Russian
«Alaska–Siberia Railway»... «Paris–New York Main Line»... The «Trans–Alaska–Siberia» syndicate!.. These resounding names mean very little to people of the second half of the twentieth century. The younger generation, and even most contemporaries of that era, with rare exceptions, know almost nothing about one of the most ambitious international schemes of American big capital. Only some older people occasionally recall:
— Yes, yes, I remember. That affair once caused a great stir...
From 1898 to 1906, no fewer than three thousand articles and reports in the world’s press were devoted to a project promoted by American financiers: to connect America with Asia and Europe by rail through Siberia.
The project was backed by some of the largest American bankers: J. P. Morgan (John Pierpont "J.P." Morgan), J. Hill (James Jerome Hill), Jacob Schiff (Jacob Henry Schiff) of the banking house Kuhn, Loeb & Co., the director of the National Bank in New York Alfred Curtis, senators, and members of Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet. Drawn into the scheme were the French president, Russian ministers headed by Prime Minister Witte, members of the imperial family, and Tsar Nicholas II himself. The key initiator and behind-the-scenes organizer was one of the most notorious American stock-market speculators of that era, “railroad king” Edward Henry Harriman, father of the later well-known statesman Averell Harriman.
It is useful to recall from the beginning to the end the history of the so-called «Trans–Alaska–Siberian Railway». This helps the reader understand what kind of risks Russia faced from American expansionist plans even in the early twentieth century.
1898.
In 1898, the Washington Academy of Sciences organized an expedition to Alaska. Its members included geographers, meteorologists, geologists, botanists, zoologists, mineralogists, and representatives of various universities and scientific societies. The press in several countries raised a great stir around the expedition.
Newspapers were especially excited by the news that the man financing the expedition, Edward Henry Harriman, would “personally accompany the expedition and share with its members all the hardships and privations of both the land and sea voyage.”
The American “railroad king” was shrewd enough not to reveal to journalists the real purpose of his new venture. But when the ship carrying the expedition was already on its way back from Alaska, a sudden order was heard:
— Course west–northwest! To Chukotka!
It turned out that the “owner” had included in the expedition’s plan a survey not only of Alaska, which by then already belonged to the United States, but also of Chukotka — that is, Russian territory. Having purchased at a low price from the imperial government, in 1867, the extensive Russian possessions on the northwest of the continent, American entrepreneurs were already casting an eye on the rich Russian lands lying on the other side of the Bering Strait. And not only casting an eye: they were already operating in Chukotka, on the Kolyma, on Kamchatka, and on the Russian Commander Islands. American smugglers, plying local Chukchi with alcohol, bought up fur for next to nothing and shipped it to America. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, having learned that there was gold in Chukotka, these seekers of easy profit founded an American joint-stock company under a “Russian” signboard and even began to sell — to American prospectors — plots of Russian land.
But Edward Harriman’s ambitions concerning Chukotka went much further. And not only Chukotka, as we shall see.
So the American expedition, originally outfitted for Alaska, suddenly headed toward Chukotka. However, it did not succeed in actually reaching the Siberian coast. A storm that broke out at sea forced a change of course. The captain steered the ship toward a small island, and when the storm was over, he took Harriman’s battered ship south, toward the shores of the United States.
Since we have mentioned Chukotka, let us recall the story of one more “scientific” expedition.
Before us is the Russian magazine Nature and People, No. 4 of November 28, 1902. An article entitled «Across Siberia to the Bering Strait» begins with the words: «Harry de Windt has just published in the latest issue of an American magazine his travel notes on a journey across Siberia...»
The magazine Nature and People says nothing about de Windt’s companions. But from the American press of that time one could learn that the “indefatigable traveler” was accompanied by the French viscount Clanchamp-Bellegarde and American railway engineer George Harding.
What was the goal of this journey by the “geographer,” the viscount, and the engineer? In the American monthly Harper’s Magazine, Harry de Windt himself defined the purpose of his trip quite clearly: «Is it possible to extend an American railway into northeastern Siberia? That is what interested us...» And he immediately assured those who had sent him to the north of Russia: «The enormous mineral resources of the region through which our railway would pass will more than cover the construction costs within a few years...»
It is hard to state things more plainly.
There is one more “scholar” we must mention in this pre-history of Harriman’s venture, especially since later he came to the forefront in this American scheme affecting Russia. This was Loieq de Lobel , a Frenchman, a “railway engineer” and “builder of railway tunnels” — at least, that is how the press of that period introduced this agent of American interests.
Two years after the failure of Harriman’s expedition, Loieq de Lobel arrived in Alaska to study the coast and the seabed of the Bering Strait. Returning to New York (together with de Windt, who had crossed from Chukotka to Alaska), Lobel met, according to American newspapers, with “several owners of American railroads.” Shortly afterward he made public his sensational project of a “Paris–New York main line with a railway tunnel under the Bering Strait.”
