Skallagrim
Well-known member
You are applying observations about specific late-20th and early 21st century trends to an early 20th century context, particularly one in which the disparity regarding demographic conditions, degree of education, and overall technological capacity between the relevant nations had not yet diverged nearly as widely.It's a statistical artifact of "developing countries" seeming like they are going to equal, or even overcome the first world countries within a short amount of time, due to assumed extrapolation of momentary high rate of growth. I remember such predictions being applied to China, India and Brazil and i'm not even that old.
It even got its own meme
In other words: apples and oranges.
And the USA had only managed to abolish slavery a few decades before that, hence my statements about Russia being a few decades behind the USA at the outset. You are confiming my statements; I approve!Meanwhile Russia has only managed to abolish serfdom around late XIX century.
Exactly. Soviet industrialisation was utter shit, and the myth of Stalin in that regard is precisely that: a myth.Soviets were obsessed with industrialization beyond what the Tzar would try, causing some of their reputation to arise in the process, and in the end even then it turned out that while they can have a lot of industry, they aren't keeping up in technology level, nevermind commercialization of it - not that civilian economy and prosperity were ever a big thing for Russia before communism.
Hence my statement that Russia suffered by having communism inflicted upon it. (Although there is, of course, far more -- and more damning -- evidence of that.) Note that the pre-war trends of industrialisation were far more sustainable, being practically identical to what had already been done in the USA, but with a delay, as I already mentioned. But also proceeding slightly faster, due to the factors that I also mentioned.
It would seem that we are in agreement.