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Soviet Union [USSR] Topography and Drainage
Most geographers divide the vast Soviet territory into five
natural zones that generally extend from west to east: the tundra
zone; the taiga or forest zone; the steppe or plains zone; the arid
zone; and the mountain zone. Most of the Soviet Union consists of
three plains (East European Plain, West Siberian Plain, and Turan
Lowland), two plateaus (Central Siberian Plateau and Kazakh
Upland), and a series of mountainous areas, concentrated for the
most part in the extreme northeast or extending intermittently
along the southern border. The West Siberian Plain, the world's
largest, extends east from the Urals to the Yenisey River
(see
fig. 6). Because the terrain and vegetation are uniform in each of the
natural zones, the Soviet Union, as a whole, presents an illusion
of uniformity. Nevertheless, the Soviet territory contains all the
major vegetation zones with the exception of tropical rain forest.
Ten percent of Soviet territory is tundra, that is, a treeless
marshy plain. The tundra is the Soviet Union's northernmost zone of
snow and ice, stretching from the Finnish border in the west to the
Bering Strait in the east and then running south along the Pacific
coast to the earthquake and volcanic region of northern Kamchatka
Peninsula. It is the land made famous by herds of wild reindeer, by
"white nights" (dusk at midnight, dawn shortly thereafter) in
summer, and by days of total darkness in winter. The long harsh
winters and lack of sunshine allow only mosses, lichens, and dwarf
willows and shrubs to sprout low above the barren
permafrost (see Glossary). Although the great Siberian rivers
slowly traverse this
zone in reaching the Arctic Ocean, drainage of the numerous lakes,
ponds, and swamps is hampered by partial and intermittent thawing.
Frost weathering is the most important physical process here,
shaping a landscape modified by extensive glaciation in the last
Ice Age. Less than 1 percent of the Soviet population lives in this
zone. The fishing and port industries of the Kola Peninsula and the
huge oil and gas fields of northwestern Siberia are the largest
employers in the tundra. The frontier city of Noril'sk, for
example, with a population of 181,000 in 1987, is one of the
largest settlements above the Arctic Circle.
The northern forests of spruce, fir, cedar, and larch,
collectively known as the taiga, make up the largest natural zone
of the Soviet Union, an area about the size of the United States.
Here too the winter is long and severe, as witnessed by the routine
registering of the world's coldest temperatures for inhabited areas
in the northeastern portion of this belt. The taiga zone extends in
a broad band across the middle latitudes, stretching from the
Finnish border in the west to the Verkhoyansk Range in northeastern
Siberia and as far south as the southern shores of Lake Baykal.
Isolated sections of taiga are found along mountain ranges, as in
the southern part of the Urals, and in the Amur River Valley in the
Far East. About 33 percent of the population lives in this zone,
which, with the mixed forest zone, includes most of the European
part of the Soviet Union and the ancestral lands of the earliest
Slavic settlers.
Long associated with traditional images of Russian landscape
and
cossacks (see Glossary) on horseback are the steppes, which are
treeless, grassy plains. Although they cover only 15 percent of
Soviet territory, the steppes are home to roughly 44 percent of the
population. They extend for 4,000 kilometers from the Carpathian
Mountains in the western Ukrainian Republic across most of the
northern portion of the Kazakh Republic in Soviet Central Asia,
between the taiga and arid zones, occupying a relatively narrow
band of plains whose
chernozen (see Glossary) soils are some of the
most fertile on earth. In a country of extremes, the steppe zone,
with its moderate temperatures and normally adequate levels of
sunshine and moisture, provides the most favorable conditions for
human settlement and agriculture. Even here, however, agricultural
yields are sometimes adversely affected by unpredictable levels of
precipitation and occasional catastrophic droughts
(see Soviet Union USSR - Production
, ch. 13).
Below the steppes, and merging at times with them, is the arid
zone: the semideserts and deserts of Soviet Central Asia and,
particularly, of the Kazakh Republic. Portions of this zone have
become cotton- and rice-producing regions through intensive
irrigation. For various reasons, including sparse settlement and a
comparatively mild climate, the arid zone has become the most
prominent center for Soviet space exploration.
