Chương 89: Conspiracy of the Consul-General (July-September, 1918)
es of the Russian Empire.
Very similar to what Portugal and the Netherlands had achieved centuries ago.
Old methods adapted to a modern world, with a pragmatic and effective vision. Tsar Nicholas II was terrifying, because while Alexander III started this, Nicholas II perfected it and used bland methods that exceeded even his father's.
*******
[Trotsky]
Important events occur within the leftist politics of the Russian Empire, on July 5, 1918, several people join the International Workers Party of Russia (Mezhdunarodnoy Rabochey Partii Rossii) marking a notable change in party policy.
The party was led by Lev Trotsky, who had split from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (dominated by Iosif V. Stalin and Lev Kamenev). Being the first 'Trotskyist' party in the world.
And this party was joined by Maria Aleksandrovna Spiridonova and other old Left Socialist Revolutionaries. The question is why?
The political reform of Tsar Alexander III and successive governments had effectively eliminated the SRs as a political force, as they had refused to participate in elections and were crushed by other political forces.
Spiridonova admitted that in hindsight, that had been a huge tactical-political mistake, which in part supported electoralism within Russia and the rise of the RSDLP.
But in the International Workers Party of Russia, Spiridonova and others saw the opportunity for a resurgence of the Left-SRs in a much more legitimate and popular way.
Indeed Trotsky and Spiridonova formed an alliance, the Old Left-SRs joined the Trotskyist party, which added more agrarian-populist leftist ideologists to its ranks.
It could turn out positive, although the International Workers Party of Russia definitely did not have the best political strategists ... (Trotsky was a better military theorist-practitioner than a politician).
Spiridonova believed that she and Trotsky were bringing a major revitalization within the Russian Empire's left, after Stalin dominated the RSDLP and Kerensky controlled the Trudoviks.
For her, the RSDLP was 'rude' in its steps, with only temporary mass appeal, because they (the RSDLP) only 'breathe with hatred'.
So in Spiridonova's opinion, the RSDLP would go bankrupt in the second stage of their political revolution. On the other hand, the International Workers Party of Russia would be the "social revolution" that would attract the workers-peasants of Russia, a social revolution that would soon break out and that world revolution would be successful.
Which is similar to the Trotskyist theory of the Permanent Revolution.
Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov soon joined as well, and with this the International Workers Party of Russia became an important socialist-agrarian-populist league, bringing together Trotskyists and old SRs.
They obviously abandoned many old practices, but theoretically in ideology they were still there. They were a left-wing opposition to the Stalin-Kerensky(-Nicholas II) alliance.
An example of the later generations of this union was Nikita Khrushchev.
*******
[Diplomacy]
The diplomatic situation in the post-WW2 and post-Great Depression period was undoubtedly getting complicated. The Allied Bloc was never a tight-knit bloc, and it obviously fell apart as quickly as the war ended and other elections occurred in the United States.
Under these conditions, again the international situation was changing and dividing into regional blocs: Red Europe, the London Hub and the Russosphere.
With a United States that returned to neutrality under Henry Ford, and only sought to maintain its territories and sphere of influence in Central America.
Giving free space to the British influence (at the political-economic level) in Latin America, especially Chile, Gran Colombia and Peru-Bolivia.
Moreover, Ford, although he was a populist, maintained a policy of POSSIBLE reconciliation with the Imperial Federation, because the USA wanted to sell cheap products to any possible country.
And this could only be achieved through a certain level of reconciliation with the British.
It also didn't help that Ford didn't have very pro-Russian views (he was very neutral to the Russian Empire), which meant the reduction of Russian-American relations in favor of lukewarm Anglo-American steps.
Of course within the moderate Ford and Edward VIII, the more reactionary-irredentist factions planned to stab the other at the slightest opportunity (but these factions were under control, for the time being).
Fortunately, Edward VIII could not act freely, since Russia was there and now the Imperial Federation was seeking neutrality with Russia in the short-medium term.
This meant that a full-scale reconciliation between the Imperial Federation and the United States was impossible. Russia would not allow such an alliance, which was an existential threat to them (Alyáska, the Russian Colonial Empire and Eurasia).
But this did not completely limit British action or planning, in this there were two important architects, the British Consul General in Russia, Sir Bruce Lockhart and David Rowland Francis, American Consul General in Russia.
Lockhart and David Rowland were important in repairing Anglo-American relations in the post-war period, with small treaties that added together increased relations between the two countries.
