United States Army
The United States Army is the land warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States, is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution; as the oldest and most senior branch of the U. S. military in order of precedence, the modern U. S. Army has its roots in the Continental Army, formed to fight the American Revolutionary War —before the United States of America was established as a country. After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army; the United States Army considers itself descended from the Continental Army, dates its institutional inception from the origin of that armed force in 1775. As a uniformed military service, the U. S. Army is part of the Department of the Army, one of the three military departments of the Department of Defense; the U. S. Army is headed by a civilian senior appointed civil servant, the Secretary of the Army and by a chief military officer, the Chief of Staff of the Army, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It is the largest military branch, in the fiscal year 2017, the projected end strength for the Regular Army was 476,000 soldiers. S. Army was 1,018,000 soldiers; as a branch of the armed forces, the mission of the U. S. Army is "to fight and win our Nation's wars, by providing prompt, land dominance, across the full range of military operations and the spectrum of conflict, in support of combatant commanders"; the branch participates in conflicts worldwide and is the major ground-based offensive and defensive force of the United States. The United States Army serves as the land-based branch of the U. S. Armed Forces. Section 3062 of Title 10, U. S. Code defines the purpose of the army as: Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States Supporting the national policies Implementing the national objectives Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United StatesIn 2018, the Army Strategy 2018 articulated an eight-point addendum to the Army Vision for 2028.
While the Army Mission remains constant, the Army Strategy builds upon the Army's Brigade Modernization by adding focus to Corps and Division-level echelons. Modernization, reform for high-intensity conflict, Joint multi-domain operations are added to the strategy, to be completed by 2028; the Continental Army was created on 14 June 1775 by the Second Continental Congress as a unified army for the colonies to fight Great Britain, with George Washington appointed as its commander. The army was led by men who had served in the British Army or colonial militias and who brought much of British military heritage with them; as the Revolutionary War progressed, French aid and military thinking helped shape the new army. A number of European soldiers came on their own to help, such as Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who taught Prussian Army tactics and organizational skills; the army fought numerous pitched battles and in the South in 1780–1781, at times using the Fabian strategy and hit-and-run tactics, under the leadership of Major General Nathanael Greene, hit where the British were weakest to wear down their forces.
Washington led victories against the British at Trenton and Princeton, but lost a series of battles in the New York and New Jersey campaign in 1776 and the Philadelphia campaign in 1777. With a decisive victory at Yorktown and the help of the French, the Continental Army prevailed against the British. After the war, the Continental Army was given land certificates and disbanded in a reflection of the republican distrust of standing armies. State militias became the new nation's sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point's arsenal. However, because of continuing conflict with Native Americans, it was soon realized that it was necessary to field a trained standing army; the Regular Army was at first small and after General St. Clair's defeat at the Battle of the Wabash, the Regular Army was reorganized as the Legion of the United States, established in 1791 and renamed the United States Army in 1796; the War of 1812, the second and last war between the United States and Great Britain, had mixed results.
The U. S. Army did not conquer Canada but it did destroy Native American resistance to expansion in the Old Northwest and it validated its independence by stopping two major British invasions in 1814 and 1815. After taking control of Lake Erie in 1813, the U. S. Army seized parts of western Upper Canada, burned York and defeated Tecumseh, which caused his Western Confederacy to collapse. Following U. S. victories in the Canadian province of Upper Canada, British troops who had dubbed the U. S. Army "Regulars, by God!", were able to capture and burn Washington, defended by militia, in 1814. The regular army, however proved they were professional and capable of defeating the British army during the invasions of Plattsburgh and Baltimore, prompting British agreement on the rejected terms of a status quo ante bellum. Two weeks after a treaty was signed, Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans and Siege of Fort St. Philip, became a national hero. U. S. troops and sailors captured HMS Cyane and Penguin in the final engagements of the war.