One-quarter of the Soviet Union consists of mountains or
mountainous terrain. With the significant exceptions of the Ural
Mountains and the mountains of eastern Siberia, the mountains
occupy the southern periphery of the Soviet Union. The Urals,
because they have traditionally been considered the natural
boundary between Europe and Asia and because they are valuable
sources of minerals, are the most famous of the country's nine
major ranges. In terms of elevation (comparable to the
Appalachians) and vegetation, however, they are far from
impressive, and they do not serve as a formidable natural barrier.
Truly alpine terrain is found in the southern mountain ranges.
Between the Black and Caspian seas, for example, the Caucasus
Mountains rise to impressive heights, marking a continuation of the
boundary separating Europe from Asia. One of the peaks, Mount
El'brus, is the highest point in Europe at 5,642 meters. This
range, extending to the northwest as the Crimean and Carpathian
mountains and to the southeast as the Tien Shan and Pamirs, forms
an imposing natural barrier between the Soviet Union and its
neighbors to the south. The highest point in the Soviet Union, at
7,495 meters, is Mount Communism (Pik Kommunizma) in the Pamirs
near the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China. The Pamirs
and the Tien Shan are offshoots of the tallest mountain chain in
the world, the Himalayas. Eastern Siberia and the Soviet Far East
are also mountainous regions, especially the volcanic peaks of the
long Kamchatka Peninsula, which juts down into the Sea of Okhotsk.
The Soviet Far East, the southern portion of Soviet Central Asia,
and the Caucasus are the Soviet Union's centers of seismic
activity. In 1887, for example, a severe earthquake destroyed the
city of Vernyy (present-day Alma-Ata), and in December 1988 a
massive quake demolished the Armenian city of Spitak and large
sections of Kirovakan and Leninakan. The 1988 quake, one of the
worst in Soviet history, claimed more than 25,000 lives.
The Soviet Union's water resources are both scarce and
abundant. With about 3 million rivers and approximately 4 million
inland bodies of water, the Soviet Union holds the largest fresh,
surface-water resources of any country. Unfortunately, most of
these resources (84 percent), as with so much of the Soviet
resource base, are at a great distance from consumers; they flow
through sparsely populated territory and into the Arctic and
Pacific oceans. In contrast, areas with the highest concentrations
of population, and therefore the highest demand for water supplies,
tend to have the warmest climates and highest rates of evaporation.
The result is barely adequate (or in some cases inadequate) water
resources where they are needed most.
Nonetheless, as in many other countries, the earliest
settlements sprang up on the rivers, and that is where the majority
of the urban population prefers to live. The Volga, Europe's
longest river, is by far the Soviet Union's most important
commercial waterway. Three of the country's twenty-three cities
with more than 1 million inhabitants are located on its banks:
Gor'kiy, Kazan', and Kuybyshev.
The European part of the Soviet Union has extensive, highly
developed, and heavily used water resources, among them the key
hydrosystems of the Volga, Kama, Dnepr, Dnestr, and Don rivers. As
is the case with fuels, however, the greatest water resources are
found east of the Urals, deep in Siberia. Of the sixty-three rivers
in the Soviet Union longer than 1,000 kilometers, forty are east of
the Urals, including the four mighty rivers that drain Siberia as
they flow northward to the Arctic Ocean: the Irtysh, Ob', Yenisey,
and Lena rivers. The Amur River forms part of the winding and
sometimes tense boundary between the Soviet Union and China. Taming
and exploiting the hydroelectric potential of these systems has
been a monumental and highly publicized national project. Some of
the world's largest hydroelectric stations operate on these rivers.
Hundreds of smaller hydroelectric power plants and associated
reservoirs have also been constructed on the rivers. Thousands of
kilometers of canals link river and lake systems and provide
essential sources of irrigation for farmland.
The Soviet Union's 4 million inland bodies of water are chiefly
a legacy of extensive glaciation. Most prominent among them are the
Caspian Sea, the world's largest inland sea, and Lake Baykal, the
world's deepest and most capacious freshwater lake. Lake Baykal
alone holds 85 percent of the freshwater resources of the lakes in
the Soviet Union and 20 percent of the world's total. Other water
resources include swampland, a sizable portion of territory (10
percent), and glaciers in the northern areas.
Data as of May 1989
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