While the fools are fighting…
364. While the fools are fighting…
“The broken heart of "Madame Butterfly" caused an explosion of laughter in the Empire of the Rising Sun, because none of the kimono wearers was stupid enough to assume that she could stay with her "husband" until the death will part. Usually, the "marriage contract" was concluded with Japanese women for a period of one to three years depending upon how longer the ship would have to stay in the Japanese port. By the time such a contract expired, a new officer appeared, or if the previous "husband" was generous enough and his "wife" could save enough money, she returned back to her family.”
“Emperor Nicholas II has always been tormented by the same question: "What would his father do in his place?"
A.M.Romanov, ‘Memoirs of the Grand Duke A.M.Romanov’
“While the smart man is thinking, the fool is already doing.”
“While the fools are fighting the smart people are making money”
Proverbs
1914.
The US.
Formally, everything was just peachy. More or less. The world’s share of the US manufacturing amounted to 32% with annual steel production was 31,800,000 tons. In 1913, American exports amounted to 2.466 billion dollars, when imports amounted to $1.813 billion.
Then recession kicked in with the contractions of manufacturing and unemployment growth up to 11%. As a result, in 1914 export decreased almost by 100 millions and import increased by 81 million. Still, the GNP was approximately 38.6 billions, so this was serious but not critical. However, the U.S. had problems with the balance of payments and credit deficit. The main financial source of the American economy outside it was Great Britain and international transactions had been made in pounds, not dollars. The foreign (European) investments in the US amounted to $7.2 billion and American in foreign countries - $5 billion. The pure foreign debt was 3 billions or almost 7% of the GDP and, so far, “free market economy” did not allow concentrate the financial resources in the “strategic” sectors including the new areas, which had routinely suffering from the shortage of funds. For example, production of aviation industry amounted only to $2,000,000 and shipbuilding to $100,000. Only 35% of the metallurgy capacities had been engaged and while the agriculture was in a better position, it was dependent upon consumption in the cities which was going to be impacted by coming recession.
The European war came as a blessing. Production of the aviation industry increased, shipbuilding skyrocketed and so did the wheat export and the same goes for many other sectors. And, of course, the weapons producers and those financing them had been successfully lobbying for a considerable strengthening of the US army and navy to meet the potential challenges. There was an intensive discussion about creation of a government-sponsored military-financial corporation that is going to provide a financial backing of the strategically important sectors of economy and (artificially) maintain the course of the government-issued bonds.
And, with everybody looking for the credits, position of the world’s biggest creditor had been shifting from Britain to the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, there was an open question who and how is eventually going to pay the growing national debts but this was an issue of the future, just as the potential byproducts of the overextended credits to the economy and greatly expanded volume of money in circulation. Right now the things were good.
Politically, so far, the interventionist and noninterventionist lobbies had been balancing each other. The first group (representing you can guess whom) wanted bigger contracts to the military industry and the second wanted to profiteer on the broader imports and credits to the combatants.
With no big public sentiment for entering the war (and a general lack of understanding why it is being fought) and no clear winner, the US stuck to the neutrality and making money.
Japan.
So far, Japanese government had been torn between two desires:
However, the militarist party kept advocating a military action arguing that, with the German garrison in Kiautschou is small and isolated and the risk is minimal: Germany is far away and occupied fighting Britain and it is extremely unlikely that Russia was going to start a war on Germany’s behalf.
On the top of all of the above there were:
Russia.
Intermission. In OTL NII was seemingly almost physically afraid of his uncles Vladimir, Sergei and Alexei: they could almost always get what they wanted by shouting on him. To some degree this was also the case with Nicholas Nikolaevich. While AIII was maintaining order in the family by his intimidating personality, NII was trying to avoid the scandals by accommodating his uncles and they used this to their advantage. OTOH, with his own generation (Alexander Mikhailovich and Sergei Mikhailovich also were his “uncles” and AM was his brother in law and pretty much the only close friend) he felt himself much freer in his usual practice of promising things and then reneging on the promises. ITTL these uncles are already dead and he has more “education in governing” but this part of his personality is still there.
