Reincarnated as Nikolai II

Chapter 157 Promises Must Be Kept: Pacta sunt servanda (11)

Three months if short. Half a year if long.

The war that all of Europe started with such light hearts had now entered its second year.

Looking at the arms race that continued long into the 20th century, everyone must have expected this great clash, but entering the war's second year, they all realized one thing.

'Preparation was insufficient.'

No one had imagined the truly inhuman battlefields that emerged - the endless maze of muddy trenches stretching across continents, the grinding wars of attrition where men were fed into the machinery of death like coal into a furnace. The generals still dreamed of glorious cavalry charges and decisive battles, blind to the coming reality of machine guns and artillery barrages.

Though they had projected high war expenses in their budgets, none could have foreseen the astronomical costs that would devour dozens of times the national fiscal budget. Every ministry, every department found itself desperately scraping for funds, selling bonds, and printing money at unprecedented rates.

They had anticipated that maintaining the home front would be challenging during wartime, but their predictions fell catastrophically short. No one had envisioned the mouse-tail rations that left children crying from hunger, the punishing over 80-hour work weeks in munitions factories that broke both body and spirit, or the steady stream of death notices that left countless families shattered and hollow.

This was a transformation beyond anything in recorded history - a time when every aspect of society, culture, politics, and economy now revolved around this all-consuming war. The theaters stood empty save for propaganda plays, the newspapers spoke of nothing but battles and sacrifices, and even children's games in the street mimicked the distant thunder of artillery.

That was Finance Minister Kokovtsov's grim assessment as Russia entered the war's second year, watching as the empire he had worked so hard to modernize began to crack under the strain of a conflict no one had truly been ready to face.

'Post-war debt pile is burdensome, and as casualties increase the state will suffer aftereffects. Moreover, industry and society are revolving focused on war, so this won't be easy to recover from either. Politics... that's something the losing side must bear entirely.'

Former Prime Minister Witte shed bloody tears fighting an uncivilized East Asian country for 8 months?

Incomparably, brilliantly developed from then, the Empire is once again shedding bloody tears without fail.

Nevertheless, just one thing.

Among ten thousand adverse conditions catching the eye, there was just one thing Kokovtsov evaluated positively:

"Industry... is developing. Rapidly at that."

The Imperial government grew wealthy, the military strong, and capital, labor, and technology developed, but fundamentally it's still an agricultural country.

In the future commonly called the 'middle income trap' development stagnation state, Kokovtsov instinctively sensed it in the early 20th century.

His instinct grew sharper in crisis awareness due to Germany's changes before the war.

An invention by some German scientist that destroys existing agriculture.

Fertilizer.

This thing that seemed would choke the already long-declining grain prices finally established large-scale factories in Germany in 1913.

Fortunately those factories now produce poison gas and chemical weapons instead of fertilizer, but anyway the technology hasn't disappeared.

Fertilizer. This is a fatal weapon to the Empire. It's undoubtedly an industrial weapon that ends Europe's grain export era dependent on Russia, dramatically increases productivity gaps per land, and allows overcoming even famine.

Even the great Witte wouldn't dare predict this. To think a way to multiply humanity's foundation of agriculture many times overnight would appear.

"With that fertilizer's appearance, agriculture can no longer be a great power's core industry."

Now any country could potentially achieve self-sufficiency, and just spreading that fertilizer could make soil rival black earth, chernozem.

Kokovtsov also considered maximizing Imperial agricultural productivity through that fertilizer to cause worldwide grain price crashes, but this was highly likely to be blocked by tariffs and protective barriers.

Must acknowledge. Can only move forward by acknowledging.

The time has come for the Empire to increase workers, not farmers.

But since 1910, the Empire's industrial structure change seemed like kicking air like a carriage stuck in rasputitsa.