The History Scrutineer

This article is an extract from the extremely-necessary and well-written book ‘A History Of Central Banking And The Enslavement Of Mankind’ by Stephen Mitford Goodson, which Renegade History fully recommends to all readers. This part of the book – towards the end, focuses (very interestingly) on what Russia might have achieved had central bankers not ‘meddled in’ (for want of a far stronger term) – her affairs. 

Russia.

Pages 175 – 182.

Russian economic prosperity and growth commenced at the liberation of the serfs by Alexander II in 1861. Serfs under state control had been freed earlier by Tsar Nicholas I. As is quite often the case, the most autocratic of monarchs were the only ones confident enough to go over the heads of the lites and pass legislation in the interests of the peasants. Unlike the Austrian liberation of its own serfs a few years before and Lincoln’s freeing of southern slaves, Russian serfs were liberated with land. The state reimbursed the eternally indebted nobility and, over time, the peasant was to pay the state back. The payments were very low and Tsar Nicholas II in 1905 cancelled them altogether. This was just one more nail in the nobility’s coffin. 

Russian serfs had never been slaves. Serfdom, a reaction to the Swedish and Polish invasions of the 17th century, affected only peasants in the black earth regions in the Russian south. It never existed in the north nor in Siberia. In central Russia, it affected only serfs required to perform labour dues, but by the 1840s, most peasants paid money rent, meaning that they were not serfs. Serfdom, in Russia, really meant the guarantee of peasant land ownership and, at the same time, the guarantee of noble incomes as they served the state, usually in a military capacity. Since everyone served someone, the system was balanced. Under Tsar Paul and his mother Catherine II, the nobles were freed from state service and, as a result, became politically impotent. 

Peasants had full self-government in the commune, where all posts were elected. The volost, or county, government, was entirely elected, with equal representation for all classes. The court system both at the volost and commune levels, too, was based on pure peasant democracy. Commune judges were exclusively peasants, and volost courts had two noble and two peasant representatives. For the most part, Russian nobles were financially worse off than the peasantry, drowning in debt and long released from state service. They had little to do but buy expensive western luxuries they could not afford. The peasant commune had the right to nullify federal law, and was generally self sufficient. If anything, tsarist Russia suffered from too much democracy. 

In 1861, the volost was replaced by the zemstvo, a strong county system with a lower house of peasants and an upper house of nobles, usually poor. The zemstvo was in charge of education, infrastructure, church life, tax collection and police. There was no part of peasant life that was not based on local democracy. A “land captain”, usually a poor noble, was elected to mediate disputes between peasants and nobles, and sometimes, peasants would go to the captain if he had a beef with the commune or the zemstvo authorities. Politically speaking, from 1850 on, the nobles were politically impotent. 

Hence, the freedom of the serfs and the creation of a free press, the zemstvo and an endless array of educational reforms put a bullet in the revolutionary movement, almost entirely financed from Britain. Seeing this as intolerable, Alexander II was assassinated for his trouble in 1881. His son, Alexander III, continued his father’s reform programs but, being a man of immense size and toughness, smashed the revolutionary movement, making it toothless until his untimely death in 1894. 

Tsar Alexander III established the Peasant Land Bank in the early 1880s, which gave interest-free loans to peasants and sought to channel investment money into agricultural improvement. Tsar Alexander and his finance minister, Nikolai Bunge, drafted and passed the most comprehensive labour regulations in European history His son, Nicholas II, continually added to them until the outbreak of World War I. 

In labour relations the Russians were pioneers. Child labour was abolished over 100 years before it was abolished in Great Britain. Russia was the first industrialised country to pass laws limiting the hours of work in factories and mines. Strikes, which were forbidden in the Soviet Union, were permitted and minimal in Tsarist times. Trade Union rights were recognised in 1906, while an Inspectorate of Labour strictly controlled working conditions in factories. In 1912 social insurance was introduced. Labour laws were so advanced and humane that President William Taft of the United States was moved to say that “the Emperor of Russia has passed workers’ legislation which was nearer to perfection than that of any democratic country”. The people of all races in The Russian Empire had an equality of status and opportunity, which was unparalleled in the modern world. His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917) and his state bank had created a worker’s paradise that was unrivalled in the history of mankind. (Goodson, 87-89). 

There is no mystery here. The equally autocratic German emperor passed similar legislation a bit later. In both cases, economic growth in both agriculture and industry averaged 15% yearly. Population growth boomed, and, in the Russian case, peasants were given free land and tools in lush, southern Siberia (not the frozen north) for the sake of colonising this vast empty space about twice the size of the US. By 1905, 90% of Russian arable land was in the hands of peasants. No other industrialised society could match this. Peasants were buying noble land in massive quantities as Russia, at the same time, was completely self-sufficient. Her domestic market accounted for almost 99% of her production, and she needed nothing from abroad. All she got from the West was revolution. 

Moving southward, Georgia requested Russian protection as a shield against her Islamic neighbours. The XIII Dalai Lama of Tibet, Thoubten Gyamtso, requested Tsar Nicholas II to take his country under Russian protection to protect this Buddhist monarchy from drowning in British opium. Several Russians served as tutors to Tibetan nobles and the Dalai Lama himself. Russia was seen as the saviour of all those who fought British and Chinese imperialism. 

