Even a 3rd grader knows that 'growth' is relative to a base. So if you literally start from almost nothing in 1920 because of a civil war, of course you are gon

Even a 3rd grader knows that 'growth' is relative to a base. So if you literally start from almost nothing in 1920 because of a civil war, of course you are gone have pretty good growth. That doesn't mean its comparable to nations like the US or Britain. In fact, economic trends were going better during Russian Imperial regime. The 'feudal mudpit' was in a extreme growth phase. In fact part of the reason for WW1 was the German plans were looking at Russia and seeing how soon they would be overtaken. But I guess they just didn't know that it was a 'feudal mudpit'. And of course Russia was never feudal in the first place so I suggest a history book. > feudal mudpit I see you are repeating the same old Soviet Propaganda nonsense. Funny how the Soviets literally financed the first 10 years of their rule with systematically exploiting the wealth produced by that 'feudal mudpit' when they sold of much of the wealth of church and the whole cultural heritage of the country. Imperial Russia built a massively large and massively successful weapons industry before and during WW1. In fact Russia did amazingly well and by 1917 was able to seriously equip the largest army in Europe with competitive weapons and keep them in the field. Its a total misconception that Russia was not a first rate economy power. The literally fought Germany, Austria and the Ottoman with almost no supplies from outside. Unlike Soviets, they didn't have massive amounts of British and later US supplies flowing in. Russia already WAS a global super power. Many people even back then realized that most likely the world would be heading into a situation where Russia and the US were the two major powers, both in Britain and Germany. These very factories is what helped the Reds win the Civil war and is the bases for the next 10-20 of growth back to old level. From there massive peasant exploitation that literally killed 20-30 million people allowed them to buy massive amounts of tools and machines from the West. Often buying Western plants and 1 to 1 rebuilding them in the Soviet union. Additional measure they used where making a deal with the Germans, where Germany was secretly using Soviet land as training ground for the army and building factory for weapons that were not allowed by the West. A great way to extract industrial goods and plans from Germany for payment and also systematically stealing every single German economics secret. This operation is actually far larger then we knew until recently and was going on from 1922. That policy didn't work out so great for them.