About the Construction of the Great Siberian Way

In March 1891 Alexander III signed the decree on the building of Transsib or, as it was called then, the Great Siberian Way. One of the reasons of this was the neighborhood with overpopulated China, which could become unsafe, as well as with Japan, working at the creation of the mighty fleet in the Pacific ocean region.

The construction started from both sides at the same time: from Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok, situated from each other at the distance of 7000 kilometers. And already on December 6, 1895 at 2 p.m. the first train arriver at Krasnoyarsk, the capital of the Yenisey Province, about 26 000 people gathered to look at it. The temporary working traffic opened from the Ob’ to the Yenisey.

In the entire world the Great Siberian Way was absolutely reasonably considered to be the new wonder of the world, since the road not just connected Europe and Asia, but it was being built under the hardest conditions. An axe, a shovel, a saw, a pick and a trail were the main tools of the builders. It is formally considered that the Transsiberian Railway was constructed during 25 years, that is quite quickly, minding those tools which the workers formed “the core ridge of the Russian giant” with. So, while travelling along Transsib, remember the immortal feat of the Russian people!

The need for a big number of specialists, related to railway - trackmen, switchmen, wagon co-drivers, conductors, car attendants, firemen, and workers of the railway workshops – caused the inflow of migrants to the Yenisey Province from the European part of Russia. So, already in 1898 only in Krasnoyarsk there were 2000 people working at the railway. Thanks to the influx of workforce the expanding of the city happened – wastelands near the railway lines near Krasnoyarsk got inhabited and new city districts appeared: Nikolaevskaya sloboda and Alekseevskaya sloboda.

Based on the materials by kras.rzd.ru and красноярские-архивы.рф