Building Ahead of Demand. An Economic History of the Baikal–Amur Mainline from the Tsar's Surveyors to the Twenty-First Century

This study traces the economic history of the development of the territory between the northern end of Lake Baikal and the lower Amur, through which the Baikal–Amur Mainline runs. The period covered extends from the river routes of the seventeenth century to 2025. Four regimes of development are distinguished by the source of labour and the origin of the freight base, namely the gold-mining regime (1840s–1920s), the mobilisation regime (1932–1953), the planned regime (1974–1991) and the corporate regime (after 2010). Budgeted and actual costs, employment figures, population dynamics and freight flows are set side by side. At every stage construction ran ahead of the formation of a freight base, and the economic return on the line became apparent only after external demand for bulk commodities took shape in the 2010s. The cost of a kilometre of track is converted into gold, into international dollars at purchasing power parity and into shares of gross product and of annual capital investment; on this measure the line proves the most expensive of the Siberian railways in absolute terms and the third heaviest burden on the economy of its day, after the Circum-Baikal and the Amur railways. A departmental cost estimate for the section from Ust-Kut to Tynda of 5561.8 million roubles is introduced into scholarly circulation, taken from the GlavBAMstroi directive schedule on display at the BAM History Museum. The material is related to H. Innis’s staple theory, to the thesis of F. Hill and C. Gaddy on the “Siberian curse” and to the experience of resource railways in Canada and Australia, which makes it possible to separate the excess of the settlement component of Soviet development from the long-run usefulness of the transport component. The energy base of the zone, permafrost, environmental constraints and the sex composition of the population are examined separately. Materials of the BAM History Museum in Tynda and observations made during a journey along the line in 2020 have been used.