Luzhkov offers to redirect Siberian rivers to Central Asia
[3.11.2008]
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has written books on love and the Kuril Islands. His latest tome, "Water and Peace," revives a grandiose Soviet plan to redirect Siberian rivers to irrigate cotton fields in Central Asia.
On the cover, Stalin leans over a map of the Soviet Union in a propaganda poster with the slogan "Victory Over Drought!"
The project "was thoughtlessly closed at the beginning of Gorbachev's perestroika," a news release from the mayor's office reads. It calls the scheme a "unique megaproject of the state and business."
Luzhkov presented the 170-page book at the Mayor's Office on Thursday. Journalists weren't allowed to ask questions, Kommersant wrote.
The project "will give us the possibility to sell water in the republics of Central Asia," Luzhkov said, Kommersant reported.
The idea to divert water from Siberian rivers came under serious consideration after World War II, and Brezhnev poured funds into research in the 1970s.
Facing serious opposition from experts and campaigners, the Central Committee wound up the scheme in 1986.
The mayor is a long-term advocate of the idea. In 2002, he sent a letter to then-President Vladimir Putin calling for the construction of a 2,550-kilometer canal from Khanty-Mansiisk to Central Asia via Kazakhstan.
