No GNW (or “Peter goes South”)
- Thread starter alexmilman
- Start date
I'm for it continuing wherever you are most comfortable for it to be. (It would be worthwhile to think, though, if post-1900 really would garner 211 more pages)
Honestly, I’m not at all sure about 200 more. The interesting (IMO) coming event is Great Depression with its impacts here and there (and a chance for the RE to “play the SU” 😉). After it is more or less over there is a Far East China-Japan mess, which as far as I can see is not generating too much of an interest, Russia -Japan conflict/full scale war and Poland at war with Austria-Bohemia or Germany. Somewhere at that point the whole thing has to stop. So, to think about it, perhaps moving does not make too much sense.
I’m trying to figure out if I can do one more in parallel. Say, CII which uses only one part of her anatomy for thinking (I mean head). Or Nappy and AI getting well together (not sure if this is not ASB). 😂
Honestly could be good, especially in atracting new people to read and engange with it
I must say that my interest in the TL is gone, now I stay for the people, though a non-Russian tl might be a good shakeup
Thanks. Interesting. Not quite sure how to do this and what the result is going to be. Can you, please, elaborate?
So basically it's all elbowgrease. It's starting a new thread post 1900. The new thread has a URL, which you add to this one in the last thread mark of this thread. The URL of this thread is the first post (thread marked obviously) of the new thread, so people can always find both threads. Then its "just" copying all your updates from the thread marks in this thread post 1900 to the new thread and thread marking them again.
This, it's hard to find a good Russian tl, especially one as this that is so well researched and reveals things beyond the cliches we see happening in Russia at other tls
Also, after russia invasion of Ukraine, there are almost no russia tl, and many tl are trying to destroy russia or weaken them.
And if you write a positive Russian TL now you might get accused of being a Russia shill. Like how in the 28 Days Later TL here in the site where the Rage Virus decimated most of Europe but Russia was mostly safe and managed to occupy it's former ussr territories, a few years later after that some user came and demanded that it was changed given the war going on.
This is a very good point and I made mine mind. For as long as it lasts TTL will continue here: I don’t want to deal with the individuals who are confusing alt-history with a reality and seriously think that the postings are changing history or must serve some political agenda.
Very dark clouds
445. Very dark clouds.
1929. The Great Depression
The US
Most of the 1920s an unhealthy big part of the civilized world, and especially the US, had been busy “looking for a greater fool”: during the rapid growth, investors are ready to spend more because of the confidence that they will be able to resell the goods to an "even bigger fool" who will pay the price they named. What’s worse, most of the players had been borrowing amounts of money greatly exceeding their own capital. When “the bigger fool” is absent, the prices go down, the creditors demand their money back and the BIG OOPS starts. But so far everything was fine: national income increased from $32 billion in 1913 to $89.7 billion in 1927. Companies shared growing profits with employees, and they created demand for goods and services. By October 1929, the money supply (cash in circulation and in bank accounts) in the U.S. economy had increased by 60 percent compared to the beginning of the decade. Everybody believed that tomorrow is going to be even better than today and out of 120 millions population more than 30 millions had brokerage accounts. 25% of the population looking for the bigger idiots than themselves is always a dangerous situation, especially while they are successful.
At the same time, some signs of imminent problems, if desired, could be noticed earlier: already in 1926 there was a drop in sales in certain sectors, for example, in the automotive industry, a decrease in companies' investment in production, a decline in construction: it was much more profitable to put money into speculations with the shares than invest them in the shares of the manufacturing companies. But these were just trifles easy to ignore.
Agricultural sector was a separate but not unrelated issue: during the Barmalei War the increased demand for all toes of grain led to millions of acres of native grassland being replaced by heavily disked fields of straight row crops. Of course, to establish and maintain their farms the farmers needed money and, as a result, had been deeply in debt to the banks. In the late 1920s the the grain prices started falling, which prompted increasing of the ploughed area to compensate lost revenues with increased quantity, which led to both destruction of the land and a danger of the overproduction so the millions farmers relied upon a notion of the ever increasing demand, which, just as a “greater fool” idea may stop working resulting in BIG OOPS in that area. The dust storms will come later as a cherry on the top.
