RUSSIA 1913

There was no doubt that Russia’s greatness was still a work in progress in 1913. The empire’s geography presented a daunting challenge to the movement of goods and people. Decent roads were few and far between. Fewer than one tenth of one per cent of Russian villages had local telephones and no public telephone line connected the Russian empire to the outside world. Russia’s rail network, in which the French were keen to invest in order to speed their ally’s mobilisation against Germany in a time of war, was only a quarter as dense as that of the United States. Poring over Russia’s railway timetables, Théry calculated that it would take a minimum of 75 hours and nine minutes for an express passenger to travel from Chelyabinsk, where Europe meets Asia, to the German border.



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