Art of the Possible: Backgrounds

[Immaculate]

I am very impressed with the speed you made this into a real thing with.

 

[Immaculate]

EQ (or really anyone),

I think this question goes with background, so i post it here.

With Bryan as president, i take it that 'free silver' is a thing. What effect has this had on the US? Economically? Socially/Culturally?

Alternatively, with the agrarian pressure from the south not present (because of the CSA), maybe Brian ran on a different platform?

 

[Ahigin]

Excerpts from "Modern History of Russia" by AST Press Publishing, 2003.

1900: The great reawakening

- Education reform, or Reforma Prosveshcheniya:

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Piotr Mikhailovich von Kaufman, Ministr Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya (Minister of Public Education)

According to the census that took place in 1897, just barely 20% or Russian population was literate, which meant that four out of five Tsar’s subjects couldn’t even read their name or sign a legal paper. While ignorant people were easier to manipulate, they made poor workers, untrainable soldiers, -- and boring collocutors. While Vladimir I realized the risks and the cost of bringing the light of knowledge to every house across his sprawling dominion, he also knew that the new century required big changes if Vladimir wanted to keep his country competitive.

With such thoughts in mind, the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias requested Piotr von Kaufman to develop what became known as “Reforma Prosveshcheniya” (lit. “Enlightenment Reform”).

The reform was separated into several parts. The first part listed measures to establish government-funded elementary, middle, and high schools in all cities with population >5,000 people, with at least one such school for every 600 families. It left many rural areas still deprived of access to basic government-funded educational facilities, but that problem was hoped to be dealt with through the second part of the reform.

The second part covered various tax cuts and government funds to private educational enterprises, such as seminaries, Sunday schools, private lyceums, etc. Generally speaking, any private educational facility accommodating more than 20 pupils for the length of at least 9 months a year was to be considered a tax-free non-profit enterprise. If such facilities were located in areas not covered by government-funded schools (which was most of the countryside) that could qualify for government funds. Besides, any significant donations to government-approved private schools were allowing the sponsor to qualify for various tax cuts as well. That measure, as Minister of Public Education von Kaufman hoped, would encourage the capital to invest into education.

The third part of the reform covered the standards of government-funded education as well as certification of private schools. In general, these standards were similar to many European countries, however, there were three significant differences. Namely, the list of subjects, along with “regular” Math, Physics, History, Language, etc., included basic military training (familiarity with firearms for boys, first aid for girls), handicraft (basic engineering and woodwork for boys, textile and cooking for girls), and religious studies. The latter one was closely intertwined with Russian History and mostly consisted of indoctrination in Russian Orthodox Christianity, support of the regime, and basic moral values of the Russian commune. In some areas (Central Asia, Tatarstan, Buryatia, etc.) religious studies were allowed to be performed from the point of view of other religions (such as Sunni Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc.), but only as long as the general message was still centered on loyalty to the Tsar and unity of all subjects of the Russian Empire.

Fourth section of the reform covered establishment of various higher education facilities in all major Russian cities. In fact, many of such universities already existed and were included into the reform only to signify additional investment into the level of government-provided higher education.

Spoiler :

A group of Russian soldiers and NCO during a class in a “regimental school,” 1900

Lastly, the fifths section was fully dedicated to military education. This section was the most important to adult commoners, since it instituted a so called “polkovaya shkola” (lit. “regimental school”) in every regiment of Russian Army. Now, all conscripts of Russian Imperial Army below ober-officer (lowest officer rank), however illiterate, were required to pass a basic course of studies throughout their term of service, with its complexity ranging depending on the rank (basically, NCOs were to receive a bit of extra knowledge). Logically, handicraft, military training, and religious studies were more prevalent in this course, but soldiers were still given the skills they’d need in civilian life after finishing their service;

- Tax reform, or Reforma Podushnoy Podati:

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Count Sergei Yulievich Witte, Ministr Finansov (Minister of Finance)

While not nearly as ambitious as von Kaufman’s reform of education, the tax reform proposed by Segei Witte was nonetheless a clear sign of its time – a risky, yet bald overhaul of obsolete, traditional Russian social order. However, Witte’s natural cautiousness meant that, instead of revolutionizing imperial system of taxation (a dangerous step for a giant, dormant country) the reform constituted a system of tax cuts and corporate grants previously unused in Russia.

