"Yuzhsibreki" project and its predecessors

One of the most important aspects of environmental history is the history of the development and transformation of aquatic ecosystems, which play an important role in human life and represent an essential condition for any stable state. In the USSR ideas for integral water resources management were studied for decades and various schemes of water resources reallocation were proposed. As the Aral-Caspian problem worsened/, specialists focused on the vast territory of the Ob-Irtysh interfluve which had the necessary characteristics. The article considers one of the most ambitious projects on the river runoff redistribution for economic purposes, i.e. the Yuzhsibreki project developed by A. Miller-Shulga. The project suggested a complex multi-stage water transfer scheme from the Ob, Irtysh, Ishim, Tom, Chulym, Yenisei, Angara and Lena to the Aral-Caspian region According to A. Miller-Shulga this project was to result in the creation of a «new socialist lake-river network»...