You need to bear in mind that Imperial Russia had introduced a pretty decent education system (based on Denmark's if memory serves) and, in the under 30 age group, literacy levels were (more or less) identical to those in Britain or Germany. 1914 was almost 50 years post the emancipation of the serfs and Tsarist Russia was well aware that in needed bureaucrats, engineers, doctors etc. Remember that virtually all of Stalin's key scientists, engineers and aircraft designers received their education during the reign of Tsar Nicholas. Tsarist Russia's literacy levels were already broadly comparable to Germany never mind Soviet Russia. Yes, if you were a Kola Peninsula Lapp or a Yakut in Eastern Siberia you might have slipped through the educational net, but there would have been in absolute terms more educated Russians than educated Germans at any time in the twentieth century. And Russian industrial capacity was fast catching up with Imperial Germany by 1914, the Germans in 1914 were looking at a declining window of opportunity to fight a winnable war with Russia (even if they exaggerated the timescale of Russian modernisation and improvements to their military capacity they were broadly right that Russia would eventually outmatch Germany). Stalin did achieve some remarkable results in respect of industrialisation, it wouldn't be fair not to acknowledge that but Western supplies also played a big part in WW2 (other threads have discussed this in exhaustive detail) and the Cold War USSR was never as strong as the West thought it was