The approaching centenary of the revolution in Russia is a good reason to once again think about why events called "turmoil", "coup", "revolution" periodically occur in history.
And the first question: what are the reasons for what happened to Russia in 1917? Yes, there are many books that talk about both internal and external causes, and much more has been written about reasons of the second kind: about the American-Jewish banker Jacob Schiff, who financed subversive work in Russia; about the German General Staff, which provided support to Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin; about Trotsky, who was a henchman of either world Zionism, or the Anglo-Saxon financial oligarchy, etc. etc.
Of course, enough has been said about internal reasons. A number of prophecies were made even before the revolution. For example, the holy righteous John of Kronstadt warned about the coming upheavals in Russia, saying that the Russian people began to move away from God and this inevitably deprives them of their heavenly protection …
In this article, I want to draw your attention only to the fact that the internal and external causes of the revolution are organically interconnected, and the internal causes are primary. Only by acting on the causes of the internal order that cause a revolution can it be prevented. And all that we can do in relation to the so-called external causes is to expose them to a barrier. Both on the state border and in the souls of citizens.
Perhaps the greatest discrepancies in assessing the causes of the 1917 revolution arise among economists. And they arise because of diametrically opposite assessments of the economic situation and economic policy of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some talk and write about the economic “flourishing” of Russia at that time, while others, on the contrary, assess the economic situation in the country as critical. The former portray the revolution as a surprise (even an accident) and blame everything on external reasons (they say, "the Englishwoman crap"). The latter, with numbers in hand, show the catastrophic situation in the Russian economy and try to understand the root causes of the revolutionary catastrophe. Let me tell you right away: I personally belong to the second group. And I will try to explain what happened to the Russian economy using the example of the policy of the then Minister of Finance Sergei Yulievich Witte. The figure of this figure in today's Russia is iconic. Some call him a "genius", put him on a par with Pyotr Stolypin. Others (of whom, unfortunately, a minority) believe that with his reforms, Witte brought Russia to revolution. I also adhere to the second point of view.
"Golden mousetrap" for Russia
The list of "merits" of Sergei Yulievich in the destruction of Russia is quite long. Historians usually prioritize Witte's role in the preparation of the Manifesto of October 17, which undermined autocratic-monarchical rule with a liberal constitution. Witte's role in negotiations with Tokyo after the Russo-Japanese War, which ended with the signing of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty, is often remembered (Russia then gave Japan half of Sakhalin Island, for which Witte was nicknamed "the half-Sakhalin Count"). However, these are "merits" of a political nature. And his main economic "merit" was the so-called monetary reform of 1897.
Sergei Witte took over as finance minister in 1892 and immediately proclaimed a course towards the introduction of a gold currency in Russia. Prior to that, for almost a century, Russia formally had a silver ruble, which was determined by the Coin Charter, adopted at the beginning of the reign of Alexander I. In fact, Russia used not metal, but paper money. You can read about this in the book of the famous Russian economist Sergei Fedorovich Sharapov "Paper Ruble" (the first edition was published in 1895). The idea of the gold ruble came to Russia from Europe. Let me remind you that the same Europe before the Napoleonic wars lived, relying either on silver money or on bimetallism (the simultaneous use of silver and gold money). However, pure paper money was also used. Paper money is common in war conditions. Let me remind you, too, that the UK fought its vaunted Industrial Revolution with de facto paper pounds sterling.
But in Europe, the Napoleonic wars ended, and one of their results was the concentration of gold in the hands of the newly-minted Rothschild clan. These owners of gold were faced with the task of turning the yellow metal into a means of enrichment. Gold should grow in profit. So the idea was born to impose a gold standard on the world. Its essence is simple: the number of banknotes (paper notes) issued by central banks should be tied to the stock of yellow metal in the basements of these institutions. To increase the supply of banknotes - "blood" circulating in the body of the economy, it is possible only by increasing the gold reserve. And it can be increased either by increasing its own production of metal, or by maintaining a surplus of the country's trade and balance of payments. But this is not available to everyone. And then the third option arises - to replenish the stock at the expense of gold credits. The owners of the Rothschild gold are willing to provide such loans at a good interest rate. What is most surprising: with such a system of organization of the monetary economy, the purchasing power of the yellow metal is constantly increasing. The fixed (or slowly growing) gold stock of the Rothschilds is opposed by an increasing mass of commodities. For every ounce of yellow metal, every year you can buy more and more physical volumes of different goods. And also "effectively" to buy up politicians, enterprises, entire states. This is the essence of the gold standard!
Politicians in Europe and outside it perfectly understood the intention of the owners of gold, so they in every possible way avoided proposals to introduce gold standards. England was the first to "bend". And it is no coincidence: the most energetic and "creative" of the five sons of Mayer Rothschild, Nathan, settled in London. Omitting details, I will say that he put under his control first the Bank of England, and then the British Parliament. The latter, at his direction, stamped the law establishing the gold standard in England (the law came into force in 1821). This was followed by the adoption of such a standard in the main British dominions - Canada and Australia. Then, thanks to the intrigues of the Rothschilds, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 was unleashed, which ended with the creation of a unified Germany ("Second Reich"), payment by France in favor of the winner of an indemnity in the amount of 5 billion gold francs and the introduction of a gold mark from 1873. I do not know why Bismarck is called the "iron chancellor", he deserves the title of "golden chancellor". Then the process of spreading the gold standard around the world went very briskly: France, Belgium, the United States, etc. Europe immediately entered a state of economic stupor, since the transition to a gold currency meant a contraction of the money supply and deflation. Since 1873, the Great Depression began there, from which it was possible to get out only at the very end of the century. Russia was then still outside the gold standard club. And the example of Europe testified that one should stay away from the "golden mousetrap".
