All of us who studied in Soviet schools were hammered into our heads that our people saw electricity for the first time, with the arrival of the Bolsheviks.
We learned by heart the GOERLO plans and Lenin's grandfather's statement about the "electrification of the whole country."
I then had a firm belief that the houses were lit with torches. So I imagined that the owner combed the splinters and inserts them one by one into the holder.
This is now the understanding of the whole absurdity of such coverage. Try it at your dacha, sit in the evening with torches. If you're lucky and you don't burn down the dacha, you will still have to whitewash or paint the ceiling.
In general, it seemed that before the revolution everything was in such desolation. You read the work of Maxim Gorky "Mother" and you fall into a deep depression. How bad people lived, and even in the dark.
Probably, we were instilled with love and gratitude to the Bolsheviks, for the fact that they freed us from the tsarist slavery at the torch.
But with the advent of the Internet, books and materials became available that show the history of Tsarist Russia from the other side.
For example, the catalog of the Russian Department at the World Exhibition in Paris.
Promotional video:
I will not cite all the achievements of our country presented at this exhibition. This is a topic for a separate article.
I will give just one page that concerns the development of electricity in the Russian Empire.
In addition to the DC electric motor, electric fan, electric pump, transformers and rheostats, I was greatly surprised, as a former electric rolling stock driver, by the electric motor for electric road cars.
Hello, we've arrived! What is it like?!!!
We all know that in the beginning there was a steam locomotive, then a diesel locomotive, and finally, the pinnacle of progress - an electric locomotive.
This is an exhibition in 1900, at which the Joint Stock Society of Russian Electrotechnical Plants (plural), presents an electric motor for electric railroad cars.
But it takes several years to build these plants and develop and then manufacture such an engine. That is, it was invented even earlier.
We are also looking at the document.
The third edition of the engineer V. A. from 1912 "What you need to know to spend less on electricity."
From it we learn that even then the population was paying 40 kopecks per kilowatt of electricity for electric meters.
There were TWO tariffs - night and day. At the same time, the population and industry were paid at different rates.
Here are the light bulbs, though not Ilyich.
Luminous advertising, as well as advertising from RUNNING WORDS.
Electric sewing machine.
Electric fan and room electric oven.
Hair dryer.
Electric samovar and electric iron. Remember the hot charcoal irons from history?
And here, an electric facial massager is depicted, as well as a tree with an electric garland.
Luchins say?
Electric polisher and electric washing machine. Not "Indezit" of course, but it will erase.
I will not exhibit the entire book. And it is so clear that in history lessons at school, they told us, to put it mildly, a lie.
In fact, Russia, in 1913, was in 5th place in the world in terms of electricity production (1.88 billion kWh).
The total capacity of hydroelectric power plants in Russia, by 1917, was 19 MW.
The USSR reached such indicators only in 1928.
And even such a well-known phrase about the "electrification of the whole country" belongs not to Lenin, but to Vladimir Vernadsky, who back in 1896, planned until 1920 to create a wide network of power plants throughout the country.
So this revolution only threw us back.
The first tram appeared in Kiev in 1891, and the last one in 1916 in Arkhangelsk.
Electrified railways were used to transport goods.
And electric lamps, by 1916, illuminated not only Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also many other cities of the empire.
Among them: Orenburg, Yaroslavl, Smolensk, Riga, Ufa, Barnaul, Vyatka, Kaluga, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Chita and Vladivostok.
And this is not a complete list.
It was like this:
And we were told that so: