Yet, in the early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness of Imperial Russia (1721–1917)—uneven and combined economic development—facilitated rapid and intensive industrialization, which produced a united, working-class proletariat in a predominantly rural, agrarian, peasant society. Moreover, because the industrialization was financed mostly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia did not possess a revolutionary bourgeoisie with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants (as occurred in the French Revolution, 1789). So, although Russia's political economy principally was agrarian and semi-feudal, the task of democratic revolution therefore fell to the urban, industrial working class, as the only social class capable of effecting land reform and democratization, in view that the Russian propertied classes would attempt to suppress any revolution, in town and country.