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“... We Need to Take All Necessary Measures to Save the Baikal”

The Baikal Day is celebrated in our country on September 8, 2019

The Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake on the planet and one of the attractions of Russia. In 1996, the Baikal was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The Baikal Day is celebrated in order to attract public attention to the important issue of preserving this unique natural site.

Since the late 50s of the last century, the first materials in defense of Lake Baikal and its region, caused by the construction of pulp and paper mill on the shores of the lake, appeared in the press of our country. In the 60s, these performances grew into a broad social movement. One of the first among the writers who defended Lake Baikal was Mikhail Sholokhov.

According to the memoirs of Svetlana Sholokhova (eldest daughter) during the visit of Nikita Khrushchev in the stanitsa Veshenskaya in 1959, Mikhail Sholokhov raised the question of the advisability of building a pulp and paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal. Sholokhov proved to the head of the country the need to preserve the lake - the pearl of our country.

Mikhail Sholokhov spoke about the problem of preserving Lake Baikal in his speech at the XXIII Congress of the CPSU in 1966:

“Let's go back to the Baikal. Much has been said and written about it. But we do not very often listen to serious press signals. And is it not going to work out on Lake Baikal, as well as on the Volga? Or maybe we will find courage in ourselves and refuse to cut down forests around Lake Baikal, to build pulp mills there, and instead we will build those that will not threaten the death of the treasury of Russian nature - Lake Baikal? In any case, all necessary measures must be taken to save Lake Baikal. I am afraid that our descendants will not forgive us if we do not preserve the “glorious sea, sacred Baikal”!

Natalya Kirsanova

Ekaterina Karbysheva