Ural-Kuzbass Region in the Economic Modernization of Sverdlovsk Railway in 1956–1991

The Ural-Kuznetsk industrial complex received an additional development impulse during the Great Patriotic War, which, in its turn, triggered a fundamental technical reconstruction and electrification of the railway transport in the Urals and Siberia. The General Plan for the Electrification of Railways (February 3, 1956), adopted by the Council of Ministers of the USSR, presupposed a gradual electrification of the entire main line, from the center of the country through the Urals and Siberia to the Far East. It was the first comprehensive reform of the entire national transport system. The article describes the economic efficiency of transport services of the largest industrial complex in Western Siberia. Despite the radical technical reconstruction of the transport links in the Urals and Siberia, the economic efficiency of the modernization processes on the Sverdlovsk Railway declined as the transportation between the Urals and Siberia intensified in the 1950s–1980s. While determining the role of electrification in the transport modernization in the Urals and Siberia, the author revealed the factors that inhibited the modernization processes and summarized the economic results for the industrial development in these regions. The modernization of railway transport was identified as a fundamental technical and economic renewal of railway transport based on electrification, diesel locomotive traction, and the construction of new lines. The railway electrification in the Urals and Siberia became the basis for scientific and technical progress in the local transport systems and resulted in a threefold increase in their efficiency, intensifying the freight transportation between the largest economic regions. However, the systematic reduction of state investment in the railway industry and inadequate economic distribution of labor forces reduced the economic efficiency of transport, gradually turning it into a lagging sector of the state economy.