For Want of a Word – Stolypin endures

Given the discussion that goes on in this thread, you're definitely not in the minority here. I for one definitely want to see the gritty details of statesmanship, it is in those details where states succeed and fail. Even the greatest transformation or revolution, whether technological, political, or otherwise, has tiny seeds it can be traced back to.

On the discussion of the evils of bolshevism, I'd add the note that the atrocities of the soviet union had many seeds from before the revolution.

Premier among them, I'd say, is the fact that a revolutionary, conspiratorial, underground organization, making use of terrorism as part of its political arsenal, is exactly the sort of environment where beasts of men like Jughashvili could prosper, and is not at all suitable for organizing a culture of democratic debate, but rather an opposite culture of outright paranoia. Moreover, Russia already suffered from a political culture where sycophancy and political appointments were common, and it certainly didn't get better once sycophants could use the charge of ideological deviation as a bludgeon against peers whose competence posed a threat.

Another seed, tied to the first in some ways, is the history of the use of secret police - when the Okhrana made it a habit to play with fire, embedding agents provocateur like Azef and Bobrov, they ended up outright supporting the growth of violent, extremist wings of the organizations they were watching. Frankly the history reads like a cautionary tale of hubris - their scope of operations, and the risks of blowback, make me think that they just didn't account for the possibility that they might inflame the situation too much for them to handle. They organized collaborationist unions to pull people away from revolutionary rhetoric, and then one of their unions attempted to petition the Tsar and were rebuffed in the Bloody Sunday massacre. The Okhrana outright printed revolutionary leaflets, perhaps in an attempt to get subversives to show themselves, and their embedded agents engaged in some cases directly in planning or executing political terrorism. They were so unaware of the inherent societal instability of a Russia with developing mass movements and a political structure unable to effectively take in the populace's feedback, that they continued to directly harm the stability of the country out of what I can only assume was a misguided assumption that it would never get bad enough for outright revolution. And then WWI came along and they had to redirect their efforts to foreign counterespionage, and all the revolutionary fervor and organization that they fed was now largely free to operate, in a social milieu that steadily got more and more angry due to the stresses of the war. And then, of course, with the February revolution came the wholesale dissolution of the Okhrana, as they had completely bled all legitimacy in the eyes of the new government thanks to their many abuses, and thus all their secret puppets, independent and dangerous at the best of times, were free of even the barest hope of being reined in somehow, should the puppetmaster somehow have come to its senses at the eleventh hour.

I alluded above already to the problem of the government being unable to respond to the development of mass politics, thanks to growing literacy and urbanization. If workers, peasants, etc had an effective way to petition the government without being met by the bayonet, if the people had a better ability to influence their government's priorities, then most would have tried those methods, and the revolutionaries would never have amassed as much support as they did. If only Nicholas had the foresight to cooperate and compromise more with the Duma, rather than shutting it down when inconvenient, denying it any power over ministerial appointments, and arbitrarily tipping the electoral rules in his favor, making it clear that Russian democracy operated only at the emperor's pleasure, then it could have grown into an institution that gives the people the feeling that they have a voice, and that their benevolent emperor's rule is indeed benevolent.

ITTL a lot of these contributing factors can have been mitigated - there's certainly been more effective government under the enduring Stolypin than OTL, the Okhrana could have somehow been reined in and made to kill its pet projects for the good of Russia, the organs of government maintain a stable continuity, and hopefully, hopefully, there will be further reforms, since the current state of Russian governance is nowhere near capable of ruling without frequent oppression. On that last one though, I'm not holding by breath - Stenkarazin has hinted that Tsar Nick is retrenching in autocracy now that the war is over, and so while I think that a liberal constitutional order would be the best scenario for Russia right now, I currently don't see that happening.
I'm just anxious to see what kind of development will Germany have in this timeline. Even if Russia loses all of her allies due the shows of force against the Poles, there is nothing Britain andFrance can really do if Germans and Russians form a joint spehere of influence over Central Europe. I wonder if the Nazis would be such Slavophobes if there was a genuine path for a Russo-German alliance.

