The Role of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Supplying of the Far Eastern Region in 1903-1913: a Comparative Analysis of Foreign Trade and Transport Statistics

Zyuzin Konstantin Student, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119992, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovskii pr-t, 27-4, Faculty of History zyuzinconstantine@yandex.ru

Valetov Timur ORCID: 0000-0002-1981-6144 PhD in History Senior lecturer, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119192, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovskii pr-t, 27-4, Faculty of History, G-423 valetov@gmail.com Other publications by this author

The Trans-Siberian railway, commissioned in the first decade of the XX century, was an unprecedented construction project to create a fast land route, the purpose of which was to establish communication with the Far East, more than 6 thousand kilometers away from European Russia. The horse-drawn traffic that existed since the XVIII century along the Siberian Highway, the journey along which from European Russia to the border with China could take up to six months, ceased to meet modern requirements in the second half of the XIX century. The lack of rapid transportation meant a potential loss of control – thus the empire had already lost its possessions in America in the 1860s. At the same time, the way of rapid transportation was primarily important from a strategic point of view as an opportunity to quickly transport troops and military cargo, and the peaceful supply of the region in the XIX century was based on maritime supply, simpler and faster even for overseas routes. An important role in the supply of the Far East with essential goods, of course, belonged to foreign ships (British, American, etc.), with which it was difficult for domestic ones to compete both in terms of delivery costs and in general in the organization of the process. The maritime supply of the region from European Russia was carried out mainly by ships of the Volunteer Fleet, an organization that launched flights from Odessa to Vladivostok in 1879 ^{[1, p.50]}. Strictly speaking, there was also a variant of bringing goods to the settlements of the region along the rivers of the Amur system, and such a supply took place, especially along the Sungari River from China, but the size of the river cargo flow was not relatively large, primarily because it was not easy to get to these rivers themselves from any densely populated and abundant places, so that there will be no further talk about river supply.

The railway provided an alternative way of supplying the region, and it is worth recalling that the full-fledged opening of the movement of trains from European Russia to Primorye took place in 1903 after the completion of the construction of the section of the eastern branch of the KVZHD from the Pogranichnaya station to the Grodekovo station of the Ussuri Railway.

From the very beginning of the discussion of the Trans-Siberian Railway project and throughout its construction, various public circles in Russia discussed its benefits for the development of the economic life of the country, as well as the prospects for domestic production and trade. Based on statistical data on the activities of railways in different parts of the world, including domestic ones, various works have been published on the question of how the Siberian Way can affect the political, socio-economic and cultural aspects of life both in the Russian lands beyond the Urals and in the country as a whole. Along with discussions about the need to strengthen the security of their Far Eastern territories, promote their more active settlement, as well as what role the Trans-Siberian Railway should have played in this, even the question of its global transport significance was on the agenda of that time.

The opinion that the railway would allow the developing Russian industry to take part in the conquest of Asian markets, which was entrenched in government circles, mostly at the instigation of Finance Minister S.Y. Witte, was also supplemented by assumptions about its exceptional role in the development of world communication routes, as was written by a variety of authors and periodicals of that time, such as For example, the magazine "Niva", which called the connection of the Siberian Railway with the Chinese Eastern "... a world historical event, a triumph of conquest in the Far East" ^{[2, p.137]}. The reasonable prospects of moving passenger flows from steamship flights to the railway, which was supposed to shorten the journey time to the destination and make the journey more comfortable, may have been justified to some extent. In any case, the number of foreign nationals who came to Russia during the 1880s-1890s steadily amounted to 250-300 thousand people per year, since 1906 (with an increase in 1903 and a reverse decline in 1904-1905) began to grow by 30-50 thousand people per year and in 1913 amounted to 516 thousand people. A significant part of this growth is accounted for by crossing the Asian border: before the opening of the Trans–Siberian railway, about 50 thousand foreigners came through the eastern borders per year, and since 1906 - by 150-200 thousand people (Statistics of departures of foreign nationals from the empire gives a similar picture.) ^[3]

The Trans-Siberian railway also played a crucial role in the process of resettlement of peasants, including to the Far East. The beginning of the implementation of the Stolypin program to encourage peasants moving from European Russia beyond the Urals falls at the same time when the railway fully started working after the Russian-Japanese War, and in 1906-1908, as can be seen from Figure 1, the population of the Primorsky Region almost doubled, and in subsequent years the population also grew significantly Amur region. It is quite important that this has also led to an increase in the need to supply the region with food, industrial goods, etc.

Fig. 1. Dynamics of the population of the Amur and Primorsky regions in 1900-1913 (at the end of the year).

Source: Review of the Amur Region for ^[1900-1913]. Blagoveshchensk–Khabarovsk, 1901-1915; Review of the Primorsky Region for ^[1900-1913]. Vladivostok, 1902-1915 (the yearbooks for 1903-1904 were not prepared because of the war).

Returning to the expectations of contemporaries, we note that some of them, like the Amur Governor-General (1893-1898) S.M.Dukhovsky, even expressed that the result of the launch of trains on the Trans-Siberian railway could be the redirection of cargo traffic from Europe to Asia from the sea route through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean ^{[4, p.58]}, although these, of course, were overly optimistic expectations that were not met.

But how useful was the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railway from the point of view of the total cargo flow in fact? What does the comparative dynamics of the import of domestic and foreign goods by sea and by rail to the Far East look like in the next ten years after its opening? In this article, the task is to consider this picture based on the study of various statistical sources.

Extensive historiography is devoted to various issues of the construction and functioning of the Trans-Siberian Railway ^[5]. Detailed statistics are not so often involved, although some examples of such works are found. Thus, V.F.Borzunov in 1972 in his dissertation on the history of the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway showed its influence on the state of agriculture, cattle breeding, mining and other economy of the region, considered the nature and directions of transportation in its various sections ^[6]. There is approximately the same material in the study of V.P.Kalinichev, who, based, among other things, on statistical data on rail freight transportation, emphasized the important role played by the Siberian Way in the overall development of communication routes of Russian territories beyond the Urals, noted the overall growth of passenger transportation, as well as cargo of several specific groups, including the most important – bread, butter, meat, tea ^[2].

But these and other authors use general and rather fragmentary, depending on the goals set, statistics of cargo turnover of the Trans-Siberian railway.

More details in the study by A.G.Boyakhchyan, devoted to the nature and direction of sending goods along the Ussuri branch before and after the commissioning of the entire Trans-Siberian railway in 1900-1914. ^[7] Based on statistical data published by the Board of the Ussuri Railway and the CER, the author showed a picture of the movement of goods in Primorye, including the structure of internal and transit shipments with the allocation of the most important categories of goods: grain, coal, construction materials, etc., as well as the particularly important role of these articles of cargo transportation for the economic viability of the Manchurian and Ussuri branches of the Siberian Route. However, the topic of this work affects only regional transportation, that is, the movement of goods within Primorye.

