The New York Times, November 7, 1904 p.9:
RUSSIA'S NEW GREAT RAILROAD IN ASIAOrenburg-Tashkent Line Was Completed a Few Days Ago.
GREAT VALUE STRATEGICALLY
Prince Hilkoff Pushed the Construction of the Road with Much Energy--
The Cities Traversed.
Foreign Correspondence of The New York Times
LONDON, Oct. 27.--A correspondent of The Times says:
"Only a few days ago a railway was completed which is destined to play a part in Asia second only to the Trans-Siberian, or the great lines that have transformed India. Although the line is finished so far as the laying of rail is concerned, it will not be open for passenger traffic until July, 1905. Still it exists as an available means of communication. It is known as the Orenburg-Tashkent Railway.
"Orenburg, a town of some 60,000 inhabitants and chief town of the Government of Orenburg, is situated on the River Ural, at this point the boundary line between Europe and Asia. Its commerce is trifling; the town owes its importance to its strategical situation. It has been for 200 year the spot whence expeditions have been organized for 'research' in Asia. It is the terminus alike of the old postroad to Tashkent and of the European railway system in this direction. Although it produces nothing, it has for two centuries been the mart at which Asiatic goods were received and sorted for distribution in Europe.
"Every year caravans of Bactrian camels brought thither the silks of Samarkand and Khiva, the beautiful lambswool skins and carpets of Bokhara, which were exchanged in the Gostini Dvor, or bazaar, outside the town, for hardware, grain, and sugar. If Peter the Great build St. Petersburg as a peephole into Europe, he used Orenburg as a window to look into Asia.
THREE PLANS PROPOSED.
"When it was decided by passing north of the Caspian to extend the Russian Railway system into Turkestan, three different projects were submitted to the commission charged with the selection of the route. Of these the first was the line now completed--of which presently.
"The second idea was to take advantage of the Saratof-Uralsk Railway, to extend it across the desert to Kungrad, a little fisher village near where the Amu-Daria River falls into the Aral Sea. From Kungrad the track, passing east of Khiva town and over the Karakum, or Black Sand, would have joined the Central Asian Railway at Chardjui (Four Springs,) where a magnificent iron girder bridge resting on nineteen granite piers spans the Amu-Daria.
"A third project was to connect Tashkent by rail with Semipalatinsk, via Aoulie-ŕta, Vierni, and Kopal. This line was to pass between the two great, though little known, lakes, Issk-kul and Balkash. From Semipalatinsk, the head of the steamboat service on the great Irtish, two alternative routes were proposed. One, following the river valley more or less, would have joined the Trans-Siberian at the station of Omsk; the other was designed to pass along the post road to Barnaöul, and thence to Obi station, where the Trans-Siberian bridges the Old River. The partisans of this scheme desired to join the Central Asian and Siberian railway systems. Those who favored the Khivan route did so on the grounds that it would run almost in a straight line from Uralsk to Chardjul.
OLD POST ROAD CHOSEN.
"But both schools were destined to give way to the advocates of the old post road route from Orenburg. The whole of Tashkent desired to take advantage of this well-known roadway, which was called the "natural" connecting link between Europe and Asia. Of late years but few passengers or goods followed this way, which had been quite supplanted by the Tashkent-Samarkand-Merv-Askhabad railway line, the creation of Annenkoff.
"The direct Orenburg-Tashkent Railway, of which the two sections were joined in October (September, O. S.) 1904, runs as follows: From Orenburg, the terminus of the railway from Samara over the Ural River to Ilensk, on the Ilek, a left affluent of the Ural. From Ilensk to Aktiubinsk, Kazalinsk, up the Sir-Daria Valley to Petrovsk, Turkestan, and across the steppe direct to Tashkent.
"The new line does not exactly follow the old post road which led from Aktiubinsk to Irgiz in the steppes of the nomadic Khirgiz, and from Turkestan town, via Chimkent to Tashkent. But it so nearly adhered to it as to render new surveys necessary only here and there; it passed over a country offering no natural difficulties, and, further, it certainly was the route desired by the Russians established in Central Asia.
"Consecrated by almost two centuries' use, it appealed more to their sentiments than the desert route to the west of Aral, or the distant journey through Semirechla, the land of seven rivers. And this consideration is no mean one in Russia, for the Slav is essentially a creature of sentiment--dreamy, sedentary, adverse to change, preferring to tread in the footsteps of his ancestors.
PRINCE HILKOFF'S ENERGY.
