Early routes, trade and settlement were north-south, using the great rivers to sail in from the Arctic during the brief summer. Meanwhile the great natural resources of Siberia remained untapped, and economically the east was looking to China not Russia, so the tsars then the Soviets persisted. But not until did Russia have a fully-paved, all-weather highway coast to coast. And even now that the highway is open, freight and people are moved via the railroad much more than via road - especially over the vast distances that are often necessary to get from anywhere to anywhere in Siberia.
A railway was a better prospect for shifting heavy freight, and construction of the Trans-sib railway began in May from both west and east. The first decade was a story of muddy heroism, with over km of railway built β no other railway has been built so fast.
This despite all the hills, moors and swamps, despite the iron-hard frozen ground, impenetrable taiga and great rivers to be crossed, all with 19th Century equipment and know-how - and in a country often viewed as hopelessly backwards by contemporaries. There were up to 60, workers building the railway and many lives were lost. The whole km railway was completed in , with electrification completed in It changed the face of Russia, which now became an Asian as much as a European nation.
Siberia and Far Eastern Russia saw an economic boom, and a massive migration to these regions - not always voluntary. Towns along the railway, such as Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Irkutsk, grew to large industrial cities.
Equally, other places withered: Tomsk was intended to be on the Trans-sib but improved engineering allowed a shorter route via Novosibirsk, so instead it became a dumping-place for dissidents, a back-water, and its old town is better preserved as a result.
