章節 33: Winners and Losers
Among the empire's nobles, including those who aren't hereditary nobles and non-commoner nobles (knights, retired senior officers, barons, seda, landholding gentry: pomeshchiks, noble clergy, medal recipients, etc.), there are roughly 1.5 million.
However, families that can inherit and haven't fallen, and current or direct line counts or higher, calculated by elimination, don't even reach 1%.
So what's good about being in the top 1% of nobles among nobles?
In the past, only nobles could own serfs, but there are no serfs in the current era.
Noble men were exempt from military service, but nowadays if nobles don't go to the military, they're looked down upon as having physical defects.
They had the privilege of entering higher education schools like the Imperial Law School or Imperial Lyceum, but I abolished this too while loosening the education system.
They have freedom from legal corporal punishment, but the law doesn't favor nobles for serious crimes.
In the end, there's nothing good about being noble.
At most they don't have to pay shared funds collected by local zemstvos, but wealthy nobles mostly pay more anyway.
Nevertheless, being born into the Romanov family means it's fate to marry other royalty or nobility.
'That's just how the times are. Believing there's nobility in blood and the existence of inferior and superior.'
In novels there's the repertoire of emperors falling in love with restaurant women while traveling incognito, but that's just the act of a rogue who doesn't know his place.
What emperor or grand duke would be foolish enough to become alienated from all noble society? Especially if born noble.
"Are you that fool."
"Brother! She was suffering! I was trying to heal her wounds!"
"I wondered what rogue was spreading adultery rumors at my sister's debutante, but Count Dashkov quietly told me your name."
Mikhail Alexandrovich.
It sounds strange but he's the Heir Tsarevich. In other words, third in line to the throne, but practically second.
Anyway, my brother Mikhail will likely briefly become Tsar after I die, after Georgy Romanov (who has poor health) takes over, with a high probability.
"Sigh, I stopped the rumors from spreading for now. What family is that woman from?"
"She's the wife of Baron Fedokevna, a commoner by birth. She cried saying she suffered from her husband's violence..."
"Did you only talk?"
"...For now."
"Hmm, you're hopeless."
At times like this, there's a best solution.
"You were a Grand Duke too? Haven't gone to the military yet?"
"I-I wasn't thinking of going to the military-"
"Neither was I."
In an era where knight novels are popular even among women, you could meet commoners. But a commoner who's taken? That just makes you trash.
"I'm the Heir Tsarevich! Brother, I really don't think military is right!"
"Didn't I go when I was Tsarevich?"
It's okay. Everyone adapts and lives well once they go. At least he won't cause trouble over women while in the military.
Though I'm quite familiar with Russian history and even the secret history of the Romanov family, I'm not sure if such things happened originally.
But Mikhail's tendencies at least are certain.
'This crazy bastard, was he into taken women?'
Though I don't know exactly who Mikhail meets throughout his life, I know his child doesn't make it onto the imperial family list later.
I remember it being impressive that he was a son born through a rushed marriage and adultery without the Tsar's permission.
I tried to look at women of similar age using Olga's debutante as an excuse, but instead learned about Mikhail's unwanted preferences.
"Tsk, nothing to be done."
When social gatherings are held at the imperial palace, nobles from not just the capital St. Petersburg but also Moscow attend in large numbers.
"Since nobles like it too, should keep holding them to appease them."
Where's a pretty woman without power hunger who's smart with a good family that I'll fall for at first sight?
Seems like I only have more conditions now that I'm in my 30s.
==
Mixed grains and barley. Though their harvest times are all different, crops that usually appear on Slavic tables continue through summer and fall from May oats to September wheat.
In other words, if you just get through spring drought well, that year's harvest is roughly revealed.
In that sense, the Tsar's reforms began showing results in the five western provinces as soon as summer came.
"The harvest amount... isn't normal?"
"They didn't do fallow land, right? Right? Because now no one says anything if you don't do fallow?"
"No, but harvest amounts increasing in just one year? Just from dividing land?"
Though Nikolai reacted nonchalantly saying "Of course, since there were good harvests continuously from this time," others were different.
Even Witte showed other concerns.
"The whole country has a good harvest, but the west especially. If nationwide land reform had been possible, grain prices would have plummeted and all farms would have gone bankrupt."
"Fortunately we increased export channels."
"Kokovtsov, promote the current harvest amounts throughout the empire."
"Understood."
Though nothing is as dangerous as internal division in reform, the imperial government didn't miss this opportunity.
The government tried to thoroughly exploit farmers' psychology.
Namely, humans' fundamental psychology of comparison.
[25% increase in harvest in just 1 year?]
[Western imperial citizens expected to repay loans early at this rate!]
[West getting rich, east getting poor?]
[Black earth that's not even my land, not even envious anymore.]
Dissolving the mir means instilling individualistic tendencies in farmers. There were many trivial problems like who used too much water, who encroached on whose field - but these would be resolved as they gradually adapted to reform.
Anyway, what's important is that the west that distributed land has more harvest, and the remaining land that didn't has less harvest.
In other words, while grain prices fell, only westerners are making money.
Quite a few opposed this.
"Cut the bullshit! How much Land Bank funds did they use - wouldn't it be strange if harvest didn't increase?"
