Economic change in industry

Alexander II

New Work Discipline

• Machine safety for new workers

Reutern’s reforms

• Doubled industrial output

• 7x increase in railway track

  • Private contractors allowed for corruption

• Foreign investment and expertise

  • Govt bonds, tax exemptions and monopoly concessions

  • JJ Hughes - iron and steel production

• Effects cut short by Russo-Turkish War

• Laid foundation for later

Alexander III - Bunge

• Fiscal amendments - abolition of the Salt Tax and Poll Tax

• Peasant Land Bank

• Increased state ownership of railways - 69% by 1911

• Blamed for dramatic fall of the rouble

Alexander III - Vishnegradskii

• Taxes, railways, crown properties, state bank an d treasury more efficient

• Medele’ev tariff 1891

• Large grain exports

• 1981 famine seen as result of his policies

Witte + the Great Spurt

Significant

• Command economy - heavy state intervention

• Coal production doubled

• 7x increase of iron and steel production

• 350% growth of railway - focus on Trans-Siberian railway

• Foreign loans

• Gold standard to give investors confidence

• Development of infrastructure

Witte + the Great Spurt

Not significant

• Productivity still far lower than the West

• State control prevented an entrepreneurial class from developing

• Indirect taxation worsened standard of living

• Focused on heavy industry and neglected light industry and agriculture

• Railway still had 11x fewer miles of track than Germany by 1914

• Loans could be recalled at short notice

• Declining living conditions and increased contact with the West increased chances of revolution

Lenin + State Capitalism

• Depleted resources after WWI

• Decree on Land

  • Private land divided and given to peasants

• Decree on Workers’ Control

  • Workers’ committees given extra powers to run factories

• Supreme Economic Council (SEC)

  • Managed key nationalised industries

Lenin + War Communism

• Civil war nullified impact of State Capitalism

• Industry at 10% of pre-war levels

  • Huge fall in coal, oil and heavy industry production

• Nationalisation of larger enterprises + state monopoly of markets

  • Caused unrest as people lost control of trade

• Partial militarisation of labour

• Forced requisitioning

  • Removed surplus of food to feed urban workers and army

• Relied on terror

Lenin and NEP

• Denationalisation of small-scale enterprise and return to private ownership

• State control of heavy industry through trusts

• Rejuvenation of trade through removal of trade restrictions

• Return to foreign investment and expertise

• End of grain requisitioning

• Unpopular - seen as betrayal of October revolution