The pretext for the reform was clear. Vast majority of capital in Russia was concentrated in the hands of aristocratic landowners (pomeshchiks), the Russian Orthodox Church, and the merchant class (kupechestvo). While the latter one possessed a certain degree of capitalist initiative (despite being politically rather economically conservative in its majority), the first two were characterized by Witte as a “dead capital.” Accumulated over centuries of privilege and exploitation of lower classes, these money were rarely invested into any enterprises, since technological backwardness and governmental corruption created a major risk for any such investment.

In an attempt to encourage capital-holders to start private firms or invest into existing ones, various tax cuts were established for individuals and organizations that could declare a certain (considerable) part of their income or savings invested into businesses officially incorporated in Russia or owned directly by the Russian government.

For landowners, another way to receive a tax cut was through selling considerable amount of land to private farmers or peasant obshchinas (rural communities with shared property management). In order to prevent a group of landowners from selling the same land back and forth to each other in a chase for easy tax cuts, a five-year moratorium was established on re-selling the patch of land that has already been declared as qualifying for a tax cut.

Naturally, Witte realized that no tax cuts would stimulate economic activity of the Church, since the latter enjoyed full freedom of taxation. Initially, the Minister of Finance intended to carefully introduce a small, token tax on church property, but that proposition was vetoed by the Tsar himself, who needed the Patriarch’s support during the long sequence of economic reforms he planned for the next several years. That forced Witte to go for an alternative solution: providing government subsidies to all enterprises of more than 60 employees with at least 40 per cent of church funding and a stable production output.

Spoiler :

Fishing and butchering artel of the Cossack Sladkovs family

Another attempt to stimulate economic activity was undertaken in the field of lowering of corporate taxes, as well as taxes on small and medium businesses. A specific point was made to support cooperative enterprises, so called “artels.” Such businesses, due to the decentralized nature of ownership, had a high risk on the stagnant Russian market, and to combat this any artel founded in a particular tax year was given a two-year tax break. In order to minimize chances of various scams and financial pyramids, an Imperial Register of Partnerships and Trust Funds was organized, which was supposed to keep track of all enterprises eligible for such tax breaks.

The last but not least, various zones of lowered taxation were established across the territory of Transural, Siberia, and the Russian Far East, encouraging resettlement and business expansion in the Eastern direction.

- Guard Department, or Okhrana:

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Members of the Guard Department of Russian Imperial secret police

Established in 1880, the Guards Department (also known unofficially as the Tsar’s Okhrana or, contemptuously, Okhranka) was the youngest branch of Russian secret police. In its essence it was tasked with combatting political radicals and foreign sympathizers in various circles of Russian society. With the recent round of economic reforms, Vladimir I expected a new wave of public discontent to rise dramatically.

First of all, far-left and nationalist radicals were expected to use public confusion caused by the reforms in order to agitate the masses – a known threat to the experienced detectives of Okhrana. However, for the first time since its creation, Byuro Politicheskogo Syska (Political Investigation Bureau) was requested to begin cautiously shadowing (not persecuting) various reactionary and fundamentalist Christian cabals. While that task seemed unexpected at the first glance, it made a lot of sense in the context of economic reforms that the Vladimir I’s government was planning to undertake. With discontent being expected from all sides of political spectrum, including the previously staunch supporters of the Romanovs’ dynasty, the Guards Department had its hands full indeed.

- The Great Siberian Way, or Velikiy Sibirskiy Put’:

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A postcard depicting a map of the Great Siberian Way upon its completion

Development of the Korean diplomatic crisis in summer 1900 made a critical weakness of the Empire of Russia all too obvious to the Tsar and his ministers. While Russia’s geopolitical focus was aimed at the Orient, its infrastructure effectively strangled any initiative in that direction. Siberian and Far Eastern businesses were effectively separated from Central Russia, and the troops located in the East could not expect any quick reinforcements should a war come.

