ABSTRACT
The war posed vital issues about the need to secure additional output from existing resources and to develop industrial capacity. Certainly Russian industry had important achievements to its credit, in terms of developing new products and new branches of manufacturing and delivering munitions in sufficient quantities to banish some of the nightmares of 1915. Military and technical specialists were more active in supporting innovation; the semi-official Vankov organisation played an important role here. Long before the Bolshevik revolution, Russian entrepreneurs were confronted by challenges to their economic position, not by organised labour but by the tsarist state and educated society. Disruption of the labour force, combined with difficulties in sustaining supplies of fuel and raw materials, were reflected in an overall decline in labour productivity. However, it proved difficult to translate these advantages into an effective system of supply. Government intervened in order to allocate fuel and other inputs to defence contractors.
