Abstract
Abstract At the turn of the last century, international political tension intensified and the Great Powers accelerated their armament efforts. Conflicts in the Balkans threatened, as early as in 1908, to lead the two blocs of European countries into a great war for which especially Russia would have been very poorly prepared. The economic crisis of the early 1900s had increased the technological backwardness of the eastern Empire's heavy industry and armament compared with those of the other Great Powers. Partly for this reason the Russian government considered it best to stay outside the Balkan conflict at this point and to concentrate on modernising its army's weaponry and speeding up the building of strategic railways and harbours in the western parts of the Empire. In 1908 the Imperial government acquired a domestic loan of 200 million rubles, followed by a foreign loan of 525 million rubles, to finance these armament efforts.
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