Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Soviet Russia showing major hydropower sites
- 1 Challenge of the third generation of Soviet power
- 2 Building authority around a new agricultural policy
- Part I Advice and dissent in the shaping of Brezhnev's agricultural and environmental programs
- Part II Implementation of the Brezhnev programs
- 7 Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
- 8 The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
- 9 Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
- 10 Carrying out a third-generation program with second-generation methods
- 11 Conclusion: lessons of the Brezhnev policies and the future of reform
- Notes
- Index
7 - Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Map of Soviet Russia showing major hydropower sites
- 1 Challenge of the third generation of Soviet power
- 2 Building authority around a new agricultural policy
- Part I Advice and dissent in the shaping of Brezhnev's agricultural and environmental programs
- Part II Implementation of the Brezhnev programs
- 7 Loosening the grip of old priorities: the long struggle against hydropower
- 8 The new environmental program: do the Soviets really mean business?
- 9 Slow gains at a high price: the frustrations of reclamation
- 10 Carrying out a third-generation program with second-generation methods
- 11 Conclusion: lessons of the Brezhnev policies and the future of reform
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Far from Moscow, in the arid steppes of the south of the European USSR, carrying out the Brezhnev program means wresting water from established users and transferring it to irrigation. The government's new priorities clash with the old in many places but particularly in the operation of the dozens of power stations located astride the major rivers of the European USSR. These stations control the timing, amount, and reliability of streamflow for all users. The issue here is no longer the reallocation of capital in Moscow but the much more complicated and delicate matter of overseeing a partial transfer of power among competing agencies at a multitude of local points. Power officials have shown themselves resourceful at resisting change. As a result, the leaders' new priorities have been only partly translated into real changes in the field, and the reclamation program, for all its high priority in Moscow, is weakened where it ultimately counts.
Wherever water is scarce, hydropower and reclamation are natural competitors. Irrigators want water in summer; power-grid operators want it in winter to run through their turbines when demand for electricity is at a maximum. This means power-grid operators try to keep reservoirs as full as possible at the very time when irrigators want them drawn down. Unavoidably then, reallocating priorities at this local level means trading electricity against irrigation water. Moreover, hydropower stations supply a special kind of electricity. Because they can be stopped and started easily (unlike steam generators, which develop stresses and cracks if they are heated and cooled too often and too quickly), they are the ideal way to cover daily and weekly peaks in demand, as well as unforeseen needs in between.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reform in Soviet PoliticsThe Lessons of Recent Policies on Land and Water, pp. 101 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981