Electrification of the whole country, GOELRO plan and the era of lighting

The famous phrase about "electrification of the whole country" was not invented by Lenin. And the pride of the Bolshevik GOELRO-Dneproges plan was designed before October. The revolution and the Civil War only delayed the electrification of Russia

Before the ceremonial inclusion light bulbs Ilyich in the village of Kashino near Moscow, another 40 years remained. This, however, did not prevent enthusiasts from introducing electricity into Russian life to light hitherto unprecedented electric lamps on the Liteiny Bridge in St. Petersburg in 1880 - after all, the innovators did not know that in the Soviet future it would be the first Kashin lamp to be declared the first in Russia. It was completely different for them: the monopoly of the owners of gas lamps in the imperial capital — they had the exclusive right to cover St. Petersburg. But for some reason the Liteiny Bridge fell out of this monopoly. The ship with an electrical installation that lit the lanterns was also brought to him.

Their lordships

Just three years after this demonstration of “antitrust light presentation”, the first power station with a capacity of 35 kilowatts was opened in St. Petersburg - it was located on a barge moored at the Moika embankment. There were installed 12 dynamo cars, the current from which was transmitted by wire to Nevsky Prospect and lit 32 street lamps. The station was equipped by the German company Siemens and Halske, at first it played a major role in the electrification of Russia.

Three years later, in 1886, the Electric Lighting Society was founded in St. Petersburg, bringing together scientists and businessmen in the "electrification of the whole country" (these "Leninist" words were already written down in the charter). Most of the company's shareholders were foreigners - primarily the same Siemens concern - but the technical personnel were Russian. All future creators of the GOELRO plan worked here - Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Leonid Krasin, Robert Klasson and others. Even then, the first projects of large-scale construction of power plants and power lines were being developed.

Although in the field of energy, the Russian Empire lagged noticeably behind Western countries, the development of the industry at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries took great strides. At the end of the century, the first thermal power plants with a capacity of more than 5 megawatts were built - Raushskaya in Moscow and Okhten in St. Petersburg. But the matter was not limited to capitals - the country's first three-phase current power plant appeared in 1893 in Novorossiysk. The three-phase current, first applied by the Russian engineer Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky in Germany, made both the generation of electricity and its transmission over long distances much cheaper. By 1896, the number of power plants increased to 35. The efficiency of such stations was approaching 25% (it reaches 60% in modern combined cycle power plants). All of them belonged to private owners, including 12 to the Electric Lighting Society.

The first Moscow contract of the company - on the inclusion in the work of the block for lighting the shopping arcade of the Passage of the merchant Postnikov (the Yermolova Theater is now located in this building) - was signed in 1887. The following year, the first power station in the current capital was launched (now this is the premises of the Small Manege).

In 1899, member firms of the Company attracted leading banks to finance electrification work by founding the Big Russian Banking Syndicate. Despite the name, there was only 12% of domestic capital there - the rest was invested by foreigners. The syndicate was mainly involved in tram routes and the electrification of railways. The first Russian tram was launched in 1892 in Kiev, and in Moscow it appeared seven years later. Later, the City Duma approved the metro construction plan.The defeat of our troops in the war with Japan had a positive effect on the development of energy - Russian ships began to be equipped with electric power equipment. And of course, one city after another switched to electric lighting. True, slowly - even in Moscow before the revolution, electricity was not in 70% of residential buildings.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the scientific support for the electrification of pre-revolutionary Russia. Higher education institutions funded from the treasury graduated engineering personnel for the industry. With the support of the imperial Academy of Sciences, electrotechnical congresses were regularly held - from 1900 to 1913, eight were held. The congresses discussed both specific plans for the construction of individual facilities and strategic prospects. Among the latter, the most ambitious was the project developed at the beginning of the 20th century by the great scientist Vladimir Vernadsky. It envisaged the creation by 1920 throughout the country of a wide network of power plants, the energy of which could feed new industrial areas. Actually, it was precisely these ideas that formed the basis of the future "Leninist" GOELRO plan.

Domestic science was based on the development of Russian entrepreneurship. Gradually, Russian businessmen pressed foreigners, especially after the outbreak of World War I, when the Germans left the Russian market. The most vigorous activity was developed by the Baku oil industrialist Abram Gukasov, who became the leading manufacturer of electric cable and the head of Ruskabel JSC. With his money in Moscow, a large Dynamo plant was built, which produced electric motors and generators using Western technologies, but from local parts. At the same time, the Svetlana factory opened - the country's first manufacturer of electric lamps according to Edison's patents.