Seemingly, the things were going on well. Industry and trade were increasing, Russia was steadily getting rid of the foreign debts and, using the war as an excuse, mostly nationalized the oil industry. But the government had been plagued by the problems the biggest of which was the Emperor himself. His late father taught him a routine of the government but could not teach how to chose people or to get rid of his natural indecisiveness. As the ministers he inherited Witte (PM) and Stolypin (Interior) and, as minister of finances he had a reasonably competent Kokovtsev but the Army and the Foreign Affairs were as close to the disaster as it goes with the Navy being “problematic”.
The Navy.
Intermission. OTL conversation between Rozdestvensky and Grand Duke A.M. in the presence of NII and Admiral-General in 1904: “Rozdnstvensky ... said that he was ready to immediately go to Port Arthur and meet the Japanese face to face. His almost Nelsonian speech sounded comical coming from a man who was entrusted with almost all power over our fleet. I reminded him that Russia has the right to expect anything more significant from its naval chiefs than readiness to go down.
"What can I do," he exclaimed: "Public opinion should be satisfied. I know that. I am fully aware that we do not have the slightest chance to win the fight against the Japanese.
- Why didn't you think about it before when you ridiculed Mikado sailors?
"I didn't ridicule," Rozhestvensky objected stubbornly: "I'm ready for the biggest sacrifice. This is the maximum that can be expected from a person.”
And this man with suicide psychology was going to command our fleet!”
The Army.
During the reign of AIII the Military Minister was general Vannvsky whom the emperor knew personally and valued for …er… not rocking the boat. He did not approve of the technical innovations but usually was caving to a pressure so the Russian army was not lagging behind armies of the other Great Powers. However, he was absolutely alien to the issues of a big scale military production, military usage of the railroads, etc. and while innovations in the “conventional” weapons were something he was grudgingly accepted, he completely rejected the brand new ideas like aviation (and the Grand Duke A.M. had to appeal directly to the emperor).
Artillery was in a good shape thanks to its inspector-general, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich who “practically created Russian rapid-fire artillery, laid the foundations of heavy mobile artillery, invariably demanded and personally checked with each officer an ability to conduct a fire from the closed positions and enforced supply of the necessary optical devices”.
Vannovsky retired and NII replaced him with general Rediger. He was one of the few ministers who managed to establish good business relations with the centrist and partly with the right-wing factions of the State Duma, which had a positive impact on the rapid and successful consideration and approval of the army bills submitted to the Duma. The reason for the dismissal was the emperor's dissatisfaction with one of Rediger's speeches in the State Duma, which caused a public outcry (in fact, the Minister of War recognized the fact of dissatisfaction of the current command staff, which immediately caused attacks by the right-wing press, which wrote about the minister's insult of the army).
General Rediger was replaced by general Sukhomlinov. He was a charmer. He also was a graduate of the General Staff Academy, a cavalryman, author of the books on tactics and (which should but did not ring an alarm bell) for a while served under general Dragomirov [1]. While it was already too late to abolish the “useless” innovations that were already adopted, he contributed by denying useful of the internal combustion engines. “War is a fistfight, today this fight will be with the use of an internal combustion engine, so we don't need them.” However, Under Sukhomlinov, reserve and fortress troops were disbanded, due to which field troops were strengthened (the number of army corps increased from 31 to 37) and he created military counter-intelligence.
