Honestly is a world without butter even worth it? Like at this point is it worth living anymore?
Why would you subject yourself to that?
And if you have to wouldnt that be a empirical proof that God hates you?
Precisely my point!
Eat butter.
No GNW (or “Peter goes South”)
- Thread starter alexmilman
- Start date
Why would you subject yourself to that?
And if you have to wouldnt that be a empirical proof that God hates you?
Precisely my point!
Eat butter.
How about during the great depression? That was the thing I was thinking about. I was reading that farmers were actually overproducing during this period, making the good themselves practically valueless. However, I did see Milk was used a lot, so perhaps that could be a backup scenario.
True that. I would however think the mines and factories fueling the current growth need more workers so I could imagine them trying to convince young unattached men. 14-20 or so?
I brought the data just to show that demand is there and even growing. Overproduction caused fall of the prices, bankruptcies, etc. but did it completely kill a consumption market? The people had bee going to the movies in the record numbers and buying huge volumes of illegal booze which hints that there were still plenty of people above the starvation level.
There was no “go to the factory” campaigns: information was passed by the natural ways. The obvious problem is that this was still a relatively young capitalism and the industrial plants, not to mention the smaller factories, were not exactly paradise on the Earth: the working conditions were harsh and the living accommodations were, generally, not good. Both had been steadily improving but the process was long and painful. Still, non-agrarian sector was seemingly attractive enough for the millions. I’ll provide more data in the future chapters.
Then, don’t forget that the working style of a peasant and industrial worker was noticeably different. A pleasant had stressful and relaxed period during the year, tied to an agricultural circle and, at least to some degree was in charge of his own activities. A factory worker had to work 10-11 hours per day (except for the Sundays and official holidays) on schedule the whole year and to do a monotonous work under supervisor’s direction. So the change was not necessarily easy psychologically. Of course, this was easier for the relatively young people not burdened with the families.
Workers, fish, gold, etc.
324. Workers, fish, gold, etc.
To avoid both “Hell” and “Heaven” picture of the RE, here are some numbers.
According to traditional counts, the Russian labor force, understood as manual wage-earners in all realms of the economy (as opposed to communal or individual farmers). Within this category by the late 1890s the numbers looked as following [2]:
Compensation had been varying greatly by the industry, professional qualification, geographic location, etc. Typically, increase of the compensation had been lagging behind other parameters. For example, on the Putilov Plant within 5 years compensation grew only by 2% while value of product increased by 50% and profits 3 times. By various statistical measures, in the compensation area RE was lagging behind the most developed industrial countries [3]. One of the reasons for such a situation was that an offer was greatly exceeding demand for the workforce. But, to be more precise, this applied only to the low-/unqualified labor force coming from the over-populated rural areas. On average the incomes in metallurgical and machine-building industries were 51.4 - 63.3% higher than an average wages while in textile industry they were 20% lower and in food-processing industry 10% lower. In the last two cases this was because these industries had been routinely employing big numbers of the low-qualified workers and women.
Intermission. To get a general idea, in OTL survey of 5,630 workers from 502 enterprises polled in Kiev in 1913 produced the following results:
In St. Petersburg in the 1910s, the average salary in industry was 450 rubles per year. The amount of 700 rubles per year was considered a good salary for a worker. (In German industry, the average salary in terms of rubles was 707 rubles.) Locksmiths-assemblers at large factories received 850-900 rubles per year or 70-75 rubles per month. Hundreds of Putilov workers had 1,200 rubles each, and the highest salary was the American worker - 1,300 rubles.
In the city electric transportation system of St. Petersburg, equipment repairmen received 840 rubles per year, line repairmen - 720 rubles, simple locksmiths - 480 rubles, conductors and wagon drivers - 40 and 45 rubles per month and "apartment in kind" - this meant living in an official family dormitory. "Line workers", who received annual salaries of up to 840 rubles and served at least 1 year, received bonuses 2 times a year for 70% of the salary, or 140% per year.
Electricity age created additional (admittedly small) niches. In Kherson the certified electricians working in a local electric company were getting up to 1,300 “on a side” (in addition to their salary) by doing extra work in the local movie theaters, etc.
On the bottom part of a spectrum, including those engaged in the heavy physical jobs like loaders in the ports, were getting anywhere between 50 kopecks and 2 rubles peer day and the women performing the same heavy work had been getting 20 - 40 kopecks less than men.
It can also be noted that both male and female artels of movers compensated for their modest earnings and deception on the part of employers by stealing everything that lies badly. In the newspapers you could read about the pockets of trousers that could hold up to half a pound of grain, and about bags tied under the skirts to the belts. In short, everyone survived as well as they could.
For comparison, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Russian-Japanese, the monthly officer's salary was as follows: the general - from 500 to 770 rubles per month; the colonel - 325 rubles; the captain - 145 rubles, and the first lieutenant - 55 rubles per month. In other words, an experienced worker was getting approximately captain’s salary and a technician approximately first lieutenant’s. In both cases their living expenses (with the equal size of a family) were much lower than officer’s.
Working conditions. In 1882, a factory inspection appeared in Russia to force owners of factories and factories to treat their employees humanly. The first factory inspectors sincerely tried to do everything to ensure that the working issue in the country was resolved peacefully, civilized, but lost to the manufacturers, local authorities and their own leadership.
Since all cases related to the factory industry were administered by the Ministry of Finance, in 1882 it launched the 1st initiative. To begin with, the government decided to limit itself to the introduction of the law on minors, as well as the establishment of factory inspectors in industrialized regions of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Vladimir. It should come as no surprise that, being a former professor, Bunge (then the Minister of Finances) started with the 1st screwup: the idea was good but a number of the inspectors was pathetic. Each district included several gubernias. One inspector had to oversee an area the size of two Germanies. The district inspectors were subordinate to the chief factory inspector.
Then came the 2nd screwup. As inspector of the most important and restless Moscow Industrial District Bunge appointed professor of financial law at Moscow University I. Yanzhul. He was honest, energetic and full of the good intentions but had no experience of dealing with the real life factory owners and, which was the 3rd screwup, this inspection had practically no means of enforcement. Many factory owners kept ignoring the imperial decrees and inspectors and the workers were not even aware of their existence.
The reason for such an attitude from the owners was simple: they were not used to the idea of a active government’s interference into the owners relations with their workers and considered the new laws as the empty bureaucratic dreams which will never be enforced. In this assumption they were pretty much correct, at least for a while. The biggest punishment possible was a fine up to 100 rubles.
The law of 1886 addressed some of these problems. Number of the inspectors increased and their functions expanded. Now they were falling into 4 categories:
The law of 1886, defending the rights of workers to receive all wages, prohibited manufacturers from freely fining their workers, and all capital accumulated at the factory from legally imposed fines was directed exclusively to the needs of the workers themselves. Every year at the end of September this year, the factory inspection collected information on the availability of fine capital. The clear declaration of all the reasons and amounts of fines recorded in special time sheets approved by the factory inspection, which followed with the introduction of the law and the control of the amount of fine money led as a minimum to a double reduction in fines.
In 1894 Witte formulated goal of the factory inspection as “reasonably carrying out the laws into life, without violating the fair interests of the industry itself”: his main goal was not to lag behind the most advanced foreign labor laws.
Far East. Gold and Fish.
Nikolaevsk on Amur was founded in 1850 and between that time and mid 1890s was passing through the ups and downs. In 1856 it became the administrative center of Primorskaya Oblast - territories to the South of Kamchatka all the way to Korean border. In 1860s it became a naval base of the Siberian Flotilla. Besides port itself there were big warehouses and the technical facilities allowing to repair and build small and medium sized river and sea ships. City became the regional commercial and cultural center and its population kept growing. City was first and foremost oriented toward he state business.
But in 1872 the naval port was transferred to Vladivostok and the city went down. As of 1890, only 1.8 thousand people lived in this city (Nikolaevsk remained only the center of the Ud district) and there were only 184 houses, there was one church, a parish school, a city three-grade school (annual state maintenance - 3.4 thousand rubles), a training barrel making shop, a telegraph station and a prison. However, the city was already in a process of being ready to the next upswing, this time with the private business being prevalent. According to official statistics, the city's trade turnover exceeded 2.5 million rubles and it became the major supply base of the Sakhalin and then also of the Amgun gold region. Prior to 1890 the region produced over 132 puds of gold and in 1890 the Amgun Gold Mining Company was founded and soon became on of the biggest gold producing companies in Russia extracting within 6 years over 17.8 tons of gold. The boom (re-)started.
In 1890s the city became center of the Russian Far East fishing industry. If earlier it was supplying exclusively regional domestic market, now big part of the produce is being exported, mostly to Japan (Japanese had been trying to start fishing of their own in the Amur’s firth but were not permitted). After completion of the TransSib and introduction of a favorable tariff the salted salmon, 80% of the catch, had been sent to the domestic markets all the way to St-Petersburg successfully competing with the imported Rhine salmon. Most of the remaining 20% was exported to Japan.
There were new gold-mining and fishing companies operating in and near the city, some of them with very considerable capital (up to 5 milkions rubles). Population exceeded 10,000 with approximately the same number of the seasonal workers coming during the fishing period. Port was greatly expanded, dredgin work was carried out on the Amur’s fairway, port got the pilot service, two excavation machies, an icebreaker-type boat and two cranes. Still, the city remained mostly wooden.
Being (relatively) big and important, meant that the city had to be protected. In 1897 the first coastal battery had been built and construction of the extensive fortifications started. The future fortress had 14 mine boats assigned to it.
Alaska (is this a “Far West”?). A small scale side show was the Klondike Gold Rush: in 1897 approximately 1,800 prospectors tried to get to the Klondike gold fields by sailing from St. Michael by the river boats up the Yukon river. It did create a short-term nuisance for the local administration and short-term boom for the St. Michael’s businesses and the boat owners. Most of the idiots found themselves stranded in the isolated camps along the way. After which there was more nuisance (and some income) in helping them to get out of these camps and of Alaska (in any direction). [6] The gold fields on the Alaska territory had been prudently kept out of the foreigners’ grasp.
But starting from the 1880s Alaska was already exporting salmon, smoked and canned into the US.