To spare everybody the numerous economic theories (beyond what I wrote above these theories are divided into two main categories: (a) those I never heard about and (b) those that I did not understand), I’d stick to a contemporary rumor reported by Upton Sinclair in Between Two Worlds: someone wanted to withdraw hundred (IIRC) bucks from his bank account, the bank did not have cash and this triggered the panic and chain reaction. True or not, this at least easy to understand. 😉
On October 24 1929 s—t hit the fan. There was a mass sale on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): in total, traders got rid of 12.9 million shares and bonds, and the main indicator of that time - the Dow Jones Industrial Index - fell by 11 percent. The next day, the situation slightly recovered, prices went up, but the effect was deceptive. "Black Thursday" was followed by "Black Monday" and "Black Tuesday." By the middle of the week, about 30 million more shares had been sold out, the market as a whole lost about 40 percent of its value, which in monetary terms amounted to $30 billion (440 billion at the current exchange rate). In what later will be known as Great Depression unemployment reached 25%, industrial production halved, more than 5,000 banks bankrupted, crop prices fell 60% destroying millions farmers, etc.
In agriculture the OOPS started when demands for the grain plummeted and the costs with them. The farmers found themselves with a production that nobody was going to buy, could not make their payments to the banks, lost the farms and turned into the migrant workers traveling across the country in a hope to find at least some work. The banks were saddled with the worthless farms and also went down to be consumed by the big ones, which could deal with the short term losses.
In the cities situation was so lousy that even personages like Al Capone had been running the soup kitchens.
But, on a cheerful side, the movie industry was blooming. So were the gaming and bootlegging industry. Which means that economy was essentially healthy and getting back to normal is just a matter of time … and abolishing of the Prohibition, of course.
Elsewhere
The waves had been spreading throughout the world. Except for Antarctica and some most economically advanced places in the middle of nowhere where they did not care too much about stock exchange, imports/experts, gold standard and other nonsense. For example, in New Guinea it was a duty of a good son to break a skull of his dead father and suck his brain through a straw; in a time free from performing these filial duties the natives were seemingly busy looking for the available sources of protein (understandably, the potential sources were doing the same), which kept them occupied in ecologically-friendly way not leaving too much time forplaying on stock exchange and as a result preventing high unemployment, loss of the savings and other distressful experiences.
Well, and China also was not impacted because it stuck to the silver standard but in its existing domestic situation nobody would probably notice the Depression of any size anyway.
According to the Lomonosov’s Law, if something is being taken from one place, something should add elsewhere and in this specific case Russian Empire was in a good position to be on the “added” side due to the specifics of its economic system:
The US company “Kahn inc.” received a package of orders worth $2 billion and ensured the implementation of more than a third of industrial and construction projects. The company invented a method of “conveyor-flow” production of technical documentation, which allowed to make projects in a matter of weeks and to build plants in months.
Tsaritsin tractor plant was built in the USA, dismantled, transported on 100 cargo ships and then assembled in Russia. Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works was designed by the American company Arthur McKee Company, and equipment for car assembly plants in Nizhny Novgorod was provided by Ford Motors.
Of course, not everything went smoothly: the main importer of the Russian grain was Britain and devaluation of a pound in 1931 caused considerable losses and a need to dig into the gold reserves but, comparing to the results, it was worth it. Within a decade volume of the industrial production grew by 429% comparing to 1929. Of course, a very important component was the “human material” familiar with the new technologies and, with an alternative to stay in a line to the soup kitchen, there was plenty of it available at the reasonable costs. About 20,000 American engineers and technicians and up to 10,000 Germans came and were responsible for production for the first few years while their Russian colleagues had been getting necessary experience.
All these developments required domestic specialists of all levels, from engineer to a skilled worker, which meant a need of a much greater number of the educational entities of all levels from college down to the “elementary” courses preparing technicians and this, in turn, meant much more qualified teaching technical cadres than the empire had at the moment [4], leading to the extensive contracting of the foreign instructors. Within a decade over 300,000 specialists of all levels had been educated.
Well, of course, the people are not grow on the trees so the obvious question was about the source of the new cadres for the greatly expanding industry. Most of the needed workers had been coming for the poorest peasants, usually from the rural communes, immediately or soon after the military service. They were disciplined, used to live in the barracks, usually in a good physical shape (soldier’s ration was much better than what even middle level peasant could afford: 1,230 grams of bread, 136 grams of cereals, 300 grams of meat, monetary allowances for vegetables, tea, sugar, butter, etc.). Of course, while this was making them good labor cadres there was an open question about a resulting negative impact upon the least efficient sector of the Russian agriculture and its influence upon the total output. But this will take time to assess and in a meantime Russian Empire had been getting a big expansion of its heavy industry for a reasonably low price.
