Nation Application
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Full Nation Name: The Imperial State of Russia
Short Nation Name: The Russian Empire / Russia
National Symbols: The Russian Flag / The National Anthem / The regalia of the Romanovs / The Russian Orthodox Cross / Monomakh's Crown / The Brown Bear, all the way down to borscht.
Capital: Petrograd (St. Petersburg)
Territory: As outlined in green on the map.
Form of Government: Constitutional Monarchy, but either "Constitutional Monarchy under an Autocratic Tzar" or "Limited Monarchy under an Autocratic Tzar" probably defines it better after the passing of the 1905 Constitution.
Head of State: Tzar Nikolai II Romanov
Head of Government: Premier Sergei Witte
Ideology: Tzarist Autocracy / Rightist Conservatism / Imperialism / Russian Nationalism / All-Russian Nationalism / Elements of Slavophilia
Population: Approximately 165 000 000
Military Description: The Russian Imperial Army is a vast force, counting 1 500 000 men at arms in peacetime with somewhere up to 25 000 000 men more of military age being fit for mobilization should the need come. It is well armed with the Mosin-Nagant 1891 service rifle, Maxim heavy machineguns and the 76mm Light Field Gun all good, well-made weapons on par with those of the other great powers. Still, the Russian Army faces vast issues with adequately equipping the huge numbers of men it could potentially call upon with it's backward and inadequate industrial-base and lacking transport infrastructure. It has a lack of experienced officers, who are often overworked and overburdened while elements of the senior leadership is made up of appointed aristocrats with barely a smidge of military education. The Russian Army has a grand total of... 600 trucks (including 12 ambulances) and 240 cars. Still reforms have been ongoing, slowly, since the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905. The Imperial Russian Air Corps has a grand total of 240 aircraft, many of whom are pretty worn and 12 zeppelin airships, 4 of whom are in combat-ready condition. The Russian Imperial Navy has been recovering since the disastrous war with Japan, numbering 60 000 servicemen and increasing numbers of modern ships, including 55 submarines. But most of it's vessels are on the older side, with some being borderline obsolete.
Economic Description: The Russian economy has exhibited strong growth thanks to consistent leadership under the Witte administration. As Finance Minister, Witte enacted an alcohol monopoly which has brought in significant revenues since 1891 as well as investing heavily in extension of railways, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway being the paramount achievement. A budding network of "Commerical Schools" have been established in major towns and cities to help train people for work in modern industrial settings. Witte also undertook a major currency reform in 1895 to place the Russian ruble on the gold standard that resulted in increased investment activity and an increase in the inflow of foreign capital. Working hours were limited while commercial and industrial taxes were reformed. Witte's deputy Premier Stolypin has mainly focused on agricultural and rural reforms. The reforms introduced the unconditional right of individual landownership as based on the civil rights outlined in the 1905 Constitution. Stolypin's reforms dismantled the obshchina system and replaced it consolidated modern farmsteads supported by the Peasant's Land Bank. Focus has been placed on development of large-scale individual farming, the development of agricultural cooperatives for the Mir's, development of agricultural education and sunday schools in villages, dissemination of new land improvement methods and affordable lines of credit for peasants. Credit Cooperatives are currently flourishing, as is agricultural output while industry grows and railways are laid. Basic workplace safety regulations were recently introduced, as were economic support measures and increased rights for the Zemstvas. Large amounts of land have been brought into cultivation in Siberia with large-scale settlement and colonization programs enacted to increase land-use and industrial development east of the Urals while easing the overpopulation issues in the Czernozem belts of Russia and Ukraine, more than 12 million people moved to Siberia as a result of this program, which is still ongoing and possibly set to be extended further. Still, the Russian Empire needs decades of this kind of progress, indeed, decades upon decades in order to reach a level of economic development similar to a country like Germany, Britain or France. Full-on socio-economic "Westernization" on the basis of Enlightenment philosophy is not even close to the end-goal of the deeply conservative leadership in the reforms. It is to modernize in order to strengthen the Tzarist state and secure it from external threats and internal unrest.
Goals: Grow the economy, agriculture and industry / Improve living conditions to ease potential threats of unrest and preserve the system / Uphold the Monarchy / Improve military leadership, logistics and equipment / Further facilitate settlement in Siberia and colonization in Central Asia / Destroy the Ottoman Empire / Destroy the Habsburg Empire / Dominate the Black Sea region / Possibly divest troublesome regions.
Point of Divergence: 1905, with Bloody Sunday being averted and a constitution being introduced.
