Because of different geographical conditions obtaining along the line, and to facilitate and speed construction, the Trans-Siberian was also divided into six sections, which allowed work to be carried on simultaneously at different points. These were: the Western Siberian section, from Chelyabinsk to the Ob River (880 miles); the Central Siberian, from the Ob to Irkutsk (1,162.5 miles); the Circumbaikalian, from Irkutsk to Mysovsk, around the southern end of the lake (194 miles); the Transbaikalian, from Mysovsk to Sretensk (669 miles); the Amur section, from Sretensk to Khabarovsk (1,326 miles); and the Ussuri section, from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok (483 miles) – for a total length of 4,7l4.5 miles. The most difficult areas, around Lake Baikal and flanking the Amur, were reserved until last.
Though most of the tsar’s advisers were lukewarm to the idea of a railway (largely because of its prohibitive expense), Sergey Witte, the new Minister of Finance, overcame their resistance and remained the guardian angel of the enterprise. Easily the most capable official in the imperial government, he was a man of extraordinary self-discipline and spartan habits who worked sixteen hours a day throughout his professional life. Though of eccentric appearance, with “a massive head, a long and heavy torso, and weak and oddly short legs,”579 he had a commanding presence, a rigorously analytical mind, and the kind of prophetic insight into political matters that gave him the reputation of a seer.
Born in Tiflis, Georgia, in 1849 to Dutch and Russian parents of high social standing and substantial means, Witte’s privileged origins did not entirely favor his prospects in life, since the turmoil of his childhood left him deeply scarred. It is said that he “held it as a grievance against his mother that she did not suckle him herself, and his early precocious recollections were of his family’s eighty-four servants and of ugly scenes between his wet nurse and his nursery-maid and her drunken husband.” A series of besotted or erratic tutors – “a retired Caucasian veteran, who also drank heavily; a retired officer in the French navy, who was deported by the authorities after a scandalous love affair; and a Swiss who became enamored of his governess” – did not ease his development, although something like a rage for order was kindled in him in reaction to the chaos of his formative years.580 His first ambition, in fact, was to become a professor of pure mathematics, but a precipitous decline in the family fortune induced him to enter railway administration instead. Within a very short time he had mastered all the technical details that bear upon the efficient management of freight, and at the time of the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78), he happened to be in charge of all traffic passing along the Odessa Railway to the front. Witte’s exceptional management of the line brought him to the attention of high government officials, including the tsar, who also noted the remarkable system of tariffs which lowered rates yet increased the revenue. In February 1892 he was made Minister of Ways of Communication, and six months later, Minister of Finance.
Witte moved briskly to rehabilitate the Russian economy. To restore confidence in a declining ruble, he established the gold standard, accumulated financial reserves, lured large blocks of foreign investment capital to new industrial initiatives, assisted industries with government subsidies, introduced the state liquor monopoly, taxed staples like tobacco, sugar, and kerosene, and selectively imposed or eliminated tariffs to foster foreign trade. Yet his policies involved sacrifice, and because the Trans-Siberian Railway was the most visible of his great undertakings, Lenin was not absolutely mistaken in subsequently depicting him as a “conjurer” who, while disclaiming a deficit, “plundered the treasury to see his railway through.”
Extending eventually 5,500 miles through seven time zones from Chelyabinsk in the Urals to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan, the Trans-Siberian Railway was destined to be by far the longest railway in the world. It would not only facilitate colonization but also defense, spur development in the territory through which it passed, and spread Russian influence throughout the Far East. As a by-product, the construction and heavy industries of Russia stood to gain, and within Siberia itself the railway could be expected to lead to improved waterways, expanded metallurgical plants, more efficient mining and agricultural enterprises, a growing trade with China, and the transport of “tons of Siberian grain, timber, hides, butter, and minerals to bolster the mother country’s internal and export trade.”581 It would also help build up a solid base for Russian power on the Pacific and facilitate the maintenance of Russia’s Pacific Fleet. Beyond that (in Witte’s opinion) it might even create a new world order by opening up “new horizons not only for Russia but for world trade... resulting in fundamental alterations in the existing economic relations between states.”582 And relations with the United States were among those uppermost in his mind. Indeed, the railway excited so many expectations that it deserved to be called, as it was, one of the wonders of the world.
More than anything else, however, the government was counting on the line’s ability to serve as a “safety valve” to ease the rural overpopulation of European Russia, beleaguered by famine and seething with inchoate revolutionary discontent. Although these huddled masses were yearning to breathe free (if that is what the promise of Siberia meant), the difficulties of the journey by barge and cart were sufficient to discourage even the hardiest of peasant families, among whom disease and other perils of the journey took a terrible toll. Before the coming of the railway, some 10 percent of the children of emigrants, it is said, died en route. Most migrants settled in southwestern Siberia, where most of the arable land could be found. Indeed, the known resources – outside of Pacific fishing – justifying construction of a railway east of Omsk were obscure, and strategic and political considerations emerged as paramount for carrying the Trans-Siberian through to the sea.
At Witte’s urging, a special Trans-Siberian Committee was established – made up of the tsar’s chief ministers or cabinet, presided over by the tsarevich – to coordinate construction with land distribution schemes, and medical, veterinary, and various other services to ease the emigrant’s plight. The committee’s expanded powers subsequently gave it jurisdiction over all matters bearing on Siberian development, including “the right to allocate funds, fix expenses, expropriate land, timber, and buildings, requisition convict and military labor, establish a separate railway police force, select routes, and determine where and when construction should begin.”583
Built with astonishing if reckless speed, within a month of the groundbreaking ceremony in Vladivostok, the road began to cross the wastelands of Siberia, spanning the widest rivers and manned by an army of up to 100,000 laborers and technicians of all kinds.
The western division – from Chelyabinsk to the Ob – was carried forward under the direction of Constantine Mikhailovsky, designer of the great Alexander Bridge over the Volga and Russia’s greatest civil engineer. Although the track was laid through level plains, including the Ishym and Barabinsk steppes, he faced wholly inadequate supplies of wagons, horses, barges, and basic materiel, and had to recruit skilled workers from as far away as Turkey and Persia. Steel had to be imported from the Urals, cement from St. Petersburg, other supplies from Warsaw. His line passed through swamps, peat bogs, and jungles of nettles; and to prepare the way, he had to improvise dikes, dig canals, and sink trestle pilings into beds of slime. Even hardwood had to be brought in, since the local timber was unsuitable for bridges and ties. And every wooden tie had to be hand-cut. In addition, he had to build lime kilns for the brickwork of his bridges, and drill artesian wells. Since no shelters had been prepared for the laborers in advance, they bivouacked on the open plains until the early frosts came, and then moved into makeshift log cabins, boxcars, or “crude huts thrown together with railway ties and partly covered by sod.”584