His relations with State Duma were awful and he never visited it but he was good in getting what he wanted directly from NII and this was quite annoying to his colleagues ministers, especially to Kokovtsev. “I developed my point of view in the most detail to the Sovereign and presented a special statement in which I showed all the unnecessary money that the Minister of War demanded and without which our military training would not have suffered any damage. The amount of these extra loans turned out to be very significant - about 80 million rubles only for 1913. I also presented, as usual, another statement - on unspent loans of the old time - there were more than 180 million rubles.” Nicholas thanked him: “Let's hope that now it will go better and better, and if Sukhomlinov tells Me again that you're interrupting him off in loans, I'll just tell him that I don't want to listen to it anymore, and that it will now be his fault, not you.” ….and soon afterwards requested a new big sum of money on some new Sukhomlinov’s schema in violation of the legal procedures due to the alleged “emergency”. “The analysis of his requirements, which I hastily made, found out that out of 63 million rubles, at least 13 million have already been included in the estimates and cannot demand a secondary allocation - this general Sukhomlinov simply did not know - and ashamed by Kharitonov, naively remarked: "well, so they can be excluded." It turned out that out of the remaining 50 million, only about 20 require an immediate distribution, and more than 30 will be required in mid-1913 or even much later.” And this was just one episode. In general, with his very superficial military education NII simply was no grasping substance of the issue. Kokovtsev again:
“The Sovereign obviously sincerely thought that He supported the army, satisfying the demands of the Minister of War, and did not have the opportunity to delve into all their absurdity. .
When, a few days later, I visited Him with my next report, He completely sincerely and simply told me that after reading the Council's report, He finds that it is better to give money than to refuse it, although it is obvious that they will not be able to use these funds on time, but it is important that the army will know that it is being taken care of and prepared for war.
Again and again, I had to say in vain that the army needs not that according to the estimates of the Military Ministry there are allocated money, but that artillery has guns and shells and there is no shortage of rifles, machine guns and cartridges, and that it is necessary to give and execute the order properly, and not to remake drawings several times and not cancel them. I said all this time, clearly realizing that under such a manager as Sukhomlinov, the whole thing will remain in the same hopeless state and will go with the same turtle step, no matter how much you accumulate fuel material around us.”
Eventually, in 1914 he was accused of making the questionable contracts, mishandling supplies system and other misdeeds.
As a result, he was fired and replaced with general Polivanov who, as a deputy minister, worked with Rediger and then Sukhomlinov and had good relations both with the Council of Minister and with the right-wingers in the Duma. He focused on improving the supply of the army. Supporter of the involvement of the general public in military production. During Polivanov's administration, the acute crisis in supplying the army was generally overcome. The restructuring of the military industry, in which Polivanov played the main role, gave an increase in the production in 1915 (compared to 1914) of rifles by almost 2 times, machine guns - by 4 times, cartridges - by 70 percent, guns - by 2 times, shells - by more than 3 times. At the same time, Polivanov's active contacts with representatives of the large bourgeoisie and in the Duma circles, which reached self-promotion, gave rise to his distrust in the inner circle of Nicholas II. Close friendship with the chairman of the Central Military-Industrial Commission A. I. Guchkov also was “incriminating” but for the next few years he retained position.
He appointed general D.S.Shuvaev a Head of the Main Intendant Directorate of the Ministry of War. Being personally a very honest person Shuvaev accomplished impossible: eradicated corruption in the intendancy. During the reorganization of his directorate he paid a special to strengthening of the technical committee by introducing representatives of civil departments (ministries of finance, trade, industry, etc.), as well as professors of a number of institutes.
Foreign Affairs.
This area was bad. The Russian diplomats traditionally had been the great specialists in protocol, language of the diplomatic messages, etc. Some of them even had been good as the ambassadors. However, as soon as any of them was appointed Minister of the Foreign Affairs, some internal mechanism was clicking in and they either became afraid of their own shadows or started promoting some insane schemas. This phenomena was going back to at least the reign of AII and AIII became “his own Foreign Minister” with Girs serving just as an executor of his orders. Girs was followed by Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, followed by N.P.Shishkin, followed by M.N.Muraviev, followed by V.N.Lamsdorf, followed by A.P.Izvolsky who fell out of favor for conducting the secret negotiations without informing the fellow ministers (and, what’s more unfortunate, these negotiations being unsuccessful and leaked to the press). Now the Minister was S.D.Sazonov, Stolypin’s protege with a rather surprising reputation of being a liberal. Just as Izvolsky, had been suspected in the wrong (anti-Ottoman) sympathies on the Balkans but, unlike his predecessor, managed to keep his personal feelings under control.
