The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were times of
crisis for Russia. Not only did technology and industry continue to
develop more rapidly in the West, but also new, dynamic, competitive
great powers appeared on the world scene: Otto von Bismarck united
Germany in the 1860s, the post-Civil War United States
grew in size and
strength, and a modernized Japan emerged from the Meiji Restoration of
1868. Although Russia was an expanding regional giant in Central Asia,
bordering the Ottoman, Persian, British Indian, and Chinese empires, it
could not generate enough capital to support rapid industrial
development
