Transportation infrastructure development projects as a factor of shaping a transboundary trading space of Russia/USSR - Mongolia

This paper analyzes the role of railroad construction in the shaping of a Russian-Mongolian transboundary trading space. The junction of Russia and China by the railroad via Kyakhta and Urga was strategically significant for the Russian/Soviet state, creating conditions for its dominance in the Mongolian economic area. The idea to build the Kyakhta railroad branch line developed by the state with assistance of Transbaikalian merchants was implemented as a concrete project by the Ministry of Transportation and approved by the State Duma of the Russian Empire. It was finally completed almost half a century after by the Soviet Union on a different ideological foundation. The construction of the Ulan-Ude - Kyakhta - Ulan-Bator railroad line accounted for the pro-Russian character of the Mongolian economic area.