Background

The need to industrialise to overcome backwardness and to prepare for possible wars with industrialised opponents was not an original Bolshevik idea. It was also part of the reason for the industrialisation policy of Count Witte, Minister of Finance of the Russian Empire in 1892–1903, Chairman of the Committee of Ministers in 1903–5 and Prime Minister in 1905–6. It was also part of the motivation for the abortive modernisation efforts in late Qing (Manchu) China and the industrial policies of the KMT (Guomintang) government in 1932–7.

Despite thirty years of economic growth resulting from state support for railway building, an inflow of foreign capital and favourable world market prices for Russia’s agrarian exports (especially grain), the Russian Empire collapsed because it was weaker than its external and internal enemies. It was unable to mobilise the resources to defeat Germany in World War I or to feed adequately during that war the civilian urban population and the millions of men it mobilised for the war. Its initial failure to mobilise sufficient industrial resources meant that its soldiers, especially in 1914–15, lacked the equipment to fight successfully an industrialised opponent (its later poor performance seems to have been largely a result of poor military leadership). Its failure to mobilise sufficient financial resources led to rapid inflation. Its failure to adequately feed the civilian urban population and the army were major factors leading to the February Revolution. The demonstration of 8 March 1917 in St Petersburg which precipitated the February Revolution was primarily a bread protest by factory workers and housewives. The failure of the army to restore order in St Petersburg partly reflected liberal and socialist anti-autocracy propaganda, but was partly a result of the poor food which the government provided for the army in the winter of 1916–17 – a fatal mistake which was the immediate cause of the collapse of the autocracy.