The Soviet Union was heavily dependent on rail transport, not least during the Russian Civil War and the Great Patriotic War, but also for industrialization according to the five-year plans.
The Soviet Union had a non-industrial railway network of 147,400 kilometres (91,600 mi), of which 53,900 kilometres (33,500 mi) were electrified.[1]
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After the foundation of the Soviet Union the People's Commissariat of Railways (after 1946 named the Ministry of Railways (МПС) expanded the railway network 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 for an enlargement of rail transport felt that increased investment and the lengthening of already established rail tracks could solve the ongoing congestion crisis.[2] 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 recapitalisation of the railways. Gosplan economists in the meantime advocated for the rationalisation 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.[3]
The Central Committee ordered Lazar Kaganovich to solve the railway crisis in 1935. Kaganovich first prioritised bottleneck areas over other less-traveled areas; his second priority was investing in heavy traffick lines, and thirdly, the least efficient areas of the rail network were left to themselves.[4] Another problem facing rail transport was the massive industrialisation efforts pushed on by the authorities. The industrialisation 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 industrialisation efforts to better prepare themselves for a future war with Germany, which became reality in 1941.[5]
The USSR rebuilt its rail system and industrialized with five-year plans. As a result, railroad freight grew about 20 times from 20 to 400 billion tonne-km by 1941.[6] But then disaster struck again: World War II in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In the first year or so of the war, traffic plummeted to about half its prewar value. But then the USSR started restoring and constructing railroads during wartime so that by the end of the war about half of the lost traffic had been recovered. After the war was over it took a few more years to restore the railroads and get back to the pre-war level of traffic.
Then the USSR embarked on a series of more five-year plans and rail traffic rapidly increased. By 1954 their rail freight traffic (about 850 billion tonne-km) surpassed that of the United States and the USSR then hauled more rail freight than any other country in the world.[7] Rail freight continued to rapidly increase in the USSR so that by 1960 the USSR was hauling about half of all railroad freight in the world (in tonne-km)[8] and they did this on a rail system consisting of only 10% of the world's railway kilometrage.[9] The status of hauling half the world's rail freight continued for almost 30 years but in 1988 rail freight traffic peaked at 3852 billion tonne-km (nearly 4 trillion). And then, a few years later in 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart and its largest republic, the Russian Federation, which then hauled about 2/3 of the traffic of the former USSR, became an independent country.[10]
For the USSR in 1989 (shortly before the collapse), the railroads hauled nearly eight times as much ton-km of freight by rail as they did by highway truck.[11] For the US, it was only 1.5 times as much by rail.[12] Thus trucks in the USSR played a far lesser role in hauling freight than they did in the US, leaving the railroad as the basic means of freight transportation. In 1991 a law was passed which declared that railroads were the basic transportation system of the USSR.[13]
During the Great Patriotic War (World War II) the railway system played a vital role in the war effort transporting military personnel, equipment and freight to the frontlines and often evacuating entire factories and towns from European Russia to the Ural region and Siberia. The loss of mining and industrial centers of the western Soviet Union necessitated speedy construction of new railways during the wartime. Particularly notable among them was the railway to the Arctic coal mines of Vorkuta, extended after the war to Labytnangi on the Ob River; construction work to extend it all the way to the Yenisey continued into the 1950s, aborted with the death of Joseph Stalin.
As a result of the World War II victory over Japan, the southern half of Sakhalin Island was returned to Russia in 1945. The 1067 mm railway network built by the Japanese during their forty years of control of Southern Sakhalin now became part of Soviet Railways as well (as a separate Sakhalin Railway), the only Cape gauge rail system within USSR (or today's Russia).
After the war the Soviet railway network was re-built and further expanded to more than 145,000 km of track by major additions such as Baikal Amur Mainline.
Soviet rail transport became, after the Great Patriotic War, one of the most developed in the world, surpassing most of its First World counterparts. The Soviet railway system was growing in size, at a rate of 639 km a year from 1965 to 1980, while the growth of rail transport in First World countries was either decreasing or stagnating. This steady growth in rail transport can be explained by the country's need to extract its natural resources, most of which were located close to, or in Siberia. While some problems with the railways had been reported by the Soviet press, the Soviet Union could boast of controlling one of the most electrified railway systems at the time. During much of the country's later lifespan, trains usually carried coal, oil, construction material (mostly stone, cement and sand) and timber. Oil and oil products were one of the key reasons for building railway infrastructure in Siberia in the first place.[14]
The efficiency of the railways improved over time, and by the 1980s it had many performance indicators superior to that of the United States.[15] By the 1980s Soviet railways had become the most intensively used in the world. Most Soviet citizens did not own private transport, and if they did, it was difficult to drive long distances due to the poor conditions of many roads. Another explanation has to do with Soviet policy, the first being the autarkic model created by Joseph Stalin's regime. Stalin's regime had little interest in rail transport, or any other form for transport, and instead focused most of the country's investments in rapid industrialisation. Stalin's regime was not interested in establishing new railway lines, but decided to conserve, and later expand, much of the existing railways left behind by the Tsars.[16] However, as Lev Voronin, a First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, noted in a speech to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1989; the railway sector was the "main negative sector of the economy in 1989". As industrial output declined in the late-1980s so did the demand for transportation, which led to a decline in freight transport in return.[17]
The Soviet rapid transit system was seen as the cheapest way of urban transport, and eventually another point acquired greater significance; the authorities could allocate their resources from the automobile industry to the rapid transit sector and save a substantial volume of the country's diesel and petrol. Because rapid transit system usually were cheaper to operate and less energy consuming, the Soviet authorities managed to construct 20 rapid transits nationwide,[18] with a further nine in construction when the Soviet Union collapsed.[19] Twenty other stations were under construction in 1985.[20] The country's rapid transit system was the most intensively used in the world.[18]
The efficiency of the Soviet Railways improved over time and by the 1980s had many performance indicators superior to the United States.[21] Railroads built in the USSR were planned, and in contrast to the US, only a single railroad line would be constructed between major cities. This avoided the situation in the US where two (or sometimes more) railroad companies would construct lines that more or less paralleled each other resulting in wasteful duplication of effort. But most of the rail lines in the USSR were inherited from the Russian Empire which had also avoided such duplication.
