AHC- Uber-Capitalistic Russia

Although it's no longer communist nowadays, Russia was once the champion of global socialism. During its several decade-existence, the USSR arose from the Bolshevik-led revolution in 1917, to a rapidly industrializing power under Joseph Stalin, to a superpower that went toe-to-toe with the United States during the Cold War. For better or worse, Russia remains infamous for its recent--and world-changing--communistic past.

But could Russia have gone in the opposite direction?

Instead of it becoming the far-left, authoritarian colossus that it was IOTL, your challenge is to make Russia a world bastion of laissez-faire capitalism comparable to, if not surpassing the OTL United States in this regard. It can be a Russian Empire that industrializes earlier, or a provisional government that successfully makes democratic reforms--among many unlisted options.

Thank you in advance,
Zyobot
 

Anchises

Banned
Central Powers win/make white peace/last longer.

Due to a combination of factors this leads to a White victory.

The victorious Whites are a bunch of bickering cleptocrats.

Eventually this leads to a laissez-faire economic system that serves as a framework to allow the oligarchs to plunder the country.
 
I wonder if Russia would experience its own Gilded Age--perhaps one even worse than the late 19th Century United States did.
 

Vuu

Banned
Requires medieval PoD to induce the mentality needed to make the kind of libertarian capitalism you think of
 
Looks like pre-1900. Becoming protestant might also be required.

Much earlier PoD(s), fair enough. Perhaps the Decembrist Revolt succeeds and a liberal constitutional monarchy is established. Russia opens up to foreign trade and business, notably with the UK--which happens to in the middle of the Industrial Revolution.

Eventually, it overtakes the UK and becomes comparable to, perhaps even above the 19th Century US for sheer industrial output and technological advancement. Since this is the Industrial Revolution, Russia also endures its own Gilded Age, but I'm not sure where else to go from there.

Anyway, what do you guys think?
 
Some bizarre variant of Objectivism may work as a modernizing authoritarian ideology for Russia. Only the Czar/CEO of Russia, Inc. can use the free market to crush the reactionary aristocracy and turn pious orthodox peasants into egoistic entrepreneurs and consumers.

So, anarcho-monarchist Russia?
 
So, anarcho-monarchist Russia?
I wouldn't call it anarchism, it would present itself as an impartial, modernizing night watchman state. Rapid economic development in heterogenous states tends to create extreme inequalities that will build support for socialist revolutionaries and exacerbate any pre-existing ethnic tensions. The regime would probably tell its people that democracy will lead to chaos as larger ethnic groups try to lord their relative demographic weight over everyone else. Parliamentary rule would let poor socialists destroy property rights and redistribute the wealth of the conservative, landowning establishment and the new bourgeoisie down to themselves, very un-Objectivist.
1914 Russia resembles the problems that contemporary Nigeria or Congo face with inequality, ethnographic-religious conflict, and natural resources that impede economic development. This Russia would look more like Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew than some hippie anarchist experiment.
 
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