"When Michael Ivanovitch Hilkoff has once decided, he allows no grass to grow under his feet. In America, imitating the example of his great Emperor Peter at Zaandam, the Minister of Ways and Communications of the Russian Empire worked himself as a plate layer. He also learned there the value of time and truth, so lightly estimated by the mass of his countrymen.
"In September, 1900, as the writer can state from observation on the spot, the embankment near Orenburg had only been laid for about ten miles. The bridge to span the Ural River had not yet left the workshop in Tula. It had been necessary to wait until the snows melted and the river had re-entered its bed before building the earth approaches. The work had been carried through many miles at the European end before that on the other section, 1,300 miles away at Tashkent, was even commenced. For at the Asiatic end the work was even easier than at the other extremity. Rumors of great difficulties to be encountered at Kazalinsk and thence to Karmakchi, (Port No. 2,) along the bed of the Sir-Daria, turned out to be groundless.
"After having seen Orenburg I determined to visit Tashkent. Only four years ago there were still difficulties placed in the way of strangers passing over the Central Asian Railroad, and British subjects were not allowed to visit Bokhara or Khiva. In the Spring of 1901 these difficulties were removed. A journey from Moscow via Rostov on the Don and Baku, across the Caspian to Krasnovodsk, and thence by train again some 1,500 on to Tashkent, became quite an easy matter. Full of interest as was every mile of the way, through desert and oasis, over the great rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, I will not dilate on it here, but will at once describe the Asiatic terminus of the new line.
TASHKENT A NATURAL CAPITAL.
"Tashkent lies as if destined by nature for a capital. The Shirt-schak, carrying the melted snows from the Ala-tau, a branch of the Tian Shan or 'Heavenly Mountain' chain, rushes foaming a mile or two south of the town to mingle with the Sir Daria. Local tradition attributes to Iskander the curious Persian bridge that spans its dry bed, or stands in floodtime useless amid its waters.
"Quite near Tashkent, sheltering it from the icy east winds, are the Chatkall hills, where Chadshikent's peaks rise some 9,000 feet above the dust haze. From the railway station on a clear day can be seen Hasret-i-Sultan, rising white above the Zarafshan River bed eighty miles away to the south. The longitude of Tashkent is the same as that of Haldarabad in Sind. Its altitude of 1,200 feet tempers th excessive heat in Summer, while its Winter is cold and bracing. The Russian town is nearest the station. Embowered in poplar and other trees, lately planted but high in growth, it is laid out in the form of a sector of a circle.
"Three great boulevards radiate from the cathedral which shelters the remains of Kauffman. Each house stands separate in its own compound or garden, sometimes of great extent. Beyond the park which surrounds the cathedral is the residence of the Governor General, the great gardens of which bound the Russian town on the north.
"Two miles further, on the road to Akdjar, begins the native city. It is a vast assemblage of narrow streets, mud houses, mosques, madrasses, and bazaars. The latter are all covered with reed mats hung over frameworks of wood, to keep out the fierce rays of the sun. Although the native city contains some 150,000 inhabitants and the Russian town perhaps 10,000, yet the latter occupies as much space as the former. From the Governor's palace to the station is quite three miles. On the way one passes an elegant iron railing decorated with an imperial cipher. It incloses the residence of the Grand Duke Michael Constantinovitch, (not to be confounded with other Michaels of the same family,) who was exiled many years ago.
THE FIRST TRAIN SOUTH.
"I arrived at Tashkent on Oct. 15, 1902, in time to see the first train steam north from the station. It did not go far, in truth, for the railhead ended eight miles off; but the ambankment was finished much further. Gen. Ivanoff, the Governor General, made the journey to the railhead. The boys of the cadet college near the station had erected a triumphal arch, and their treble cheers saluted the decorated train on its passage.
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Uzbekistan is the geographic and population center of Central Asia. The country has a diverse economy and a relatively young population.
Russia conquered and united the disparate territories of present-day Uzbekistan in the late 19th century. Stiff resistance to the Red Army after the Bolshevik Revolution was eventually suppressed and a socialist republic established in 1924.
During the Soviet era, intensive production of "white gold" (cotton) and grain led to the overuse of agrochemicals and the depletion of water supplies, leaving the land degraded and the Aral Sea and certain rivers half-dry.
Independent since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the country has diversified agricultural production while developing its mineral and petroleum export capacity and increasing its manufacturing base, although cotton remains a major part of its economy.
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Through Russian Central Asia Graham 1916
In Russian Turkestan Meakin 1903
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