____________
[1]
“If the sparrow is close
-We're loading a gun.
If there is a fly, hit the fly!
Take it out on the fly.”
[2] In OTL by 1914 so this is not a true BS. Speaking of which, did I already tell a story about a co-worker of mine who, when ordered to wrote a very serious technical document, instead of doing a research, just put some crazy numbers, off the top of his head (Russian equivalent is “from the ceiling”) and, after delivering document to his boss, put his chair on the top of his desk, climbed on it and wrote these numbers on the ceiling. When the outraged boss came in and asked where did he get these numbers from, he pointed upward and honestly answered “from the ceiling”. And got away with it. This was a True BS but also underscores a “beauty” of the socialist economy: nobody was giving a damn. BTW, did I mentioned that the project was related to the construction of a nuclear power plant? On a cheerful side, nobody really involved in a construction and operation gave a s—t about the documents coming from this organization. 😂
[3] This looks as a grey area to me because the “average numbers” tend to hide differences between various categories and the same goes for the expenses. The known things are: (a) women and underage labor was widely used, (b) the professionals had been reasonably well off while (c) the unqualified workers not too much so but (c) was varying within a considerable range.
[4] In the “how bad it was” articles quoting the pre-revolutionary surveys, vodka is simply included into the “necessary expenses” (Russian liberals always considered extensive drinking as one of the factors needed for qualifying as “oppressed”) without any specifics about its percentage within this category. Interestingly enough, certain bona fide communist with a personal experience of working as equipment repairman in one of Donbass mines somehow missed to mention vodka in the list of his standard expenses. Probably, his extensive experience in that area started only after the revolution and elevation within the Party hierarchy. 😉
[5] According to the memoirs of the Soviet Prime Minister A.N. Kosygin (he was born in 1904) - his father was a qualified St. Petersburg worker - a family of six people (four children) lived (rented) in a three-room separate apartment, and his father worked alone, and maintained the family without problems. Khruschev: “I got married in 1914, twenty years old. Since I had a good profession (mechanic), I was able to rent an apartment right away. It had a living room, kitchen, bedroom, dining room.” And he was a low-qualified mechanic (too young), on a lowest level of payment category.
[6] In OTL the border was not quite settled while Alaska was Russian but we can assume that, due to the absence of any serious interest on the Russian side, the issue could be amicably settled with Britain/Canada well before the rush and the area on which Dyea and Skagway exist in OTL is Canadian so the Russian administration does not have to deal with the rush-related problems.
“Don't try to mine gold when you can sell shovels.”
“Have you heard about the new movie set in a post apocalyptic world where the proletariat control the means of production? They're calling it Mad Marx.”
Unknown Authors
«Если близко воробей —
Мы готовим пушку.
Если муха — муху бей!
Взять ее на мушку.» [1]
‘Musicians from Bremen’, the anime
“Low wages are a happy gift for Russian entrepreneurship.”
Witte
“Repairing bicycles is not such an easy job, and it is not possible to perform it impeccably by local forces. Therefore, I sent my brother to Moscow to Meller's bicycle factory to study the repairing skills under the guidance of specialists. Thus, it is possible to make repairs in my workshop, which no one could achieve in Kherson so far.”
Advertisement published by an owner of the bike-selling company in Kherson, 1890s
“It's a strike. Women working in the port three days ago went on strike, demanding an increase of 5 kopecks for every 500 puds of grain loaded. Yesterday, after not working for two days, the female loaders again started working on the same terms."
From newspaper, 1890s
Boring statistics. “Have you heard about the new movie set in a post apocalyptic world where the proletariat control the means of production? They're calling it Mad Marx.”
Unknown Authors
«Если близко воробей —
Мы готовим пушку.
Если муха — муху бей!
Взять ее на мушку.» [1]
‘Musicians from Bremen’, the anime
“Low wages are a happy gift for Russian entrepreneurship.”
Witte
“Repairing bicycles is not such an easy job, and it is not possible to perform it impeccably by local forces. Therefore, I sent my brother to Moscow to Meller's bicycle factory to study the repairing skills under the guidance of specialists. Thus, it is possible to make repairs in my workshop, which no one could achieve in Kherson so far.”
Advertisement published by an owner of the bike-selling company in Kherson, 1890s
“It's a strike. Women working in the port three days ago went on strike, demanding an increase of 5 kopecks for every 500 puds of grain loaded. Yesterday, after not working for two days, the female loaders again started working on the same terms."
From newspaper, 1890s
To avoid both “Hell” and “Heaven” picture of the RE, here are some numbers.
According to traditional counts, the Russian labor force, understood as manual wage-earners in all realms of the economy (as opposed to communal or individual farmers). Within this category by the late 1890s the numbers looked as following [2]:
- Private and State-owned Industry - 6,000,000 (out of which state-owned - 1,500,000)
- Railroads/other transport, communications - 1,398,000
- mining - 645,000
- construction - 1,600,000
- small industries - 3,706,000
- commerce - 865,000
- household - 3,000,000
- menial laborers - 2,500,000
- Agricultural laborers - 6,500,000
Compensation had been varying greatly by the industry, professional qualification, geographic location, etc. Typically, increase of the compensation had been lagging behind other parameters. For example, on the Putilov Plant within 5 years compensation grew only by 2% while value of product increased by 50% and profits 3 times. By various statistical measures, in the compensation area RE was lagging behind the most developed industrial countries [3]. One of the reasons for such a situation was that an offer was greatly exceeding demand for the workforce. But, to be more precise, this applied only to the low-/unqualified labor force coming from the over-populated rural areas. On average the incomes in metallurgical and machine-building industries were 51.4 - 63.3% higher than an average wages while in textile industry they were 20% lower and in food-processing industry 10% lower. In the last two cases this was because these industries had been routinely employing big numbers of the low-qualified workers and women.
Intermission. To get a general idea, in OTL survey of 5,630 workers from 502 enterprises polled in Kiev in 1913 produced the following results:
- 30% were highly qualified workers with experience - they lived very well and had almost no problems. These are those who were sometimes called the "worker aristocracy". Their annual income was above 600 rubles and they rented or owned individual apartments or houses.
- 17% were the bottom level workers receiving minimal salaries and renting part of a room. However, it follows from the questionnaire that for this poorest group, salary was enough for all priority needs (food, clothing, etc.), and at the same time they had free money in their hands every month (at least 5% of the salary) - it is likely that they just drank it. [4]
- 53% in the middle:
- 60-70% families - head of a family is the only working person. Food for the family consumed up to 49% of income; lower percentage than in Europe, partially due to a lesser consumption of meat, which was a general traditional situation in the rural areas from which these workers came.
- 53% of workers in that group (mostly family) rented individual apartments and most of the rest - separate rooms in the apartments (3% owned their houses or apartments). The average rent for housing was 19% of the family budget. [5]
- The cost of clothes for single workers averaged about 13 - 15%.
- So, 49% for food, 19% for housing, up to 13-15% for clothes. Which leaves about 17-19% of free money remained in the average working family per month. Funny as it may sound, some of these money had been spent on entertainment. Spending on children's health and education occupied a very modest place in the family budget: there already were reasonably functional systems of free elementary education and medicine for the lower classes.
In St. Petersburg in the 1910s, the average salary in industry was 450 rubles per year. The amount of 700 rubles per year was considered a good salary for a worker. (In German industry, the average salary in terms of rubles was 707 rubles.) Locksmiths-assemblers at large factories received 850-900 rubles per year or 70-75 rubles per month. Hundreds of Putilov workers had 1,200 rubles each, and the highest salary was the American worker - 1,300 rubles.
In the city electric transportation system of St. Petersburg, equipment repairmen received 840 rubles per year, line repairmen - 720 rubles, simple locksmiths - 480 rubles, conductors and wagon drivers - 40 and 45 rubles per month and "apartment in kind" - this meant living in an official family dormitory. "Line workers", who received annual salaries of up to 840 rubles and served at least 1 year, received bonuses 2 times a year for 70% of the salary, or 140% per year.
Electricity age created additional (admittedly small) niches. In Kherson the certified electricians working in a local electric company were getting up to 1,300 “on a side” (in addition to their salary) by doing extra work in the local movie theaters, etc.
On the bottom part of a spectrum, including those engaged in the heavy physical jobs like loaders in the ports, were getting anywhere between 50 kopecks and 2 rubles peer day and the women performing the same heavy work had been getting 20 - 40 kopecks less than men.
It can also be noted that both male and female artels of movers compensated for their modest earnings and deception on the part of employers by stealing everything that lies badly. In the newspapers you could read about the pockets of trousers that could hold up to half a pound of grain, and about bags tied under the skirts to the belts. In short, everyone survived as well as they could.
For comparison, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Russian-Japanese, the monthly officer's salary was as follows: the general - from 500 to 770 rubles per month; the colonel - 325 rubles; the captain - 145 rubles, and the first lieutenant - 55 rubles per month. In other words, an experienced worker was getting approximately captain’s salary and a technician approximately first lieutenant’s. In both cases their living expenses (with the equal size of a family) were much lower than officer’s.
Working conditions. In 1882, a factory inspection appeared in Russia to force owners of factories and factories to treat their employees humanly. The first factory inspectors sincerely tried to do everything to ensure that the working issue in the country was resolved peacefully, civilized, but lost to the manufacturers, local authorities and their own leadership.
Since all cases related to the factory industry were administered by the Ministry of Finance, in 1882 it launched the 1st initiative. To begin with, the government decided to limit itself to the introduction of the law on minors, as well as the establishment of factory inspectors in industrialized regions of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Vladimir. It should come as no surprise that, being a former professor, Bunge (then the Minister of Finances) started with the 1st screwup: the idea was good but a number of the inspectors was pathetic. Each district included several gubernias. One inspector had to oversee an area the size of two Germanies. The district inspectors were subordinate to the chief factory inspector.
Then came the 2nd screwup. As inspector of the most important and restless Moscow Industrial District Bunge appointed professor of financial law at Moscow University I. Yanzhul. He was honest, energetic and full of the good intentions but had no experience of dealing with the real life factory owners and, which was the 3rd screwup, this inspection had practically no means of enforcement. Many factory owners kept ignoring the imperial decrees and inspectors and the workers were not even aware of their existence.
