Imperial Russia could survive and industrialize, but what was really needed (and quite lacking) was external stability. Russia could deal with internal revolts when it was at peace, or not in a major war (witness various peasant rebellions, and 1905), but World War I basically destroyed the pillars that Imperial Russia relied on to survive, mainly using the army as a tool of state power when workers/peasants got out of hand. The army disintegrated, even started fighting against the state, and there was not enough residual loyalty for Tsar Nicholas II to fall back on. Plus the man was rather incompetent, which was also a major reason that the revolution succeeded, because any break that may have been caught by a more politically savvy Tsar was passed up due to Nick II's incompetence.
If WWI can be put off until the early 20's, something which is quite doable, Russia will probably have industrialized and modernized enough that it wouldn't suffer a total failure of the state in a war against the Central Powers. Indeed, one of the main reasons cited in Germany backing Austria to the hilt was that German military planners wanted to fight Russia before Russia modernized enough to win. That modernized enough to win point was sometime in the late 10's or early 20's.
I think that German military planners were probably right on that point, which would bring up an interesting issue. The British were not committed anti-Germans, they were committed anti-strongest power in Europe. So if that torch passes (or in the mind of war planners and the public passes) to the Russians (who the British have more conflicts with anyway) that could do some strange things to the alt-WWI. With a stronger Russia Germany would probably be even more involved in internal Austro-Hungarian affairs, trying to fix its ally so that it provides some kind of solid support in a future war against Russia (Franz-Josef's death in 1917 will give Germany the chance to really impose its own vision on AH, and provide the chance for some serious, if unsuccessful, slavic shenanigans), and Germany could change its military strategy. With Russia now a bigger threat, and perhaps with the UK changing its diplomatic outlook, there could be a "diplomatic revolution" sometime in the late 10's early 20's to reflect the growing power of Russia and the threat that presents to both the UK and Germany.