Some excessively inquisitive mind could ask a bizarre question why would Russian Empire need so many tractors. Fortunately, nobody involved in the industrialization project was stupid or tactless enough to ask it. The American side had been happy to get the great contracts and employment opportunities and on the Russian side those who by their position may ask such a question had been informed in advance that the newly built plants with some reasonably small additions and adjustments may start producing not just tractors but some other types of the very useful vehicles as well.
__________
[1] While there are fools around, we can live successfully by cheating.”
[2] While there are greedy people, we’ll keep being lucky.
[3] With the exception of TTL-related BS, this mostly reflects the OTL events of the early 1930s. Why invent things if a reality is fantastic enough? 😉
[4] It would be dangerously close to ASB to paint a picture in which under the normal circumstances the educational system of the Russian Empire would …er… voluntarily shift from producing mostly lawyers, philosophers and historians to predominantly educating the engineers. And who would educate them.
«Покуда есть на свете дураки,
Обманом жить нам, стало быть, с руки.» [1]
«Покуда живы жадины вокруг
Удачу мы не выпустим из рук» [2]
‘Adventures of Buratino’
“Doctor, can you put in my diagnosis “Great” before “depression””?
“- Two comrades meet. "I heard you lost a lot of money on Wall Street. Were you a bear or a bull? - "No, I was just an ass," the friend answers.”
“ Year 2007. Meeting of shareholders. The elderly head of the bank is trying to convince the audience that the crisis is over and the market has finally stabilized. He's being asked for arguments." Forty years ago, I sold 500 shares of our company and bought a 1967 Ford pickup truck. Last week I sold another 500 shares and again was able to buy a Ford pickup truck released in 1967,"” .
“My grandpa grew up during the depression, as a result, he never threw anything away. He died in the war, holding a hand grenade.”
Unknown authors
“The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.”
John Steinbeck
“A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.”
Ronald Reagan
“You, guys, see a problem. I see an opportunity.”
‘My blue heaven’
“All changes occurring in nature occur in such a way that as much as is added to what is added, the same amount is subtracted from the other.”
Lomonosov’s Law
Обманом жить нам, стало быть, с руки.» [1]
«Покуда живы жадины вокруг
Удачу мы не выпустим из рук» [2]
‘Adventures of Buratino’
“Doctor, can you put in my diagnosis “Great” before “depression””?
“- Two comrades meet. "I heard you lost a lot of money on Wall Street. Were you a bear or a bull? - "No, I was just an ass," the friend answers.”
“ Year 2007. Meeting of shareholders. The elderly head of the bank is trying to convince the audience that the crisis is over and the market has finally stabilized. He's being asked for arguments." Forty years ago, I sold 500 shares of our company and bought a 1967 Ford pickup truck. Last week I sold another 500 shares and again was able to buy a Ford pickup truck released in 1967,"” .
“My grandpa grew up during the depression, as a result, he never threw anything away. He died in the war, holding a hand grenade.”
Unknown authors
“The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.”
John Steinbeck
“A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.”
Ronald Reagan
“You, guys, see a problem. I see an opportunity.”
‘My blue heaven’
“All changes occurring in nature occur in such a way that as much as is added to what is added, the same amount is subtracted from the other.”
Lomonosov’s Law
1929. The Great Depression
The US
Most of the 1920s an unhealthy big part of the civilized world, and especially the US, had been busy “looking for a greater fool”: during the rapid growth, investors are ready to spend more because of the confidence that they will be able to resell the goods to an "even bigger fool" who will pay the price they named. What’s worse, most of the players had been borrowing amounts of money greatly exceeding their own capital. When “the bigger fool” is absent, the prices go down, the creditors demand their money back and the BIG OOPS starts. But so far everything was fine: national income increased from $32 billion in 1913 to $89.7 billion in 1927. Companies shared growing profits with employees, and they created demand for goods and services. By October 1929, the money supply (cash in circulation and in bank accounts) in the U.S. economy had increased by 60 percent compared to the beginning of the decade. Everybody believed that tomorrow is going to be even better than today and out of 120 millions population more than 30 millions had brokerage accounts. 25% of the population looking for the bigger idiots than themselves is always a dangerous situation, especially while they are successful.
At the same time, some signs of imminent problems, if desired, could be noticed earlier: already in 1926 there was a drop in sales in certain sectors, for example, in the automotive industry, a decrease in companies' investment in production, a decline in construction: it was much more profitable to put money into speculations with the shares than invest them in the shares of the manufacturing companies. But these were just trifles easy to ignore.
