Transportation is closely related to commodity circulation and economic development. The Volga River and its tributaries, with their unique natural waterways, have become the link between European and Russian commodity circulation. Before the large-scale construction of railways in Russia, water transportation, relying on its own advantages, has long served as the main force of transportation, and together with animal power transportation, it has met the needs of commodity exchange throughout Russia; After the large-scale construction of railways, although the dominance of water transportation was affected by railway transportation to a certain extent, in terms of water transportation bulk commodity transportation, it continued to be inferior to railway transportation due to the large freight volume and low cost. Waterway and rail transport compete with and complement each other, and the two complement each other. Water transport contributed a lot to the circulation of goods between regions, between urban and rural areas, between raw material production areas and industrial centers, and generally adapted to the needs of the Russian Industrial Revolution. From 1890 to 1900, the freight volume of the two was equally divided, and in 1913 the freight volume of the railway far exceeded that of water transport. It can be seen that the role of water transport has been irreplaceable for hundreds of years. The importance of studying water transport in Russia is self-evident. The waterway transportation of the Volga River became an organic part of the transportation revolution, which effectively promoted the expansion of the capacity and scale of the European and Russian markets, the development of commercial agriculture, the migration of people along the waterway, the increase of urban population, and the expansion of the scale of urban construction, which had a profound impact on Russian economic and social life.

    The article was first published by Professor Zhang Guangxiang of the Northeast Asian Research Center in June 2017 in the authoritative journal of history discipline, Historical Studies, and later reprinted in full by the Chinese Social Science Digest in October 2017, and won the second prize of the 12th Social Science Excellent Paper Award of Jilin Province and the first prize of the 8th Social Science Excellent Paper Award of Changchun City in 2018