Don (river). All the most interesting about one of the most majestic rivers of Europe

Don is one of the largest waterways in the south of the Russian Plain. He served earlier and continues to serve to this day as a source of inspiration for many creative natures: artists, poets, writers, etc. The source of the Don River originates in the Tula region. Further, it waves its waves through the Lipetsk, Voronezh, Volgograd and Rostov regions. Having passed a rather long and winding path, the river Don flows into the Taganrog bay, replenishing the Azov Sea with its waters.

Characteristics of the water body

Don - river, which is a typical lowland water artery in the steppe zone. Its length is 1870 kilometers, and the area of the basin is 422,000 square kilometers. The average water discharge under natural conditions is 900 cubic meters per second. Seventy percent of the flow occurs during the flood period. Ledostav in the upper reaches of the river begins in November and lasts until mid-April, and in the lower reaches from the beginning of December to the end of March. The hydrological regime of this river underwent a significant transformation by hydrotechnical construction and other types of economic activity of modern man. Here the Nikolaevsky, Konstantinovsky and Kochetovski hydrounits were built, as well as a fairly large Tsimlyansk reservoir. Shipping starts from the mouth of the Pine River , its length is 1600 km. In the upper reaches of the Don to the Voronezh tributary, the waters are clean, less polluted and in places very dirty. Through this majestic river there is a popular tourist route - Moscow-Rostov-on-Don.

Cities and tributaries

More than 5200 tributaries flow into the Don, the main ones are Seversky Donets, Black Kalitva, Pine, Voronezh, Bityug, Medveditsa, Ilyovlya, Western Manych, Khopyor and Sal. On the banks of this river are many cities and towns. The largest of them - Kalach-na-Donu, Rostov-on-Don, Volgodonsk, Azov, Liski and others. Due to the large population, industrial enterprises and developed agriculture, the water intake in the river by the beginning of the 1990s was more than 15 km ³ / year, the use of water - 10 km³, of which 5.8 km³ was spent for production needs, 2, 4 km³ - for irrigation. However, by the end of the 1990s, due to the economic crisis (reduction in production and destruction of agriculture), the use of water decreased almost by half.

"Our breadwinner, father Don Ivanovich"

These are the words of the ancient song of the Don Cossacks who moved to the lower reaches of the river. What only the epithets did not empower the Don peoples living on its shores. These are "waves of memory", and "the river of time", and "source of inspiration", and "the river is quiet Don", and many others. The basis of all these concepts is always the source, water, spring, genus. It is not accidental that the ancestors put a chapel at the sources of majestic rivers. Thus, a small fontanel, from which any water arteries begin, became a holy place. So in Novomoskovsk, where Don originates, in 1989 a monument was erected to this great water object of our Motherland - "The Source of the River Don". He is a sculpture - two naked boys riding horses. They symbolize two brothers, two rivers - Don and Shat, flowing from the Ivan-lake.

The Kaleidoscope of Peoples

Don - the river, carrying its waters for more than one thousand years. The various peoples living on its shores are replacing each other, and he is running and running ... The history records various names that were given to him in this or that era-Iran, Tanais, and many others. In the third century BC to the new era on the bank of the Don River, not far from the location of modern Rostov, came the Greek settlers and founded a colony. It was named after the water object - Tanais. According to the ideas of the ancient Greeks, this river shared Europe and Asia. Of course, you should not dispute this opinion, because even in the eighteenth century, many scientists of Russia thought so. And even the great Lomonosov MV in his work "On the layers of the earth" wrote that the Urals should not be considered a border between Asia and Europe, because the region of the Caucasus beyond the Don is a completely different reality. And today, despite the apparent uniqueness in this matter, no, no, and this point of view will come out. So the version with the Caucasus has not yet gone into the annals of history.

During the first millennium of the new era, control over this region first belonged to the Huns, then they were replaced by Khazars. In the ninth century, in the area of the modern Tsimlyansk reservoir, the Sarkel fortress was erected. It defended the north-western borders of the Khazar Khaganate until 1117. Time ruthlessly treated this ancient citadel, at the beginning of the last century its traces could hardly be discerned (now these territories are flooded with the waters of the Tsimlyansk reservoir).

