Libmonster ID: RU-20300
Author(s) of the publication: V. P. KRIKUNOV

Railways are the main nerve of the country's economic life, the material support of economic ties and great changes in the position, character and appearance of the masses. Without taking into account their role and significance as one of the components of the capitalist economic mechanism, it is impossible to comprehend either the process of development of post-reform Russia, or the subsequent shifts in all areas of its economy. Meanwhile, this topic has not been developed for a long time.

That is why attention is drawn to the book by the senior researcher of the Institute of History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Candidate of Historical Sciences A.M. Solovyova, in which the study of specific historical issues (from the emergence of the first domestic factory roads to the creation of the railway network in the country and the organization of the state railway economy) is combined with the problem of the industrial revolution. This is the first independent IP-

page 166

a follow-up that examines the role of rail transport in the development of the industrial revolution in Russia.

The work is built on a solid documentary basis. Various data on the technical, economic, and financial condition of roads and rolling stock have been collected from old Russian statistical publications (Works of the Highly Established Commission for the Study of Railway Affairs in Russia (1866-1884) and the Special High Commission for the Study of Railway Affairs in Russia (1908-1912), which published more than 100 volumes)., many of which are almost never used in the literature. The search for new materials in the archives of the Department of Railway Affairs of the Ministry of Finance, the Department of Railways of the Ministry of Railways, various societies, committees, boards and individual figures made it possible to trace the policy directions of the tsarist government regarding railways, to clarify the idea of the mechanism of bank capital actions in this area. Given the novelty of the tasks to be solved, it would be appropriate to classify the sources used both by content and by their origin, types and types.

The author seeks, in the light of Lenin's experience, to present and analyze information on the history of Russia in comparison with the data of foreign powers, against the background of a broad perspective that reveals the role of railway transport in the world capitalist economy, the characteristic features and peculiarities of this transport in various countries (that is, a technique that remains, unfortunately, a rarity in our specialists). The book raises important and little-studied issues of the development in Russia of objective trends in the interweaving of world technical progress in transport, along with interrelated deep technical and economic processes that originated in the bowels of the old system.

Pictures of the concession speculative "fever" and various "deals", control and financial measures of the tsarist government, the process of transferring private roads into the hands of the state, the influence of railway transport directly on the development of the capitalist economy of Russia are presented in the book vividly and convincingly.

Based on the cardinal methodological Marxist-Leninist position that the industrial revolution in Russia, which unfolded in the post-reform period, was an integral part of the world industrial revolution, the author seeks to consider it in the dialectical interdependence of technical, economic and social aspects. At the same time, it is important to have a well - founded idea about the formation of a national technical school of railway personnel during the construction of the first Russian railway line Petersburg - Moscow in the 40-50s of the XIX century.

The work refutes the views of bourgeois historians, including modern ones, that "Asiatically backward Russia" was not ready at that time to "perceive the industrial revolution" and was not yet ripe for the introduction of steam transport. The materials published in the book also show the inconsistency of another version, that the tsarist government and foreigners built the railways of Russia without attracting Russian banking and private capital (not to mention the labor of the masses). Clarification of this issue is also important because some erroneous statements on this subject have appeared in our literature. Thus, V. V. Adamov calls for "thorough work" on the very concept of "industrial revolution" and gives advice in general to "think about abandoning (?!) the term "industrial revolution" for the XIX - XX centuries and replacing it "with a more capacious one (in his opinion. - V. S.), for example, "industrialization"... or the concept of the level of civilization " 1 . The book helps us to establish ourselves in the right positions, although some of its provisions are not indisputable. Thus, the author mainly associates the creation and expansion of the railway network in post-reform Russia with industrial development and clearly does not sufficiently disclose the impact of agriculture on this process.

Statistical data and other diverse materials used by the researcher made it possible to trace the stages of formation and development of the state-capitalist economic system in railway transport in Russia and abroad.,

1 V. V. Adamov. Preface to the collection " Questions of the History of Capitalist Russia. Problems of multi-layout". Sverdlovsk. 1972, pp. 11-12.

page 167

that the state railway sector by the end of the century included 70% of the country's railway network - 23 major highways with a length of 34 thousand versts. The total amount of capital invested in them reached 3.4 billion rubles. More than 400,000 railway workers and employees worked here (pp. 293-294). 30% of the entire Russian railway network was under the control of several monopolies. These private roads with a length of more than 16 thousand versts were distributed among seven joint-stock companies-powerful financial and capitalist associations with a capital of 1.4 billion rubles. They employed over 150,000 railway workers (p. 294). The dominance of banks in this branch of the capitalist economy stimulated the growth of Russian financial capital.