Also, without Marxist principles being baked into Russian society, the advancement of women's rights in the country would have been way slower, since that was a core template of the leftist movements during the twentieth century. Giving women education and prospects in the labor market is the perfect recipe for bringing down birth rates, though. So, if Russians birth rates had a more organic decline, instead of the acute dip they had during Stalin's era, then we might very well see a situation where other ethnicities of the Russian Empire are driven into reservations in order to make room for more East Slavs (poor Kazakhs and Uzbeks).
 
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For once, Russia is richer by 480 tons of gold. If anybody has any good source on what happened to the Kazan gold reserve, let me know!

A good source on russian finances is the "Banks and Bolsheviks". The following points are based on it.

The French shareholders won't lose their investments and there is no reason at all why they won't continue buying russian securities. In 1888, French shareholders owned less than 2 billion francs of russian stocks (cash value, not nominal stock). By 1914 they owned more than 10 billion. At the same time period, french FDIs in Russia increased from 200 million to 2,3 billion francs. These assets are still at play and will produce investments (and dividends for the shareholders), as they havent evaporated overnight.

It will also be interesting to see what happened with the loans german banks provided Russia before the war. Business with german industry will be profitable in the future but Russia won't have any need of german financial institutions to float debt. Even before the war german banks lagged behind their british, french and american counterparts. If anything, the war finished their value as future loan providers - at least for countries the size of Russia. In any case I don't see war-torn Russia paying back german bondholders.

An interesting fact is also the perception of Russia as a trustworthy country when it comes to bonds. Just before the February Revolution, the spread of the Imperial Russian Government 1906 bond over British consols was at its lowest since 1906.

The 1907-1913 rally of investing in Russia was not affected by events such as the murder of Stolypin or the 1912 Lena Massacre or the 1908 stand-off with Austria-Hungary. Russia, for all intends and purposes, was a booming economy, akin to modern China.

Agricultural output was on the rise as well: Cereal exports rose from 7.9 million tons between 1899 and 1903 to nearly 12 million tons in the period from 1909 to 1913. The Soviet Union managed the 1912-1913 output only in the 1950s. The cultivated land in Siberia rose by 70% between 1904 and 1914. Without a civil war and soviet policies, I believe this trend to continue. It is worth mentioning that the output was increased not just by increase of cultivated land, but of increasing use of chemical fertilizers.
Since we're floating numbers around, I'd also like to point out the massive rise in Russian industrial production during the Great War. When the war started, Russia had a smaller industrial output than any of its main competitors. 5.3% of the global industrial output was Russian, while 35.8% was American (gotdang, America!); 15.7% of it was German; 14% of it was British; and 6.4% of it was French. However, this doesn't tell the whole story.

In the period from 1909 to 1913 alone, heavy industry grew by 174% and light industry by 137%. The growth speed was truly staggering, but kind of predictable when you consider that while Germany and Britain imported a good chunk of their raw materials, Russia was major exporter of them, so its industry was naturally very competitive. Furthermore, the growth during the war years was just... I can't even express it. Here are the numbers:

Equipment production: from 1913 to 1917, it went up by 311.7%! While we are all aware of the statiscs that show about 1/3 to 1/2 of Russian soldiers were not outfitted with proper equipment, you must remember: it was the largest army on Earth by far at that point! Arming 2/3 of the Russian army meant arming all of the French army, and then some! Also, Russia's reliance on the outside for its industrial needs wasn't only declining, but falling like a meteore. In 1913, about 69.3% of the Russian Imperial Army's equipment came from outside suppliers. By 1917, that number had dropped to 19.6%.

It might look like I'm inflating those numbers, but I literally just googled and pulled them from wikipedia. I was so impressed I felt I had to share! These are the sources listed in the wikipedia article: Экономическое положение России в годы Первой мировой войны; СССР и капиталистические страны; Industrialization and Foreign Trade; The Industrialization of Russia.

I'm not done yet, though. You might think that this rise in industrial production is just a general trend during wars because of aggregate demand, but you'd be wrong. During the war, Germany and Britain's industrial production declined by outrageous margins of 36% and 11%, respectively. Meanwhile, Russia's grew 21%! This means that in 1917, on the eve of OTL's February Revolution, Russia had a larger industrial capacity than France in absolute terms, and was about two two thirds of the way into overcoming the all mighty Germany! Other metrics of Russian industry during the Great War: over the three years it remained in the conflict, engineering went up 476%, metal processing 301% and chemical industry 252%.

