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Collapse & Persistence: The Interwar Years (1917-1939)
How World War I shattered the Tsarist-era proposals, why the Bolshevik Revolution killed international cooperation, what happened during the chaos of the 1920s Civil War, and how the Great Depression made even discussing the tunnel seem absurd
Abstract
The years between 1917 and 1939 represent the Bering Strait tunnel's longest period of dormancy since the dream's emergence in the Gilded Age. World War I destroyed the infrastructure, capital, and international cooperation that had briefly made the project seem plausible in 1904-1907. The February and October Revolutions of 1917 transformed Russia from a potential Western partner into an ideological enemy. The Russian Civil War (1918-1922) plunged the former empire into chaos where survival trumped grand infrastructure. The 1920s saw scattered proposals—Joseph Strauss's 1892 thesis resurfaced, Chinese and Japanese engineers floated ideas—but none gained serious traction amid economic instability and ideological division. Then the Great Depression crushed even speculative thinking: with unemployment exceeding 25% in the U.S. and revolutionary fervor gripping Europe, spending billions on Arctic tunnels seemed not just impractical but obscene. This paper examines how two decades of collapse—political, economic, institutional—froze the Bering dream more completely than Arctic ice ever could. Yet even in this darkness, the vision persisted: in Soviet planning documents, American engineering journals, and the minds of dreamers who refused to accept that war and revolution had made connection impossible. Their persistence would prove crucial—when conditions eventually improved, advocates didn't start from zero because interwar dreamers had kept the flame alive through history's darkest hours.
1. 1914-1917: World War I Destroys Everything
In June 1914, Europe's delicate balance of power shattered. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered alliance systems that pulled continent after continent into war. By August, Russia was mobilizing millions of soldiers against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Great War had begun.
For the Bering Strait tunnel proposals that had flourished in the early 1900s, World War I was catastrophic.
The Russo-Japanese War's Shadow
Even before WWI, Russia's capacity for mega-projects had been severely damaged. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) had drained Russian treasury reserves and exposed the empire's military and infrastructural weaknesses. After humiliating defeats at Port Arthur and the Battle of Tsushima, Russia's government was nearly bankrupt. This financial depletion was a key reason Tsar Nicholas II withdrew support for the 1906-1907 Bering tunnel consortium proposal despite provisional approval in 1905.
But WWI made the Russo-Japanese War look like a skirmish.
The Eastern Front's Slaughter
World War I devastated Russia on a scale almost impossible to comprehend. At the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914—just weeks into the war—some 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded, with nearly 100,000 taken prisoner by the Germans. By year's end, Russia had lost over one million men.
Russia's WWI Catastrophe in Numbers
- Total mobilized: 12-15 million men
- Total casualties: ~6 million (killed, wounded, missing, or captured)
- Infrastructure collapse: Railways requisitioned for military use, unable to supply cities
- Economic devastation: Industrial output fell sharply, inflation soared
- Food crisis: Petrograd needed 60 railway cars of food daily but often received less than 20
- Currency collapse: By 1916, the ruble had just 25% of its pre-war buying power
Russia's infrastructure, already inadequate, couldn't supply both the military front and domestic cities. The railway system—which any Bering project would require—was commandeered entirely for military use. Trains that should have delivered food to cities carried troops and munitions instead. By February 1917, urban Russians were starving.
The American Position
The United States remained neutral until April 1917, but American attention and capital were focused on the European war, not Siberian infrastructure. Banks that might have financed tunnel studies were instead buying war bonds. Engineers who might have surveyed Arctic routes were designing trenches and fortifications. Railroad magnates were profiting from wartime industrial production, not dreaming about connecting continents.
More fundamentally, the war destroyed the assumption of inevitable progress that had animated Gilded Age proposals. If civilization's most advanced nations could slaughter each other in industrial-scale warfare, perhaps humanity wasn't ready for grand cooperative projects after all.
2. 1917: Revolution and Regime Change
By early 1917, Russia's cities faced critical shortages. In February, when a women's day march through Petrograd merged with angry bread queues, revolution erupted. Soldiers ordered to fire on protesters refused and shot their officers instead. Within days, Tsar Nicholas II—absolute ruler of one-sixth of Earth's land surface—abdicated. Three centuries of Romanov rule ended.
The Provisional Government (March-November 1917)
The Provisional Government that replaced the tsar introduced liberal reforms: freedom of assembly and press, amnesty for political prisoners. But it made a fatal error: it refused to end Russia's participation in WWI. The defeats, casualties, and food shortages continued.