As a result of having a shorter rail system plus more freight traffic, the USSR had a freight traffic density (in ton-km per km of line) 6-7 times higher than the US. In the US, the mean daily freight car mileage was only 95 km. vs. 227 km. for the USSR. The percent of freight car miles that ran empty was 41% for the US vs. 29% for the USSR. It was claimed that labor productivity rose 4.3 fold between 1955 and 1980, resulting in the USSR being roughly the same as the US (after taking into account that the USSR hauled a greater proportion of non-bulk commodities which were more labor intensive to haul—more switching of cars, etc.).
However, the reliability of locomotives in the USSR was much worse than for the US.[22] Their high traffic density often resulted in traffic congestion and delays, especially after an accident blocked the line.[22][23]
As compared to the U.S., the Soviet Union got off to a very slow start in electrification but later greatly surpassed the US. Electrification in the US reached its maximum in the late 1930s which is just when electrification was getting its start in the USSR.
In 1932 the USSR opened their first short 3000 volt DC electrified segment in Georgia (birthplace of the Soviet premier Joseph Stalin) on the Suramsk Pass grade located between the capital, Tbilisi, and the Black Sea.[24] The grade (slope) was steep: 2.9%. The original fleet of 8 locomotives was imported from the United States and were made by General Electric (GE). The Soviets also got GE to give them construction drawings so as to enable the Soviets to construct similar locomotives. Strange as it may seem, the first Soviet locomotive to be made was not a copy, but one of Soviet design which was completed in Nov. 1932 with great fanfare. Later in the same month, the 2nd locomotive to be made in the USSR, a copy of the GE locomotive, was completed. At first, many more copies of U.S. design were made than for ones of Soviet design, since no more locomotives of Soviet design were made until 2 years later.
In 1941, prior to World War II, the USSR had electrified only 1865 route-kilometers.[25] This was well behind the US which had electrified nearly 5000 kilometers.[26] However, since the USSR rail network was much shorter than the US, the percentage of the USSR's kilometers electrified was greater than the US.
Electrification was put on hold during World War II as the western part of the Soviet Union (including Russia) was invaded by Nazi Germany. After the war, the highest priority was to rebuild the physical destruction caused by the War, so railroad electrification was further postponed for about 10 years.
In 1946, just one year after the end of World War II, the USSR ordered 20 electric locomotives from General Electric,[27] the same U.S. corporation that supplied locomotives for the first USSR electrification. But due to the cold war, they could not be delivered to the USSR so they were sold elsewhere. The Milwaukee Road in the U.S. obtained 12 of them where America nicknamed them "Little Joes", "Joe" referring to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet premier.
In the mid-1950s, the USSR decided to launch a two pronged approach to replace their obsolete fleet of steam locomotives. They would electrify the lines with high density traffic and slowly convert the rest of the lines to diesel. The result was a slow but steady introduction of both electric and diesel traction which lasted until about 1980 when their last steam locomotives were retired.[28] In the US, steam went out about 1960,[29] 20 years earlier than for the USSR.
But once dieselization and electrification had fully replaced steam (around 1980) they began to convert some diesel lines to electric, but the pace of electrification slowed. The result was that by 1990, over 60% of the railway freight was being hauled by electric traction.[30][31] This amounted to about 30% of the freight hauled by all railroads in the world [32] and about 80% of rail freight in the US (where rail freight held almost a 40% modal share).[33] The USSR was hauling more rail freight than all the other countries in the world combined, and most of this was going by electrified railway.
After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, railroad traffic in Russia, sharply declined [34] and new major electrification projects were not undertaken except for the line to Murmansk which was completed in 2005.[35] Work continued on completing the electrification of the Trans-Siberian Railway, but at a slower pace, finishing in 2002.[36] However, the percent of tonne-kilometers hauled today by electric trains has increased to about 85%.[30]