Russia faces difficulties in the late nineteenth…
1888 CE to 1899 CE
Not only does technology and industry continue to develop more rapidly in the West but also new, dynamic, competitive great powers appear on the world scene: Otto von Bismarck's united Germany, the post-Civil War United States, and Meiji Restoration Japan.
Although it is an expanding regional giant in Central Asia, straddling the borders of the Ottoman, Iranian, British Indian, and Chinese empires, Russia cannot generate enough capital to undergo rapid industrial development or to compete with advanced countries on a commercial basis.
Russia's fundamental dilemma is that either it can attempt to accelerate domestic development and risk upheaval at home or it can progress slowly and risk becoming an economic colony of the more
advanced world.
The transformation of the economic and social structure of Russia is accompanied by political ferment, particularly among the intelligentsia, and also by impressive developments
in literature, music, the fine arts, and the natural sciences.