In this chaos, discussing Bering tunnels was absurd. The government couldn't feed Petrograd—how could it contemplate building infrastructure in the Arctic? The Provisional Government's priority wasn't connecting to Alaska; it was surviving until tomorrow.
October 1917: The Bolshevik Revolution
In October 1917 (November by the modern calendar), Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in a nearly bloodless coup. Lenin promised "Peace, Land, and Bread"—promises that resonated with war-weary Russians. In March 1918, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, ceding one million square miles of territory to end Russian participation in WWI.
Bolshevism and International Isolation
The Bolshevik Revolution transformed Russia from a potential Western partner into an ideological enemy. Lenin's government:
- Repudiated all Tsarist-era foreign debts, angering Western creditors
- Nationalized foreign-owned property without compensation
- Called for worldwide socialist revolution to overthrow capitalism
- Established the Comintern to coordinate international communist movements
Western nations viewed Bolshevism as an existential threat. Cooperation on infrastructure projects became unthinkable when the two sides were ideologically committed to each other's destruction.
For Bering tunnel advocates, the Bolshevik Revolution was disaster. The brief window of cooperation that had existed in the early 1900s—when Imperial Russia and the United States maintained cordial relations—was gone. The new Soviet state actively sought to undermine Western capitalism. Building a tunnel to connect with your ideological enemy made no sense to either side.
3. 1918-1922: The Russian Civil War
The Bolshevik seizure of power sparked civil war. The "Reds" (Bolsheviks) fought the "Whites" (a loose coalition of monarchists, liberals, and socialists) across the vast former Russian Empire. Foreign powers intervened: Britain, France, Japan, and the United States sent troops to support the Whites and protect their interests.
American Intervention in Siberia
In 1918-1920, the United States deployed approximately 8,000 troops to Siberia as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Officially, the mission was to secure Allied supplies, protect the Trans-Siberian Railway, and assist the Czechoslovak Legion. Unofficially, it aimed to contain Bolshevism.
The irony was profound: American soldiers were fighting in Siberia—the very region any Bering tunnel would traverse—not to build infrastructure but to combat the Bolsheviks who now controlled it. The intervention failed to defeat the Reds but succeeded in poisoning U.S.-Soviet relations for decades.
Infrastructure Destruction
The Civil War devastated Russia's already-weakened infrastructure. Railways were sabotaged by both sides. Bridges were destroyed. Factories were requisitioned for war production or simply collapsed. By 1921, industrial output had fallen to roughly 20% of 1913 levels. Agricultural production collapsed. Famine killed millions.
In this environment, maintaining existing infrastructure was impossible—building new transcontinental projects was fantasy.
The Bolshevik Victory
By 1922, the Bolsheviks had won. The Soviet Union was formally established in December 1922. But victory came at staggering cost: an estimated 7-12 million deaths from combat, disease, and famine. The economy was in ruins. International isolation was complete.
For the next six decades, the Bering Strait would be not a potential connection but an ideological barrier—the eastern edge of the "Iron Curtain" that divided communist and capitalist worlds.
4. The 1920s: Scattered Proposals in an Unstable World
Despite the chaos, the Bering tunnel dream didn't die entirely. Throughout the 1920s, scattered proposals emerged—testament to the vision's enduring appeal even when conditions made realization impossible.
Joseph Strauss's 1892 Thesis Resurfaces
In the 1920s, Joseph Strauss—who had written a senior thesis on a Bering Strait rail bridge in 1892 and would go on to design the Golden Gate Bridge—saw his early work cited as proof of technical feasibility. Strauss's thesis had proposed the first serious engineering study of a Bering bridge, and its resurfacing in the 1920s gave credibility to advocates arguing the project was achievable.
But Strauss himself was focused on other projects. The 1920s saw him designing over 400 bridges across the United States. The Bering Strait could wait—the Golden Gate, which would make him famous, couldn't.
International Engineering Discussions
Japanese and Chinese engineers occasionally floated Bering crossing ideas in the 1920s, usually in the context of broader pan-Asian railway visions. These proposals recognized that connecting Asia to North America via the Bering Strait would complete a global rail network.
But they remained paper exercises. Japan's economy was recovering from WWI disruptions and the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake that devastated Tokyo. China was fragmenting into warlord territories amid ongoing civil strife. Neither nation had capacity for mega-projects in the Arctic.