The reason for such an attitude from the owners was simple: they were not used to the idea of a active government’s interference into the owners relations with their workers and considered the new laws as the empty bureaucratic dreams which will never be enforced. In this assumption they were pretty much correct, at least for a while. The biggest punishment possible was a fine up to 100 rubles.
The law of 1886 addressed some of these problems. Number of the inspectors increased and their functions expanded. Now they were falling into 4 categories:
- Control for implementation of the new regulations.
- Studying complaints and prevention of the conflicts and misunderstandings between management and workers.
- Filing the protocols regarding the violations of the laws, which had been transferred to the courts.
- Consideration and approval of tax documents, time sheets, schedules and internal regulations at factories and plants.
The law of 1886, defending the rights of workers to receive all wages, prohibited manufacturers from freely fining their workers, and all capital accumulated at the factory from legally imposed fines was directed exclusively to the needs of the workers themselves. Every year at the end of September this year, the factory inspection collected information on the availability of fine capital. The clear declaration of all the reasons and amounts of fines recorded in special time sheets approved by the factory inspection, which followed with the introduction of the law and the control of the amount of fine money led as a minimum to a double reduction in fines.
In 1894 Witte formulated goal of the factory inspection as “reasonably carrying out the laws into life, without violating the fair interests of the industry itself”: his main goal was not to lag behind the most advanced foreign labor laws.
Far East. Gold and Fish.
Nikolaevsk on Amur was founded in 1850 and between that time and mid 1890s was passing through the ups and downs. In 1856 it became the administrative center of Primorskaya Oblast - territories to the South of Kamchatka all the way to Korean border. In 1860s it became a naval base of the Siberian Flotilla. Besides port itself there were big warehouses and the technical facilities allowing to repair and build small and medium sized river and sea ships. City became the regional commercial and cultural center and its population kept growing. City was first and foremost oriented toward he state business.
But in 1872 the naval port was transferred to Vladivostok and the city went down. As of 1890, only 1.8 thousand people lived in this city (Nikolaevsk remained only the center of the Ud district) and there were only 184 houses, there was one church, a parish school, a city three-grade school (annual state maintenance - 3.4 thousand rubles), a training barrel making shop, a telegraph station and a prison. However, the city was already in a process of being ready to the next upswing, this time with the private business being prevalent. According to official statistics, the city's trade turnover exceeded 2.5 million rubles and it became the major supply base of the Sakhalin and then also of the Amgun gold region. Prior to 1890 the region produced over 132 puds of gold and in 1890 the Amgun Gold Mining Company was founded and soon became on of the biggest gold producing companies in Russia extracting within 6 years over 17.8 tons of gold. The boom (re-)started.
In 1890s the city became center of the Russian Far East fishing industry. If earlier it was supplying exclusively regional domestic market, now big part of the produce is being exported, mostly to Japan (Japanese had been trying to start fishing of their own in the Amur’s firth but were not permitted). After completion of the TransSib and introduction of a favorable tariff the salted salmon, 80% of the catch, had been sent to the domestic markets all the way to St-Petersburg successfully competing with the imported Rhine salmon. Most of the remaining 20% was exported to Japan.
There were new gold-mining and fishing companies operating in and near the city, some of them with very considerable capital (up to 5 milkions rubles). Population exceeded 10,000 with approximately the same number of the seasonal workers coming during the fishing period. Port was greatly expanded, dredgin work was carried out on the Amur’s fairway, port got the pilot service, two excavation machies, an icebreaker-type boat and two cranes. Still, the city remained mostly wooden.
Being (relatively) big and important, meant that the city had to be protected. In 1897 the first coastal battery had been built and construction of the extensive fortifications started. The future fortress had 14 mine boats assigned to it.
Alaska (is this a “Far West”?). A small scale side show was the Klondike Gold Rush: in 1897 approximately 1,800 prospectors tried to get to the Klondike gold fields by sailing from St. Michael by the river boats up the Yukon river. It did create a short-term nuisance for the local administration and short-term boom for the St. Michael’s businesses and the boat owners. Most of the idiots found themselves stranded in the isolated camps along the way. After which there was more nuisance (and some income) in helping them to get out of these camps and of Alaska (in any direction). [6] The gold fields on the Alaska territory had been prudently kept out of the foreigners’ grasp.
But starting from the 1880s Alaska was already exporting salmon, smoked and canned into the US.
____________
[1]
“If the sparrow is close
-We're loading a gun.
If there is a fly, hit the fly!
Take it out on the fly.”
[2] In OTL by 1914 so this is not a true BS. Speaking of which, did I already tell a story about a co-worker of mine who, when ordered to wrote a very serious technical document, instead of doing a research, just put some crazy numbers, off the top of his head (Russian equivalent is “from the ceiling”) and, after delivering document to his boss, put his chair on the top of his desk, climbed on it and wrote these numbers on the ceiling. When the outraged boss came in and asked where did he get these numbers from, he pointed upward and honestly answered “from the ceiling”. And got away with it. This was a True BS but also underscores a “beauty” of the socialist economy: nobody was giving a damn. BTW, did I mentioned that the project was related to the construction of a nuclear power plant? On a cheerful side, nobody really involved in a construction and operation gave a s—t about the documents coming from this organization. 😂
[3] This looks as a grey area to me because the “average numbers” tend to hide differences between various categories and the same goes for the expenses. The known things are: (a) women and underage labor was widely used, (b) the professionals had been reasonably well off while (c) the unqualified workers not too much so but (c) was varying within a considerable range.
[4] In the “how bad it was” articles quoting the pre-revolutionary surveys, vodka is simply included into the “necessary expenses” (Russian liberals always considered extensive drinking as one of the factors needed for qualifying as “oppressed”) without any specifics about its percentage within this category. Interestingly enough, certain bona fide communist with a personal experience of working as equipment repairman in one of Donbass mines somehow missed to mention vodka in the list of his standard expenses. Probably, his extensive experience in that area started only after the revolution and elevation within the Party hierarchy. 😉
[5] According to the memoirs of the Soviet Prime Minister A.N. Kosygin (he was born in 1904) - his father was a qualified St. Petersburg worker - a family of six people (four children) lived (rented) in a three-room separate apartment, and his father worked alone, and maintained the family without problems. Khruschev: “I got married in 1914, twenty years old. Since I had a good profession (mechanic), I was able to rent an apartment right away. It had a living room, kitchen, bedroom, dining room.” And he was a low-qualified mechanic (too young), on a lowest level of payment category.
[6] In OTL the border was not quite settled while Alaska was Russian but we can assume that, due to the absence of any serious interest on the Russian side, the issue could be amicably settled with Britain/Canada well before the rush and the area on which Dyea and Skagway exist in OTL is Canadian so the Russian administration does not have to deal with the rush-related problems.
Last edited:
The rivalry
325. The Rivalry
By the late 1890s “everyone” in Europe was spending huge resources on the naval buildup with the most popular explanation being “everybody does this”. Basically, the whole situation was fitting into two fundamental questions formulated by the XIX century Russian progressive literature: “who is to blame?” and “what to do?”.
Who is to blame?
Well, of course, everything (as always in the cases related to the navies, and not only) was blamed on Britain as a general source of all evils. But during the last few centuries everybody more or less used to the British naval supremacy and was not as agitated as now. So in this specific case “everybody” was pointing fingers to Germany as the country which caused them to get into the great expenses because it decided to challenge the status quo. But “Germany” is a big and vague term so there must be a specific person to blame and here he was.
Allegedly, it all started by Admiral Tirpitz. The details are somewhat murky. It is more or less firmly established that an obscure captain of the US Navy, Mahan, wrote a book about the only way to achieve the world’s dominance (“The Sea Power for the Dummies” or something like that, nobody was quite sure). [1] The book became quite popular among the naval establishment because it had nice pictures of the sail ships and the complicated schemas of the naval battles with the wind and current directions and other cute things looking at which was allowing an intended reader [2] to look smart.
Presumably, after getting familiar with a proposed theory, Tirpitz decided to achieve a world dominance for Germany (quite patriotic) and started working in that direction with an energy bordering on an obsession. However, in most cases familiarity with this opus did not produce any serious lasting brain damaging results so there were speculations that in the case of Tirpitz some dramatic event took place. The most popular analogy was the classic case of Newton and certain agricultural product but the book was too thin to cause the same effect as a descent-sized apple. Which leaves a wide variety of the less likely options including a theoretical possibility that Tirpitz really read the book and by the reason which is rather hard to comprehend was impressed [3].
Perhaps the Mahan’s theory was not as relevant as the existing practice: on each and every international occasion the Brits had been pushing to everybody’s noses the fact that they had the biggest navy with the rather interesting conclusion that based upon that fact they can do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever and wherever they want. Which was quite annoying to the most of the rest of Europe. Taking into an account that the French and Italian naval ideas of that time tended to be on a rather peculiar side, the obvious solution was to do what the Brits were doing: build the big warships. Which indicates a possibility that perhaps Tirpitz came with the idea of German naval buildup on his own and “The Book” was not critically important.
Why this British rather unpleasant habit was not easy to ignore? The obvious answer was “the colonies”. Practically every European country that wanted to be taken seriously considered its duty, unless it was completely landlocked, to get at least some colonies. The most notorious exceptions were Princedom of Monaco, Austrian Empire and Russian Empire:
By the end of the 80s of the 19th century, a long streak of disputes and negotiations between Great Britain and Germany on West Africa temporarily ended with the delimitation of spheres of influence on the West African coast. Germany, which was looking for ways of rapprochement with England, made certain concessions on controversial colonial issues. However, at that time it didn't get anything in return. Anyway, the borders established on the map meant little because the territories were not properly researched and mapped. Clarification and change of border lines could not but lead to new conflicts. They were all the more fierce, the fewer territories unoccupied by European powers remained and the closer these conflicts were related to differences in other parts of Africa or the whole world.
