Rasputin of the East

Episode 11

Russian Empire, near Moscow.

I got hit by the royal carriage, and I slowly turned my head and looked out the window.

“I am almost in Moscow.”

“let’s go. I didn’t even move my body, so I’m feeling nauseous.”

It’s never because I’m losing.

“I’ll go to the dorm and finish it, I remembered the location of the horse.”

‘shit.’

Taking a deep breath, I adjusted my clothes.

“Why are you here?”

“I really want to know why the princess came all the way here.”

“……I want to see Moscow, what do I do?”

“Then I’ll have to take the princess to the Bolshoi Theatre.”

“Are you going to a place you shouldn’t follow?”

“It’s not, but it’s going to be very boring. Mama, I am going to Moscow University today.”

“Why Moscow University?”

I also included the question of why I was dragged along, but Stolipin ruffled his mustache and responded as if it wasn’t a big deal.

“The Imperial Agricultural Commission meeting is there, I called because I needed your cooperation.”

“Why do we need Ohrana for the Agricultural Council?”

“I don’t know if you know, but do you know what the situation in the Empire was like before His Majesty Alexander II emancipated the serfs?”

“Out of the imperial population of 67 million, 50 million were peasants, of which 40 million were serfs, 18 million of the serfs were state peasants, and 22 million were serfs on private land who were subordinated to landowners. Is that correct?”

“Yes, economically, serfs donated 30% to 50% of the harvest as an aid, and had to work three days a week. It is a system that allocates land based on the labor force of It is Mir’s job to redistribute the land every few years, lead communal living and communal farming, and use the public funds to build schools and hospitals and manage roads and infrastructure.”

“You are speaking in the present tense.”

“Yes, they are the main culprits of the current imperial productivity. Despite the achievements of His Majesty Alexander II, Mir has not disappeared. They were not only peasant autonomy, but they were also a convenient tool for the empire to rule over the peasants, but they were horrendous in quality.”

“There is a reason serfdom disappeared from Western Europe hundreds of years ago. It’s inefficient.”

“Free workers are hundreds of times more productive and efficient than serfs. If you do business in the new continent, do you know that you used to have slaves in the new continent?”

“Why don’t you know?”

“If you give money to free workers, if you want to make slaves do what 10 people would do in an hour, you have to take 100 people, pay 20 free people and supervise them. ”

If you free the slaves and give them wages, 120 people, including the supervisor, spend 12 times more labor and 10 times the time, so the efficiency is 120 times lower.

Is it really worth the 120-fold inefficiency to save the wages paid to those 100 wage workers?

“It must be because the landowners’ brains are hardened.”

“The Empire’s main export is wheat, the peasants eat rye and sell wheat, but the landowners take the profits and exploit the serfs, agriculture declines, the countryside becomes ghost towns, and the serfs flee to the cities. , and they are infiltrating the so-called Red Socialist Terrorist Organization!”

“Calm down, I am in front of the Princess.”

Stolipin, who was momentarily furious, immediately bowed his head slightly toward Olga.

“I’m sorry, Mama. Stop being angry.”

“I understand. I didn’t know the details… but it seems serious.”

“No matter how bad the climate of the empire was, the productivity gap with Western Europe was too great. Grain production is given, but exports increase, and the blood, sweat and tears are passed on exclusively to the peasants. Count, do you know how much land each peasant holds?”

“The average is 10.4 desyatina (desyatina: the unit for calculating land area in Russia, 1 desatina is 1.0924 hectares, or 3304 pyeong, or 10922.31 sqm). I guess.”

“Despite the achievements of His Majesty Alexander II, the achievements are clearly unfinished. The land of the peasants has decreased by 20% compared to before the liberation, and the coordinators are on the side of the nobles, so it is the peasants who die. can also see No matter how well they take care of the land, they will take it from Mir and redistribute it, so will they have the will to work?”

Well, that’s right, in fact, the self-employed middle class, commonly referred to as the кулак, that Stolipin reformed and nurtured only accounted for 12% of Russia’s population, but they produced 50% of Russia’s total grain production. just because.

“Are you trying to beat Mir?”

“Mirne is only an obstacle to agricultural innovation by blocking the movement of the population, which is a stumbling block to industrialization and to agricultural innovation.

“That’s why you called me.”

