5. Scan the text: Demand, Design and Importance of the Trans-Siberian Railway*

In the late 19^th century Japan, China and England wanted Asian territories to be out of Russian control and Russia had to make it secured.

This was the main reason to construct the railway. However, ultimately, the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway let Russia develop Siberia and Pacific shore. At that time the development of Siberia was hampered by poor transport links within the region as well as between Siberia and the rest of the country. There was no steady connection between European Russia and its Asian areas. Aside from the Great Siberian Road, good roads suitable for wheeled transport were few and far between. For about five months of the year, rivers were the main means of transportation. Only a railroad could be a real solution to the region's transportation problems.

The first railroad projects emerged in Siberia after the completion of the Moscow-Saint Petersburg Railway in 1851. One of the first was the Irkutsk–Chita project, proposed by William Collins, an American entrepreneur, and supported by Transport Minister Constantine Possiet with a view toward connecting Moscow to the Amur river, and consequently, to the Pacific Ocean.

Siberia's Governor, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, was anxious to advance the colonization of the Russian Far East, but his plans could not materialize as long as the colonists had to import grain and other food from China and Korea. It was Muravyov's initiative to conduct surveys for the future railroad in Khabarovsk region.

Before 1880, the central government had ignored those projects, because of the weakness of Siberian enterprises, clumsy bureaucracy, and fear of financial risk.

The Minister of Finance Count Egor Kankrin wrote: “The idea of covering Russia with a railroad network not just exceeds any possibility, but even building the railway from Petersburg to Kazan must be found untimely by several centuries”.

At last the original plans for the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway were approved by the Emperor Alexander II. His son, Alexander III supervised that construction. Sergey Witte was appointed Director of Railway Affairs in 1889. He was responsible for that construction.

The design process lasted for 10 years. Sergey Witte fought against suggestions to save funds, for example, by installing ferryboats instead of bridges over the rivers until traffic increased. The designers insisted and secured the decision to construct an uninterrupted railway. To save money and avoid of clashes with the land owners, it was decided to lay the railway outside the existing cities.

Similar to the First Transcontinental Railroad in the USA, Russian engineers started the construction at both ends and worked towards the center. The railway was laid north from Vladivostok along the right bank of the Ussuri River to Khabarovsk till the Amur River. That railway branch was called the Ussuri railway. The branch from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk was built in 1897.

In March 1891, the future Tzar Nikolay II opened and blessed the construction of the Far Eastern segment of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. He stopped in Vladivostok after the visit to Japan at the end of his round-the world journey.

Russian soldiers, as well as convict labourers from Sakhalin and other places were pressed into railway-building service. More than 5,000 railmen were employed at the Far Eastern Railway in 1900. With the completion of the Amur River line north of the Chinese border in 1916, there was a continuous railway from Petrograd to Vladivostok that remains to this day the world's longest railway line. The Imperial State Budget spent 1.455 billion roubles from 1891 to 1913 on the railway construction. It was an expenditure record which was surpassed only by the military budget in World War I.

In 1991, the fourth route running further to the north was finally completed. Known as the Baikal Amur Mainline, this recent extension departs from the Trans-Siberian line at Taishet several hundred miles west of Lake Baikal. It crosses the Amur River at Komsomolsk-on-Amur (north of Khabarovsk), and reaches the Pacific at Sovetskaya Gavan. Thus the epoch of the Trans-Siberian railway construction was completed.

The Trans-Siberian Railway gave a great boost to Siberian agriculture. It influenced the territories it connected directly. As Siberian agriculture began to export cheap grain towards the West, agriculture in Central Russia was still under economic pressure after the end of serfdom, which was formally abolished in 1861. Thus, to defend the central territory and to prevent possible social destabilization, in 1896 the government introduced the Chelyabinsk tariff break and a similar barrier in Manchuria.

This measure changed the nature of export. There appeared a lot of mills in Altai, Novosibirsk and Tomsk to supply the local population and other regions with cheap breadstuffs.

From 1896 till 1913 Siberia exported on average 501,932 tonnes (30,643,000 poods) of grain annually.

Nowadays the Trans-Siberian Railway is still very important for Russia; the route is the shortest way between Europe and Asia, and Russia makes money by transporting goods from China and Japan to Europe, as around 30% of Russian exports travel on the main transportation line of Russia.