In the first quarter of the 18th century, due to a sharp increase in the size of the army and navy, the textile and especially sailing-and-linen industry began to develop rapidly.
[1][2] However, Peter I conducted a series of laws that aggravated the situation of peasants and prevented the creation of a wage labor market.
[citation needed] After the death of Peter I, up to the middle of the century, the industry of Russia, in spite of everything, continued to develop.
In the middle of the 18th century, Russia took first place in the world in the smelting of cast iron and became its main exporter to Europe.
At the end of the sixties in the textile industry, there were 231 large enterprises, including 73 woollen factories, 85 linen and 60 silk.
Sowings of agricultural crops expanded, including more valuable ones - wheat, potatoes, buckwheat, industrial and medicinal plants, etc.
The founding of the Free Economic Society (1765) contributed to the propaganda of the achievements of agronomic science, although so far on a "focal" scale.
Wage labour was especially prevalent in the textile industry and exceeded 90% However, unfree labor in feudal Russia still impeded the transition to factory production.
[citation needed] Only at the end of the 18th century, at the government's initiative, did a discussion begin on a large-scale project that concerned the use of English comb out and spinning machines.
[citation needed] Crisis phenomena were observed in the mining industry of the Urals, where manufactory production was based on monopoly and forced labor.
However, the owners of the plants did not use coal for puddling, which led to large-scale deforestation, to an increase in production costs and to an even wider use of non-economic forms of exploitation of workers.
The crisis in the mining industry also affected the position of state-owned military factories, where modern metalworking and mechanical production increasingly dealt with the supply of low-quality raw materials.
The low cost of serfdom made it unprofitable to replace it with machine labor based on the use of steam engines.
Entrepreneurs were not interested in raising the qualifications of the workforce; labor productivity at state-owned and private-owned manufactories grew extremely slowly.
By the early 1880s, the main industrial products began to be produced at factories and plants using machines and mechanisms driven by steam.
[citation needed] Factory production on the basis of civilian labor pushed into the background manufactory in all leading industries.
[citation needed] In the late 1880s and up to the end of the century, primarily heavy industry developed at a rapid pace, the volume of production of which increased by 4 times, and the number of workers doubled.
If in the 80s large mechanized enterprises were rare among the huge mass of artisanal production, then in the late 19th - early 20th centuries.
In search of a way out of this difficult situation, the government made deliberate efforts that led to an unprecedented industrial boom that began in 1893.
[12] At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire, along with the United States, occupied a leading position in world agriculture.
[citation needed] Production and import of industrial equipment[19] On the eve of the revolution, the country's national income was 16.4 billion rubles (7.4% of the world total).
[20] According to Orlov, Georgieva, Georgiev the development of industry reached the peak both in quantitative and in qualitative terms towards the end of the existence of the Russian Empire, on the eve of the February Revolution.
[citation needed] Subsequent industrialization was carried out in the USSR in the late 1920s using administrative-command methods based on five-year plans under totalitarianism.