Rail Traffic in The Early Soviet Union
After the foundation of the Soviet Union the People's Commissariat of Railways (after 1946 named the Ministry of Railways (МПС), the railway network expanded to a total length of 106,100 km by 1940. A notable project of the late 1920s and one of the centerpieces of the First Five-Year Plan was the Turkestan–Siberia Railway, linking Western Siberia via Eastern Kazakhstan with Uzbekistan.
As the quality of rail transport continued to deteriorate, in part because of the Russian Civil War, some within the Soviet leadership claimed that the railways were not sustainable if congestions continued to increase. Those who advocated an enlargement of rail transport felt that increased investment and the lengthening of already established rail tracks could solve the ongoing congestion crisis. The majority agreed on increasing investments, but there was no clear consensus on how these investments were to be used. There were even some who believed in the privatization of the railways. Gosplan economists in the meantime advocated the rationalization of the railways, coupled with tariffs based on actual cost, which would reduce traffic demand and provide funds for investment. The leadership was unable to reach a conclusion and the rail system continued to deteriorate. In 1931, in a Central Committee (CC) resolution, it was decided that increased investments coupled with the introduction of newer trains could solve the crisis. This resolution was never carried out, and yet again, the system continued to deteriorate.
The Central Committee ordered Lazar Kaganovich to solve the railway crisis in 1935. Kaganovich first prioritized bottleneck areas over other less-traveled areas; his second priority was investing in heavy traffic lines, and thirdly, the least efficient areas of the rail network were left to themselves. Another problem facing rail transport was the massive industrialization efforts pushed on by the authorities. The industrialization proved to be a heavy burden on the railways, and Vyacheslav Molotov and Kaganovich even admitted this to the 18th party congress. Even so, the Soviet Government continued their industrialization efforts to better prepare themselves for a future war with Germany, which became reality in 1941.
Read more about this topic: Rail Transport In The Soviet Union
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, rail, traffic, early, soviet and/or union:
“Today he plays jazz; tomorrow he betrays his country.”
—Stalinist slogan in the Soviet Union (1920s)
“For this is the mark of a wise and upright man, not to rail against the gods in misfortune.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“There’s something about the dead silence of an office building at night. Not quite real. The traffic down below is something that didn’t have anything to do with me.”
—John Paxton (1911–1985)
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The tremendous outflow of intellectuals that formed such a prominent part of the general exodus from Soviet Russia in the first years of the Bolshevist Revolution seems today like the wanderings of some mythical tribe whose bird-signs and moon-signs I now retrieve from the desert dust.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“At all events, as she, Ulster, cannot have the status quo, nothing remains for her but complete union or the most extreme form of Home Rule; that is, separation from both England and Ireland.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)