In this timeline, I don't really think Russia needs a lot more investment, since it already enough industrial output to spark further industrialization on its own. Remember, Europe as a whole had its infrastructure bombed into oblivion, and from what we can gather in our world's history, transitioning out of war economy won't do that much for them, and they'll remain reliant on imports of both food and industrial goods. With cheap labor, bountiful resources and an industrial base, Russian products would be extremely competitive in the post war years. American products would be in the race too, but Russian labor is cheaper, since the February Uprising has probably made everyone allergic to unions, and is way closer, which drives down prices massively. Although I don't think the American economy would be seriously affected by this, as it already represented a third of the world's industrial output and most of that fed an internal market, it would have massive implications for Russian industry.

Quite frankly, I'd advise the people of this world to beware the Slavic Horde coming from the east. Without the Russian Civil War and the years of poor industrial management from the Bolsheviks during the NEP, that trend would keep going. Also, I already mentioned in another comment Russian dmeographic trends and the colonization of Siberia, which reminds me to answer this comment by a pretty wise fellow:

Cynically, a byproduct of the big losses is a lessened pressure on the land issue solution and in your TL at least some of the new areas (and those seriously devastated during the war) can be used for the resettlement (cheaper than migration to Siberia and helps to “correct” demographic balance). Another factor is that numbers of the industrial proletariat kept growing during the war and the effective salaries had been increasing making this occupation more attractive.

I don't understand how settling land that had been settled previously will correct demographic inbalance. If the land wasn't enough previously, how will it be enough now? The German offensive into the Ukraine as described by OP was little better than a short-lived occupation. Sure, many soldiers died, probably the casualties for Russia were close to reaching seven digits, but not that much farmland was acctually destroyed, and their owners didn't disappear (they're Germans, but not Nazis yet, they're no killing the civillians on mass). So, there is little to no land to be resettled in the Ukraine, and no land to be distributed to the soldiers come home from the war. Actually, after the Germans wreaked havoc upon a third of European Russia, the Ukraine would be the last place where peasants would want to settle in. Siberia and Kazakhstan, on the other hand, have pretty good evironments (like I mentioned in another comment, southern Siberian cities like Novosibirsk are at the same latitude as the Canadian-American border) and are completely peaceful. Not only that, but considering that most industries would probably relocate to Moscow and surrounding areas, due to the February Uprising and to be closer to the mining centers, farms further east have a closer consumer market to sell goods to.
 
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Russian peasants already had land in communal ownership and stolypin famous reforms were about giving them individual plots of land
By 1917, 90% of all farm land had been sold off to a few individuals.

The Solypin reforms gave land in Siberia and a few million had accepted it still leaving over 140 million peasants not owning their land.

What I am talking about is handing over the same land that the peasants worked.
 
So @alexmilman argued the following


So for you to rebut this post, you need a source to confirm your counter claim. Not


But something in the lines of: I've read a source like
Economic Development of the late Russian Empire in Regional Perspective - Yale Economics
(Not sure if the source applies, but you get my point I hope)
Edit: this looks like a nice source to work with


Then Alex can offer his counter source and so on. Then you get a proper back and forth. @CalBear will applaud such a back and forth id imagine, while just doing blanket statements is counter productive. Let's look at it from a rather idiotic premise: if I was a flat earther. Imagine you saying the earth is round. And I go, "no, you are wrong on every issue". You then refer to some creditable sources that prove your point. I then ask in 3 different ways something along the lines of "you don't understand" or "you are not getting it". Who's answer is more creditable yours or mine? Is it an adult discussion or just a yes/no back and forth? Cause even if flat earth me would bring "facts" to prove the earth is flat, my sources never would be more creditable than yours.

So to circle back: if you want to discredit someone's point, you need to back it up with a source on which your claim is build. Then we can have a discussion on the accuracy of said source and decide whether that trumps the original claim. The original claim then produces the counter source and we decide on the merit of that source and so on and so forth.

That would be a mod friendly educational discussion.


Who owns that debt, who's going to pay for that debt to be voided, how will you be a reliable partner if you just change the rules?

