1510 Rusland en Duitsland waren rond 1900 sterk opkomende machten. In 1920 waren ze verwoest.

 

 

Bron: het X account van Rina Lu.  @Rinalu_

 

Nicholas II was, in fact, a great leader of Russia. You won't really hear about these stats anywhere. The bottom line is Russia was developing rapidly at the beginning of the 20th century, which was one of the reasons for WWI. Let's look into Nicholas II's achievements together and then tell me what you think after you read the whole thread.

 

1.    By 1913, Russia had the 4th largest GDP in the world, behind only the USA, Germany, and Britain, ahead of France and Japan.

2.      In terms of GDP growth rate, Russia was among the fastest-growing economies globally, averaging 6–9% annual growth between 1890 and 1913. Photo: Antique dress of a peasant woman from Olonetskaia Province, 1909. Most of the photos used in the thread were taken by Prokudin-Gorsky (1863–1944), who was a Russian photographer and a pioneer of color photography. Commissioned by Nicholas II, he traveled across the Russian Empire from 1909 to 1915, documenting cities, people, factories, monasteries, and landscapes in color.

3.      It held the 3rd largest gold reserve globally, 1.695 billion gold rubles, surpassed only by the USA and France.

4.      The ruble was stable and backed by gold since Witte’s 1897 monetary reform, making it one of the most reliable currencies in the world.

5.      Foreign direct investment poured into Russia, especially from France, Belgium, and Britain, financing railroads, industry, and banking.

6.      Russia was the #1 grain exporter, supplying up to 40% of the world’s wheat and rye and earning consistent trade surpluses.

7.      The Russian Empire produced 25% of global barley and was a major supplier of flax, oats, and butter as well.

8.      By 1914, Russia had over 80,000 kilometers of railways, the 2nd longest network in the world after the United States, including the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway.

9.      Russia ranked in the top 3 globally in coal and iron output.

10. The number of hospitals increased sharply from 2,100 in 1890 to 8,110 in 1912, and by 1916 there were about 8,461 hospitals, including around 170 psychiatric institutions.

11. The number of students in primary schools grew from roughly 3.8 million in 1896 to about 9.7 million in 1914.

12. The number of gymnasiums (secondary schools) also rose dramatically from 239 in 1892 to about 2,300 by 1914.

13. Russia went through one of the fastest periods of industrial growth in the world, with output rising by nearly 9 % a year. Hundreds of new factories and plants were built, including the expanded Putilov and Obukhov steel works in St. Petersburg, the Bryansk and Kolomna locomotive plants, and major shipyards in St. Petersburg and Nikolaev. The Baku oil industry made Russia one of the world’s top energy producers, while new textile mills appeared in Moscow, Ivanovo, and Yaroslavl.

14. Stolypin’s agrarian reform aimed to create a strong class of independent farmers by breaking up the old peasant communes and giving land to individual owners. It encouraged migration to Siberia and offered cheap land loans through the Peasant Bank. The goal was to modernize agriculture, boost productivity, and stabilize the countryside but World War I and the 1917 Revolution cut it short before it could fully succeed.

15. As part of Stolypin’s reforms, the government pushed people to move to Siberia by offering free land, tax breaks, and cheap loans. Families got around 15 hectares each, free train rides on the Trans-Siberian, and help to get started with houses and livestock. Between 1906 and 1914, over 3 million people moved east, turning empty land into new villages and farms. The idea was to ease the pressure in crowded European Russia and make Siberia grow and thrive.

16. Under Nicholas II, Russia’s population grew significantly, from about 125 million people in 1894 to roughly 175 million by 1917. In other words, the population increased by around 50 million during his reign.

17. The famous plan of electrification of Russia (GOELRO), often credited to Lenin, was in fact largely based on pre-revolutionary projects developed under Nicholas II. Before 1917, Russia had already launched major electrification programs through the Ministry of Railways and Industry, and by 1913 it ranked among the world’s leaders in electricity growth. Many of the engineers who later worked on GOELRO had been developing similar plans before the revolution. After 1917, these same specialists formalized the program, while Lenin simply approved and politicized it, turning it into a symbol of the new Soviet era. His famous slogan, “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country,” was more propaganda than innovation.

18. During WWI, Russia under Nicholas II achieved major successes, especially with the Brusilov Offensive of 1916 and the Blue Kroger strategy, a rapid-mobilization plan later studied and used by Hitler in World War II. These strategies allowed Russia to strike first, deal heavy blows to Austria-Hungary, and help save France and Italy from collapse. Because Russia was actually winning militarily, the empire’s internal collapse in 1917 became extremely beneficial for Germany, freeing its forces from the Eastern Front and changing the entire course of the war.