Television and was awarded state honors by President Yeltsin. Appointed to the Government Commission for the Funeral of the Royal Family, Radzinsky worked diligently to have the remains of Nicholas II and his family buried in the cathedral at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. See also: NICHOLAS II; RASPUTIN, GRIGORY YEFIMOVICH; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; THEATER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kipp, Maia A. (1985). “The Dramaturgy of Edvard Radzin-skii.” Ph.D. diss. University of Kansas, Lawrence. Kipp, Maia A. (1985). “Monologue About Love: The Plays of Edvard Radzinsky.” Soviet Union/Union Sovi?tique 12 (3):305-329. Kipp, Maia A. (1989). “In Search of a Synthesis: Reflections on Two Interpretations of E. Radzinsky’s ‘Lunin, or, the Death of Jacques, Recorded in the Presence of the Master.’” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 3(2):259-277. Kipp, Maia A. (1993). “Edvard Radzinsky.” In Contemporary World Writers ed. Tracy Chevalier. London: Saint James Press. Radzinsky, Edvard. (1992). The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II. New York: Doubleday. Radzinsky, Edvard. (1996). Stalin. New York: Double-day. Radzinsky, Edvard. (2000). The Rasputin File. New York: Nan A. Telese.
(1911-1987), stage entertainer, director, film actor.
Arkady Raikin ranks as one of the most popular and acclaimed stage entertainers of the Soviet era. He was particularly well known for his uncanny ability to alter his appearance through the use of makeup, and his witty, satirical monologues and one-man sketches endeared him to several generations of fans. As a young man Raikin worked for a short time as a lab assistant in a chemical factory, but his real passion was acting. He enrolled in the Leningrad Theater Institute, and upon his graduation in 1935 he found employment with the Leningrad Theater of Working-Class Youth (TRAM). He also found his way into the movies, and in 1938 he starred in The Fiery Years and Doctor Kaliuzhnyi. He also appeared in films later in his life and wrote and directed the 1974 television film People and Mannequins.
But Raikin devoted the bulk of his creative energies to entertaining on the stage. In 1939 he joined the prestigious Leningrad Theater of Stage Entertainment and Short Plays (Leningradsky teatr estrady i miniatyur), and in 1942 he became artistic director of the theater. He remained affiliated with this theater for the remainder of his career, even after it moved to Moscow in 1982, where it was renamed the State Theater of Short Plays. Raikin also found success as master of ceremonies for stage shows that allowed him to entertain audiences.
His many awards included People’s Artist of the USSR (1968), Lenin Prize (1980), and Hero of Socialist Labor (1981). In 1991 the Russian government honored him by issuing a postage stamp in his name, and the Satyricon Theater (formerly the State Theater of Short Plays) was named in Raikin’s honor in 1991.
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See also: MOTION PICTURES; THEATER
Beilin, Adolf Moiseevich. (1960). Arkadii Raikin. Leningrad: Iskusstvo. Uvarova, E. (1986). Arkadii Raikin. Moscow: Iskusstvo.
The first Russian railways, built as early as 1838, were tsarist whimsies that ran from St. Petersburg to the summer palaces of Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk. Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855) ordered the construction of these and the Moscow-St. Petersburg line, which, according to legend, the tsar designed by drawing a line on a map between the two cities using a straight-edge and pencil. One hundred fifty years later, the railway system had expanded to almost 150,000 kilometers (90,000 miles), or almost two-thirds the length of the network serving the United States. With 2.3 times the territory of the United States, however, the net density of the Soviet Union’s rail system was only about one-fourth as concentrated. It was, and is, a system of trunk lines with very few branches, which supplied only minimum service to major sources of tonnage.
Naturally, this spartan system was severely strained at any given time. Soviet freight turnover was more than 2.5 times as great as that of the United States, making it the most densely used rail network in the world. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, Soviet railways carried 55 percent of the globe’s railway freight (in tons per kilometer) and more than 25 percent of its railway passenger-kilometers. Compared to other domestic transportation alternatives, Soviet railways had no comparison: They hauled 31 percent of the tonnage, accounted for 47 percent of the freight turnover (in billions of ton-kilometers), and circulated almost 40 percent of the inter- city passenger-kilometers.
REGIONAL RAIL SYSTEMS AND COMMODITIES
In the Russian Federation of the early twenty-first century, the leading rail cargoes, ranked according to tonnage, comprise coal, oil and oil products, ferrous metals, timber, iron ore and manganese, grain, fertilizers, cement, nonferrous metals and sulfurous raw materials, coke, perishable foods, and mixed animal feedstocks. The most conspicuous Russian carrier is the Kemerovo Railway, which hauls more than 200 million tons of freight per year, two-thirds of which is coal from the mines of the Kuznetsk Basin (Kuzbas), Russia’s greatest coal producer. When the West Siberian and Kuznetsk steel mills operate at full capacity, the Kemerovo Line also carries iron and manganese, iron and steel metals, fluxing agents, and coke. Rounding out the freight structure are cement and timber.
The only other railway that ships more than 200 million tons of freight is the Sverdlovsk, or Yekaterinburg, Railway in the Central Urals. The system’s most important cargoes include timber from the nearby forests; ferrous metals from iron and steel mills at Nizhniy Tagil, Serov, Chusovoy and others; and petroleum products from the refineries at Perm and Omsk. Other heavily used railways comprise the October (St. Petersburg), Moscow, North Caucasus, South Ural, and Northern lines, each shipping more than 140 million tons per year. The much-heralded Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) Railway, which became fully operational in December 1989, remains Russia’s most lightly used network. Three-fifths of the freight it transports is coal from the South Yakutian Basin.
REGIONAL BOTTLENECKS
In terms of combined freight and passenger turnover (ton- and passenger-kilometers), the world’s most heavily used segment of railroad track stretches between Novokuznetsk in the Kuzbas and Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals. Parts of the Kemerovo, West Siberian, and South Urals railways each maintain a share of this traffic. While touring the Soviet Union in 1977, geographer Paul Lydolph observed train frequencies on this segment as often as one every three minutes in different locations and at various times during the day. By the 1990s, operating at 95 percent of its capacity, the West Siberian arm of the Trans-Siberian Railway was critically overloaded. Ironically, 40 percent of the freight cars were usually empty: Had these cars not been on the track, the West Siberian line would have been running at only 48 percent of capacity! Such was the waste inherent in the Soviet centrally planned command economy.
Since 1991, because of the alterations in the freight-rate structure-the Soviet system was heav1266
RAILWAYS
ily subsidized to keep the rates artificially low- and the post-Soviet depressed economy throughout Russia, particularly in coal mining, iron and steel, and other bulk sectors, both the Kemerovo and West Siberian railway networks have witnessed sharp declines in usage. They continue to represent bottlenecks, but these were much less severe than the ones they became in the Soviet period. The worst bottlenecks in the post-Soviet era occur in ports-both river and sea-and at junctions. The absolute worst are found in Siberia and the Russian Far East, where traffic is heavy, there are few lines, and management traditionally has been lax.
Since 1991, railway headaches have been less associated with capacity and more with costs. In the early 1990s, the Yeltsin government introduced free-market principles and eliminated the artificial constraints on prices and freight rates that had prevailed in the USSR. The de-emphasis on the military sector, which controlled at least one-fourth of the Soviet economy, proved to be a devastating blow to heavy industry and rail transport. The