The advantages of the book include statistical tables (there are 28 and 5 appendices in the text), which clearly reflect the development of railway transport and related branches of the national economy, which makes the presentation very convincing. However, the author has prepared only 10 tables on his own. Attached to the paper are maps that reveal the dynamics of railway development by the main chronological periods studied in the book. One of them is the first attempt to map the degree of dependence of the railways of old Russia on state-monopolistic financial associations at the beginning of the XX century.

The value of a monograph is determined not only by the breadth of generalization of materials first introduced into scientific circulation, but also by the novelty of the approach to the consideration of a number of issues. No less important is the perspective that this work opens up through the formulation of problems that give rise to disputes and reflections, which contribute to the movement of creative thought. Thus, the emergence of railways is considered in the work as a condition for the development of capitalist economy, since they "began to play a relatively independent role as a powerful factor stimulating the rapid growth of the main branches of heavy industry" (p. 81). This is certainly the case. But it seems to us that we should not lose sight of the reverse impact of heavy industry and agricultural production on railways, which was manifested in different ways at each stage, On the one hand, the impact of general shifts in the world (in particular, the characteristics and features of socio-economic life in Russia) on the appearance of railways, and on the other hand, On the other hand, the very development of railways (taking into account their specifics in different economic regions) and the strength of their impact on the course of changing the country's appearance should be studied in an indissoluble unity.

Is it necessary to prove that without the working class it is impossible to imagine the development of railways at all? Therefore, one of the tasks of the study should have been, in our opinion, to study the question of the labor force (if not from the point of view of its socio-political position in society, then, in any case, as the most important element of the productive forces). The monograph notes that "a new type of capitalist transport caused the formation of the railway proletariat - one of the largest groups of wage workers in Russia" (p. 144) and that now "in Soviet historical literature, interest in its study has significantly increased" (p.8). But for some reason, this almost did not affect the content of the book. In the text, only a few pages are devoted directly to the workers themselves (pages 144-146, 227-228, and 291-292). But it's not just about volume. Not a single fact is given about the composition of workers, their structure, placement and position on different roads (taking into account the diversity of socio - economic conditions in the center and suburbs), as well as about the sources of formation .2 As for how they affected the nature of work, the level of labor productivity, the degree of profitability and the process of forming railways-

2 Practically, the working class is not mentioned in any of the 28 tables in the main text. And only in Appendix 3 " Comparative data on the operation of railways in European Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA "on the basis of the" Statistical Collection of the Ministry of Railways"," total number of employees and workers (thousand people) "and" per mile of track "are indicated, as well as" average maintenance one employee and a worker (rubles)", and then only for the year 1900. Appendix 5, "Dynamics of labor force growth and steam power supply of industry and railway transport in Russia from 1875 to 1900," shows how many thousands of people worked serving railway transport in 1875-1878, 1890 and 1900. (page 307). However, it is not clear who the author took into account in this case: only permanent workers or also temporary and day laborers?

page 168

If the proletariat of the various regions of Russia has three particularly important points - the time of construction and opening of railways, their location and technical equipment - then we can only guess about this, it would be more expedient to first (at each stage of development) show the labor efforts of the masses to ensure the operation of railways and already as a result and consequence of all this the role of railway transport, its impact on the development of the capitalist economy of the country.

It was necessary to attract more research from those authors who worked on the issues raised in the book in local archives and revealed previously unknown information. Despite all the attention paid by A. M. Solovyova to literature (see pages 7-12), unfortunately, she did not use a number of works of this kind .3
3 For example, works by: F. A. Shcherbina. General sketches of economic and commercial-industrial conditions of the Vladikavkaz railway district. Hch. 1-3. SPB. 1892-1894; S. I. Potolov. Workers of the Donbass in the XIX century, Moscow, 1963 (it reveals the relationship between railway construction and the emergence of industrial centers-pp. 74-94); V. A. Zolotov. Grain export of Russia through the ports of the Black and Azov Seas in the 60s-90s of the XIX century. Rostov n / A 1966 (it contains a special chapter on the development of transport and its role in the formation of the southern grain region and foreign trade-pp. 38-86), etc.