Edit 3: FYI from 2nd link:


So I'd argue that this source suggest that the issue is ownership, but not individual ownership. It argues the commune system needs reform. Sounds very creditable to me. So I think Alex was right and even you are somewhat right. Hopefully we can now switch to a discussion on how to reform the communes, because they were not completely bad
No sources are needed.

The same land that the peasants worked, that very same land is to be handed over.

Hand over that land.
 
No sources are needed.

The same land that the peasants worked, that very same land is to be handed over.

Hand over that land.
Sources ARE necessary. I've provided mine, and in a civil discussion you now provide your own to counter mine. If you don't, remarks like the one above feel to me like a fart: as substantial as the wind, and rather unpleasant.

So please, I look forward to your sources on why I'm wrong. Without them I'll be discarding your statement as opinion not fact.
 
Sources ARE necessary. I've provided mine, and in a civil discussion you now provide your own to counter mine. If you don't, remarks like the one above feel to me like a fart: as substantial as the wind, and rather unpleasant.

So please, I look forward to your sources on why I'm wrong. Without them I'll be discarding your statement as opinion not fact.


Why do you need a source for handing over the land.

And how does one even provide such a source.

The land that the peasants worked, split it up and hand it over.
 
Why do you need a source for handing over the land.

And how does one even provide such a source.

The land that the peasants worked, split it up and hand it over.
So I've gone back and read your previous argument with alexmilman, and you were arguing over who specifically owned land before the war. You claimed (using some random marxist website) that 90% of the land was owned by Kulaks. Alex replied, using other sources, that the peasants actually owned quite a bit of land, and that besides that the land that would be siezed would be nowhere near enough to satisfy demand anyway.

This is irrelevant of course, because the problem is with how you argue. Alex provides sources and backs his claims up with them. You then claim that everything he ever says is wrong and back this up with absolutely nothing. If you are arguing in good faith, you need to provide sources for your claims if someone asks for them. Attempting to metaphorically shout someone out of the argument by repeating your sourceless claims no matter how much evidence your opponent provides is much less likely to work in text format, and is rude besides.

Essentially, provide evidence for your claims or stop making them. Or, to use Hitchen's Razor, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".
 
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So I've gone back and read your previous argument with alexmilman, and you were arguing over who specifically owned land before the war. You claimed (using some random marxist website) that 90% of the land was owned by Kulaks. Alex replied, using other sources, that the peasants actually owned quite a bit of land, and that besides that the land that would be siezed would be nowehere near enough to satisfy demand anyway.

This is irrelevant of course, because the problem is with how you argue. Alex provides sources and backs his claims up with them. You then claim that everything he ever says is wrong and back this up with absolutely nothing. If you are arguing in good faith, you need to provide sources for your claims if someone asks for them. Attempting to metaphorically shout someone out of the argument by repeating your sourceless claims no matter how much evidence your opponent provides is much less likely to work in text format, and is rude besides.

Essentially, provide evidence for your claims or stop making them. Or, to use Hitchen's Razor, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".


His claim is about the nobility and the land that the nobility owned.

I am talking about the land that is worked, not only the land owned by the nobility.

Hand over the land worked.

After the civil war ended the land was divided up, in this scenario the same thing happens but without a civil war and all those deaths and all that destruction.
 
In 1935, in the most advanced economy in the world, roughly 6 out of 7 million farms lacked electricity. Being a farmer sucked hard in the USA, imagine spending your day boiling water on a wood stove indoors in a shack so you could can food in the height of Texan summer—the women doing it, and they were virtually all women, had to run out of the house to cool down for a couple minutes and then right back in because the wood stove needed constant tending to stay hot and a wary eye to make sure it didn’t burn down their clapboard house (if you didn’t can food in the summer you starved in the winter). If it was a god awful living in the USA that means globally most farmers had it even worse off. I don’t even wanna describe the actual horror show of what you did to wash and iron clothes. This is all from Caro’s fantastic first LBJ volume.

In the Soviet Union x number of farms were divided y style in z year.

Do you see the difference? One has details sourced from a major history book, the other is an opinion.
I assume that post was meant towards my last comment.

And it has very little if anything to do with what I have been saying.

Before the war land was worked in Russia.

Hand over that land to those who worked it.

And asking for a source that land was worked before the war is ridiculous.
 
