How This Lake Saved the Soviets

[00:00:04]In the winter of 1941, the city of Lennengrad was surrounded.

[00:00:11]Nearly 3 million people encircled by the German army to the south and the Finnish army to its north with no food, no fuel, and no way out. The siege had begun in September, but by November, the city's food supply had less than 2 months left.

[00:00:29]The death toll was already climbing towards what would eventually become the largest loss of civilian life in a single city, possibly in the entire history of warfare. And then the temperature dropped far enough for the ice on Lake Leoga to bear the weight of a truck. Now, what followed was known as the road of life. the ice road that crossed a frozen lake under artillery fire every night for nearly three winters. It's one of the most extraordinary stories of human survival in the 20th century. Trucks drove out carrying starving civilians. Trucks drove back carrying food, medicine, and ammunition. Meaning this road was the only connection between a dying city and the living world. It likely saved hundreds of thousands of lives. So in today's episode, let's talk about Lake Leoga.

[00:01:27][music] [music] Lake Loga is the largest lake in all of Europe. It sits approximately 50 km from what is now called St. Petersburg. It covers approximately 17,700 km, making it the largest lake in Europe and the 15th largest in the world. Its maximum depth reaches 230 m in the northern basin. The lake has a asymmetric character. The northern shore is more rocky and indented. It's more of a classic fjorded landscape of granite headlands, islands, and narrow bays, carved by glaciers into some of the most dramatic freshwater shoreline in all of Europe. However, the southern shore is flat and low. It's more rey and marshy at the water's edge, a complete contrast to the northern shore. Now, the lake drains westward into the Neva River, one of the shortest, widest, and most powerful rivers in Europe. just 74 kilometers long but carrying the outflow of an enormous watershed that includes not only Loga but also lakes onga Sima and the entire river network of the Corellia. The Neva discharges into the Gulf of Finland at the city of St. Petersburg and it is Neva's float sourced from Lake Loga which gives the city its character, its floods, its industrial power and its unmistakable beauty.

[00:03:24]Now, Lake Ledogga's geology is surprisingly similar to many of the large lakes we have here in North America. In geological terms, it's an extremely young lake. The Scandinavian ice sheet at its maximum extent roughly 20,000 years ago was 2 km thick over the Loga region. That weight depressed the crust of the Earth by hundreds of meters. And as the ice retreated, beginning around 15,000 years ago, the water that had been locked in the glaciers melted and pulled into the basin that the ice had carved, this produced a series of lakes and connected water bodies that changed configuration repeatedly as the ice margin shifted and different drainage routes opened and closed. The Loka basin we know today stabilized around approximately 4,000 years ago. And like the area around Hudson Bay in Canada, the region around Lake Ledoga is slowly rising. The weight of that ice sheet that melted is going to take a long time to recover from. And thus, the crust is still rising, about 4 to 6 mm every year in the northern Loga region. On a human scale, that's almost imperceptible. But over geological time scales, it will eventually tilt the lake's drainage pattern and alter its connection to adjacent water bodies. The northern shores rocky character reflects the ancient granite of the fenoscandian shield. Also sometimes known as the Baltic shield. This represents some of the oldest exposed rock in all of Europe. The southern shores flatness reflects glacial sediments deposited by retreating ice. It's softer, younger material that weathers differently and produces a completely different landscape from the rocky north.

[00:05:17]Long before St. Petersburg existed here and Russia even existed as a political entity, Lake Loga was at the center of one of the most important trade routes in the medieval world. The Verangians, the Norse traders and warriors who gave Russia its early ruling dynasty and its very name, crossed Loga on what they called the route from the Verangians to the Greeks, a trade artery running from Scandinavia through the Baltic up the Nava River into Lake Leogga and then south through the river systems of Russia across the Black Sea and into the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople.