At this point it is appropriate to return to Edward Henry Harriman. This owner of twenty-seven American railways, participant in a number of international railway companies, sought to gain control over the rail network of almost the whole world. Among his properties was the Union Pacific Railroad, which crosses the entire North American continent, but whose tracks, to their owner’s great frustration, ended at the Pacific Ocean.
«The ocean? Well then, we will extend our Union Pacific on the Asian shore of that ocean, and our trains will race across China, across Siberia and the Urals to the Baltic Sea; they will reach all the way to Paris itself... And the American Union Pacific main line will become a round-the-world railway,» Harriman told reporters at the time, describing his plans.
Maxim Gorky captured these “dreams” with particular vividness and brevity: «If, sitting in New York, he senses that somewhere in Siberia a dollar has sprouted, he stretches his hand across the Bering Strait and plucks his favorite plant without even getting up from his chair.»
Did Harriman truly intend to build a railway in Chukotka and Yakutia? Of course not. Laying a railway five thousand kilometers long in the Far North, under conditions of a six-month polar night, in tundra where frosts reach sixty degrees and blizzards rage for weeks; then connecting the Alaskan and Siberian lines with a sixty-kilometer tunnel driven under the seabed — such a task at that time belonged more to the realm of adventure novels. Harriman, however, was the hero of a very different kind of story. What he really wanted was to secure concession rights to exploit all of northeastern Siberia — rights that would make him the de facto master of the surface and the mineral resources of Eastern Siberia. That was what Harriman and his allies in the White House had in mind.
In 1901, precisely when Lobel was “justifying” his «Paris–New York Main Line» project, St. Petersburg received two other distinguished American “travelers” — senators Lodge and Beveridge. Upon his return home, Albert Beveridge published the following, more than candid, statement in the magazine Saturday Evening Post: «We can allow Russia to use the territory to the west of Irkutsk; but to the east of this city lies the natural market of America...»
That same year, speaking at the 56th session of the U.S. Congress, Senator Albert Beveridge declared: «Fate has marked out our policy... We shall establish American outposts throughout the world. Around these outposts great American colonies will arise, where our flag will fly... The American way of life will follow our flag. American law and American order will take root in lands that until now have remained in darkness...»
After Lobel’s expedition to Alaska, de Windt’s journey, and the senators’ visit to Russia, events began to develop according to a definite plan. In New York it was decided that, at first, action should be conducted through France. There Lobel was to present his «Paris–New York via Siberia and Alaska» project. According to this plan, the line from Cape Dezhnev to Krasnoyarsk was to be built on a concession basis by “the French.” For the “meeting” line in Alaska, another syndicate was created in New York, this one American, representing the same group. Its legal representatives were the chief engineers of the Harriman and Hill railroads: James W. Armstrong, George H. Pegram, Henry Rohwer, E. L. Corthell, and J. A. L. Waddell.
In Paris, Lobel launched an energetic campaign. He drew into his “syndicate” prominent French bankers, former ministers, aristocrats, generals, and other “men of name,” and secured “high patronage” from the then president of France, Émile Loubet. He organized a lecture at the Sorbonne on the “Great Main Line,” published a book on the “future Alaska-Siberia Railway,” and for three years conducted persistent negotiations with the Russian government from Paris. The American branch of Harriman’s speculative syndicate, for the time being, remained in the background.
As for the Russian imperial government, at first it responded with refusals. It evidently did not believe that Lobel and his French associates possessed sufficiently large capital. However, after Lobel received a third refusal in 1904, Harriman sent him to St. Petersburg with the broadest possible powers, this time in the name of the American syndicate «Trans–Alaska–Siberia».
To support his case, Lobel brought with him a noteworthy document signed by a member of Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet — Secretary of the Treasury Leslie Shaw. It read: «Taking into consideration the advantages which the Trans-Alaska-Siberia Railway will bring to the United States and to Russia, we express our wish for its realization and obligate ourselves to assist with our capital and personal participation in the formation of a company for the exploitation of the Trans-Alaska-Siberia Railway immediately upon receipt of an edict of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of All Russia granting the said concession...» In addition to the Secretary of the Treasury, this letter was signed by many leading American financiers, including Alfred H. Curtis, director of the National Bank in New York.
Harriman and his associates also handed Lobel a draft of the proposed concession terms. Here are the main points of this remarkable document:
1. «The Trans-Alaska-Siberia syndicate proposes to build at its own expense, on a concession basis, a railway from Krasnoyarsk to Yakutsk, Verkhne-Kolymsk and Cape Dezhnev, with a total length of five thousand versts. A tunnel will then be driven under the Bering Strait to the Diomede Islands, from which a second tunnel will be built to Cape Prince of Wales (in Alaska).»