An example of studying maritime transport can be the works of I.R.Khamzin, devoted to Russian-Chinese trade in the second half of the XIX century, in particular sea transit in the 1880s-1890s. ^[8] Using a variety of material, including trade statistics data, in a number of articles the author examines the mechanism and dynamics of trade between Russia and China as by land, and by sea through Chinese and Russian ports through the transportation of the Voluntary Fleet. But these works cover the period before the introduction of the Trans-Siberian Railway into operation.

Thus, the question raised by us of studying the structure of the import of goods to Primorye seems insufficiently studied. We will consider the issue for the entire period from 1903, i.e. the connection of the Ussuri railway branch with the network of All-Russian railways through the KVZhD, to 1913.

Research sourcesThe source base of the study consists of several categories of statistical materials collected in accordance with the directions in which the region was supplied with goods.

In a rough approximation, we can say that there are transport statistics that take into account the internal transportation of goods, and customs statistics that take into account imports. However, in detail, the picture seems somewhat more complicated.

The situation with customs statistics is relatively simple. Since the beginning of the XIX century . a yearbook of foreign trade was published in Russia (since 1874 it was published under the title "Review of Foreign Trade ...")^[3], which at the time under review turned into a solid informative collection of various statistics. Naturally, the source contains information about imports (i.e. goods that have passed customs inspection and released to the domestic market), and tables are given on the import of goods at each customs point, of which the ports of Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk were the main ones in the Far East, as well as the Border station at the entrance to the Primorsky Region through the CER. The data of these customs offices are of the main interest for our research; information on Vladivostok and Mykolaiv customs first appeared in a stripped–down form (indicating the import of excise goods only) in the yearbook for 1890, and in full - since 1902. Unfortunately, the distribution of goods by country of origin in the yearbook is shown only for the entire import of the country, but not for a single item, which imposes restrictions on the formulation of the task.

Note that at the grassroots level, customs, of course, collected more detailed statistics: where else would the consolidated statistics of the distribution of trade by country come from? Vladivostok and Mykolaiv customs kept statistics of all goods passing through them, including during the years of the existence of Porto Franco in the Far East. Then this information got into the reports on the activities of customs for the passage of goods. As far as can be judged, since 1902, that is, since the formation of a full-fledged customs supervision in Primorye, all data on the movement of goods were compiled in a special form according to import/export nomenclatures approved by the Customs Duties Department, and then printed under the name, for example, "Vladivostok Customs Bulletin" or "Nikolaev-on-Amur Bulletin customs". Separate copies of such statements for 1907 and 1908 were identified in the funds of the Primorsky Regional Statistical Committee ^[9] and the Vladivostok Stock Exchange Committee ^[10], stored in the Russian Historical Archive of the Far East (RGIA DV). Some of the tables were occasionally published in the "Leaflet of the Primorsky Regional Statistical Committee", a magazine published since mid-1900 in Vladivostok. The reports contained tables on goods imported and exported through the specified customs offices, each of which was compiled and issued on a specific basis: 1) tables listing the number of imported/exported goods received, indicating the quantity and value for each individual category, 2) tables on the import/export of goods in pounds by country of origin/destination; 4) tables on the number of goods imported/exported by short cabotage; 5) tables on the number and value of goods imported/exported by long-distance cabotage from the ports of European Russia; 6) special tables on imported goods subject to excise duty. All this information was received monthly to form general statistics, which were then printed in the yearbooks of foreign trade. A comparison of the monthly reports of the Vladivostok Customs for 1907 revealed in the archive with the information of the yearbook showed their coincidence. However, some of the material was cut off during data processing when compiling yearbooks. As already mentioned, the yearbook does not distribute import and export through separate customs offices by country, and therefore it is impossible to assess the role of different countries in the supply of Primorye. The use of monthly Customs reports could serve to highlight this topic. The main drawback of the customs "vedomosti", however, is the absence of their regular publication in any single collection. Archives and libraries have not yet revealed at least a relatively complete set of them, and when these data appear in the "Statistical committee Leaflet", the tables look depressingly one-sided. Take the table "Information on the number of goods for which the duty was paid at Vladivostok customs for the first half of 1901" ^{[11, p.2-5]} The origin of the table is clearly customs; the classification of goods, by the way, is even more detailed than that adopted in the yearbook of foreign trade in accordance with the articles of the customs tariff: here, in particular, such goods as diving equipment, drawing accessories, phonographs, rollers for them, glass plates for cameras, etc. are recorded separately. However, the information is shown only by customs, only in natural units (by weight), without specifying the value, and the distribution is made only by months of registration of goods, but not by exporting countries.

In addition to import data, the yearbook of foreign trade published information on the sea transportation of goods from the Black and Baltic Seas. Until the mid-1880s, while transportation to the Far East was minimal, all Russian cargo going on a long voyage was registered as export. With the development of the Primorsky Territory, the volume of these shipments grew rapidly, and it became impossible to leave them as part of exports, so since 1885 (when goods worth 745 thousand rubles were sent from Odessa to Primorye) ^{[12, tab. II-B. S.13] [13, tab.XIII, p.9]} information about the maritime supply of the Far East from Russia was regularly published in this source. As can be understood from what has been said, these data were compiled according to the information of the senders, so if some cargo destined for Vladivostok was sold on the way to a foreign port, it still got into the statistics, but such cases can probably be ignored. But the accounting in question treated ships under any flags equally, so this statistic seems to be more reliable than any statistics of Russian transportation. Thus, the bulk of the cargo turnover was carried out by steamers of the Voluntary Fleet, and the statistical reports of this society also represent a good, in some respects more detailed source, but clearly not complete from the point of view of general supply.

Fig.2. Dynamics of sea transportation of Russian goods to the East in 1895-1913: general (according to the yearbook of foreign trade) and steamships of the Voluntary Fleet.

Source: Review of Russia's foreign trade on the European and Asian borders for ^[1885-1913]. St. Petersburg–Pg., 1886-1916; Voluntary Fleet. Governance. Commercial department. Cargo and passenger traffic statistics. 1914 Pg., 1916. Tab. No. 13.

Figure 2 shows comparative statistics of the dynamics of sea traffic to the East, and it confirms this thesis. Here, one line is built on the basis of data from the foreign trade yearbook; these are all shipments from the ports of the Black and Baltic Seas to the Far East that are not related to foreign trade. The other two lines show the size of transportation by steamers of the Voluntary Fleet on the Odessa–Vladivostok line; routes from other ports of the Black Sea are also included here. Some of these shipments are of an export nature (Odessa–Shanghai), some are imported (Colombo–Vladivostok), there are even purely external shipments (Hong Kong–Nagasaki), but the bottom line shows the dynamics of the size of transportation from some Russian ports to others (in 1898-1903, cities of the Kwantung region were also included in their number). We see that although the transportation of the Voluntary Fleet made up a significant part of the total transportation, and the dynamics of transportation was similar, foreign trade yearbooks take more into account; they are clearly more complete.

In addition to these sources, materials on sea delivery to Vladivostok were collected directly by port services. The reports of the Vladivostok Commercial Port Authority were compiled monthly and consisted of detailed tables separately on the arrival and departure of ships, where each ship was indicated with the date of registration and other data: under which flag it was registered, in whose name, from which port it came, how much cargo it brought. The format of the main table did not allow for a sufficiently detailed inventory of all incoming goods, but summary tables were attached, with the results of the port's cargo turnover of various goods for the month. As an example, we can cite the report (handwritten) for 1907, which is in the funds of the RGIA DV ^[14]. Since 1911, these reports have been published, they can be found in the library ^[15]. But they also definitely served as the basis for the publications of the "Leaflet of the Primorsky Regional Statistical Committee", which provides, for example, information "On cargo delivered by commercial ships to Vladivostok" in the quarters of 1900 ^{[16, pp.2-4] [17, pp. 3-4, 10-11]} These data could also be used by the authors- contemporaries. In particular, in the literature there is a detailed publication of tables of cargo delivery to Vladivostok for 1894 and 1895 and to Nikolaevsk for 1895, separately on foreign and Russian ships ^{[18, pp.123–162]}. The same statistics were printed in the appendices to the "Reviews of the Primorsky Region". A comparison of the total volume of cargo brought by foreign and long-distance vessels to Vladivostok in 1912 shows the complete identity of the data from the report of the head of the port and from the "Review of the Primorsky Region": 30.681.633 poods ^{[19, p.42] [20, p.9]}. In various archival files, we managed to find reports of the port, the statistics of which also correspond to those printed in the "Reviews of the Primorsky Region" for 1909, 1911 and 1913. It should be noted, however, that in principle we will not find data on the cost of goods in port statistics, the same is typical for the railway described below: the compilers of transport statistics were interested only in traffic volumes as indicators of transport capacity. For the purposes of this article, which studies the volume of cargo flows, this is enough, but in general it is a big minus for a statistical source. But here there is a distribution of imported goods by country (not the origin of goods, but the accessories of ships, which greatly devalues this statistic), and also, since the port list of goods was collected upon import, and not driven into the framework of a ready–made unified classification (as in customs and railway statistics), there are many in the list of goods interesting details. So, in customs statistics, metal products are grouped into a common "blind" group, and here we find bolts, nails, horseshoes, wheels, beds, hardware, tableware and cutlery, etc. But some of the goods (and most of them), on the contrary, were not subject to distribution and were included in the indefinite groups of "Government goods" and "Railway goods".

It is quite possible to compare the statistics of the Vladivostok Commercial Port Authority on total import (by weight) with the total data of the foreign trade yearbook: on exports, "long-distance cabotage" and transit from the sea to China via the CER. So we can consider two obviously independent sources that collect basically the same information. The results for 1909-1913 are shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Comparison of the dynamics of goods brought by sea to Vladivostok in 1909-1913 according to customs and port data.

Source: Review of foreign trade ... for ^[1909-1913] year. St. Petersburg, 1911-1915; Review of the Primorsky Region for ^[1909-1913] year. Vladivostok, 1911-1915.

The comparison shows that although in some years the discrepancy in the estimate of cargo turnover is quite large, reaching up to 4.6 million pounds, the relative discrepancy of sources is within acceptable limits, and the overall trend of dynamics looks the same.

Thus, we consider it expedient to take the information from the foreign trade yearbook to study the sea import to the Far East in 1903-1913, while other materials with comparably developed and systematized materials for each year, apparently, are presented with scattered and difficult to collect information, and some of them probably do not exist at all.

Fig. 4. The Russian Far East in 1910Note.

The map does not show the South Manchurian branch of the CER, from Harbin to Port Arthur.Another way of bringing goods to the region was the railway, and at the time in question it passed from Transbaikalia to Vladivostok only through China.

There were customs offices at the intersections with the state border: the western one with the name "Manchuria" and the eastern one with the name "Border". Accordingly, cargoes from European Russia (transiting through China), imported from Manchuria and transit, heading from there to be shipped abroad by sea (mainly soybeans to Japan, to the British colonies and to the same China) arrived in the Primorsky Region by rail.

This importation, of course, was also registered at the customs outpost at the Frontier station of the KVZhD, opened in 1902 and later transformed into a Class II customs ^{[21, p.43]}. It is worth noting, however, that unlike customs offices on the Pacific coast, the customs registration procedure, according to the order of the post at the Border station, was faster and usually had to be completed no later than 48 hours from the start of the inspection of the train ^{[22, p.279]}. Transit, railway (i.e. necessary for the construction, repair and operation of the railway), as well as some other categories of cargo, including those traveling from European Russia to Primorye and back, were immediately released in the presence of relevant documents, unopened seals on the packaging of the cargo, as well as a satisfactory result of a surface random inspection of the freight train ^{[22, from 279-283]}.

The yearbooks of foreign trade, however, are critically incomplete in this respect: if the transit of foreign goods from China through the Ussuri Region for subsequent shipment by sea has been taken into account since 1903, then in the opposite direction – fully only since March 1909, after the abolition of the Port of Franco in the Far East, and, most importantly, information about transit transportation of Russian goods "from the Manchurian customs to the Border to the Primorsky Region", that is, it is about the import of goods to the Far East from the rest of Russia by rail, they begin to be published here only since 1910, and although the data are carefully developed, with a detailed list of goods and indication of their weight and value, the period for research is obtained too short.

Therefore, transport statistics, which began to be published in the last quarter of the XIX century, is a more important natural source. ^{[23, pp.46-47] [24, pp.38-40]} "Summary statistics of transportation on Russian railways" was published by the publishing house of the Department of Railway Affairs of the Ministry of Finance since 1893 (with data for 1892) and it was annually issued in the form of a set of issues for the main groups of railway nomenclature. The general tables of cargo transportation by departure and destination, within and between all existing railways of Russia available in this collection provide a rich material on the basis of which it becomes possible to track the movement of goods to the Far East, i.e. at the station of the Ussuri railway.

In each issue there is a table "Distribution of traffic by departure and destination roads". Here you can see from which railway to which how much was sent per year (by weight) of the product to which the issue is dedicated. And if we take, for example, the issue dedicated to the transportation of sugar in 1910, we will see that during the year 160 thousand pounds of sugar arrived at the Ussuriyskaya railway station (refined sugar in barrels is part of all transported sugar, about which there are other tables), 123 thousand of them were sent. from the Ussuriyskaya road, 33 thousand p. – from the Moscow-Kiev-Voronezh and 4 thousand p. – from the South-Western railway ^{[25, p.9]}, Respectively, 123 thousand p. are internal transportation between the stations of the region, and 37 thousand p. is, it would seem, the supply of sugar to the region by rail from European Russia. However, there is also a more detailed table where you can see the departure and destination stations directly ^{[25, p.69]}. And then it turns out that the specified sugar was sent from the stations Khutor-Mikhailovsky and Bobrinskaya via Odessa–Vladivostok (destinations – Vladivostok and Khabarovsk). This means that all 33 thousand pounds went by sea. On the other hand, in the same year 66 thousand pounds of textiles were sent from the Moscow-Kazan road (from Moscow and Voskresensk) to Ussuriyskaya, and the table explicitly states that the goods were traveling along the Trans–Siberian route (via Ryazan–Chelyabinsk-Irkutsk) ^{[26, p. 742]}. Thus, we can trace the railway transportation of the most important goods. Unfortunately, there is no single table that would show how much cargo was transported from one road to another: there are only total totals of departure and arrival of goods by each railway, but in our case these data are not applicable, because it is impossible to separate the external import to the Far East from European Russia from domestic traffic on the Ussuri road.

When comparing railway statistics with foreign trade statistics, which we use as a base for bringing goods by sea, there is a small problem of differences in the nomenclature of goods accepted in them. Railway nomenclature is not as fractional as trade nomenclature, it shows more general categories of goods. However, in the introduction to the volumes of railway statistics, special tables are attached in which the articles of customs and railway tariffs are compared, thus allowing the study of both types of statistics for large categories of goods in comparison, which, by the way, is often used in the issues of "transportation by Russian railways" themselves.

It is quite obvious that the summary railway statistics discussed above combined statistical data on individual railways. Samples of these statistical reports on the Ussuri Railway for 1903-1904 . (under the publishing house of her board) ^[27], as well as for 1910-1914. (under the publishing house of the Board of the KVZhD) ^{[28, 29]} were identified in the central library of JSC "Russian Railways" (until 1918 – the friendly library of the Accounting Department of the State Railways Department, until 1946 – the Central Library of the NPS, until 1995 – the Central Library of the Ministry of Railways of the USSR). The reports for 1910-1914 are separate publications on 1) the departure of goods from the stations of the Ussuri railway, 2) the arrival of goods, 3) the movement of grain cargoes. For each station, detailed statistics of cargo transportation are provided, indicating the departure and destination stations, the route and the quantity of goods. Such a structure of reports allows us to study in sufficient detail the volumes of cargo transportation within the framework of local, import, export and transit messages, which are given in separate tables.

The study of the materials of statistical reports for 1910-1913 allowed us to establish a predominant coincidence of the final figures of transportation for individual tariff groups with similar information from the "Summary Statistics of Transportation on Russian Railways", which indirectly confirms their use by officials of the Department of Railway Affairs when compiling summary statistics.

Railway statistics on the import of goods to the Far East via the Trans-Siberian Railway can also be compared with the independently collected statistics of the foreign trade yearbook, but this can only be done since 1910, because previously the latter did not publish the volumes of goods imported from European Russia (which, from the point of view of trade statistics, represent the transit of Russian goods through the territory China, through the customs of Manchuria–Border).

Fig. 5. Comparison of the dynamics of the import of goods to Primorye along the Trans-Siberian railway through the Border station in 1910-1913. according to customs and railway data.

Source: Review of foreign trade ... for ^[1910-1913] year. St. Petersburg-Pg., 1912-1915; Statistical report of the Ussuri Railway on the transportation of private goods of small, large and passenger speeds (except grain cargo) on arrival and transit for ^[1910-1913] year. Harbin, 1911-1914.

Figure 5 shows the results of such a comparison. Here, customs data is the sum of information about imports through Border Customs, about transit from European Russia to Primorye via China by rail and about transit from Manchuria abroad via Vladivostok. The railway statistics are taken from the reports of the Ussuriyskaya Road, in which a summary "Comparative statement of the size of the movement of low-speed private cargo (without piece transportation) according to reports" was printed, which indicated the import and transit to the Ussuriyskaya road of all cargo (including, despite the name of the volume, and bread). As you can see, the figure shows an acceptable coincidence of trends when using independent sources, and since the dynamics of rail imports from Russia for an earlier period can only be obtained from publications of transport statistics, we will use it.

Thus, the source review shows the possibility of compiling a fairly complete dynamics of cargo import to the Far East in the context of "import – import from Russia" and "sea – railway" based on the data of the yearbook of foreign trade and railway statistics. The specificity of the sources leads to the fact that the issue can be investigated for the entire period of 1903-1913 only for certain groups of goods, and we will take the 12 most important ones, which accounted for obviously more than half of the total import. Unfortunately, for the period of 1903-1909, no statistics have been revealed that adequately show the size of the total cargo brought by rail from Russia in transit through Manchuria.

Comparison of statistics on the total import of goods to the Primorsky regionIn the economic life of Primorye in the late XIX – early XX centuries, the former consuming region, the external delivery of goods played a particularly important role, on which the welfare of the local population largely depended.

To begin with, let's look at the general picture of the import of goods into the region.

As mentioned above, statistical sources before 1910 do not allow us to determine the volume of rail traffic from Russia in full, so for a general comparison we use data on the total traffic of the 12 most important commodity groups.

In 1910-1913, when the movement of goods in Primorye was the most intense, and the available statistics allow for comparison, more than 75% of the mass of all goods brought to the region by rail fell into the selected categories (it makes sense to compare here only by the weight of the cargo transported, and it should be noted that our consideration includes the heaviest and bulk cargo: fuel, timber and other building materials, metals, metal products and machinery). Fig. 6 shows that the underestimation of railway transportation can probably be neglected: at least for 1910-1913, when the data of the foreign trade yearbook allow us to take them into account completely, the statistics of importation along the Trans-Siberian railway differ slightly from the one that we can build for 12 goods for the entire period.

Summing up the final statistics of both cargo transportation from Russia and imports allowed us to build the dynamics of the import of goods to Primorye by sea and railway supply routes for 1903-1913, presented in the same figure. Here we see the constant predominance of the importation of various goods aimed at domestic consumption by sea over transportation by rail.

Fig. 6. Dynamics of the total import of goods to Primorye in 1903-1913.

