to reach the White Sea. Then the Pechora turns north and crosses the arctic Arctic Circle and the border of the Nenets Okrug; Pustozyorsk; Naryan-Mar, the Nenets capital and a port at the head of the Pechora delta; Pechora Bay; Pechora Sea; and finally the Barents Sea. Hydrology The monthly average discharge of the river was recorded between 1981 and 1993 in the village of Oksino, located upstream from the mouth. The values are presented in the diagram below (metric units, m3/s). Canal projects to the Kama River Before the arrival of the railroad to the Pechora, an important way of travel to the region was via a portage road, from Cherdyn in the Kama basin to Yaksha on the Pechora. A project for a Pechora–Kama Canal along the same general route was widely discussed in the 1960s through 1980s, this time not as much for transportation, but for the diversion of some of the water of the Pechora to the Kama, as part of a grand Northern river reversal scheme. However, no construction work was carried out on the route of the proposed canal, other than a triple nuclear explosion in 1971, which excavated a crater over long. Literary reference The Pechora was the source of the name of Pechorin – protagonist of the 1839 novel A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, a well-known work of Russian literature. References Pechora in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia Rivers of the Komi Republic Rivers of Nenets Autonomous Okrug