«As the voice of the past, a fearsome rumble of the rapids appeared in the dusk over the Dnipro River. For many years it could not be heard here, this deep-seated rumble of the abyss, which contained something primordially bestial and murk». This is how Oles Honchar described the moments right after the retreating Soviets had blown up a section of the Dnipro Dam in 1941.