If in 1909 the share of Russian capital in the electrical industry was 16.2%, then by 1914 it reached 30%. This was largely due to the customs-tariff war that the then Minister of Finance Witte unleashed with Germany in the 1890s. Without going into details, let’s say that the result of this war was the creation of such conditions when it was more profitable for German (namely, they were leaders in power engineering at that time) companies to create production in Russia than to import finished products here. In general, over the years of the prewar industrial boom, the increase in foreign investment in the energy sector amounted to 63%, while Russian - 176%. Energy in the country has developed at a pace that is constantly ahead of the growth of the economy as a whole - 20-25% per year.

Before the war, a power station with a capacity of 9 megawatts was built in Bogorodsk, near Moscow (now Noginsk). At that time, it was the largest in Russia, and in the world there were no more than 15 such "giants" (almost all in the USA, as the United States was then called). For the first time she transmitted current over wires over a long distance - up to 100 km. It was supposed to build several such power plants capable of supplying energy to Moscow, and in the future, the entire Central region.

Russian inventors were thinking about developing vast hydropower resources. The first hydroelectric station (then called the "water power plant") with a capacity of 700 kilowatts was built on the Caucasian river Podkumok near the city of Essentuki in 1903. The second was built by monks on the Solovetsky Islands. In 1910, by agreement with the American concern Westinghouse, the construction of the Volkhov hydroelectric station began, the capacity of which was to reach already 20 megawatts. It was promised to be built by the same Siemens and the American company Westinghouse. And in 1912, many companies and banks joined in a consortium to build a hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper rapids - the future of the Dnieper. The project was examined by German experts; they also suggested laying a canal bypassing the future hydroelectric power station, which would make the Dnieper navigable. Construction at an estimated cost of 600 million gold rubles was to begin in 1915.But he, like many other projects, was prevented by the First World War.

The emergence of large power plants could change a lot in the Russian economy. But so far, almost all power plants were low-power, 10-20 kilowatts, and were built randomly, without any plan. They were created at large enterprises or in cities. In the first case, they were built by the owners of the enterprises themselves, in the second - joint-stock companies that sold electricity to the city authorities. In a number of cases, city councils issued loans to companies to build power plants in exchange for supplying electricity at a cheaper price (for example, in 1912 in Saratov). Very rarely, cities or even villages built small stations at their own expense.

In 1913, the capacity of all power plants in Russia reached 1 million 100 thousand kilowatts, and electricity generation - 2 billion kilowatt-hours. According to this indicator, Russia ranked eighth in the world, lagging not only behind the leaders of the USA (there were already 60 billion), but even from tiny Belgium.

And yet, electricity production in Russia grew faster than in all other countries except the United States - by 20-25% per year. It is estimated that at such a pace, by 1925, our country would be the first in the world in this area.

Bright future

As you know, history does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, and therefore to say that it would be if instead of the GOELRO plan the country had the opportunity to develop normally - without wars and revolutions - is pointless. Moreover, this plan itself, without any exaggeration, is a reason for pride and a worthy contribution of our country to the history of world industrial policy.

The already mentioned Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Technological Institute and the author of the project of the Electrodacha TPP near Moscow, built in 1912, was commissioned by the party to infiltrate the St. Petersburg branch of the Electric Lighting Society to strengthen the Bolshevik cell. Then he transferred to the Moscow branch of society. Party work, however, did not prevent Krzyzhanowski from participating in the main work of society. But it was revolutionary - though not in the political, but in the economic sense. Krzhizhanovsky did not forget his work with leading Russian experts in the field of energy. Moreover, he became so carried away by the electrification plans of Russia that he was able to infect them with his fellow youth - Lenin, with whom he created the Union for the Emancipation of the Working Class in the mid-1890s.

In December 1917, Krzyzhanowski received a reception from the leader for two prominent members of the Lighting Society, Radchenko and Winter. They told the head of the new government about the already existing plans for the electrification of the country and, most importantly, about their harmony with plans close to the Bolsheviks for centralizing the national economy. But then the Civil War began, after which in 1920 the country produced only 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity - five times less than in the notorious 1913.

This meeting, however, remained in the memory of Lenin. On February 21, 1920, Ilyich signed a decree establishing the State Electrification Commission of Russia (GOELRO). The commission was headed, as you might guess, by Gleb Krzhizhanovsky (by the way, one of the very few people with whom Lenin was on the "you"). Krzhizhanovsky attracted not only practical engineers, but also scientists from the Academy of Sciences - only about 200 people. Among them, by the way, was the famous Russian philosopher, priest and "part-time" outstanding electrical engineer Pavel Florensky. He came to meetings of the commission in a cassock, and the Bolsheviks suffered.