Per the treaty, both sides (the United S
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km2, it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island, the ninth-largest island in the world. In 2011, Great Britain had a population of about 61 million people, making it the world's third-most populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan; the island of Ireland is situated to the west of Great Britain, together these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands, form the British Isles archipelago. The island is dominated by a maritime climate with quite narrow temperature differences between seasons. Politically, Great Britain is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constitutes most of its territory. Most of England and Wales are on the island; the term "Great Britain" is used to include the whole of England and Wales including their component adjoining islands. A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland by the 1707 Acts of Union.
In 1801, Great Britain united with the neighbouring Kingdom of Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, renamed the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" after the Irish Free State seceded in 1922. The archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over 2000 years: the term'British Isles' derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe this island group. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia; the earliest known name for Great Britain is Albion or insula Albionum, from either the Latin albus meaning "white" or the "island of the Albiones". The oldest mention of terms related to Great Britain was by Aristotle, or by Pseudo-Aristotle, in his text On the Universe, Vol. III. To quote his works, "There are two large islands in it, called the British Isles and Ierne".
Pliny the Elder in his Natural History records of Great Britain: "Its former name was Albion. Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne; the French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Bryten, Breten. Britannia was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together, it is derived from the travel writings of the Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far north as Thule. Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, described the island group as αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι; the peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Priteni or Pretani. Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic-speaking inhabitants of Ireland; the latter were called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans. Greek historians Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo preserved variants of Prettanike from the work of Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who travelled from his home in Hellenistic southern Gaul to Britain in the 4th century BC.
The term used by Pytheas may derive from a Celtic word meaning "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" in reference to body decorations. The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain and to Ireland as little Britain in his work Almagest. In his work, Geography, he gave the islands the names Alwion and Mona, suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest; the name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island. After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae refers to the island as Britannia major, to distinguish it from Britannia minor, the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from Britain; the term Great Britain was first used in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee".
It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine and Ireland". Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain, it is often used to refer politically to the whole of England and Wales, including their smaller off shore islands. While it is sometimes used to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, this is not correct. Britain can refer to either all island
Fort Custer Training Center
Fort Custer Training Center known as Fort Custer, is a federally owned and state-operated Michigan Army National Guard training facility, but is used by other branches of the armed forces and armed forces from Illinois and Ohio. It is one of the most used Midwest training facilities and is used for company level small arms and maintenance training. Fort Custer occupies land in both Kalamazoo County, Michigan, to the west and Calhoun County, Michigan, to the east. Most Fort facilities are located north or south of M-96 about four miles west of Battle Creek, Michigan, in Calhoun County, two miles east of Augusta, Michigan, in Kalamazoo County; this locates the Fort about 14 miles east of the town of Kalamazoo and south of M-96, divided east–west by the Kalamazoo and Calhoun county line that runs north and south. The current Fort Custer Training Center is located south of M-96 and east of the county line at 2501 26th St. Battle Creek, Michigan 49037; the Battle Creek VA Medical Center is located north of M-96 in northwest Calhoun County at 5500 Armstrong Rd.
Battle Creek, Michigan 49037. Fort Custer National Cemetery is located north of M-96 in Kalamazoo County, about two miles east of Augusta, Michigan, at 15501 Dickman Rd. Augusta, Michigan Fort Custer Recreation Area is located on the south side of M-96 in Kalamazoo County, at 5163 Fort Custer Dr. Augusta, Michigan 49012. Camp Custer was built in 1917 for military training during World War I. Named after Civil War cavalry officer General George Armstrong Custer, the facility trained or demobilized more than 100,000 troops during World War I; the camp was first designed and built by civil engineer Samuel Arnold Greeley in just a few months to handle 35,000 men. In the years following World War I, the camp was used to train the Officer Reserve Corps and the Civilian Conservation Corps. On August 17, 1940, Camp Custer was designated Fort Custer and became a permanent military training base. During World War II, the post had an area of 16,005 Acres, Quarters for 1,279 Officers and 27,553 Enlisted Personnel.