The solution was obvious and, typically for Russia, grand in its scale. A network of modern railroads was to connect cities of Central Russia with the Far East through the Urals, Siberia, and Transbaykal. The project was owned by the government, but it was also announced that up to 9% of the project funding was open to private investments, while 40% of the project funding was open to foreign investments.

The plan was to complete the giant infrastructure project in three phases. First phase aimed at connecting St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Chita, Harbin, and Port-Arthur in a long four-line two-way railroad. It could allow direct redeployment of troops and materials from west to east and back, and also provided a stable and relatively quick mean of internal migration for the Tsar’s subjects.

Second phase was going to include completion of side railroad branches that would connect the hubs of the Great Siberian Way with other major economic centers of Russia: Astrakhan’, Kazan’, Rostov-na-Donu, Samara, Kursk, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, Simbirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tashkent, Blagoveshchensk, Dal’niy, Vladivostok, and Khabarovsk. That would bring the capital and industrial capacity closer together, allowing a flow of raw materials and industrial goods between major centers of production.

Finally, the third stage merely extended smaller branches to less significant guberniyas (provinces) of the Russian Empire, as well as connected the Great Siberian Way to the railroad networks of other (primarily, European) countries. It was hoped that, with the signing of Russo-Polish Treaty of Economic Cooperation, the railroad would allow transit of European goods to the Oriental markets, which, in turn, would generate a decent profit for the Russian customs service.

 

[Ahigin]

Excerpts from "Modern History of Russia" by AST Press Publishing, 2003.

1901: Inward improvement

Code of State Procurement, or Ustav Gosudarstvennyh Zakupok:

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Glava Upravleniya Gosudarstvennyh Zakupok (Head of the State Procurement Office) Nikolai Stepanovich Tagantsev

Introduction of Polish and Japanese industrial production to the Russian market seemed to have solved one problem: easy access to quality industrial goods for average subjects of the Imperial crown. However, simultaneously it created a problem for indigenous Russian businesses, as their production couldn’t hope to compete with cheaper and better quality foreign goods. It quickly became a focal point of major discussion that took place in Russian financial and administrative circles. Some proponents of state capitalism recommended dealing with the problem by creating huge government-owned enterprises. Laisses faire economists insisted that providing preferences to Polish and Japanese businesses itself was to blame, and that free flow of foreign goods would put Russian capital in a “healthy, evolutionary” position of “be better, or be trampled.” Finally, luddites and economic reactionaries traditionally leaned to blunt old-fashioned mercantilism and economic isolation.

The opinion that won the trust of the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias was the one spearheaded by a prominent centrist economist and lawyer Nikolai Tagantsev. Imperial government, Tagantsev rightfully argued, traditionally was the biggest consumer of industrial production in the country, and recent undertaking of extensive reforms and giant infrastructure projects placed the government demand for industrial production even higher. So, instead of intervening into the laws of open market, the government may simply stimulate local production by outsourcing all or vast majority of state procurement to Russian businesses. In addition to allowing local businesses to grow and develop thanks to lucrative government contracts, it would also generate a lot of loyalty to the state and the crown among major capital owners, cementing their support of the Tsarist government.

Vladimir I’s favoritism of this line of economic thought quickly led Nikolai Tagantsev to becoming the head of the newly reformed State Procurement Office. Starting April 4 1901 (traditional end of winter heating season and beginning of bidding for next year’s contracts), all state procurements and contracts were to be undertaken according to the following order of preferences in regards to suppliers and service providers:

1. Large Russian businesses;
2. Medium or small Russian businesses;
3. International companies incorporated in Russia;
4. Polish or Japanese suppliers;
5. Any other foreign suppliers.

The amount of goods and services to be purchased was expected to be enormous, so the government was ready to face lack of local supply to fully meet the state demand. In that case, as big as possible of a share of state procurements was supposed to be purchased from Russian businesses, with the remaining share coming from foreign suppliers. Types of goods to be delivered ranged from canned food and uniform for the Russian military and navy to various industrial tools for state-owned military factories to office supply and furniture for the extensive network of public institutions, offices, schools, hospitals, prisons, etc. A notable exception to this rule were areas of extreme state and public importance in which quality couldn’t be compromised under any circumstances.

