Domestic river fleet

Historians of the national river fleet have established that at the height of the 1913 navigation season, 4,600 steamships and motor ships of various classes and about 24,000 barge-type vessels were operating on the country’s rivers and lakes, accounting for 29% of Russia’s total freight turnover.

After the restoration of the river fleet was completed during the years of the First Five-Year Plan, a period of its reconstruction began. Shipbuilders were now faced with the task not only of replenishing shipping companies with vessels of Soviet construction, but also of boldly introducing advanced technologies that would shorten construction times, reduce the consumption of scarce metal, and thus lower costs. One of the progressive methods of those years was electric welding.