Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

CONFIRMATION BY USCIA

The U. S. Central Intelligence Agency analysts reported a quantity of confirmatory information, including an unsigned document of Moscow origin stating, among other items

*** U. S. S. R. hydropower will be particularly extensively developed. By the end of the 5-year plan (1960), the total electricity generated will increase 1.88 times (from 1955 figures), but the electricty generated by hydroelectric stations should increase 2.55 times ***.

This document also established the relationship of various hydro projects in the vast U. S. S. R. complex with considerable details on the Siberian developments. The CIA likewise offered a volume of data already secured from other agencies, and stipulated the agencies' contribution should be identified as unclassified and unoriginal.

The State Department, Foreign Intelligence and Research Bureau, freely offered a quantity of confirmatory documentation, some from overseas economic attachés and much duplicatory, responsive to the committee inquiry.

All this is set forth to clarify to the committee how extensive and scattered positive information on the Rusisan power effort was, and is, in the executive department, and also how little emphasis or circulation was given the data and how unreflected it was in recommendations or advice submitted the Congress in matters that might have altered the relationship between the nations in this basic field affecting national strength. This information does not appear to have been suppressed or withheld. It just seems to have been ignored or lost until collected herein.

FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION PROVIDES DATA

To further discharge some of the chairman's instructions regarding relationships between other nations in the power field, the Federal Power Commission was requested to provide certain other data it regularly calculates. On an annual per capita production (or consumption) kilowatt-hour basis, the Federal Power Commission reported the United States now in third place among 15 countries, topped by Norway and Canada. The 1956 production per capital kilowatthour figures are: Norway, 6,752; Canada, 5,519; United States, 4,069; followed by Luxembourg, Sweden, and Switzerland. Since there is little relationship between hydro potential, size, or population among nations, the per capita figure has the benefits of compensating somewhat for this dissimilarity.

STATE DEPARTMENT REPORTS RUSSIAN RISE

The State Department reported:

HYDROELECTRIC POWER

The share of hydroelectric power in total electric power produced in the U. S. S. R. grew steadily in the 1930's and 1940's but since 1950 has declined very slightly (from 13.9 to 13.6 percent of total in 1956). As can be seen from table 3, hydroelectric resources are unevenly distributed geographically. The largest concentrations are in the northwestern part of the R. S. F. S. R., the Ukraine, and in the mountains of the Caucasus and central Asia. The important

central industrial region and the Ural area lack significant hydroelectric

resources.

The hydroelectric potential of the U. S. S. R. is very large. It has been estimated at about 3,700 billion kilowatt-hours per year, about 12 percent of the world's total, or 7.6 times U. S. potential. The greatest portion of the undeveloped potential is in Siberia, far from centers of consumption. The now abandoned sixth 5-year plan (1956-60) called for an increase by 1960 of 2.7 times in the installed capacity of hydroelectric powerplants and 2.2 times in thermal electric plants. It is not as yet possible, however, to predict what the new plan for 1965 will contain. Atomic energy is being used for power production on an experimental basis at the present time, and larger plants are under construction.

MAJOR PROJECTS

The Kuibishev project on the Volga, which has an installed capacity of 2.1 million kilowatts, has recently been completed, and it is planned that its reservoir will help irrigate 1 million hectares. The Stalingrad project, downstream from Kuibishev, is now under construction; it will have a capacity of 2.3 million kilowatts and will help irrigate 1.5 million hectares.

The Kakhovka project (312,000 kilowatts) on the Dnieper is complete and the Kremenchug (450,000 kilowatt) storage reservoir project is under construction on the Dnieper. The Kremenchug project will provide storage capacity for the existing Dneprostroi and Khakovka projects and other projected dams downstream.

In Siberia development is now concentrated on the Angara River, which is especially favorable for hydroelectric development because of its unusually constant flow through the year. The largest project now under construction, the Bratsk development, will have a capacity of 3.6 million kilowatts. scheduled for completion in 1960.

FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION COMPARISONS

It is

To show what Communist countries, other than Russia are doing to increase their power production, the Federal Power Commission made a list, with China showing the greatest surge, that follows:

TABLE A.-Installed electric generating capacity

[blocks in formation]

Still another comparison in table form of increased installed capacity of non-Communist West European countries was made on request by the Federal Power Commission. Outstanding is West Germany,

which accompanied its postwar revival in industrial strength by tripling its power supply in 9 years, as shown in the listing following: TABLE B.-Installed electric-generating capacity-West European countries [In thousands of kilowatts]

[blocks in formation]

The basic capacity figures, alluded to earlier with percentage change, for the U. S. A. and U. S. S. R. over a 16-year period (with Canada and Latin America added to round out the Western Hemisphere) supplied by the FPC follow:

TABLE C.-Installed electric generating capcity, 1,000 kilowatts

[blocks in formation]

Reduced to graph form in the committee files the lines showing rate of increase nearly parallel but not (in latest 1956) convergent. There factual reporting must stop and the accuracy of Soviet prophecies become dependent on the fulfillment of their proclaimed and identified plans, as contrasted with future United States development. With an assumption the Soviets do what they say they will, and the United States continues to increase generating capacity at current rates, Mr. Khrushchev could be right in his premature boast about surpassing the United States in power production in 15 years.

IRRIGATION IN SOVIET RUSSIA

The U. S. S. R. has a vast and accelerating irrigation program which, with the exception of the arid regions of the Mid-Asian Re

publics, is a form of river development subordinated to the prime objective of power production.

The Russian endeavor, on the basis of a dozen creditable reports, divergent as to arithmetic, but in basic agreement as to trend, appears to have far greater velocity than the U. S. irrigation program.

