In fact, the crude oil produced by the Tyumen oil field is not indispensable, this part of the crude oil transported to China became the oil of China's strategic oil reserves, and like the Kuwaiti Dabulgan oil field, the Tyumen oil field also faced the unfavorable situation of reduced production and broken transportation lines after the outbreak of the war.

However, in comparison, the profits brought by the Tyumen oil field far outweigh the costs, which is why Huaguo has invested heavily in the development of this permafrost oil field. From a long-term strategic point of view, it is uncertain who will belong to this giant oil field after the outbreak of war.

After the financial situation improved considerably, Nicholas II launched a political reform campaign in mid-1907 called "Royal Resolve", which focused on punishing the country's most serious corruption. The movement achieved certain results, and although it did not bring Russia to the level of political clarity, it curbed the spread of corruption to a certain extent, and the decline of the whole country was alleviated, and it showed a slow upward trend.

The nobility and the upper strata of society learned a lesson from the previous wave of revolution, and after the environment improved slightly, the large landlords, feudal aristocrats and big capitalists tilted their social resources slightly towards the bottom. The serfs who worked on the plains of Eastern Europe did not starve to death, the workers were paid ten potatoes a day, and the sporadic alms of the nobles calmed the turmoil in Russian society and made the serfs grateful to them.

Having consolidated the power of the Romanlov dynasty, restored social order, and had large fortunes, Nicholas II's ambitions beat again. In the Far East, the Russian Army established a new Far Eastern Army and the Mongolian Army, with a total number of more than 300,000, with the aim of protecting Russian interests in the Far East and the safety of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The Far Eastern Army and the Mongolian Army built a large number of permanent fortifications in the border areas, and the raw materials such as reinforced concrete used in the construction of the fortresses were all exported from China, and the design of the fortresses was also carried out by Chinese engineers, and even most of the labor force for the construction of these fortresses came from China.

There is a debate within China about helping Russia build military fortresses, and some people, represented by ordinary officers, resolutely oppose this kind of behavior of financing the enemy for the sake of a little economic gain. From a strategic point of view, Russia is a natural enemy of China, and its long national border and vast territory have caused the two countries to accumulate heavy troops in the border areas.

On the Russian side of the border, there is an uninhabited region of Siberia, which has little economic value for Russia, and even if the entire Siberia and Far East east of the Ural Mountains are lost, it will not damage the core of Russia. But China is different, south of the border is the economic hinterland of China, and with the development of the northeast region, the importance of it is becoming more and more obvious, and everyone can see that it will become the most important heavy industry center and agricultural center of China, and if war breaks out, it will be the first to be threatened. In addition, after crossing the Mongolian steppes, it will be the Central Plains region of China, and the Russians will pose a great threat to the Central Plains like the nomads of ancient times.

Radical military officers even demanded that the heads of companies that had betrayed the interests of the country and those associated with the government who agreed to the matter be executed and deprived of their wealth for undermining national security. What is ironic is that most of these radical officers are members of a young officers' organization in the army called the "Presidential Guard", which has only one purpose, that is, to be loyal to the president and to die for the president!

What they didn't expect was that the biggest figure who decided the matter was the great President Luliang to whom they were allegiated! After consulting with the high-ranking officers of the gene people, he believed that the closed fortresses in modern warfare could not stop the advance of the army, the defensive strategy of shrinking the head of the turtle was outdated, and there were a variety of secret weapons in the Chinese military industry to deal with the closed fortresses. In this way, the Russian army can be relatively concentrated, and it will be annihilated.

Later facts proved that the stiff brains of the genetic people and Lu Liang's whimsy became an obstacle to the Chinese army's attack, and the losses caused made Lu Liang regret it, and once again blamed himself for his decision to slap his thigh. A series of cities along the Trans-Siberian Railway, including the Vladivostok fortress, the Boli (Khabarovsk) fortress, the Chita fortress, the Ulan-Ude fortress, and the Irkutsk fortress, eventually became a roadblock to the Chinese army's offensive. During the war, Lu Liang bowed and apologized to the people for this incident, voluntarily admitted that it was a mistake caused by his wrong decision, and because of this incident, he pulled the people out of the personality cult of the president.

Taking advantage of its oil wealth, Russia has added a large number of new equipment to the army, including new rifles, machine guns, mortars, large-caliber artillery and train guns, which are slowly filling the pockets of the Far Eastern Army and the Mongolian Army. New fighter planes ordered from Britain and tanks ordered from France were to arrive in Russia by May 1909. Imitation aircraft and tanks from the country's military factories have become the mainstream equipment of the Russian army, and although the performance is not satisfactory, it is better than nothing.

In order to deal with the threat of China, the Russian army also formed the Central Asian Army Group, which was mainly composed of local herdsmen, mostly mobile cavalry, equipped with some small-caliber artillery. Due to the low level of the local economy, the distance from the hinterland of Russia and the hinterland of China and Asia, and the difficulty of transportation, the Russians did not build a military fortress similar to the Far East. The army top brass believed that the vast steppes and Gobi deserts of Central Asia were enough for any attacking army to fall into them.

Russia's center of gravity has always been in the European direction and has never changed, and Asia is just an addition to the expansionist ambitions of the Slavs. In order to cope with the pressure of the Imperial German Army and to cope with the expansion in the Balkan direction, the Russian Army, at the request of Nicholas II, reorganized the forces of six army groups in the European direction. The Minister of War promised Nicholas II that in the event of a full-scale outbreak of war, Russia could expand the strength of three army groups in a month, to one and a half million in six months, and to three million in a year.

Cheap serfs kept the army from a shortage of replenishment, but the fragile industry was not enough to cope with the pressure of equipment requirements brought about by the great expansion. Nicholas II never gave up his maritime ambitions, nor did he give up the search for ice-free ports, and after most of the navy was wiped out in the Far East, the Russian navy ushered in the era of the Gotsugaku. Unlike the British, the Russian Navy has mostly disappeared from the old warships, which allowed the newly replenished warships to keep up with the times.

It is a pity that the Russian shipbuilding industry does not have the capacity to produce new battleships, and the whole world is in a shipbuilding frenzy, and no country is willing to sell the battleships it has worked so hard to produce to other countries. Of course, in addition to Huaguo, the sale of four super battleships to Germany was still talked about until more than a year later, which was an outlier, full of incomprehensible secrets, which most Westerners blamed on the miracle of Eastern civilization, and some even abandoned their faith in Jesus because of this, and turned to Huaguo to find traces of God.

Nicholas II ordered the foreign minister to submit a request to China to buy battleships, and they put forward a list of intentions to purchase four super battleships in one go, but unfortunately China resolutely refused to sell such weapons. In desperation, Russia groped for its own design and construction, and until the outbreak of the Great War, the Russian Navy did not get a new battleship.

The shipbuilding industry is only one manifestation of Russia's weak industrial base, and Russia lags behind the newly industrialized countries in terms of steel production and the number of industrial workers. Before the start of the war, Russia's local military industry provided the army with only 900 tanks, 2,500 artillery pieces and 1,100 aircraft, and there was a large shortage of guns and ammunition.

Most of the wealth brought by oil was squandered by the aristocracy, business owners, large landowners, etc., who bought luxury goods from all over the world and competed with each other for wealth. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the homes of the great nobles often store hundreds of world-famous cars, ranging from the most precious Chinese sports cars, to sophisticated German cars, to unrestrained American cars. Russia is the world's largest oil exporter, but due to the lack of petrochemical processing capacity in the country, it has to import refined oil products from Europe!

"Rich Russians" became a popular word at the balls of the upper classes, and instead of investing their wealth in industry to expand the scale of production, update production techniques and equipment, the nobles stuffed money into the pectorals of women. Because of the Russian tycoons, the prices of luxury goods such as red wine, art, luxury cars, and watches all over the world have risen exponentially. Because those Chinese merchants didn't have a diamond on them, they didn't have a high-end watch, they didn't have a string of pearl necklaces. The Chinese put the consumption of decoration into production, and a few years later they used the weapons produced to break into the homes of the rich Russians and rob all the luxuries.

PS: Spoiler, tomorrow's content is the government's summary work report, should you add some content before the war starts? Xiaobaijun also wants to write about the layout of the Olympics and South America, and asks book friends to give suggestions. Thank you so much! (To be continued.) )