The ongoing problem was a prevailing (with the exception of Izvolsky) Eurocentric experience of these ministers and a resulting absence of the first hand knowledge of the Far Eastern affairs. As a result, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich who, on the early stages of his naval career spent three years in Nagasaki, probably had a better knowledge of the subject that Russian Foreign Minister.
Intermission. In OTL the ship on which he was making circumnavigation was, as a part of the trip, stationed in Nagasaki for three years. This was usual practice which both sides seemingly enjoyed. Obviously, the young naval officers were looking for certain “accommodations” and the existing institute of the temporarily marriage served the purpose perfectly. The officers had been living in the nice clean houses with the small beautiful gardens and beautiful local girls trained to make their life comfortable. No stigma had been attached to this occupation and the girls had full respect of their neighbors and families. After visiting households of few of his fellow officers AM was easily persuaded to get follow the trend. Taking into an account his high status, he was presented with an assembly of 60 girls to chose from. According to his memoirs, they were indistinguishable: doll-like, delicate, beautiful and extremely elegant. With his preferred color being blue he picked one in a blue kimono and it worked just fine. The girl was highly resected in the village as a “wife” of a “very important samurai” and everybody involved had been happy. Later, he decided that it will be a good idea to learn Japanese and she acted as his tutor. Then the cable came from his cousin AIII with the instruction to pay an official visit to mikado. Master of the ceremonies at the Japanese court previously served in the same capacity in the German Imperial court and the whole thing was done with a due pomp: special train, 101 guns salute, escort of the mounted Guards, the whole enchilada. During a banquet he was sitting next to the Empress and decided to surprise her by talking without an interpreter. The Empress reacted strangely obviously trying to restrain herself but when he continued talking she brought in laughing and soon the whole table followed. Surprised, he asked if he did not learn Japanese well and got an answer that, on a contrary, he learned it too well and there was even a correct guess in which village exactly he was staying. It just happened that people of that village are talking on some specific dialect which the “true Japanese” find very funny [2]. PM Ito even promised to send girl in question an official gratitude for her pedagogical success.
Of course, there were specialists in the Foreign Ministry but they were hardly present at the high level decision making discussions and, them being in the subordinate positions, it was quite possible that they would be saying something their superiors would like to hear. Taking into an account the increasing importance of Japan and growing mess in China, this shortage of competence made it difficult to define and implement the right Russian policy on the Far East.
____________
[1] Remember, one who denied the magazine rifles, machine guns and other foolish things that may negatively impact the only important thing, the soldier’s spirit.
[2] My personal guess was that that “dialect” was full of the obscenities but unfortunately AM did not provide any details so the funny part remains a mystery.
“The broken heart of "Madame Butterfly" caused an explosion of laughter in the Empire of the Rising Sun, because none of the kimono wearers was stupid enough to assume that she could stay with her "husband" until the death will part. Usually, the "marriage contract" was concluded with Japanese women for a period of one to three years depending upon how longer the ship would have to stay in the Japanese port. By the time such a contract expired, a new officer appeared, or if the previous "husband" was generous enough and his "wife" could save enough money, she returned back to her family.”
“Emperor Nicholas II has always been tormented by the same question: "What would his father do in his place?"
A.M.Romanov, ‘Memoirs of the Grand Duke A.M.Romanov’
“While the smart man is thinking, the fool is already doing.”
“While the fools are fighting the smart people are making money”
Proverbs
1914.
The US.
Formally, everything was just peachy. More or less. The world’s share of the US manufacturing amounted to 32% with annual steel production was 31,800,000 tons. In 1913, American exports amounted to 2.466 billion dollars, when imports amounted to $1.813 billion.