XIII - XVI centuries

In the thirteenth century, the Don (river) survived the invasion of the Golden Horde, which destroyed all nomadic settlements. However, after a hundred years, trade began to resume here again. Whole lines of ships were drawn to the city of Tana, at that time the Genoese colony (the present Azov) - it was a slaveholding center. In the period from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries, Cossacks began to emerge in the lower reaches of the Don. So, in 1570, it won the championship among other similar entities - by seniority. Over time, it became the most numerous of all existing Cossack troops. Don's daredevils were well-organized and represented a rather serious force, compelling to reckon with themselves. Thus they became a constant headache for the house of the Romanovs, because it was in this environment that a spirit of rebelliousness, libertinism and a heightened sense of justice arose.

XVII-XVIII century

From 1670 to 1671 Don (river) is going through a Cossack revolt, raised by Stepan Razin. This uprising was truly "senseless and ruthless", accompanied by robbery and violence. However, even after the execution of Razin on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, the Don did not find peace. Only six years after these events a new riot broke out here, headed by Kondraty Bulavin. He was provoked by an active search for fugitive serfs. After the suppression of this uprising, the Don army lost some of its land, some Cossacks moved to the Kuban, beyond the Danube, and the other - to Romania and Turkey. The serfs were returned to the owners.

20th century

During the Soviet Union, this river was one of the main waterways of the building industry. The Donbass, a region located on the banks of the Seversky Donets, the right tributary of the Don, was gaining a great deal of strength. In addition to the coal mines already operating here since the end of the nineteenth century, machine-building and metallurgical plants, food and light industry enterprises, and chemical plants began to be built. And in 1948 the construction of the Tsimlyanskaya HPP and the reservoir began.

Description of the navigable opportunities of the majestic river

The shipping of the Don begins from Voronezh and to the Azov Sea. And the river works tirelessly. This waterway is one of the largest in the European part of the country, after such giants as the Volga and the Urals. The current of the Don is divided into three sections: Upper, Middle and Lower. So, the first of them stretched from the source and to the confluence of the inflow of the Quiet Pine. Further to the town of Kalach-na-Donu is the Average. And finally, the last section is located between Tsimlyansk reservoir and Taganrog Bay. In general, this river is difficult to navigate, because its path is rather meandering, respectively, and the survey is not ideal. In addition, there are shallow areas. And in the area of the Lower Don navigators have to make very clever turns: the readings of the instruments and the beep-warning are not all, one wrong movement of the steering wheel, and one can encounter a boat that has arisen because of the turn. This is the river Don. Rostov-on-Don gives rise to a 340-square-kilometer delta. The riverbed is divided into numerous channels and sleeves, which are called locally-the Erica and the Girla, among them the largest ones-Kalancha, Kuterma and Dead Donets. In winter, the river is covered with a thick layer of ice, on average, the ice sheet can last for three and a half months. During the high water level, the water level rises substantially, although for the most part the coast is steep, but low-lying places also exist. So spring floods on the Don - a common occurrence.

Channel History

The thought of linking two powerful water arteries (the Volga and the Don), and, therefore, the Azov and Caspian seas, to the canal, also visited the Turkish sultan Selim II, who traveled to Astrakhan in the sixteenth century. However, he could not put it into practice. After this plan, Peter the Great caught fire, but the Northern War distracted him from this venture. Later (before 1917), Russian engineers prepared more than thirty projects to build the canal, but these plans were also not destined to come true for various reasons. And in the Soviet era, this project was implemented. In 1952, in a record time (just four years), the construction of the Volga-Don canal was completed. It was built on the stretch from Volgograd to Kalach-na-Donu, at this point the rivers converge for a minimum distance of 80 km. No hydrotechnical construction of a world of this scale was created in such a short time. As a result of the commissioning of the channel, Volga and Don received access to five seas: the Azov, Baltic, White, Caspian and Black. Simultaneously with the construction of this hydraulic structure, Tsimlyansk reservoir was built with a hydroelectric power station.

Don River Fish

Nominally on this river there are more than seventy species of fish. However, in recent decades, as a result of a significant deterioration in the ecology of the region (oil spills, debris, intensive distribution of blue-green algae), many of them have become very rare. This sturgeon, sterlet, beluga. In addition, the population of catfish is diminishing and thinning. So, twenty years ago there were specimens weighing 10 kg. Now, to catch a catfish weighing 2-3 kg is a great luck. Most often you can find pike, crucian carp, bream, rudd, bleak, burbot, oatmeal. Here is such a fishing! The Don river is the most rich in fish in the lower reaches, but pollution is also great here.