Because as bad as Russia's position was in 1913, it was still rapidly gaining in strength; it was industrializing at a rapid clip; and given a few more years, it would have laid down some serious military reforms.
Okay, let's take some statistics.
Steel production:
1900 is 2.2 million tons, 1913 is 4.8.
Sounds great, right?
United States: 10.3 million to 31.8 million
Germany: 6.3 million to 17.6 million
Britain 5 million to 7.7 million
France: 1.5 to 4.6 million
Austria-Hungary: 1.1 to 2.6 million
Hard to boast about doubling production when three great powers are tripling theirs, even if we consider comparing absolute output unfair.
Total industrial potential (from 1900 to 1913) with Britain in 1900 being 100.
US: 127.8 to 298.1
Germany: 71.2 to 137.7
Britain: 100 to 126.2
Russia: 47.5 to 76.6
France: 36.8 to 57.3
Austria-Hungary: 25.6 to 40.7
Total manufacturing (1900-1913:
United States 23.6% to 32%
Germany: 13.2% to 14.8%
Britain: 18.5% to 13.6%
Russia: 8.8% to 8.2%
France: 6.8% to 6.1%
Ausitria-Hungary: 4.7 to 4.4%
Same source:By contrast, the USSR did little more than continue on the path the Tsars would have set it upon, except with a fuckton more corpses, and with policies which led directly to four years of unmitigated destruction of the Russian heartland.
Russian steel production goes from 0.16 million tons in 1920 (last place) to 5.7 million tons in 1930 (5th place) to 18 million in 1938 (3rd place with nearly twice as much as Britain's 10.5 million).
Industrial potential goes from 72 (1928) to 152 (1938), putting it in fourth place still - but much closer than it was twenty-five years ago.
Total manufacturing is only 9%, still fourth place.
Given the devastated state of Russia after WWI, the Soviet Union made enormous progress - even considering how much of that was merely making up for lost ground.
The period under the tsars is less impressive.
I'm not entirely sure the tsars would have avoided the corpses, given the both were autocratic police states that regarded dissent as tantamount to treason and the fact the patience of the people is nearly exhausted by 1914.
It may or may not have been a better place to live in (I differ to social historians here), but it was a weaker state.I'd honestly say that Russia was a better place under the Tsars than under Communism, which is about as faint as praise gets for any system of government.
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