Agricultural sector was a separate but not unrelated issue: during the Barmalei War the increased demand for all toes of grain led to millions of acres of native grassland being replaced by heavily disked fields of straight row crops. Of course, to establish and maintain their farms the farmers needed money and, as a result, had been deeply in debt to the banks. In the late 1920s the the grain prices started falling, which prompted increasing of the ploughed area to compensate lost revenues with increased quantity, which led to both destruction of the land and a danger of the overproduction so the millions farmers relied upon a notion of the ever increasing demand, which, just as a “greater fool” idea may stop working resulting in BIG OOPS in that area. The dust storms will come later as a cherry on the top.
To spare everybody the numerous economic theories (beyond what I wrote above these theories are divided into two main categories: (a) those I never heard about and (b) those that I did not understand), I’d stick to a contemporary rumor reported by Upton Sinclair in Between Two Worlds: someone wanted to withdraw hundred (IIRC) bucks from his bank account, the bank did not have cash and this triggered the panic and chain reaction. True or not, this at least easy to understand. 😉
On October 24 1929 s—t hit the fan. There was a mass sale on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE): in total, traders got rid of 12.9 million shares and bonds, and the main indicator of that time - the Dow Jones Industrial Index - fell by 11 percent. The next day, the situation slightly recovered, prices went up, but the effect was deceptive. "Black Thursday" was followed by "Black Monday" and "Black Tuesday." By the middle of the week, about 30 million more shares had been sold out, the market as a whole lost about 40 percent of its value, which in monetary terms amounted to $30 billion (440 billion at the current exchange rate). In what later will be known as Great Depression unemployment reached 25%, industrial production halved, more than 5,000 banks bankrupted, crop prices fell 60% destroying millions farmers, etc.
In agriculture the OOPS started when demands for the grain plummeted and the costs with them. The farmers found themselves with a production that nobody was going to buy, could not make their payments to the banks, lost the farms and turned into the migrant workers traveling across the country in a hope to find at least some work. The banks were saddled with the worthless farms and also went down to be consumed by the big ones, which could deal with the short term losses.
In the cities situation was so lousy that even personages like Al Capone had been running the soup kitchens.
But, on a cheerful side, the movie industry was blooming. So were the gaming and bootlegging industry. Which means that economy was essentially healthy and getting back to normal is just a matter of time … and abolishing of the Prohibition, of course.
Elsewhere
The waves had been spreading throughout the world. Except for Antarctica and some most economically advanced places in the middle of nowhere where they did not care too much about stock exchange, imports/experts, gold standard and other nonsense. For example, in New Guinea it was a duty of a good son to break a skull of his dead father and suck his brain through a straw; in a time free from performing these filial duties the natives were seemingly busy looking for the available sources of protein (understandably, the potential sources were doing the same), which kept them occupied in ecologically-friendly way not leaving too much time forplaying on stock exchange and as a result preventing high unemployment, loss of the savings and other distressful experiences.
Well, and China also was not impacted because it stuck to the silver standard but in its existing domestic situation nobody would probably notice the Depression of any size anyway.
- The hardest hit were the countries with the economies greatly dependent upon exports, with the unemployment usually in the double digits (Australia - 29%, Canada - 27%)
- France, with it mostly self-sufficient economy) was lightly hit with unemployment under 5% and no bank bankruptcies. Which, French being French, did not prevent the riots and growing popularity of the socialists.
- Germany, comparing to the previous crisis, had a relatively soft landing but had to postpone projects of developing its new African colonies and armaments. Manufacturing had been hit and unemployment was over 10% but there was an “outlet” allowing to contain the internal tensions. Still, there was a noticeable raise of the extreme parties on both sides of a political spectrum.
- Japan got off easily due to the immediate implementation of the policy combining the deficit spending and currency devaluation (which allowed to squeeze Britain in the textile markets). Unfortunately, the low level of the domestic problems tempted activists of the Kwangtung Army to be even more aggressive. But this is a different story.
- The Latin American countries had been hit hard across the board because world prices for commodities such as wheat, coffee and copper plunged.
- Poland was affected by the Great Depression longer and stronger than other countries due to inadequate economic response of the government and the pre-existing economic circumstances of the country. Unemployment rose up to 43%, industrial production decreased by 41% and the government, for the first couple years was making things worse sticking to the gold standard. The good news for the neighbors was that for a while volume of the militaristic noises had been lowered to a whisper level and everybody could relax.
