with 400 million people in its border Russia
If Europe avoided all the major wars of the 20th Century, the population of Russia would be in the 600 million-1 billion range today. Probably around about 800 million.
Not only did lots of Russians die between 1914 and 1950, the Soviet push to urbanize Russia turned it into a 3rd world country with 1st world demographics. That had a huge impact.
It's worth noting that Russia would be hard-pressed to support such a population on her current resource base. The country could end up in a high-population low-development trap.
I simply don't think that overthrowing tsar or giving power to the Duma would help Russian economic growth in no-WWI situation. At best, you'd get decades of oligarchs and corruption, an earlier Yeltsin era (which would still be better than post-Qing China did - no warlords), at worst, situation would deteriorate into some insane far left not too different from Bolsheviks taking power, except they'd do it through elections, not coup.
Has anyone said that overthrowing the Tsar would help? (Overthrowing the Tsar and replacing him with someone better might help - but the actual overthrow step would be regressive.)
And in the long run, the Duma is getting more power like it or not.
Denekin, Wrangel, Boldyrev, Kappel, Kornilov, Kolchak, Alexiev, Yudenich et al were all pro military and communications/logistics modernisation so, even in a worst case scenario of a military dictatorship, industrialisation would continue.
Being pro-modernization and effectively modernizing are two different things.
Not to mention being more integrated in the world economy from 1917 onwards (no defaulted debts or lack of diplomatic recognition so they could buy in as well as build).
Overall this is a good thing, but it does mean that Russia won't develop alot of the resources it did in OTL. Russia has plenty of resources, but they are mostly lower grade or harder to get to compared to, say, the resources of the USA. So the country would be less developed in some ways because they'd be importing materials from abroad.
Also, while the Russians will be able to access foreign capital, they'll still be repaying foreign debts and will have to satisfy the demands of the owners of the capital. This will lead to more efficiency than OTL's Soviet soft-budget accounting, but it will also lead to slower growth.
So better overall, but not better in all ways.
Possibly yes they surpassed Russia for a given year or years but over the twenty five year span? And had they comparable mineral and population resources to continue to grow almost as rapidly over the next twenty five?
Austria-Hungary had a pretty impressive range of resources all in close proximity to each other. The dual monarchy was pretty messed up after the mid-19th Century, but if you have a PoD that addresses the dire weakness of the government and its balkanized politics, the Hapsburg Empire would have enormous potential.
When trying to project it forward we have to look at the system they used. If, as others have posited, the best way for it to continue its expansion is to change the system of governance (a tacit admission the previous system was unsuited) the Russian example of OTL points to Civil War and a decade or so of stagnation or recessions. This doesn't bode well. If the Russian Tsarist system is to continue and produce further industrialisation and expansion, it requires systematic changes I believe OTL proves it incapable of making.
Tsarism had many weaknesses, but I don't see any reason why it was any worse than, say, the government of Mexico or Brazil. Tsarism would either perform adequately or it would fall and be replaced by something that would have to do better in order to survive.
fasquardon