Things had been made worse when in 1894 Hohenlohe, an advocate of the colonial expansion, became Chancellor of the German Empire. It meant a course to confront Britain. Nevertheless, the British side decided to use the rival and, with the help of Germany, block France's path from the west of the African continent to the Upper Nile (and thus stop the Brits expanding from the East). These intentions were implementef by the agreement between Britain and Germany, according to which the territory of Cameroon to Lake Chad in the north and the Shari River basin were recognized as a sphere of German influence. However, the British plans to push France and Germany against each other did not come true. After signing an agreement with Great Britain, Germany began negotiations with France. The dissatisfaction of both states was caused by the strengthening of positions and expansion of the scope of activity of the British "Royal Company of Niger". Together, they wanted to put pressure on the opponent. As a result, in March 1894, an agreement was signed under which Germany restricted its possessions to Cameroon, and the French side granted freedom of action throughout the space east of its borders. In other words, France was getting an access to the areas from which Britain tried to block it (and did so by having more troops on a ground).
The conflicts of that types kept going on with the European powers acting in all possible combinations and the schemas getting more complicated and not limited to Africa, like the British proposal to exchange Cameron to the recognition of the German annexations in China.
To add to the general mess, there were lesser players regularly getting the bigger ones involved one way or another with the “hot places” being everywhere from Morocco, where the Sultan was learning how to ride a bicycle thus causing diplomatic tensions between Germany, which was supporting his right to do so independently, and France (supported by most of the European powers, which already had their own problems with this dangerous vehicle) , which demanded that he must invite an instructor (French one)
and all the way Dutch South Africa where, with the Brits actively pushing from the North and the Dutch settlers coming from the South, the border passing tough the territory North of Vaal River became an itchy issue; especially after the gold was found (in this case Germany, which was supporting the Dutch, was joined by most of Europe). In other words, situation in Africa was extremely volatile and there were serious fears that one of these conflicts may cause a major European war.
In general, the German policies toward Britain remained restrained. As State Secretary of the Foreign Affairs explained to the Russian ambassador , “We are forced, in the opinion of the emperor, to observe the strictest restraint towards Great Britain, whose fleet far exceeds ours and constantly threatens our colonial acquisitions.” The obvious way out of that problem was to remove this impediment and the time was, seemingly, favoring Germany: annual industrial growth of Britain was 2.1% vs 4.1% in Germany.
The rivals.
To a great degree Britain was a victim of its own earlier success because starting from the 1870s a growing trend was export of the capital out of the metropolis and investment in the places where it was producing greater profits, the US, South America, colonies and even European countries. Active export of capital, possible thanks to huge colonial possessions, reduced investment in the domestic economy - which slowed down the pace of economic growth. In addition, the annual growth of industrial production was slowed down by the beginning of the lag in technology. Starting from the 1870s, industrial development in Germany, and not only, was faster and more progressive than in Britain, where the equipment of many enterprises was already outdated and modifications were more expensive because they were disrupting established production cycle. Even some of the British innovations were first implemented in Germany. For a while, profits from the colonies were more than compensating for the lagging technology but then the competitiveness problem kicked in: quality of the German manufactured goods became equal or even better than of the British, while being cheaper. Then, Britain fall in its own trap: while most of the “young” competitors had high protective tariffs, the free trade paradigm allowed penetration of the cheaper German goods into the British domestic market while their own markets had been protected by the high tariffs.
Germany started much later and almost from the scratch, which allowed to install the most modern equipment and made it easier to adopt the most innovative technologies. However, Germany had two fundamental problems: shortage of its own natural resources and a need of the external markets. To some degree the first issue was addressed by the friendly relations with Russia and Sweden but only to some degree. From Russia the agricultural supplies were available and the same goes to the oil-based products but most of the rest, especially supplies needed for metallurgy, were consumed by its own domestic development thus forcing Krupp, Siemens and other to open factories in Russia (German investments were mostly in the areas of metallurgy, machinery, electrical appliances and chemical industry) . Sweden was a big exporter of iron but the growing German industry still needed more. Then, there was an issue of the markets and in this area Germany was in a more difficult position than Britain with its colonial empire. In an effort to conquer foreign markets, German entrepreneurs carefully studied the tastes of the population of those countries where they were going to sell their goods. The success of the Germans was also facilitated by the fact that in Germany the level of consumption, as well as the standard of living of the general population, was quite low, which forced German entrepreneurs to look for markets for their goods abroad.The main exports of Germany were tools, machines, electrical products, chemical and pharmaceutical products, light industry products, i.e. Germany pressed goods similar to the British ones, and in territories that had long had close ties with England. By the late 1890s the German investments abroad were equal to 50% of the British and 60% of the French.
Obviously, in the world-wide competition the British naval hegemony was a trump card which it was repeatedly using as the ultima ratio. It was not a big surprise that in a “young” country like German Empire the frequent public demonstration of its inferiority was causing resentment not limited to the emperor or a small circle of the bellicose maniacs and this made allocation of the huge sums on naval development politically feasible. The general situation on the continent also was favorable: having good relations with both Russia and France, not to mention the smaller players, made continental military confrontation rather unlikely allowing to concentrate investments and technical resources on the navy at the army expense. Both Russia and France had been encouraging German naval progress: whatever minor conflicts of interests existed between them and Germany, those with Britain were much greater and it was expected that a need to confront Germany in the North Sea is going to weaken the British (and by extension Italian as well) position on the Med, which both France and Russia considered zone of their interests.
In Russia, it was expected that forcing Britain to build more and more capital ships for the North Sea meant that, even with the vast resources it possessed, it would have to cut on construction of the long range cruisers, which was important for the Pacific where Britain was actively stirring the pot trying to attract Japan on its side with a purpose to “restrain” Russia. It was hard to tell what exactly this meant because so far RE was not expanding on the East and was quite restrained even in its spheres of interest. However, Russian Far East still was in a process of development and, as such, vulnerable.
As a result, Wilhelm II was receiving all encouragement he needed and, with a full approval of his subjects, could get fully engaged in his naval hobby.
What to do?
So far, Britain and Germany had what looked like the irreconcilable differences: the officially proclaimed British goal was to have a navy stronger than two biggest European navies combined while the German purpose was to have a navy equal to at least 2/3rd of the British navy. Unless both France and Russia were willing to comply by cutting their navies or the Germans gave up on their program, the British formula would not work without a further upgrade of its naval program. So far, the Brits had been heavily relying upon the numbers [4] and in this area they were doing fine having 63 battleships vs. 26 German but the Germans had been increasing rate of their construction: according to the new plan proposed by Tirpitz Germany will have (at some point in a future) 45 battleships and armored cruisers.
Of course, by that time Britain will build more but, taking into an account that both France and Russia started their own construction of the new battleships and that, as was shown, however unconvincingly, by the Sino-Japanese war, technological progress is making the battleships obsolete in an alarmingly high rate, Britain was seriously risking to end up with a huge fleet of an useless junk. Building 50-60 brand new capital ships simultaneously was too much even for the British resources so there was a need for brand new approach. The problem was to just figure out what this approach is going to be.
Minor developments.
The ongoing colonial and naval race had been watched in Moscow with a great interest which, besides serious, definitely had a big amusement component. Of course, general attitude of AIII to the European affairs was formulated in his famous “when the Emperor of Russia is busy fishing, the European affairs can wait” but to a great degree this was PR bluff for both international and domestic consumption (or it would not be widely known). RE could not just ignore the naval race because there were interests, its own and of the Baltic League, to protect outside the more of less “internal” Baltic and Black Seas (both Denmark and Sweden had far away colonies). The most important of these interests were those on the Pacific: Russia had to protect a huge perimeter from Alaska to Vladivostok with the limited regional resources. Most of the battleships and cruisers under construction or planned were intended for deployment there, even if this was not advertised.
But, besides the ocean coast, there was a long border by the Amur. It was strengthened by the removal of Chinese enclaves on the Russian side but it was anything but quiet. The honghuzies, pushed out of the immediate border area during the war had been back because the Chinese administration of Manchuria was doing nothing to eliminate them and some of the local governors were even legitimizing them by a formal inclusion into their provincial “armies” (of course, with the inability to pay salaries, they were not preventing these “soldiers” from being engaged in their “professional activities”). What was worse, there was a seemingly growing broad based unrest in China caused by what many Chinese were considering blasphemous activities of the Christian missionaries who were definitely causing major natural disasters like including the Yellow River flooding and droughts. Besides, the generally xenophobic population was fed up with a massive influx of the foreigners and things foreign. In 1896 there were already attacks on German missionaries in the regions of Western Shandong.
Quite obviously, very few people in the Russian Empire cared about the German missionaries but there was a memory of Chinese attack on Blagoveschensk and continued reports about the raids of the Chinese gangs across the Amur, especially into the gold-mining district near the border. And from time to time there were attacks on the ships sailing by the Amur. By that time 160 steam vessels and 261 barges were operating on the Amur and 1 steamship, 15 sailing ships and 20 barges on the Selenga River. In other words, the river traffic was economically important and must be protected.
Some of the steamships received small caliber artillery and machine guns but there was a need for something more serious and for the purpose the Amur River Flotilla was created. The first step included three gun boats of “Buryat” class made in Sormovo, transported disassembled by the railroad and then assembled in Kokui settlement of the Amur.
Each of them had displacement of 193 tons, machines providing 480 horse powers, speed of 11 knots, had been operating on oil, had range of 1,100 miles on 8 knots. Armor: elevators, ammunition cellars and gun shields -12 mm. Armament: two - 75 mm guns with a barrel length of 50 calibers (fire range - 48 cables; rate of fire - 8 rounds per minute), four 7.62 mm machine guns, two 64 mm; two 64 mm Baranovsky landing guns; two 47 mm salute guns; one spotlight with a diameter of 60 cm. 1.5 kW radiotelegraph station ("Telefunken").
Then 7 more powerful boats of “Vogul” class were added. Each had displacement of 244.5 tons, the same power installation as “Buryat” with a resulting lower speed of 10 knots. Range was 1,700 miles at 8 knots. Armor: side belt and wheelhouse - 12.7 mm. Deck and traverses - 9.5 mm.
