page_title: Rail transport in the Soviet Union
section_title: Pre-war industrialisation period, 1928–1941
hierarchical_section_title: Rail transport in the Soviet Union / Pre-war industrialisation period, 1928–1941
caption_attribution_description: English: USSR 150-year Anniversary of National Railways Envelope, 1987 - front side Русский: Конверт "150 лет отечественным железным дорогам", 1987-06-26, лицевая сторона
context_page_description: The Soviet Union was heavily dependent on rail transport, not least during the Russian Civil War and World War II, but also for industrialisation according to the five-year plans.
  During the Soviet era, freight rail traffic increased 55 times, passenger traffic increased almost 10 times, and the length of the rail network almost doubled. The Soviet Union had a railway network of 147,400 kilometres, of which 53,900 kilometres were electrified.
context_section_description: After the foundation of the Soviet Union the People's Commissariat of Railways (NKPS) (after 1946 renamed the Ministry of Railways (МПС)), the railway network expanded to a total length of 106,100 km by 1940 (vs. 81,000 km in 1917 which was exceeded in length only by the United States).  The volume of freight hauled (in tonne-km) increased over fourfold during this period.  A notable project of the late 1920s, which became one of the centrepieces of the first five-year plan, was the Turkestan–Siberia Railway, linking Western Siberia via Eastern Kazakhstan with Uzbekistan.
  In the late 1920s, the young Soviet Union under Stalin embarked on a programme of rapid industrialisation.  In a 1931 speech, in which Stalin promoted intensive industrialisation, he concluded that "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed."  But if industrialisation generally was to be given first priority, the question arose as to what priority should be given to railway development specifically, keeping in mind that industrialisation requires greatly increased rail transport of goods, e.g. iron ore and coal for steel mills.  An example of this was the "Ural-Kuznetsk metallurgical combine" (approved in 1928) where the source of coal was located over 2000 km from the source of iron ore.  Not only that, but the steel output had to be transported long distances to its final point of use.
  A British railway historian  claims that the Soviet objective was to limit investment in railway improvements so that railways could barely meet the new and heavy demands for increased transport placed on them by industrialisation, thereby allowing more capital for such industrialisation.  While there were significant investments made in railways, they were not enough to avoid the failure at times to transport all the goods, especially in early 1931 and 1933.  Some of the resulting supply-line crises resulted in production shut-downs.  However, in other cases "crisis" was used to describe a situation where the stocks of inputs stored at a plant (such as iron ore at a steel mill) almost ran out due the railway's failure to deliver on time; no substantial harm would be done to production output, but it would be a close call.
  Near the start of first five-year plan of industrialisation (1928) there were four main railway decision makers: the government, the party, Gosplan (the Soviet planning agency), and the railway ministry (known as NKPS).   When the NKPS didn't seem to be able to cope with a situation, the party or government would intervene. The majority agreed on increasing investments, but there was no clear consensus on how these investments were to be used. Gosplan advocated the rationalisation of the railways, coupled with tariffs based on actual cost, which would reduce traffic demand and provide funds for investment.  In 1931, in a Central Committee (CC) resolution proposed recapitalisation  (replacing all the ties, rails, and renewing the ballast by either cleaning or new ballast) to create some "super mainlines" which would be electrified.   This resolution was never adequately carried out, and the actual electrification achieved was only about a tenth of that proposed.
  The Central Committee sent Lazar Kaganovich to solve the railway crisis in 1935. Kaganovich first prioritised bottleneck areas over other less-travelled lines; his second priority was investing in heavy traffic lines, and thirdly, other lines (which were also burdened with increases traffic) were left to fend for themselves. Another problem facing rail transport was the massive industrialisation efforts pushed on by the authorities. This industrialisation placed a heavy burden upon the railways, and Vyacheslav Molotov and Kaganovich even admitted this to the 18th party congress. Even so, the Soviet Government continued their industrialisation efforts to better prepare themselves for a future war with Germany, which became reality in 1941.
caption: A Soviet postage stamp celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first railways
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