More than 300,000 troops trained there, including the 5th Infantry Division, sent to Iceland in 1942 to protect the North Atlantic convoy routes, in 1944 landed in France shortly after D-Day. The division saw much combat and sustained heavy casualties at the Battle of Metz. In 1943, Fort Custer was the activation point for many Army inductees from Chicago and other parts of the midwest. New troops received their equipment before being sent by train to Basic Training or other duty assignments; the primary purpose of the camp was to function as a Military Police Replacement Training Center. Fort Custer served as a prisoner of war camp for 5,000 German soldiers until 1945. Fort Custer became home to units of the Navy Reserve in 1949 and to a Marine Corps Reserve Tactical Bridge Company in 1952. During that time 17,000 troops were trained for the Korean War and Fort Custer served as an induction center for draftees. Beginning in 1959, Fort Custer served for a decade as part of the North American Air Defense system.
In 1968, the state of Michigan took over operation of the base. Fort Custer's facilities are used by the Michigan National Guard and other branches of the armed forces from Ohio and Indiana; the 177th Regiment, Regional Training Institute, Augusta Armory and the Regional Maintenance Training Site are based at Fort Custer. Additionally FBI, the Michigan State Police, other law enforcement agencies have used the area. Fort Custer offers a distance learning center and dining facilities for visiting units, plenty of training areas; the small arms ranges are upgraded and the maneuver training areas offer a variety of terrain. ROTC cadets use Fort Custer for their bi-annual CFTXs; these exercises consist of day and night land navigation, Situational Tactical Exercise lanes. Cadets are placed into squads with other cadets from different schools, graded on their performances. Fort Custer is being looked at as the location of a proposed Eastern United States missile defense site; the U. S. Navy Reserve's Navy Operational Support Center Battle Creek is located in the northeast portion of the facility.
It provides administrative and medical support to 270 Michigan and Indiana reserve Sailors in 13 units and is staffed by 14 Full-Time Support Sailors. Established during World War I and expanded during World War II, the base reached a size of over 14,000 acres. After the wars, the size of the base was reduced. In 1923, 675 acres were transferred for the Battle Creek Veterans Affairs hospital; the hospital received casualties from Europe. During and following WWII, the Fort Custer Veterans Affairs Hospital served for the in-patient medical care and therapy of amputees. WWII war veteran amputees living in Michigan refused to return to Fort Custer for any reason, as they continued to have nightmares of the hospital; the Fort Custer Veterans Affairs Hospital is best known today for providing superb out-patient and, more in-patient care for male and female veterans with Post Traumatic Stress. The extensive grounds included a 200-acre working farm for vocational therapyThe 3,000-acre Fort Custer
Battle of Shenkursk
The Battle of Shenkursk, in January 1919, was a major battle of the Russian Civil War. Following the Bolshevik loss at the Battle of Tulgas, the Red Army's next offensive action was against the Allied garrison of Shenkursk. Allied forces in Shenkursk and the surrounding villages included men from the United States and the United Kingdom with support from the White Russians; the battle ended with an Allied retreat from Shenkursk ahead of a superior Bolshevik army. Company A, of the United States Army 339th Infantry made up the bulk of Allied forces protecting the Vaga River. American Captain Otto "Viking" Odjard was in command of about 200 men of the 339th and a remaining 900 British and White Russian troops. Odjard's headquarters was at Shenkursk though the majority of Americans, including a section of field artillery consisting of two three-inch 18 pounders, were positioned in the nearby village of Vysokaya Gora. A small force of forty-seven Americans, under Lieutenant Harry Mead, was stationed eighteen miles south of Shenkursk at the village of Nizhnyaya Gora.
Half a mile east of Nizhnyaya Gora, a company of White Russian Cossacks were stationed in the village of Ust Padenga. At dawn on January 19, concealed Bolshevik artillery opened up "a terrific bombardment" on Nizhnyaya Gora. After an hour the shelling ceased and 1,000 Bolsheviks assaulted the village with fixed bayonets. Lieutenant Meade knew. Odjard ordered Meade to put up a delaying fire as long as possible, promised that the artillery section would cover the retreat from Nizhnyaya Gora; the Americans opened fire. A platoon of Cossacks arrived from Ust Padenga, but their officer was wounded and they retreated. Meade ordered the retreat, only to find that the village's main street was covered by enemy machine gun fire, so using them meant certain death. Meade wrote: "To withdraw we were compelled to march straight down the side of this hill, across an open valley some eight-hundred yards or more in the terrible snow, under the direct fire of the enemy. There was no such thing as cover, for this valley of death was a open plain, waist deep in snow.
