Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union began a massive irrigation project in what are now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, diverting water from the rivers that feed the Aral Sea to irrigate farmland.
: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kz.html



