The Largest Megaproject in History

this is the Trans-Siberian Railway abrasive iron that encompasses almost the entirety of Russia coming in at roughly 8 400 kilometers in length when construction finished in 1916 for comparison that's just over two and a half times longer than the United States's own transcontinental Railway which topped out at 3270 kilometers the US line was built through a far less hostile landscape through more populated areas and with a clearer economic benefit to the state linking up the highly productive West and East coasts in comparison the Trans-Siberian was built in often freezing temperatures through hostile terrain and to an entirely unproductive region of Russia so why did the Russian State go to such unprecedented lengths to connect east to west and how in the end did it overcome these challenges the history behind the railway and its construction is fascinating it is one of Imperial ambition autocracy and a man who has become synonymous with the project the Russian Minister of Finance Sergey Vitter the Trans-Siberian Railway was first and foremost a political tool it was supposed to expand and maintain the power of Russian autocracy there had been some concern during the late 19th century among the Russian political establishment that Siberia would develop its own power structure parallel to the state due to its remoteness this of course would have meant Siberia would be harder to control in the mind of Alexander III this was a terrible possibility it threatened that tsaris principles of autocracy the Tsar was terrified that the Russian monarchy might lose direct control over the proceedings of the state a fear instilled in him after his father's liberalizing reforms turned sour revolts broke out and the iron-like grip tsarism once had over Russia and her people began to wane he wanted to ensure nothing like that would ever happen again and the railway across Siberia was one of the ways in which he intended to reassert the monarchy's authority and ensure the remote territory did not slip from its control echoing his emperor Constantine nikolovic posiat the minister of Transport for Russia from 1874 to 88 argued that quote until there is a railroad across all of Siberia it will be estranged from the general system and political life of the Russian state the unification of the nation via a state-controlled railway project as opposed to privately constructed ones that were built in the United States and Canada would be the cherry on top a rejection of Western liberalism and a Vindication of tsarist autocratic rule embodied in Iron and Steel there was of course also an economic aspect to it the untapped potential and hidden Riches of Siberia just waiting to be exploited Catherine the Great had called it Russia's India Mexico or Peru in that regard however these economic and even military considerations were secondary to the political benefits that the state envisioned initially the Russian State elected to pursue a short southern route from Nizhny Novgorod to tjuman much to the Chagrin of the minister of Transport posiet who had proposed a northly alternative this however turned out to be an unexpected Boon for his line the russo-turkish war of 1877-88 combined with poor harvests and a decline in global grain prices caused the ruble to Tumble as a result Imperial comptrollers rushed to mitigate the damages on the Imperial balance sheet and some of the first cuts to be made were targeted at railways in short not only had pozier's foes been dealt a serious blow but he had also avoided the setback of winning the railway bid and then being unable to complete it due to monetary restrictions once the state's finances had recovered in 1884 posiet reintroduced his route but now with an extension deep into Siberia starting in Samara and stretching all the way to Vladivostok as luck would have it his proposal was successful at the second time of asking and he would have likely seen the project through her disaster not struck in 1888 two years after his project had begun construction and after bureaucratic inertia disagreements over finances and bickering among Regional Elites a fateful Railway crash guaranteed his departure from Russian political life on October 17th Tsar Alexander's Imperial Train derailed near the town of borky in eastern Ukraine the dining car in which the emperor and his family had been relaxing in was flung from the tracks and overturned miraculously there were no fatalities and no one was seriously hurt the cause of the crash was excessive speed as minister of Transport the ultimate responsibility lay with posiet and although it seems he was not forced out such an accident caused him to Tender his resignation the line upon which the accident occurred the southwestern was actually managed by one Sergey Vita and not by POS yet directly born into a lineage of civil servants and lower nobility he had clawed his way up the Imperial bureaucracy using what few connections he had to maneuver himself into positions of power he was a near Machiavellian figure strangely despite the line being vitters he suffered virtually no political setback due to the accident counter-intuitively it appeared that through the crisis he had managed to form somewhat of a bond with Alexander III Vitter had sounded the alarm bells on the dangerous speeds being taken by the Imperial train on his line before his warnings had of course not been heeded when he had been scolded by Imperial officials for demanding lower speeds on trips in the past he had erupted into a monologue on how he would rather not quote bash in the head of the emperor which higher speeds would surely do the Tsar overheard the commotion and while he was dissatisfied with his brazenness recognized Vita's capabilities as a railway man this personal Bond as well as Vita's capacity for political maneuvering saw him move up the rungs of the Imperial bureaucracy over the next few years taking over the post administer of Transport in 1892 and finally becoming Minister of Finance the same year as Vita ascended the ranks his Focus shifted from supplanting his political Rivals who had now either retired or been forced to resign to the Trans-Siberian Railway this period of Vita's career as both a politician and a rare woman can be characterized by his almost singular focus on the task of completing the Trans-Siberian Railway and he was a force to be reckoned with a meticulous and intelligent operator he would bend the conquitaris bureaucracy to his will in order to accelerate the financing planning and construction of the line in this vein he created the committee of the Siberian railroad through which he fast-tracked policy decisions that already had the tsar's approval avoiding the lengthy debates that would have hampered progress in traditional bureaucratic channels his complete Focus did come at a cost though mostly to his wider duties as Finance Minister and the welfare of the peasantry whose interests he would sideline in favor of the Railway and whose taxes he would raise to an eye-watering level to fund the project there was also the more literal cost to consider according to Vita's own estimates the price of the Railway mounted to nearly 2. 5 billion rubles which converted to dollars and adjusted for inflation would be roughly 52. 6 billion dollars today over a 12-year construction period from 1891 to 1903 that amounted to nearly 15 percent of Russia's national yearly expenditure an absolutely staggering amount this did not seem to phase the Emperor who had appointed Vita precisely because he would do everything that was necessary to get the job done quickly just a month after Vita entered office as Minister for transport the project began that sarovic Nicholas II traveled to Vladivostok and laid the first stone for the construction of the great Siberian Railway with the young air apparent having Broken Ground on the 19th of May 1891 the Trans-Siberian Railway began Construction from the get-go Vita and his construction committee knew it was going to be a Titanic challenge to Source all of the required materials principally there was the issue of transporting said materials into the remote Siberian Hinterlands as much of it could not be locally sourced for this reason the committee of the Siberian Railroad embarked on an adjacent infrastructure effort that saw Siberian rivers and canals expanded and improved as to facilitate the Siberian supply chain to put it another way the Trans-Siberian Railway was such a massive undertaking it merited its own infrastructure initiative to support it the resources that would ultimately be transported down these navigable waterways were composed of roughly 454 million kilograms of rail railroad spikes and joints initially Vita imagined that a large share of the required materials would be produced domestically in Siberia but when this failed to pan out production was instead shifted to European Russia United Kingdom and Poland but in addition to the difficulty of transporting resources to Siberia an equally difficult task was Labor the number of people to work on the project over the course of its lifespan is unknown however archival material and expected Workforce requirements penned by the Trans-Siberian Railway committee put the active working population between 57 to 80 000 workers this is comparable to if not greater than the Panama Canal's Peak Workforce of sixty thousand some historians such as Christian Vollmer have contended that the workforce Rose as high as 200 000 workers at Peak construction however I cannot confirm if this is the case as his work did not cite of source needless to say the Manpower required was immense and most of the labor had to be imported from European Russia and some even from China there simply wasn't enough labor in Siberia to accommodate the Trans-Siberian Railway the committee thus spent roughly 30 million rubles in order to facilitate the relocation of European labor into Siberia a sum that today would be the equivalent of 630 million dollars estimates from the Russian State archives and from historians such as Igor namov put the total migrant influx between 1 to 1.

