In 1957, only forty years later, and after suffering the revolution, the First and Second World War, Russia won an important steep in the space race.
Granted, those were very hard times for the Russian people, but, still, credit where it's due.
> In search of a way out of this difficult situation, the government made deliberate efforts that led to an unprecedented industrial boom that began in 1893. The years of this boom were a time of economic modernization of Russia under the auspices of the state.
+----------------+-----------+-----------+------+
| Сountry | 1881–1885 | 1896–1900 | 1913 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+------+
| United States | 28.6 | 30.1 | 35.8 |
| United Kingdom | 26.6 | 19.5 | 14.0 |
| Germany | 13.9 | 16.6 | 15.7 |
| France | 8.6 | 7.1 | 6.4 |
| Russia | 3.4 | 5.0 | 5.3 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+------+
> On the eve of the revolution, the country's national income was 16.4 billion rubles (7.4% of the world total). According to this indicator, the Russian Empire ranked fourth after the United States, Germany and the British Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrialization_in_the_Russi...
Anyway, In 1917, it was the poorest country per capita of Europe except Portugal and suffered the revolution and the first and the second world war. I think is kind of surprising that, starting in that position, they could keep the pace in a race with the USA.
French First Republic too suffered from revolution yet two decades later it (First Empire) conquered much of the Europe. There was no other choice for USSR. All wealth flooded into militaristic complex. System could effectively produce weapon but it could not solve citizens needs.
In 1910 'Russian Empire' was 170 Million people, the US was 100 Million people. We're talking about 10x GDP per capita.
That would be like the US vs. Morocco today.
Today GDP per capita is $66K US vs. $12K Russia which is substantial.
Russia has, for a long time, hard 'fairly large, inefficient economic base'.
They have power mostly because of their size, and their 'acute' ability to produce things (they have very smart people), and of course their aggressive Imperial view of things.
Serfdom abolished in 1861, by 1917 forth country by GDP. Table I've cited shows increase of share in world production while shares of UK, Germany and France were decreasing. It occupied a leading position in world agriculture.
USSR reintroduced serfdom, peasants had no passports, they could not move into town without permissions [1]. USSR had famines in 1921–1923 and 1932–33, about ten of millions died. Total mismanagement. There was rebirth after Stalins death, if only they've introduced reforms like later in China.
Russia today is mostly resource-based economy [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia#/media/File:...
2) It doesn't matter that much if 'Russia version X' share of world economy was 'growing' for some range of a few decades if it's literally 1/10th the per capita economic power of those other nations. It's still a 'way behind'.
In fact, the 'further behind' the quicker growth should be. Most of the 'very poor' nations of the world today are growing very quickly.
'Russia Version X' has always been quite far behind, it's been that way for centuries, since the dawn of what we might even call 'Russia'.
That's exactly my point. Apply "per capita" to China several decades ago, it does not translate to its status today. It started with 1978 reform [1], per capita would eventually catch up.
> 'Russia Version X' has always been quite far behind ...
That's hand wavy, I can apply same rhetoric to Japan and some periods of China. In parallel universe USSR took required reforms and PRC didn't. Russian Empire had fourth GDP in the world, that's not Morocco, that's economy of Japan or Germany plus pool of cheap labor and natural resources.
And yes, Japan and China were 'way behind' as well in most of the modern era.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great....
> In 1917, Russia was one of the most backwards countries in Europe, practically a feudal agrarian society.
I've specifically mentioned 1893 and 1861 as starting point. It was industrial state by 1917. You have nothing to contradict it.
But the counterfactual isn't stasis. Russia of 1913 was busy on the same sort of government-driven upswing that Germany had ridden a few years earlier, there was lots of modernization going on and lots more planned. The soviet propaganda of course was very keen to downplay this, so they pushed "practically a feudal agrarian society" ideas hard.
At the same time as making Spitnik & submarines, and many many tractors, I think they also never equaled the 1913 harvest. At their peak, perhaps early 60s, they were still importing a lot of food from the prairies. In the 80s, without imports, the calculation was that they'd have been back to WWII levels of rationing.
You mention Germany. The Bismark government (hardly a communist government) created the first social security program, probably because they were afraid of what could happen if they don't.
And the people eating the 1913 harvest didn't start a revolution. The empire fell apart after years of war (as did the Austrians, and the Turks) and then many factions duked it out. And then reconquered all the hungry people who hoped they'd seen the last of guys from Moscow, with guns.
I don't think it's so simple. We have to account for the revolution in 1905. The Wikipedia article is a good one (1) and I think it shows the zeitgeist. In my view is the pressure of the system in the peasants and in the proletariat what creates the conditions for 1917, even if the wars were the trigger.
That "feudal society" had built the Trans-Siberian railway. While it certainly was lagging behind the Western Europe in industrialization, it was a solid second-tier country, like Japan or AH.
It's like being a centralized economy really helps when you have to catch-up a competitor, and when the path to achieve that is very well understood. By contrast, market economies shine when innovation is the driver of growth.
Russia was more or less devastated, having lost more soldiers and civilians than everyone else except China combined. With Communism, they chose to maintain an adversarial stance towards the West, and they're still paying dearly for it today. The entire history of Russia seems to consist of smart people making one bad decision after another.
For example, building of metro in Kyiv was planned to start in 1918.