Armament: two 120-mm guns with a barrel length of 45 calibers (fire range - 70 cables; rate of fire - 9 rounds per minute; ammunition of 150 rounds per barrel); one 122 mm howitzer (munition - 200 rounds); four - 7.62 mm machine gun; one spotlight with a diameter of 60 cm.
Radiotelegraph station with a capacity of 1.5 kW ("Telefunken").
Flotilla also included numerous auxiliary ships.
__________
[1] “While in actual command of a ship, his skills were not exemplary; and a number of vessels under his command were involved in collisions with both moving and stationary objects. He had an affection for old square-rigged vessels rather than the smoky, noisy steamships of his own day; and he tried to avoid active sea duty.” Why, with this record he was appointed a lecturer in naval history and tactics at the Naval War College is anything but clear.
[2] Term “reader” has to be understood in a broad terms including those who just looking at the illustrations. It would be rather unrealistic to expect that most of those with the admiral rank to read a book on the naval issues: they supposed to know everything worth knowing on the subject.
[3] Not being concerned with a world domination, I found this book rather uninspiring, besides a great revelation that a country which has a biggest fleet with the best trained crews is probably going to dominate the sea. Which was really not too important for the “land-oriented” countries with enough of the natural resources of their own.
[4] Text on a caricature below: - Should we attack, Sir? - Oh, no. First we must signal for help! We hardly three times as strong as the Germans!
“Germany's superiority at sea cannot be compatible with the existence of the British Empire.”
Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe
“…Then we will fight, because these are issues of national honor and dignity.”
“My study of history hasn't encouraged me to strive for world domination. In the empire of which I dream, the German emperor will be trusted by other countries and must be seen as a honest and peaceful neighbor.”
Wilhelm II
“We were busy drawing lines on land maps, where a white man’s foot did not step. We gave each other mountains, rivers and lakes, and we were hindered by only a small inconvenience: we never knew exactly where these mountains, rivers, lakes were.”
Lord Salisbury
“…How little can we rely on the assurances of the German government that they want to cooperate with us in Africa. Germany has joined France and is putting pressure on the Royal Company of Niger. It is necessary to be on the out, there may be combinations of Germany with our rivals in West Africa and other parts of the continent. You have to be careful when making any concessions to Germany regarding African issues.”
John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambassador in Berlin, 1894.
“France now reaps the fruits of its distrust of Germany, which prevented the alliance of both countries from combating the spread of English rule in Africa.”
E.E. Staal, Russian Ambassador in London
“- And you are cooly watching this mayhem?
- No, I’m watching it with a great interest”
Popular soviet-times radio program for the kids
Sir Eyre Alexander Barby Wichart Crowe
“…Then we will fight, because these are issues of national honor and dignity.”
“My study of history hasn't encouraged me to strive for world domination. In the empire of which I dream, the German emperor will be trusted by other countries and must be seen as a honest and peaceful neighbor.”
Wilhelm II
“We were busy drawing lines on land maps, where a white man’s foot did not step. We gave each other mountains, rivers and lakes, and we were hindered by only a small inconvenience: we never knew exactly where these mountains, rivers, lakes were.”
Lord Salisbury
“…How little can we rely on the assurances of the German government that they want to cooperate with us in Africa. Germany has joined France and is putting pressure on the Royal Company of Niger. It is necessary to be on the out, there may be combinations of Germany with our rivals in West Africa and other parts of the continent. You have to be careful when making any concessions to Germany regarding African issues.”
John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambassador in Berlin, 1894.
“France now reaps the fruits of its distrust of Germany, which prevented the alliance of both countries from combating the spread of English rule in Africa.”
E.E. Staal, Russian Ambassador in London
“- And you are cooly watching this mayhem?
- No, I’m watching it with a great interest”
Popular soviet-times radio program for the kids
By the late 1890s “everyone” in Europe was spending huge resources on the naval buildup with the most popular explanation being “everybody does this”. Basically, the whole situation was fitting into two fundamental questions formulated by the XIX century Russian progressive literature: “who is to blame?” and “what to do?”.
Who is to blame?
Well, of course, everything (as always in the cases related to the navies, and not only) was blamed on Britain as a general source of all evils. But during the last few centuries everybody more or less used to the British naval supremacy and was not as agitated as now. So in this specific case “everybody” was pointing fingers to Germany as the country which caused them to get into the great expenses because it decided to challenge the status quo. But “Germany” is a big and vague term so there must be a specific person to blame and here he was.
Allegedly, it all started by Admiral Tirpitz. The details are somewhat murky. It is more or less firmly established that an obscure captain of the US Navy, Mahan, wrote a book about the only way to achieve the world’s dominance (“The Sea Power for the Dummies” or something like that, nobody was quite sure). [1] The book became quite popular among the naval establishment because it had nice pictures of the sail ships and the complicated schemas of the naval battles with the wind and current directions and other cute things looking at which was allowing an intended reader [2] to look smart.
Presumably, after getting familiar with a proposed theory, Tirpitz decided to achieve a world dominance for Germany (quite patriotic) and started working in that direction with an energy bordering on an obsession. However, in most cases familiarity with this opus did not produce any serious lasting brain damaging results so there were speculations that in the case of Tirpitz some dramatic event took place. The most popular analogy was the classic case of Newton and certain agricultural product but the book was too thin to cause the same effect as a descent-sized apple. Which leaves a wide variety of the less likely options including a theoretical possibility that Tirpitz really read the book and by the reason which is rather hard to comprehend was impressed [3].
Perhaps the Mahan’s theory was not as relevant as the existing practice: on each and every international occasion the Brits had been pushing to everybody’s noses the fact that they had the biggest navy with the rather interesting conclusion that based upon that fact they can do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever and wherever they want. Which was quite annoying to the most of the rest of Europe. Taking into an account that the French and Italian naval ideas of that time tended to be on a rather peculiar side, the obvious solution was to do what the Brits were doing: build the big warships. Which indicates a possibility that perhaps Tirpitz came with the idea of German naval buildup on his own and “The Book” was not critically important.
Why this British rather unpleasant habit was not easy to ignore? The obvious answer was “the colonies”. Practically every European country that wanted to be taken seriously considered its duty, unless it was completely landlocked, to get at least some colonies. The most notorious exceptions were Princedom of Monaco, Austrian Empire and Russian Empire:
- For Monaco it was easy: anyone who risked to express some doubts about its greatness would be banned from Monte-Carlo and thus remain a social pariah until issuing a profound public apology.
- In Austria, the official attitude of His Imperial Apostolic Majesty Franz Joseph I toward the colonies was formulated the same way as his attitude toward the housemaids: “His Majesty does not notice them”. Even a possibility to claim the Land of Franz Joseph was rejected.
- In the case of the Russian Empire the universal international desire was that it will not start getting colonies: stretching across three parts of the world was scary enough to be taken seriously.
By the end of the 80s of the 19th century, a long streak of disputes and negotiations between Great Britain and Germany on West Africa temporarily ended with the delimitation of spheres of influence on the West African coast. Germany, which was looking for ways of rapprochement with England, made certain concessions on controversial colonial issues. However, at that time it didn't get anything in return. Anyway, the borders established on the map meant little because the territories were not properly researched and mapped. Clarification and change of border lines could not but lead to new conflicts. They were all the more fierce, the fewer territories unoccupied by European powers remained and the closer these conflicts were related to differences in other parts of Africa or the whole world.
Things had been made worse when in 1894 Hohenlohe, an advocate of the colonial expansion, became Chancellor of the German Empire. It meant a course to confront Britain. Nevertheless, the British side decided to use the rival and, with the help of Germany, block France's path from the west of the African continent to the Upper Nile (and thus stop the Brits expanding from the East). These intentions were implementef by the agreement between Britain and Germany, according to which the territory of Cameroon to Lake Chad in the north and the Shari River basin were recognized as a sphere of German influence. However, the British plans to push France and Germany against each other did not come true. After signing an agreement with Great Britain, Germany began negotiations with France. The dissatisfaction of both states was caused by the strengthening of positions and expansion of the scope of activity of the British "Royal Company of Niger". Together, they wanted to put pressure on the opponent. As a result, in March 1894, an agreement was signed under which Germany restricted its possessions to Cameroon, and the French side granted freedom of action throughout the space east of its borders. In other words, France was getting an access to the areas from which Britain tried to block it (and did so by having more troops on a ground).
The conflicts of that types kept going on with the European powers acting in all possible combinations and the schemas getting more complicated and not limited to Africa, like the British proposal to exchange Cameron to the recognition of the German annexations in China.
To add to the general mess, there were lesser players regularly getting the bigger ones involved one way or another with the “hot places” being everywhere from Morocco, where the Sultan was learning how to ride a bicycle thus causing diplomatic tensions between Germany, which was supporting his right to do so independently, and France (supported by most of the European powers, which already had their own problems with this dangerous vehicle) , which demanded that he must invite an instructor (French one)
and all the way Dutch South Africa where, with the Brits actively pushing from the North and the Dutch settlers coming from the South, the border passing tough the territory North of Vaal River became an itchy issue; especially after the gold was found (in this case Germany, which was supporting the Dutch, was joined by most of Europe). In other words, situation in Africa was extremely volatile and there were serious fears that one of these conflicts may cause a major European war.
In general, the German policies toward Britain remained restrained. As State Secretary of the Foreign Affairs explained to the Russian ambassador , “We are forced, in the opinion of the emperor, to observe the strictest restraint towards Great Britain, whose fleet far exceeds ours and constantly threatens our colonial acquisitions.” The obvious way out of that problem was to remove this impediment and the time was, seemingly, favoring Germany: annual industrial growth of Britain was 2.1% vs 4.1% in Germany.
The rivals.
To a great degree Britain was a victim of its own earlier success because starting from the 1870s a growing trend was export of the capital out of the metropolis and investment in the places where it was producing greater profits, the US, South America, colonies and even European countries. Active export of capital, possible thanks to huge colonial possessions, reduced investment in the domestic economy - which slowed down the pace of economic growth. In addition, the annual growth of industrial production was slowed down by the beginning of the lag in technology. Starting from the 1870s, industrial development in Germany, and not only, was faster and more progressive than in Britain, where the equipment of many enterprises was already outdated and modifications were more expensive because they were disrupting established production cycle. Even some of the British innovations were first implemented in Germany. For a while, profits from the colonies were more than compensating for the lagging technology but then the competitiveness problem kicked in: quality of the German manufactured goods became equal or even better than of the British, while being cheaper. Then, Britain fall in its own trap: while most of the “young” competitors had high protective tariffs, the free trade paradigm allowed penetration of the cheaper German goods into the British domestic market while their own markets had been protected by the high tariffs.