Then recession kicked in with the contractions of manufacturing and unemployment growth up to 11%. As a result, in 1914 export decreased almost by 100 millions and import increased by 81 million. Still, the GNP was approximately 38.6 billions, so this was serious but not critical. However, the U.S. had problems with the balance of payments and credit deficit. The main financial source of the American economy outside it was Great Britain and international transactions had been made in pounds, not dollars. The foreign (European) investments in the US amounted to $7.2 billion and American in foreign countries - $5 billion. The pure foreign debt was 3 billions or almost 7% of the GDP and, so far, “free market economy” did not allow concentrate the financial resources in the “strategic” sectors including the new areas, which had routinely suffering from the shortage of funds. For example, production of aviation industry amounted only to $2,000,000 and shipbuilding to $100,000. Only 35% of the metallurgy capacities had been engaged and while the agriculture was in a better position, it was dependent upon consumption in the cities which was going to be impacted by coming recession.
The European war came as a blessing. Production of the aviation industry increased, shipbuilding skyrocketed and so did the wheat export and the same goes for many other sectors. And, of course, the weapons producers and those financing them had been successfully lobbying for a considerable strengthening of the US army and navy to meet the potential challenges. There was an intensive discussion about creation of a government-sponsored military-financial corporation that is going to provide a financial backing of the strategically important sectors of economy and (artificially) maintain the course of the government-issued bonds.
And, with everybody looking for the credits, position of the world’s biggest creditor had been shifting from Britain to the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, there was an open question who and how is eventually going to pay the growing national debts but this was an issue of the future, just as the potential byproducts of the overextended credits to the economy and greatly expanded volume of money in circulation. Right now the things were good.
Politically, so far, the interventionist and noninterventionist lobbies had been balancing each other. The first group (representing you can guess whom) wanted bigger contracts to the military industry and the second wanted to profiteer on the broader imports and credits to the combatants.
With no big public sentiment for entering the war (and a general lack of understanding why it is being fought) and no clear winner, the US stuck to the neutrality and making money.
Japan.
So far, Japanese government had been torn between two desires:
- To use situation for greatly increasing Japan’s footprint in China peacefully, to a great degree at the British expense.
- To enter war on the British side and grab German Kiautschou and then the whole Chinese Shantung province.
However, the militarist party kept advocating a military action arguing that, with the German garrison in Kiautschou is small and isolated and the risk is minimal: Germany is far away and occupied fighting Britain and it is extremely unlikely that Russia was going to start a war on Germany’s behalf.
On the top of all of the above there were:
- The US preaching the territorial integrity of China and open doors trade policy; none of which was pleasing Japan.
- China appealing to everybody to support its sovereignty and seemingly eager to kick the Europeans out of their concessions.
- Britain encouraging Japan to attack the German colony.
- German and France encouraging Japan to attack the British positions in China.
- Russian position which so far was rather difficult to figure out.
- 2 dreadnoughts
- 1 battlecruiser
- 4 2nd class battlecruisers
- 10 pre-dreadnoughts
- 8 armored cruisers
- 15 protected cruisers
- 6 light cruisers
- 1 seaplane carrier
- 50 destroyers
- 12 submarines
Russia.
Intermission. In OTL NII was seemingly almost physically afraid of his uncles Vladimir, Sergei and Alexei: they could almost always get what they wanted by shouting on him. To some degree this was also the case with Nicholas Nikolaevich. While AIII was maintaining order in the family by his intimidating personality, NII was trying to avoid the scandals by accommodating his uncles and they used this to their advantage. OTOH, with his own generation (Alexander Mikhailovich and Sergei Mikhailovich also were his “uncles” and AM was his brother in law and pretty much the only close friend) he felt himself much freer in his usual practice of promising things and then reneging on the promises. ITTL these uncles are already dead and he has more “education in governing” but this part of his personality is still there.
