If Russia reaches its full potential of industrialization, economy, and military power, in short, all the possibilities that make it power, will it surpass Europe and the United States?
Russia's potential
- Thread starter KING OF EGYPT
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I'm going to give a firm maybe 
The 20th century was a pretty big Russia-screw so it's hard to estimate what Russia's maximum potential would be if everything went right from a 1900 start date.
I think in a TL with no World Wars it could be stronger than America, and by extension be the strongest single country on the planet. The World Wars wrecked Russia economically and demographically, while greatly empowering America. At the same time, it being stronger than the rest of Europe is very unlikely in a no World War scenario because the rest of Europe was also pretty severely screwed by those, and without them the European Great Powers could each be beastly economies with metropolitan populations in excess of 100 million by the modern day.
Maybe in a world with no World Wars but where western and central europe are ravaged by communist revolutions that close the continent to American goods? But that'd likely be a existential problem even for an optimally reformed Russian Empire...
The 20th century was a pretty big Russia-screw so it's hard to estimate what Russia's maximum potential would be if everything went right from a 1900 start date.
I think in a TL with no World Wars it could be stronger than America, and by extension be the strongest single country on the planet. The World Wars wrecked Russia economically and demographically, while greatly empowering America. At the same time, it being stronger than the rest of Europe is very unlikely in a no World War scenario because the rest of Europe was also pretty severely screwed by those, and without them the European Great Powers could each be beastly economies with metropolitan populations in excess of 100 million by the modern day.
Maybe in a world with no World Wars but where western and central europe are ravaged by communist revolutions that close the continent to American goods? But that'd likely be a existential problem even for an optimally reformed Russian Empire...
You need a Russian monarch who is willing to share power with the Duma and transition to a constitutional monarchy and you need a monarch who's willing to abandon Serbia to Austria.
An "Everything goes right." 20th century might put Russia as the strongest nation on the planet, but "everything goes right" is not the same thing as the best plausible scenario, especially with a POD around 1900.
Not to say OTL was the best case scenario, but that Russia goes the entire 20th century with no costly revolutions/civil wars, foreign conflicts, purges, or other messes that interfere with "everything goes right" even if things go less badly than OTL feels hard to impossible to achieve.
Not to say OTL was the best case scenario, but that Russia goes the entire 20th century with no costly revolutions/civil wars, foreign conflicts, purges, or other messes that interfere with "everything goes right" even if things go less badly than OTL feels hard to impossible to achieve.
Best case is where Russia will surpass the USA, (some might consider it asb) but well who predicted that the backward colonies that federated itself as the so called United States will be the number 1 superpower in 1776.
No. Not unless it uses it's position to dominate China and the Asian landmass just as Mackinder had feared. Such a move will bring Europe and the US against Russia in conflict that Russia probably wouldn't be able to withstand.
I never pretended to be an “expert” but flattery is always gladly accepted. 😂
The question is quite complicated because a lot depends upon the definitions, especially as far as the “might” is involved. In 1912-13 reputed French economist conducted analysis of the Russian economy based upon the statistic data from the past few decades and came to a conclusion that, without the wars and other big problems the Russian Empire will have the biggest economy in Europe (IIRC, the US was not mentioned).
One may discuss reliability of the method based upon the statistics from the past (linear approximation with no allowances for the unknown scientific and technological innovations, etc.) but in a presented generally rosy picture one thing was missing and it was growing dependency upon the foreign capital. Mostly French, Belgian and British. Starting from Witte’s tenure as the Finance Ministry the explicit policy of the Russian government was combination of a protectionism with the increasing dependency upon the import of the foreign capital. By the 1910s 60-70% of the financial transactions in Russia had been controlled by six major banks of St-Petersburg which, in turn, had been controlled by the French capital. Which, in turn, meant that a big part of the Russian industry had been controlled by the foreign capital.
