The Rise of Australasia

Amid the relative calm in the international community, time quickly reached June 1920.

During this time, the war within Russia was extremely intense. Both sides of the conflict, Tsarist Russia and Soviet Russia, engaged in fierce battles centering around Poland. The battle for Kiev broke out three times, and it was successively occupied by the Polish army, the Soviet army, and interventionist forces.

The World Alliance also increased its assistance to Tsarist Russia once again, even newly independent Hungary joined the ranks of the interventionist forces.

Although it seemed that the World Alliance was doing its best to prevent the expansion of the Soviets, if one delved deeply into the immense benefits that the Russian Civil War brought to the World Alliance, one would not think so.

Even Nicholas II and the Tsarist government that had not seen it before now clearly noticed the ambitions of the World Alliance, especially England and France. Their aid was not without compensation. After all, only the Russian Civil War could bring greater benefits to the World Alliance, allowing many countries to have enough income during the era of the Great Economic Depression.

On June 12, 1920, Saint Petersburg, Tsarist government Imperial Conference.

Despite avoiding the risk of being overthrown in World War I, Nicholas II’s condition was far from good.

Due to the worries of the civil war, Nicholas II’s face was much more wrinkled, many of his hair turned gray, and he looked more than a decade older than a few years ago.

Although he was only 52 years old, the prime of a person’s political career, Nicholas II looked old and frail, like a 60 or 70-year-old man nearing the end of his life.

The civil war has reached a point where neither Soviet Russia nor Tsarist Russia can stop it if they want to.

The Russian Civil War made other countries smell business opportunities, and since it concerned their own interests, they would not support Russia in ending the civil war.

Russian minerals, assets, and even population and the wealth accumulated by the empire for hundreds of years were used by Nicholas II as collateral and exchange for loans, allowing Tsarist Russia to persist from the beginning of the civil war until now.

According to the imperfect statistics of Tsarist Russia, the financial expenditure of the civil war has reached more than 1 billion pounds now, and the financial debt is close to 20 billion pounds. The country’s finances are not far from collapse.

If it weren’t for the occasional assistance from the World Alliance and the Nicholas II family’s century-old savings, perhaps the Tsarist government would have collapsed before the finances did.

Nicholas II spared no effort in winning this war. Capitalists and nobles who opposed Nicholas II were all confiscated by him, and all their assets were used in this war.

This also caused many nobles to flee abroad, as no one wanted their family’s hard-earned wealth to vanish overnight.

The Romanov family’s properties and industries, including the government’s state-owned enterprises, were basically on the sale list of Tsarist Russia.

Those with money could not only buy Russian factories and mines but could also buy state-owned enterprises, including oil and military factories.

Although military factories could play a significant role in the war, Russia’s current situation makes it impossible to organize the labor force for production.

Furthermore, the production of military factories requires a corresponding system, but Russia’s industry has completely collapsed so far, making it nearly impossible to reopen military factories. Find exclusive stories on empire

What is even more deadly is that, compared to the loss of industry, the damage of this civil war to Russia’s agriculture is a huge blow.

In 1913, the total grain output of Russia was about 92 million tons, making it a truly major grain-producing country.

However, in 1919, Russia’s grain output sharply dropped to less than 60 million tons. More than half of the Russian civilians were hungry, and over a third of the Russian civilians were in a food crisis. Every year, hundreds of thousands or even millions of Russians starved to death.

If it were not for Nicholas II’s purchasing a large amount of grain from Australasia and Europe at the expense of his family’s century-old savings, the sharp decline in Russia’s population would have been an extremely exaggerated number.

To be honest, it was because most of the civil war took place in the western part of Central Europe, namely the Polish and Ukrainian regions.

Otherwise, the attack on Russian agriculture would be even more deadly, and Russia would no longer be considered an agricultural country. Importing grain would not even be enough to save the situation in Russia.

Polish and Ukrainian grain output combined only accounted for a ninth of Russia’s grain output. Other vast areas could still grow food crops.

This was just how big and strong Russian families were. For example, Hungary, whose civil war lasted only a short time for just over three months.

But these three-plus months dealt a fatal blow to Hungary’s agriculture, and the grain output that year was directly cut by half.

There was no way, Hungary’s territory was relatively small. The civil war had already mobilized a large number of farmers, and the war had also affected the agricultural production, making the reduction of grain output a matter of course.

It is worth mentioning that even before the invention of cars, Russia was already one of the major oil-exporting countries.

As oil prices have risen higher and higher, Russia has indeed made a fortune from oil exports and increased its foreign exchange income considerably.

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