"Shouldn't we impose more taxes on the five provinces for fairness?"
"Of course it happened with how much support was poured in!"
But the voices of literate people who just pushed pens wouldn't stick in the ears of farmers breathing dust.
They understood the situation very simply.
Because the Tsar let them own land, harvests increased.
Only this proposition stuck firmly in farmers' hearts.
"U-us too!"
"Why partial implementation? What are our higher-ups doing! Ask for the next mir dissolution to be our area!"
"Yeah, sick of the mir too. Always separate people working and people playing."
"What are the representatives we elected doing! Why weren't we included in those five provinces!"
When that comparative psychology seeped into every corner of the countryside and started poking Duma representatives' behinds even though it wasn't election season.
Witte muttered to Kokovtsov with a face like he'd been hit by a hammer.
"...Deputy Kokovtsov."
"Yes, Minister."
"Remember why the Tsar created the Duma at the initial bureaucrat meeting after ascending?"
"Hmm, that was quite a while ago. Though I don't remember the exact words, wasn't the Duma's purpose to include imperial citizens' will in bottom-level state administration?"
"Not that nice-sounding expression."
Garbage bin. The Duma was a garbage bin that gathered all sorts of underground and backwater ideologies and ambitions in one place.
The Tsar made it so all imperial citizens could smell the stench flowing from that garbage bin through newspapers.
But today. He feels the tide of farmers who make up 80% of the empire moving the Duma.
That Duma created by the Tsar.
Imperial farmers, not Duma representatives, are moving.
'The Duma's real role... did the Tsar know it would be like this from the start?'
Not the role those vermin Duma representatives want while coveting power without knowing their place. The role they'll take on going forward.
That is agreeing to overturn land according to the wishes of the farmers who form their foundation.
They will do so. Because their seats come from farmers' votes.
What is the driving force of reform? The Tsar's power?
If it was only that from start to finish, the driving force would have been chipped away whenever opposition appeared.
But today, Witte got goosebumps tasting an aspect of the grand plan this young Tsar had built since early in his reign.
At this rate, the driving force of reform won't be just His Majesty the Tsar.
The Duma too, whether they want it or not, must become one driving force of reform to survive.
"He planned the Duma's role and agricultural reform at twenty-six? Kokovtsov, what were we doing at twenty-six?"
"When I was twenty-six... I think I had just finished studying abroad and was working as a 5th rank inspector at a prison under the Interior Ministry. I received the Order of St. Vladimir 4th class for prison management organization design then."
"I only got promoted twice consecutively for showing talent in railway transport during the Ottoman Empire war. I remember being happy about exceeding 5,000 rubles annual salary."
In contrast, the Tsar prepared such a grand plan alone and brought it this far.
Who would dare look down on him as a Tsar who didn't receive heir education if they knew this truth?
Who would dare not follow his reforms?
'How amusing must he have found a Finance Minister suspiciously questioning without any sense.'
His Majesty must have predicted everything -
The nature of that Duma jumping around without knowing how high the sky is.
The level of officials who couldn't properly follow his grand plan.
[Conservative Party expresses infinite respect for His Majesty the Tsar's reforms]
[Markets spread to countryside, signal of domestic market activation?]
'Ah, Your Majesty who teaches me my place without a single rebuke, while I proudly called myself a genius.'
Though Witte confirmed reform accelerating as elections approached, he still didn't fully know how far the Tsar's grand plan extended.
The expected good harvest across Europe would be an obstacle to food exports. But domestic market activation at exactly this timing?
What about companies grown through policy funds filling gaps the state couldn't touch yet with farm tools and warehouses?
Though Nikolai would have been concerned that the Prime Minister candidate had gone crazy if he heard, Witte's eyes seemed to be getting moist.
'This is it. This is it. Not previous Finance Ministers falling while reforming alone, but the entire empire participating in reform.'
Not an empire frozen like ice showing rejection reactions to small changes.
The era of just some bigwigs jumping around here and there reforming has passed.
Now, an era has arrived where everyone wants reform.
Around when elections end in November, reform's hand will naturally reach other provinces too.
Then the Duma will try to lead agricultural reform instead. They will rather step forward to hide their shameful past two years.
However. There was one thing left before that.
"Minister, the Okhrana will start moving in earnest soon. His Majesty's will is so strong that even you can't stop-"
"Ah, don't worry. Director, do we have many of our people too?"
"...We'll have to check, but there should be people among officials who will face me."
"Can't be helped. He must be doing it because it's clearly necessary."
"Hmm, didn't you oppose last time saying the timing wasn't right?"
"It's all the Tsar's doing so there must be a reason!"
The war on corruption.
The time has come to settle the Duma's four years of karma.
He's ashamed of his past self who opposed earlier this year, saying it would provoke the Duma too much or that even officials would be hit by sparks when they were already short on workers.
'Didn't he grow even the Okhrana right after ascending? Then this too must be within His Majesty's palm.'
Corrupt officials are bound to do dirty things even during reform, and it's time to instill fear in the Duma too.
Director Sekerensky just felt burdened by Witte maintaining moved eyes even while explaining plans to catch and kill people.
'Could there be more of His Majesty's intentions that I don't know? What more is there?'
Who was it that said resolved doubts become conviction?
Witte had already become a fanatic himself.
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