To run was impossible, to halt was worse yet and so nothing remained but to plunge and flounder through the snow in mad desperation, with a prayer on our lips to gain the edge of our fortified positions. One by one, man after man fell wounded or dead in the snow, either to die from grievous wounds or terrible exposure." The Americans got no artillery support. Only seven men of the forty-seven men reached Vsyokaya Gora, including Meade; the Bolsheviks did not continue the attack, allowing the Americans to recover many of their wounded. By evening only 19 Americans were missing, six of these were known to be dead. Two more Americans showed up that night, having hidden out in a Russian log house for several hours before sneaking past the Bolsheviks; that night, Lieutenant Douglas Winslow arrived from Shenkursk with men of the Canadian Field Artillery to take over the two three-inch guns from the White Russians who fled the battle earlier. The Cossack company retreated from Ust Padenga to Vsyokaya Gora, managing to do so without alerting the Bolsheviks.
Over the next three days the outnumbered Americans held Vysokaya Gora against repeated attacks from an enemy which now numbered over 3,000 men. The fighting took the form of heavy skirmishing and the Russians began employing snipers to harass the American lines instead of launching more bayonet charges against well defended fortifications; the snipers inflicted many additional casualties on the Allied soldiers, as well as shrapnel from repeated artillery bombardments. On January 20 and 21, the Bolsheviks attacked suffering heavy casualties from the Canadian guns. On the evening of January 22, orders came through; as the Allies began their retreat, a Soviet incendiary round set it ablaze. One of the two Canadian three inch guns fell into a ditch, the gunners had no choice but to disable the gun and leave it; the Allies reached the village of Sholosha at 7 AM on January 23 and rested before continuing to the village of Spasskoe, four miles from Shenkursk, where they planned to fight a delaying action.
When they arrived they were met by Captain O. A. Mowat of the Canadian field artillery, with a detachment of men and a single three-inch gun. In the morning of the 24th, the Soviets began firing artillery on the Allies in the town. In the afternoon Captain Mowat was badly wounded; that day a Soviet shell struck the lone remaining field gun, destroying it, killing a gunner, injuring Captain Odjard, evacuated to Shenkursk. The Allied Lieutenants decided that they could not hold Sholosha without artillery, so they ordered a withdraw to Shenkursk. By 4 pm on January 24, the survivors of Company A reached Shenkursk; some of the Americans were so weary of battle that they fell asleep as soon as they stopped marching. The Red Army was not far behind them though and they surrounded Shenkursk with the apparent intention of attacking the following morning. Captain Odjard requested instructions from his commanding officer, British General Edmund Ironside in Arkhangelsk, who ordered Odja
Russia
Russia the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres, Russia is by far or by a considerable margin the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, the ninth most populous, with about 146.77 million people as of 2019, including Crimea. About 77 % of the population live in the European part of the country. Russia's capital, Moscow, is one of the largest cities in the world and the second largest city in Europe. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, China and North Korea, it shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U. S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. However, Russia recognises two more countries that border it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as parts of Georgia.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus' disintegrated into a number of smaller states; the Grand Duchy of Moscow reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and achieved independence from the Golden Horde. By the 18th century, the nation had expanded through conquest and exploration to become the Russian Empire, the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state; the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War.
The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Lithuania, it is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic. Russia's economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2018. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally; the country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and an active global partner of ASEAN, as well as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Trade Organization, as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union, along with Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan; the name Russia is derived from Rus', a medieval state populated by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the history, the country was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля", which can be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography.
