Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way?
Instead of trying to increase industrialization and urbanization as in the OTL and as generally done in AHTLs, the Tsars tries to generally let things be?
People living in rural areas tend to have less political consciousness, be more conservative, and more religious. During recessions, they have more stable employment on farms, and have direct access to food. Tsarist Russia still had a small per capita (proportionate to other European Great Powers) Industrial base and was still dependent on foreign manufacturing while also being a major exporter of food by WWI.
Given Russia’s sheer size, lack of literacy, and just how dispersed so many places are, having a focus on agriculture and commodities might just make sense up until around the 30s and 40s. Competing with smaller, more educated countries with more infrastructure, local and developed energy sources all over, and established industries might just be a bad idea.
Primarily focusing on universal school attendance, improving infrastructure, gradually modernizing agriculture, ensuring peasants can become land owners relatively easily, and colonizing what you already have might be a safer idea.
You’ll still see decent industrialization over the next few decades, just at a slower pace, without doing much catching up. With smaller Urban centers, you can implement work laws to keep people happier (albeit probably with less money), leave larger rural areas for them to fall back on during times of recession and famine, and try to get your new industrial class intermarried into to aristocracy or given some sort of voice.
By the 30s and 40s, the Empire can have the literacy, infrastructure, agricultural surplus, and gigantic population needed to actually begin massive industrial growth without causing massive issues.
This strategy basically requires a more modest Russian foreign policy that only goes to war when under attack or when dealing with a scenario where victory is guaranteed. You basically concede that Germany has a larger industrial base than you until the 40s or 50s. But by the 40s Russia can undergo growth similar to OTL China from 1990-today and be a High Income Economy and Super Power by the 70s.
That kind of prestige, the increase in living standards, support from more traditionalist institutions in general (Military, Church, Aristocracy), and winning over your new Industrialists might be enough that the common man loves or at least likes the Tsar and feels content. When some people still protest the Tsar, the regime might not need to silence them, as they might be able to just point to the Tsar’s track record of success, accuse them of undermining the country, or be popular enough to just ignore/laugh at them.
If the Regime lasts that long, they can try to manipulate demographics through other means. Mandatory religious public education, heavy restrictions on divorce, pay men out the ass to join the army while they are young, create positive net worth in the nations youth to enfranchise them into the system, encourage large families and marriage, discourage or legally restrict divorce, pay for anyone to go to college but don’t cover classes that in the OTL tend to encourage left wing and democratic tendencies, create a state media with great content mixed with government propaganda, only grant government interviews to Networks that are kind to the regime. Things like that to create a population that is not likely to revolt and likely to lean towards conservatism naturally.
Also ensure some kind of system of universal healthcare and national retirement by the 1970s. Clean up pollution aggressively by the 70s. Spend money on prestige programs like a serious space program from the 60s to the present. Act nobel, doing things like sending massive numbers of volunteers (including the Tsar) to situations like the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak and 2004 Tsunami. Intervene to stop things like the Rwandan Genocide, but don’t stay around for the aftermath, just stop massacres without getting bogged down (and have the Tsar actually fight if physically capable). If your government claims that it knows best, is divinely inspired, and noble, act like it and make sure cameras see you doing it.
If done correctly, the government might not even need a secret police or restrictions on freedom of speech to ensure its survival because it will just be popular enough.
Thoughts on this? Completely ignorant or off base? Mostly right? Missing the point? Hit and miss?