Transport collapse in Siberia in 1904-1905: Reflection in periodicals

The Siberian railway and its system of transport communications as a whole were not ready to be simultaneously used for peaceful and military purposes during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Insufficient attention has been paid to the problems of the functioning of Siberian transport during this period in the literature. The subject matter of this study is the transport crisis in Siberian cities, caused by the conversion of the Siberian railway to martial law during the Russo-Japanese War. The aim of the study is to identify the economic and social consequences of the sudden cessation of the Siberian railway civil usage in 1904-1905. The historical sources for this study are documents from the collections of the Russian State Historical Archive, as well as the newspapers Sibirskiy Vestnik (lit. “Siberian Bulletin”), Vostochnoe Obozrenie (lit. “Eastern Review”) and Sibirskaya Zhizn' (lit. “Siberian Life”), published in 1904-1905. These newspapers are digitized and available for use on the website of the Research Library of Tomsk State University. Historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-system research methods and content analysis are used in this study. The transport infrastructure and the population of Siberian cities found themselves in a severe situation due to the restrictions caused by the Russo-Japanese War. The analysis of the situation shows that the railway incorporated very well into economic life. Therefore, the military restriction of its usage had a crucial impact on the lives of the civilian population. In just a few weeks, Siberian cities faced a transport crisis. There was a shortage of essential goods, prices increased, and business activity decreased in the cities. Even the army did not receive what it needed. Cargo was late for several months or lost. Passenger trains could not accommodate everyone who needed it. The cities faced the deficit of necessities, commodity prices went up, business activity declined, and mass famine set in (in some regions). The volume of fraud with goods increased. Traditional transportation and local industry were unable to quickly replace the loss of railway advantages. The railway changed the economy of Siberia: many areas of traditional transport degraded; unprofitable sectors of the economy disappeared. Siberia not only integrated into the all-Russian economic space thanks to the railway, but also became dependent on this integration. The population of Siberia, dissatisfied with the transport crisis, became an active participant in the revolutionary events of 1905, despite a large distance from the metropolitan cities.

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