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Why do you need a source for handing over the land.

And how does one even provide such a source.

The land that the peasants worked, split it up and hand it over.

So you original post was:
Do land reform, that is what the people wanted, split the land of the 250,000 larger landowners and give it to the people. Right there lots of political tension will be lost and loyalty of 10s of millions of people will be gained, guaranteeing for one generation election victories. 250,000 will be unhappy, and 10s of million will be happy, easy to win an election.

If done during the war, do so sensibly where one geographic area is done at a time, where you call back the people from that area, distribute the land, then they go back, and then the next area.

Forgive all the debts that the peasants had. This will add to the gratitude and will also add to the electoral victory for one generation of the party that does so.
That Alex rebutted:
In 1916 89.3% (100% in Siberia) of the agricultural land had been owned by the people who had been holding less than 50 "десятин": units of 80x30 "саженей". "Сажень" is 2.16 meters. Social status of these "estate owners" having more than 50 "десятин" changes nothing and your idea about the problem being solved by confiscating property of 250,000 estate owners is not working: this would not produce enough land. BTW, most of the remaining big estates had been in Ukraine producing the sugar beets.
http://istmat.info/files/uploads/32868/russkoe_selskoe_hozyaystvo_pered_revolyuciey_m._1928_g.pdf
The "landbank" ( Крестьянский поземельный банк) was a state institution, not "nobility-owned", created with the explicit purpose of buying nobility-owned lands and selling them to the peasants. In 1883—1915 more than a million peasant households bought through it more than 15,900,000 "десятин". Bank was charging interest varying between 7,5% and 8,5%, hardly a high interest. In 1905—1907 bank bought 2.7M "десятин" from a nobility and in 1906 lands of the imperial family and part of the state-owned lands had been transferred to it as well.

Only approximately 10% of the peasants had been renting the land or working as the hired hands.

IIRC, we already discussed this issue and you are not saying anything new. Don't see any sense in re-addressing the same issue, especially taking into an account that your main argument is "it is all wrong" without any credible support.

I still haven't seen any of your sources that state Alex is wrong, except you typing "you are wrong". However, we humored you and low and behold, I could find something that partially adds proof for you: namely that peasant communal ownership wasn't working, see this post. So my point would be you'd ought to talk about how to reform the communes. If you again look at my post, it actually states that though communes itself weren't bad, the lack of land consolidation hurt them immensely. Additionally the lack of investment into modern techniques and tools (e.g. Tractors) was a big issue.

So in stead of farting in our general direction (Monty Python!) I'd rather see a post tackling the redistribution and modernization.

And one other thing: Forgiving the debt is nice and all, but who's going to pay for it? In your older posts you referred to US loans to the central government. Sure that works, but who's going to pay them back? And the interest? Ow, and what are you not going to do because you spend money on forgiving loans?

I'd argue that leasing a reorganized peasant commune a (couple of) tractor(s) would have a better impact.
 
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CalBear

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I assume that post was meant towards my last comment.

And it has very little if anything to do with what I have been saying.

Before the war land was worked in Russia.

Hand over that land to those who worked it.

And asking for a source that land was worked before the war is ridiculous.
If you can't argue in good faith, don't argue.
 
So you original post was:

That Alex rebutted:


I still haven't seen any of your sources that state Alex is wrong, except you typing "you are wrong". However, we humored you and low and behold, I could find something that partially adds proof for you: namely that peasant communal ownership wasn't working, see this post. So my point would be you'd ought to talk about how to reform the communes. If you again look at my post, it actually states that though communes itself weren't bad, the lack of land consolidation hurt them immensely. Additionally the lack of investment into modern techniques and tools (e.g. Tractors) was a big issue.

So in stead of farting in our general direction (Monty Python!) I'd rather see a post tackling the redistribution and modernization.

And one other thing: Forgiving the debt is nice and all, but who's going to pay for it? In your older posts you referred to US loans to the central government. Sure that works, but who's going to pay them back? And the interest? Ow, and what are you not going to do because you spend money on forgiving loans?

I'd argue that leasing a reorganized peasant commune a (couple of) tractor(s) would have a better impact.
I applaud your patience (😂).

