The Presidential Library – to the 120th anniversary of the West-Siberian Railway

October 28, 2016 from 9:15 to 10:30 at the Presidential Library will be held a presentation of inter-regional historical and cultural project, dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the West-Siberian Railway - one of the main sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The project will present a multimedia exhibition with the city, through which the West-Siberian Railway runs, as well as electronic collection “West-Siberian Railway” on the library portal. The presentation will be attended by project participants - representatives of the regional centers of the Presidential Library from Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Omsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo and Barnaul, who will tell about the contribution of their territories to the creation of the road.

The main objective of the project - to show the history of the construction and the establishment of the West-Siberian railway on the basis of publications stored in the collections of regional libraries; these publications formed Presidential Library collection.

The electronic copy of the article by V. Kartamyshev "Siberian Railway" (1889) says: "The device of a continuous path from Chelyaba, Orenburg, Tyumen Chrysostom or to Vladivostok or Beijing is a company which by its cost, technical difficulties and the future of the world's cultural value is not inferior value digging the Suez and Panama canals, or through, from ocean to ocean, road America or construction of Mid-Asian railway, if we consider the latter as a member of the Indo-European iron road".

The Presidential Library's collected work "Siberia and the Great Siberian Railway" (1893), timed to the celebration of the fourth hundred discovery of America and exhibition in Chicago, described as the Minister of Finance Russia Witte instructed the Department of Commerce and Manufactures make "for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as a description of Siberia, a country little known to foreigners, and the Great Siberian railway".

Despite the enormity of the material costs and the need to pull a string of railway "from Chelyaba to Vladivostok", Russia is firmly committed itself to implement such a difficult enterprise, to change not only the situation in Russia as a whole, but also the fate of the vast taiga Zauralye.

The book "The Great Siberian Railway" (1901) states: "The importance of lifting the economic life of Siberia were also activities of the Siberian railway to improve the navigability of the Siberian rivers and in particular the river Amur and the lake Baikal. Some of the rivers contain state-owned shipping company. …Because of the ordering of trade exchange with the countries of the Far East - China and Japan - the Siberian railway constructed in Vladivostok a commercial port, equipped with a strong on winter ice-breaker".

The road was built in the period from 1891 to 1916 at the expense of the treasury. The length of it to 1899 was 1408 kilometers. Today the unfolded length of the main track line is 9020.1 kilometers. The value of the road for the Russian economy (and not only) cannot be overestimated, because, as it has been written in the quoted above publication, "The Great Siberian Railway will benefit not only Russia: it will be of great service to the material and spiritual culture of mankind, and from this point of view, will acquire value and interest for the entire civilized world".