page 169


© libmonster.ru

Permanent link to this publication:

https://libmonster.ru/m/articles/view/A-M-SOLOVYOV-RUSSIAN-RAILWAY-TRANSPORT-IN-THE-SECOND-HALF-OF-THE-19TH-CENTURY

Similar publications: LRussia LWorld Y G


Publisher:

Fedor DenisovContacts and other materials (articles, photo, files etc)

Author's official page at Libmonster: https://libmonster.ru/Denisov

Find other author's materials at: Libmonster (all the World)GoogleYandex

Permanent link for scientific papers (for citations):

V. P. KRIKUNOV, A. M. SOLOVYOV. RUSSIAN RAILWAY TRANSPORT IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY // Moscow: Libmonster Russia (LIBMONSTER.RU). Updated: 19.01.2025. URL: https://libmonster.ru/m/articles/view/A-M-SOLOVYOV-RUSSIAN-RAILWAY-TRANSPORT-IN-THE-SECOND-HALF-OF-THE-19TH-CENTURY (date of access: 07.02.2025).

Found source (search robot):


Publication author(s) - V. P. KRIKUNOV:

V. P. KRIKUNOV → other publications, search: Libmonster RussiaLibmonster WorldGoogleYandex

Comments:



Reviews of professional authors
Order by: 
Per page: 
 
  • There are no comments yet
Related topics
Publisher
Rating
0 votes
Related Articles
ВЕЧНАЯ ТЕМА. Светлана АЛЕКСИЕВИЧ: Чудный олень вечной охоты (Книга любви)
Catalog: История 
4 hours ago · From Вадим Казаков
Мастерам культуры предлагают определиться
6 hours ago · From Вадим Казаков
ОЛЬГА ИПАТОВА: НЕ ВПАСТЬ В БЕСПАМЯТСТВО
6 hours ago · From Вадим Казаков
Без купюр. ПОД ЗНАКОМ АФГАНА
Catalog: История 
Yesterday · From Вадим Казаков
"ОГ": ЧЕЛОВЕК. ОБЩЕСТВО. КУЛЬТУРА. ВПЕЧАТЛЕНИЯ НЕДЕЛИ
Yesterday · From Вадим Казаков
Попробовал для себя ответить на не простой вопрос о идеологии и патриотизме: взгляды на прошлое, настоящее и будущее в изложении литературы и альтернативной истории.
2 days ago · From Михаил Зверев
Литература бывает бездоходной - но не безотходной. Писатели - как дети малые...
3 days ago · From Вадим Казаков
НА РАЗВАЛАХ ВЕЛИКОЙ ИМПЕРИИ
Catalog: История 
3 days ago · From Вадим Казаков
Завтра начнется вчера
Catalog: История 
3 days ago · From Вадим Казаков
"Свидетель мира" - "Чернобыльской молитве"
Catalog: Экология 
3 days ago · From Вадим Казаков

New publications:

Popular with readers:

News from other countries:

LIBMONSTER.RU - Digital Library of Russia

Create your author's collection of articles, books, author's works, biographies, photographic documents, files. Save forever your author's legacy in digital form. Click here to register as an author.
Library Partners
A. M. SOLOVYOV. RUSSIAN RAILWAY TRANSPORT IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY
 

Editorial Contacts
Chat for Authors: RU LIVE: We are in social networks:

About · News · For Advertisers

Libmonster Russia ® All rights reserved.
2014-2025, LIBMONSTER.RU is a part of Libmonster, international library network (open map)
Keeping the heritage of Russia


LIBMONSTER NETWORK ONE WORLD - ONE LIBRARY

US-Great Britain Sweden Serbia
Russia Belarus Ukraine Kazakhstan Moldova Tajikistan Estonia Russia-2 Belarus-2

Create and store your author's collection at Libmonster: articles, books, studies. Libmonster will spread your heritage all over the world (through a network of affiliates, partner libraries, search engines, social networks). You will be able to share a link to your profile with colleagues, students, readers and other interested parties, in order to acquaint them with your copyright heritage. Once you register, you have more than 100 tools at your disposal to build your own author collection. It's free: it was, it is, and it always will be.

Download app for Android