How industrialized was the Russian Empire before 1917?

The easiest way to determine a country's tech level is just to look at its navy. Russia's navy in 1914.....not very impressive. Four capital ships averaging 24,800 tons. In comparison, the German navy possessed 19 capital ships averaging 22,140 tons. Russia had a larger army, not still not as big as you'd considering the population of the Russian empire at the time. Russia managed to mobilize 12,000,000 soldiers from 1914 - 1918. Russia had a population of 166 million in 1914. Germany managed to mobilize 11,000,000 soldiers from 1914 - 1918. Germany had a population of approx. 68 million in 1914. So if I did the math correctly, Germany mobilized roughly 16% of their population during the war, whereas Russia mobilized only 7% of her population.

Russia's navy got absolutely ravaged by Japan in 1905 which is why in 1914 it appears even less impressive then it already was

also Russia don't have a warm water port

Vladivostok.

All the battleships that Russia lost in 1905 were pre-dreadnoughts. Pre-dreadnoughts were painfully obsolete by 1914 so I deliberately excluded pre-dreadnoughts from the calculations. Only dreadnoughts and battlecruisers were counted.

I'd say you need to take into account how much each side was spending on the navy, too, though. Russia was spending £9,000,000 to Germany's £14,000,000 on the navy. Only in 1913-14 did Russia actually start to outspend Germany in Naval expenditures, and even then it was only by £1,000,000.

It's honestly kind of surprising the hear that Russia actually managed to outspend Germany on naval expenditures in 1913, although I do remember "A World Undone" saying that Russia had just approved a 40% expansion to both army and navy right before the war, although the war happened before these plans could come to fruition.

Also forgot to mention the whole shitshow that was the Russian general staff in which you had the pro-navy and pro-army men disagreeing with one another. Also the naval forces believed naval expenditures should better be used for trade and whatnot, rather than military purposes.

The entirety of Russia between 1900-13 is just surprising as fuck. Productivity pretty much exploded, even during the Russo-Japanese war Russia was experiencing economic growth, albeit slowed down, of course. For reference Russia was spending £24,000,000 on the Navy in 1913 compared to Germany's £23,000,000

bump

No shit russians mobilized less soldiers than germans. They barely had enough ammunition and rifles for the ones already mobilized.

I Think Russia for most of the 1900s was similar to America in the affect of my personal theory is that they succeeded despite their governments, not because of it.

Russias production was staggering for how fucked up their government was.
In the same vein, its a miracle any American science or techology took off with the govt cockblocking everything.
Look at the early history of Henry Ford, who completely revolutionized modern manufacturing, and the government cock blocked him for years and years

IIRC the production of rifles needed was 200,000 monthly, but Russia only averaged 71,000, there were only 3 factories producing munition and only 1 arms plant (Tula Arsenal) manufactured machine guns.

The government owning a state monopoly on alcohol was the reason why revenue exploded so hard, though. They attempted to privatize it but this resulted in poor quality being sold for high prices, thus reducing the government's revenue, so they went back to state-controlled again, the only problem was of course increasing alcoholism, obviously. Not all of government intervention in the economy was bad for Russia, but not saying it was entirely good, either.

It was industrializing at a decent rate. Its economy was open, it had a growing educated middle class that looked to more developed countries as a possible future course for Russia with increasing political liberalization culminating in a constitutional monarchy.

WW1 fucked Russia's shit up.

It seems very difficult for governments to determine what needs interfered with and what is better off being left alone, but to be fair, it seems like an incredibly difficult task, predicting what small actions could lead to, years or even decades down the line.

Russia's government mainly focused on subsidizing factories outside of alcohol if memory serves right. They wanted there to be no foreign competition in the Russian empire, but other than that my knowledge on Russia's government intervening is small, basically they wanted to be self sufficient and not rely on foreigners.

I know for a while Russia was seen as a boogeyman of Europe, did that have a big impact on their economy?
The country itself has a shit ton of natural resources, and a decent chunk of very fertile land, its hard to not see them as a super power

Not sure. Russia was very good trading partners with Germany and in fact was the largest trader with Russia, second being Britain. I'm not sure exactly how much Russia was feared but the Germans seem to have taken advantage of Russia's underdevelopment by supplying them with what they wanted the most. Also I guess you could see Britain not trading with Russia as much as Germany. But it's more of that Britain had much more trade partners to choose from, so perhaps the fact there were more trading partners for other empires to choose did have an impact on her economy, but she was still.l a massive exporter of grain. I'll probably give a more detailed response when I'll have a bit more free time in an hour, right now tried to make it as short as possible

Thanks for the recommendation, user. Here in Brazil the Russian Empire is generally thought as a feudal dump riddled with misery and famine.

They had significant levels of industrial development in the main cities, but most of the country was still peasant tier.

The Soviet takeover saw a severe decline in output - Iron output for example fell to levels saw under Peter the Great, nearly 200 years before the Soviets.

The Soviets actually enlisted help from American industrialists to reopen their factories because they had driven out everyone who knew how to run a factory.

Source: Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development Volume I

Yeah that book sort of takes into account the various problems Russia had and how it addressed.
A common stereotype is that Russia was a ation of alcoholics and the government just let it slide. Interestingly enough that wasn't actually the case, and Russia began heavily investing in pamphlets, lectures and of the sort to educate people on the danger of alcoholism. Not only that, but they began investing in other leisurely activities, such as tea-shops, book-reading, plays etc. The government even attempted to make alcohol harder to get by implanting state-owned alcohol stores, ran by people hired by the state. The stores would open and close at specific times, so you wouldn't be able to buy it whenever.

