In the early 20th century, European royal families intermarried with each other, and King George V of the United Kingdom, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany were cousins of blood thicker than water, and they had a common grandmother (maternal grandmother) Queen Victoria of England. World War I was later called a war between cousins.
Between the three cousins, Russia, although the largest territory, was the weakest side. Therefore, Tsarist Russia hugged the thighs of Britain and France and was responsible for the war on the Eastern Front. Tsarist Russia has mobilized 15 million troops into the battlefield, but it still cannot defeat Germany, which is fighting on the eastern and western fronts. By 1917, his own country had collapsed first, a revolution had broken out, the Tsar had been forced to abdicate, and Russia had withdrawn from the Entente.
Tsarist Russia has made few achievements on the battlefield, to put it bluntly, it is still not a national strength. There is only an empty shelf, and when encountering such a hard stubble as Germany, it can only be cut. Let's take a look at the colors of Russia during World War I.
In 1861, the Civil War broke out in the United States. In the same year, Russia began the reform of serfdom, liberated a large number of laborers, and capitalism began to develop rapidly, achieving high success by the beginning of the 20th century. By 1910, in 50 years, the industrial production of Tsarist Russia had increased by 9.5 times, and in the same period, Britain, France, Germany and other countries had increased by only 1.5 times, 2 times and 5 times.
By the year of the outbreak of World War I, Tsarist Russia's industrial strength had become the fifth largest country in the world after the United States, Germany, Britain and France, and you can also think of it as one of the world's top five countries.
At that time, Russia's oil and timber production accounted for the second place in the world, cotton cloth production accounted for the third place, machine manufacturing coke and sugar production accounted for the fourth place in the world, steel, iron ore and cement production accounted for the fifth place in the world, coal production accounted for the sixth place in the world.
However, if you look at the production data, there is still a big gap compared with the United States, Britain and France. In 1913, Russia's industrial output was only forty percent of France's, Britain's one-fifth, Germany's one-sixth, and America's eleven-fourth. In terms of specific production, in 1913 Russia produced only 36 million tons of coal, while Germany reached 277 million tons, the United Kingdom 292 million tons, the United States 517 million tons; Russian pig iron production was 4.6 million tons, while the United States was 31.46 million tons, and Germany was 19.31 million tons. In terms of the average output of the population, the Russian data is even more ugly.
Not only is Tsarist Russia's strength inferior to that of the four major countries mentioned above, but it also has a very low level of technology, is highly controlled by foreign capital, and is heavily dependent on foreign capital. More than 60,000 kilometers of railway stocks and bonds in Tsarist Russia were mainly in the hands of Britain and France. France, on the other hand, was the largest creditor of Tsarist Russia, and by 1914, France had invested 14 billion francs in Russia, accounting for 33.3% of all foreign capital in Russia.
In addition to the railway industry, the control rate of foreign capital over the main industrial sectors of Russia: 3/4 of the capital of hardware industry, 95.4% of the total coal mining of the donbas joint stock companies, 6/10 of the total oil production, 90% of the capital of electric power and motor manufacturing enterprises, and almost 100% of the chemical industry.
Due to the strong control of foreign capital, the Russian machine manufacturing industry has been slow to develop. Before the War, the total horsepower of Russian industrial power equipment was only one-fifteenth of that of the United States and one-eighth of that of Germany, and the level of labor production in Russian industry was as low as one-tenth of that of the United States.
Militarily, affected by the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the Russian Navy was seriously injured, and its ranking fell from the third place in the world to the sixth place. Before the outbreak of World War I, Russia had 1.42 million troops, and at the end of 1914 the total number of troops exceeded 6.5 million. In the next three years, after 19 mobilizations, a total of 15.8 million people were mobilized until Tsarist Russia withdrew from the war. However, it was mainly composed of peasants, lacked training, low combat ability, and extreme shortage of weapons, and did not play much of a role on the battlefield.
After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power and Russia's economic construction was on the right track, and then it really began to take off!