Kankrin turned down numerous bids to build railways,
and it was only in 1851 that a line was built linking Moscow
and Saint Petersburg. Kankrin’s policy was continued by
Count Kleinmichel, who was made head of the main
administration of Transport and Public Buildings. This
institution became the main arbiter of railway construction,
and Kleinmichel used it as a platform to discourage their
construction. After 1849 he even used his power to censor
discussion in the newspapers of railway development.
Map 13 (opposite) shows the consequences of this logic.
While Britain and most of northwest Europe was
crisscrossed with railways in 1870, very few penetrated the
vast territory of Russia. The policy against railways was
only reversed after Russia’s conclusive defeat by British,
French, and Ottoman forces in the Crimean War, 1853–
1856, when the backwardness of its transportation network
was understood to be a serious liability for Russian