The name Rus itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, Swedish merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state centered on Novgorod that became Kievan Rus. An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia applied to the western and southern regions of Rus' that were adjacent to Catholic Europe; the current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Rus', Ρωσσία Rossía—spelled Ρωσία in Modern Greek. The standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are commonly
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East. With a length of 9,289 kilometres, from Moscow to Vladivostok, it is the longest railway line in the world. There are connecting branch lines into Mongolia and North Korea, it has connected Moscow with Vladivostok since 1916, is still being expanded. It was built between 1891 and 1916 under the supervision of Russian government ministers appointed by Tsar Alexander III and his son, the Tsarevich Nicholas. Before it had been completed, it attracted travellers who wrote of their adventures; the railway is associated with the main transcontinental Russian line that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At a Moscow–Vladivostok track length of 9,289 kilometres, it spans a record eight time zones. Taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world, after the Moscow–Pyongyang 10,267 kilometres and the Kiev–Vladivostok 11,085 kilometres services, both of which follow the Trans-Siberian for much of their routes.
The main route of the Trans-Siberian Railway begins in Moscow at Yaroslavsky Vokzal, runs through Yaroslavl, Omsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude and Khabarovsk to Vladivostok via southern Siberia. A second primary route is the Trans-Manchurian, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian east of Chita as far as Tarskaya, about 1,000 km east of Lake Baikal. From Tarskaya the Trans-Manchurian heads southeast, via Harbin and Mudanjiang in China's Northeastern Provinces, joining with the main route in Ussuriysk just north of Vladivostok; this is the oldest railway route to Vladivostok. While there are no traverse passenger services on this branch, it is still used by several international passenger services between Russia and China; the third primary route is the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Ulan-Ude on Lake Baikal's eastern shore. From Ulan-Ude the Trans-Mongolian heads south to Ulaan-Baatar before making its way southeast to Beijing. In 1991, a fourth route running further to the north was completed, after more than five decades of sporadic work.
Known as the Baikal Amur Mainline, this recent extension departs from the Trans-Siberian line at Taishet several hundred miles west of Lake Baikal and passes the lake at its northernmost extremity. It crosses the Amur River at Komsomolsk-na-Amure, reaches the Tatar Strait at Sovetskaya Gavan. On 13 October 2011, a train from Khasan made its inaugural run to North Korea. In the late 19th century, the development of Siberia was hampered by poor transport links within the region, as well as with the rest of the country. Aside from the Great Siberian Route, good roads suitable for wheeled transport were rare. For about five months of the year, rivers were the main means of transport. During the cold half of the year and passengers travelled by horse-drawn sledges over the winter roads, many of which were the same rivers, but ice-covered; the first steamboat on the River Ob, Nikita Myasnikov's Osnova, was launched in 1844. But early beginnings were difficult, it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing on the Ob system in a serious way.
Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena and Amur in the 1870s. While the comparative flatness of Western Siberia was at least well served by the gigantic Ob–Irtysh–Tobol–Chulym river system, the mighty rivers of Eastern Siberia—the Yenisei, the upper course of the Angara River, the Lena—were navigable only in the north-south direction. An attempt to remedy the situation by building the Ob-Yenisei Canal was not successful. Only a railway could be a real solution to the region's transport problems; the first railway projects in Siberia emerged after the completion of the Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway in 1851. One of the first was the Irkutsk–Chita project, proposed by the American entrepreneur Perry Collins and supported by Transport Minister Constantine Possiet with a view toward connecting Moscow to the Amur River, to the Pacific Ocean. Siberia's governor, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, was anxious to advance the colonisation of the Russian Far East, but his plans could not materialise as long as the colonists had to import grain and other food from China and Korea.
It was on Muravyov's initiative. Before 1880, the central government had ignored these projects, because of the weakness of Siberian enterprises, a clumsy bureaucracy, fear of financial risk. By 1880, there were a large number of rejected and upcoming applications for permission to construct railways to connect Siberia with the Pacific, but not Eastern Russia; this made connecting Siberia with Central Russia a pressing concern. The design process lasted 10 years. Along with the route constructed, alternative projects were proposed: Southern route: via Kazakhstan, Barnaul and Mongolia. Northern route: via Tyumen, Tomsk and the modern Baikal Amur Mainline or through Yakutsk; the line was divided into seven sections, on all or mo
United States
United States Army