History: In 1905, Russian confidence had been shaken to it's core with the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the economic burdens of a conflict fought to far away from the centers of the Empire led to poverty and destitution for many. As can be expected, unrest followed soon thereafter. On saturday, 21'st of January 1905, priest and labor leader Grigorij Gapon informed the government of a forthcoming procession to the Winter Palace to hand a workers' petition to the Tzar. The Imperial ministers convened to consider the situation. There was, of course, never any thought that the Tzar, who had left the capital for Tsarskoye Selo on the advice of the ministers, would actually meet Gapon. The suggestion that some other member of the imperial family receive the petition was nearly rejected, but, in the end, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, Tzar Nicholas' youngest brother and one of only two members of the Imperial family present in the city at the time was asked by the Ministers if he would accept the petition and he, reluctantly, agreed.
Sunday 22'd of January, Gapon began his demonstration. Locking arms, the workers marched peacefully through the streets. Some carried religious icons and banners, as well as national flags and portraits of the Tzar. Throughout the city, at bridges on strategic boulevards, the marchers found their way blocked by lines of infantry, backed by Cossacks and Hussars and there, Gapon met the Grand Duke, handing over the petition. Things remained tense but after few hours, the protestors returned to their homes. Still, with the defeat of Russia by a non-Western power, the prestige and authority of the autocratic regime took a nosedive. Strikes erupted in several major cities including Moscow, Kiev and Warsaw, the Tzar then issued the Reform Ukaz in April of 1905 full of vague promises in hopes of cutting the rebellion short. However, protests and sporadic violence continued constantly teetering on the edge of spiraling out of control. Sergei Witte, Chairman of the Committe of Ministers freshly back from concluding the peace deal with Japan recommended that a manifesto be issued immediately. Nicholas immediately told Witte to leave the Winter Palace, unable to think of changing the Tzarist system.
Thus, disorder kept spreading and the future of the dynasty seemed at risk, the Tzar stood between the choice of instituting the reforms suggested by Sergei Witte, or imposing a military dictatorship. The only man with the prestige to keep the allegiance of the army in such a coup was the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievich, the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army. The Tsar asked him to assume the role of a military dictator. But, in an emotional scene at the palace, the Grand Duke refused and threatened to shoot himself if Tsar did not endorse Witte's plan. This act was decisive in forcing Nicholas II to agree to the reforms. And so, Sergei Witte was called back to the palace, allowed to form his Reform Council alongside Ivan Goremykin and a committee consisting of elected representatives of the zemstvos and city councils. And, with the Tzar's signation of the hastily outlined 1905 Constitution, The Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias established a constitutional monarchy gave up part of his unlimited autocracy. For a time, he retreated from politics in anger and outrage, despite retaining may of his former powers and slowly returning to a more and more active role after 1910, increasingly clashing with the Duma.
The new constitution was a landmark moment in Russian history. It provided for a bicameral Russian parliament, without whose approval no laws were to be enacted in the Empire. This legislature was composed of an upper house, known as the State Council, and a lower house, known as the State Duma. Half of the members of the upper house were appointed by the Tsar, while the other half were elected. Members of the lower house were to be elected by the Russian people who now had universal male suffrage. While the Duma held the power of legislation and the right to question the Tzar's ministers, it did not have control over their appointment or dismissal, which was reserved to the monarch alone. Nor could it alter the Constitution, save upon the emperor's initiative. The Tzar also retained an absolute veto over all legislation, as well as the right to dismiss the Duma, but with a subsequent re-election. The emperor also had the right to issue decrees during the Duma's absence, though these lost their validity if not approved by the new parliament within two months. The monarch also retained supreme authority over Russia's administrative and external affairs, and had the sole power to declare war, make peace and negotiate treaties.
It also granted certain basic-level civil rights such as the guaranteed protection from arbitrary arrest and detention, the inviolability of homes and domiciles, protection from illegal search and seizure, the right to travel (though subject to various restrictions), and the full right to own private property. Still, freedom of the press was absent and still under strict state control, as was freedom of religion, which while in the first draft was removed by Witte after the deeply religious Tzar refused to sign it otherwise, keeping Russian Orthodoxy as the state religion, which avoided a contentious relationship with the new government and the church. It also outlined dynastic matters such as royal inheritance, the conditions of military service, universal male sufferage for all the Tzar's subjects above age 25 etc. A snap election was held in 1906 and Sergei Witte rose to power as Russia's first elected Premier. The first Duma was deeply unstable for months until Witte managed to build a coalition with Pyotr Stolypin, despite seeing the man as a "closeted reactionary" and securing the support of Alexander Guchkov and Grigorij Lvov to help sway the fractious Duma. The Witte Administration was narrowly re-elected in 1910, but hardline liberals and radical socialists soon accused the government of engaging in voter-fraud and gerrymandering to avert the possibility of a Kadet majority in order to secure the government of the conservative Octobrists led by Witte with the nonpartisan conservative monarchists in the Russian Monarchists Alliance along with Stolypins Russian People's Reform Party, while the Kadets, the Russian Social Democrartic Worker's Party, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Trudoviks form the opposition.
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