Siberian telegraph line: on history of construction (1860s-1890s)

In the second half of the 19th century the vast Siberian and Far Eastern territories of the Russian Empire were poorly populated and needed more reliable protection. An electric telegraph was needed for an operational connection between remote regions of the country. In 1859, by the decision of Emperor Alexander II, a telegraph line was launched across Siberia and the Russian Far East (the Siberian Telegraph). In addition, there were plans to connect the telegraph line of Eurasia with North America through the Bering Strait (the Russian-American Telegraph). In the second half of the XIX century, the Russian military engineer D.I. Romanov, journalists and statistics A.M. Burukhin and M. Shedling, the German scientist R. Andre and the participant of the Russian-American Telegraph Expedition G. Kennan wrote about the Siberian and the Russian-American telegraphs. In the second half of the XX century this topic was of interest to A.L. Narochnitsky, A.V. Yarotsky, N.N. Bolkhovitinov, Canadian researchers S. Robb and S. Wilcockson. In the last two decades, scientific works on this subject have been written by O.N. Razumov, M.S. Vysokov, G.N. Shaposhnikov, A.V. Postnikov, V.A. Morev, N.S. Shishelov and others. The aim of the article is to trace the history of the Siberian Telegraph during the 1860s and 1890s and to assess the importance of telegraph communication through Siberia and Far East for the realization of the geopolitical and economic interests of the Russian Empire. The author singled out the factors that influenced the construction of the Siberian Telegraph: 1) the vulnerability of the borders of Russia in the Amur and the weak population of the Russian Far East under the conditions of Russian-British contradictions; 2) economic interests of Russia required the development of operational communication in this region; 3) the initial setbacks in the telegraph line across the Atlantic influenced the appearance of proposals from the Americans on the construction of the Russian-American Telegraph across the Bering Strait. But after the successful conduct of the Transatlantic Telegraph in 1866, the Americans refused further cooperation in this matter. But the project of the Russian military engineer D.I. Romanov was partially realized. In the 1860s the telegraph line between Irkutsk and St. Petersburg was put into operation. In 1870 a telegraph communication was conducted in Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk, in 1871 - in Vladivostok. Russia received a telegraph connection with China and Japan. The author comes to the conclusion that in the course of work on conducting an electric telegraph across Siberia and the Far East, several problems were solved: further development of the telegraph network contributed to the economic development of remote regions; strengthening of international relations in the east of the country; the operative communication of the center of the Russian Empire with remote regions of the country.

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