[00:05:56]Silk, spices, and Byzantine gold moved north along this route. Fur, amber, and Norse silver moved south. It was one of the most defining commercial corridors of the early medieval world. And Lake Ledoga was a key stopping point. On the southern shore of Leoga, at a point where the Vulc River enters the lake, stands the site of Staya Ledoga, meaning old Leoga. one of the oldest towns in Russia and by some accounts the first capital of the Ruric dynasty that would eventually rule Kievin Roose and lay the political foundations of the further Russian state. The settlement dates to at least the 8th century CE but may also be even older. It was a Vangian trading post, a fortified exchange point where Norse merchants met the Slavic and Finnish peoples of the surrounding forest and the goods of two civilizations changed hands. In addition to its fascinating history, Lake Loka also has a fascinating ecology. The lake supports approximately 53 species of fish, including landlocked populations of Atlantic salmon and brown trout. fish whose ancestors entered from the sea when the lake was still connected to the Baltic and who have since adapted to freshwater life over thousands of years of isolation. But perhaps the most remarkable resident of Lake Loga is the Ledoga ringed seal, a freshwater subspecies of the ringed seal found only in this lake. Its ancestors were marine seals that colonized the lake when it was still connected to the Baltic Sea at the end of the last ice age. estimated to be around 10,000 years ago. As the land rose and the connection to the sea was severed, the seal population was trapped inland. And then over thousands of generations, it has adapted to life in fresh water. However, today the Loga seal is classified as vulnerable. Its population estimated as somewhere between 3,000 to 5,000 individuals. It has been reduced by historical hunting, by entanglement in fishing nets, and by the disturbance of its breeding habitat on the lakes's ice.

[00:08:09]We started this video by talking about the lakes's importance during World War II because on September 8th of 1941, German forces completed the encirclement of Lennengrad, cutting the last landroad into the city. What followed was the longest and most destructive siege in modern history. 872 days during which nearly 800,000 civilians died, the majority from starvation. Now to understand this siege, we need to understand the geography of this region because the siege was determined by Lake Leogga. The German and Finnish forces controlled the land to the north and the south of the city. To the west was the Baltic Sea and to the east was Lake Leogga. The lake to the east was the only gap in the encirclement, but it was a lake. It wasn't a road. In summer, ships could cross it, but the Germans controlled the air over the lake and bombed the supply convoys. The quantities that could be delivered by boat were a fraction of what the city actually needed. The food rations for the civilians fell to 125 g of bread per day. That was just not enough food, leading to the mass death nearly 800,000 civilians like I mentioned previously. However, in November of 1941, the temperature dropped to minus 15° in Lennengrad and it stayed there and thus ice began to form on Lake Loga creating the famous ice road. The Roga Ziznney, the road of life was opened on 22nd November of 1941. The ice was thin, terrifyingly thin in places, and trucks broke through it and sank with their drivers. German aircraft bombed the road. Artillery shelled it. The ice was marked with fur branches. The holes where trucks had gone through the ice left open as warnings. Drivers kept their cab doors open so they could jump if the ice gave way. Many did not even jump in time.

[00:10:12]However, between 1941 and 1942, roughly 360,000 tons of supplies crossed the Dogga's ice. In the other direction, approximately 550,000 civilians were evacuated. The weakest first, the children, the starving, and the dying.

[00:10:31]The lake was the difference between the death of a city and its now survival.

[00:10:36]The road of life was brutal and dangerous and it cost lives even as it saved them. But it held and thus the city of Lennengrad held. Surprisingly the road of life operated for three winters. It summer it was replaced by a supply route across the open lake. Still under German attack and still dangerous.

[00:10:56]The siege was finally broken on 27th January 1944 when Soviet forces reestablished a land corridor to the city. The total civilian death toll was somewhere between 800,000 and possibly 1.5 million people. The precise figure remains contested and the full count may never be possible. Today on the southern shores of Lake Leoga, a series of monuments are built to commemorate the road of life. It is visited by Russians in large numbers. It is almost unknown in the west. The lake that saved Leningrad has never fully entered the consciousness of the world outside Russia, which says something about whose stories really get told.