Especially in economic matters, American corporations did not have much problem doing business with the British Social Aristocracy. And the population could not do much in this regard (the Socialists opposed but were not in power, while the National Republicans spoke and conspired but did not act ... for the moment ... and the Democrats did nothing).
Russia and Red Europe were effectively isolated from other great powers, counting that there was nothing binding on Japan or others.
There was consequently a joint planning for the defense of Europe and the Russosphere against the future plans of the Imperial Federation.
It was a battle that would be mainly in Africa and the seas, with a serious fear of amphibious invasions on a global scale ...
Not that the Imperial Federation had it much easier, fighting Russia and Red Europe was fighting GIANT enemies.
Britain's best hope was to find a way to quickly topple its enemies or deprive them of important resources.
With the help of Sir Lockhart, important plans were developed.
Louis Alexander Mountbatten and the State Council (including other members of the armed forces and King-Emperor Edward VIII) essentially developed Six General Plans of Attack on the Russian Empire.
* East: Attack of the Far East, in particular the occupation of Korea and Manchuria to attack the Siberian positions of the Russian Empire (cut railways, resources and threaten industries of the Russian war effort).
* America: Invasion of Alyáska, simply to deprive the Russians of a possible platform for attack against British Canada or other Russian attempts to dominate the northern Pacific Ocean.
* North: Occupation of the north of the Russian Empire, particularly in Scandinavia (Finland, Kola, Karelia, etc).
This with the intention of continuing to divert resources from the defense of Petrograd and the Baltic, cutting off resources from the Russian imperial navy, supporting Sweden and Norway, and threatening important portions of European Russia.
* South: The attack plan would be the conquest of the Bosphorus Straits (Constantinople-Tsargrad) to enclose Russia in the Black Sea and prevent its projection of economic-military power to the Mediterranean Sea.
Through this the Imperial Federation would bring down Russian allies in Anatolia and the Balkans, while it could attack portions of southern Russia. In particular Crimea, parts of the Caucasus and Ukraine (which was an important food basket for Russia and Europe).
* Caucasus: The invasion of British troops from Transcaucasia, depriving Russia of important oil resources such as those in Baku.
Of course such a plan depended on the dominance of the southern part of the remarkable Caucasus Mountains and the success of strategic plans in the Middle East-Anatolia.
* West: Fight in continental Europe, true that Russia was a giant but through the Russian defeat in Germany, the London Axis forces could have a chance especially in the flat regions of the Polish Congress.
Which could mean a significant drop in Galicia (where oil could be obtained), Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
[Annex: Central Asia was not an objective since the difficult geography would mean a stagnation or non-fighting zone like previous conflicts).
Of course in each plan there were variables, such as the possibility of neutral or allied countries in the British war effort against the Russian Empire.
Russian allies like those in the Middle East (Persia in particular) also had to be brought down.
*******
[Solovetsky Islands/Солове́цкие острова́]
Navy Minister Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov was continuing his major expansive reforms of the Russian Imperial Navy, aimed at Russia's future conflict with the other great powers.
In this process and other reforms, Minister Romanov established an important naval base in the Solovetsky Islands.
The Solovetsky Islands are islands present in the White Sea, through which the Russian Empire could have communications and defensive measures for the north of Russia and the White Sea – Baltic Canal (Belomorkanal).
The Solovetsky Islands were once home to some inhabitants and a monastery, but under the intervention of the Russian navy they became another part of the Russian Empire's war machine.
Nothing too spectacular, but it was enough.
What was notable was when Solovetsky became the first proving ground for future prison reforms in the Russian Empire, which included the creation of the first of the forced labor camps for political prisoners and others (the evolution of the Katorga system).
A rare honor for the Solovetsky Islands, which to this day have their reputation as a military operations center and archipelago prison.
*******
[Sarnoff]
After having worked in the entertainment industry for some time (mainly in restaurants and theaters of Frederick Bruce Thomas, an African-American who moved to Russia), on September 7, 1918, David Sarnoff founded Korporatsiya Dzheneral Elektrik Radio Rossii ( Корпорация Дженерал Электрик Радио России, General Electric Radio Corporation of Russia).
Sarnoff was an important businessman in the radio communications sector, even at that time in 1918, radio was seen as point-to-point communication.
This was because it was primarily a medium for basic news, trade, and military use, to pass information from point A to point B and so on.
Sarnoff on the other hand, like other people of his time, began to understand radio communication as point to mass, an individual-speaker who could speak to many (listeners, public).
This had already been done before, as for example the speeches of the Russian tsars after Alexander III.