Seemingly, the things were going on well. Industry and trade were increasing, Russia was steadily getting rid of the foreign debts and, using the war as an excuse, mostly nationalized the oil industry. But the government had been plagued by the problems the biggest of which was the Emperor himself. His late father taught him a routine of the government but could not teach how to chose people or to get rid of his natural indecisiveness. As the ministers he inherited Witte (PM) and Stolypin (Interior) and, as minister of finances he had a reasonably competent Kokovtsev but the Army and the Foreign Affairs were as close to the disaster as it goes with the Navy being “problematic”.
The Navy.
- The Minister of Navy, admiral Dikov, conducted a number of much needed organizational reforms and was quite popular in the navy but he had a big problem: he was expressing an open disdain to the State Duma and the Duma’s leadership was reciprocating in kind, which made obtaining the credits for naval buildup close to impossible and in 1912 he asked to be relieved from his duties and retired from the active service (but remained in the Council of State). His successor, vice-admiral Voevodsky (former Dikov’s deputy), also was at war with the Duma and had to go in 1913 to be replaced by admiral Grigorovich, who had reputation of a capable naval administrator and was able to get for the Navy the huge credits.
- But the problems did not stop there. Chief of the General Naval Staff (GNS), vice-admiral Rozdestvensky, was, for all practical purposes, an idiot. To be fair, at least he was not an idiot with initiative but this was not a big consolation because he was not a stubborn idiot either and, while pretending to be a brave idiot, completely lacked a backbone in his communications both with the emperor and “the public”, which, for the time being, was keeping him in his position. Actually, he was not too bad for his specific position, which was strictly bureaucratic (functions of the GNS included: human resources, statistcs, regulations, training, etc.). It is just that he had to be kept out of any practical command and, with NII being rather unpredictable, this was hard to guarantee).
Intermission. OTL conversation between Rozdestvensky and Grand Duke A.M. in the presence of NII and Admiral-General in 1904: “Rozdnstvensky ... said that he was ready to immediately go to Port Arthur and meet the Japanese face to face. His almost Nelsonian speech sounded comical coming from a man who was entrusted with almost all power over our fleet. I reminded him that Russia has the right to expect anything more significant from its naval chiefs than readiness to go down.
"What can I do," he exclaimed: "Public opinion should be satisfied. I know that. I am fully aware that we do not have the slightest chance to win the fight against the Japanese.
- Why didn't you think about it before when you ridiculed Mikado sailors?
"I didn't ridicule," Rozhestvensky objected stubbornly: "I'm ready for the biggest sacrifice. This is the maximum that can be expected from a person.”
And this man with suicide psychology was going to command our fleet!”
The Army.
During the reign of AIII the Military Minister was general Vannvsky whom the emperor knew personally and valued for …er… not rocking the boat. He did not approve of the technical innovations but usually was caving to a pressure so the Russian army was not lagging behind armies of the other Great Powers. However, he was absolutely alien to the issues of a big scale military production, military usage of the railroads, etc. and while innovations in the “conventional” weapons were something he was grudgingly accepted, he completely rejected the brand new ideas like aviation (and the Grand Duke A.M. had to appeal directly to the emperor).
Artillery was in a good shape thanks to its inspector-general, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich who “practically created Russian rapid-fire artillery, laid the foundations of heavy mobile artillery, invariably demanded and personally checked with each officer an ability to conduct a fire from the closed positions and enforced supply of the necessary optical devices”.
Vannovsky retired and NII replaced him with general Rediger. He was one of the few ministers who managed to establish good business relations with the centrist and partly with the right-wing factions of the State Duma, which had a positive impact on the rapid and successful consideration and approval of the army bills submitted to the Duma. The reason for the dismissal was the emperor's dissatisfaction with one of Rediger's speeches in the State Duma, which caused a public outcry (in fact, the Minister of War recognized the fact of dissatisfaction of the current command staff, which immediately caused attacks by the right-wing press, which wrote about the minister's insult of the army).