2 million people from 1893 to 1902. many of whom would undoubtedly work on the railway convict labor also featured prominently with the average number of convicts on each section of the line numbering around 5000. they were joined by Exiles from European Russia and were one of the most stable working populations available this Army of laborers would work in some of the most remote parts of Russia in extreme climates and under difficult conditions a total of 2.

2 percent of the workers would perish with injury rates climbing as high as 10 percent while these numbers are quite High by modern standards they pale in comparison to similarly expansive contemporary Mega projects such as the Panama Canal whose fatality rate climbed as high as 12. 7 during the french-led construction from 1881 to 89. convict laborers had it the worst though at the mercy of their guards and task Masters who in the absence of much of anything else to do in the Siberian wastes imbibe themselves with vodka and set about tormenting their captives often Killing Them In Cold Blood alcohol was not only abused by the enforcers though statistics of tribute two percent of all worker deaths on the project to alcohol poisoning it seemed that many turned to drink to Stave off the tedium and hardship of the Siberian wastes some of the most dangerous jobs involved demolition efforts poorly manufactured dynamite and irresponsible work practices led to many deaths among the workforce along the circum by car route workers dangled pendulously from Cliffs above the deepest lake in the world while they placed Dynamite charges sometimes scaffolding was employed but the work was treacherous regardless indeed many of the deaths were due to hazardous working conditions one Railway journalist wrote that quote owing to the extreme cold Bridge Engineers would allow their body temperatures to run down more than they were aware with the result that some of them would slip or find they could not get their numbed fingers to grasp a support in time falling into the granite-like Frozen River below being killed instantly living conditions for the workers also often left much to be desired one newspaper steppenoylitosk or the step Gazette reported in 1893 that laborers working on the west Siberian line were initially forced to sleep on the wet ground right up until the frost of winter set in it was only after a year of complaint that the state contract is in charge of the line finally acquiesced agreeing to build wooden Huts for the workers the Trans-Siberian Railway would be mostly complete by 1898.

however some critical Eastern portions of the line would not be built until 1916. in the meantime the full line would be serviced by a route through Chinese Manchuria being replaced by the Amur Railway in 1916 which meant that the railway was at that point fully within Russian borders Lake Baikal would also take some time to be conquered with no Railway being planned between the ikutsuka Terminus on the west side and the misovaya station on the East due to the challenging terrain surrounding the lake plans for a route past the lake would be shelved until 1898 and the railway would not be completed until 1904.