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Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by aaron-lebo on Sunday January 14, 2018 @01:37AM (#16143106)
They were successful by the late 30s (after lots of misery), but the Russian economy had been growing for a long time. I'm not sure the imperials or republicans couldn't have pulled it off, Russia had lots of natural advantages, especially after winning WW2.

GNP:

    Country 	1890 	1900 	1913 	1925 	1938
    Russia/USSR 21 180 	32 000 	52 420 	32 600 	75 964
    Germany 	26 454 	35 800 	49 760 	45 002 	77 178
    Britain 	29 441 	36 273 	44 074 	43 700 	56 103
    France 	19 758 	23 500 	27 401 	36 262 	39 284
They went from the second smallest economy in 1890 to the biggest in 1913 (imperials). The economy crashed after the revolution and bad economic experiments and then rebounded. Russia was late to the industrial revolution so a lot of that growth was just it kicking in, along with the Soviets removing anyone that got in the way. Hard to say how much can be attributed to either.

They were holding their own late into WWI and actually had an agreement to obtain Istanbul, which the Bolsheviks revoked (hard to fault them) along with all that they gave up in the separate treaty with the Germans. Imagine them sticking it out to 1918 with gains from being on the allies and the revolution averted. They would have been as well positioned as anyone in Europe.

Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by baursak on Sunday January 14, 2018 @12:02PM (#16145008)
> Russia had lots of natural advantages, especially after winning WW2

What? How is having all your industrial infrastructure destroyed and 20 million of young, able-bodied males killed an advantage?

Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by ZenoArrow on Sunday January 14, 2018 @02:35PM (#16145843)
I believe GP is referring to natural resources (oil, gas, etc...) rather than the human cost of war.
Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by andrepd on Sunday January 14, 2018 @09:42AM (#16144418)
> They went from the second smallest economy in 1890 to the biggest in 1913 (imperials).

What does it matter, if 90% of the population lived in near complete destitution?

Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by masonic on Sunday January 14, 2018 @02:11AM (#16143188)

  The economy crashed after the revolution 
The loss of the war with Japan didn't help, either.
Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by sologoub on Sunday January 14, 2018 @02:38AM (#16143241)
Source?

I can’t find any evidence that there was any economic significance to that war aside from loss of the fleet and human life. Bruised imperial egos for sure and likely contributing to an image of a week government, but I’m hard pressed to see how it could have had any impact on the industrial output of the country.

Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by ptaipale on Sunday January 14, 2018 @04:38AM (#16143492)
You could surely say that the war with Japan didn't help.

Well-known events like the Potemkin mutiny may be dismissed as not impacting industrial output, but there was a large-scale general strike which actually lead to "1905 revolution" [0]. The loss to Japan was of course only a partial factor, with bigger contributor being the overall economic downturn of early 1900's.

There were some direct impacts from this revolution. There was large-scale unrest in Kingdom of Poland (the Russian-held part of partitioned Poland). Finland (then a Grand Duchy in the Russian empire) abolished Diet of Finland in favour of a new Parliament of Finland, with universal suffrage for both men and women. And in mainland Russia, the absolute monarchy was abolished in favour of a parliamentary monarchy.

However, this was too late for the Russian empire to recover.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution

Re:Poverty-Fighting Startups by loblollyboy on Sunday January 14, 2018 @06:45AM (#16143865)
Sergei witte basically saved Russia’s ass in the peace negotiations. He was one of at least two very good ministers fired by the tsar in a time when Russia really needed one.