Getting back to the subject, I’d say that the problem with the communal land property was not as much an idea itself but it’s form of implementation. The land was owned by a community (which was neither good nor bad) but for the purpose of working on it it had been partitioned (on annual basis, which kills individual’s interest in improving land quality) between the community members and even this was done as a set of the narrow strips separated from each other thus limiting possibility of using the modern equipment. If community not just owned tye land but worked on it as on undivided parcel (with the profits distributed based upon some established principle) than modernization of the methods is possible all the way to purchasing/renting tractors and other modern equipment and the same goes for fertilizers and other methods of land improvement: community would have a greater purchasing/borrowing potential than an individual. So, strictly speaking, maintaining communal structure was not wrong per se, it was just wrong in its existing form. The community-based cooperatives started appearing before 1917 and after the RCW there were attempts to restore that approach in a form of “Communities for joined work on the land” (ТОЗ), an idea killed by the commies who preferred government-controlled collective farms (strictly speaking, the same principle).

So, within the existing trends, government could combine Stolypin reforms (creation of the individual farmers) and modified communal model. However, the fundamental problem was in a fact that empire needed more industrial workers, not peasants: Russia already was too deep into the “peasant agriculture” with its productivity being inevitably lower than for the big “industrialized“ estates and extreme vulnerability to the natural disasters and extraordinary circumstances like wars. Taking into an account improving living conditions of the industrial workers, miners, railroad workers, etc., going to the cities may become increasing attractive for the poorer peasants (leaving their land to more successful ones) so the economic policies encouraging greater industrial development could provide a part of solution for the rural overpopulation.

Now, as far as the demagoguery related to “give land to those who is working on it” is involved, this was SRs pet idea. Needless to say that SRs had been falling into two major categories: murderous scumbags (like Savinkov & Co) and the fools who did not bother with the facts and arithmetics. Was this tried in OTL? Yes, it was. Practice of renting the land to the outsiders had been quite common in the areas of Don and Kuban Cossack Hosts: the area had a great agricultural land and the Cossacks had been getting the individual allotments which many of them had been renting (completely or partially) to the outsiders (“inogorodnie”). After the October coup of 1917 majority of the Cossacks had been quite sympathetic to the Bolsheviks and really did not like the Whites but then the “inogorodnie”, with the support of the Bolsheviks, demanded their share of the land (see slogan above). The results? The Cossacks sided with the Whites (whom they kept to dislike) and started killing “inogorodnie”. Northern Caucasus and Don region turned into a bloody (literally) mess. Now, taking into an account that the Cossacks were the most loyal subjects of the empire and routinely used to deal with the unrests, whom the government would be using to deal with the Cossack rebellion if it is trying to take away their land?

Your take on the foreign loans is just to the point: who and why would keep lending money to a foreign government who is not going to pay them off because it keeps forgiving the debts owned to it? Well, of course, there is a way around: government can forgive the debts and compensate loss by raising the taxes on the former debtors (aka, peasants, because they are the only land owners left). Surely, the peasants would be excited 😜.
 
I applaud your patience (😂).
Well, I also pressed the report button cause I was pissed. 😉
However, the fundamental problem was in a fact that empire needed more industrial workers, not peasants: Russia already was too deep into the “peasant agriculture” with its productivity being inevitably lower than for the big “industrialized“ estates and extreme vulnerability to the natural disasters and extraordinary circumstances like wars. Taking into an account improving living conditions of the industrial workers, miners, railroad workers, etc., going to the cities may become increasing attractive for the poorer peasants (leaving their land to more successful ones) so the economic policies encouraging greater industrial development could provide a part of solution for the rural overpopulation.
✅ So I'd say with this in mind stimulating the swap from man/animal power to mechanical power is double as interesting. Its support the internal consumption of the rising industry, frees up workers and makes a more valuable trade offering (end goods have more margin then raw products)
Your take on the foreign loans is just to the point: who and why would keep lending money to a foreign government who is not going to pay them off because it keeps forgiving the debts owned to it? Well, of course, there is a way around: government can forgive the debts and compensate loss by raising the taxes on the former debtors (aka, peasants, because they are the only land owners left). Surely, the peasants would be excited 😜.
😆 In Dutch we have a saying that directly translate to "(getting a) sigar from your own box (of sigars)". Highly appropriate here 😉
 
