19th century Russian general modernized Warsaw (Sokrates Starynkiewicz zmodernizował 19-to wieczną Warszawę)

lthough I have been removed for decades now, I still consider myself a “warszawiak”, which means native of Warsaw. As such, like most of us, I love and take pride in my city. So, it was a surprise, when my friend from Kielce (another Polish town) sent me this interesting video about a little known 19th century president of Warsaw, Sokrates Starynkiewicz. That’s right, Socrates!
His presidency spanned between 1875 and 1892, which, to anyone who knows anything about history, will be obvious that it was under Russian occupation. And to "add insult to injury”, he was a general in Czar’s army. When he became the president, Warsaw was a city of slums, dirty and stuck in 18th century, according to the documentary.
He started by doubling the city’s economy by various ways. He created large industries, among many, steel to supply Russia with things like bridges, which were still used all they way up to Russian-Japanese War. That trade exchange, where Poland was a main supplier, provided Russia with top technologies for the times, creating great industrial opportunities at home as well.
As an interesting fact, it was the way that Russian bureaucrats operated, that allowed high quality products to be favoured. There was an unwritten rule, that 30% of contract cost would come back to the buyer in form of a bribe. So that way, the more they spent, the more came back to them, so naturally there was high interest in new and expansive technologies.
Among many things he did, was built a massive vodka distillery for a Russian army, which helped stabilize rural areas around Warsaw and the whole region by guaranteeing demand for rye. But one of the biggest ventures that Starynkiewicz undertaken was to create proper water supply as public utility, that would bring Warsaw to 20th century European city standards. To do that, he went to Frankfurt to meet with an Englishman named William Lindley, who just created waterworks there. Based on that Sokrates and Lindley built Filtry, Warsaw’s waterworks, a technological marvel for the time, that operate until this day. It wasn’t an easy task to get such big endeavour of the ground, firstly the Russian government didn’t want to fork out 8 million roubles to pay for it, so after a long bureaucratic battle, Starynkiewicz decided to pay for the initial costs out of his own pocket, to get the project approved. After that there were the citizens of Warsaw themselves, that were against the project, especially the landlords, who didn’t feel like paying higher property taxes for something that didn’t bring immediate profits. Another fun fact, in order to get this massive endeavour going, since there was quite the resistance, Starynkiewicz would literally visit places like newspapers, sit down with a reporter that wrote a piece against the project and argue his point until the reporter would agree with him. He created public debates, which until then were unheard of. All in all, a Russian general, with Russian funds, brought Warsaw out of the 18th century slums, and made it into a prosperous European city ready for the 20th century. And if yo think, that that’s the end of Starynkiewicz and his endeavours in Warsaw’s improvements, then guess again. In part to we’ll talk about how he modernized/created public transportation, again with interesting anecdotes and stories, among other things. Apparently the waterworks were just the beginning. I hope that English readers enjoyed this, and for the polish readers it’s a little bit of history and persuasion to deviate from Russio-fobia, which is running amok in Poland nowadays.