Why Proposals Persisted Despite Impossibility
The 1920s proposals served important functions even though none progressed:
- Kept institutional memory alive: Engineers continued refining technical approaches
- Maintained symbolic power: The tunnel represented cooperation in an era of division
- Inspired future generations: Students read about Bering proposals and carried the dream forward
- Provided hope: In a decade scarred by war, grand visions offered alternative futures
Soviet Economic Planning
In the USSR, Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921-1928) partially restored market mechanisms and began economic recovery. But Soviet priorities were rebuilding war-torn European Russia, not developing the Far East. The Trans-Siberian Railway, damaged during the Civil War, required extensive repairs. Extending rail deeper into Siberia—let alone to the Bering Strait—was decades away.
Moreover, the USSR was internationally isolated. Western nations refused to recognize the Bolshevik government until the mid-1920s. Trade was minimal. The notion of cooperating with the United States on infrastructure was laughable when the two nations barely had diplomatic relations.
5. 1929-1939: The Great Depression Crushes All Dreams
On October 29, 1929, the U.S. stock market collapsed. The Great Depression—the worst economic catastrophe in modern history—had begun. Within months, it spread globally, devastating economies worldwide.
The American Collapse
The Depression's impact on the United States was staggering:
In this environment, proposing to spend billions on an Arctic tunnel to connect with the Soviet Union—a nation the U.S. had just formally recognized in 1933 after over a decade of non-recognition—was politically and economically insane. Americans were standing in bread lines. Families were losing homes. Veterans marched on Washington demanding promised bonuses. Infrastructure spending focused on domestic relief: the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and similar programs employed millions but on projects within U.S. borders.
Soviet Industrialization
In the USSR, Stalin launched his Five-Year Plans in 1928, pursuing breakneck industrialization through central planning. On paper, this should have created conditions for mega-projects. In practice, Stalin's priorities were heavy industry in European Russia and Ukraine, collectivizing agriculture (causing massive famine), and building the gulag system to exploit forced labor.
As we explored in Paper #6, Stalin's Far East development relied heavily on gulag labor. Any 1930s Bering tunnel would likely have been built by prisoners—a moral stain that makes celebrating even unrealized proposals from this era deeply problematic.
The International Situation
The 1930s saw rising tensions that would explode into World War II:
- 1931: Japan invaded Manchuria, beginning its imperial expansion
- 1933: Hitler took power in Germany, beginning rearmament
- 1935: Italy invaded Ethiopia
- 1936-1939: Spanish Civil War became proxy conflict for ideological struggles
- 1937: Japan invaded China proper, starting the Second Sino-Japanese War
- 1938: Germany annexed Austria and the Sudetenland
- 1939: Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II
International cooperation on infrastructure was impossible when nations were preparing for war. Capital flowed to rearmament, not Arctic tunnels. Engineers designed tanks and aircraft, not transcontinental railways.
6. Conclusion: Darkness Before Dawn
The years 1917-1939 represent the Bering Strait tunnel's longest and darkest dormancy. World War I destroyed the infrastructure, capital, and international trust necessary for cooperation. The Bolshevik Revolution transformed Russia from potential partner to ideological enemy. The Russian Civil War devastated what remained of imperial infrastructure. The 1920s saw scattered proposals but no serious progress. And the Great Depression crushed even speculative thinking about billion-dollar Arctic projects.
Yet the dream persisted. Engineers kept files. Advocates kept writing. Students kept reading about Gilded Age visions. When WWII forced brief cooperation (as we explored in Paper #6 with ALSIB), the groundwork existed because interwar dreamers had maintained institutional memory through decades when realization was impossible.
The interwar period teaches that mega-projects require more than technical feasibility. They need:
- Political stability: Impossible when empires are collapsing and ideologies are warring
- Economic resources: Unavailable during depression and recovery from devastating war
- International trust: Destroyed by revolution, intervention, and competing systems
- Public support: Absent when populations face unemployment, hunger, and insecurity
- Elite consensus: Fractured by ideological division and nationalist competition
None of these conditions existed between 1917-1939. That the dream survived at all is testament to its power as symbol and the persistence of advocates who refused to accept that chaos was permanent.
They were right to persist. World War II would briefly create conditions for cooperation (ALSIB). The Cold War would transform the tunnel into political symbol. And eventually, decades later, economic and political conditions would shift enough to make serious proposals possible again.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves. First, we must go back to the beginning—to the Gilded Age dreamers who first imagined that human ambition could bridge continents and whose vision has endured through 120 years of war, revolution, depression, and ideological conflict.
In our next paper, we'll finally reach the origins: the Gilded Age (1890-1917), when William Gilpin, the Cosmopolitan Railway visionaries, and Tsar Nicholas II first dreamed that rail could unite the world—before the 20th century's catastrophes made their optimism seem impossibly naive.
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