| Trans-Siberian
Railway (Transib)
·
1895: network consists of 22,000 miles of track
·
Finance Minister Sergei Witte (1892-1903): strong impetus behind the
building of the Trans-Siberian Railway (TSRR)
·
TSRR thought up by state officials in St. Petersburg and motivated
by political rather than economic or commercial concerns
·
TSRR failed to spur the economic development of Siberia specifically
or Russia as a whole
·
TSRR also failed in fulfilling the government's objective of
Russifying Siberia and insulating it from foreign manipulation
·
Japanese concern over the TSRR was a primary cause of the
Russo-Japanese War, which diminished rather than expanding Russian
influence in East Asia
·
Tsar Alexander III (ruled 1881-1894) was closely involved in the
planning and construction of the TSRR
·
1898-1901: 1,900 miles of railway constructed annually
·
TSRR build at an enormous financial and human cost with little
immediate benefit
·
1896: After humiliating defeat in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895),
Chinese allow Russian corporations to build and operate Chinese
Eastern Railroad across northern Manchuria to Vladivostok
·
Construction of South Manchurian Railroad from Port Arthur/Darien
(administered as a Russian port after 1898) to Harbin
Along
the Khilka River in the Lake Baikal region
Cutting
the TSRR's path through rocky terrain by hand
Present-day
photo of the TSRR bridge across the Lena River in Eastern Siberia
TSRR's
proximity to China along its path in Chita District
TSRR
following the Chinese border through Amur District
TSRR's
southward path in the Maritime Region toward its terminus in
Vladivostok
Events
of 1905, 1917, and 1941-1945
- 1905:
Following Bloody Sunday, members of the several railway unions
transport revolutionary ideas along the rails
- 1902-1911:
6,600 miles built--State owned 2/3 of network
-
1917: Rail network near collapse due to strains of massive troop
transportation and movement of refugees away from the Eastern
Front
- 1917:
Breakdown of transportation network leads directly to the onset
of the February/March Revolution
- May
1918: Czechs who had joined the Imperial Army seize the TSRR
- 1930s:
TSRR double-tracked by gulag labor
- Mid-1930s-early
1950s: Railways used to transport gulag prisoners to the east
and north
- Stalin
era: many boxcars simply abandoned along the track and prisoners
left to perish
- 1941-1945:
Rail network indispensable to Red Army during World War II,
known in the USSR as the "Great Patriotic War"
- 1950s:
Importance of trains in Ballad
of a Soldier
as a military asset and a means of returning home
Baikal-Amur
Mainline Railway (BAM)
- Traversing
Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, the 2,305 mile-long
BAM runs about 380 to 480 miles north of and parallel with the
Trans-Siberian
- BAM
(in theory) provides Russia with a second railway link to the
Pacific Ocean
- Route
of the present-day BAM was first considered in the 1880s as an
option for the eastern section of the Trans-Siberian
- 1930s:
many gulag prisoners, including German and Japanese prisoners of
war, ended up in railway construction camps along the BAM
- 1953:
Following Stalin's death that March, virtually all construction
work on the BAM stopped and was abandoned to the elements
- March
1974: Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated that a new
BAM project would become a huge Komsomol (Young Communist)
undertaking
- September
1984: a "golden spike" (Utah, 1867) connecting the
eastern and western sections of the BAM was hammered into place
- No
Western media were invited to attend this historic event as
Soviet officials did not want any questions asked about the
line's operational status
- In
reality, only one third of the BAM's track was fully operational
- BAM
declared complete in 1991
- Mid
1990s: BAM was one of Russia's least profitable railways
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