- Annually, up to 30% (IIRC) of the dividends paid by the Russian enterprises had been exported in gold to pay the foreign investors instead of being reinvested into the Russian economy. And this not counting percentages by the foreign loans.
- All the way to the 1914-15 most of the Russian coal, metallurgical and oil industries had been controlled by the foreign capital. In the case of a coal industry syndicate “Produgol”, controlled by Paris-based committee, had been keeping the coal production artificially low to benefit from the higher costs and additionally benefit from importing duty free French coal. Situation with the iron was more or less the same and Baku oil industry was dominated by “Branobel” (Nobel brothers) and “Mazut” (Rothschild) who were interested in limited production (to keep costs high) and very specific narrow set of the refined products. At least “Produgol” started falling apart in 1912 but what will be a general tendency in a rosy future is anybody’s guess.
- Nomenclature of the fast developing areas was limited with the big gaps. For example, the aluminum production was simply absent. Wolfram ore had been exported to Germany from which the processed metal had been imported. The practical process of getting synthetic rubber was invented by Lebedev in 1910 but went nowhere until the funding for the further research became available in 1932 with the resulting mass production of the Soviet synthetic rubber. The growing number of the Russian-made airplanes, cars and trucks is somewhat misleading because all the way to the 1910s they were overwhelmingly using the imported engines, ignitions, rubber, etc. and the engine-building industry had quite limited capacities until the Soviet times, etc.
As a side note, the “rosy” scenario definitely excludes the colonial adventures like one in China. Witte’s idea of the peaceful penetration proved to be a very costly failure economically and politically. His pet railroad project (TransSib passing through China - East China RR) lived on big state subsidies and, after RJW it became obvious that there is a need to get back to the abandoned initial project of the line passing completely through Russia (Witte kept resisting it even after the war). The RR expansion into Korea greatly contributed to start of the RJW while not producing any serious benefits. The adventures with Port-Arthur and Dalnii does not need any explanations except, perhaps that it cost huge amounts of money before the war and Dalnii as a commercial port proved to be a failure. The only meaningful expansionist move (which, by the geographic reasons would involve a minimal international risk) would be annexation of Xinjiang region because of its natural resources: in OTL the Soviets for quite a while had been controlling it by this reason through the pet warlords.
Late POD Kerensky teams up with Kornilov to make him dictator crushes Bolsheviks and other radicals from both the left and right, avoids civil war.
No but keeps it in check
I think russias biggest enemy and friend is geography and the dead weight of Siberia
The Soviet Union had nearly ten times as many live births as France at one point in the 1930s. If someone wants they can write a timeline with a giant Tsarist population where the RE becomes a high income economy by the 1970s and gets reserve currency status.
Do you mean today's Russia? Then it already surpasses Europe and is quickly catching up to US on other areas of industry. What do I mean by that? Production of small components that make up civilian industry like airplanes for an example since this one area where the US has been pretty much dominant for decades.
In military production well Russia far surpasses the US decades ago, pretty much all their military components now are Russian made. Meaning that they don't have to hand out contracts on private companies to build their stuff like how western militaries do.
If you don't believe me just look for both western and Russian sources. Pretty much both data raw or otherwise indicate rapid growth of Russia than even before. While Europe and US is pretty much degrading or entirely gone like Germany and UK.
In military production well Russia far surpasses the US decades ago, pretty much all their military components now are Russian made. Meaning that they don't have to hand out contracts on private companies to build their stuff like how western militaries do.
If you don't believe me just look for both western and Russian sources. Pretty much both data raw or otherwise indicate rapid growth of Russia than even before. While Europe and US is pretty much degrading or entirely gone like Germany and UK.
This must be a joke. And surely you can make Russia even better than it is now.
Is this sarcasm or what? I stand my point today's current Russia is practically at it's healthiest form right now. They survived the mother of all sanctions, their entire economy, military and culture is practically moving forward at breakneck speeds.
Could it better? Yes it could, I would argue they can make it even more successful than what it already is, considering how absolute disaster their Yeltsin era was.
