The Edge of the World
We remember the last decades of Tsarist Russia as a time of backwardness and confusion, but this was the regime which built the greatest railway in the world, the railway that changed the history of Russia by opening up Siberia and in so doing changed the world. It also led the Tsar into a disastrous war with Japan which destroyed Russia’s credibility as a great power and led Austria and Germany into believing that they could crush Russia’s protégé, Serbia, with impunity. The Tsar’s were destroyed by a chain of events unleashed by their greatest triumph. Wolmer’s book tells the story of the building of the railway, a process that never ends, and its fortunes in war and peace. In so doing he tells us how Siberia was developed and the environmental changes, good and bad, that have ensued, an important dimension to Russian history that the West often overlooks. His books are already well known to railway enthusiasts; this one merits a wider readership.