The longest-serving Soviet minister, who led the railways for 29 years
In the late 1930s, reviewing a young engineer's proposal to cut train assembly times, Lazar Kaganovich wrote: 'We should help develop Comrade Beshchev's talent and research instincts.'
The first professional railway engineer to become Soviet Minister of Railways, he held the post for 28 years and 7 months (1948–1977), the longest continuous tenure of any Soviet minister. He directed postwar reconstruction, raising freight turnover 45% above prewar levels by 1950, then drove the historic transition from steam to diesel and electric traction that cut railway operating costs by nearly a third. Under his leadership, freight turnover grew eightfold, 23,500 km of new main lines were laid, and the existing 56 railways were consolidated into 26 major trunk lines. He also restarted survey and design work for the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and pioneered computerized traffic control and high-speed rail experiments in the USSR.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1935Graduated Leningrad Institute of Railway Transport Engineers; senior engineer, Khovrino station, Moscow
- 1937–1940Head, Ordzhonikidze Railway
- 1940–1941Head, Oktyabrskaya Railway
- 1941–1942Special commissioner, NKPS; organized military supply and civilian evacuation, Leningrad Front
- 1942–1944Head, Kuybyshev Railway
- 1944–1946Deputy People's Commissar, Head of Movement Directorate, NKPS
- 1946–1948First Deputy Minister of Railways
- 1948–1977Minister of Railways of the USSR (28 years, 7 months)
Related historical events
Launching Soviet high-speed rail, 1957–1972
High-speed running was the first technical program Beshchev tackled systematically as minister. An order of 29 May 1957 set out a detailed action program and technical measures to raise speeds on the Moscow–Leningrad line; work moved into practice the same year, when the diesel locomotive TE7-001, hauling a 1,000-tonne freight train, reached 134 km/h on the Pokrovka–Klin section, the first such speed attained in the USSR. Diesel locomotives with 800–900-tonne trains later reached 140 km/h, the design speed of the TE7 class that replaced steam on the Moscow–Leningrad line.
In the 1960s trials shifted to electric traction. In 1965 a ChS2 electric locomotive covered the 650 km between Moscow and Leningrad in 4 hours 59 minutes at a maximum of 160 km/h. In 1970 Beshchev instructed A. S. Yakovlev's aircraft design bureau to develop an experimental high-speed car with an aviation jet engine, built by the Kalinin carriage works; two years later, dynamic tests of a two-car, 60-tonne unit on the Dnieper railway recorded 249 km/h. By the 1970s domestic locomotives capable of more than 140 km/h had been built.
In the end, however, the Soviet government chose high-speed electric locomotives manufactured in Czechoslovakia, on political grounds. The domestic high-speed line Beshchev had pressed for was not adopted, a decision that left the initiative in this field dependent on allied production.