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of agriculture, took on a new form and became one ofthe major tasks of the administration, both central andlocal.The economic revolution that was transforming somuch of Russia between i860 and 1914 (see pp. 356-370)could not fail at the same time to be transforming boththe scale and machinery of government and the bases oftsarist power. There was a great expansion in theactivities of the central government in communications,industry, finance, and trade, and to a lesser degree in itsregulation of labour conditions.The development of railways (1000 miles in i860;44,000 in 1914, and 8000 building), telegraphs (since1851), and telephones (since 1881) involved a vastextension of the direct control that the state had alwaysexercised over communications. The great bulk of therailway and telegraph system was state owned andoperated, after an early period of leasing to privatecompanies, and even when the state was not the actualconstructor and operator it was deeply involved financially.State action was yet further extended by the conquestof the new colonial empire in Central Asia (1864-85)and the great expansion in Siberia bound up with theTrans-Siberian railway (begun in 1891) and leading tothe new imperialism in the Far East and the war withJapan (1904-5). All the railways and other communicationsin Asia were state lines and planned as partof state policy, and Russian economic expansion inManchuria and Persia alike was mainly dependent onthe government, especially the ministry of finance whichcreated and directed the Russo-Chinese Bank and itsequivalent in Persia (see p. 302).Industry continued to look to St Petersburg forsubsidies (direct or indirect), concessions, and tariffprotection, and it was, in many of its most importantand expanding branches, very closely tied to the stateas being the largest consumer (e.g. army, navy, railways,inland waterways, building construction). The linkingtogether of capital, technique, raw material, and transportwas effected to a large degree by governmental means.It is significant that at the end of the nineteenth century120