Well, I also pressed the report button cause I was pissed. 😉

✅ So I'd say with this in mind stimulating the swap from man/animal power to mechanical power is double as interesting. Its support the internal consumption of the rising industry, frees up workers and makes a more valuable trade offering (end goods have more margin then raw products)

😆 In Dutch we have a saying that directly translate to "(getting a) sigar from your own box (of sigars)". Highly appropriate here 😉
I choose just to ignore what @CalBear described as “artillery barrage” style: it does not make sense to argue if the only thing you are getting back is repetition of the meaningless slogans. In practical implementation “Hand over that land to those who worked it” means punishing successful people and, why stop there, confiscate all private property with a purpose to distribute it evenly among population. Had been formally a goal of the Bolsheviks. Confiscation part was reasonably successful but somehow the leaders ended up in the palaces and estates of the former oppressors while, according to Nikita Khrushchev (one of the beneficiaries), an average worker lived in the conditions much worse than before the revolution.

Ot seems that we agree on the virtue of industrialization vs. getting more “agrarian”: more powerful industry would be able to provide a wider variety of the items for domestic consumption and to make them more affordable. Just to take the agricultural machinery: the whole new infrastructure would be built to support it (repairs, operations, supply, etc.) and many of otherwise poor peasant would end up working in it and getting the decent money.

Another aspect, which can’t be discounted, is Russian ability to produce more weaponry, especially on the heavy end. Look at the naval program: Russian dreadnoughts of the 1st generation were more expensive and had worse technical characteristics than their Italian and AH counterparts and production of the heavy field artillery had been lagging well behind Germany. The same goes for construction of the big ships in general: Russian icebreakers had been built in the UK by the Russian specifications: theoretical base was there but industrial capacities were not.

I like that Dutch saying. It’s Russian equivalent would be “move money from one pocket to another”. 😜
 
I like that Dutch saying. It’s Russian equivalent would be “move money from one pocket to another”. 😜
Hey that's rather similar to another we have, loosely translated: moving from trouserpocket to vestpocket. Maybe nautical terms weren't the only ones that was shared between Russia and NL 🙃😉
 
What would happen to Denkin? As the Romanov court survives perhaps he could have a roll on the general staff.
For what I read about him, he doesn't seem the nicest person to put it mildly. However he might have impressed his superiors like he did otl, so I don't see why not
 
For what I read about him, he doesn't seem the nicest person to put it mildly. However he might have impressed his superiors like he did otl, so I don't see why not
Not sure what was so bad about his character but he was definitely a capable and dedicated person. After he won the case related to the appointment to the General Staff, he was on a right path to the further career but, as you can see, he was serving as a staff officer but in the army units, not in the General Staff. Without 2 major wars (and useful connections) he may or may not make his career as fast as in OTL.
 
Not sure what was so bad about his character but he was definitely a capable and dedicated person. After he won the case related to the appointment to the General Staff, he was on a right path to the further career but, as you can see, he was serving as a staff officer but in the army units, not in the General Staff. Without 2 major wars (and useful connections) he may or may not make his career as fast as in OTL.
So I only have wiki to go on, but this doesn't endear me to him:
In the territories it occupied, Denikin's army carried out mass executions and plunder, in what was later known as the White Terror. In the town of Maykop in Circassia during September 1918, more than 4,000 people were massacred by General Pokrovsky's forces.[8] In the small town of Fastov alone, Denikin's Volunteer Army murdered over 1,500 Jews, mostly elderly, women, and children.

The press of the Denikin regime regularly incited violence against communist Jews and Jews seen as communists in the context of treason committed by Red agents. For example, a proclamation by one of Denikin's generals incited people to "arm themselves" in order to extirpate "the evil force which lives in the hearts of Jew-communists."

Religious and faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church, Denikin did not criticise the pogroms against the Jewish population until the end of 1919. Denikin believed that most people had reasons to hate Jews and wished to avoid an issue that divided his officers. Many of them, intensely anti-Semitic, allowed pogroms under their watch, which turned into a method of terror against the Jewish population and served to earn the favour of the Ukrainian people for much of 1919.[
Though I must be honest and agree this is with 2021 hindsight
 
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