Travel remained unpredictable and slow. Transport on the Vyshnyi Volochek
canal system between Tver’and St. Petersburg by the end of the century took
between 57 and 79 days; traveling the 640 kilometers between the capitals
(today a railway trip of four hours) improved over the course of the eighteenth
century fromfive to two weeks with improvements in the highway. The densest
network of roads was the thirteen“tracts”radiating from Moscow to north,
west, and south. When Russia acquired lands to the west, it linked its roads and
post routes with existing networks created by Swedish, German, Ukrainian, or
Polish governments. Governor-General Petr Rumiantsev had developed an
extensive postal service in Left Bank Ukraine, for example, in the 1760s after
the Hetmanate was abolished in 1764. This postal system for state and private
mail had nine routes and over seventy postal stations; by the 1770s roads
extended through the Hetmanate and connected with Crimea and Novorossiia.
In 1782 as the Hetmanate’s central administrative offices were abolished, this
system was integrated into the imperial system. Empire-wide post service was
improved in 1799 with the creation of six Post Offices (Pochtamt)tooversee
mail and coach services, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Left and Right Bank
Ukraine, lands taken from the Grand Duchy, Tambov and Kazan. International
postal lines to Constantinople, Vienna, and into Poland expanded as the borders
oftheempireexpanded.
Connections to the east were less dense: as the southern frontier was pacified, in
1763 traffic was shifted from a route through Verkhotur’e to a more southerly
(and more direct to Moscow) track through Ekaterinburg, which became a busy
customs post for Siberian trade. From the 1760s to the end of the century a“great
Siberiantrakt”was constructed from Ekaterinburg to Iakutsk, forcibly settled with
peasants from European Russia as farmers and coachmen. Further south, roads
through the Barabinskii steppe between Omsk and Krasnoiarsk paralleled the
forced settlement of peasants to this area in the 1750s and 1770s. By the 1780s a
new 790-verstaroad in central Siberia extended to Irkutsk. In the 1790s Paul
I ordered the creation of more stations in eastern Siberia to bring practice in line
with that in European Russia. Russia’s road, coach, and mail system, however, was
primarily oriented towards military and trade networks in European Russia, as
were its new waterways.
WATERWAYS
As Robert Jones notes, in pre-modern times grain was like oil, essential for the
functioning of society. One can add that for Russia transit trade was a lifeblood of
government income. Movement of trade and grain required reliable and affordable
means of transport, which Russia’s natural geography—an extensive and low plain
criss-crossed by major rivers—afforded. Road travel was expensive when it was
easiest, that is, in the frozen winter, since horses (unable to graze in snow-covered
fields) required expensive fodder. It was difficult in the spring and autumn muddy
periods. Thus, river travel was essential. In the eighteenth century, with the growth
Surveillance and Control 341