2. «As compensation for the expenses incurred, the Russian government shall grant the syndicate, for a term of ninety years, in addition to the right-of-way needed for the tracks, railway structures and telegraph, also a strip of eight miles (12,872 meters, or roughly twelve versts) on each side of the line, and with regard to these lands all the rights belonging to the state are transferred to the concessionaires... The state shall also hand them copies of plans, descriptions, statistical materials, etc. relating to these lands.»
(The full text of these “terms” was later published by S. V. Slavin in the collection Chronicle of the North.)
In other words, Harriman and his partners were seeking nothing less than full and unlimited ownership and control over the surface and subsoil of a territory in Eastern Siberia amounting to 120,000 square versts.
But the syndicate’s appetite did not end there. It demanded the right: «...to acquire other lands for the purposes of cultivation, establishing plantations, constructing buildings and so on; to build auxiliary railways, canals, ports, dams, quays, docks, warehouses, elevators, tramways from the railway stations; to establish transport enterprises on navigable rivers and on the sea; to operate mines, plants, forests, quarries; to generate and use electrical and any other form of power...»
The draft terms also called for the syndicate to be exempted from taxes and customs duties, and gave the “concessionaires” the right to recruit an armed guard — in effect, to create their own American military units in Eastern Siberia.
In practical terms, this meant the de facto occupation of Russia’s northeastern territories.
Yet the efforts of Lobel, who arrived in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1905, did not immediately succeed. The imperial government at that time was alarmed by the rising wave of the first Russian revolution. Agreement by the tsar’s ministers to Harriman’s project would have given revolutionary and opposition circles an additional argument against the regime, already discredited by its policies in Korea and Manchuria. Under these conditions Prime Minister Witte, although he did not expel Lobel outright, was in no hurry to enter into negotiations.
Failing to obtain an audience with Witte, Lobel directed his efforts — and Harriman’s dollars — toward members of the imperial family. Through a certain V. Vonlyarlarsky, an adventurer and agent of American interests in Chukotka, he secured the support of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov, who had considerable influence over the Tsar. Through another well-known figure, Minister of the Court Baron Fredericks, he won favorable attention to the project from the Empress. Among the papers of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, the following note has been preserved: «I had an opportunity to speak about the “Siberia-Alaska” railway (obviously with the Tsar. — G. G.). The idea was received with more than sympathy. I advise, in the most confidential manner, to warn [the interested parties] that there is an enormous chance of a commission being appointed, and that they should not leave. November 25, 1905. Nikolai.»
As a result, a meeting was held in the Council of Ministers at which the Grand Duke was present. A commission at the Ministry of Railways was established under the chairmanship of Ziegler von Schaffhausen, just as Lobel had hoped.
However, there were Russian patriots — scholars and engineers — who demonstrated that Lobel’s “project” was technically untenable and merely disguised a speculative plan by foreign financiers. Many Russian businessmen also objected, annoyed at the prospect that “all the profit from this enterprise would go to the Americans.” The decisive factor, though, was the rapidly growing revolutionary movement of the masses. At the very moment when, in Moscow, armed detachments of workers were fighting government troops, the imperial authorities could not easily embark on another major venture.
Officials in the ministries chose a tactic of delay. In Washington, this tactic was quickly understood. A familiar device of American diplomacy was brought into play: pressure through financial leverage. Reports appeared in the press about negotiations over a loan to be granted by the United States... to Japan.
The implied message was clear: either Russia would grant the concession peacefully, or America would once again support Japan and seek to deprive Russia of Siberia by other hands.
Feeling backed by the White House and having effectively bought influence at the imperial court, Lobel behaved ever more arrogantly. Learning that Russia was considering construction of the Amur line of the Trans-Siberian Railway, he immediately proposed that the syndicate would build not only the Amur line but also a whole series of branches from the main American-built line from Krasnoyarsk to Cape Dezhnev: to Okhotsk, Chita, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, and so on. In other words, instead of a 5,000-verst line, a 10,000-verst system was “envisioned.” The American syndicate proposed to “help Russia” by completing the Great Siberian Railway — that is, to bring under its control not 120,000 but 240,000 square versts of territory.
Even so, on March 20, 1907, the Russian Council of Ministers was finally forced to reject Lobel’s project outright.
As is known, the collapse of this scheme did not end efforts by American interests. Attempts to “stretch out a hand across the Bering Strait” continued right up to the October Revolution, which put an end to the operations of foreign capital in Russia. Later, during the period of intervention from 1918 to 1922, such efforts took on other forms and were ultimately repelled by the Red Army.
Nevertheless, even today it is far from useless to recall these pages of history, which illustrate both the scale and the methods of early twentieth-century expansionist projects across the Bering region.
Found in the archive and retyped by Fyodor G. Soloview (InterBering).
