University of Glasgow

To the Great Ocean. The Taming of Siberia and the Building of the Trans-Siberian Railway byHarmon TupperReview by: Terence ArmstrongSoviet Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Apr., 1966), p. 516Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/149937 .

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REVIEWS

Harmon Tupper, To the Great Ocean. The Taming of Siberia and the Building f' the Trans-Siberian Railway. London, Seeker and Warburg, r965. 536 pp. 551-.

IT is rather extraordinary, when one comes to think of it, that the Trans-Siberian railway has had no historian since its earliest days. Its construction was a vast engineer- ing undertaking; it was often an issue in domestic politics; and the finished product, as it came into service stage by stage, had a tremendous impact not only on the region it served, but far beyond. All these aspects come within the purview of Mr. Tupper, and he has treated them fully and eagerly. This is above all the book of an enthusiast, and a railway enthusiast at that (few varieties exude more ardour). His publisher claims that Mr. Tupper expected to write a fairly short book, but he found hiimself hooked. This emerges clearly, and I am glad he was.

Much relevant information has been brought together. Forgotten stories of Igth century British and American railroaders and adventurers have been fascinatingly retold; the key role of Witte is, of course, given full weight; the capabilities of the engineers in charge of construction of each sector are evaluated; and the background to it all, from relations with China to changes at the Ministry of Finance, gets detailed treatment. Sometimes, perhaps, a little too detailed, for Mr. Tupper carries tangential asides to rather considerable lengths. He has clearly read copiously, and hates to lose a good anecdote. But he evidently does not read Russian, and although he was well served by translators (as his characteristically lengthy acknowledgements make clear), this is a pity. That it is not more than a pity is due to the fact that there was a surpris- ingly large number of literate foreigners travelling in Siberia at the times in question.

The whole enterprise emerges as something which was typically Russian, almost to the point of caricature: an accomplishment on the grand scale, symbolized if you like by the mobile Orthodox Church which formed part of the rolling stock; yet at an astonishingly low standard of execution, with the result that, even although speeds were very low, trains left the rails alarmingly frequently-'like squirrels', reported an early traveller-and parts of the line had to be made up after the passage of every train. Improvements have been made all the time, of course, and Mr. Tup- per's last chapter, 'The New Siberia', gives a picture of the route today, electrified as far as Irkutsk. But the fastest expresses still average only 31 m.p.h. over the Moscow- Vladivostok run. 'To the great ocean', in case anyone is trying to guess the origin of the quotation, is the inscription at the western end of the tunnel near Chita-when it was constructed, the first tunnel east of the Urals.

The book is excellently produced and richly illustrated. All the desirable accessories are there too-appendices, bibliography, index (although possibly the entry 'Trans- Siberian railway', with an estimated 700 pages of references, is overdoing it a little). The presence of all this evidence of thoroughness is most welcome, even if to me, at any rate, it imparted a somewhat old-world flavour, which was reinforced by the large type, reminiscent of more spacious days. If I have anything to hold against Mr.

Tupper, it is no more than his unfailingly bright, anecdote-filled, educated-travelogue style, with its references to 'Joseph V. Stalin' and 'Yerofey P. Khabarov'. He is writing, of course, for the wider public beyond universities and institutes, and I hope he is read by it. The serious student, if he is as undeterred as he should be by the style, will find a well-stocked storehouse of information.

TERENCE ARMSTRONG

University of Cambridge

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