https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borki_train_disaster#Investigation

In the preceding years, [Sergei] Witte had been regularly involved in managing imperial train journeys across his railroad and was well known to the tsar. Two months before the crash, Alexander, upset about Witte’s insistence on reducing train speed limits, had publicly chastised him and his railway, referring to its owners’ ethnicity:

Nowhere else has my speed been reduced; your railroad is an impossible one because it is a Jewish road.

According to Witte, he had warned the government earlier of the deficiencies in train setup, notably using paired steam engines and faulty saloon cars.

  • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    1 month ago

    Yeah, but like, I’m reading a long-ass book about Franco’s Spain, and one of the things that the Spanish Right would do in the leadup to the Civil War was just the Spanish oligarchs denouncing various people as jews. That author at least, didn’t make it sound like it “spanish right accuses others of being secret bolsheviks” but more liken “spanish right reinvents inquisition and accuses random catholics of secretly being jewish / jews”, with the implications that being jewish was the crime these people committed.

      • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        1 month ago

        A People Betrayed by Paul Preson. It details a long story of Spain and it’s politics from around the time of the Spanish-American War and until the fall of Franco I believe. The lead up to the civil war is incredibly long and detailed, and I think it’s about 300 pages before you even get to the civil war, and then 20 pages of war, before it goes deep into post-war politics under Franco. I’m not even halfway and it’s really good, albeit it’s REALLY fucking detailed, and it makes you hate everyone that has ever been a right winger with a burning passion, if you don’t already.

        Edit: Should probably add, this book was recommended highly on GenZedong back when that sub was still pretty active, and it was recommended with the caveat that the author isn’t a socialist or a marxist, but he is still really good at understanding how structural contradictions drive society. Apparently the author isn’t all too charitable to the Spanish socialist movement, but all I’ve seen so far is the fact that he blames the Republican’s own infighting for the poor performance of the left/center in the civil war. Which isn’t too much of a stretch to argue, I would say.