Source: Sea transportation by import and from Russia, as well as imports through the Border station and rail transportation from Russia in transit through Manchuria for 1910-1913 – according to the "Review of foreign trade ... for ^[1903-1913] year"; transportation from Russia through Manchuria 12 main commodity groups for the entire period – according to the "Summary statistics of transportation... ^[1903-1913] year".

Note. When plotting the schedule, we found it expedient to deduct the import of tea from the statistics of sea imports, because the bulk of it was then sent by rail to central Russia. There are practically no other such products.

At the same time, it is worth noting the curious ratio of sea and rail imports in 1904-1907, when even taking into account what happened in 1904-1905. The Russian-Japanese war and the decline of commercial shipping by sea, especially from European Russia, rail transportation on the unblocked CER could not approach the volume of cargo delivered by sea. Undoubtedly, such a picture has developed due to serious loads on the capacity of the Siberian, Trans-Baikal and Chinese sections of the Trans-Siberian railway, associated with the mass movement of soldiers and army cargo to Manchuria during the war.

The nature of sea and rail imports in the post-war years reflects two processes that took place at that time in Primorye. Firstly, the sharp jump in the import of goods by sea through Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk-on-Amur in 1906 was primarily due to the influx of imported and domestic goods into the region after the war. Goods and products of various kinds in conditions of deferred demand flooded the local market and were sold for a long time (at least a year) ^{[30, L.84]}, in connection with which, in the presented dynamics, there is a drop in the number of goods imported by sea in subsequent years. Later, since 1909, customs statistics record a constant increase in the volume of imported goods by sea, both imported from abroad and traveling by long-distance cabotage.

Secondly, as mentioned above, during these years there is a significant increase in the population of the region and the corresponding need for commodity supply. The post-war dynamics of the railway import of goods through the Border station is somewhat different from the port one: here the surge in imports falls not in 1906, but in 1907-1908, and this volume falls mainly on the transportation of grain, which will be discussed in more detail below.

The picture of the supply of the region with the most important goods looks different both from the point of view of the ratio of imports from Russia and from abroad, and from the point of view of transport supply. To begin with, let's consider this immediately for all the main product groups, taking for each of them 100% of the total import to the region for the entire period.

Fig. 7. Distribution of imports of the main commodity groups in Primorye (in total for the entire period of 1903-1913) by origin of goods.

As we can see (Fig. 7), from the point of view of the origin of goods, the supply of the region depended more on imports than on the import of goods from the rest of Russia. The predominance of domestic goods in import refers only to those whose production, for various reasons, was developing rapidly at that time – so successfully that it was not afraid of competition from other countries (like domestic textiles or cement) or even had a good sale on the European market (kerosene, sugar). At the same time, relatively cheap, but voluminous goods (grain, timber) were cheaper to import from neighboring countries (primarily China), even if Russia was their exporter on the world market as a whole.

8. Distribution of imports of the main commodity groups in Primorye (in total for the entire period of 1903-1913) by supply routes.Fig. 8 shows that it was these goods imported from Manchuria that formed the basis of rail transportation, but some large shipments from the rest of Russia also appear here, which is better to talk about when considering the structure of the import of each commodity group in dynamics.

Grain cargoesAs shown in Fig. 9, almost the entire volume of imported bread in 1903-1913 was imported to the Primorsky Region.

Fig. 9-10. Dynamics of grain cargo import structure in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

Mass transportation of grain cargoes from abroad mainly came from China, Korea and Japan, from where, however, they carried not only grain of various kinds, but also vegetables, meat, and other edibles. There was a critical shortage of own bread (and food in general) in the poorly populated and not mastered by peasants region, mass import from Siberia was expensive and organizationally insufficiently adjusted, as a result of which flour mills focused on its mass import ^{[31, p.91]}. It should be noted that the import of bread necessary for the region was not taxed even after the final abolition of the porto Franco regime in the Far East in 1909 ^{[32, p.47]}. The doubts of the local administration that existed at that time regarding the need for such preferential conditions for imported bread, however, could not shake the special position of Manchurian, Korean and Japanese grain on the Primorye market until the end of the existence of the Russian Empire. 11, compiled on the basis of the data of the "Surveys of the Primorsky region" and the yearbooks of foreign trade, shows the importance of imported bread for the region: in 1905-1912. they often accounted for more than a third of all bread consumed, and in 1908 – more than half, which is probably due to the unexpected increase in the number of eaters following the mass immigration to the Far East of immigrants from European Russia (Fig. 1).

11. The harvest of bread and potatoes in the Primorsky region in comparison with their import through local customs in 1905-1912.

Source: Review of foreign trade ... for ^[1905-1912]; Review of the Primorsky Region for ^[1905-1912].

Note. The graphs show only the overall ratio of the domestic harvest and imports; for a serious analysis of the picture, it would be necessary, of course, to take into account that different loaves and especially potatoes weigh differently with the same caloric content, that some of the loaves are used for fodder or for smoking wine, but in this article such details remain out of brackets.Domestic bread, which accounted for 15% of the total imports for 1903-1913, arrived in Primorye both by sea and by rail.

In the first case, peak volumes occurred in 1906 and 1911, when by long-distance cabotage (from Odessa) 1.1 million poods were transported, in the second case – in 1908, when 323 thousand poods of grain cargo arrived from the Siberian to the Ussuri Railway.

According to the method of delivery of grain cargoes in Primorye, the predominance of their transportation in ordinary years by rail is noticeable; in total, for 1903-1913, these amounted to 62% against 38% by sea (Fig. 8).

From Fig. 10 it becomes clear that the sea route (mainly through Vladivostok) since 1907 began to lose its dominant position in the delivery of bread to Primorye, and the railway since that time has become the main organizer of its transportation in the region. The growth in the volume of sea transportation of grain cargoes in 1905-1906, apparently, is associated with the need to restore the state of the local post-war market, and the railway in these early years could not yet seize the initiative: This could be caused by both problems with its capacity due to the need to export a large number of troops from Manchuria back to Russia, and the unavailability of the bread procurement system in Manchuria, as well as strikes on the railway ^{[30, l.165]}.

With a more detailed study of the material on the import of grain cargoes in Primorye, it is interesting to design the specialty of sea and railway import. So, if the railway became the main one in the supply of grain, then during the entire period from 1903 to 1913, rice from China and Japan was imported en masse to the port of Vladivostok, the volumes of which were usually more than 1 million pounds per year. At the same time, the number of rice shipments through the Border station was minimal. Such a difference in the nature of import by sea and by rail becomes understandable given that large rice-growing areas were located in Japan and southern China, from where, obviously, it was more convenient to deliver rice by ship to the port of Vladivostok, unlike Manchuria and other northern regions of China, where this crop was not grown for sale in foreign markets.

SaltFig. 12-13.

