RUSSIA: Big Lever

Under a blazing August sun, hundreds of Ukraine officials and thousands of grimy Soviet citizens stood on the banks of the Dnieper one day last week and listened to oratory. The occasion was the official opening of the largest hydroelectric plant in the world: Dnieprostroy, built in five years at a cost of $110,000,000. Oratory was not the only thing turned on. Already in action were five of the nine great turbogenerators that will eventually produce 800,000 h.p. Water raised by the great concrete wall will make the Dnieper navigable up nearly all of its 1,400 miles. It will irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres. Workmen are hurrying to finish aluminum, steel and machine tool plants at the dam site. Soviet statisticians boast that it will serve a population of 16,000,000.

Two men shared the orators’ bouquets: tall, bearded Professor Alexander Winter, chief Soviet engineer, and Col. Hugh Lincoln Cooper of Manhattan who collaborated on the design and has worked on the dam almost since its inception. Under his orders all the turbines were installed, most of the concrete poured, and the job finished eight months ahead of the contracted time limit. To him went a special honor, the Order of the Red Star, highest Soviet decoration, never before bestowed on a foreigner. Said Col. Cooper:

“The practical experience of American methods thus acquired will be a lever in raising the living standards of this country. No one looking at Dnieprostroy can doubt the Soviet Union’s success in becoming a great industrial nation.

“Despite the difficulties of our job our relations with the Soviet Government were always excellent. During the whole five years neither side needed to resort to the arbitration clause of the contract.”