[00:11:43]Today, the city of Lennengrad is known as St. Petersburg. It's home to roughly 5.5 million people, making it one of the largest cities in Europe. The vast majority of its drinking water comes from the Neva River. The same Neva River which flows out from Lake Loga.

[00:12:01]Unfortunately, the lake has been under significant pollution pressure for decades. Paper and pulp mills on the lake shores discharged organic waste that depleted oxygen in the southern basins through much of the Soviet period. Phosphate runoff from agriculture developed alol blooms. This clouded the water and reduced its biological quality. An aluminum smelter at Volkov on the southern shore contributed heavy metal contamination and the Soviet industrial economy treated the lake as both a water source and a kind of waste disposal system simultaneously.

[00:12:37]The good news is is that water quality has improved since the Soviet period.

[00:12:42]The closure or modernization of some industrial facilities, the reduction in agricultural phosphate runoff, and the modernization in wastewater treatment have produced measurable improvements in the lakes's water quality since the 1990s.

[00:12:57]There are other settlements on the shores of Lake Loga. There is Volv located close to where the Vulov River enters the lake. It grew up around one of the first hydroelectric power stations in the Soviet Union. The Volov hydroelectric station completed in 1926 which provided power to Lennengrad through the early Soviet period and is still operational today. The city is an industrial settlement of roughly 45,000 people. Its economy built around the power station and an aluminum smelter which has since closed its doors.

[00:13:32]Industries whose environmental impact on the southern Lagod basin has been significant and long-term. In the far north of the lake sits Sortavala, a town that's located in Russia but has a Finnish character. That's because historically this city has been part of Finland. And we can see this through its architecture. The art nouvo and national romantic buildings of the early 20th century give the town a visual language different from the Soviet settlements on the southern shore of the lake. It is the gateway to the Volam archipelago.

[00:14:07]the Russian monastery complex in the northern lake that is one of the most important sites in Russian Orthodox Christianity. Its monastery founded in the 10th century and its islands are among the most striking landscapes on the lake. Sort of is a town that has changed countries twice in the last 100 years. Its residents navigating an identity that sits between the Finnish history and the Russian present. So, in a way, Lake Ledoga is more than just a lake. Yes, it's the largest lake in Europe, but it's also a lake that helped save one of the largest cities in Europe. It's also a lake that's home to one of the rarest marine mammals, the Loga Ringed Seal. But despite its importance in terms of historical events and its ecology, the lake today faces significant challenges. And like I mentioned previously, the biggest issue right now is industrial pollution. But there is one more challenge that I haven't discussed yet. A challenge that could potentially be the most catastrophic of all because scientists and environmental groups have raised long-term concerns regarding nuclear waste, which pose potential contamination risks to Lake Loga and of course the drinking water of St. Petersburg. Because during the 1950s, the Soviet military used the islands in the northern part of Lake Leogga for nuclear weapons testing. Even today, Lake Loga still suffers high radiation levels. Scientists have recorded radiation levels up to 400 micro severs per hour. Similarly, in the 1960s, a specialized mine carrier ship named the kit was used as a floating storage device for radioactive waste. Now, that ship sank in the northwestern part of the lake. It's since been removed, but obviously traces of the radioactive elements can occasionally still be detected in the sediment of the lake.

[00:16:08]Environmental groups have also discovered irradiated bunkers in the broader St. Petersburg and Lake Leogga region. Like many of the lakes I discuss on this channel, unfortunately, Lake Loga isn't really wellnown here in North America. But of course, that does not mean it's any less important. And on that note, I want to say thank you for watching this video till the end. If you made it all the way here and you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, why not go ahead and hit that subscribe button?

[00:16:38]I make videos like this two or three times a month. If you liked this video, I'm sure you'll like some of the upcoming content I have. And as always, I'll catch you in the next one. Peace.