General Rediger was replaced by general Sukhomlinov. He was a charmer. He also was a graduate of the General Staff Academy, a cavalryman, author of the books on tactics and (which should but did not ring an alarm bell) for a while served under general Dragomirov [1]. While it was already too late to abolish the “useless” innovations that were already adopted, he contributed by denying useful of the internal combustion engines. “War is a fistfight, today this fight will be with the use of an internal combustion engine, so we don't need them.” However, Under Sukhomlinov, reserve and fortress troops were disbanded, due to which field troops were strengthened (the number of army corps increased from 31 to 37) and he created military counter-intelligence.
His relations with State Duma were awful and he never visited it but he was good in getting what he wanted directly from NII and this was quite annoying to his colleagues ministers, especially to Kokovtsev. “I developed my point of view in the most detail to the Sovereign and presented a special statement in which I showed all the unnecessary money that the Minister of War demanded and without which our military training would not have suffered any damage. The amount of these extra loans turned out to be very significant - about 80 million rubles only for 1913. I also presented, as usual, another statement - on unspent loans of the old time - there were more than 180 million rubles.” Nicholas thanked him: “Let's hope that now it will go better and better, and if Sukhomlinov tells Me again that you're interrupting him off in loans, I'll just tell him that I don't want to listen to it anymore, and that it will now be his fault, not you.” ….and soon afterwards requested a new big sum of money on some new Sukhomlinov’s schema in violation of the legal procedures due to the alleged “emergency”. “The analysis of his requirements, which I hastily made, found out that out of 63 million rubles, at least 13 million have already been included in the estimates and cannot demand a secondary allocation - this general Sukhomlinov simply did not know - and ashamed by Kharitonov, naively remarked: "well, so they can be excluded." It turned out that out of the remaining 50 million, only about 20 require an immediate distribution, and more than 30 will be required in mid-1913 or even much later.” And this was just one episode. In general, with his very superficial military education NII simply was no grasping substance of the issue. Kokovtsev again:
“The Sovereign obviously sincerely thought that He supported the army, satisfying the demands of the Minister of War, and did not have the opportunity to delve into all their absurdity. .
When, a few days later, I visited Him with my next report, He completely sincerely and simply told me that after reading the Council's report, He finds that it is better to give money than to refuse it, although it is obvious that they will not be able to use these funds on time, but it is important that the army will know that it is being taken care of and prepared for war.
Again and again, I had to say in vain that the army needs not that according to the estimates of the Military Ministry there are allocated money, but that artillery has guns and shells and there is no shortage of rifles, machine guns and cartridges, and that it is necessary to give and execute the order properly, and not to remake drawings several times and not cancel them. I said all this time, clearly realizing that under such a manager as Sukhomlinov, the whole thing will remain in the same hopeless state and will go with the same turtle step, no matter how much you accumulate fuel material around us.”
Eventually, in 1914 he was accused of making the questionable contracts, mishandling supplies system and other misdeeds.
As a result, he was fired and replaced with general Polivanov who, as a deputy minister, worked with Rediger and then Sukhomlinov and had good relations both with the Council of Minister and with the right-wingers in the Duma. He focused on improving the supply of the army. Supporter of the involvement of the general public in military production. During Polivanov's administration, the acute crisis in supplying the army was generally overcome. The restructuring of the military industry, in which Polivanov played the main role, gave an increase in the production in 1915 (compared to 1914) of rifles by almost 2 times, machine guns - by 4 times, cartridges - by 70 percent, guns - by 2 times, shells - by more than 3 times. At the same time, Polivanov's active contacts with representatives of the large bourgeoisie and in the Duma circles, which reached self-promotion, gave rise to his distrust in the inner circle of Nicholas II. Close friendship with the chairman of the Central Military-Industrial Commission A. I. Guchkov also was “incriminating” but for the next few years he retained position.
