"PERSHPEKTIVNAYA" ROAD FROM PETERSBURG TO MOSCOW
The article is devoted to the little-known page of the history of the development of land communications in Russia in the 18th century. Object of the research: "pershpektivnaya" road between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Paved between the two capitals in the 1720s, this road greatly shortened the path between them. The distance along the old road through Novgorod, Kresttsy and Torzhok was 735 versts (appr. 487 miles), the new one was 593 versts (appr. 593 miles). Direct as an arrow, the road passed through the wooded, swampy sparsely populated lands of the Novgorod province. Based on archival sources and published legislative acts, the author reveals the reasons for laying a new road, the chronology of the construction of its plots. The author also conducts a comparative analysis of the nature of the construction organization of the "pershpektivnaya" road and "osudareva" (His Majesty’s) roads (a road paved in 1702 from the White Sea to Lake Onega for the transport of troops and navy) and draws a conclusion about a general military mobilization model for the implementation of large infrastructure objects of the Peter's time. The article considers the mechanisms for providing construction workforce and financial resources. The author shows that immediately after the death of Peter I the new road was abandoned; instead of it the old Moscow- Novgorod road was used. On the basis of published memoirs, P.P. Melnikov, the author puts forward the hypothesis that in the 1840s. Nikolaevskaya railway passed through the Moscow-Petersburg "pershpektivnaya" road.