Interesting facts about the history of the creation, formation and development of railroad communication in Russia — on the public video lecturing of the Presidential Library

Public video lecturing of the “Knowledge of Russia” cycle focused on the “180th anniversary of the beginning of railroad communication in Russia” was held in the Presidential Library on December 8, 2017. Students of St. Petersburg State University of Communications of Emperor Alexander I, St. Petersburg College of Railway Transport, as well as staff employees of the Minor October Railway attended the event on the scene. While the listeners from Barnaul, Bologoye, Velikiye Luki and Petrozavodsk — via videoconferencing mode.

Deputy head of the Oktyabrskaya Railway for personnel and social issues Vladimir Odintsov introduced an audience to some interesting facts from the history of railways in our country. He paid special attention to these people who was at the origins of the establishing and development of this type of transportations: Agustín de Betancourt, P. P. Melnikov, N. O. Kraft and many others. Alexander Pushkin was mentioned as well. As it turned out, the great poet was an active supporter of the construction of a railway in Russia, while this innovative idea has met with great resistance in the society.

“Most of the statesmen of that time saw in the railways something revolutionary, which could undermine the people’s well-being by violating the existing order of labor market and elimination of certain ways of earnings, and moreover — to shake the very foundations of state independence,” — according to the first issue of the Historical essay on the development of railroads in Russia from their foundation to 1897 inclusively, which is available on the Presidential Library website in an extensive selection of rare materials on Russian railways.

Examining the rare books presented in the collection, we can observe how a new type of transportations developed in our country. So, from 1865 to 1875, the average annual increase in the railways of Russia amounted to 1500 km / about 1 ml, but issued in 1887 Index of Russian railways included already 61 railway lines connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg with a broad network of cities, not only Russian ones, but also the cities abroad.

To get familiar with the history of the development of railways in Russia and its regions is possible owing to such digitized rarities as the Guide to the Great Siberian Railway of 1900, Siberia and the Great Siberian Railway of 1893, The First Russian Railway in Central Asia and its importance for the Russian Central Asian industry and trade of 1891, The English Railway in Balaklava of the period of the Crimean War of 1931, The Northern Manchuria and the Chinese Eastern Railway of 1922, as well as many other attention-grabbing materials.

The collection of the Presidential Library dedicated to the railways included the historical documents, photographs, research works on the influence of railways on agriculture, industry and trade in the Russian Empire, as well as documentary films focused on this subject.