A 227-kilometer canal, built by hand and dynamite in just twenty months, became nearly unusable for most ships even after it was completed. This paradox reflects the difficulties faced in some large-scale Soviet projects, especially the White Sea-Baltic Canal. The canal, built under Stalin’s regime, was meant to connect the White Sea to the Baltic Sea, passing through the Karelia region and using the Ladoga, Onega, and Vygozero lakes. The project was overseen by Naftali Frenkel, a former Cheka agent known for his strict labor policies that tied prisoners’ food rations to their work output. The canal’s construction involved up to 100,000 prisoners, known as zeks, who were sent to the site in September 1931. At its peak, around 126,000 prisoners were working under the Belbaltlag camp system. The human cost of the project is still debated, with estimates of deaths ranging from 25,000 to 250,000. Despite this, the canal was inaugurated on August 2, 1933, in a grand ceremony attended by Stalin, diplomats, and Soviet writers who hailed it as a triumph of socialist engineering. However, the canal’s depth was far below the original plan—only 3.5 meters instead of the intended 5.4 meters—making it unsuitable for most large ships and military vessels. Historian Tomasz Kizny called the construction a total failure, noting that the canal never served any strategic military purpose. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his book The Gulag Archipelago, visited the canal in 1966 and confirmed its minimal use for maritime traffic, reinforcing the view that the project was a failure. The canal was partially destroyed during World War II, and navigation only resumed in July 1946 after repairs to its locks and dams. Today, the White Sea-Baltic Canal has only limited traffic, mostly from tourist barges. While the name of the canal is more commonly seen on Soviet and Russian cigarette packs than on actual shipping routes, it remains a powerful symbol of the Stalinist era. The project highlights how the regime prioritized rapid execution and propaganda over technical quality and the human cost involved. Despite its functional failure, the canal stands as a reminder of the political decisions and sacrifices made during that time.