Ladoga Canal major canals constructed in Russia. It was one of the projects of Peter the Great, who ordered its construction in 1718. Rapid economic development in Russia required a significant expansion of routes, especially waterways. One part of the Vyshny Volochek waterway (1709) linking the Volga river to the Baltic Sea, passed through Lake Ladoga. The Ladoga section of the route was one of the most difficult and dangerous because the lake is prone to winds and storms which destroyed hundreds of cargo ships. Peter the Great decided to avoid the navigation in the huge and stormy lake by building a
Baltic Ice Lake small channel in the Strait of Øresund. The lake was higher than sea level (which itself was lower than the present-day sea level) by some tens of metres. Lake Ladoga was part of it. Emergence of the land then closed the channel through the Strait of Öresund. The lake rose until at about 11,200 BP it broke through a narrow corridor in the region of Mount Billingen in present-day south-west Sweden; this used to be described by Quaternary geologists as a massive, single tap of Niagara-like force but it is now considered more likely that it happened in several steps