Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 172, The Mailstrom, Part 10.

It was the spring of 1905 and Tsar Nicholas II had a problem.

Well, actually, he had a lot of problems.

His commander in the Far East, some idiot named Alexei Kuro-Potkin, had promised him that

six months after the beginning of a war with Japan, the Russian Empire would be able to move

enough troops to Manchuria to get on the offensive and start winning the war.

That deadline had passed more than half a year ago, and yet defeats on the ground

were continuing to pile up for Russia.

Yet this, in and of itself, was not really a huge problem.

After all, there was no idea more time-honored than the Russian military tradition than trading space for time,

and the Tsar had no shortage of young Russian men who could be

convinced, or coerced, to die for God, Russia and the Tsar.

Yet the war in Asia was not Russia's only problem.

Russian modernization had been picking up steam over the past few decades, and especially

since the signing of the Franco-Russian

alliance in 1894, and the subsequent sweet-sweet loans from France that the alliance provided.

Modernization was beginning to provide Russia with all the benefits enjoyed by modern states

in Europe, more consumer goods, stronger militaries, all that good stuff,

but it was also creating a lot of problems.

Among other things, in an effort to bring Russia into line with the rest of Europe, Serfdom had been abolished in 1861,

freeing up the massive Russian peasant class to engage in labor on the open market.

However, the liberated Russian peasantry encountered conditions in the Russian economy

...