African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1289: Chapter 298: Alcohol

This is actually quite easy to understand. At this time, Russia was at war, and Russia was one of the most backward among the imperialist states; naturally, the people on the Russian front lines and in the occupied zones lived in the most miserable conditions.

Previously, the Tsarist government had requisitioned grain from the occupied areas; after the Allies occupied Ukraine they similarly levied grain there. And whether it was Tsarist Russia or the Allied National Army, military discipline was not exactly sound—especially the Bulgarian units. On top of that, agriculture in these regions had already been severely disrupted by the war itself.

In this period, the occupied zones of Tsarist Russia such as Ukraine, even if not quite a hell on earth, were still sunk in dire suffering.

So one should not underestimate a small biscuit; they were what allowed these Russian refugees, long trapped in famine, to calm down quickly.

As for their life in the Basra refugee camp, although far from the battlefront, the Ottoman Empire obviously was not running a charity. It merely ensured, in the most basic sense, that they could stay alive.

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”Freedom!”

The so‑called Freedom was an old‑style sailing ship, anchored in the Persian Gulf south of the town of France and Austria.

On the beach between the town of France and Austria and the Persian Gulf, dozens of small boats were already pulled up, because the town had no harbor and there was no berthing space for large ships, which could only float offshore.

To get to the Freedom, they had to board those small boats, row over to the side of the Freedom, and then climb up the ladders to reach the deck.

The refugees were divided into groups of ten and boarded the small boats one after another. Each boat had three East Africans aboard, responsible for maintaining order and handling the boat as it drifted toward the Freedom.

On shore, the East Africans carried out a final round of disinfection, holding spray bottles filled with disinfectant and giving the refugees one last cleaning.

”Kumoyev, what are the East Africans spraying on us? It smells like vodka.”

Sitting in the small boat, Lebria pressed his sleeve to his nose and took a deep sniff as he spoke.

A young man with a distinctly Slavic face said, ”It should be alcohol. The East Africans are really extravagant. This stuff must take a fair amount of grain to produce, and at the front it’s a life‑saving resource.”

The young man was Kumoyev, from a place in Russia called Ananyev Village.

Ever since the outbreak of the World War, Nicholas II had issued a prohibition on alcohol, which greatly displeased the Russians, who were practically addicted to drinking.

As for why this prohibition was enacted, one explanation goes back to the Russo‑Japanese War, when Russian troops were notoriously drunken, causing supplies to fail to reach the front in time. Some newspapers even reported that it was not the Japanese Army that defeated the Russians, but alcohol itself that beat the Russian Army. So, drawing on that last lesson, Nicholas II promulgated the prohibition.

As for other reasons, just as Kumoyev said, distilling alcohol consumes enormous quantities of grain, which in wartime, with nationwide food shortages, is an extremely wasteful act.

Before the war broke out, Russian conservatives vigorously supported the authorities’ campaign against alcoholism. They carried out anti‑drinking propaganda, using speeches and publications to make the public aware of alcohol’s harms.

In short, there was a large constituency inside Russia that supported prohibition, and this group wielded considerable influence within the Russian government.

If Ernst were to judge Nicholas II’s prohibition, he would call it ”tearing down his own Great Wall.”

After all, a Russian army in a sober state is in fact at its most dangerous; alcohol actually helps to numb the fear and panic of Russia’s lower‑rank soldiers toward the war.

Moreover, from Ernst’s perspective, no country has ever truly succeeded with prohibition. Whether the United States or the Soviet Union, all ultimately ended in failure.

Of course, the initial intention of prohibition was, overall, good: excessive drinking is indeed extremely harmful to health. But in a country like Russia, where the lower classes live in such misery, talk of ”health” is sheer nonsense.

And the effects of Russia’s prohibition were also very obvious: liquor on the black market was driven up to exorbitant prices, and the lower classes actively sought substitutes for vodka, such as medical alcohol, and even methanol, floor polish, and varnish.

Thus, when the East Africans produced spray bottles of alcohol to disinfect these Russian refugees, the Slavs once again felt a profound shock.

Lebria, breathing in the wafting alcoholic fragrance from his clothes, as though afraid that the scent might fade, said, ”It’s rousing the craving in me.”

”Before the war reached Petri Talisman, life was very hard, but I still managed to buy alcohol twice from the black market, dilute it with water to a lower concentration and drink it to ease my fatigue. It makes me miss the days before the war broke out, before the prohibition came in.”

”Back then, my father hadn’t yet been forcibly drafted, our household could still get by, and the price of vodka hadn’t been jacked up so high by those black‑hearted merchants. Thinking back now, even if life was difficult then, compared to these three years of war it was already practically heaven.”

Lebria was only sixteen. In the early stages of the war, Tsarist Russia expanded its army by voluntary enlistment, but very quickly turned to compulsory conscription. In the process, many peasants and commoners were forced to leave their homes and go to fight.

But before Russia could organize a new round of conscription, Lebria’s home region had already fallen. At Lebria’s age he was actually in great danger; whether he would be forcibly drafted or not depended entirely on the mood of the local Recruiting Officer.

And it was his youth that led the Allies, after occupying Lebria’s hometown Petri Talisman, to sell him to East Africa.

In this ”new triangular trade” organized by East Africa, East Africa played the role of last century’s American plantation owners, picking and choosing: they refused the old, and would not take the very young either; youths like Lebria, on the brink of adulthood, were the most sought‑after.

Being young meant being healthy; even after being shipped to the South Sea Region he could continue working for East Africa, and his age made it easier for the East African Government to reshape him.

Although the Labor Party was currently active inside Russia, this did not at all affect East Africa’s recruitment of migrants from the occupied zones. After all, the regions where the Labor Party was active were Russia’s urban areas—rooted in factories or in sensitive sites like barracks.

The countryside was basically neglected by the Russian Labor Party, a tradition later inherited by the Soviet Union. Someone like Lebria, born in a purely rural Russian district, and from a line of Peasant Slaves, naturally could not become a target for Labor Party expansion.

The entire Russian Labor Party amounted to scarcely more than a hundred thousand people. If it were cities like Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv and the like, East Africa would certainly not ignore the risks just to recruit this tiny number of migrants from them.

Besides, even if migrants were recruited from those cities, once in the South Sea Region they would not stay. Russian cities and countryside are two completely different worlds; the living standards of urban dwellers are far higher than those of Russia’s mass of peasants.

Kumoyev sighed and said, ”Just from the East Africans using alcohol to disinfect us, the biscuits they gave us yesterday, the automobiles we rode in, and last night’s dinner, it’s clear that East Africa is far richer than Russia.”

”That’s good news for us as well. The ’South Sea Region’ that East African officer mentioned probably won’t be too bad either. At the very least, compared to Russia, it shouldn’t be worse.”

East Africa’s living standard had never been low—at least above the world average. With the passage of time and the development of East African industry, in recent years the living standard of East Africans had already caught up with that of the other great powers.

Indeed, because of the long‑standing slave system, East Africans in some respects had even surpassed ordinary citizens of the great powers. Worldwide, the only peoples comparable to East Africans were the Americans, the people of the United Kingdom, France, and a few others.

Kumoyev was clearly a meticulous and thoughtful Russian youth; from a handful of details he had already judged his own future prospects.

Of course, East Africa’s colonies obviously could not be compared with the homeland. But what the colonies lacked was mainly developed industry and a robust economy; in other respects, such as law and institutions, they differed little from the homeland.