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National Geographic : 1973 May
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famed state-owned caviar industry struggles against progress, pollution, and rising costs. South of Togliatti, I stopped at the Volgograd Sturgeon Hatchery. "The total sturgeon catch dropped from 24,000 tons in 1938 to 13,500 tons in 1960," manager Alexei Lubyansky told me. "Natur ally, the output of black caviar was affected. It was because of the power dams on the Volga, which block off the fish from their natural spawning grounds in the tributaries." Sturgeon Struggle for Survival The Soviet Government has opened 18 hatcheries, which produce some 50 million fingerlings a year (page 610). When the stur geon are about 35 days old, they are released back into the river and its tributaries. Many perish, but since 1960 the catch of adult fish has been slowly growing. Still, not enough caviar is produced to meet demands. Mr. Lubyansky showed me the ponds where tiny fish, weighing only a few ounces, darted away from our shadows. "You wouldn't think it, but one of these fish may still be alive in the year 2072. I once saw a beluga that weighed 1,200 pounds and was at least 50 years old. We think today about the caviar, the eggs, but the flesh is also prized. In times gone by, the czar and the nobility had their Volga beluga shipped to Moscow; it took a month, by troikaor drozhky. The fish were packed in wet hay and kept asleep with vodka, so the story goes. They arrived drunk but alive." The Communists are taking even more trouble to keep the sturgeon, and the lucra tive caviar industry, alive. The usual fine for poaching a sturgeon is 100 rubles (about $120), but recently a Volga dredge captain poached several and got a five-year jail sentence. The Soviet Government has taken a no nonsense approach to the entire problem of protecting the river and its fish from the dangers of pollution. It has decreed the ex penditure of enormous sums of money in the next two years; 15 city governments along the river will spend 300 million rubles for sewers and water-treatment plants, while 421 industries, large and small, will allot 700 million rubles for antipollution facilities. I went downriver to the delta city of Astrakhan, near the Volga's outlet to the Caspian Sea, to enjoy the fruits of this con cern. A prorezi, a water-filled barge that (Continued on page 612) The Volga, Russia's Mighty River Road Woman's touch prevails in the Soviet Union's healing arts; some 80 percent of the country's doctors are women. In a land where free medical care is offered to every citizen, the demand for physicians is enor mous. At the Volgograd State Medical Institute, these two girls are among the 3,500 physicians-in-training enrolled for six years of study. 607
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