How did they become a world superpower and almost overtake the us? During ww1 russia had the highest death toll, this led to the Russian revolution and an even higher death toll. Russia was the only entente nation that surrendered.
Ww2 was even worse, they lost 26 million people and the west was completely ravaged. The British and French empires fell apart after Ww2 but somehow soviet Russia was stronger than ever.
In: Economics
Russia/the Soviet Union, even after the losses in sustained, had several things going for it.
1. Access to most of the most important resources to developing an industrial economy. Tons of oil, iron, coal, etc., as well as some of the most fertile soil in the world to feed itself (mostly. Sometimes)
2. A huge potential workforce. The USSR had the third largest population on Earth.
3. Its network of eastern European satellites. This resources and manufactured goods were extracted from these economies, while they served as a captive market for Soviet goods.
4. The Soviet economy was never actually that big. What took people by surprise is how *fast* it got big, but that’s more a factor of where it started. Through most of the industrial revolution, the Russian Empire was functionally a feudal state, and that didn’t really start to change until the early 1900s. The Soviets took this start and ran with it, but each billion you add to your GDP is harder than the last. When you start barely industrialized, the early gains happen quickly.
5. You really can’t undersell the importance of a government that is philosophically committed to industrialization as a moral good.
6. They lied. A lot. The USSR was always seriously overstating its GDP.
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