Tsar Nicholas II was tempted to make war on Manchu China, since China held the western Buddhist populations and the Tibetans in thrall. Several million Muslims also were held under Chinese Manchu rule. Russia was called the ‘White Saviour” long prophesied by Chinese sages. Making matters worse for the British, oil was discovered in Baku, today’s Azerbaijan, then part of the Russian Empire. The Rothschild Dynasty declared war on Russia, financed Russian revolutionaries and importantly, created an anti-Russian alliance. The Rothschild alliance, for their part, was created in retaliation for Russian success. It was based on financing Turkey, the Turkish tribes of the Russian south, Persia, and, most ominous of all, Japan. Turkish occupation of the Balkans was given the Rithschild’s seal of approval since, without Turkey, pro-Russian states like Serbia and Bulgaria would fill the vacuum. The British press praised the Turks as liberators from “Orthodox superstition” and held the Russians to be “Mongols” whose “fangs” must be kept out of the Balkans. 

Russia helped finance Bulgaria and Serbia, and sought to unify China once the Manchu state fell. With an indirect protectorate over Tibet and the addition of the literate and urbanised Georgian state, an unstable balance of power between the banker’s paradise and the worker’s paradise was reached. Unfortunately, Japan was a much better bet than China. Russia supported Afghanistan against England in the Anglo-Afghan war of 1879 – 1880, but this was not as significant as the recreation of Japan under the aegis of the Royal Navy.

Had Russia not been a party to World War I, what might the world look like as a result? A realistic scenario could look like this: The exploding Russian population would have populated all Siberia and parts of Central Asia. She would have taken the Balkans and Constantinople, quite possibly with Germany’s blessing. This would have permitted Russia’s taking of most of the Middle East, or at least acting as the chief protector of Orthodox Greeks and Arabs. Germany would see the rationality in an alliance with Russia over Vienna. Russian and German interests, ideology, and political systems were quite similar. The Russian alliance with her old enemy England made little political sense for Russia, but controlling German expansion was London’s priority by 1910-1913. Germany realised that her alliance with Austria-Hungary would force Germany into any conflict Vienna might back itself into. This would not be in Germany’s interest. Austria’s poor military performance in the war, as well as her unstable economy, is what forced Germany to divide its military forces between two fronts. 

Russia’s new and growing oil wealth, her immense natural resources, internal market and industrial capital would have financed a protectorate over all China and quite possibly Southeast Asia. Much of Central Asia, under Chinese control, would have come under Russian protection, if not occupation. Compared to English colonialism, Russian expansion was never exploitative, but defensive. 

This market, economic growth and continued population explosion would have drawn the remaining powers of the world to Russia. She would be seen as, militarily speaking, unassailable. Moving east instead of west, she would be no threat to the European balance of power. Any alliance with Germany would seal the nature of Europe as a strong traditionalist, royalist and Christian land power. Vienna would be worse than helpless, and might began to unravel as the Germans of the empire sought union with Germany and the Slavic population looked to Russia. An angry and expansionist Hungary would also be helpless, constantly at war with ehr equally angry minorities. 

The Orthodox Church would find a willing ally in (royalist) German Lutheranism and the growing Old Catholic movement. Had Russia and Greece joined with his schism from the Roman church, as originally planned, the Old Catholic Church would have grown substantially. There was already quite an interest among conservative Anglicans and some Lutherans in the Orthodox tradition. 

Much of western Canada would have come under Russian control from the population of Alaska, whose positive interaction with the native Aleutians made Russia a welcome presence, rather than an imperial one. Russian firms were already in Hawaii, and would have protected the monarchy there. The US financed the Hawaiian Royal House’s overthrow. Given Russia’s welcome in much of Asia, there is no reason to believe the Hawaiian Royal House (and other Pacific states) would not also see the benefit in a powerful, yet distant, protector. 

Russian imperialism was not profit seeking as the British empire was. It was defensive. Native populations were normally treated well, and, as in the case of the Armenians and Muslims of Asia, never were forced to convert to Orthodoxy or speak Russian. They took their oath to the Tsar on the Koran. Poland was granted one of the most liberal constitutions in the world, and Finland, another colony of Russia, was totally independent in every respect except foreign policy. Hence, there is no reason to hold that Russian imperial rule would have been resented, or even have been considered ‘rule’ in the normal sense. 

Today, this seems like a fantasy barely conceivable. But for a time,prior to the mass slaughter of World War I, this was considered a viable reality in St. Petersburg and London. Goodson gives a glimpse as to why this might have been:

In 1860 The State Bank of the Russian Empire was founded with the aim of boosting trade turnovers and the strengthening of the monetary system. Up to 1894 it was an auxiliary institution under the direct control of the Ministry of Finance. In that year it was transformed into being the banker of the bankers and operated as an instrument of government’s policy. It minted and printed the nation’s coins and notes, regulated the money supply and through commercial banks provided industry and commerce with low interest rate loans (Goodson, on Alexander II, 83-84).

The opponents of the Pax Russica were not idle. St. Petersburg, for all its problems, was one nut the banking regime would not crack. If Russia continued its massive development, population growth and industrialization, usury would be destroyed. The Russian state, more so than private capital, planned and directed investment with local funds. The French were the only substantial foreign presence in Russian industrialism. If this was to be replaced with Russo-German joint projects, usury would be under severe attack. Something had to be done. To give the reader a hint what this was, Goodson quotes Congressman LT McFaddens’s speech to The House of Representatives in 1932:

They (western banks) financed Trotsky’s mass meetings of discontent and rebellion in New York. They paid Trotsky’s passage from New York to Russia so that he might assist in the destruction of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian revolution  and they placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky’s disposal in one of their branch banks in Sweden so that through him Russian homes might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from their natural protectors. They have since begun the breaking up of American homes and the dispersal of American children. 

*That, dear readers of The History Scrutineer, is surely an infinitely intriguing theory of what Russia may have been as well as a truly compelling explanation of how the greatest enemy of the people of this world – central bankers, have and still to this day operate malevolently in the shadows, hellbent of securing their own personal/collective avaricious gains.