Germany started much later and almost from the scratch, which allowed to install the most modern equipment and made it easier to adopt the most innovative technologies. However, Germany had two fundamental problems: shortage of its own natural resources and a need of the external markets. To some degree the first issue was addressed by the friendly relations with Russia and Sweden but only to some degree. From Russia the agricultural supplies were available and the same goes to the oil-based products but most of the rest, especially supplies needed for metallurgy, were consumed by its own domestic development thus forcing Krupp, Siemens and other to open factories in Russia (German investments were mostly in the areas of metallurgy, machinery, electrical appliances and chemical industry) . Sweden was a big exporter of iron but the growing German industry still needed more. Then, there was an issue of the markets and in this area Germany was in a more difficult position than Britain with its colonial empire. In an effort to conquer foreign markets, German entrepreneurs carefully studied the tastes of the population of those countries where they were going to sell their goods. The success of the Germans was also facilitated by the fact that in Germany the level of consumption, as well as the standard of living of the general population, was quite low, which forced German entrepreneurs to look for markets for their goods abroad.The main exports of Germany were tools, machines, electrical products, chemical and pharmaceutical products, light industry products, i.e. Germany pressed goods similar to the British ones, and in territories that had long had close ties with England. By the late 1890s the German investments abroad were equal to 50% of the British and 60% of the French.
Obviously, in the world-wide competition the British naval hegemony was a trump card which it was repeatedly using as the ultima ratio. It was not a big surprise that in a “young” country like German Empire the frequent public demonstration of its inferiority was causing resentment not limited to the emperor or a small circle of the bellicose maniacs and this made allocation of the huge sums on naval development politically feasible. The general situation on the continent also was favorable: having good relations with both Russia and France, not to mention the smaller players, made continental military confrontation rather unlikely allowing to concentrate investments and technical resources on the navy at the army expense. Both Russia and France had been encouraging German naval progress: whatever minor conflicts of interests existed between them and Germany, those with Britain were much greater and it was expected that a need to confront Germany in the North Sea is going to weaken the British (and by extension Italian as well) position on the Med, which both France and Russia considered zone of their interests.
In Russia, it was expected that forcing Britain to build more and more capital ships for the North Sea meant that, even with the vast resources it possessed, it would have to cut on construction of the long range cruisers, which was important for the Pacific where Britain was actively stirring the pot trying to attract Japan on its side with a purpose to “restrain” Russia. It was hard to tell what exactly this meant because so far RE was not expanding on the East and was quite restrained even in its spheres of interest. However, Russian Far East still was in a process of development and, as such, vulnerable.
As a result, Wilhelm II was receiving all encouragement he needed and, with a full approval of his subjects, could get fully engaged in his naval hobby.
What to do?
So far, Britain and Germany had what looked like the irreconcilable differences: the officially proclaimed British goal was to have a navy stronger than two biggest European navies combined while the German purpose was to have a navy equal to at least 2/3rd of the British navy. Unless both France and Russia were willing to comply by cutting their navies or the Germans gave up on their program, the British formula would not work without a further upgrade of its naval program. So far, the Brits had been heavily relying upon the numbers [4] and in this area they were doing fine having 63 battleships vs. 26 German but the Germans had been increasing rate of their construction: according to the new plan proposed by Tirpitz Germany will have (at some point in a future) 45 battleships and armored cruisers.
Of course, by that time Britain will build more but, taking into an account that both France and Russia started their own construction of the new battleships and that, as was shown, however unconvincingly, by the Sino-Japanese war, technological progress is making the battleships obsolete in an alarmingly high rate, Britain was seriously risking to end up with a huge fleet of an useless junk. Building 50-60 brand new capital ships simultaneously was too much even for the British resources so there was a need for brand new approach. The problem was to just figure out what this approach is going to be.
Minor developments.
The ongoing colonial and naval race had been watched in Moscow with a great interest which, besides serious, definitely had a big amusement component. Of course, general attitude of AIII to the European affairs was formulated in his famous “when the Emperor of Russia is busy fishing, the European affairs can wait” but to a great degree this was PR bluff for both international and domestic consumption (or it would not be widely known). RE could not just ignore the naval race because there were interests, its own and of the Baltic League, to protect outside the more of less “internal” Baltic and Black Seas (both Denmark and Sweden had far away colonies). The most important of these interests were those on the Pacific: Russia had to protect a huge perimeter from Alaska to Vladivostok with the limited regional resources. Most of the battleships and cruisers under construction or planned were intended for deployment there, even if this was not advertised.
But, besides the ocean coast, there was a long border by the Amur. It was strengthened by the removal of Chinese enclaves on the Russian side but it was anything but quiet. The honghuzies, pushed out of the immediate border area during the war had been back because the Chinese administration of Manchuria was doing nothing to eliminate them and some of the local governors were even legitimizing them by a formal inclusion into their provincial “armies” (of course, with the inability to pay salaries, they were not preventing these “soldiers” from being engaged in their “professional activities”). What was worse, there was a seemingly growing broad based unrest in China caused by what many Chinese were considering blasphemous activities of the Christian missionaries who were definitely causing major natural disasters like including the Yellow River flooding and droughts. Besides, the generally xenophobic population was fed up with a massive influx of the foreigners and things foreign. In 1896 there were already attacks on German missionaries in the regions of Western Shandong.
Quite obviously, very few people in the Russian Empire cared about the German missionaries but there was a memory of Chinese attack on Blagoveschensk and continued reports about the raids of the Chinese gangs across the Amur, especially into the gold-mining district near the border. And from time to time there were attacks on the ships sailing by the Amur. By that time 160 steam vessels and 261 barges were operating on the Amur and 1 steamship, 15 sailing ships and 20 barges on the Selenga River. In other words, the river traffic was economically important and must be protected.
Some of the steamships received small caliber artillery and machine guns but there was a need for something more serious and for the purpose the Amur River Flotilla was created. The first step included three gun boats of “Buryat” class made in Sormovo, transported disassembled by the railroad and then assembled in Kokui settlement of the Amur.
Each of them had displacement of 193 tons, machines providing 480 horse powers, speed of 11 knots, had been operating on oil, had range of 1,100 miles on 8 knots. Armor: elevators, ammunition cellars and gun shields -12 mm. Armament: two - 75 mm guns with a barrel length of 50 calibers (fire range - 48 cables; rate of fire - 8 rounds per minute), four 7.62 mm machine guns, two 64 mm; two 64 mm Baranovsky landing guns; two 47 mm salute guns; one spotlight with a diameter of 60 cm. 1.5 kW radiotelegraph station ("Telefunken").
Then 7 more powerful boats of “Vogul” class were added. Each had displacement of 244.5 tons, the same power installation as “Buryat” with a resulting lower speed of 10 knots. Range was 1,700 miles at 8 knots. Armor: side belt and wheelhouse - 12.7 mm. Deck and traverses - 9.5 mm.
Armament: two 120-mm guns with a barrel length of 45 calibers (fire range - 70 cables; rate of fire - 9 rounds per minute; ammunition of 150 rounds per barrel); one 122 mm howitzer (munition - 200 rounds); four - 7.62 mm machine gun; one spotlight with a diameter of 60 cm.
Radiotelegraph station with a capacity of 1.5 kW ("Telefunken").
Flotilla also included numerous auxiliary ships.
__________
[1] “While in actual command of a ship, his skills were not exemplary; and a number of vessels under his command were involved in collisions with both moving and stationary objects. He had an affection for old square-rigged vessels rather than the smoky, noisy steamships of his own day; and he tried to avoid active sea duty.” Why, with this record he was appointed a lecturer in naval history and tactics at the Naval War College is anything but clear.
[2] Term “reader” has to be understood in a broad terms including those who just looking at the illustrations. It would be rather unrealistic to expect that most of those with the admiral rank to read a book on the naval issues: they supposed to know everything worth knowing on the subject.
[3] Not being concerned with a world domination, I found this book rather uninspiring, besides a great revelation that a country which has a biggest fleet with the best trained crews is probably going to dominate the sea. Which was really not too important for the “land-oriented” countries with enough of the natural resources of their own.
[4] Text on a caricature below: - Should we attack, Sir? - Oh, no. First we must signal for help! We hardly three times as strong as the Germans!
Attachments
Well this is getting interesting, I must admit the development of Russia's eastern territories is a pretty interesting topic to see specially with how it just keeps getting more unstable.
Britain approaching Japan, as weird as it to say I feel a lot more concerned for Japan in this timeline where Britain's usual trick of playing continental powers has largely failed and has been for a while their are two things you can do, either keep trying the old strategy or accept maybe you need to increase your own power and fight yourself and well Japan's a island nation that has some things the English want from them. Could easily go from Britain wanting a junior partner/pawn to well puppet/vassal fast.
Britain approaching Japan, as weird as it to say I feel a lot more concerned for Japan in this timeline where Britain's usual trick of playing continental powers has largely failed and has been for a while their are two things you can do, either keep trying the old strategy or accept maybe you need to increase your own power and fight yourself and well Japan's a island nation that has some things the English want from them. Could easily go from Britain wanting a junior partner/pawn to well puppet/vassal fast.
But Britain pretty much financed RJW and was quite pro-Japan.
My impression (on which I can be absolutely wrong) is that in OTL Britain was initially more concerned about screwing Russia (I still did not get why would Britain be so concerned about the Russian idiocies in Manchuria and Korea: it did not have any serious footprint in any of these places) then in thinking about Japan’s future. They were Asians and, as such would have to obey the British dictates. When it came to ”Oops!” moment, it was already too late.