From the gold standard to economic collapse and revolutionary upheaval
And here S. Witte, having become at the helm of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire, began persistently to drive the country into this very "golden mousetrap", using for this intrigue, deception and support of the "enlightened" public. Professor I. I. Kaufman. We must honestly admit that there were few politicians in Russia at the end of the 19th century who understood the essence of the gold standard and the threats to Russia that arose if it was adopted. The overwhelming majority of the people did not delve into the intricacies of the monetary reform that Witte was preparing. Everyone was convinced that the gold ruble was good. That from the moment of its introduction, the “dances” with the ruble, which have destabilized the Russian economy, will stop; they began under Alexander II (then full currency convertibility and "freedom of movement" of the ruble were introduced, it began to walk on European stock exchanges and became a toy in the hands of speculators). Opponents of the introduction of the gold ruble in Russia could then be counted on one hand. Among them are the aforementioned S. F. Sharapov. They also include the officer (later General) of the Russian General Staff Alexander Dmitrievich Nechvolodov, who convincingly and succinctly explained the essence of the gold standard in his small book "From ruin to prosperity" (for this he was attacked by St. Petersburg officials). One cannot fail to mention in this series Georgy Vasilyevich Butmi, who wrote articles and delivered speeches exposing the plans of Witte and his entourage. Later, these articles were published as a collection of "Golden Currency". These and other patriots predicted that if Russia lives under the gold standard, the country's economic collapse is inevitable. And this will provoke social unrest and political cataclysms, which only play into the hands of the enemies of Russia.
And so it turned out. First, the introduction of the gold ruble spurred the inflow of foreign capital into Russia. Until 1897, foreigners were wary of Russia, since the unstable ruble created the risk of currency losses in income received from foreign investment in the country. The gold ruble has become a guarantee that foreigners will receive everything in full and will withdraw money from the country at any time without loss. European capital flowed into Russia, primarily from France and Belgium; secondarily from Germany. This was followed by investments from England and the USA.
Sergei Yulievich is often credited with prompting the process of industrialization in Russia. Formally, this is the case. Several industries began to develop rapidly. For example, the production of coke, pig iron and steel in the Donetsk industrial center or gold mining in the Lena mines. However, this was industrialization within the framework of the dependent capitalist model. Industrialization is one-sided, focused on the extraction of raw materials and the production of goods with a low degree of processing. These goods, in turn, were exported outside Russia, since there was almost no domestic production of final complex products (primarily mechanical engineering). Moreover, such a lopsided industrialization was carried out with the money of foreign investors.
In the literature, you can find various figures characterizing the share of foreign capital in the Russian economy before the revolution. Some say that this share in some industries was, they say, not that high, but they forget about the peculiarities of Russian statistics and the Russian economy of that time. Russian banks were the main shareholders in many industries, this was the classic model of financial capitalism. And the banks were "Russian" purely formally, only from a legal point of view. In terms of capital, these were foreign banks. In Russia, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was only one purely national (in terms of capital) bank in the group of large banks - Volgo-Kamsky. The economy of Russia belonged mainly to foreign capital, the levers of control of the empire were gradually transferred to the western kings of the stock exchange and the usurers.
Another result of Witte's reform was a sharp increase in the country's external debt. The treasury had to replenish the gold reserve, which was melting as a result of the deterioration of the country's trade and balance of payments. The last such catastrophic deterioration was caused by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. and the subsequent revolution of 1905-1907. I would like to note that Witte managed to impose a very tough “golden collar” on Russia. If in Europe some countries covered their paper money issue with gold reserves by only 25-40%, then in Russia the coverage was close to 100%. Russia, of course, had a source of replenishment in the form of its own gold mining in Transbaikalia and the Far East (up to 40 tons at the beginning of the 20th century). Witte created his own system for controlling Far Eastern production, but it is interesting that at the same time, a significant part of it in the form of smuggling went to China and further to Hong Kong and London. As a result, the Rothschild gold loans became the main way to replenish Russia's gold reserves. On the eve of the First World War, the Russian Empire ranked fifth or sixth in the world in terms of many types of industrial and agricultural products, but in terms of the amount of external debt, it shared the first or second line of the world rating of debtors with the United States. Only the United States had a predominantly private foreign debt, while Russia had a predominantly state or sovereign debt. By the middle of 1914, such a debt of Russia reached 8.5 billion gold rubles. The country was under the strict control of the world's usurers and risked finally losing its sovereignty. And all this is thanks to the efforts of Witte. Although he left the post of finance minister in 1903, the mechanism for destroying Russia was set in motion. That is why this figure can be safely called a harbinger of the 1917 revolution.
And it is no coincidence that one of the first decrees of Soviet Russia was the rejection of pre-war and wartime debts (at the beginning of 1918, their amount had already reached 18 billion gold rubles).