He appointed general D.S.Shuvaev a Head of the Main Intendant Directorate of the Ministry of War. Being personally a very honest person Shuvaev accomplished impossible: eradicated corruption in the intendancy. During the reorganization of his directorate he paid a special to strengthening of the technical committee by introducing representatives of civil departments (ministries of finance, trade, industry, etc.), as well as professors of a number of institutes.
Foreign Affairs.
This area was bad. The Russian diplomats traditionally had been the great specialists in protocol, language of the diplomatic messages, etc. Some of them even had been good as the ambassadors. However, as soon as any of them was appointed Minister of the Foreign Affairs, some internal mechanism was clicking in and they either became afraid of their own shadows or started promoting some insane schemas. This phenomena was going back to at least the reign of AII and AIII became “his own Foreign Minister” with Girs serving just as an executor of his orders. Girs was followed by Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, followed by N.P.Shishkin, followed by M.N.Muraviev, followed by V.N.Lamsdorf, followed by A.P.Izvolsky who fell out of favor for conducting the secret negotiations without informing the fellow ministers (and, what’s more unfortunate, these negotiations being unsuccessful and leaked to the press). Now the Minister was S.D.Sazonov, Stolypin’s protege with a rather surprising reputation of being a liberal. Just as Izvolsky, had been suspected in the wrong (anti-Ottoman) sympathies on the Balkans but, unlike his predecessor, managed to keep his personal feelings under control.
The ongoing problem was a prevailing (with the exception of Izvolsky) Eurocentric experience of these ministers and a resulting absence of the first hand knowledge of the Far Eastern affairs. As a result, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich who, on the early stages of his naval career spent three years in Nagasaki, probably had a better knowledge of the subject that Russian Foreign Minister.
Intermission. In OTL the ship on which he was making circumnavigation was, as a part of the trip, stationed in Nagasaki for three years. This was usual practice which both sides seemingly enjoyed. Obviously, the young naval officers were looking for certain “accommodations” and the existing institute of the temporarily marriage served the purpose perfectly. The officers had been living in the nice clean houses with the small beautiful gardens and beautiful local girls trained to make their life comfortable. No stigma had been attached to this occupation and the girls had full respect of their neighbors and families. After visiting households of few of his fellow officers AM was easily persuaded to get follow the trend. Taking into an account his high status, he was presented with an assembly of 60 girls to chose from. According to his memoirs, they were indistinguishable: doll-like, delicate, beautiful and extremely elegant. With his preferred color being blue he picked one in a blue kimono and it worked just fine. The girl was highly resected in the village as a “wife” of a “very important samurai” and everybody involved had been happy. Later, he decided that it will be a good idea to learn Japanese and she acted as his tutor. Then the cable came from his cousin AIII with the instruction to pay an official visit to mikado. Master of the ceremonies at the Japanese court previously served in the same capacity in the German Imperial court and the whole thing was done with a due pomp: special train, 101 guns salute, escort of the mounted Guards, the whole enchilada. During a banquet he was sitting next to the Empress and decided to surprise her by talking without an interpreter. The Empress reacted strangely obviously trying to restrain herself but when he continued talking she brought in laughing and soon the whole table followed. Surprised, he asked if he did not learn Japanese well and got an answer that, on a contrary, he learned it too well and there was even a correct guess in which village exactly he was staying. It just happened that people of that village are talking on some specific dialect which the “true Japanese” find very funny [2]. PM Ito even promised to send girl in question an official gratitude for her pedagogical success.
Of course, there were specialists in the Foreign Ministry but they were hardly present at the high level decision making discussions and, them being in the subordinate positions, it was quite possible that they would be saying something their superiors would like to hear. Taking into an account the increasing importance of Japan and growing mess in China, this shortage of competence made it difficult to define and implement the right Russian policy on the Far East.
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[1] Remember, one who denied the magazine rifles, machine guns and other foolish things that may negatively impact the only important thing, the soldier’s spirit.
[2] My personal guess was that that “dialect” was full of the obscenities but unfortunately AM did not provide any details so the funny part remains a mystery.
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