Talk:Rail transport in the Soviet Union

FIXED: Neutrality was disputed re: Rail problems in the 1930's

After the 1st paragraph (re the TransSib) of Rail transport in the Soviet Union#Rail traffic problems in the early Soviet Union there are a number of wrong or biased statements. First, I've changed the citation from "Davies" (an editor) to "Westwood" (the author of the "Transportation" chapter). Westwood presents most of the facts OK but uses biased hyperbole in his comments on the facts: p.158 "ramshackle", p.181 "rotten". The Wikipedia editor has erred in not reporting on the overall gist of Westwood's chapter and of the 29 pages written by Westwood on Railroads. This part of the wiki only references (and reports on) the first 4 of these 29 pages. The Wiki editor has "There were even some who believed in the privatization of the railways" but I can't find it in Westwood.

This wiki section reports that "the system continued to deteriorate" without explaining in what way it was deteriorating. I have added to this a somewhat contradictory sentence "However, at the same time railway traffic was growing (See graph)." In Westwood's concluding remarks: "... the government decided that the burden imposed (on rail transportation) by industrialization could be handled with a disproportionately small allocation of capital resources, and this policy was an overall success despite a succession of misjudgements."

I generally agree with this and propose that I rewrite this part which will more or less reflect the above take on the subject.. Also I'll try to check Hunter's book. Do you agree? David S. Lawyer 01:35, 17 December 2013 (UTC) It's been almost a year and no comments on my proposal for a rewrite so I'll start on it soon; tomorrow ?. David S. Lawyer Tonight I deleted the biased material and added some new, but most of the pages of Westwood's article aren't covered nor are the conclusion. The Russian history book on this period is 400 + pages long and little of this has been covered either. Don't know if I'll find time to do all this but at least for now I think the statements in the article are much more truthful. And if I don't do it, who will, since others contributing to this don't seem to read Russian or have access to the literature which is often not to be found in any library covered by "Worldcat" (but are sometimes in my private library or can be found (pirated) on the Internet). David S. Lawyer 08:30, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

References

Stalin's support of railroads; FIXED

The (now deleted) statements I marked as dubious claim that Stalin wasn't interested in railroads. In Westwood's chapter on Soviet transport: "Stalin once went as far as an analogy between the function of Russia's railways and the British Empire's merchant navy, ..." Also, wasn't the Turkestan-Siberia railways called "Stalin's Railway". An article in ЖД Транс. (Имени товарища Ленина; 4-1990, p.62 +) indicates that Lenin was very much involved in railroads and I think that Stalin was likely less involved but nevertheless still involved. If no one objects, I'll remove these claims about Stalin until someone finds a better evaluation of Stalin's influence on railroads. David S. Lawyer 04:21, 15 May 2014 (UTC). Due to no comments in 6 months, I deleted this claim. In the post-Stalin period, I saw many mentions of Lenin's interest in railways but nothing about Stalin. The above analogy regarding the British ... navy was given in a 1935 speech by Stalin to railway workers: Stalin pep talk to railway workers. Stalin places great emphasis on how essential the railways are for the USSR and praised the worker work and efforts. The analogy is that just as ocean shipping of goods was necessary to hold together the British Empire, likewise the Soviet railroad system is essential to the Soviet Union. David S. Lawyer 06:36, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

75.34.150.73 (talk)

Not clear information

There is a paragraph that is not really clear:

"A British railway historian claims that the Soviet objective was to limit investment in railway improvements so that railways could barely meet the new and heavy demands for increased transport placed on them by industrialization, thereby allowing more capital for such industrialization. While there were significant investments made in railways, they were not enough to avoid the failure at times to transport all the goods, especially in early 1931 and 1933. Some of the resulting supply-line crises resulted in production shut-downs. However, in other cases "crisis" was used to describe a situation where the stocks of inputs stored at a plant (such as iron ore at a steel mill) almost ran out due to the railway's failure to deliver on time; no substantial harm would be done to production output, but it would be a close call."

First question is: "...the Soviet objective was to limit investment in railway improvements so that railways could barely meet the new and heavy demands for increased transport placed on them by industrialization, thereby allowing more capital for such industrialization..." How does the fact that the railways barely meet the expansing demand of industrialization helps allowinf more capital to industrialization?

Then: "However, in other cases "crisis" was used to describe a situation where the stocks of inputs stored at a plant (such as iron ore at a steel mill) almost ran out due to the railway's failure to deliver on time; no substantial harm would be done to production output, but it would be a close call." This is really unclear to me, why do the mentionned above stocks "run out"? How does it not harm production output ?

If anyone can help out, as I am trying to translate this to french, it would be great. ThePrestigious (talk) 21:23, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Sources on Rail Reliability

The last two lines of the section "USSR vs. USA" do not have any reliable sources. They have two absent article references and one dead link to the Rand Corporation. Given that there is no elaboration, does anyone have any objection to deleting these lines from the page?