Vasily Surikov, Stenka Razin, detail, 1906.
Oil on canvas, 318 × 600 cm. Russian Museum, Moscow.
O. Kurliukov, Tabernacle, 1901–1906. Silver, gilding, cloisonné enamel, porcelain, 33 × 9 × 14 cm.
St. Michael Cathedral, Sitka, Alaska. Moscow.
Unknown artist, Icon: Kazan Mother of God, mid-19th century. Wood, oil paint, 45 × 57 cm.
Irkutsk Regional Museum, Irkutsk.
Konstantin Savitsky, Repairing the Railroad, 1874.
Oil on canvas, 100 × 175 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Illarion Pryanishnikov, Empties, 1872.
Oil on canvas, 48 × 71 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
In December 1895, the Trans-Siberian railway was completed to Omsk; in 1896 to Obi; in 1896 to Irkutsk, 3371 miles east of Moscow. Stretensk was reached in July 1900, and there the original scheme terminated. To avoid carrying the line along the Amur, an arrangement was come to with the Chinese Government in 1896, by which the engineers were given rights to drive the track across North Manchuria in an almost straight line to Vladivostok; and in 1898 the Russo-Chinese Bank (alias Russian Government) obtained a concession to make a branch due south from the Manchurian section to Port Arthur on the Gulf of Pechili. These sections were pushed forward with the greatest possible speed, owing to political events in the Far East, which demanded the presence of large bodies of troops to protect or extend Russian interests.
Many Russians once supposed that the construction of the Great Siberian Railway would ruin the traffic of the river systems; but it was found, on the contrary, that with the coming of the railway the river traffic was actually very greatly increased. This was due partly to the great stimulus given to business generally throughout Siberia, and also to the fact that these rivers, excepting the Amur, were dangerous to access by the cold sea route of the Arctic Ocean, and until the railway came, had no ready outlet for their traffic. Ocean steamers could readily enter the mouth of the Amur, but very few entered the great rivers which empty into the Arctic, on account of the difficulty and danger of navigating the Arctic Ocean north of the continent of Europe and Asia. Occasionally vessels from Russian ports and some from English and other ports in Europe made the trip; but the service was not regular and many of them were compelled to turn back, while not a few were lost. Hence the railway was of peculiar benefit to the traffic of these rivers by supplying a connection with the outside world which could not be gotten satisfactorily by sea.
Though the rivers and military postroads offered ready means of local travel before the railway was built, yet the distances in Siberia are so great that these methods, even under the most favorable circumstances, were slow and tedious; and, moreover, during a large part of the year the rivers are frozen and sleighs had to be used. The journey to different places took many months, and sometimes years, and was accompanied by great hardships and dangers, not only from the intense cold of the winter, but also from the intense heat of the short summer, and from wild beasts and famine. In early days the journey from Moscow to Irkutsk took about a year, while to Kamchatka it took six months more. Later on, however, the improvements on the military postroads and in the service on them made travel much more rapid, and a distance of 200 miles a day was not an unusual rate. Nevertheless, it became yearly more evident that more rapid communication was necessary for the proper development and protection of this vast region; and by about 1860 the project of railways in Siberia was much discussed. Many schemes to connect different river systems by short lines of railway, thus facilitating transcontinental traffic, were considered; but it was finally decided to build a continuous line from European Russia across Siberia to the Pacific. The discussion over the route of this line lasted for over twenty-five years, until finally, in 1891, the Tsar Alexander III chose the present one.
An elaborate monument at Vladivostok commemorates the arrival of the Tsarevitch at that place in 1891, and his inauguration of the Great Siberian Railway. The road was to be started from both ends and to be pushed as rapidly as possible. In the meantime the railway system of European Russia had already been continued east from Moscow to the Urals, and in 1892 the extension to Tchelyabinsk on the Asiatic side of the Urals was opened. This town was considered the starting point of the Great Siberian Railway, and from here the line was built eastward, passing through the region of Orenburg, along the southern border of the region of Tobolsk and the northern border of the Kirgiz Steppe; thence through the regions of Tomsk, Yenisey, and Irkutsk to Lake Baikal, reaching the town of Irkutsk in 1898. The passengers and freight were then transferred across the lake by boat, though the railway was later constructed around its south end. The road begins again on the other side of the lake, and has been completed eastward through Transbaikalia to Stretensk, on the Shilka River, to which point it was opened for travel in 1901. In the meantime, the East-Chinese Railway, built under Russian auspices through Manchuria, was completed. This line connected the line in Transbaikalia with the Ussuri Railway, thus establishing a through route from St. Petersburg and Moscow to the Pacific Coast port of Vladivostok. A branch line also connected the East-Chinese Railway with Port Arthur and the splendid Russian seaport of Dalny.
One of the principal objects of the railway was the transportation of emigrants to the fertile valleys of Central Siberia. The train-bound traveller passed train load after train load of outward-bound emigrants. At the principal stations of Chelabinsk, Kurgan, Omsk, Kainsk, and Atchinsk, emigrants by the hundreds disembarked, and could be seen encamped by the roadside awaiting their further transportation north, south, or east. The numbers were evidence that the attractions offered by the Government entirely outweighed prejudice and the discomfort of a long journey.
The agents of the Russian government were sent to the most thickly populated or distressed portion of European Russia, and there the desirability of emigrating to Siberia was impressed upon the more industrious of the peasantry, who could scarcely make ends meet in the overcrowded cities. The Russian Government offered inducements to the willing, and at the same time fixed a nominal fare to Siberia, in order to keep out the dangerous or dissolute. This fare was fixed at the rate of about one-twentieth of a penny per kilometer; and thus it was possible for a peasant to travel three thousand kilometers (two thousand miles) for the moderate sum of six roubles. From Southern Russia this would land the emigrant in the heart of Siberia.
Boris Yakovlev, Transport Returns to Normal, 1923.
Oil on canvas, 100 × 140 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
House of Carl Fabergé, Model of the Imperial Trans-Siberian Railway and a Fabergé Egg, 1901. Egg: onyx, silver, gold, quartz, enamel;
Train: gold, platinum, 13 cm. Armoury Museum, Moscow.
In 1896 alone nearly a quarter of a million peasants left Russia for Siberia. At that time, neither the railway nor the colonizing department could cope with the rush, and the Tsar was compelled to issue the edict commanding the officials of the various Siberian governments to drop all other State work and devote their efforts to the colonization movement. For a time things were in a completely chaotic state, and a large number of emigrants, finding no land ready for them, returned to Russia.
The Trans-Siberian Railway, as measured from Moscow, has a length to Vladivostok of 9,288 miles. The railway in its course crosses the upper waters of the Obi, Yenisey, Lena, and Amur at points where they begin to be easily navigable by vessels of considerable size. Up to the commencement of the Siberian railway, the only means of communication with interior Siberia were by horse. Such enormous distances had to be covered between towns that, in order to accommodate the large number of travellers, the Government erected, on the great high-road which pierced the heart of Siberia, stations at intervals of twenty-five to thirty miles. At these stations, horses could be hired at rates set down on a Government schedule, but beyond this and the shelter afforded, nothing was provided. It