GalleryRepublic of Electricity
We have mentioned before that the bulk of Estonia's electricity output is produced by power stations working on shale. The years 1949 and 1954 saw the starting-up of two power stations operating on shale dust.
We have also mentioned that the construction of the Baltic power station near Narva is in full swing. When this station is finished it will provide plenty of electricity for all Estonia's industry and meet also all the requirements of her agriculture and her people.
On top of that there will be plenty of electricity in reserve. It will be transmitted by high-tension lines to Leningrad and Riga; every collective farm in the republic will be supplied with electricity; and it will be fed by an underwater cable to the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa (Dagoe). Thus the whole of Estonia will be supplied with electricity.
Electricity was unknown on the isle of Kikhnu before. But today the isle is brightly illuminated. The electric power station that started working there this year has provided lighting for all the houses of the collective farmers and for the House of Culture.
All the livestock sections are now supplied with electricity and this has made milking much easier. Only a short while ago fish was unloaded and salted by hand. Now electric motors do the job, with the fish carried by a conveyor to cold storage and to the salting barrels. Electric windlasses load the fish into refrigerator ships.
Old Estonia was on "hunger rations" as far as electricity went. The power industry developed at a snail's pace. In the last seven years of capitalist rule the electricity output increased by only 173 million kwh. In the same amount of time in socialist Estonia—between 1951 and 1958—the electricity output went up by 640 million kwh.
In the seven years ending 1965 it will increase still more, by another 5,000-odd million kwh.
In 1965 Estonia will generate 6,400 million kwh. of electricity, five-and-ahalf times more than in 1958 and thirty-two-and-a-half times more than in the old Estonia.
In that year our little republic alone will produce 230 per cent more electricity than the whole of tsarist Russia did in 1913.
One can form a notion of how much electricity there will be by the fact that in 1965 our per capita electricity output will reach 5,120 kwh. For the sake of comparison we might note that the per capita figure in the U.S.A. today is 4,100 kwh.
Soviet Booklets, London, England, in December, 1959, as part of the series
"THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
