Why did Russia struggle to industrialise and keep pace with Western Europe?One of the main reasons for WW1 (and later the invasion of the Soviets by the Nazis) is the prospect of Russia clearly industrialising, and later them clearly doing so again under stalins oversight.While it was poorly implemented and badly done both times, the sheer scale of Russia in population, land and resources meant a country like Germany or any other countries Russia considered neighbors had good reason to be terrified they’d be invaded or threatened into essentially vassaldom by a fully developed Russia.Yet no matter how things played out, Russia never really reached its full potential. Even under peacetime in the Cold War they had so many internal failings. Fake production reports and unreliable supply chains etc, that they needed grain imports from their enemies ffs. Nothing really improved since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is still a basket case. The only reliable industries seem to be raw resources like gas and oil, and weaponsWhy couldn’t Russia get its act together ever? Is it a geographic issue preventing adaquate infrastructure? Is it ironically handicapped by how big it is?
This last question may be irrelevant for history but, do you think China will retake the outer slice of Manchuria that Russia took in 1860?If Russia enters another period of massive internal conflict and decline it wouldn’t be wild to imagine China occupying it for “safety” or securing their borders or whatever even if they don’t openly annex it. Although with Russia beinf their primary ally and economic partner Russia would need to truly be in a bad spot for them to consider wrecking their relationship to acquire it, since any resource gains would be nominal anyway. It’s easier to just let Russia mine and drill and buy it from them Likewise I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Japan take Sakhalin under some US backed exercise in the same period. Although Sakhalin would probably be at least nominally self governed as some weird new micro state that’s also mostly Russian populated anyway Plus I always wondered how some weird Russian Alaskan state would have functioned. Like if some of the Romanovs survived, fled to Alaska and reigned there as claimants to the Russia itself even as the Soviets take over, like how Taiwan claims to be the legitimate government of mainland China. I’d imagine it’d get a lot of Russian refugees and also US/Canadian backing economically as some “fuck you” to communism, in exchange for getting American missiles and radar etc stationed there