But it was not a common practice in the corporate world, corporations simply did not adequately take advantage of the potential of this medium.
Sarnoff, too, was also fortunate to arrive at the right time, where demand for consumer goods were expanding once again (during the post-war economic miracle) and broadcasting was on a major upswing.
And everything exploded when Sarnoff used it for the transmission of sports such as boxing, more than 300,000 viewers were attentive to the General Electric Radio Corporation of Russia.
What marks Sarnoff's meteoric rise on the Russian economic scene at that time.
Sarnoff popularizes AM broadcasting and becomes an important radio lord of the Russian Empire, learning from his old mentor Frederick Bruce Thomas to turn radio into massively viable entertainment for the commercial sector.
Radio programs (generally dealing with fictional stories of made-up characters or popular culture) and music became especially popular in Russia from now on.
Although Sarnoff tried, between the mid-30s and early 40s he had to give ground to FM broadcasting (Sarnoff tried to suppress it, but the Russian state supported it), and he also dabbled in television but obviously there were other giants in this industry.
Still, there is no underestimation of Sarnoff's achievements and how he influenced Russia and the rest of the world due to his theory-practice about the commercial radio communications sector.
An example is that Sarnoff began to 'measure the success' of radio programs and broadcasts, due to their number of listeners.
Which in his time was something 'revolutionary'
*******
[International]
July 1, 8 tons of TNT explode in a munitions factory in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire (England, Imperial Federation), killing 134 people of whom only 32 are recognized.
On July 2, a similar event occurs in Split Rock, New York, which killed 50 people.
Great expansion of the New York subway (which is managed by two private companies without public administration), the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue line is created (which includes stations at Canal Street, Chambers Street, Christopher Street, Cortlandt Street, Franklin Street, Houston Street, 14th Street, 18th Street, 23rd Street, 28th Street, Anderson-Jerome Avenues and Sedgwick Avenue).
July 3, the Imperial Federation buries several Irish organizations in Northern Ireland, suspected of possible espionage or cooperation with the Socialists of the Socialist Republic of Ireland.
Currently this simply means more repression against autonomists - possible separatists, nationalists, anti-British Catholics, women's groups (usually feminists), among others.
In this way Northern Ireland remains 'safe' or at least strongly in the British sphere.
July 4, ascension of Mehmed VI Vahideddin (also called Şahbaba) as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire ... Of course this is only within the Ottoman-Turkish community in exile, outside of Anatolia.
July 10, the term 'Comrade' and the socialist emblems within Red Europe begin to become popular, as a result of cultural revolutions within the People's Republic of France and the Free Republic of Germany.
Both countries are de-facto the 'orbs' of the socialist world in these times due to their size and economic importance (although Iberia and Italy had considerable historical importance), so trends in these countries inspired other parts of Red Europe or the international socialist movements.
French Red Emblem.
Flag_of_the_Communist_Party_of_Germany.svg
Original Coat of Arms of the Free Republic of Germany.
1200px-Coat_of_Arms_of_East_Germany_%281950%E2%80%931953%29.svg.png
'Simple' emblems from Socialist Europe, the hammer represents industrial workers while the sickle and wheat represent agrarian origins (rural workers).
Later socialist designs have added different designs (including paintbrushes or books for intellectual workers-artists) or different regionalisms.
Strong advances in British exploitation in southern West Africa (Nigeria and its surroundings), especially in the development of ports and railways useful for resource extraction and British shipbuilding.
July 12, the ship Kawachi (河内), one of the flagships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, explodes while anchored in Tokuyama Bay at 3:51 p.m., waiting for target practice from July 11.
Of the 1000 men present, 600 died and the rest survived (with varying degrees of injuries). Soon the investigative commission raised that it could have been the result of arson.
The Kawachi explosion was a justification for enormous repressions and use of the military power of the navy in Japan from 1918 onwards.
The painter of Spanish origin Pablo Ruiz Picasso marries the Russian dancer of Ukrainian origin, Olga Khoklova (better known as Olga Picasso).
July 15, Paramount Pictures releases the film Uncle Tom's Cabin, adaptation of the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the film is considered lost today.
July 18, Generalissimo Philippe Petain successfully purges the military junta of France (Chad), thereby narrowly sparing a coup against his authority.
Despite this, it is clear that the far-right French state is in quite bad shape, unable to regain its lost territories after the successful Ha'il-Russia cooperation (which occupied both Sudan and Eritrea).
July 23, political repression and big problems in Japan continue. The price of rice reaches sky-high levels, prompting 660,000 farmers and 250,000 associates to hold protests throughout rural communities in Japan.
