Pavel hesitated and Natasha thought that he was about to complain about her not taking a husband to manage the family’s wealth properly. It was a complaint he had made before, several times. Pavel was a very capable man who had been quick to adopt the innovations and new industries made possible by the Dacha, which was why he still had the job despite Natasha’s annoyance at his attitude.
But instead he just said, “You were out of touch. And the work must go on. I had no instructions to the contrary.”
“Very well. Give me a report on what has been happening since we last talked,” Natasha said.
It was a long report and much of it wasn’t very pleasant hearing. Many of the reforms that she had made under the influence of Bernie, and increasingly the influence of Anya, Filip and Father Kiril, had been reversed. The bonuses for good work and good ideas, the improved working conditions and pay, had been stopped and some of them had even been backtracked, treated as though they were loans, not payment, making greater debt that the serfs owed her. Then there was the diversions of funds, prices much too high paid to the Sheremetev clan for too little goods of too little quality and goods produced here sold to Sheremetev connections for kopeck’s on the ruble. “Director-General” Sheremetev and his greedy family hadn’t chopped off the head of the golden goose, but they were halfway to strangling the poor bird in trying to squeeze extra eggs from it.
As she listened she was forced to a realization. She couldn’t save it. The industrial base that she had been working to build here wasn’t something she could defend from Sheremetev. Even the estates and lands that had been her family’s for generations would be lost, at least temporarily, and the knowledge of that loss almost ripped the heart out of her. At the same time, this was strangely liberating. The family lands were gone, the serfs and other workers who made those lands productive would not be owned by her family, no matter what she did. The only question was who would get them. When it finally came, the decision to free her serfs from their ties to the land was easy. Better they should belong to themselves than Sheremetev, much better.
“Very well,” Natasha said. “There is a proclamation I must make and legal documents that I need drawn up.”
When the nature of those legal documents was made clear to him, Pavel had a fit. He explained that Natasha was a spoiled little girl and that no man would be so foolish, not even her idiot of a brother who married a peasant. He was, in fact, so angry that his thoughts about the innovations, at least the nontechnical innovations came boiling out. That she was wasting her family’s heritage was clear. That the peasants that she showered useless and expensive gifts on would work harder with a touch of the lash instead. Natasha was tempted to give Pavel a touch of the lash, but she restrained herself. She needed to hear this. She especially needed to hear who else among her factors and agents felt this way.
So she listened meekly, like a school girl taking her deserved scolding. And Pavel, in his anger and desperation, poured out quite a bit she needed to know.
Then she had him arrested.
Another clerk was called and the proclamations were drawn up. All the serfs on all the Gorchakov lands had all their debts to the Gorchakov family forgiven. They were, if they chose to be, released from their bonds to the land and were asked to join Natasha in the east where they would build together a new land of free people. Those who chose to stay on her lands were welcome to do so, but should be warned that those who would likely seize her lands were less likely to respect her decrees in regards to the serf’s debts. Having had her documents written up, she took them off to be examined by the czar.
* * *
Meanwhile, the clerk who had taken down the documents took himself off to repeat their contents to anyone who would listen.
* * *
The czar, the czarina, and his ad hoc Duma of Bernie, Anya, Filip, Kiril, and Tim, listened to her plan with varying degrees of shock. Tim was flabbergasted and honestly thought it was a horrible idea. Not without reason. The serfs would run, some to the east following Natasha sure enough, but others into banditry among the Cossacks. And as word spread of what she had done, other serfs would run, hoping to hide among hers. The nation would collapse. Anarchy would rule and Russia would burn.
“Perhaps,” said Filip. “In fact, I suspect you’re quite right. But it won’t be better for waiting. Serfdom eats at Russia like a tape worm, sapping the nation’s strength and killing its greatness unborn. And the longer we wait before seizing freedom, the less we will know how to handle it when we finally gain it.”
He smiled, then. “If nothing else, Your Majesty, you can form a legitimate Cossack state.” Filip waved his hand toward the east. “Somewhere out there.”