Railways in Russian History

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 built 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

Trans-Siberian Railway (Transib)Along the Khilka River in the

Lake Baikal region


Cutting the TSRR's path through rocky terrain by hand


Late 1990s 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

Events of 1905, 1917, and 1941-1945

• 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

Events of 1905, 1917, and 1941-1945

• 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 1984, 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

Railways in Russian History

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