The Un-Orthodox Solution

The shortages were not just felt by the allies or the assorted neutrals, most of whom like China, were all now in various levels of undeclared war with either side. The Triple Entente had more than it’s fair share of problems as well. The United States was probably the least effected of anyone by the various shortages but, was not unscathed. Despite the fact that most of the citizens of the North American belligerents, both Allied and Entente, suffered the least of anyone they still felt a pinch in the form of sky rocketing food prices. Many a historian have tried to place the blame for this on a multitude of factors but, when one examines the evidence, that we have, there seems to be only one reason for the rising food costs in North America. It seems that individual grocers, dry goods stores, and market dealers raised their prices for no other reason than they knew they could.

The US and Canadian Governments attempted to combat this with laws but, the merchants quickly found ways around this. One grocer even went so far as to demand that a customer buy his dog with a barrel of flour. The flour was marked with the government price while the dog went for an outrageous sum. Once the customer got home with his needed flour, and his unwanted dog, the animal was trained to runaway and come back to the grocery store. This kind of gouging was across the board and in places like Mexico, many merchants simply refused to sell their goods unless they could do so at the prices they set. In the Confederacy, with each state trying it’s own approaches, the attempts at combating food prices was an unqualified mess and led to a black market of goods that were quickly competing with legitimate businesses who found they could not keep up. More than a few major retailers filed for bankruptcy under these systems.

While problems in the US were very real and impacting peoples lives in a noticeable way, what all of the civilians of North America had was an unshakable resolve that this was ‘abnormal’ and that, sooner or later, the ‘normal way’ would eventually return. This helped stifle much unrest but, in places like Russia, this was not the case. Just like in China, Russia was a land that seemed homogenous to the foreign observer but, this was only an illusion. There were even many native Russian speaking peoples who pledged their loyalties to their region before that of Czar Nicholas. That was not even counting the social problems that were being created by a rapidly industrializing economy that was being overseen by a ruler that was not only trying to rule his people in old feudal styled agrarian manner but, seemed to not even realize the changes were happening.

Russia was also a very large place and, while that seems obvious to anyone who looks at a map, such a precursory examination is only scratching the tip of the iceberg. While Russia had made many strides in the road to modernization there were still large tracks of the country, most of it in fact, that was still living in almost stone age conditions. There were also many area’s where people did not speak Russian, did not fancy living under the Czar, and lacked a modern infrastructure on top of it. Georgia was one such place.

This region had always been considered problematic by St Petersburg. In 1901 it was being ruled, by the Czar, as the Tiflis Governate. The name says everything, in that, since the conquest of the region, the Russian Empire was doing their best to “Russianize” their subjects and would not even call the people what they were. Even birth certificates were issued with a Russian name and not their real one. The Orthodox Church was pushed in the region and one of their primary duties was to make sure that everyone spoke Russian. It was a war of ethnic conversion and one that was not too popular with the population.

Ironically, the single biggest resistance to this system would come out of the very institution that had been supplanted to make it happen. In this case it was a single individual whose Georgian name was Ioseb Besarionus dze Jughasvilli. He was the son of a cobbler and very religious mother. His father had many lapses with alcoholism, was reportedly abusive, and seems to have lost his business because he could not control his temper. Jughasvilli grew up in an environment of perpetual turmoil and, like Theodore Roosevelt, was a sickly child on top of this. His mother sought to get him out of this environment and packed the boy off to religious school as soon as she could. He would remain in this world for many years.

By the second year of the war, Ioseb had managed to avoid service in the army due to his enrollment in the seminary. He had also done everything required to become an Orthodox Priest. When it was time to take his final exams, for reasons known only to Ioseb, he simply did not show up. What we do know, as reported by many of his classmates, is that Ioseb was both a lackluster student and something of a rouge scholar. While the boy did not excel in academics he was a voracious reader. Ioseb had become exposed to many of the ideas that were floating around at the time, and somewhere in that jumble of ideologies, he seems to have been transformed into a die hard Georgian Nationalist.

It is easy to surmise that Ioseb was the product of a turbulent childhood and, by that reasoning, it is a logical assumption that he grabbed on to whatever ideology got to him first. There was no stronger pull than that which was going on in the streets of Tiflis. There had been no fighting in Georgia but, the war was being felt here in many ways and had been since the outbreak of hostilities. Not only was food getting expensive but, as the casualty lists grew, the Russian Government was pressuring their regional governors for more soldiers. Many of the troops slaughtered by Winston Churchill, in and around Belgrade, were in fact from this region.

Horror stories from the army camps and from the front had long since reached Georgia. While there are no official accounts one only has to look at the writings of Jughasvilli to find all that you need to know. Many a historian take his journals and correspondence with a grain of salt, and with good reason, however, in this case it would seem that Ioseb only had to tell the truth. More than a few young Georgian men had already fled to the mountains in order to avoid being conscripted into the army. Despite popular lore, most of these men were city dwellers and had no idea how to take care of themselves in the wilderness. Once Ioseb was expelled he quickly found himself on a list of draftee’s, so, he too fled to the hills and showed the others how to survive.

That is not to say that Ioseb Jughasvilli knew any more about living off the land than the others. He was a city boy and knew no more about hunting and gathering than those who were around him. What Ioseb did have was a superior vocabulary and an arsenal of rhetoric. It was something that these starving individuals gladly consumed and, before long, Ioseb had effective control of most of the emerging groups in his area. Another strength that Ioseb had, at least in this task, was that he did not consider himself above killing anyone who might be a threat and, in some very public and horrible ways.

These multiple groups of young Georgians, like in China, would slowly merge and had a near endless sea of replacements as the war went on. Once Ioseb became their undisputed leader, he was left with the dilemma of how to make good on his promises. Ioseb had no way to feed, shelter, or clothe these people except by the method that he was, fortunately for him, most comfortable with. The almost Orthodox priest turned to stealing what was required.

In the beginning, Ioseb was very indiscriminate about who he would take from. He obviously chose his targets by the method of whether or not the victim had what he needed. As time went on he definitely changed his strategy, after it became clear that such raids were counter productive in that it destroyed potential allies who would later prove to be useful. It was this realization that separated Ioseb from any number of bandit leaders that were now showing up in wilderness areas around the world. It would transform his ‘bandit kingdom’ into a revolution of sorts and, groups such as this, would plague the world for years to come, long after the war had ended.