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Notes -
But are you correcting for the fact that Tsarist Russia was basically a feudal backwater? It’s not like the communists inherited a shiny industrial state and then drove it i to the ground. They’re the only reason the industrial state exists at all.
So historians tend to have either a pro-Soviet or anti-Russian bias. If you start looking into the numbers Russia was well behind the great powers but industrializing.
At the dawn of WW1 Russia had more km of railway than anyone except the US. Note that sources split the UK and British India, so you can easily argue that the UK was ahead. Obviously that's spread over a massive territory, but it's still something. The Trans-Siberian Railway was pre-communist.
During WW1 the Russian Empire was making it's own artillery, rifles, and armoured cars.
Sure it was underdeveloped, but it was a major oil producer during the age of oil. A more moderate government would have been able to industrialize a bit more slowly but with far fewer corpses.
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