Introduction: the transformation of market conditions in the basic industries, 1908–1914

Between 1908 and 1913, the output of large-scale industry in Russia grew at an average annual rate of more than 9 per cent (in current prices) and more than 7 per cent (in 1913 prices). These were impressive rates of growth, approximating to the rapid rate of growth of industrial production during the 1890s, and far in excess of the modest rates achieved between 1900 and 1907, when growth barely exceeded 1.5 per cent per annum. All sources agree on the fact that industry performed impressively during the last peacetime quinquennium. However, the reasons for this renewed upsurge in industrial production have never been properly explored or resolved. In this chapter, the opportunity is taken to review the explanations and to sift through the evidence. The initial assumption is that, since the revival of growth coincided with Russian rearmament, some kind of relationship existed between the two phenomena. However, it is also possible that industrial growth and rearmament were unrelated, or (in the language of the statistician) ‘autocorrelated’.

Contemporary observers failed to agree on the causes of prewar industrial growth in Russia. Some, like Ivan Ozerov and Finn-Enotaevskii, maintained that by 1910 the state had once again become a significant customer for manufactured goods, notably for rails, transport equipment and armaments. Tugan-Baranovskii took a similar line.