Russian Culture and Economy Without WWI

abc123

Banned
As far as I understand, the increase was due to communal land being distributed as private land in the big land reform of 1906 - free peasants in communes became private owners of the land they had always worked on. There was no re-distribution of land. the land given to this class when the serfs were emancipated in 1861 was too small to grow any cash crops or surplus grain enough to gain capital for investment.

In average, the increase of land held by a free farmer household was 1/8 of a desyatin (a desyatin is about 10 000 square meters), so about 1 375 square meters 1861-1915.

In Russia 1914, the Tsar and the Imperial Family held 143 million desyatin of land, free peasants 170 million desyatin, the nobility 42 million desyatin. The church also held substantial lands, probably about 30 millioon desyatin.

50% of the free peasants still lived in communes (about as effective as later Soviet kolchoses). Only about 15% of the free peasants were wealthy enough to use artificial fertilizer (these were the Kulaks), the others barely managed to feed themselves and had no surplus to invest in their farming.

In 1913, 6,5 million wooden ploughs were used, and 4,5 million iron and steel ploughs. That tells quite a bit of how little money the Russian peasantry had to invest in better tools.


Well, I did said that the process will go SLOW. But from 1914. until today is 100 years, that's pretty big amount of time. And Bih estates aren't nescesarry a bad thing for some country. Slowly they will be transformed in pretty modern farms...
The bottom thing is- Imperial Russia was a net exporter of grain, and would most likely stay so. Vommunist Russia didn't had enough food to feed it's population.
So, better than OTL.
 

Deleted member 1487

Where did you get that info about some unrest to happen in 1914? Despite some global economic stagnation before the WWI Russia was faring pretty well growing rapidly in economics, and first of all, in industrial economics.
Here you go:
["The Problem of Political and Social Stability in Urban Russia on the Eve of War and
Revolution" Revisited
Author(s): Leopold H. Haimson
Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Winter, 2000), pp. 848-875
Published by: The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies]
There were several major general strikes going on and didn't end even at the start of the war and needed to be bloodily put down by Cossacks and Gendarme. These had been ongoing every year in the Summer since 1910 IIRC and had by 1914 morphed into political strikes instead of just economic. The population was getting restive, but it still wasn't a mass movement large enough to take down the government. Yet.


That's a common stereotype even among Russian home-made historians.:rolleyes: Somehow, many people think that if there were no Stalin and so called " forced industrialisation", Russia would have never become an industrially strong country. However, I should point out here that if we look at the indicators of industrial growth of the pre-war Russian Empire, sector by sector, we'd find amazing things about the trends of economic development of Russia. The Czarist Russia WILL industrialise but probably with more focus on different industrial sectors than the Bolsheviks.
Without Stalin's forced industrialization Russia would not have industrialized as quickly or as much. I never said Russia would not industrialize or become a strong industrial power, but it would not do so as quickly or fully with the Czarist system. Please provide sources and figures if you can to show how quickly Russia was industrializing before the war, especially if they are related to types of industry. As far as I know military-, rail road-, and agriculture-related industries were the only ones that really were growing. While the growth numbers seem impressive, Russia was growing from such a low point that like modern China or contemporary Austria-Hungary it had only the ability to go up. AH actually outpaced Russia in percentage of growth, but like Russia much of it had to do with industry popping up where it had never before been. This was also only possible due to French loans.
And don't confuse war growth, which was heavily linked to vast sums being lent by Russia's allies, with pre-war growth, as the former rapidly boosted Russia's overall industrialization and was only possible with industrial specialists sent from France and Britain to aid Russia in their organization of industry.

Without the war Russia would have taken much longer to get to where they were in 1918 than OTL and probably would only reach Stalin levels of industrialization in the 1950's or 60's ITTL depending on foreign loan availability. But unless Russia starts investing in her people and educating them, all the industrialization in the world won't matter, and will probably only hurt politically due to larger numbers of bitter, low paid, mistreated workers, as it will mean her workers are not able to produce quality products that can be sold outside the nation.
 

