Between Two Empires: Railway Construction in the Far East in the Late Imperial Period

Based on a wide range of archival sources, this article analyses the history of the creation and functioning of the Nikolskaya branch of the Ussuri Railway in the conditions of the Russian-Chinese transborder of the eastern approach to the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). Designed to connect the CER with the Russian railway network, this branch was significant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the point of view of ensuring the connection of the Trans-Siberian Railway with Vladivostok before the construction of a bypass along the Amur. The concept of “transborder” makes it possible to fit this plot into the broader problem of the formation of contact sociocultural zones along the long land border between Russia and China. The unification of the roads of the two empires into a single railway network led to an increase in migration flows, the founding of new settlements, and the development of civil and military infrastructure, elements of which can be still seen today. At the same time, for a long time, researchers paid no attention to the construction of the connecting branches of the CER and the Trans-Siberian Railway, excluding the adjacent territories from the general narrative of transborder issues, which makes the study particularly relevant. At the same time, archival materials make it possible to characterise not only the difficulties that the Russian government encountered during the construction of the connecting branch but also the initial stage of the formation of a network of settlements along it, their development, as well as the specifics of existence in transborder conditions. The listed issues were raised not only in the Committee of the Siberian Railway, the Ministry of Railways, and the Ministry of Finance, which directly supervised the construction and determined the volume of financing, but also in the CER Society. From the financial point of view, turning to the method of joint road construction using private and state funds, previously tested on other railways in the country, would become one of the arguments for leasing the Ussuri Railway to the CER Society.