Trans-Siberia. A Stop on the Way.
Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma - Winston Churchill
Springtime, Novosibirsk
Most stories seem to come to us from the East, almost regardless of where we are. The East is where the the morning sun hatches and where the first rays of dawn peek over the ridge of the Pacific to cast a first guiding light into the new day.
Days and nights have passed since leaving the shores of Vladivostok. We awake in the morning and rise with the sun to follow it to its evening showdown out west as the landscape passes by like slides on a screen. After days of recurring patterns and different shades of forest green, dark lakes, small wooden villages amid foggy meadows and dilapidated industrial buildings, a hard rain is released over Novosibirsk Oblast. The train makes its way through a web of tracks past the outer switchyards as the carriages lurch towards the central station. Breaks are squealing, rain hammering on tin roofs and diligent women in uniform, each tending to a designated carriage of the iron caravan, call out the first stop of the day as we approach the concrete platform.
Local vendors congregate outside the windows. This is the attraction of the day, the mighty Trans-Siberian coming to town with a hopeful prospect of business; cabbage pirogues for sale to hungry travelers, currencies converted for a small commission, pickled vegetables, vodka, dried noodles, underwear and warm sweaters, chessboards and second-hand magazines, mainly Russian gossip, German sports reviews and a few fashion publications in Hebrew. The competing scents of coal, iron, wet concrete, tar and red beet soup fill the air as voices call out in the rain. A handful of station supervisors monitor the spectacle from a shed next to the station building. A 50 minute stop before a whistle blows and the locomotive tows the rolling bazaar out into the wild again, back to the eternity we came from.
* * *
We find ourselves at an approximate 1650 kilometers east of the great obelisk in the Ural mountain forests, displaying an engraved two-headed arrow pointing in opposite directions: Europe. Asia. The message is clear enough, though what it points out more than anything is the difficulty to grasp the very border it is set out to define, as the setting could easily be confused with any clearing in the woods somewhere in the Ardennes.
Europe and Asia are elusive concepts. Comparing Versailles to the Taj Mahal or a classical chamber ensemble to a meandering sitar tune, it seems clear enough - though closing in on the border between the two, the differences appear less certain. The Ural Mountain chain stretches from the Arctic Ocean to northwestern Kazakhstan, and the Bosphorus strait divides the city of Istanbul into East and West. Yet the difference - like most cultural differences - is gradual rather than absolute. Perhaps it is these gradual shifts of scenery that makes traveling by land worthwhile. A couple of new words, a peculiar looking church tower, new ways of greeting each other, foreign scents and dinner specials turning more exotic by the day: this is movement to a higher degree than what a sign or a certain speed per hour can ever illustrate.
* * *
As the rain starts to moderate, the scene on the platform gives a faint gleam of something else, something vaguely familiar; Is it the Wild West ?
Traveling extensively across the great landmasses of the East and the West, of Russia and North America, it is striking how similar these vast countries are. It starts as a purely geographical resemblance amidst the deep forests, high mountains, the red sandstone sierras, coal mines and the sheer volume of space, though it is soon accompanied by other similar traits - as if these two giant empires founded on vast resources, raw power, a predominantly Christian culture, European settlement and a great deal of Asian influx, were the print and negative of the same photograph.
Perhaps the vast railways embody this similarity more than anything, like widespread horizontal monuments of rust celebrating the art of overcoming distance. No other mode of transportation marries the suggestive mysticism and meditation of travel with the grounded practicalities of engineering more effectively than our trains - the Transsibirskaya in particular.
The great Trans-Siberian Railway is the train ride of a lifetime, spanning more than 9000 kilometers and seven time zones between the Sea of Japan and the Russian capital. It allows goods and travelers to be transported from one side of the continent to the other in a mere eight days. Over a week might sound like an eternity to the restless Homo Contemporary, but when built between 1891 and 1916, it changed the world and the very concept of geographical distance.
The project, undertaken by Tsar Alexander II, bore a resemblance to the first American Transcontinental Railroad completed in 1869, connecting what was then the far west of the country - Iowa and the Missouri River - with California and the setting sun of the Pacific coast. The Russian endeavor was also prompted by events oversees, as the American Civil War of 1861-1865 led to a loss of cotton imports from the Southern states to the textile factories in Russia. This shift in supply on the world cotton market gave new urgency to Tsar Alexander's campaign in Siberia, giving access to the Central Asian soil suitable for growing cotton. This would eventually make Uzbekistan one of the world's leading cotton producers, which it still is today.
Far-reaching railroads would secure Moscow's demand for cotton and minerals in the long run, and connect Washington D.C. to the gold discovered in California as the region was taken over from Mexico in the mid-19th century. In a way, this was an early phase of a race between powers that perhaps didn't yet see each other as future competitors for power in Europe.
What is interesting about these far-reaching communications and their yield, is that it was not entirely clear who would come to master them in America and Russia respectively. The American Transcontinental Railroad was partly built during the Civil War between North and South, well before the future of the Union and the Confederate States was settled. The Trans-Siberian Railroad was finished in 1916, one year before the Russian Revolution that would dismantle Tsarist rule, see the rise of the Bolshevik government and prompt the abdication of Nicholas II. As it happens, the latter events had their ideological foundation in the ideas of German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, born in the Prussian town of Trier about a hundred years earlier. As Germany eventually unified in 1871, Berlin became the capital. Ninety years later, a wall would be erected, dividing the city between the competing ideologies of the East and the West; chiefly represented by Russia and America.
Ideas travel, as do people, and with them history is made for better or for worse. Along the tracks, settlers from an overcrowded and troubled European continent - many of them German - would travel east and west in search for new virgin lands to cultivate. This migration helps us understand the fact that over 50 million Americans claim German ancestry today, and that German speaking villages can still be encountered in some far corners of the former Soviet Union, such as Kyrgyzstan, the mountainous land at the Chinese border. Along for the ride in both directions came Hungarians, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, Scandinavians, Italians, Chinese and Koreans to name a few who have exported portions of their heritage into what was to become their world of tomorrow. The rest, is history.
Our short stop along the way is coming to an end. I hand over a few Kopek for a pirogue and a four year old football review predicting the outcome of the forthcoming year's Bundesliga. It has stopped raining and the vendors are withdrawing as the attendants prepare for departure. A shroud of calm lowers itself onto the platform and a saturated light flows into the cool air. I take a deep breath and ponder the possibility that I might never come here again.
The Muscovite hinterland is a treat as well as a penance, a beauty and a beast, a ruthless spread of land intertwining the mystery of distance and the hard facts of industrialization and agriculture. This is where dissidents like Dostoevsky and even young Stalin himself have been sent into exile over the years, as well as fortunes been made. It is where settlers of old and today's backpackers come together to the rhythm of iron wheels beating against the tracks day after day, night after night, until we wake up somewhere else.