MOSCOW LETTER:Middle class Russians can afford to use the train but its impact on outlying communities has been to deepen their isolation, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
VLADIMIR LENIN returned from exile on one to foment revolution; Anna Karenina threw herself under one and her creator, Leo Tolstoy, died after disembarking from one at a wayside station.
Trains have a special place in Russia’s history and literature and in the psyche of its people. They allowed the tsars to conquer central Asia, helped the Soviets tap the treasures of resource-rich Siberia, and carried millions to the oblivion of the gulag.
The enormity of Russia seeps into the traveller as the old train trundles for days through the taiga or the steppe, and it doesn’t take long for Moscow to feel very far away, for its power to weaken and slip. Cash dispersed by the capital dwindles to a trickle in the regions, and the Kremlin’s proclamations and pep talks quickly fade to a whisper.
Russia’s leaders now talk boldly about modernising the country, fostering investment and innovation far from Moscow, and they have a fitting symbol for their project.
Sapsan– Russian for "peregrine falcon" – is a bullet train that halves the standard journey time between Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, and may soon whisk travellers to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
In buying the sleek grey, red and blue trains from Germany, Russia has leapt more than 50 years in rail technology in a single bound.
Gone are steaming samovars, clinking vodka bottles and the gentle sway and creak of slow-moving carriages, replaced by a sound-proofed 250km/h streak through the Russian countryside, replete with western-style trolley service, high-speed wireless internet access and TV.
The train competes strongly with the airlines that fly between Moscow and St Petersburg, making the trip in four hours but without the hassle of security checks and airport traffic jams.
The rail and air fares are comparable, meaning middle-class Russians can afford them. But the train has not been welcomed by the villagers who flash by its windows in a blur.
The Sapsanhas struck and killed several people on its dash between Russia's biggest cities, and forced the cancellation of many minor rail services that criss-crossed its path, deepening the isolation of rural communities.
In response, locals have cut the overhead power lines, hurled rocks and even aimed shots at the train that for them symbolises the urban elite’s neglect of Russia’s regions.
Prime minister Vladimir Putin, who during a decade in power has done little to improve Russia’s ailing infrastructure, sought credit this summer for the somewhat belated completion of the first paved road across the country. He admitted, however, that for long stretches – with just two lanes, a thin layer of asphalt and no lighting or service stations – it was more like decent farm road than a motorway.
It is president Dmitry Medvedev, who replaced Putin in the Kremlin when he moved to the prime minister’s office in 2008, who portrays himself as Russia’s moderniser-in-chief.
He maintains a blog, champions the creation of a “Russian Silicon Valley” at Skolkovo outside Moscow, and is depicted by allies like business leader Igor Yurgens as the man who can turn Russia from an oil- and metals-breathing behemoth into a high-tech trailblazer.
“We need a modernisation leap. Such a leap is associated with Medvedev, both in the West and inside the country,” Yurgens said last week, when encouraging Putin to allow his protege to run unopposed for a second term as president in 2012 elections. “Vladimir Putin is more popular among conservative voters who like stability, discipline, order. Medvedev is popular among liberal voters who like change, progress, movement forward.”
Medvedev wants to be associated with landmark projects like Sapsan. But its passengers know that the train is a dismally rare example of the modernisation that he craves.
“We are good at creating symbols like this but not so good at making sustainable changes. This should be the standard Russian train like it is in parts of Europe. We should have had it 10 years ago,” said Sergei (40), a business consultant travelling to St Petersburg.
Russia’s entire infrastructure needs renewing, from industry and power generation through things like transport and agriculture to housing, healthcare and education.
But Russians have well-founded fears that, having failed to invest when oil and gas revenues were at record highs, their leaders will now focus on headline-grabbing events like the 2014 Winter Olympics and a mooted Formula One grand prix in Sochi rather than overhauling the creaking systems that 140million people use each day.
“Some people may be nostalgic for the old trains, the samovar, the tea in glasses with nice metal holders,” said Sergei. “I’m not. It still takes a week to get to Vladivostok, so there’s still plenty of time for all that.”