Of course, the latter wasn't entirely effective, since some Russians began hoarding the alcohol and then selling them at even higher prices, or saving not drinking for months, and then getting piss drunk at a specific day (Like a family gathering, funeral, baptism) from all the alcohol he accummulated, that sort of didn't really help. Also the funds that went into the teashops was also fairly small, nonetheless it does show Russia tried to do something about the problem.

Another thing was that Russia wasn't so feared economically because it also couldn't really trade with nations East as well, that is until the Trans-baikal railway when they could at least put up some competition for the British in China, but they weren't seen as a viable competitor, especially in the quality department where some even complained aobut the quality of products that were received from Russia, and the fact Russia heavily relied on English machinery to actually get its industry rolling.
Another thing would be that some of Russia's territories were only recently annexed, so beginning industrialization in them was difficult, since the locals perceived the Russians still as "foreign aliens". An example would be Central asia (Forgot which good, though).

Fucking word count
Evidence of alcoholism increasing in Russia despite these restrictions in the consumption of alcohol per head increasing from 0.54 vedro (1.46 imperial gallons/6 liters) to somewhere 0.67 vedro (1.87 imperial gallons/8 liters), or an extra of 2 liters of alcohol per head, if I didn't mess up the measurement system.

im sure having millions die or be captured in world war 1 wasnt the most efficient way to grow the economy either

the commies did russia a favor in the long run

No. For the most part the business hummed along where it was profitable regardless of the governments and their personal diplomatic relations.

People thought the economic integration was basically going to ensure peace forever because of the damage that could be done if they suddenly disrupted business with war.
The banks and business men in countries such as Britian were in full panic mode when war actually was going to break out.

Yeah dude if not for the commies WW1 would still be going on today. It's not like the war was going to end in 1918 anyway. And if Russia hadn't been bolshevized, the war might have been over before the end of 1917.

Iron output fell to 75% of prewar production in 1915 and to 2% after the first year of bolshevik power.

It had a large industrial output but the majority of the workforce still worked in agriculture with primitive methods.

>People thought the economic integration was basically going to ensure peace forever because of the damage that could be done if they suddenly disrupted business with war.

And this might have actually been true if every nation had been a democracy. But in Germany, the Kaiser had independent control of military matters. He was able to activate the Schlieffen plan without consulting the Reichstag. Given that the Reichstag was mostly controlled by center-left socialists during that time, the war almost certainly wouldn't have happened if Germany's civilian leadership had been allowed to have a say in it. Books on WW1 often lament that although Germany had the most advanced economy in the world at the time, the scientists and businessmen who made that advancement possible had little influence in making important decisions in comparison to the military.

>TLDR: The German military leadership had too much independent authority.

They had warm water ports in Europe and Asia.

This is correct, the Balkan and Crimian wars lead to th w closure of the bosphoris and thus blocked 80% of Russian trade. The government ministers then made the smart choice of pursuing autarky in effort to protect Russia if her trade routes were threatened in the future.

The Baltic sea is too damn cold and it could very easily be blockaded by Germany. The Black Sea was warmer but the Turks could "blockade" it by heavily mining the Dardanelles. The only Russian ports that were really safe during the war were the ones on Russia's eastern coast. Fortunately for Russia, Japan was on the side of the Entente, or else those too would have been closed. Although in late 1917, Japan did end up seizing those ports, ostensibly to prevent them from falling into Bolshevik hands.

I dont agree because blaming the Kaiser for the war ignores how bad Le Tigre and France wanted revenge, how desperate the Serbian problem in AH was and how the liberal imperialists under the Czar wanted a paneslavic empire.

The Kaiser also had about 12 people that needed to go along with the plan for war. He himself didn't want it after the ultimatum and even though the Reichstag didn't officially vote for war even the SDs supported the war as well as the population in general.

How's that different than Gray almost unilaterally commiting Britian to war via the Naval deal with France?

>He himself didn't want it after the ultimatum

Let me clarify. Wilhelm II might not have personally wanted it, but he was convinced by the General Staff that:

1. War with Russia is inevitable.

2. Russia is industrializing rapidly, the longer we wait, the worse our chances will be.

3. The Schlieffen plan is our only hope of winning, and this plan depends on punching everybody else in the balls before they're ready to fight, so it must be activated as soon as possible.

Wilhelm actually did ask Moltke if it would be possible to delay the Schlieffen plan to allow more time for diplomacy, and Moltke basically flipped his shit and started screaming that they've been planning this for years and that any further delay will ruin any chance of success. The key point here, is that the German military basically made the decision to go to war by themselves. Nobody from the civilian government was consulted on this. The only person who had the authority to tell them to stand down was Kaiser Wilhelm II, and given that all his advisors were also from the German military, there is really no chance he'd tell them "No."

If the Schlieffen plan had gone to a vote in the Reichstag, it almost certainly would have been voted down. At this point in time, the Reichstag was controlled by center-left socialists who were generally against aggressive military action. Hell, their very first act upon gaining power was to heavily reform German's colonies in Africa from ruthlessly exploitative hellholes to models of enlightened colonialism where natives received free education and forced labor was banned. This after the Kaiser had been ready to effectively order mass genocide of Africans just a few years prior during the Herero rebellion.

To repeated the central point of this rant, the German military simply had too much independent authority.

An example of Russia's industrialization would be how much oil they started pumping, too, imo.
Emba fields are probably the craziest ones. A whopping 16500% increase in production in a 3 year span.
1 pood = 36.121 lbs or 16.3807 kg

They began industrialising during the German Wars of Unification, pretty late, but they did it very fucking quickly from the beginning of the 20th Century.