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The canal runs partially along several rivers and two lakes, Lake Onega and Lake Vygozero . The total length or the route is 227 km (141 mi).
The Soviets presented the Canal as an example of the success of the First Five Year Plan. Its construction was completed four months ahead of schedule. The entire Canal was built over the course of twenty months, between 1931 and 1933.
In fact, the Canal was the first major project constructed with the forced labor of Gulag inmates. BBLAG, the Directorate of the BBK Camp, serviced the construction, supplying a workforce of an estimated 150,000 convicts. The Soviets portrayed the project as evidence of the efficacy of the Gulag. Supposedly "reforging" criminals through "corrective labor," the working conditions at the BBK Camp were brutal. A carefully prepared visit to Belomorkanal hid the worst of the brutality from a group of Russian writers and artists, including Maxim Gorki, Aleksey K. Tolstoy , Victor Shklovsky, Mikhail ZoshchenkoMikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko ( 1895 1958) was a Russian satirist of the Soviet period. He attained particular popularity in the 1920s, but lived in poverty after his denunciation in the Zhdanov decree of 1946. He developed a simplified deadpan style of, who compiled a work in praise of the project.
The Canal was commemorated by the brand of Russian cigarettes BelomorkanalBelomorkanal ( Cyrillic is a brand of Russian cigarettes that was introduced to commemorate the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, abbreviated as "Belomorkanal" in Russian language. Belomorkanal is a cigarette of specific design called papirosa ).