TheSiberian Route (Russian:Сибирский тракт,romanized: Sibirsky trakt), also known as theMoscow Highway (Московский тракт,Moskovsky trakt) andGreat Highway (Большой тракт,Bolshoi trakt), was a historic route that connectedEuropean Russia toSiberia andChina.
The construction of the road was decreed by the Tsar[which?]and was not finished until the mid-19th century. Previously, Siberian transport had been mostly by river viaSiberian River Routes. The first Russian settlers arrived in Siberia by theCherdyn river route which was superseded by theBabinov overland route in the late 1590s. The town ofVerkhoturye in the Urals was the most eastern point of the Babinov Road.
The much longer Siberian route started inMoscow as theVladimir Highway and passed throughMurom,Kozmodemyansk,Kazan,Perm,Kungur,Yekaterinburg,Tyumen,Tobolsk,Tara,Kainsk,Tomsk,Yeniseysk andIrkutsk. After crossingLake Baikal the road split nearVerkhneudinsk. One branch continued east toNerchinsk while the other went south to the border post ofKyakhta where it linked to camel caravans thatcrossedMongolia to aGreat Wall gate atKalgan.
The Siberian route to China was followed in the early 18th century by aSwede,Lorenz Lange, and twoScots,Thomas Garvine andJohn Bell.
In the early 19th century, the route was moved to the south. FromTyumen the road proceeded throughYalutorovsk,Ishim,Omsk,Tomsk,Achinsk andKrasnoyarsk before rejoining the older route at Irkutsk. It remained a vital artery connecting Siberia withMoscow and Europe until the last decades of the 19th century, when it was superseded by theTrans-Siberian Railway andAmur Cart Road. The automobile equivalent is theTrans-Siberian Highway.
The Siberian Route was also known as the Tea Road, owing to the great quantities oftea that were transported from China to Europe through Siberia. Charles Wenyon, who passed by the "Great Post Road" in 1893, subscribed to the popular belief that "the best tea produced in China for the exportation goes to Russia".[1]
In 1915, China exported to Siberia 70,297 tons of tea, which accounted for 65% of the country's overall tea exports.[2] The route is the namesake of theRussian Caravan blend of tea.
It was imported primarily in the form of hefty hard-packedtea bricks which allowed each camel to carry large quantities in a more compact manner[3] and could also pass for units of currency. From Kyakhta, tea was transported to theIrbit fair for further commercial transactions. Another popular Chinese import item was driedrhubarb root, which was sold west of St. Petersburg "for fifteen times what it cost in Kyakhta".[4]
