Soviet Railways [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION There is, perhaps, no other branch so tied in with the general pattern of the economy as the transportation system and, above all, the railways. A product of socio-economic progress and change, they present an accurate enough gauge of a country's economic situation. During the fifty years of building socialism in the USSR, during the grim period of civil war and the nazi aggression, the Soviet railways have been the means of linking the country's far-flung industrial centres, the basic mode of passenger transport. They have proved equal to the staggering task imposed by the rigours of wartime. The important role of railways was fully realized in pre-revolutionary Russia as well. Their drawbacks at crucial moments were due to the inflexibility of the tsarist regime, its sluggish and I