The Russian administration, guide at the time by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, determined in 1918 that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast, would be diverted to try to water the arid region, in order to grow rice, melons, cereal, and also, cotton; this was part of the Soviet plan for cotton, or "white gold", to become a major export. This did finally end up becoming the case, and today Uzbekistan is one of the world's largest exporters of cotton