Naval infrastructure could strengthen Russia's wider economy

Russia could build useful destroyers, but needed them after Tsushima and before World War I. Supporting its separated fleets also required investment in ports and the railways connecting them with the capital and interior. Those links could strengthen the wider economy by moving goods as well as naval supplies. Arctic supply routes were less practical during World War I than during World War II, and routes across Siberia offered another way to bring goods into Russia. Russia extracted abundant raw materials but lacked enough successive layers of industrial production to be self-sufficient. Later Soviet economic plans sought to develop that industrial capacity. World War I exposed the weakness when imports through the Baltic and Black Sea ports were cut off.