b "Documentar în imagini: 35 de ani de la inaugurarea Canalului Dunăre – Marea Neagră" [Photo documentary: 35 years since the inauguration of the Danube – Black Sea Canal]. agerpres.ro (in Romanian). Archived from the original on 2021-11-13. Retrieved 2021-02-09.
- ^ Marian Cosor, "Canalul Dunăre-Marea Neagră își va scoate banii în 633 de ani" ("The Danube – Black Sea Canal Will Absorb Its Construction Cost in 633 Years") Archived 2007-02-08 at the Wayback Machine, on Radio Constanța, May 26, 2005
- ISBN 1-56324-633-3
References
- Cherneva, Toni; Rotariu, Oana. "Reflections on a dark past – the forced labour camps of the Danube Delta" (PDF). www.breiling.org. Retrieved May 22, 2021.
- Petrescu, Florian (2009). Din istoria dacoromânilor. Vol. 1. București: Verus. ISBN 978-973-7754-57-8.
- Stănescu, Mircea (2010). Reeducarea în România comunistă. (Reeducation in communist Romania) Vol. III (in Romanian). București, Romania: Polirom. ISBN 978-973-46-1626-8.
- Tismăneanu, Vladimir (2003). Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism. ISBN 0-520-23747-1.
- Treptow, Kurt W. (1996). A History of Romania. Iasi: Center for Romania Studies. ISBN 978-0-88033-345-0.