Germaniac

Donor
I believe that without the war Russia would industrialize at a slower pace but overall by OTL ww2 they would be at least near those levels (considering they had lost nearly two decades of development through the war and the civil war) HOWEVER, in the Czarist Russia you would likely see HUGE cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kiev grow and most of the rest of the country stagnate. One major problem with industrialization in Czarist Russia was it's absolute concentration in very few cities.
 
I've always thought of Russia as more of an Asian than a European nation, both culturally and, to some extent, racially as well, so I think it borders on ASB to expect it to just become like part of Europe in any circumstances.

On the other hand, some of the most very "Western" nations today are Asian; look at South Korea, Japan, and increasingly China. Assuming Bolshevism is butterflied away by the lack of WWI (I tend to think that it would be; the Tzar's armies won't be stretched into oblivion and destroyed), I can see by today a Russia that emulates American pop culture and society to a certain extent (probably not as much as those three examples I gave).
 
I've always thought of Russia as more of an Asian than a European nation, both culturally and, to some extent, racially as well, so I think it borders on ASB to expect it to just become like part of Europe in any circumstances.

What kind of pseudoscientific definition of race are you working with? Russians are Slavs, and any honest definition that disqualifies Slavs from being european would exclude everyone except the Basques.

On the other hand, some of the most very "Western" nations today are Asian; look at South Korea, Japan, and increasingly China. Assuming Bolshevism is butterflied away by the lack of WWI (I tend to think that it would be; the Tzar's armies won't be stretched into oblivion and destroyed), I can see by today a Russia that emulates American pop culture and society to a certain extent (probably not as much as those three examples I gave).

Before communism, Russia and China were Americas best friends when it came to foreign policy. No real conflicting interests you see. So I would expect a pop culture more comparable to the British: you can see America's fingerprints, but it is still uniquely Russian. You have to remember the reason that Japan Taiwan and South Korea are as western in outlook as they are; Japan was occupied after WW II and was rebuilt from the ground up by the occupying force, South Korea and Taiwan were dependent on America for their defense for several decades. A no WWI Russia will never be in ether of those positions, and its culture will reflect that, taking the things they like from American culture, while avoiding the things they don't like.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
As far as I understand, the increase was due to communal land being distributed as private land in the big land reform of 1906 - free peasants in communes became private owners of the land they had always worked on. There was no re-distribution of land. the land given to this class when the serfs were emancipated in 1861 was too small to grow any cash crops or surplus grain enough to gain capital for investment.

In average, the increase of land held by a free farmer household was 1/8 of a desyatin (a desyatin is about 10 000 square meters), so about 1 375 square meters 1861-1915.

In Russia 1914, the Tsar and the Imperial Family held 143 million desyatin of land, free peasants 170 million desyatin, the nobility 42 million desyatin. The church also held substantial lands, probably about 30 millioon desyatin.

50% of the free peasants still lived in communes (about as effective as later Soviet kolchoses). Only about 15% of the free peasants were wealthy enough to use artificial fertilizer (these were the Kulaks), the others barely managed to feed themselves and had no surplus to invest in their farming.

In 1913, 6,5 million wooden ploughs were used, and 4,5 million iron and steel ploughs. That tells quite a bit of how little money the Russian peasantry had to invest in better tools.

Fertileser are overrated at this point in history, to large extent Denmark only began to use it on industrial scale in the later 50ties, and Denmark had large agricultural surpluses and was well known for the quality of our products. Fertileser are important in large scale industrialised agriculture specialising in wheat, mais and other cash crops and using mechanised labour. In small scale family farms you simply specialise in crops which doesn't need them, and in the more expensive products like dairy, meat and eggs. The collective village are a bigger problem, collective villages tended to br slow to adopt new methods, or shift top more expensive products.
 
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