Cities, Railways, and Revolutions: Drawing the Links

In the late-Tsarist period, an urban revolution hit Russia. Major cities exploded in size. The population of St. Petersburg, the imperial capital, trebled from just over 500,000 in 1864 to 1,500,000 in 1900, rising to 2,500,000 by 1917.

It wasn’t just Russia’s capital city that was on the rise. By 1917, approximately 20 percent of the population of the entire empire lived in cities. Some of the most remarkable examples of city growth took place in Siberia, a traditionally underpopulated (by Slavic Russians, at least) region of the empire. And it was here, especially, that another factor came into play. Transportation.

At the same time as Russia’s dramatic urbanisation began, another revolution was underway – a transport revolution. Its most impressive aspect was the growth of Russia’s railways. By the 1890s, the prime example of Russia’s railways was the Trans-Siberian (or “Great Siberian”, as it was called at the time) railway.

Both urbanisation and railways were intimately linked, and in ways not always entirely obvious. These twin features of late-Imperial Russia are important to teaching Russian History before 1917. They give an opportunity not just to examine two distinct, separate developments, but also to delve into their connections.

This is the purpose of this brief post.

 

The Trans-Siberian and Urban Development

In the 1890s, the Trans-Siberian railway began to transform Siberia. Built in six monster segments beginning in 1891, its original route stretched 5,000 miles, becoming the longest single line in the world. And despite its faults (slow trains and uncomfortable carriages foremost amongst them), it brought huge and significant change to the towns and cities through which it passed.

The route of the Trans-Siberian railway

These changes are revealed in a contemporary source, Asiatic Russia (Aziatskaia Rossiia), published in 1914. Amongst other information on Siberian towns and cities, the encyclopaedic volume listed their changing populations between 1897, when the first empire-wide census had been taken in Russia, and 1911.

Growth of Siberian towns and cities in the early 1900s. Source: Aziatskaia Rossiia (1914)

Overall, towns and cities in Siberia appear to have seen a consistent and remarkable growth. But take a closer look, and you’ll see a more subtle trend.

All major towns and cities grew. But some grew far more significantly than others.

The populations of Krasnoiarsk, Omsk, and Vladivostok roughly trebled, that of Irkutsk grew by 150%, and Chita’s grew by almost seven times. Most spectacularly, Novo-Nikolaevsk (today Novosibirsk) boomed out of nothing to become a city of over 63,000 people. By contrast, Tobol’sk and Iakutsk grew marginally, while Tomsk’s population slightly more than doubled.

The reason for the discrepancy in urban growth lies in these towns’ and cities’ location, and, more specifically, their proximity to the Trans-Siberian line. All those cities whose populations grew most rapidly were on the main line. All those whose populations barely grew were not. Tomsk, whose population did grow significantly, but far less quickly than cities like Krasnoiarsk, Omsk, or Novo-Nikolaevsk, was on a spur of the Trans-Siberian line, and not on the main line itself.

This fact struck observers at the time. In 1897, one suggested that Tomsk would be left “stranded”, with the “doom of the city almost sealed” by the fact it was not on the mainline. “This”, notes historian Janet Hartley, “was an exaggeration – Tomsk remained an important administrative, commercial and cultural center – but some of its economic importance did shift to Omsk”, the city main city to the west, which was on the Trans-Siberian line.

 

Growing Cities, Changing Cities

Just as important as the growing importance of cities along the Trans-Siberian was their changing character. City life, along with populations and urban environments, was transformed along the railway line.

Most obviously, cities grew – sprawling in an often unplanned and chaotic manner – to accommodate new arrivals. In many cases, these new arrivals were workers associated with the railway itself. A case in point is the city of Krasnoiarsk, which developed two new districts, called Nikolaevsk and Alekseevsk, that quickly became the home to blue-collar workers and their families.

Krasnoiarsk city map, c. 1905. Note Nikolaevsk district to the west of the city centre. Alekseevsk district is directly to the north of Nikolaevsk.

The workers’ districts, which were constructed “at an American tempo” (i.e. extremely fast), lacked many of the urban amenities of Krasnoiarsk’s city centre. Divided from the main city by the railway line, they were quite literally “the wrong side of the tracks”. Yet for Krasnoiarsk’s politics, they would become extremely important. It was here that a revolutionary movement, led by radical Social Democrats, would emerge in the city, helping it become an important player in both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions.

Urbanisation, therefore, was crucial to cities’ political radicalisation.

 

Teaching the Railway and its Impacts

The development of Russian cities and railways – and more specifically Siberia and the Trans-Siberian line – is a key issue to consider with students. A lesson attempting to do just this can be found here.

What do students need to know? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Urbanisation went hand-in-hand with Russia’s transport revolution, which in turn made Russia a world leader in railways.
2. Cities close to main railway lines rapidly grew in importance, overtaking those further from railways.
3. The character of cities – demographic, economic, and political – rapidly changed, something that would have great significance for how future events including the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 would play out in those cities.

Selected Further Reading

Alistair Dickins, "Spaces of Revolution: The Spatial Tactics of Urban Socialism in a Siberian City, c. 1895-1905", Revolutionary Russia 36, 1, pp. 1-33: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546545.2023.2208041

Janet M. Hartley, Siberia: A History of the People, Yale University Press (2014)

Ivan V. Nezgodine, "The Impact of the Trans-Siberian Railway on the Architecture and Urban Planning of Siberian Cities", in Ralf Roth and Marie-Noelle Polino, The City and the Railway in Europe, Ashgate (2003)