- The World Depression broke at a time when the United Kingdom had still not fully recovered from the effects of the Barmalei War and crisis of the 1920s. The country was driven off the gold standard in 1931. Demand for traditional industrial products collapsed, which hit the northern industrial areas. Unemployment reached 20% and exports had fallen in value by 50%.
According to the Lomonosov’s Law, if something is being taken from one place, something should add elsewhere and in this specific case Russian Empire was in a good position to be on the “added” side due to the specifics of its economic system:
- While there were over 100 stock exchanges in RE, the main ones, in St-Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa, had been trading predominantly with the state bonds (60.5% in Moscow Stock Exchange) and commodities and only a very small percentage of the population was actively engaged in stock trading: majority of the investors traditionally were on a conservative side opting for safety.
- A very high share of the Russian manufacturing, especially heavy industry, chemical industry and mining were either state owned or state-controlled (through the loans, partial ownership, state contracts issued through the military-industrial committees, etc.). Only the light industries (textile, food industry, domestic appliances, etc.) were much more on their own.
- “Farmers” (individual, communal, coops) were getting their loans almost exclusively from the state-owned Peasants’ Land Bank, which was almost completely excluding land speculations allowing dealing with the “systematic problems” in a less harsh way than the private banks.
- While RE was one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products, these exports did not amount to a critical share of its budget, being mostly a way to balance (with some surplus) the foreign trade. Most of the industrial and agricultural production had been consumed by the internal market.
- Since joining the Gold Club the Finance Ministry had been hoarding the gold (the gold mining production being one of the biggest in the world).
The US company “Kahn inc.” received a package of orders worth $2 billion and ensured the implementation of more than a third of industrial and construction projects. The company invented a method of “conveyor-flow” production of technical documentation, which allowed to make projects in a matter of weeks and to build plants in months.
Tsaritsin tractor plant was built in the USA, dismantled, transported on 100 cargo ships and then assembled in Russia. Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works was designed by the American company Arthur McKee Company, and equipment for car assembly plants in Nizhny Novgorod was provided by Ford Motors.
Of course, not everything went smoothly: the main importer of the Russian grain was Britain and devaluation of a pound in 1931 caused considerable losses and a need to dig into the gold reserves but, comparing to the results, it was worth it. Within a decade volume of the industrial production grew by 429% comparing to 1929. Of course, a very important component was the “human material” familiar with the new technologies and, with an alternative to stay in a line to the soup kitchen, there was plenty of it available at the reasonable costs. About 20,000 American engineers and technicians and up to 10,000 Germans came and were responsible for production for the first few years while their Russian colleagues had been getting necessary experience.
All these developments required domestic specialists of all levels, from engineer to a skilled worker, which meant a need of a much greater number of the educational entities of all levels from college down to the “elementary” courses preparing technicians and this, in turn, meant much more qualified teaching technical cadres than the empire had at the moment [4], leading to the extensive contracting of the foreign instructors. Within a decade over 300,000 specialists of all levels had been educated.
Well, of course, the people are not grow on the trees so the obvious question was about the source of the new cadres for the greatly expanding industry. Most of the needed workers had been coming for the poorest peasants, usually from the rural communes, immediately or soon after the military service. They were disciplined, used to live in the barracks, usually in a good physical shape (soldier’s ration was much better than what even middle level peasant could afford: 1,230 grams of bread, 136 grams of cereals, 300 grams of meat, monetary allowances for vegetables, tea, sugar, butter, etc.). Of course, while this was making them good labor cadres there was an open question about a resulting negative impact upon the least efficient sector of the Russian agriculture and its influence upon the total output. But this will take time to assess and in a meantime Russian Empire had been getting a big expansion of its heavy industry for a reasonably low price.
Some excessively inquisitive mind could ask a bizarre question why would Russian Empire need so many tractors. Fortunately, nobody involved in the industrialization project was stupid or tactless enough to ask it. The American side had been happy to get the great contracts and employment opportunities and on the Russian side those who by their position may ask such a question had been informed in advance that the newly built plants with some reasonably small additions and adjustments may start producing not just tractors but some other types of the very useful vehicles as well.
__________
[1] While there are fools around, we can live successfully by cheating.”
[2] While there are greedy people, we’ll keep being lucky.
[3] With the exception of TTL-related BS, this mostly reflects the OTL events of the early 1930s. Why invent things if a reality is fantastic enough? 😉
[4] It would be dangerously close to ASB to paint a picture in which under the normal circumstances the educational system of the Russian Empire would …er… voluntarily shift from producing mostly lawyers, philosophers and historians to predominantly educating the engineers. And who would educate them.