Spark of Revolution? Railway Disorganisation, Freight Traffic and Tsarist Russia's War Effort, July 1914–March 1917

Abstract

To what extent was Tsarist Russia's collapse in 1917 caused by the wartime breakdown of railway transport? Focused on freight traffic, this article addresses one fundamental aspect of this critical question, namely the railway network's efficiency, and especially the allegations of widespread disorganisation. It seeks to identify the overall amount of ‘useful work’ achieved during 1913–1916: not simply the weight of goods loaded, but also the distances that these freights were carried. In these crucial terms, it argues, the railways actually worked far more intensively than in peacetime, implying that although the network did suffer major problems, railway disorganisation was not a spark of revolution.

Notes

For assistance with the preparation of this article I am very grateful to Aleksandra Bekasova, Yurii Il'in, Boris Kolonitskii, June Middleton, David Moon, Sergei Pogodin, Julia Safronova, David Saunders, Brandon Schneider, John Westwood and staff at the Russian State Historical Archive and Russian National Library, St Petersburg. The research for this article was funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

 1 Trepov Report to Council of Ministers, 15 February 1916: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (hereafter, RGIA), fond 268, opis 5, delo 318, listy 198ob–199.

 2 Zayavlenie No. 196, 26 February 1916; and Stenograficheskii otchet, Gosudarstvennaya Duma, chetvertyi sozyv, sessiya IV, zasedanie 28, 29 February 1916: RGIA, f. 1278, op. 5, d. 1041, ll.1–2, 10–ob.

 3 This fundamental question is the core concern of the present author's current main project, which is a book-length history of Russia's railways in the First World War.

 4 Unfortunately, given that our main sources will be annual reports, we need to set an end date of December 1916 rather than February or March 1917.

 5 The term ‘public network’ refers here to the so-called common-carrier railways that operated a public passenger and freight service and were normally required by law to accept all traffic offered for shipment, as distinct from short local lines and railways associated with, for example, a particular industrial enterprise. The MPS differentiated between railways ‘of general significance’ (obshchego znacheniya) and railways ‘of local significance’ (mestnogo znacheniya); our concern is with the former. Also excluded are lines that were still under construction but which operated some traffic on a limited ‘temporary’ basis. The question of precisely which lines need to be included in our calculations is discussed at length below.

 6 The metric values of 1 pud and 1 verst are, respectively, 16.3 kilograms and 1.06 kilometres. The metric equivalent of the pud-verst is the tonne-kilometre.

 7 The archives of the MPS are located at RGIA in more than a dozen collections (fondy). The main focus of the search has been the Traffic Section of the Operations Department of the MPS Directorate of Railways (f. 273, op. 10). Searching was also undertaken in several other collections: the Technical Department of the MPS Directorate of Railways (f. 273, op. 6), the MPS Chancellery (f. 229), the Department of Railway Affairs at the Ministry of Finances (f. 268, especially op. 5), and a collection of papers from many individual railways (f. 350).

 8 Note, for example, the caveat at RGIA, f. 273, op. 10, d. 3523, l. 2ob, which was penned in the Traffic Section of the Operations Department in about mid-1916 as an introductory warning for a report comparing the work and usage of rolling stock in 1913 and 1915: ‘In view of the deterioration that has been observed in the accuracy of statistical data, and the incongruity and obsolescence of the existing forms of reporting for the conditions of the time that we are living through, one should view the quantities and indicators given in the present report as approximate, giving merely a general picture of variations in the work of the network and the usage of the rolling stock. Thus, for example, one must note that when the wagon census was conducted on 1 November 1915, it transpired that the recorded quantity of wagons on the railways, which is taken as the basis for calculating the indicators, differed greatly (rezko) on many lines from the actual quantities on those lines, and consequently, the [results for the] average distance travelled and time on feeder tracks and so forth are different from the actual [results]’.

 9 With regard to the names of individual railways, this article employs transliterated forms of the Russian names rather than translations. Note that most of the names had a singular form—for example, Permskaya zheleznaya doroga—but some had a plural form, such as Zakavkazskie zheleznye dorogi. The plural as well as the singular form is found for the Moskovsko–Vindavo–Rybinskaya line. The Russian-operated Chinese Eastern Railway was not part of the Russian network as such, and its name has been translated into English. The Russian spelling of some names may vary: for example, Samara–Zlatoustskaya or Zlatoustovskaya.

10 The preliminary figures for 1913–1915 are in: Predvaritel'nye glavneishie svedeniya o rezul'tatakh eksploatatsii Rossiiskikh zheleznykh dorog obshchego znacheniya za 1915 god po sravneniyu so smetnymi na tot zhe god predpolozheniyami i otchetnymi za 1913 i 1914 gg dannymi (Petrograd, 1916). Such reports were produced annually, but no later edition has been found: almost certainly the 1917 edition was never produced. The nomenclature of the final reports was basically standardised. A typical example is: Otchet po eksploatatsii Severo–Zapadnykh zheleznykh dorog za 1915 god (Petrograd, 1916).

11 See Puti soobshcheniya Rossii, No. 2–3, 1917, pp. 104–7. Omitted from this list is the Podol'skaya Railway, presumably due to printing and proofing errors.

12 The locations searched for reports were the MPS archives at RGIA, the RGIA library and the Russian National Library, St Petersburg (RNB). Certain other libraries, such as the Russian State Library in Moscow, also have some of these reports. The lines with regular traffic in 1916 that are excluded from our survey are: Varshavskie pod”ezdnye puti; Vol'marskii pod”ezdnoi put'; Galitsiiskie; Irinovskaya; Kovel'–Vladimir–Volynskaya; Kuvshinovskii pod”ezdnoi put'; Libavo–Gazenpotskii pod”ezdnoi put'; Liflyandskie pod”ezdnye puti; Lodzinsko–Zgerzhskii i Pabyanitskii pod”ezdnye elektricheskie puti; Mal'tsevskie; Markovskii pod”ezdnoi put'; Moskovskoe Obshchestvo pod”ezdnykh putei v Rossii; Pervoe Obshchestvo pod”ezdnykh putei; Petrokovsko–Suleevskii pod”ezdnoi put'; Primorskaya Petrogradsko–Sestroretskaya; Semirechenskaya; Starodubskii pod”ezdnoi put'; and Dorogi Velikogo Knyazhestva Finlyandskogo.

13 The Roman numerals here refer to the standard numbering of the sections in the main reports. The budget estimates had the same two forms of statistics, but the numbering of the sections was different.

14 For example: ‘Rezul'taty eksploatatsii kazennykh zheleznykh dorog za iyul’ mesyats 1914 goda (po predvaritel'nym dannym): RGIA, f. 273, op. 10, d. 2692, l. 11; ‘Vsepoddanneishii doklad’ [draft], February 1915: RGIA, f. 273, op. 10, d. 2582, ll. 128–30 (covers the whole of 1914 using preliminary data).

15 This situation is fundamentally different from the Second World War, when Soviet railway traffic did contract very substantially, not least because of the loss of so much more territory with dense and busy railway provision. For summary figures see Kumanev (1988, p. 312).

16 Trepov Report to Council of Ministers, 15 February 1916: RGIA, f. 268, op. 5, d. 318, l.199ob.