[antonf]

> Historians describe that Russian peasants pre-1917 were basically living in Medieval conditions

FWIW, communism actually forced Russian peasants back into Medieval conditions: first by punishing former peasants who became landowners (so called kulaks), who were declared as class enemies and persecuted. And later by forming Kolkhozes (collective farms), which were not that different from serfdom: children born by members of Klokhoz were forced to work in Kolkhoz too, members had to work state-owned land for free or for minimal amount of sustenance (about a pound of grain per day), and de facto were not allowed to legally leave.

> Maybe Communism was the only way to drag Russian society, kicking and screaming, into the modern era that other European nations had attained, centuries earlier.

It wasn't. Stolypin reforms implemented from 1906 through 1914 aimed at making peasants landowners was a better way.