I decided to leave it messy but along the lines earlier discussed so the existing map is OK. The colonial powers in OTL & ITTL came to the general agreements but, as Salisbury remarked, all these colonial agreements were based upon the unreliable maps of unexplored territories, with the resulting conflicts, proposals of the land swaps and misunderstandings.
Principle of “possession by presence” (or whatever the term) was based upon presence in a coastal area from which one could get inland. But the “inland” tended to be little known beyond the vague terms so the “civilizers” kept bumping into each other or just guessing and it was quite easy to start operating on a “foreign” territory.
The Great Plans
326. The great plans
Railroad itch. Late 1890s
Even before independence of Mongolia was officially recognized, Russia started construction of two railroads “hooked” to the TransSib:
There was a popular idea of the “Yellow Russia” initiated by journalist I.S. Levitov who described this was the space from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, in which "the Russian element is mixed with the population of the yellow race” and may serve as a buffer between Russia proper and “yellow danger”. He honestly confessed that he has no idea how to achieve this goal but the whole thing implied a massive Chinese immigration into the Russian Far East with the following assimilation.
The idea was picked up by more imaginative group of people and, preserving its name, turned into a proposal of a direct annexation of the Chinese territories all the way to the Yellow Sea with the following conversion of the local population (only 14,000,000 of them, not a big deal 😉) into the Orthodoxy, which would automatically turn them into the loyal Russian subjects. Presence on the Yellow Sea would give Russia unrestricted access to the Pacific, which the Japanese will not be able to block. This part of the grand schema was made pretty much impractical after the Sino-Japanese War with Japan now possessing the Liaodong Peninsula. Of course, the trifles like that did not look as a major problem to the most enthusiastic proponents. Just order the Japanese to get out or kick them out. What’s the big deal? It was much more difficult to waive the newly-established British naval base at Weihaiwei and German at Tsingtao or to explain to which end Russia is going to need a consider the whole option if most of its naval trade on the Pacific was done with ….oops…. Japan. But the proponents had been unquestionably “patriotic”, which made any opponent unpatriotic by definition making argument pretty much impossible. It got its supporters in Duma and, as a part of the general tendency to criticize the government for everything it did or did not do, among the “educated classes”.
On a seemingly pragmatic side there ws a “peaceful penetration” idea favored by Witte who envisioned a great plan of tying Russian Empire together by the extensive net of the railroads. But - unlike Levitov - Witte saw a threat in "the emergence of three hundred million new subjects with a different language and religion in the Russian Empire." I was afraid that it was not the Chinese who would undergo the process of assimilation, but the Russians. Since "China's accession to Russia over time will inevitably mean Russia's accession to China." So the idea was to follow the footsteps of other “imperialist brethren” and extend the railroads into China, making money on selling goods, providing transportation, exploiting natural resources, etc.
TransSib was, undeniably, a great step in this direction but had little to do with “penetration” part. And the first step of this part of a program was, what looked absolutely reasonable on a map, a shortcut that will provide almost direct route from Chita to Vladivostok going through the Chinese territory (Manchuria). With this as a basis, the railroad could be extended South with a potential to go, if Japan agrees, to the ports on Liaodong peninsula and/or all the way to Pekin. Similar plans existed for making a railroad to Korea, which was formally independent under Japanese political but not military control. Why would the Japanese object to this? Especially if RE will strengthen its political influence in Korea. What can go wrong?
Intermission. The railroad was, indeed, shorter but the cost of construction per kilometer was almost twice higher than for TranSib (136,000 rubles per versta vs. 68,000) thanks to the incredible level of corruption.
It had to cross numerous rivers and Khingan Mountains In OTL the cost of construction of the East China Railroad for 1897-1903 amounted to more than 375 million rubles in gold. Almost 200,000 Chinese workers participated in the construction. 1,464 bridges were built on the railway, the largest of them across the Sungari River. The coast, the shortest way from Europe to Asia. A total of 92 stations and 9 tunnels were built on the line. The most grandiose was the Khingan Tunnel, 3,077 m long, which passed at an altitude of 970 m above sea level. It became widely known for the great achievement of Russian engineering thought - a closed "loop" (with a radius of 320 m, and its lower path passed in a stone pipe with a hole of 9.5 m under the embankment of the upper track reaching 24 m height) [2].
What’s worse, while the volume of carried goods kept growing, the government was not getting any profit from the Chinese Railway: the official losses of the road (covered by the government) for 1903-1911 amounted to 135 million rubles, and, according to researchers, this is not the full amount. All this with the railroad making steady profits. Income from transportation for 1907 - 1911 was (respectively by years) - 7.7; 8.2; 8.4; 10.5 and 12.4 million rubles.
The road had been managed (as per agreement with China) by, formally, a public company with the government-appointed management not being responsible to the government or anybody else. The management created an intensive infrastructure (coal mines, timber and stone processing factories, glass and brick factories, main mechanical railway workshops and much more) within the allocated strip of the land. The company had a telegraph, conducted mineral exploration in Manchuria. Hospitals, schools, shops, libraries were opened in cities growing rapidly along the railway. 20 railway schools were opened. The company owned several sugar, oil mills, gold mines, 15 mills, 30 sea and river steamers, 26 apiaries, 11 agricultural estates, 13 timber enterprises, including 5 sawmills for the production of sleepers. Investments in coal mining in the Zhalainor area (now Jalay-Nur) in 1914 were estimated at more than 10 million rubles. Large funds were invested in urban and housing construction, as well as in trade and banking. It built Kharbin into a major semi-European city with the population of over 100,000.
Already by the beginning of the operation of the road, the housing stock of the company was 280,000 square meters and afterwards the annual construction of the residential buildings have been up to 22,750 square meters. Most of the residential buildings were built in the New Town, they were mainly semi-detached one-storey houses and two-storey buildings (4-6 apartments). Mansions were built for the top administrators of the road.
For workers and employees of the Main Mechanical Workshops, [3] houses, one- and two-storey, were built on the Pier. The houses under construction were surrounded by gardens and flower beds, trying not to cut down already growing trees as much as possible. In the yards there were sheds, summer kitchens, glaciers and other auxiliary buildings. Most apartments had verandas, amenities for servants. The administration of the Railway considered it necessary to provide each road employee with a state apartment: in addition to the high salary, this served as an important argument for attracting people to work in distant and harsh Manchuria.
Of course, Chinese part of the city looked differently but who cared?
By the name of the head of administration, Dmitry Horvat, territory of the railroad was nicknamed “Happy Croatia”: the unaccountable spendings had been passed on a government as the “railroad needs”, the industrial plants were used for the outrageous speculations, the personal merchandise was transported free as the “service cargo” and even honghuzi were in the loop, destroying (for compensation) the warehouses thus allowing to write down the stolen goods as the losses due to a fire.
Geopolitically, this meant that Russian Empire was stuck with a narrow strip of the land in a middle of a generally hostile territory with a need to secure it by a permanent military presence and also being dependent upon the good will of Chinese government and dealing with the competitors demanding their slice of a pie. Plus, within few years the Chinese population of Manchuria at least doubled (to a noticeable degree thanks to the railroad) thus causing demographic “pressure” in the Russian Far East. Expansion of the railroad to Port Arthur was Witte’s next planned step of the planned “peaceful penetration” even before NII screwed things up by getting the peninsula from China.
Back to ITTL. Of course, Witte’s proposal, as presented, had certain merits and the researcher parties had been sent, with the Chinese agreement, to investigate the possible routes and provide some meaningful estimates. But while they were still in a process, a big bomb exploded into everybody’s faces, the Boxer Rebellion.
_____________
[1] In OTL for much more extensive East-China Project he got 500,000 rubles after Boxer Rebellion (the deal included compensation of 70,000,000 for the Russian losses during the rebellion) and before this, presumably 3,000,000 for the initial contract. So, 250,000 look to me as something both reflecting a limited scope of the project and big enough not to insult his dignity. 😉
[2] After reading two descriptions of that system I still have not idea how it is supposed to work. Probably made it easy to get through all ups and downs in a mountain using not too powerful locomotives. When two construction brigades digging the tunnel from the opposite ends finally met each other, the engineer in charge (and author of the loop), Bocharov, sent telegram to the emperor: “I am happy to report to Your Majesty that Khingan lost its virginity.”
[3] To avoid possible confusion, this was for the Russian employees, not the Chinese.
[4] In Russian “Horvat” means “Croat”
“The train is a communal apartment, only on wheels.”
“At the end of the XIX century, looting of China became a favorite sport of the great powers.
Unknown authors
"Railways are not a consequence of urgent necessity, but more often a subject of artificial needs and luxury. They encourage unnecessary movements from place to place.”
E.F. Kankrin, Finance Minister of Nicholas I
“Projection is a tendency to move away from real difficulties to unrealistic plans to solve them.”
Alexander Kruglov
“Without political forecasting, serious miscalculations are impossible.”
Leonid Shebarshin
“At the end of the XIX century, looting of China became a favorite sport of the great powers.
Unknown authors
"Railways are not a consequence of urgent necessity, but more often a subject of artificial needs and luxury. They encourage unnecessary movements from place to place.”
E.F. Kankrin, Finance Minister of Nicholas I
“Projection is a tendency to move away from real difficulties to unrealistic plans to solve them.”
Alexander Kruglov
“Without political forecasting, serious miscalculations are impossible.”
Leonid Shebarshin
Railroad itch. Late 1890s
Even before independence of Mongolia was officially recognized, Russia started construction of two railroads “hooked” to the TransSib:
- The first one was going from Kuragino, Krasnoyarsk Gubernia, to Urga passing through the areas of big coke coal deposits in Russia and Mongolia.
- The second one, further to the East, was going from Vershneudinsk (Ulan-Ude) to Urga and then its construction was planned to go all the way to Jining (in Inner Mongolia) and then to Pekin. Mongolian government was not a problem at all (Bogd Khan was not expensive and and PM, Prince Namnansüren, saw the economic advantages for Mongolia) on China’s side Li Hongzhang already got quite convincing arguments in favor of the project. To be specific, 250,000 of them if counting in rubles [1]. Purpose of this construction was both economic and strategic:
- Economically, because (besides the Mongolian imports and exports) it would cut the distance to the China’s big consumer area: Russia finally started getting a positive trade balance with China expoorting cheap textiles (80%), kerosine, various tools and even the sewing machines while its imports amounting almost exclusively to tea, 80%, with most of the rest being rice. In general, cost of the Russian exports to China was almost three times bigger than cost of imports from it.
