readx;?“ Emperor, I didn't expect that the sick tsar would have such a quick wit and solve the dilemma of the Russian Empire with a marriage. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info=top=dot=small-say"

When the news of the Tsar's intention to marry the future Russian Empress to the heir of the Roman Empire reached the ears of the Emperor and the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the two were sitting opposite each other on a couch and leisurely playing Chinese chess. Judging from the chessboard, Zhu Guoxiong obviously has the advantage, with one more horse and two pawns, but Zhu Jishi has the first move, and there may not be no possibility of getting it back -- the victory or defeat of this chess piece is not much more than the chess pieces.

Zhu Guoxiong's chess is very good, so he naturally knows this truth, and he still looks at the chessboard counting moves with full attention in the case of dominance, and when he hears his father's words, he just smiles coldly: "Tsarist Russia will definitely be finished!" It will definitely not support the day when Empress Alexandra gets married. ”

Zhu Jishi looked at his son, "Xiong'er, are you so sure?" If Napoleon IV didn't want Constantinople and Russian Asia Minor for the time being, Russia should have some chances, right? ”

"No more!" Zhu Guoxiong raised his head from the chessboard, smiled and shook his head, "If the tsar does not carry out constitutional reform at the same time, there may be some opportunities...... It is nothing more than how many gold francs and silver pesos Napoleon IV was willing to pay to aid Russia. ”

Zhu Jishi nodded with a deep sigh, "Napoleon IV's wife was pregnant again last year, if it is a son, it will be suitable for this Empress Alexandra in the future...... Even if you use 5 billion gold francs as a dowry, it is still cost-effective to marry Russia. Isn't 5 billion gold francs enough to offset the adverse effects of constitutional reform? ”

There are positive and negative sides to any reform, and Russia's constitutional reform is naturally not an exception. Especially at present, the Russian Empire is in extreme difficulty both on the battlefield and economically, and the prestige of the Tsarist government has been discredited. However, the Roman Empire provided adequate assistance if it was willing to do so. Russia's reforms will not necessarily fail – at least that's what Zhu Jishi thinks.

"Don't say 5 billion. Even 10 billion gold francs is useless. Zhu Guoxiong shook his head again and again, this Emperor Xuanwu of the Ming Dynasty is not only an expert in constitutionalism and law, but also a Russian expert. Since his visit to Russia more than a decade ago, he has always been very concerned about the Russian issue, and he has also set up a Russian research institute with money from his annuity, which is dedicated to the study of Russian affairs.

"The biggest problem in Russia is actually the legacy of the reform that abolished serfdom twenty years ago."

Zhu Jishi was originally looking at the chessboard, but when he heard the "legacy problem", he raised his head and looked at his son. "Emperor, do you mean their rural commune system?"

Zhu Jishi is also aware of the "joint production responsibility contract" system in the Russian countryside, and as a Chinese traveler in the 21 st century, he certainly knows the superiority and slight shortcomings of this rural land management system. This agrarian and rural management system, founded by Tsar Alexander II and later carried forward in China's reform and opening up, can be summed up in a nutshell as "maintaining a stable small-scale peasant economy."

Because of the communal ownership of land (communal or collective) and its regular redistribution, the Russian peasant always had a small plot of land to cultivate, and only if he was not too lazy, he could always make ends meet. However, while this system allowed the Russian peasants to have land for all to grow, it also greatly hindered the emergence of capitalist agriculture in Russia. At the same time, it also slowed down the migration of Russians to Siberia. Since the land was owned by the commune, it was also redistributed periodically. Nature cannot be concentrated to form a large farm. Moreover, for the sake of social stability, the Russian government also forbade the peasants to quit the communes, which naturally greatly limited the speed of urbanization and immigration to Siberia.

Although the same problem existed in later generations of China, it did not cause social instability, and the public ownership of land and later state-owned land also brought huge fiscal revenue to the government, and became a booster for urbanization construction in various places. However, Russia's "joint production responsibility contract" system has two fatal weaknesses.

"The problem lies in the Russian rural communes, in terms of the lease of landlords' land and in the autonomy of the communes." Zhu Guoxiong shook his head and sighed, "Actually, Alexander II's original intentions were good, but this person's heart is always dissatisfied......"

Alexander II's vision of the Russian countryside was actually to pursue an ideal static society in which everyone had land and farming, and commune autonomy would allow the Russian peasants to live and work in peace and contentment.

"Just because everyone has land doesn't mean that everyone can plant good land," Zhu Guoxiong played with a chess piece and sighed, "Ten fingers are still long, let alone people?" Even 20 years ago, they were generally poor, but now they are rich and poor. Aren't most of the collective farms we built in the northeast and northwest now become private farms? ”

Zhu Jishi smiled indifferently, "Isn't egalitarianism plus market economy the result?" Even if the initial stage is completely equal, sooner or later there will be differentiation. ”

This result was expected by Zhu Jishi for a long time, and he did not set up collective farms so that all peasants could have land to plant, but to use the organization of collective farms to serve the expansion of colonization. After this goal was basically achieved, the historical mission of the collective farms was accomplished, and it is not surprising that the gradual transition to private farms was even encouraged by the Ming court - unlike the dynasties that historically focused on suppressing annexation, the land policy of the Ming Dynasty was to encourage annexation and discourage the division of land.

Because anyone who has ever dealt in land knows that the management cost of a large piece of contiguous land is much lower than that of a small piece of land. It is also easy to use the rotation method to maintain the fertility of the soil and avoid over-cultivation.

For example, when the collective farms were showing signs of disintegration, the Ming Parliament passed the "Law on the Dissolution of Collective Farms" under the instruction of Zhu Jishi. It was stipulated that collective farms could only be divided into farms of more than 100 acres of land that were joined by one piece, and that no further division could be made.

At the same time, the Daming Parliament also stipulated in the "100-acre Farm Promotion Law" that all "100-acre contiguous (or above) farms" formed by preferential loans provided by the government must also be inherited or sold as a whole, and shall not be split again. Similar laws and regulations were also in place in the Chinese countries of Donghua, Xihua, and Siam, which provided free land to immigrants, to ensure that the land could be operated on a large scale.

Of course, such a system of promoting and guaranteeing large-scale land management is relatively easy to establish in countries with abundant land resources. If the contradiction between man and land is prominent, the state's policy will generally go the opposite way, ensuring as much as possible that every peasant has land to plant.

However, it is very strange to adopt such an "egalitarian land policy" in the Russian Empire, where the contradiction between man and land is not prominent, and even sparsely populated. The only reason Alexander II and his court did this was probably to pursue a permanently stable Russian countryside.

However, the development of the past 20 years has backfired. Class divisions arose in the Russian countryside, which had undergone serfdom reforms and the withdrawal of aristocratic landlords. A small part of the former serfs became rich, while the majority of the emancipated serfs remained poor or even poorer – a similar situation that arose in the years following China's land reform, which led to the collectivization of agriculture in the true sense of the word.

In Russia, however, the policy of the tsarist government in the face of this division did not at all resemble a reactionary authority representing the interests of the propertied classes. Although Tsarist Russia did not carry out further collectivization, it still used administrative orders to prohibit the privatization of commune land and the prohibition of members from quitting the commune and working alone. A number of policies to support the communes were also introduced, and they were completely on the standpoint of curbing the landlord class and the rural bourgeoisie.

Such a government naturally did not have the support of the emerging Russian kulak class, and the Russian kulak class was simply not rich enough under the pressure of such a policy.

But the poor middle peasants in Russia were also very dissatisfied with the Tsarist government, because they blamed their poverty on the incomplete reform of the abolition of serfdom. It only solved the personal freedom of the peasants (in fact, it was not very free), but did not solve the land problem of the peasants, and a large area of land still belonged to the original aristocratic landlords, which were leased by the rural communes and then distributed to the peasant households for cultivation. Therefore, the land "owned" by the rural communes in Russia was actually composed of two parts, one part of the land purchased by the peasants at the time of the abolition of serfdom and the other part of the land leased to the communes by the former aristocratic landlords. Therefore, the rural commune also has a function of collecting land rent.

According to the statistics of the Narodnaya Volta, more than 60 per cent of the land administered by the rural communes in Russia is leased from aristocratic landlords, who pay a large amount of rent every year. In the eyes of the Russian peasantry, especially the young and middle-aged peasants who grew up after the abolition of serfdom, these rents were the greatest reason for their prolonged poverty. Narodnaya Volya, and the Land and Freedom Society before it, have long been propagating the same truth in the Russian countryside, presenting the reforms of 20 years ago as only half carried out. ”

Zhu Guoxiong paused, took a sip of a cup of tea, "In Erchen's view, the biggest problem of rural communes in Russia is the universal suffrage of one household and one vote...... The rural communes in Russia were basically self-governing, and the commune managers were elected by vote, and there were no property restrictions, and the practice was one household, one vote, which was similar to the rural areas of Donghua and our earlier collective farms. But the Donghua countryside and our collective farms here had no aristocratic landlords to collect rent, and they were far richer than the rural communes of Russia. The peasants all support the imperial court, and no matter how much they vote, they will not elect the people to power! ”

"Oh? Emperor, do you think that the result of the constitutional reform in Russia will elect the Narodnaya Volya? Zhu Jishi looked a little disbelieving.

A playful smile appeared on Zhu Guoxiong's face, "It doesn't have to be the Narodya Volya, but it must be a party separated from the Land and Freedom Society, such as the Russian Socialist Party, the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and the like." In short, there must have been some people who were in trouble with the Tsar. (To be continued.) )