The government obviously responds in a repressive and undiplomatic way, but the protests have important economic and political effects.
On the one hand the Imperial Japanese Navy effectively overthrows the constitutional governmental institutions (eliminating the threat of the Diet) and begins to purge the Imperial Japanese Army (eliminating elements such as General Terauchi Masatake, cutting off an important head of the opposition).
And on the other hand, the Japanese Communist Party amasses more successes in rural communities.
July 24, the Arab National University of Ha'il is created, in the city of Ha'il (Capital of the Emirate of Ha'il) a public educational and research institute, which becomes one of the oldest educational buildings of the new emirate.
The most important thing for the time is that it was modern and would be one of the important bases of a modern country, much more industrialized and capable in scientific-educational-investigative terms.
July 28, elections of officers of the Communist Party in the Socialist Republic of Luxembourg.
August 1, premiere of the first book in the saga of The Witcher, in the Russian Empire.
August 2, the Anti-Riots Act is created, which gives the State Council of the Imperial Federation to increase the capabilities of the police and military forces in the control of the British population.
August 9, Indian chemist Prafulla Chandra Ray founds Prafulla Chandra College in British India, today the college is known as 'Bagerhat State College named after Prafulla Chandra' (or simply Bagerhat State College).
August 15, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake triggers tsunamis in the Celebes Sea (near Indonesia and the Philippines), causing incidents such as the death of 53 people in Mindanaos, Philippines.
August 16, Radola Gajda, military commander of the Kingdom of Czechoslovakia, becomes a general.
By 1922, Gajda became minister of war of the Kingdom of Czechoslovakia, although he was popular with several locals during these initial years of his military-political career, at the end of his life he would fall from grace.
August 21, the comic strip 'Cap Stubbs and Tippie' debuts, created by writer and artist Edwina Dumm, which she continued to draw until her early retirement.
Edwina_Dumm_Cartoons_Magazine_Jan._1917.jpg
(OOC: Pretty usual comic for ITL)
August 29, James Joseph William Bradley, better known as Jim Bradley, is arrested by British authorities for his attempt to promote unionization among public employees (especially firefighters).
Bradley dies in prison years later.
Kullervo Achilles Manner becomes leader of the Stalinist wing of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, competing strongly for the position of Chairman and civil leader of the Finnish Diet (position held by Antti Oskari Tokoi).
Manner is not exactly a 'Stalinist', only that he is strongly allied with Iosif V. Stalin within the SDP of Finland. Later the Stalinist wing becomes more of a hard line, but that is later.
*[Germany: We shall not make excuses for the terror]
August 30, the Free Republic of Germany is strongly shaken when Minister Rosa Luxemburg is shot dead by Friedrich Ebert, 47 years old.
Rosa Luxemburg's death had important consequences within the Free Republic of Germany, including the splitting of the Rosa Luxemburg Thought and an enormous deepening of revolutionary terror in the cultural transformations of Red Germany.
"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. "
- Phrase of Karl Marx, important German theorist-writer.
On the one hand in the political-cultural aspect, the position of Marxism-Leninism and hard-line socialism in the government of Volk-Chancellor Karl Liebknecht was enormously solidified.
With this the Red soldiers and workers actively purged capitalist and non-socialist ('revisionist and reactionary') elements from the German society of the time. Superstition and religion, traditional values, were strongly attacked and the past historiography of the German Empire and Germans in general was actively reviewed, among many other reforms (like the long-term and great implementation of the New Economic Policy and the proliferation of the 'red bureaucracy' in the Free Republic of Germany).
Laying the effective foundations for the new workers' state, which would lead to subsequent transformations (the creation of the German Democratic Republic).
* These actions were actively supported by the government of Jules Guesde, who led the People's Republic of France. Guesde was very anti-revisionist and anti-reactionary, so he favored important cultural revolutions in socialist spaces.
In the ideological aspect, the death of Rosa Luxemburg caused the division of Rosa Luxemburg Thought.
Those on the center-right joined the currents of conventional Marxism-Leninism, while those on the left (or Ultra-Leftist, beyond Germany's conventional left) were openly opposed to conventional Marxism-Leninism.
Profile of Friedrich Ebert: Ebert was an opponent of socialism who came from the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, German Social Democratic Party).
Originally Ebert was a moderate who was strongly radicalized to the right by the revolution and who believed that the German Socialist Revolution had truncated the international efforts of the German Empire (a backstabbing myth).
