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0 pointsradicalbyte2mo ago0 comments

Russia is far larger and far less populated, it's an economic backwater and a cultural dead end. Yet despite that they have rail connecting their country together.

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7 comments · 2 top-level

nephihaha2mo ago· 3 in thread

Once you get past the Urals, most of Russia's development is along an east west axis until you reach Baikal and the the far east. Also as a Marxist dictatorship for some years, there was little emphasis on independent travel (cars etc)

To call Russia a "cultural dead end" is a bit much, considering all the great artists of various kinds that country has produced. In fact, you'll find that famous Russian novels like Anna Karenina and Doctor Zhivago feature trains as motifs.

lioeters2mo ago

Great point about trains being featured in Russian novels. I imagine trains are well-represented in Japanese literature too, as well as film and maybe poetry. That's an angle I'd enjoy investigating further for other cultures. Surely the U.S. is more of a "car culture", but even offhand I can think of, for example, the novel On the Road with train-hopping having a significant role.

nephihaha2mo ago

Japan and Russia have slightly different relationships to the train I think. Other than arterial rivers (that often flow in odd directions), the railway was the only serious way to get across Siberia for a long time. Whereas in Japan, while the railways are a source of pride, there were viable alternatives such as roads and boats.

I think US trains did have their window though. At one time they would have been the main way to get into the interior or across the continent.

radicalbyteOP2mo ago

Oh Russia has created some amazing culture (Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy) but that was before they fell to the barbarians in the 1920s. After that only Lem comes to mind.. and he was either Ukrainian or Polish. Basically anyone talented and who could fled (Asimov comes to mind) because under the Soviet system, and later under Putinism the arts were a kind of wasteland. Basically the only things they did well involved little girls, drugs or board games.

It's funny as I'm quite fan of quite a few Russians, yet they're all people who either died before the Russian system was created or are those lucky enough to escape.

hirako20002mo ago· 2 in thread

So did France. There is a common factor at play with Russia. Has little to do with the country's shape.

It's like saying certain rats solve the maze because the path is simpler. Except that the failing rats happen to have a different incentive.

williamdclt2mo ago

> So did France. There is a common factor at play with Russia. Has little to do with the country's shape.

You'll have to make yourself clearer, I have no idea what you're implying

hirako20002mo ago

I implied that when a nation decides that transport infrastructure is a strategic investment, a decades long initiative, funded by the Public sector, it yields better results.

The private sector unfortunately is too short sighted, and will optimize for profit. Doesn't seem to work well for nationwide infrastructure..that being railroads, but also the internet.

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