Eastern European Railways in Transition: Nineteenth to Twenty-First Centuries ed. by Ralf Roth and Henry Jacolin (review)

This collection presents twenty-two papers on the past, present, and future of railways in Eastern Europe. It originated from the September 2009 International Railway History Association conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. The topic was chosen to suit the location, and the resulting volume, Eastern European Railways in Transition, looks to be fundamental to a better understanding of the complex history of transportation in this part of the world. As the editors, Ralf Roth and Henry Jacolin, state, the book does not set out to clarify all of the issues of the last century-and-a-half of railway history. Instead, its primary goal is “to provide an opening to the world of railways in Eastern European countries and their history.” The book is divided into three parts, each composed of essays dealing with one of the following themes: the beginnings and general development of railways in Eastern Europe, the political and economic context in which railways operated during the communist era, and the state of the railways since the 1989 transition. Most of the articles are set in the context of changing political borders, which are cited as important causative factors.

The first part—General Suggestions and Historical Overviews of Railways in Eastern European Countries—comprises six essays telling stories from the Baltic states, Belarus, Serbia, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland. The volatility of borders is a distinctive feature of this part of the world, and it has had a strong impact on the development of its railway networks. This is particularly emphasized in three papers, by Augustus Veenendaal Jr., Jan Musekamp, and Marcin Przegiętka (the last is in part 2). In many ways, Eastern Europe always has been a frontier land, with its unstable national borders marking not only political boundaries, but also technological limits. The rift between the broad gauge (1,524 mm) adopted in Russia and standard gauge (1,435 mm) used widely throughout the rest of Europe, is also a potent symbol of the region’s cultural borders. It is in these lands that the great empires of the past—Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman—met, clashed, and eventually fell in the theater of the First World War. Unsurprisingly, the railways played an important role in this historical cycle, transporting men and supplies to their death—and their salvation.

In part 2, Under Russian Protection, eight authors attempt to situate Eastern European railways in the realm of the communist rulers trammeling this part of the world for the four decades between 1945 and 1989. Covering Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Romania, and East Germany, each paper tackles the organizational, ideological, and—to some extent—technological issues of rail transportation in the Soviet Bloc. Readers may gain a distinct sense of the inherent dichotomy in this part: some of the authors portray the communist period as a golden time of modernization and progress (Milan Klubal), while others (Ivan Jakubec) trace and critically assess the pathologies behind the development of its railways. Such dualism is a typical characteristic of the notions of this period currently held by historians of the region. Historically, railways have always been a tool for realizing national ambitions—domination for some, sovereignty for others (Ihor Zhaloba, Jacolin, Tomáš Nigrin). Although the book contains very few references to the use of railways in communist propaganda of the period, or in the popular notions of Eastern European societies, Adelina Ştefan has made it her focal point.

The third part, After the Fall of the Iron Curtain: Changes—Problems—Modernization, contains eight further essays analyzing how the democratic changes of 1989 re-shaped Eastern European railway networks. Three papers, by Paul Véron, Roth, and Peter Hörz and Marcus Richter, talk directly about the unification processes, both on the national and European scale. Since discussion of future technical systems usually embraces the question of protecting the past, the two...