The White Sea-Baltic Canal was built by hand, without any modern technologies and almost without using metal and concrete. Virtually everything was made from wood. The first record of the canal project surfaced in the times of Peter the Great, who established the regular Russian Navy in October 1696 on the coast of the White Sea. The legend says that Peter himself built the first ships with an axe.

Embodying Peter the Great, Stalin continued his idea, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of human lives. The potato, from Holland, was introduced to Russia by Peter the Great in the 17th century and then became a traditional Russian food. Russia suffered extreme starvation during WWII and bread was made, containing wooden sawdust. Pancakes made from potato peel were a delicacy.