Business in Russia – 2
And so, dead drunk as I was, I didn’t come to until well into the next day’s lunch hour.
“Man, I could really go for some bean-sprout hangover soup.”
Unfortunately, this was not the Korean Empire. This was Russia. Waiting for me in place of bean-sprout hangover soup was solyanka — a kind of soup.
“Good grief. Why on earth do you drink like such a savage?”
“I had my reasons.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did.”
Once I’d finished my hangover cure under Sofiya’s half-hearted scolding, it was time to resume my duties as Emperor of the Korean Empire. Unlike the photo ops and autograph sessions of the previous days, this was actual work.
Quite apart from government business, there were things an imperial head of state had to handle with foreign royal houses.
The Russian Tsar who received me at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg wore a far more serious face than the cheerfully amicable one he had maintained until yesterday.
“Welcome. I’ve had black tea prepared — will that do?”
“Yes, that would be lovely. I’ve long been interested in Russia’s tea culture myself.”
I knew nothing about tea culture, of course. But that was how these things worked — you traded the obvious small talk and broke the ice.
Only after several exchanges of conversation — mostly questions about my newlywed life — did we get to the real matter.
“The demand for the return of the East Siberian resource development rights grows fiercer by the day.”
As I had mentioned before, the Korean Empire had obtained those resource rights as compensation for aiding the Russian Empire during the Civil War of the Reds and Whites. It had promptly dispatched the Northern Mineral Resources Survey Team, then “leased” the development rights region by region to private companies.
Until then, the Korean Empire had expected to rely on massive oil imports; Manchuria’s oil fields alone could never keep pace with rising demand. Siberian crude had made it possible to meet domestic needs.
Nearly a hundred years had now passed since we first began drawing resources from Siberia. The original term of the resource development rights agreement between the Korean Empire and the Russian Empire had been ninety-nine years.
In that time Russia had weathered several economic crises, and the Korean Empire had, in exchange for bailout funds, gradually extended the rights.
If no negotiations to renew those rights took place within the next three years, the contract would expire. The Siberian resource development rights would be returned.
Over the past twenty years, Russia had achieved stable economic growth through natural gas exports. Barring some catastrophe, there was no chance they would agree to an extension.
Of course, if the Korean Empire so intended, plunging Russia into an economic crisis would not be impossible.
That the Korean Empire held Russia by the throat was an open secret.
For all its growth, Russia’s industrial capacity still lagged behind the Korean Empire’s, and in finance the gap was far wider still.
If the Korean Empire openly set out to wreck the Russian economy, inducing a crisis would be simple — and extending the resource rights would not be out of reach.
The Tsar sitting across from me knew this. So did the Russian government and its people.
If we engineered a scheme to force an extension, or if Russia’s economy simply collapsed of its own accord with us doing nothing at all, goodwill toward the Korean Empire would hit rock bottom.
But the resource development rights treaty contained a provision ordinary citizens rarely knew about.
The contract had been concluded between the Emperor of the Korean Empire and the Tsar of the Russian Empire.
At the time both empires had been closer to absolute monarchies than constitutional ones, so it had raised no issue.
But as the imperial houses of both nations weathered various upheavals and became constitutional monarchies, the problem surfaced.
Until now, discussions had concerned extension rather than termination, so the governments had handled negotiations as proxies for their imperial houses. Should the contract be terminated, however, a new question arose: to whom would the resource development rights be returned?
Read simply, every authority under the treaty had been concluded by the Tsar of the Russian Empire — so the present Tsar, as his heir, ought to inherit them.
But the “Tsar” of that era had been the sovereign of an absolute monarchy: in effect, the state itself. The body now running the Russian Empire was not the Tsar, but the government that governed under the constitution.
With vast interests at stake, neither government nor imperial house seemed inclined to yield.
In the Korean Empire’s case, the prevailing view was that since the imperial house had made the treaty, the imperial house should decide. In short, I could settle the matter as I pleased.
Which is why the Tsar called me here — to float the idea.
Return the resource rights to the imperial house, he meant.
“Your Majesty. Though I have not long occupied the throne, I pride myself on knowing something of how a modern monarch ought to conduct himself. Until I ascended, I too was an ordinary citizen.”
“Follow the will of the people — is that what you’re driving at?”
When I nodded quietly, the Tsar continued.
“You think I don’t know that? But the people themselves are divided on this matter.”
He pulled up a screen on his phone and showed it to me.
It was the result of a poll conducted by Russia’s largest broadcaster.
To whom should the resource development rights be returned?
Government: 42%
Imperial House: 44%
Unsure: 14%
Within the margin of error, there was no meaningful difference.
“If the people had given the government their full support, I would have washed my hands of the whole affair cleanly. But they do not support the present government, and so they look to me as the alternative.”
“At least if I hold the development rights, they reason, I may monopolize the wealth — but I will not corrupt the government.”
The Free Russia Party, which had ridden high-speed growth into nearly thirty years of continuous rule, had weathered multiple corruption scandals. Naturally, many citizens suspected that the resource rights would become yet another theater of massive graft and abuse.
“Unlike the Korean Empire, our imperial house undergoes regular tax audits.”
Where the Korean Empire’s emperor had effectively distributed power of his own accord, the Russian Tsar’s authority had been severely diminished by the extreme ordeal of the Civil War of the Reds and Whites.
Neither the Tsar nor the empire’s people had forgotten that the Russian Empire had survived as an empire largely thanks to the support of a neighboring monarchy.
Even so, the Tsar of the day had failed to read the room. He ordered a harsh crackdown on demonstrators demanding a constitutional monarchy — only for the military to turn their guns the other way and force him to abdicate in favor of a nephew who had looked more kindly on the protesters.
The Tsar who inherited the throne under those circumstances accepted the citizens’ demands as they stood — among them, regular tax audits of the imperial fortune.
And so the sentiment among the public had become: better hand it to the imperial house. If the house took East Siberia’s interests, at least no government official would siphon them off.
From the imperial house’s perspective, a new revenue stream was hardly unwelcome either.
The problem is the Russian government.
The government would naturally assume the rights were coming back to them. If I suddenly announced I was returning them to the imperial house, their reaction would go well beyond mere displeasure.
“How do you intend to handle the Russian government’s backlash? Even if I transfer the rights to Your Majesty, will they not push back fiercely?”
“The State Duma elections will be held soon. Let those rotten scoundrels rail against the rights going to the imperial house all they like — the public will only hear them as desperate to swallow everything themselves.”
“If they want to keep their seats as the ruling party, they will drop the slander against the house. Of course that alone is not enough, so I have weapons of my own.”
He looked ready to show me something else, so I cut him off.
“I will trust you. You must have your own convictions. If you are confident you can withstand the Russian government’s checks, transferring the rights to the imperial house is no great difficulty. What matters is what benefit this transfer brings to the Korean Empire.”
“The Russian government means to nationalize the oil and establish a public corporation. In the process, they plan to acquire the Korean Empire’s companies currently operating in East Siberia by every means available.”
“I will stop that. Even if nationalization proceeds, they will pay a fair price. Better to trust the imperial house than a corrupt government, don’t you think?”
“That is not wrong.”
“And… let me offer something that may benefit the Korean imperial house as well. If East Siberia’s oil comes into my hands, I intend to send appropriate proceeds from oil sales by a roundabout route — through the Duke of Novgorod, who is both your father-in-law and a relative of mine.”
Hmm… was it just me, or did this fellow not look all that different from the government after all?