The river forms a wide delta, receiveing the water of some 200 tributaries (long rivers, small streams and brooks). The Volga basin produces 25% of all Russia’s crops and one fifth of industrial fishing. The river contains 70 species of fish, including 40 industrial (roach, herring,bream, pike-perch, wild carp, silurus, pike, sturgean, sterlet and others). The Volga has always been a major traditional route connecting the north with the south. It is navigable from the town of Rzhev downstream. In the town of Tver it is 200 m wide. There are 40 cities and towns including Tver, Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Ulianovsk, Samara, Saratov, Volgograd (Stalingrad, Tsaritsyn before 1917) and Astrakhan as well as 1 000 smaller settlements on the Volga, most of which lie on the high right bank. A string of reservoirs built in the Soviet period line the Volga, among them Volzhskoye (the Moscow Sea), Uglich, Rybinsk. |
