To the Edge of the World

Icy, bleak, but unusually dramatic is this portrait of earth’s longest railroad and its prominent role in Russia’s development. The building of the 5,750-mile steel ribbon between Moscow and Vladivostok was the usual railroad epic on the vastest scale, with brilliant engineering, creative financing, and an army of laborers and convicts toiling away at perilous tasks in extreme terrain. But unusually for a railroad, the Trans-Siberian followed its prodigious beginnings with second and third acts instead of just settling down to convey boxcars and sleepers. As the vital transport corridor for Russia’s expanding quasi-colony in Manchuria, it was a primary cause of the Russo-Japanese war in the early 20th century, Wolmar (The Great Railroad Revolution) argues; it erupted again during the Russian civil war as a major, if oddly one-dimensional, military theater, fought over by Czech freebooters, bloodthirsty Cossack chieftains, and Trotsky himself chugging back and forth in his armored train.