Counterfactual predictions are in general a thankless business, since they are by definition untestable, but the general idea you are suggesting, if I get it right, makes sense, whether correct or not: pre-WWI Russia was not stuck in one of those inadequate equilibria of slow growth and rigid structures, but was industrializing and modernizing, politically and economically. However, by the same token, WWI and the Bolshevik revolution did even more to push the huge lumbering behemoth out of equilibrium, giving it a chance to find a better one, which it has once Lenin’s New Economic Policy was in place in 1921. Of course, it all came crashing down when Stalin decided to go back to an absolute monarchy by another name, resulting in Holodomor and mass repressions. What would have happened should Lenin, a less cunning but a smarter and more flexible ruler, have lived another couple of decades, is anyone’s guess. He could have successfully allied with Hitler, for example, resulting in an International Socialist, instead of a National Socialist regime throughout Eurasia, Japan and Africa. Without a successful exodus of scientists from Nazi Germany the US would not have been first to develop nuclear weapons… But that is going way into sci-fi alt history. Then again, a turn to centralization and consolidation of power after a period of relaxation is a recurrent theme in Russian history, from before Ivan IV to Putin, so maybe it was inevitable under Stalin or any other leader.
Edit: gwern shamed me into adding an explicit statement that I understand that OP does not claim anything to the contrary, as the quote from the post states:
I’m also not arguing that counterfactual Tsarist growth would have been *faster* than under Lenin and Stalin—I just don’t know.
Counterfactual predictions are in general a thankless business, since they are by definition untestable, but the general idea you are suggesting, if I get it right, makes sense, whether correct or not: pre-WWI Russia was not stuck in one of those inadequate equilibria of slow growth and rigid structures, but was industrializing and modernizing, politically and economically. However, by the same token, WWI and the Bolshevik revolution did even more to push the huge lumbering behemoth out of equilibrium, giving it a chance to find a better one, which it has once Lenin’s New Economic Policy was in place in 1921. Of course, it all came crashing down when Stalin decided to go back to an absolute monarchy by another name, resulting in Holodomor and mass repressions. What would have happened should Lenin, a less cunning but a smarter and more flexible ruler, have lived another couple of decades, is anyone’s guess. He could have successfully allied with Hitler, for example, resulting in an International Socialist, instead of a National Socialist regime throughout Eurasia, Japan and Africa. Without a successful exodus of scientists from Nazi Germany the US would not have been first to develop nuclear weapons… But that is going way into sci-fi alt history. Then again, a turn to centralization and consolidation of power after a period of relaxation is a recurrent theme in Russian history, from before Ivan IV to Putin, so maybe it was inevitable under Stalin or any other leader.
Edit: gwern shamed me into adding an explicit statement that I understand that OP does not claim anything to the contrary, as the quote from the post states: