21 Future Plans
As they returned to the palace, instead of getting rest, Alexander headed straight to his office to begin planning.
Grabbing books from the bookshelves, Alexander placed them on his table and began reading them one by one.
What he needed is basic information that would help him օutline his plan for the economy.
After three hours of reading, Alexander began writing out his plan in a book that he will use as a reference for the future operation.
A question arose in his mind. How do you make the Empire of Ruthenia turn from a failing economy to an economic superpower?
The first step has already been established by giving the people what they want. They want land? Fine, they can have land. They want a representative government? Fine, they can elect their representative in an upcoming election. The people are getting tired of war? Fine, let’s end it. The people are hungry? Then let’s import foods from another country until the agricultural sector stabilized. The working conditions of the masses are a complete mess? Okay, let’s passed a law that will guarantee better working conditions. Simply put, if a country wants to get back on its feet, it has to listen to the people. Because they knew what was best and are completely aware of what was going on. The goal is to make sure that the population can have both a good standard of living while also having social and political rights.
The second step is to know what strengths and weaknesses the Empire has. To start off, the Ruthenia Empire has an immense size spanning two continents. With these, the Empire has a lot of advantages such as access to huge mineral reserves that can be mined. Agriculture is also a major sector, but due to the famine that happened five years ago and the misgovernance of his predecessor, basically denying the peasants of land, it is producing less food, causing hunger and inflation.
The Ruthenian Empire has a population of 160 million people. A huge percentage of those are middle class and peasants. They will be crucial in modernizing the Empire and making it more globally competitive with the Europan powers.
Now, what is the weakness of the empire aside from its internal affairs? The simple answer is geography. Ruthenia’s massive territory has no significant warm-water, ice-free ports with direct access to an ocean, even though it has 37,000 kilometers of coastline. Ruthenia is fundamentally limited in its maritime power simply because it has no easy way to access the world’s ocean. For example the St. Petersburg port. It’s one of the important ports of the empire but it freezes in winter. The Black Sea, however, does have ice-free ports like Novorossiysk and Sevastopol but in order to get to the ocean, you need to pass through the Bosphorus strait, a strait controlled by the Angoran Empire, which has a strained relationship with the Ruthenia Empire because of the conflict in the past decades. On the Pacific side, the Vladivostok port also freezes in the winter. That’s the reason why the empire was motivated to invade the Kingdom of Choson for its access to warm water, if not only for the Yamato Empire, a superpower in the region whom they lose in war and are now threatening their position in Choson.
To summarize, in order for Ruthenia to access the world’s ocean is through chokepoints like the Danish strait and the Sea of Yamato.
It’s a headache, it’s the reason why the Ruthenia Empire is pushing for an expansionist policy. Its recent invasion of the Persian Kingdom with a strategic goal to control the port of Bandar Abbas for access to the Indian Ocean. According to history books, the Empire lost because of the involvement of the Britannia Empire, believing that it’ll threaten their interest in the middle-east.
It’s safe to say here that the Ruthenia Empire is a landlocked country. If Alexander wants to increase the economy through exports, he’ll have access to those oceans for maritime trade. Which can also mean building a good relationship with the Europan Powers. I.E the Deutschland Empire and the Britannia Empire.
Now that he knows the strength and weaknesses of the Empire, Alexander moves on to the next step. Wide-scale modernization of the industries and infrastructures. These are the most crucial steps in making a country economically stronger. It includes road constructions, railways, bridges, water treatment plants, power plants, refineries, public transportation, schools and hospitals, and so on. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
The oil reserves which is an important resource in an industrialized and modernized world, if the Ruthenian oil deposits’ location are still the same, Alexander can exploit them.
This endeavor will grant the massive abled-bodied men a job, stipulating the economy in the process.
Not only that, this is the part where he can utilize his modern knowledge in science and engineering. This means innovating the existing technologies and introducing new ones that are up to modern standards. For example in automobiles, he noticed that the current automobile in this world doesn’t have yet an air-conditioning system or an in-heating system, power steering, coil spring suspension, and seatbelts. If he were to design an automobile that has all of those features guess what would happen? Every rich middle class and elites would want a piece of that, forcing the dominant automobile manufacturers to compete in order not to lose their customers. Not only in the field of automobiles, but Alexander also has plans to introduce new and improved home appliances such as heat pumps, televisions, and microwaves, to name a few.
Thanks to his photographic memory, he can recall every article he read and has experiences with almost everything relating to engineering.
He can do it as long as he has the money, resources, and tools.
As for the military of the Ruthenian Empire, after a humiliating defeat from the Yamato Empire, Alexander is thinking of modernizing the military through military reforms that aim to improve the army’s equipment, hardware, օrganization, training, and qualifications.
If the information he read about Ruthenian Army was correct, where the military of the empire is lagging behind the superpowers of Europa, then it’s only natural to modernize the military as well.
This endeavor would probably cause millions of money. According to the latest data, the Ruthenian GDP is top 5 in the world with a total GDP of 28,685,264,947 dollars. (Adjusting for inflation, the total would be 490,900,500,800 dollars).
Normally, this would be considered high but there was a word that is not yet confirmed that there is corruption rampant in the government of the Ruthenia Empire. Misappropriations of funds, embezzlement where instead it’s going to the public, it’s going into the pockets of the corrupt politicians. As a supreme ruler of the nation, it’s his responsibility to eliminate those. Those who steal from the public will be punished according to the laws.
Now that it has already come to light in his mind, Alexander will investigate the corruption of the government. Corruption is cancer to society, and the only effective way to deal with it is to eliminate the root.
Setting that aside, Alexander finally drafted his modernization plan in his notebook. It just has to turn into law so that it can be started. But this is different from the innovation and technologies he’ll introduce to this world. It’s not like the government should fund the creation of home appliances, that would be ridiculous and unacceptable.
Alexander explored another idea. As the heir apparent to the throne, he receives 500,000 Ruthenian rubles every year (34,119,450.61$ in today’s money). Not adding before he became an heir apparent, which is 200,000 Ruthenian rubles 13,647,780.31$) To calculate, Alexander received 200,000 every year starting when he reach the age of one until he became an heir apparent which is 16 then for each succeeding year, he’ll receive 500,000 Ruthenian rubles. In total, he received 3,200,000 Ruthenian rubles. (320,722,835.60$ in today’s money.)
Now that’s a lot of money. Most of it was donated to charities during the great famine while some were used to sponsor construction projects such as churches, hospitals, and orphanages to name a few.
He can use the remaining money to build factories with the sole purpose of bringing modern technologies into reality. If all went according to plan, the economy of the Empire will surely rise.