The construction of railways in the 19th century is a powerful, not just economic, but even a civilizational breakthrough. Everyone immediately gave up tacking on logs along the rivers, jumping from threshold to threshold, and, finally, they were able to start working to develop all types of industry. Even all sorts of vigorous computers and their increase in computing power, today, are not a fact that they can be compared with the push that the railroad gave to mankind.
And if short routes, such as Moscow-Peter-Warsaw, well, or some kind of Lubeck, connected the industry, then, to be honest, long ones simply gathered the country. Well, of course, the first is the Transsib, which has attached Siberia and the Far East to Russia.
In those days, when the magic Mongolian horses had already forgotten how to make races of 10,000 km without food, water, but with a well-fed Mongol in iron armor on a hump, and the planes had just fallen out of the nest, only the railway could ensure the presence of the power of the central leadership.
Before that, there was no smell of Russian Tsars. however, there was no one to sniff, there were no people there either, they were brought in later, under Stolypin.
On the one hand, I wanted to write about our longest railway, but something was breaking me. and in construction I am not very versed, and in iron. In addition, I have never been to Siberia and I saw the Far East only on TV. Although it may have flown from above.
Plus, the topic of the Trans-Siberian Railway has been analyzed in such detail that I have nothing to add here … Damn, I won't be a historian.
But then I came across a message from archaeologists and something struck me. Deep so. Already the beginning to itch. So let's go.
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I was even stunned. And what, from the point of view of official history, can be interesting in a piece of metal with transverse pieces of wood? Or I slept through everything and now the transformer box of the 50s can also be of historical value.
That's a find, that's a find. Previously, homeless people dismantled single-track tracks for metal, now it's the turn of science! We will not forget, we will not forgive!
Well, it's just that there is no difference at all. Historians, unlike us, God forgive me, do not think fools that in the 19th century the railway was not built, but simply cleared and ennobled after the cataclysm. Well, just got around and the technology came to mind.
In my opinion they are going to kiss her. There is no fairy tale among the people about the rail-frog that languishes under the cultural layer in anticipation of the prince ??
So here is our historical science, which, when it opens its mouth, first of all screams about the lack of funding and its bare F, this very funding, when it appears, spends on digging up an iron rod.
What are they going to find in it? Please go to the archive for the composition of the alloy. This is almost the 20th century! You yourself squeal that almost everything has been documented since the 18th! Oh well!
The most annoying thing is that no, well, well. This historian will come home now, shake himself off, pour himself some brandy and at a leisurely pace will compose the "most important", fundamental research on the invaluable value of the iron bar in the history of Russia, Siberia, and possibly the world.
Then this rail will be put into the museum, if, of course, there is a stand of that length. Uncle for his useless work, will receive a state award, and possibly will defend his doctoral degree. It is, of course, if you are lucky, to find the most valuable artifact of a bygone era - an extremely rare wooden sleeper in good condition.
And if you're unlucky, he exchanges it for a bottle of vodka from the nearest builders. Or even for snickers he will contract the boys to bring him a "miracle artifact" from the trash heap.
And I am sure he will be there, because even I found a time when, not in some village, but between Moscow and St. Petersburg, there was a railway, in many places with wooden sleepers.
Instead of clearly telling where all the nature of Siberia and Transbaikalia evaporated in the 19th century.
What the hell, where there should be a century-old impassable taiga, there are three twigs of a birch tree lonely.
And why, in general, all Russian (and many world) forests are no more than 200 years old.
Historians, damn it, kiss rusty pieces of iron !!! And to uncomfortable questions about the forest, they answer that the weather is bad, like nothing grew. Or burned out.
When asked why it is growing now, they only smile, under the cognac. So it hasn't burned out yet.
To hell with it with nature, but what kind of magical bast shoes helped the builders complete the Transsib in record time? Despite the fact that the construction was carried out in deserted, for thousands of kilometers (they are still like that), lands, through mountains, impassable taiga (which, as we once again see, for some reason does not exist) and Siberian rivers in-oh-oh- from such a width. They, the Gogol birds, will not just master them up to the middle, but will not even fly up.
Ha ha ha, historians laugh. There are hard answers to these questions. Well, except for trees, they embarrassedly cough into fists
Of course, they were convicts !!! And the number is known - 90K.
Damn, and really, how could I not have thought, this is the Russian standard - endless, always available, dangling underfoot, wanting to quickly serve and lie in a coffin, poorly educated Russian meat!
Build Petersburg? No problem! Now we will only throw bones in order to fall into the swamps! Give, 10, no, 100 million workers and peasants!
We need a Cathedral. No problem. To the glory of St. Isaac Dolmatsky (someone will finally tell me what he is famous for and, in general, who is he?) Right here, without leaving the construction site, we will recycle 100K. What? It took 40 years to build? It may even have to be added.
Yes, of course, add. Everything is easily added on paper. But even 100K in 40 years is almost 10 corpses a day! Downtown! Under the feet of the carriages of Pushkin and Dostoevsky.
90K convicts on the Transsib is nice, but how do you distribute them among the sections? There are photos of the construction site, put 100 people in there. For a concert in a club - acceptable, for a construction site - not very good.
Was the construction carried out from both sides to meet? Understand. But all the same, those who wish with their hats at the door are crumpled. About 80K. manpower is idle.
Now, if you could distribute them along the entire length, then yes, maybe something has grown together. But then, what about the gasket? The rails must dock with each other. Fuck you with so many brigades. But if they dug out …
But this is not in the paradigm of official history!
But there is a phenomenal laying speed of 740 km per year! Later they could not repeat it either on the Bam (and this is around the corner, and with powerful equipment instead of bast shoes), or even between the capitals. Nowhere.
There are still 2 tracks between St. Petersburg and Moscow. That is why all freight trains, most of the time, are stupidly standing at the marshalling yards - they are waiting for another historian with a rail to travel to Moscow for a grant on Sapsan.
And how many prisoners we had (according to your words), and those on - could not!
And on the Transsib, operating with such wooden carts and obviously tired of life with a horse (apparently two-core with a supply of prana, Mongolian), they used stone bridges using Roman masonry and a century-old margin of safety.
Bogatyrs! Not you! In the meantime, the rivers were stopped by sand and soil.
Or dug out?
They cost, of course, they built. Here in 1904, the Minister of Railways chooses a place for further laying of tracks.
For greater convenience, the workers ennobled the mountains with brickwork in all places where the owner could choose. Almost ready!!!
It remains only to dig it out !!!
Of course, there were some failures! All the same, convicts, uneducated, willful people. Sometimes they will build a bridge or a crossing, and then break it down and bury it. but all the same, though criminals, but people are kind and easy-going. Now everything will be dug up and repaired.
This, the method of double) with a margin) of construction was used not only in our country, but for example also in Africa. In the white part.
Now they will smoke, apologize and restore what they broke in their hearts.
By the way, you will be able to determine which picture of the Transsib and which South Africa?
And believe me, this is not at all about a catastrophe, a lost civilization or standard architecture all over the world.
It's all about the iron rail and the State Prize with a possible scientific title. I envy, I'm creepy. At best, they will give me a gold piece for scrap metal. Yes, and that one is not royal, but modern, issued according to the instructions and calculations of the same as historians of the leaders. Only economists. Believe me, they don't know what's going on at all.
As a holder of German and Russian diplomas in economics, I say this to you.
Yes! It will be necessary, all the same, to write a note about the Transsib. There are so many interesting things. True, they have already told everything long ago.