Ebert was executed shortly after the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, he has been a martyred idol of the German right-wing extremists ever since.
*******
August 30, the Intelligence Bureau, the first intelligence service of the Emirate of Ha'il, is created.
September 4, the newspaper El País (from Uruguay) publishes its first edition in the city of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
September 6, first reforms of the Minister of the Navy Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov in the Solovetsky Islands.
September 7, creation of the Korporatsiya Dzheneral Elektrik Radio Rossii by David Sarnoff.
An 8.1 magnitude earthquake shakes the Kuril Islands, Russian Empire, causing a tsunami that killed 23 people.
September 9, begins the realization of military games-exercises in the Volga military region, led by General Brusilov, General Kornilov and with the important initiative of Commander Mikhail Tukhachevsky.
This event ends on September 12, with satisfactory results in the conduct of operations by Tukhachevsky.
September 15, Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle released the short film The Cook.
The funny thing about The Cook is that it is a parody of the movie Salomé, produced by Theda Bara. What's so weird about this?
The Cook was released three weeks before Salomé (both films had been produced at the same time). So it is a scenario where a parody comes out before what it parodies.
September 18, the sentiment against American citizens coming from Eastern Europe increases in the North of the United States.
An example of this is the lynching of Olli Kinkkonen, a Finnish-American based in Duluth, Minnesota.
Kinkkonen was lynched by a mob calling themselves the "Knights of Loyalty" after he publicly renounced his American citizenship in response to the United States' involvement in imperialism in Central America. They took it from his boarding house to Congdon Park, where it was tarred and feathered.
Two weeks later, Kinkkonen was found hanging from a tree in another city park. Duluth police ruled it was a suicide.
September 20, important chambers of commerce are created in the Imperial Federation, which support the nationalization of Jewish assets (which pass to the state or into 'proper' private hands) and the beginning of the representation of corporations in the British government.
The 'Privatization' and other economic policies of the Social Aristocracy continue with success in the Imperial Federation.
Important reforms in the metallurgical production of the Russian Empire paved the way for the creation of the first containers, a vital piece of international trade.
September 22, the Lincoln Statue is inaugurated in Jefferson, Iowa (United States) in honor of the beginning of the construction of the Lincoln Highway.
The statue ends up being much larger than originally planned, the same with the Lincoln Highway actually.
The highway was part of the huge post-war US projects, it was made by private hands ... heavily subsidized by the state and with some cases of wasteful overspending of funds, but pro-libertarians don't like to say that.
September 23, Russian physicist Abram Fedorovich Ioffe establishes the State Institute of Roentgenology and Radiology (today Ioffe Institute) in the city of Petrograd, Russian Empire.
* [Inter-Arab Relations]
September 25th, Pan-Arabism is 'fine', but the honeymoon among Arabs is never eternal.
To think of the Arabs as a cultural monolith is a huge mistake, the Palestinian-Levantine Arabs are not the same as the Arabs of central Arabia, and the Arabs of Sudan are not the same as the Arabs in Egypt or other parts of Northern Arabia. Africa.
The government of the Emirate of Ha'il was led by Arabs from the center of the Arabian peninsula (especially the center and south-west of the Arabian peninsula).
It is true that there was a certain level of autonomy, but in any case national politics, with enormous influence in the country, was led by the Arabs of the peninsula and not so much by joint decision of the hundreds of different Arabs in the country.
Someone was going to suffer, literally or figuratively (lose influence-sovereignty in national politics).
Soon the government of the Emirate of Ha'il had a clear preference, the Arabs coming from the Arab peninsula and Jordan over the rest.
This caused the detriment of the political situation of several Arabs, especially the Palestinian Arabs.
The national government often ignored the needs of the Palestinian Arabs or had a negative influence on the regional autonomy of Palestine.
Which obviously caused divisions in the Palestinian situation regarding the Emirate of Ha'il, which were cultivated for decades.
There were the conservative-moderate pan-Arab Palestinian Arabs, the irredentist-separatist Palestinians, and the ultra-secular Palestinians who went strongly to the left.
Groups that would have important influence on the politics of the Emirate of Ha'il later on ...
In short, due to the lack of structures to resolve conflicts between different groups of Arabs within the Emirate of Ha'il, the pan-Arabist project showed early cracks.
Among these cracks, Palestine.
Nothing is simple in the world, the Arab part world in the Middle East-North Africa is no exception.
*******
September 29, attempts by civil authorities get problems in maintaining the situation in the Empire of Japan, due to the opposition of the Imperial Japanese Navy and ordinary citizens.
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