- Strategically, even if it ended in Inner Mongolia, this RR would be a great asset for bringing the Russian troops just at China’s border at the close proximity of the capital and from the direction making intervention of the third parties quite difficult.
There was a popular idea of the “Yellow Russia” initiated by journalist I.S. Levitov who described this was the space from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, in which "the Russian element is mixed with the population of the yellow race” and may serve as a buffer between Russia proper and “yellow danger”. He honestly confessed that he has no idea how to achieve this goal but the whole thing implied a massive Chinese immigration into the Russian Far East with the following assimilation.
The idea was picked up by more imaginative group of people and, preserving its name, turned into a proposal of a direct annexation of the Chinese territories all the way to the Yellow Sea with the following conversion of the local population (only 14,000,000 of them, not a big deal 😉) into the Orthodoxy, which would automatically turn them into the loyal Russian subjects. Presence on the Yellow Sea would give Russia unrestricted access to the Pacific, which the Japanese will not be able to block. This part of the grand schema was made pretty much impractical after the Sino-Japanese War with Japan now possessing the Liaodong Peninsula. Of course, the trifles like that did not look as a major problem to the most enthusiastic proponents. Just order the Japanese to get out or kick them out. What’s the big deal? It was much more difficult to waive the newly-established British naval base at Weihaiwei and German at Tsingtao or to explain to which end Russia is going to need a consider the whole option if most of its naval trade on the Pacific was done with ….oops…. Japan. But the proponents had been unquestionably “patriotic”, which made any opponent unpatriotic by definition making argument pretty much impossible. It got its supporters in Duma and, as a part of the general tendency to criticize the government for everything it did or did not do, among the “educated classes”.
On a seemingly pragmatic side there ws a “peaceful penetration” idea favored by Witte who envisioned a great plan of tying Russian Empire together by the extensive net of the railroads. But - unlike Levitov - Witte saw a threat in "the emergence of three hundred million new subjects with a different language and religion in the Russian Empire." I was afraid that it was not the Chinese who would undergo the process of assimilation, but the Russians. Since "China's accession to Russia over time will inevitably mean Russia's accession to China." So the idea was to follow the footsteps of other “imperialist brethren” and extend the railroads into China, making money on selling goods, providing transportation, exploiting natural resources, etc.
TransSib was, undeniably, a great step in this direction but had little to do with “penetration” part. And the first step of this part of a program was, what looked absolutely reasonable on a map, a shortcut that will provide almost direct route from Chita to Vladivostok going through the Chinese territory (Manchuria). With this as a basis, the railroad could be extended South with a potential to go, if Japan agrees, to the ports on Liaodong peninsula and/or all the way to Pekin. Similar plans existed for making a railroad to Korea, which was formally independent under Japanese political but not military control. Why would the Japanese object to this? Especially if RE will strengthen its political influence in Korea. What can go wrong?
Intermission. The railroad was, indeed, shorter but the cost of construction per kilometer was almost twice higher than for TranSib (136,000 rubles per versta vs. 68,000) thanks to the incredible level of corruption.
It had to cross numerous rivers and Khingan Mountains In OTL the cost of construction of the East China Railroad for 1897-1903 amounted to more than 375 million rubles in gold. Almost 200,000 Chinese workers participated in the construction. 1,464 bridges were built on the railway, the largest of them across the Sungari River. The coast, the shortest way from Europe to Asia. A total of 92 stations and 9 tunnels were built on the line. The most grandiose was the Khingan Tunnel, 3,077 m long, which passed at an altitude of 970 m above sea level. It became widely known for the great achievement of Russian engineering thought - a closed "loop" (with a radius of 320 m, and its lower path passed in a stone pipe with a hole of 9.5 m under the embankment of the upper track reaching 24 m height) [2].
What’s worse, while the volume of carried goods kept growing, the government was not getting any profit from the Chinese Railway: the official losses of the road (covered by the government) for 1903-1911 amounted to 135 million rubles, and, according to researchers, this is not the full amount. All this with the railroad making steady profits. Income from transportation for 1907 - 1911 was (respectively by years) - 7.7; 8.2; 8.4; 10.5 and 12.4 million rubles.
The road had been managed (as per agreement with China) by, formally, a public company with the government-appointed management not being responsible to the government or anybody else. The management created an intensive infrastructure (coal mines, timber and stone processing factories, glass and brick factories, main mechanical railway workshops and much more) within the allocated strip of the land. The company had a telegraph, conducted mineral exploration in Manchuria. Hospitals, schools, shops, libraries were opened in cities growing rapidly along the railway. 20 railway schools were opened. The company owned several sugar, oil mills, gold mines, 15 mills, 30 sea and river steamers, 26 apiaries, 11 agricultural estates, 13 timber enterprises, including 5 sawmills for the production of sleepers. Investments in coal mining in the Zhalainor area (now Jalay-Nur) in 1914 were estimated at more than 10 million rubles. Large funds were invested in urban and housing construction, as well as in trade and banking. It built Kharbin into a major semi-European city with the population of over 100,000.
Already by the beginning of the operation of the road, the housing stock of the company was 280,000 square meters and afterwards the annual construction of the residential buildings have been up to 22,750 square meters. Most of the residential buildings were built in the New Town, they were mainly semi-detached one-storey houses and two-storey buildings (4-6 apartments). Mansions were built for the top administrators of the road.
For workers and employees of the Main Mechanical Workshops, [3] houses, one- and two-storey, were built on the Pier. The houses under construction were surrounded by gardens and flower beds, trying not to cut down already growing trees as much as possible. In the yards there were sheds, summer kitchens, glaciers and other auxiliary buildings. Most apartments had verandas, amenities for servants. The administration of the Railway considered it necessary to provide each road employee with a state apartment: in addition to the high salary, this served as an important argument for attracting people to work in distant and harsh Manchuria.
Of course, Chinese part of the city looked differently but who cared?
By the name of the head of administration, Dmitry Horvat, territory of the railroad was nicknamed “Happy Croatia”: the unaccountable spendings had been passed on a government as the “railroad needs”, the industrial plants were used for the outrageous speculations, the personal merchandise was transported free as the “service cargo” and even honghuzi were in the loop, destroying (for compensation) the warehouses thus allowing to write down the stolen goods as the losses due to a fire.
Geopolitically, this meant that Russian Empire was stuck with a narrow strip of the land in a middle of a generally hostile territory with a need to secure it by a permanent military presence and also being dependent upon the good will of Chinese government and dealing with the competitors demanding their slice of a pie. Plus, within few years the Chinese population of Manchuria at least doubled (to a noticeable degree thanks to the railroad) thus causing demographic “pressure” in the Russian Far East. Expansion of the railroad to Port Arthur was Witte’s next planned step of the planned “peaceful penetration” even before NII screwed things up by getting the peninsula from China.
Back to ITTL. Of course, Witte’s proposal, as presented, had certain merits and the researcher parties had been sent, with the Chinese agreement, to investigate the possible routes and provide some meaningful estimates. But while they were still in a process, a big bomb exploded into everybody’s faces, the Boxer Rebellion.
_____________
[1] In OTL for much more extensive East-China Project he got 500,000 rubles after Boxer Rebellion (the deal included compensation of 70,000,000 for the Russian losses during the rebellion) and before this, presumably 3,000,000 for the initial contract. So, 250,000 look to me as something both reflecting a limited scope of the project and big enough not to insult his dignity. 😉
[2] After reading two descriptions of that system I still have not idea how it is supposed to work. Probably made it easy to get through all ups and downs in a mountain using not too powerful locomotives. When two construction brigades digging the tunnel from the opposite ends finally met each other, the engineer in charge (and author of the loop), Bocharov, sent telegram to the emperor: “I am happy to report to Your Majesty that Khingan lost its virginity.”
[3] To avoid possible confusion, this was for the Russian employees, not the Chinese.
[4] In Russian “Horvat” means “Croat”
Last edited:
Xoo xooo
Can I live in one?
They better not complain when looting them becomes China's favorite past time
Well if he prefers to go through Siberia by foot who am I to deny his wish?
Isnt that just Mongolia? At least from what they seem to be trying to do
Look I like the idea of orthodox chinese just like the next guy but this seem more like a recipe for a mandarin speaking Al Qaeda than anything else
Its that what kids call lube these days?
Oh that sounds good
Go ahead! Give us a Greater China, Wittey!
I do! All of it should look chinese!
Oh rip, lol
Happy for him!
Wish I had too
Nope. You are too noisy. 😜
People tend to have short memories and, sometimes, strange logic: “what was done then was wrong but it is not an excuse for doing it now.” Well, the substantial difference is that “then” it was forced upon the Chinese and “now” it was a voluntary act.
For him chance to walk to Siberia was quite low.
Nope. Not enough Mongols. Anyway, at that time Mongolia was a part of China.
Actually, there was a non-zero number of the Orthodox (and Christian in general) Chinese. Quite a few had been killed the boxers in rather sadistic ways.
Can’t tell about today’d kids but you got the general idea correctly.
You got it other way around: he did not want this to happen.
Something like that?
You are an extremely naughty child. 😜
I can behave!
And I'm also lying~
Indeed~
But he could always receive an increase!
True
So was the rest of the world according to China
Thats just sad
Then again the boxers also ended in sa rather sadistic way, though ironically not in a box
Or through boxing
You get the point
Yaaaaay
Too bad...for him!
Why would you not want greatness?
Not enough chinese!
...or not chinese enough?
I tend to get the two confused but in doubt increase the number of both
Thank you!
If only they had thought outside of the box.
I'm so funny it's painful, even more than LISA
That's what makes you the best, proper Brazil representation on the board! 💪🇧🇷
I blame Sun Tzu's box hat
Aww you flatter me
Also thats ironic considering before making my account I was seriously considering not telling anybody my nationality since I didnt know how I would be treated as result and was always a more cosmopolitan person than a patriot
...then I said fuck it and named my account BrSonic