John Uskglass said:
That's a bit optimistic. In my humble opinion, Russia under the Tsarist regime would've never been able to get out of the semi-periphery. For one, a large part of Russian industry was in foreign hands, much like the industry in Southern America was. This alone already but a big mortgage on Russia as a strong, independant industrialised nation.
China and Japan's industry began in foreign hands, largely.
Japan's industry has, as far as I know, never been in foreign hands. Quite the contrary: the main goal of Japan was to rise up to Western technological levels
without becoming dependent on said West.
Same as with China. Do not be fooled by the outsourcing-business: very little, if any, companies in China are owned by foreigners. They are basically privates companies renting themselves out to multinational conglomerates, if I remember correctly. I might not, but that would then be because modern Chinese economy is a bit out of my range of interest.
Also, the Japanese technological revolution was pretty unique, and I don't really imagine it could be so easily redone by another country, let alone Tsarist Russia. Completely different values, ideology, and political and geographical realities I'm afraid.
CCR said:
Secondly, under the Tsarist regime most of Russia's industry was already government led. Russia already had the lagest state-operated economic system in the world. And it was crap too.
Did'nt know that. Still, unlike the USSR, the basis of this was not idealogical, thus the Tsar would have been open to economic liberalization without massive backlash like the NEP during the early Soviet days.
I wouldn't know. History has shown that, besides some precious few exceptions, Russian Tsars generally weren't really "open" for anything. Also, the fact that the Tsar wanted to control as much of the economy as he possibly could was/is a pretty inherent feature in Russian political filosophy, same as with the state church etc. At any rate, viewing the Romanovs as flexible, modernistic leaders seems a bit strange to me.
CCR said:
Also, people working in the factories of the Tsar were even worse of than the later communist workers working in the USSR's factories. They were in somewhat the same position as workers in England and France before 1850, thus having it pretty bad.
They where in the early process of industrializing, of course they where living in shitty conditions. Still, rapid growth of GDP would have caught up with them, same as with Japan, China or a half dozen other ones.
As I said before, comparing Tsarist Russia to Japan or other 'Azian Tigers' or modern China doesn't really work. And aside from those handfull of countries, I don't think there's any non-Western country today that
doesn't have basically shitty conditions for its working class, nor a strong capitalist economy.
CCR said:
1) Unlike Latin America, the foriegn owned buisnesses in Russia where industrial. This means that the populace learns valuable skills and money, thus making it easier for Russian industrial entrepreneurs. A similar process took place in Japan and is taking place now in a hald dozen other industrializing nations, with generally positive results (Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia).
Once again, comparing Russia to the Asian Tigers doesn't really work. And as said before, the shoddy economic policy of the latest Tsars wasn't really making Russia any richer...
Y'know, in a way, the way Russia was reformed to an economical superpower under the communist regime was actually in a way closer to Japans technological spur than the way the economy was progressing under the Tsars... Both (USSR & Japan) wanted to make their country economically and intellectually strong without becoming dependant on the West, and both preferred to only take over certain Western values that they thought would benefit their people, while rejecting others. But then again, there's a lot of differences too.
CCR said:
2) As I sated earlier, Tsarists where not bound by ideology to try such moronic things as collectivisation or nationally owned industry, it was simply idiocy. They would be open to liberalization.
CCR said:
The Bolsheviks loved toying around with totally junk ideas like farm collectivisation and nationally owned industry. These where handicaps on economic growth, handicaps Tsarist Russia would not have
Ahem... Actually, yes the Tsars did. The
mir system wasn't all that different from the later communal farms. That's actually one of the main reasons why the
intelligensia saw Russia as the most likely candidate to eventually become communist: because the economy was already so close to communism (except for the fact that the economic surplus was used to enrich the Tsar instead of being re-invested in the economy and the people) that it wouldn't be such a major step in the everyday economic life of the common man to change to communism. And it wasn't.
CCR said:
I'd say you forgot the third. .
No I didn't. My third point was the fact that the Tsar wasn't a pretty good economist, and the high taxes were destroying every possibility of a middle class wealthy enough to consider starting a private business themselves, thus severly mortgaging every possibility of Russia becoming a strong, industrialised capitalistic nation.
CCR said:
I wouldn't overestimate the pre-purge officers, either. Just look at WWI - they were pretty poor leaders.
True, but a half decade of war against the best officers in the world, a half decade of war fighting along side foreign anti-Communist troops and against Communists would be BOUND to forge some good officers.
As a matter of fact, it already did. Zhukov was an officer during WWI. How many Zhukovs where in the 70,000 out of 80,000 officers Stalin killed?
Meh, I don't see any point in defending the Great Purge anyway. I was just poiting out that strategic brilliance under the Tsars wasn't really a guarantee either.
Anyway, this whole discussion is based on a 'what-if' scenario, and is therefore pretty shaky either way.