[bsk]

>>Russia in particular, a backwards agrarian empire, was about the last place he thought would be ready for it. And turned out he was right.

Hmmmm, communist regime turned the agrarian empire into world's 2nd industrial power, that won the biggest battles in human history and was the 1st to send robots and humans to space.

[eru]

And killed off a sizeable chunk of the population.

Russia until the first world war was one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, though from a low base. So you can't really compare, without a time machine.