Aside from the fact the somewhat obvious fact that Russia is very big and doesn’t necessarily have a lot of roads in a lot of places, trains have played a very significant part in Russian military history of the last 100 years . Armoured trains were the decisive factor in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War and apparently were still in use until 1953 in Western Ukraine defending the railways against Ukrainian partisans. If you are unfamiliar with the history Ukraine, during the Civil War, was home to an Anarchist army of over 100,000 personnel who fought a mobile guerilla warfare using horse and buggies. There was also the Czech legion who got stranded in Russia fleeing WWI and at one point ended up spread out along, and in control of, almost the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
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