Aleksei Pavlovich Ignatev

Trans-Siberian railway construction officially began in 1891. By that point, however, the idea was not new or revolutionary. Konstantin Poset, Imperial Russia’s Minister of Transport from 1874-1888, is one of the key figures responsible for its early conception. However, his three successors with short tenures in the period 1888-1892 help explain why Poset’s vision is delayed. They were hesitant to release funding for the project and each considered ‘illiterate’ in railway affairs. A.P. Ignatev was the ultimate impetus for the railway coming to Irkutsk. As the province’s Governor-General from 1885-1889, he was the key impetus for the transit network, and he pushed the rail question with marked fervor. He sent dozens of letters to the Tsar, emphasizing the economic desperation of the province following the fire and the economic and strategic significance that the railway would bring. This key figure residing in Irkutsk is largely responsible for eliciting the direct support of Tsar Alexander III for the project.

*Adapted from Sierra Nota’s senior thesis.

ALEXANDER SIBIRYAKOV

The most important early industrial good to nineteenth-century Irkutsk was gold. The wealthiest merchant clans, including the famed Sibiryakov family, each owned large gold mines in the province of Irkutsk. Sibiryakov men subsequently played a large role in the post-fire redevelopment of the city. As the merchants who owned enterprises in Irkutsk and directly benefited from the movement of goods, people, and money through the city, they were naturally the first people to feel the Trans-Siberian economic boom.

Perhaps the most important of these Sibiryakov benefactors was Alexander Sibiryakov, of the Sibiryakov clan now most famous for their massive fortune of 4 million rubles. Sibiryakov first took a position on the duma in 1885, and for the next several decades he would be perhaps the most important official for the development and private funding of Irkutsk. His most famous donation was actually outside of Irkutsk, to the Siberian University in Tomsk. He gave a behemoth gift of 100,000 rubles there in 1878. He was also, of course, very generous to his hometown. He gave vast sums of money to the city’s educational and religious institutions in the 1890s. This would be just the beginning of a series of developmental projects, both privately and publicly funded, that would characterize the turn of the twentieth century in Irkutsk. For example, the Church of Our Lady of Kazan, Irkutsk’s most iconic church, was a Sibiryakov-funded project and a stunning example of Russo-Byzantine architecture.

*Adapted from Sierra Nota’s senior thesis.