After ten months of hard work, the commission issued a 650-page volume with numerous maps and diagrams. This volume in the form of a strategic plan was approved by the VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which met at the Bolshoi Theater. The presentation of the report took place at the highest technical level for that time.In order for delegates to appreciate the grandeur of the proposed project, a gigantic map of Russia was exposed on the stage. And as the speaker talked about — Krzhizhanovsky — about various objects on the map, multi-colored bulbs were lit in the appropriate places. In the end, when all the lights came on, Moscow plunged into darkness - all the capacities of the then capital energy went to the Bolshoi Theater, the Cheka and the Kremlin.

GOELRO, despite the name, was not a plan for the development of one energy, but the entire economy. It envisaged the construction of not only generating capacities, but also enterprises providing these construction projects with everything necessary, as well as the accelerated development of the electric power industry in comparison with the national economy as a whole. And all this was tied to the development plans of the territories. For example, according to the plan, the Electrozavod was built in Moscow, later similar plants were opened in Saratov and Rostov. However, GOELRO went even further: it provided for the construction of enterprises - future consumers of electricity. Among them - the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, founded in 1927, the basis of domestic tank building. As part of the plan, the development of the Kuznetsk coal basin has also begun, around which a new industrial area has arisen.

It was planned to build large hydropower plants on the Volga, although in reality their construction began only in the 50s. It was planned to increase coal production to 62.3 million tons per year against 29.2 million tons in 1913, oil - to 16.4 million tons against 10.3 million. Already in 1921, the GOELRO commission led by Krzhizhanovsky was transformed into Gosplan, who was in charge of the entire economic development strategy of the country.

The first to decide to build the Kashira and Shaturskaya CHPPs in the neighborhood of Moscow. Komsomol members, military and workers from inactive factories threw it at this. Hungry and undressed people worked 18 hours a day. The Kashira power plant with a capacity of 12 megawatts, operating on coal near Moscow, was opened in June 1922, when the patient Ilyich was already locked in Gorki. Then they built the country's first power line, through which electricity was delivered from Kashira to Moscow. After the commissioning of the Shaturskaya CHPP in 1926, energy production reached its pre-war level.

The implementation of the GOELRO plan coincided with the new economic policy - having faced the real prospect of being hung on all the necessary flashlights and aspens, the Bolsheviks decided to abandon the ideology of a cash-free and bulk economy and give the medium and small entrepreneur the right to live (commanding heights - the party left large-scale industry for themselves).

Not without NEPMans and the case of "electrification of the whole country." For example, 24 artisanal artisans of the Moscow Region united into a large partnership "Electricity Production", and 52 Kaluga artels - into a partnership "Serena"; they were engaged in the construction of stations, pulled power lines, electrified industrial enterprises. The Soviet government - a rare case - encouraged private initiative in the implementation of the GOELRO. Those who were involved in electrification could count on tax benefits and even loans from the state. True, the entire regulatory framework, technical control and tariff setting were retained by the government (the tariff was the same for the whole country and was set by the State Planning Commission).

The policy of encouraging entrepreneurship yielded tangible results: about half of the generating capacities built according to the GOELRO plan were created with the involvement of the forces and means of NEPMs, that is, business. In other words, this was an example of what we now call public-private partnerships.

Western companies also participated in the implementation of the electrification plan. Hoping for profit and the return of assets nationalized by the Bolsheviks, they sent specialists and equipment to the USSR: during the first five years, up to 70% of electrical equipment came from abroad.Before the revolution, this share was less (about 50%), although for the sake of fairness it should be noted that much less equipment was required. By the mid-30s, the USSR launched the production of its own turbines, generators and everything necessary for the industry.

In the ten years that the GOELRO plan was designed, it has been exceeded. Electricity generation in 1932 compared to 1913 did not increase 4.5 times, as envisaged, but almost everywhere: from 2 to 13.5 billion kWh. In 1927, the construction of the Dnieper Hydropower Plant, the largest at that time, began Europe’s hydroelectric power station and the most prominent GOELRO facility. He was allowed in 1932. Dneproges was at the same time the last major construction project of the "Leninist" plan and the first "Stalinist" five-year plan, into which GOELRO smoothly flowed.

Vadim Erlichman