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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Territorially and demographically the Russian empire was growing for centuries, that was what I was primarily thinking of. However, it still displayed impressive (but sub British) industrial growth and labour productivity.

https://ideas.repec.org/p/hig/wpaper/199-hum-2020.html

The authors argue that Soviet historiography sought to create the impression that Russia was backward, exaggerating legitimate industrial weakness (which it had, not being as close to the traditional centres of wealth and Atlantic ports in Western Europe). However, Russian state-sponsored investments in metallurgy, alchohol and petrochemicals put those sectors on par with the British.

However, the Russian industries that were established or modernised with the help of the state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were about as productive as their British counterparts. The Southern metallurgy, which produced about half of metal output, was 105.7 per cent as productive as British iron and steel factories. The productivity of railway carriage and wagon production was also close to Great Britain’s. Finally, the Russian alcohol, tobacco, rubber, and petrochemical industries showed higher labour productivity than the analogous industries in Great Britain.

Furthermore, I'd argue that the 1905 war was ultimately caused by logistical difficulties innate in having to supply an army all the way across Siberia over 1 railway. Russia has a natural disadvantage in naval power too (rarely having good ports and focusing mostly on land), so that would complicate fighting a naval war on the other side of the world! The Japanese were closer and fairly well-organized themselves, it's not unforeseeable that they could win a war in Manchuria, right next door.

Great paper, thank you! It provides much more detailed and up-to-date view of the imperial industry, than the book I cited (by Paul Gregory, who is a renowned scholar and doesn’t belong to an early-soviet tradition of downplaying tzarist achievements).

We find that Russia’s labour productivity, calculated based on net output data and net

output weights, was at 81.9 per cent of the U.K. level, […] on a par with France’s and significantly superior to Italy’s.

What helped Russia achieve this erformance was the highly productive and large alcohol industry. Without the alcohol sector, Russia’s productivity would have been 74.8 per cent of the British level. [...] the government had made large investments in it, leading to a strong comparative advantage.

That’s it. Vodka has always been a Russian superpower. It also accounted for a huge share of tax revenues (around 30% !) in both imperial and soviet govts.

High labour productivity is a surprise to me. That said, the article shows that productivity varied a lot across industries, and ~70% of population was still employed in a much more backward agriculture, which spoils per capita figures.

Despite these successes, Russian enterprises operated with substantial friction in the production process and the labour market. […] According to Cheremukhin et al. (2017), high barriers to entry and widespread monopolies were the most important factors that slowed down Russia’s industrialisation; although these factors were also widespread in other industrialised countries

They support the evidence for monopolies (which I attribute to state policy and more directly to the tzar and his cronies), but also note it wasn’t a distinct issue (if issue at all) of autocracy. This also downplays my argument.

All that data however doesn’t elucidate the connection between autocrat and his economic policy. The growth was absent before 1880, and I believe afterwards it was only impeded by autocrats. Railroad construction – a major industrialization booster – was initiated and done almost solely by Witte – a savvy technocrat, whom Nicholas despised and eventually pushed into resignation. Stolypin, who tried to modernize agriculture, faced fierce resistance from status-quo factions. Arms industry during WWI was also dominated by Romanovs' cronies, with other factories almost staying idle, when they could contribute.

As for 1905, defeat from Japan fueled public sentiment, but it wasn’t decisive at all. The general strike of 1905 was precipitated by many decades of struggle: Bloody Sunday, local worker strikes, peasant arsons, socialist revolutionary activities, etc. The public opinion had been formed long ago, and refined into various (unofficial) parties. Their proclamations and complaints were focused on the tzar’s incompetence and intransigence. It’s a long story, but this summary is close to my perception

If the last paragraph appears too handwaving, I can bring examples from the book (in a separate message)

Oh I'm not dissing your book, that was just their general argument which I was summarizing.

Various researchers calculated that, between 1887 and 1913, Russian manufacturing and mining sectors grew, on average, from a low estimate of 5.1 per cent (Goldsmith, 1961; Suhara, 2018) to a high estimate of 6.65 per cent per year (Gregory, 1999, pp. 487-488; Kafengauz, 1994, pp. 290-297). Accepting Gregory’s (1999) higher estimate would mean that Russian industry grew considerably faster than the industry in major industrialised countries, including the U.S., the U.K., and Germany (Gregory, 1999, p. 488). Accepting the more conservative estimate by Goldsmith (1961) would mean that over this 26-year period, Russian industry grew on a par with major industrialised countries (Gregory, 1999, p. 488).

I think Russia was a successful autocracy. They faced a much more challenging geography than the Western Europeans, the area they got to take over was not the fertile Americas with endless rivers but cold and infertile Siberia. They didn't get any of the good Atlantic ports. They mostly faced the strongest non-European powers like the Ottomans, Persians, Chinese and Japanese rather than rich and easy-to-conquer foes. That they then managed to industrialize at similar rates to the West is impressive given that they started off with a poorer, less literate country. I think this shows that autocracies can develop at similar speeds to democratic countries over relatively fixed territories even in worse circumstances.

Even if Witte did get kicked out by Nicholas, surely that's a personal failure of a specific leader rather than a systemic failure. Tsar Alexander appointed him in the first place! Stolypin was appointed Prime Minister and Interior Minister by Nicholas. It seems to me that much of the damage to Russia was caused by bad luck in that they faced a stronger autocracy in Germany and a coterie of anarchists and Bolsheviks who were dead set on killing anyone who wanted to improve the country. RIP Stolypin.

No, I mentioned the book as it seems decent, but apparently is not granular enough. Your paper is a good signal for me to update.

Gregory classified Ru pattern of growth as a typical "fast start" of emerging economies, mostly extensive. And this makes sense because, as you noted, Ru didn't have much fertile soil beyond Black Earth Region, access to maritime trade beyond Baltic; but a vast space in the East to colonize, reaping low hanging fruits. China wasn't powerful at the moment, being abused by Europeans and Japanese alike. But the article clearly shows intensive growth, that's important.

Russia is a good instance of autocracy treatment group, in a natural experiment of European powers. Causality is elusive, though, as ever. Was Russia (and Japan) successful due to autocrats yielding to liberal reforms, import of European institutions and technologies; or due to restraining them? Public opinion blamed failures on entrenchment of conservative elites, backed by the tzar. But opinion is usually biased against status-quo, and the state still was a major investor in industry and education.

Speaking of counter(factuals), if an autocrat could be pressured by the public into popular reforms (like Alexander II or Nicholas II), like parliamentary Britain or France were pressured by strikes into welfare programs, what is so special about autocracy? On the other hand, if the same nominal autocracy gives raise to Stalin's industrialization, Brezhnevian stagnation and Chinese rapid growth, doesn't it imply that economic policy might be more predictive of performance, than power vertical?

Good thread. RIP Stolypin.

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