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People throughout Russia have had small farms since time began. Their growing season is short, but their need is great. They take care of their crops and all along the way from Moscow to St. Petersburg we saw small well-tended vegetable gardens in each of the villages and small towns. Surprising to me we did not see very many bridges and no ferries. A few people were out in small motorboats and row boats, but most of the water traffic was cargo moving up and down the canal system. A rather nice statue of Mother Volga spoke to an earlier time.
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The Volga River has been important throughout history and it's delta was known to the ancients as the heartland of the Scythian culture a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Ptolemy of Alexandria mentions it in his writings. The river was an important trade route between Persia and Scandinavia and it's lower reaches became the home of the Golden Horde. The upper reaches of the river were occupied by Slavs in the eighth and ninth centuries and eventually they displaced the Finnic peoples that had been there even earlier. Some of the oldest Russian cities were founded along its banks. During WWII, the bloodiest battle in human history took place at Stalingrad as the German Army attempted to control the river in their campaign to gain access to Russian oil fields. Today, the Volga River is the backbone of a system of waterways that link the Gulf of Finland with the Azov, Black, White, Baltic and Caspian Seas. A dozen major cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, are linked to each other through an unbelievably extensive network of rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and canals.
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