Dynamics of the structure of salt import in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

Local salt production in the Primorsky region was practically undeveloped. From the diagrams presented in Fig. 12-13, it can be judged that salt was delivered to Primorye almost exclusively by sea from abroad, in especially large volumes from China, Japan and, oddly enough, Germany ^{[33, l.153]}. The cheapness and availability of imported salt explain its mass import, and a significant part of it was used for salting fish, which were mined in large quantities in the Sea of Japan by domestic fishermen and poisoned from Primorye both for export and transit to Russia.

The participation of Russian ships and railways in the transportation of salt in Primorye during the entire period remained minimal, as the head of the Vladivostok commercial port, Baron G.N. Taube, complained in his report, explaining the lack of salt of Russian origin by strong competition, which could only be fought by reducing freight rates for the transportation of salt from ports of European Russia ^{[19, p.23]}.

SugarFig. 14-15.

Dynamics of the structure of sugar import in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

A completely different picture, compared with the import of salt, is observed with the transportation of sugar, which was delivered to Primorye (mostly to Vladivostok) mainly from European ports of Russia (mainly from Odessa). The role of railway transportation of sugar from European Russia to Primorye is quite insignificant during 1903-1912, and only in 1913 310 thousand pounds were delivered by direct rail through Siberia to the Far East (against 1 million pounds of sugar delivered by sea in the same year).

Taking into account the development of sugar production in the southern provinces of the Russian Empire and the ease of transporting the products of sugar factories to the Black Sea, as well as the presence of mass demand, it is not at all surprising to export sugar through the port of Odessa on long-distance coasting ships. The preference for the sea route by rail, apparently, is explained by the lower cost of transporting sugar products to the Far East by sea, including within the framework of specially established export tariffs – Direct Russian-Chinese overseas and Direct South Overseas communications. Thus, it was estimated that the cost of transporting a pood of sugar from the Pavlovsky Sugar Factory in Sumy to Vladivostok via the Trans–Siberian railway could reach 130 kopecks (excluding additional fees), while the delivery of the same pood of sugar through Odessa by sea cost 64-84 kopecks per pood ^{[34, pp.52-70]}.

Some of the large volumes of domestic sugar imported to Primorye, on the contrary, were sold further to Manchuria, where the share of its deliveries from the Ussuri railway grew from 1906 to 1913 and in the end amounted to 4% to 4.5% of the total import volume (in pounds) to the KVZHD. It is worth noting, however, that we are talking about the predominance of sugar of Russian origin in its various forms in the study period in Primorye. A variety of sweets, according to customs, were mainly imported from abroad.

Meat goods Fig. 16-17.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of meat goods in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

Meat was a fairly large category of goods in Primorye in terms of transportation volumes. Due to the underdevelopment of cattle breeding in the region ^{[35, p.78]}, meat goods were mainly imported and imported, as can be seen from Fig. 16-17, by sea from China, by rail from Manchuria, and also, according to narrative sources, from the USA and Australia ^{[33, l.153]}. The types of meat supplied were not the same on different delivery routes. Thus, the specifics of cargo delivery by sea led to the fact that most of the meat was imported into the port of Vladivostok in salted or frozen form, while the high speed of transportation by rail, relative to sea navigation, combined with the presence of glacier wagons, allowed importing fresh meat from Manchuria in significant quantities. In terms of volumes, the railway import of meat goods through the Border station prevailed over imports through the port of Vladivostok, and during the entire period from 1903 to 1913 (except only 1905).

The import of meat from Russia was exclusively by rail. The presence of developed cattle breeding in Siberia allowed domestic merchants to organize the transportation of meat to various parts of the country along the Trans-Siberian railway, which is reflected in the materials of railway statistics: it was the Siberian Railway that was the leader in the number of meat shipments throughout the period.

Nevertheless, in 1903-1910, the railway transportation of meat from Siberia to Primorye was characterized by relatively small volumes (up to 10-20 thousand pounds of meat goods per year), and they took on a mass character only in 1911, their peak value reached in 1912, when 233 thousand pounds of meat were imported to the Ussuri railway from Siberia.

CoalFig. 18-19.

Dynamics of the structure of coal import in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

Being a popular resource in the Far East, where its main consumers were a number of factories and factories, the navy, sea and river steamships, as well as the railway ^{[35, p.112]}, almost all imported coal was delivered to the region from abroad by sea (Fig.19), from China and especially to large volumes from Japan. The blocking of coal supplies during the Russian-Japanese War and, as a result, the difficulties encountered in supplying the fleet and the railway with fuel showed the dangerous strategic inconsistency of the existing dependence on imported coal, therefore, after the war, local industrialists began more active development of coal deposits available in Primorye. So, in the valley of the Suchan River (now the Partizanskaya River) at the end of the XIX century, large coal deposits were discovered, which only in 1907, after the narrow-gauge Suchan branch and the opening of the Kangauz station, began to supply large volumes (more than 10 million pounds per year) of local coal for domestic consumption, about as evidenced by local railway statistics ^[7].

However, even despite the beginning of the development of local coal mines and a sharp increase in their supplies to various areas of Primorye, after 1907, Japanese coal did not stop being imported annually in increasing volumes of millions of pounds, thus preserving its important role in supplying the region with fuel.

Petroleum productsFig. 20-21.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of petroleum products to Primorye in 1903-1913 .

The development of oil fields on an industrial scale in the Caucasus in the second half of the XIX century made the Russian Empire one of the leaders (along with the USA) in the world market of oil products. By the time under consideration, the transportation of kerosene from oil fields to the Black Sea was perfectly arranged – via the Baku–Batum kerosene pipeline. Therefore, the structure of the region's supply of petroleum products is obvious. Arriving almost in full from Russia, they were transported to the Far East on long-distance coaster ships loaded in Batumi. Rail transportation from European Russia to the Far East along the Trans-Siberian railway was minimal, compared with data on sea import, values and exceeded 100 thousand pounds only in 1913.

The main category of transported oil products was kerosene, which was used both for domestic consumption and for sale to Manchuria, where it arrived in especially large volumes since 1909, accounting for up to 4.5% of the total weight of goods exported from the Ussuri Railway to the KVZHD in the last five years of the studied period. Petroleum lubricating oils were also supplied to Primorye in considerable quantities.

The structure of the import of those petroleum products, which, in small quantities, came to the region by rail, was almost the same as when transported by sea: kerosene prevailed in the import to the Ussuri railway, petroleum lubricating oils were also brought, as well as oil residues (fuel oil), which were used as an alternative to coal.

Building materialsFig. 22-23.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of cement, bricks and other building materials in Primorye in 1903-1913.