“Because I am the commander of the military. But it won’t be easy, and not only the peasants will have to be careful, but the nobles will also try to stop them, and the current power will not be enough.”

“As I say clearly, the current internal affairs force is barely enough to cover one division. Not to mention the lack of training.”

“I know, we don’t mean to disband Mir right away, now is the time to build a cause. Coming here is one of those reasons, and besides, if we don’t pay attention to the military, can we increase the number of troops?”

“It’s not just adding numbers. There is an absolute shortage of experienced officers and executives. Even if people with experience are commissioned, there is a limit to increasing them to the maximum corps level within this year.”

And I muttered to myself that your plans won’t be easy even if you increase your military power.

Lenin’s New Economic Policy in the 1920s copied Stolipin’s policy, and so was Gorbachev’s Perestroika.

‘To promote perestroika in a short period of time, strong power is required. Gorbachev expected that Glasnost would win the support of the people and give powerful power to the center, which would be converted into the power of perestroika.

There is no glasnost here, so Stolipin used his authority in the original history to try to reform, but… he was assassinated in Kyiv and failed to do well, and with him the fate of the Russian Empire was decided. lost.

‘Until the 21st century, the background was not revealed.’

I glanced at Stolipin, if there was such a thing as history’s deterrence that he had the same lifespan as the original history, then his life was less than two years away.

The assassin was arrested and executed, but it is not known whether he was a communist, an anarchist, a conservative or another faction, a solo criminal or a culprit. Stolipin had so many enemies and was hated by conservatives and revolutionaries at the same time.

Unlucky Bismarck, it was the evaluation that history gave him.

‘But here I am.’

By holding my hand, known to be the favor of the tsar, he gains strength to pursue his own reforms. To that end, I presume that the internal affairs army will become my actual enlisted group and warlord, but I tolerate and even support my training.

It is hardly new to say that power comes from the head of a gun, considering that his predecessor, Sergei Witte, fell as soon as he lost his tsar’s protection, along with a sure means of securing him, the military force that would help him maintain his power. It would also be attractive to indirectly hold So, in case of emergency, he must have come up with a plan to build an industrial complex that could be converted into a military factory.

‘This, too, has no choice but to become May Dongju.’

The moment Russia’s reforms are complete, Stolipin will have my limbs amputated. The internal military organization that I enlisted may have protected me for a while, but now the internal affairs army, whose opponents have disappeared, is also a corrosive entity that corrodes the Russian Empire.

Even if it is not completely dismantled and continues in the form of a national military police force, I will try to castrate my influence that has taken root in it.

‘Who did it?’

To begin with, Stolipin does not know the future. World War I is inevitable, and I do not know yet whether the Russian Empire will survive or perish in that war.

If the Russian Empire collapses, the conflict will be meaningless anyway, and even if the Empire persists, I must make my status firm during World War I.

If the moment they try to take me down, they have to endure domestic chaos and even civil war, Stolipin will choose to coexist.

‘It’s a pity that it’s difficult to beat Stolipin from my side first, unless it’s going to cause a red-and-white civil war.’

Just like the saying goes that you cannot rule a country on horseback, I am not confident that I can maintain the Russian Empire on my own. That’s why I held hands with that yangban.

The train slowed down slowly while I was thinking. They arrived at Moscow’s Petersburg Station (modern Leningradsky Station).

“Let’s get off.”

“Does the meeting take long?”

“Depending on whether that little Sergei is willing to listen to me.”

“Who is Sergei…?”

“Count Sheremetev, member of the Imperial State Council and Supreme Court Justice of the Empire, I will deal with that old woman, and you should talk to Colonel Sheremetev, since he is one of the few people the Tsar has been friends with since childhood. I don’t even know.”

Sometimes that happens, when you have to choose between the worst and the lesser, without the best option.

If the patient’s tumor is not removed, the disease cannot be cured, but the moment the patient’s life is taken away from the deepest part of the body, without damaging the vital and irreplaceable organs, and removing the tumor embedded in a location that is impossible to remove. .

What should the doctor who caught the scalpel then choose? Will the tumor be ignored and the surgical site will be sutured, or will a scalpel be pushed into the tumor?

“Welcome to Moscow.”

Without replying, I followed Stolipin and escorted Olga out of the train.