If Franz Ferdinand escaped assassination, and no major conflagration between the European powers occurred, how different would Russia be culturally, politically, and economically?
There are two common strains in Russian historiography: one camp argues that Russia has long been a non-Western, Eurasian culture prone to autocracy. The other camp argues that WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution blew Russia off of an essentially European development pattern.
If the latter argument is true, would Russian culture and outlook be more European or at least more "Western" today? At the turn of the century, Russian literature, art, music, dance, and philosophy were all seen as contributions to Western culture. And the Russian Economy, pre-WWI, was receiving massive investment from Britain and France, and was integrating with global trade.
Would this trend have continued? Would Russia today seem less "foreign" to outsiders? A country with its own distinct civilization, to be sure, but essentially Western?
Or would Russia still have been viewed abroad (and internally) as something different, unique, and "foreign"?