Who Needs Blockhouses? The Final Stage in the Construction of the CER System of Permanent Fortifications amid the Collapse of the Russian Empire, 1916–1917

Despite a number of recent publications, the history of defensive construction on the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) continues to be one of the least studied aspects of the railway’s history. The article is devoted to the final stage in the construction of blockhouses designed to protect the most technically complex engineering structures along the railway. Its purpose is to examine the difficulties in coordinating the transfer of responsibility for an almost completed system of permanent defensive structures on the CER to the Transamur District of the Separate Border Guard Corps (TD SBGC) and the Inspector of the Engineering Department of the Irkutsk Military District. This process began in 1916 and ended in the first half of 1917, amid the collapse of the Russian Empire. The article presents the dynamics of the blockhouse construction process during the final stage of the work, based on documents from the RSMHA that are used in scholarly research for the first time. Based on an analysis of documents from the Main Military Technical Directorate, the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the Headquarters, and the Engineering Department of the Irkutsk Military District, the article reconstructs the decision-making process concerning the transfer of these structures. The difficulties in coordinating these issues are examined in the context of the confusion and administrative burden experienced by the Main Directorates of the War Ministry against the background of the protracted First World War. The article concludes that the occupation of the completed defensive structures by units of the TD SBGC that still remained in Manchuria, combined with the assignment of engineering supervision to the Engineering Department of the Irkutsk Military District, was not the most effective arrangement but was the only feasible option. Had the war ended successfully for Russia, the blockhouse administrative system would certainly have been revised, but this did not happen.