Turkestan-Siberia Railway

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The Turkestan-Siberian Railway (commonly abbreviated as the Turk-Sib, Russian: Турксиб) is a railway connecting Central Asia with Siberia. It starts north of Tashkent in Uzbekistan at Arys, where it branches off from the Trans-Caspian Railway. From there it heads roughly northeast through Shymkent, Taraz, Bishkek (on a spur) to the former Kazakh capital of Almaty. There it turns northward to Semey before crossing the Russian border. It passes through Barnaul before ending at Novosibirsk, where it meets the Trans-Siberian railway. The bulk of construction works was undertaken between 1926 and 1931.

[edit] Construction history

The idea of a railway between Siberia and Russian Turkestan was aired as early as 1886, but it was supplanted by that of a more practicable line between Tashkent and Orenburg in the Urals. It was not until 15 October, 1896 that the Verny town duma set up a commission to examine the feasibility of building the Turkestan-Siberia Railway. It was expected that the line would facilitate transportation of cotton from Turkestan to Siberia and cheap Siberian grain from Russia to the Fergana Valley. An eastern branch of the line would enhance Russia's military and economic presence on the Chinese border.

In 1906, the Russian imperial government decided to finance construction of the first section between Barnaul and Arys. A team of Russian engineers made a detailed survey of the steppe and semi-desert regions the railway was expected to cross. On 21 October 1915 the northern section linking Novosibirsk and Semipalatinsk opened under the name of the Altai Railway. The missing section Arys - Bishkek - Tokmak, officially known as Semipalatinsk Railway, was left to be built by the French financed, but Russian managed, private railway consortium. The Great War put an end of this project.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, construction works were suspended for a decade. Furthermore, the 140-kilometre long Semipalatinsk-Ayaguz line, built in 1918-19 by the White Russians on the initiative of Admiral Kolchak, was demolished for no apparent reason. The remaining 1442 kilometers of railway were constructed with great fanfare as part of the First Five-Year Plan. Much of the railway was built with gulag prison labour, including ethnically Finnish and Estonian population deported by Stalin's order from Ingria.

Regular passenger service was finally established between Semipalatinsk and Ayaguz on 10 May 1929. The Turksib was completed on 21 April 1930. The first locomotive that ran from Tashkent to Semipalatinsk is installed as a memorial in Almaty.

[edit] References

• Mysterious Turksib
• Vitali A. Rakov. Russian Locomotives, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1995.
• Inkerin suomalaiset GPU:n kourissa. Helsinki 1942. Inkerin karkoitettujen kirjeitä. Helsinki 1943.