The goods of the "building materials" group, including alabaster, gypsum, cement, lime and brick, as can be seen from Fig. 23, were mostly delivered by sea, and the ratio of imports from Russia and from abroad is about two-thirds to one, respectively. Russian construction cargoes were mainly represented by cement exported from Novorossiysk and Gelendzhik by long-distance cabotage ships (then Novorossiysk was the center of cement production in Russia). The remaining categories of the group were imported through the port of Vladivostok and imported from Germany and Japan, as, for example, in the case of bricks and gypsum.

A special category of goods that could be included in the "building materials" group are less difficult to produce goods that are not included in comparative statistics, such as clay or untreated building stones. Along with their mass domestic transportation on the Ussuri Railway, often associated with the construction of the Amur branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway ^[7], they were also imported (mainly from China and Japan), albeit in smaller volumes compared to local rail shipments.

Forest goodsFig. 24-25.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of forest goods in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

The group "forest goods" was quite extensive and included both forest construction materials (beams, poles, sleepers) and firewood. The graphs show that a lot of wood was imported from Manchuria by rail through the Border station, and the largest category of this group was firewood. The unusual nature of the mass import of timber to Primorye, one of the largest logging regions of Russia, where its share in local rail transport in 1903-1914 was about 30% ^[7], can probably be explained by two reasons. Firstly, the most significant volumes of imports of forest products were in the post-war years 1906-1908, when, probably, a large amount of wood was used both for local needs and for export after a two-year break in its supplies abroad from Vladivostok. In general, it is worth noting that almost all forest products exported from the Far East were of Manchurian origin, where its extraction and processing was cheaper due to cheap labor ^{[33, L.64]}. For the first time, the Ussuri forest began to be exported only in 1909, when local enterprises signed contracts with foreign importers ^{[36, L.12]}. However, even after the establishment of sales of products of domestic timber producers, the export of forest goods from Primorye still competed with the Manchurian forest and did not reach large volumes until the end of the studied period ^{[33, L.64]}. As a result, it seems possible to indicate that in addition to the direct transit of forest goods from Manchuria abroad through the port of Vladivostok (which we are not considering), it could be imported to Primorye for further sale to a foreign importer.

Secondly, the attraction of the Manchurian forest could be caused by the needs of railways: the operating Ussuri and the Amur (west of Khabarovsk) branches of the Trans-Siberian Railway under construction. The Agency of the KVZhD, whose area of responsibility since 1906 included the management of the affairs of the Ussuri Railway, concluded contracts with timber manufacturers, including Russians, who were engaged in the supply of timber for railway construction from Manchuria. So, one of his contemporaries wrote with condemnation about the practice of concluding such contracts with Manchurian enterprises to meet the demand for this category of goods even "... at such forest stations as, for example, Rozengartovka, Sviyagino, etc., where there was, as they say, plenty of wood, and at whatever price you want..." ^{[37, p.45]}

Metals and metal productsFig. 26-27.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of metals and metal products in Primorye in 1903-1913.

Although the material of this section in railway statistics is represented by two groups – "metals are not in use" and "iron, tin, steel and cast iron products" – we consider it possible to combine them here, primarily because these metal products in most cases differed little from rolled products: these were rails, beams, telegraph masts, pipes, etc. In addition, the dynamics of the import of metals and products differed little from each other.

26-27 shows that cargoes of this category were mainly imported: metals came from Germany and from Chinese ports, for example, Shanghai ^{[33, l.153]}, where they were unloaded from foreign ships and then shipped by sea mainly to Vladivostok. The same is typical for metal products: the demand for them was mainly satisfied by sea imports from Germany and Chinese transshipment ports ^{[33, l.153]}. In 1912 The Vladivostok Stock Exchange Committee noted that, as a percentage, 88% of the entire local market of metals, metal products and machinery (excluding materials coming from Russia for the construction of railways) was filled with foreign goods, of which 80% were of German origin ^{[38, L.3]}. Among these, sources note a particularly large number of nails, pipes, wires, various tools, etc. ^{[38, l.3]}

The explosive growth in the supply of metals from Russia by long-distance cabotage occurred in 1912, when various kinds of materials for railways, including the Amur branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway, occupied a significant place in the total import through Primorye.

Despite the lack of an opportunity to differentiate metal products coming to Primorye from Russia, according to their types, it seems that most of them were intended for railway construction, while imported products mainly went to the local market for the needs of the population and industry.

As part of the import by rail, imports were not, of course, of serious importance, as well as transportation from Russia until 1910, after which there was a mass movement of goods of this group from the European part of the country and Siberia to the Far East. For the most part, represented by various metal structures, they arrived for the construction of the Amur branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway, as evidenced by railway statistics, according to which the Khabarovsk station was their main destination.

Machines and toolsFig. 28-29.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of machines and tools in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

The group of goods "machines and tools" by the nature of its importation to Primorye is also quite similar to the previous one: the predominance of mainly imported supplies by sea with the increasing role of rail transport from Russia in 1909-1913. Unfortunately, customs statistics and the narrative sources involved relate most of the cargo of this group to a fairly general group, without dividing them into specific types of vehicles. However, among these mainly imported goods, a significant number of imported agricultural machinery and implements are distinguished, which were then transported along the Ussuri railway, according to railway statistics, throughout Primorye from the port of Vladivostok.

It is worth considering separately the import of goods of this category from Russia, shown in Fig. 28. In 1906, after the Russian-Japanese War and in parallel with the sharp increase in the number of immigrants in the region, the import of cars from European Russia by sea, as well as sea imports, increased sharply. However, in 1909-1913, there was an increase in the role of rail transportation of goods of this group from European Russia to the Far East. Here we meet with a process that has not yet been seen – the gradual movement of the way of transportation of at least one category of cargo from the sea route to the railway – through the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Manufactured goodsFigure 30-31.

Dynamics of the structure of the import of manufactured goods in Primorye in 1903-1913 .

The most interesting dynamics is demonstrated by the import of "manufactured goods", mainly consisting of fabrics. As can be understood from Fig. 30, during 1904-1909, the volume of imports of the manufactory exceeded the same values for shipments from Russia and reached its maximum in 1906. That year, in order to meet the increased post-war demand in Primorye, a large number of manufactories were imported from Russia, but at the same time, according to contemporaries, inexpensive consumer goods poured into Vladivostok in large quantities, of which a lot had accumulated during the war years in warehouses of China and Japan ^{[39, p.72]}. The imported and domestic manufactured goods that flooded Primorye, imported in 1906, were still looking for their consumer for a long time, which was reflected in a sharp drop in their import in 1907. The rise in the import of manufactures repeated in 1908, apparently, was associated with the desire of foreign merchants to quickly and in large quantities sell their products before the closure of the port regime.franco in the Far East, which at that time was actively discussed in the trade and administrative circles of the region.