Spoiler :

Alisov’s “skoropisets” (press typewriter), developed in Russia and (in)famous for its high quality and equally high price

To expand public support for this move, Vladimir I insisted that all procurements of the Romanov family estate were now to be made from Russian suppliers whenever the demand could be reasonably met by Russian businesses. Technically, the dynastic estate was not a part of the government apparatus, but in the eyes of the people it could create a positive example of the Tsar’s dedication to the support of “otechestvenniy” (“Fatherland-produced”) goods. While some family members (notably, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, a known Anglophile) accepted this “publicity stunt” with suppressed dissatisfaction, nobody went as far as openly objecting the order of the head of the dynasty.

- The Great Siberian Way, or Velikiy Sibirskiy Put’:

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Steam tank locomotive made in Sormovo, Nizhni Novgorod Region

One area heavily affected by the newly promoted Code of State Procurement was the grand new railway construction known to the world as the Great Siberian Way. While works on this giant infrastructure project continued in 1901 as expected, a notable change was made in the order of bidding for industrial material and equipment. From now on, Russian contractors were required to be primary suppliers of all resources, labor, and equipment, while any shortages (or equipment types simply not covered by Russian industry) were to be purchased from Poland, Japan, or any other foreign country. The biggest beneficiaries of these policies were expected to be Russian metallurgy, coal mining, and locomotive-building industries that in 1901 were still in their infancy and could not even hope to equally compete with their more developed Western counterparts.

- Education Reform, or Reforma Prosveshcheniya:

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A peasant boy being late for class in a rural school, Penza Region, early 20th century

Just like the Great Siberian Way, the Education Reform started by von Kaufman in 1900 continued its excruciatingly slow way toward modernizing the backward landscape of Russian society. The only major change in 1901 was standardization of educational standards across various regions and ethnicities of the multilingual empire. From now on, Russian was the only language that could be spoken by teachers and students during classes and exams, as well as the language of textbooks. While various dialects of the “Velikorusski” (“Grand Russian”) language were generally tolerated, all local and ethnic languages were allowed to be spoken only outside school walls. It was hoped that, while disenfranchising certain communities, this standardization would kill two ducks with one shot: make it easier to find quality educators while at the same time assimilating educated elites of various ethnic minorities, such as Jews, Tatars, Kazakh, Uzbek, Bashkir, Kyrgyz, Kalmyk, Perm’, Buryat, Manchu, and many others. Besides, it provided military “regimental schools” (the most smoothly running part of the newly established education program) with a standardized “common tongue” that could be used in warfare and engineering activities.

- Imperial Russian Geographic Society, or Imperatorskoye Russkoye Georgraficheskoye Obshchestvo:

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A seal of Imperial Russian Geographic Society

The War of Three Tsars (also known in Russian historiography as the Second Time of Troubles) significantly threw Russian society back to its traditional roots, and the state of economic devastation that followed it prevented any progressive ideas from taking roots in Russia beyond the most basic necessities of rebuilding national security and government apparatus. However, the scars of the civil conflict were slowly healing, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that some centralized efforts should be directed toward exploration of national resources which Russian territory was rich of. Up until 1901, all such efforts were strictly based on private initiatives of various artels (cooperative businesses), and very little mapping was actually done to indicate areas of particular importance for Russian industry and mining.

With these thoughts in mind the Imperial Russian Geographic Society was established under competence of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich Romanov, a known lepidopterologist and historian. The Geographic Society was intended to provide centralized support in logistics, sponsorship, and information storage for various expeditions and scientific project in such fields as physical geography, geology, mathematic geography, statistics, ethnography, political economy, paleontology, etc.

Two major efforts to be undertaken in 1901 were:
• Geological expedition in the Ob’ and Yenisei river basins, aimed at exploration and mapping of biggest mineral and carbon fuel deposits in Central Siberia;
• Arctic expedition aimed at discovering the North Pole to be organized from the Yamal Peninsula.