Using the best and identical set of (Russian) figures that both the Department of Agriculture (Foreign Agricultural Service) and the Department of State (Division of Research and Analysis) offer independently as "authoritative" the U. S. S. R. nationwide total of "general area with irrigation networks" increased 12,594,000 acres in the 5 years from January 1, 1951, to January 1, 1956.

By another comparison the U. S. S. R. Council of Ministers' "directive" reported by the United Nations to all and sundry Soviet officials requires an increase of 5,187,000 newly irrigated acres in the next 5 years ending in 1960. The same authority simultaneously "directed" its servants in the same period to "bring into cultivation" 7,657,000 acres of land-drainage construction or reconstruction. The United States through the reclamation program has irrigated some 7 million acres in the 55 years since the Reclamation Act became law in 1902. In both countries the operation is essentially the same under Central Government auspices to aid the production of the same types of crops. In another earlier broadside, reported by a British eyewitness, Soviet Russia is about halfway through a 15-year program "to increase by irrigation food and fiber production to feed and clothe 100 million more Communists." To this there is simply no American statistical equivalent.

The Soviets calculate their irrigated areas by hectares (2.4711 acres to a hectare), and their categories of reporting periods and criteria of irrigation may vary from the American standards, but apparently not enough to reverse the trends.

STATE DEPARTMENT DATA ON IRRIGATION

The Department of State (Division of Research and Analysis) summarizes the U. S. S. R. irrigation endeavor in the following language:

The area provided with irrigation networks is large in absolute termsabout 11 million hectares. As could be expected, this is only a small percent of the total sown acreage (5 percent). Most of the irrigation is by surface water, with underground water accounting for about 12 percent of the total. The increase over the past years has been considerable. However, there is some doubt about the definition of irrigated land. There is reason to believe that the data below are the sum of "irrigated" and "watered" land, since the "watered" land is only a fraction as productive as the actually irrigated acreage, the actual increase may be much smaller.

2

[blocks in formation]

An authoritative article by V. Popov in Sovetskoye Khlopkovodstvo, March 14, 1953, specifically referred to the prewar figure of 6 million hectares as including "watered"

acreage.

2 Land supplied with wells, ponds, canals, and pipelines to supplement natural water

resources.

Thus, the inclusion of "watered" land may account for the large rise of "irrigated" land since 1941.

A large part of the irrigated land is located in the Central Asiatic and Transcaucasian Republics. (See table 1.) For a variety of reasons, including the disrepair of the networks, swampiness, and salinity, not all of the acreage classified as having an irrigation network is actually used. The sixth 5-year plan (1956-60) calls for an increase of 2.1 million hectares of irrigated land, of which, roughly, 40 percent is to be derived from improvement of the existing irrigation systems.

By far the largest single crop grown under irrigation is cotton-a total of 2.06 million hectares in 1956. About one-fourth of the total cotton acreage was rain grown prior to 1953. However, a decision to give up the growing of the lowyielding nonirrigated cotton was taken by the post-Stalin regime and resulted in a rapid drop and then disappearance of rain-grown cotton. Further expansion of cotton acreage, and consequently of irrigated acreage, is being planned. An August 1956 decree dealt with the "Hungry Steppe" (Golodnaya Steppe) project, which provides for the irrigation and assimilation of 300,000 hectarestwo-thirds of which is in Uzbek S. S. R. and the remainder in the Kazak S. S. R. Further expansion of irrigated acreage was mentioned at a recent meeting of cottongrowers in Tashkent in October 1957.

Other crops grown on irrigated land are rice, sugar beets, tea, fruit, vegetables, alfalfa (grown in rotation with cotton). Little grain other than rice (which accounts for 100,000 hectares) is grown on irrigated land.

Because of the large expanse of land with inadequate precipitation, the need for irrigation is large, but the heavy capital expenditure places definite limits. The "Great Stalin projects of changing nature" announcing in 1950 were to have provided, upon their completion, an additional 6 million hectares of irrigated land and were to supply another 22 million hectares with water facilities for range farming. How much of this was actually accomplished is not clear. (See section on hydroelectric projects.) According to the official plan-fulfillment report, the irrigated acreage increased by 13 percent during the 1951-55 period and the actual utilized acreage by 25 percent; the stipulated increase for these years was 30 to 35 percent.

The current emphasis upon animal husbandry has made for renewed attention to supplying water to grazing animals, and a new push in that direction may well be in the offing.

The State Department and also the Agriculture Department and other Federal agencies accepted and offered for this study a Russian Central Statistical Administration table showing advances by the Soviets in all types of irrigation between January 1, 1951, and January 1, 1956. It breaks the U. S. S. R. program down by individual Soviets and surface, underground, well, spring, and estuary irrigation, and is included in the committee file.

Simplified and transformed into acres and compared with United States irrigation progress as was done, by the United States Bureau of Reclamation, on request, a revealing table shows the two nations, regardless of dissimilarities, in virtual equality in total irrigated area, with Soviet Russia again registering greater percentages increases in the past 5 years. It worked out as follows:

[blocks in formation]

NOTE. This result was obtained by use of the Department of Commerce agricultural census figures embracing all U. S. irrigat'on regardless of whether it was Bureau of Reclamation sponsore! or non-Federal irrigation. Therefore, it includes extensive sprinkler irrigation and is unbalanced in that the Russian figures apparently do not reflect sor nkler 'rr gat on. Also, no attempt was n ade at weight ng figures to reflect major differences in the areas and populat on of the 2 nat ons.

« ForrigeFortsett »