From the railway age to the container age: Transport technology and the changing geography of Russian economic power

Russia’s territory looks formidable on a map. Seventeen million square kilometers, vast resources, a Trans-Siberian spine from the Baltic to the Pacific. In the container era Russia has not had a share of global trade to match. Part of the explanation lies in geography. Containerization restructured the port-hinterland interface and raised the strategic returns on coastal access to liner networks. Most of Russia’s coastline is iced or far from where its population lives, and containerization penalized exactly that. This article terms the relevant variable convertibility and identifies a feedback between weak ports and commodity exports as logistical lock-in. China shows continental scale is compatible with container-era centrality when the port-hinterland-manufacturing triad is built. The Northern Sea Route, read against transit data rather than press releases, fits this pattern rather than breaks it. Mackinder’s Heartland thesis made sense for the railway age. The container age tilts toward Spykman’s Rimland.