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necessary to bring about cheaper means of communication
than the railroad, if it is really intended to develop the
agriculture of Siberia.”
Yadrintseff holds a similar opinion. “One must be a
very great optimist,” he thinks, “to believe that the
Trans-Siberian Railway will remove all the great difficulties which
are caused by the immense distances.”
Another author considers that “The direct influence
of the railway will only extend over a belt of some 250
miles along the line (120 miles or so on either side); but
the extension of Siberia from north to south amounts to
thousands of miles; and the railway does not run through
the central parts, but on the southern limits of Siberia.”
In order to avoid flooding the market of European Russia
with cheap Siberian cereals, a meeting of Siberian and Russian
merchants petitioned the government in 1890 to connect
Perm and Archangel by railroad, and it was calculated
that the freight on such a railroad from the upper Ob to
Archangel would amount to 40 kopeks a pood. [1] But
later and more careful calculations have demonstrated that
the freight would amount to from 70 kopeks to one rouble,
or say roughly twice as much, so that it would prove
impossible to export agricultural products even on that line,
which, it must be remembered, would touch only a part of
western Siberia.
In a word, railroad communication alone will not make
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