Volga River
Europe's longest river and the soul of Russia
The Volga is the longest river in Europe and, more than any other, the river of Russia itself, woven through the country's history, literature and song as Mother Volga. It rises in low hills northwest of Moscow and flows for thousands of kilometers across the western Russian plain before emptying into the landlocked Caspian Sea, far below sea level. Almost half of Russia's people live in its basin, and its waters carry a large share of the nation's inland freight.
The Volga runs about 3,531 kilometers from the Valdai Hills to the Caspian, falling only a couple of hundred meters along the way. That gentle gradient made it ideal for taming: a chain of huge reservoirs and hydroelectric dams now turns much of the river into a series of long lakes. Canals link it to the Don, the Baltic and the White Sea, so a barge can travel from the heart of Russia to five seas. At its end the river splays into a wide delta of reeds and channels, one of Europe's richest wetlands, before reaching the Caspian.
The Volga has carried Russian power for a thousand years, from the river-trading Rus to the merchant fleets of the tsars — cities like Kazan, Volgograd and Astrakhan grew on its banks. It was the strategic prize of the Battle of Stalingrad, fought to control the river city now called Volgograd. Its delta fisheries long supplied much of the world's caviar, a trade that overexploitation and pollution have since pushed toward collapse. The river remains a working artery and a national symbol at once.