The Industrial Revolution in Russia

Russia and Japan, beginning their industrial revolutions at least a half century behind most of the West, had to meet a number of special challenges. They had to acquire Western technical expertise. Outright invention was not necessary, but the process of imitation in societies not accustomed to such rapid technological change was at least as demanding. Both societies had to make reasonably explicit decisions about how to further but also how to control the process of foreign imitation. These new industrializers had to provide capital; this had been true in the West as well, but for societies that had scanty preindustrial capital resources, trying to catch up imposed special burdens. Both societies had to provide motivation. Russia, particularly, lacked a large preindustrial merchant class that was burning to set up factories; Russia had little merchant class at all. Japan’s ruling group, including the samurai, based their power on culture and military prowess, not economic leadership. The two nations proved capable of producing vigorous entrepreneurs and managers, but government played a greater role in launching the process in the first place. Certainly the state’s ability to guarantee loans and to invest tax resources was crucial to early industrialization, given the distinctive conditions of Russia and Japan. In broad outline, industrializing as a latecomer required more explicit policy decisions and more careful state-sponsored shepherding than had been necessary in the West in the early nineteenth century. This was true in the two great industrial revolutions that took shape around 1900; it would be true later for post-1950 industrializers as well.