Moscow Rizhskaya: In Search of an Ice-Free Port
The Russian Empire held control over huge swathes of land and throughout these territories were vast stores of natural resources. Due to the primarily agricultural focus of rural Russia, there was an abundance of grain and meat. Additionally, Russia had huge stores of coal, minerals, and metal ores (1). One of Peter the Great's incentives for moving the capitol of the empire to St. Petersburg was to establish a major Russian port for trade of these resources. However, St. Petersburg is very far north and its harbor is frozen for many months annually, effectively shutting down trade for a solid fraction of the year. In order to avoid this frozen harbor issue, the tsars hoped to gain control of an ice-free port for expanding their trade.
Rizhsky station was built in 1901 with the goal of creating a railway that led to the Baltic Sea through Latvia. The Latvian city of Ventspils (Vindava) was the perfect candidate for a permanently ice-free port on the Baltic Sea (2). Goods from across Russia came to Moscow where they then transferred to Rizhsky station to be sent to the sea for naval trading. During the Russian Empire, Latvia was controlled by the tsarist regime, and besides a brief stint of Latvian independence after the Soviet Revolution, Ventspils and Latvia remained one of Russia and the USSR's main thoroughfares for trade until the late 20th century (2).
Today, Rizhsky station is Moscow's only train connection to Latvia. As such, it is the least busy relative to the other eight railway stations in terms of passengers (1). Rizhsky station is unlike the other stations in that those routes, those wheel spokes, carried primarily people and cultures from Moscow outward throughout the empire. Rizhsky's importance within Muscovite culture and tsarist Russia was as the depot for goods to pass in to and out of Moscow. As transportation and communication improved throughout the 19th century, the globe became increasingly international and the Russian empire followed suit by creating a navy and merchant fleet to spread their influence via sea (2). Countries which did not open up their borders and adapt to the new global trade economy, such as China and Japan, were considered backwards and could not gain any of the perks of the free-trade of ideas and culture along with purchased goods.
Rizhsky station allowed Tsarist Russia to remain a key global player in the the emerging international trade economy by connecting the heart of the empire to a useful and ice-free trading port. Unlike Moscow's other nine stations which carried Russian people and ideas in attempts to assert physical dominance over territories for border expansion, Rizhsky station stands as an outlier, as its most important cargo was goods to increase the nation's wealth and international economic presence.