The final abolition of the port-franco regime in the Far East in 1909 led to a sharp decrease in imports of most categories of manufactured goods (with the exception of ropes and other rope products) and an equally sharp rise in shipments from Russia, the import of which in 1913 reached a significant superiority over foreign ones. Comparison with the commodity groups considered earlier shows that the effect of the abolition of duty-free import of foreign goods was most clearly manifested for "manufactured goods", which is explained by the good competitiveness of domestic textile factories of the early XX century, at least in the domestic market, especially in conditions of the possibility of using rail transport directly from central Russia. It is quite natural that for fabrics, haberdashery and other similar goods, the unit cost of transporting one pood is small compared to inexpensive heavy loads like cement or grain, so the supply of the region simultaneously with the transition to domestic goods passed almost entirely to the railway.

ConclusionsThe conducted research allows us to draw several conclusions:

1) The study of a set of statistical sources allows us to conclude that only their combination can show the overall picture of traffic flows in the Russian Far East at the beginning of the XX century. The information potential of the data array we have created is sufficient to comprehensively highlight the issues raised in the work, although there may not be enough data to study a number of related issues. The dynamic series of trade and transport statistics collected during the work on the article and used for plotting are available online on the website of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University as part of the digital project "Dynamics of economic and Social development of Russia in the XIX – early XX centuries." (http://www.hist.msu.ru/Dynamics/FarEast.xls )

2) At the beginning of the XX century, the Far Eastern Region was heavily dependent on the import of goods from outside, both of agricultural and industrial origin. The remoteness of the region from the economic centers of Russia led to the fact that imports often turned out to be cheaper, largely from the nearest regions of China and Japan. Thus, food was mainly imported, including bread, salt and meat, as well as coal, timber, metals, tools and machinery, but a number of industrial goods with which domestic producers managed to enter foreign markets (sugar, kerosene, cement and, towards the end of the period– manufacture), They came from Russia, both by sea and by the Trans-Siberian railway.

2) In such groups as metals and metal products, a certain specialization of transportation can be traced, in which metal structures and parts used in the development of infrastructure in the Far East, for example, in the construction of the Amur Railway, and from abroad, in particular, from Germany and Chinese transshipment ports, mainly came from Russia, imported products coming for domestic consumption by the population and industry of the region. 

3) Most of the goods imported into Primorye of the selected groups, both imported and domestic, were delivered to the region by sea, while the share of rail transportation initially fell almost exclusively on imports of grain goods, meat and forest goods from Manchuria. Nevertheless, the participation of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the supply of Primorye with goods gradually increased, and in 1909-1913 the railway connection between the European part of Russia and the Far East began to play an important role in the supply of the region. During this period, the volume of transportation of certain categories of goods from Siberia, primarily meat and oil, increases the transportation of machinery, fabrics, as well as some categories not included in our comparative statistics: tobacco, clothing, glass and wooden products, etc.

4) Thus, at least until 1910, railway traffic played an extremely important role in regional transportation, providing Primorye with goods both within the framework of local communication via the Ussuri Railway and imported via the CER from Manchuria, from where grain cargoes, meat, and timber arrived in large quantities.

Among the possible reasons for the relatively low volumes of transportation from European Russia to Primorye along the Trans-Siberian Railway, which, it would seem, won in terms of cargo delivery from long-distance cabotage, several significant factors can be identified: the high cost of transportation, problems with establishing their organization, as well as the state of railways in Manchuria and the Far East.

Speaking about how much the supplier of the goods would have to pay to have his cargo safely delivered to the Far East, it is worth mentioning separately about several existing methods of cargo delivery to Primorye: direct Russian-Chinese railway communication (trains followed from Russia to Primorye via Manchuria via the CER); Amur-Ussuri communication (goods followed to trains to Sretensk, from where they were reloaded onto river vessels and went along the Shilka and Amur to Khabarovsk, where they were reloaded onto trains again); direct Russian-Chinese overseas communication (goods followed the railway stations of European Russia to Odessa, from where they were reloaded onto ships and followed to Vladivostok, where they were loaded onto trains again); direct South-Overseas communication (the same way with entry into passing foreign ports), as well as Broken communication (the same sea or railway track, but outside the above tariffs). When using the tables of freight charges No. 1, No. 3 and No. 5 from Sputnik in Siberia ^{[34, p.51, 61, 70]}, it is possible to estimate the cost of transportation of each product from the railway nomenclature along the Trans-Siberian Railway and by sea through Odessa. In all cases, the cost of transportation was taken without taking into account additional fees for weighing, loading, unloading, etc. So, we can cite the already mentioned cost of transporting sugar from Sumy to Vladivostok, which was 130 kopecks per pound when transported along the Trans-Siberian railway against 64-84 kopecks per pound when transported through Odessa. Another example may be the categories "metals are not in business" and "metal products", the cost of transportation of which from St. Petersburg along the Trans-Siberian railway ranged from 119 (via Vyatka) to 129 (via Moscow) kopecks per pound, and through Odessa – 70-80 kopecks. In this regard, industrialists and merchants chose a long, but cheaper sea route. However, in the case of the Urals and Siberia, from where meat and butter were supplied to Primorye, the Trans-Siberian railway also won in the cost of transportation.

The movement of goods along the Trans-Siberian Railway was also accompanied by the absence of a well-established mechanism for delivering goods to destinations in the Far East. Merchants from European Russia had no clear idea when the goods they sent would reach Manchuria and Primorye ^{[30, l.164]}. Train delays, logistics problems and emerging "traffic jams" ^[37], the presence of "bottlenecks" on some sections of railways, the need to overload cargo from one train to another, strikes and much more could delay the transportation of a batch of goods for up to three months ^{[30, l.188]}. Against the background of the Porto-Franco regime that existed before 1909 and the acute competition with foreigners who greatly benefited in the organization of supply, this factor turned out to be especially important.

Another factor that could also affect the low popularity of the Trans-Siberian direction was the already noted problems with the capacity and condition of railways in Manchuria and Primorye. Contemporaries noted that it was possible to talk about the beginning of more or less significant quantities of railway transportation of goods from Russia to the Far East only since 1908 ^{[30, l.165]} So, during the Russian-Japanese War, the capacity of the Trans-Baikal railways was subjected to an extreme load due to the need for mass movement of soldiers and military cargo to Manchuria and back. Commercial transportation in these years was either completely discontinued, or was carried out at a baggage rate or by hooking wagons to military trains ^{[40, p.47]}. Certain difficulties in the implementation of railway traffic in 1904-1907 were also caused by workers' strikes and the theft of goods that accompanied them.

Thus, the supply by sea and ten years after the opening of the last section of the railway remained more important. However, the dynamics of the process, which we have presented in this article, shows a gradual increase in the role of rail transport.