I'll give an answer here which to almost all other AH questions would be simply a cop-out - but here, it is a necessary reminder, because I see so many (too many, for my tastes) stereotyped narratives of Russia's "inevitable X" or "inevitable Y" or "Z" around:
There are many different possibilities, from a lot better to arguably worse, depending on what exactly happens.
Russia is neither doomed to have a revolution, nor doomed to dwell in backwardness if not; it is neither bound for ultra-chauvinist totalitarianism nor for unprecedented industrial growth. Like all other countries on earth, many paths are open and plausible, if only we overcome our cliches and let our allohistorical creativity work.
Pre-WW1, Russia had a high population growth. So had other countries, but Russia's was even higher. The reasons for these high birth rates had already eroded with Stolypin's agrarian reforms, though. Population growth would probably slow down a little, and then dive like everywhere else in the developed world when contraception pills come around. IF we simply assume that things continue on the trajectory of the last pre-revolutionary decades. Which isn't necessary. Some other regime which brings down birth rates could come into place, too, for the same reasons it happened under communist rule or for others.
Pre-WW1, Russia was industrialising fast, but from a low starting level. Russia's industry grew on foreign capital influx and was export-oriented. The crises of global capitalism, if they occur comparable to OTL, would affect it greatly, but so would worldwide phases of recovery and growth. Without Stalinist ruthlessness and fervor, though, it would take very long for Russian industrial production to reach OTL levels. On the plus side, there wouldn't be the de-industrialisation of 1991ff. IF we simply assume that things continue linearily. Which they probably wouldn't. Governments trying to reduce world market dependency could change things. Or governments who mess with the underlying forces of industrial growth. Or governments who do a great job steering the country better through the up and down cycles than elsewhere, drawing on the economic depth of the country - you never know.
Pre-WW1, Russia had some of the most lively liberal movements, certainly the most interesting populist-agrarian movement of the world, a huge spectrum of labour groups and radicals, Christian sectarians, Orthodox reformers and conservatives, radical nationalists and cosmopolitanists, and yes, it had a state apparatus in which they all had very little to say. Any of these forces could have shaped Russia in very interesting ways. Its political system is absolutely unpredictable, like most country's. The likelihood of great changes is high - but that is because it is high in most countries of the world, most countries underwent radical changes in the 20th century, and Russia's system was full enough of contradictions and dysfunctionalities for it to not be immune to such changes. But in which direction - who could argue against any? The tsar appeared like an invincible autocrat for so long, who had even drowned 1905 in blood. But then, in February, he fell rather unceremoniously. The liberal parties had dominated the opposition, but when the tide of mass protests came around in 1917, they quickly became irrelevant. The SRs were the biggest party with the best network of cells across the entire country, and yet it wasn't them who governed the new post-revolutionary state. The Bolsheviks were highly unable to form effective alliances and alienated almost everyone else, and yet they took over. Nothing about this is "predictable" or carved in stone.
There is a very strong narrative that Russia, whatever happens, would always have to be some sort of autocracy. We should not forget that this is a tale which has always served those in power in Russia: first the tsars and nobility and their non-democratic state apparatus, then the party apparatus who managed to purge any trace of democracy in the first country in the world which claimed allegiance to one of the most radically anti-authoritarian political philosophies that ever existed, and today Putin's militaristic cleptocracy. And it is also a tale which flatters the allegedly superior Westerners.
No country "has it in its genes" to be autocratically governed. Russia's size is no argument when Canada is a good and solid democracy; Russia's multi-ethnic and at the beginning of the 20th century highly illiterate population is no argument when India is a good and solid democracy; its agrarian nature isn't an argument (why would it be?). The political violence and intrigues which the tsarist secret police Okhrana had implemented were, in my opinion, the most powerful factor shaping a violent, cruel, and manipulative new system, not least because the new revolutionary leaders had experienced the methods of the Okhrana first-hand as its victims. But even this must not necessarily doom a country, we must only think of all the ultra-right torture-based dictatorships of Latin America, South Africa etc., who have been replaced mostly with democracies since the 1980s/90s where such cruelty has not politico-systematically returned. (Although the scars remain, and social consequences certainly exist.)
I think we need more TLs in which Russia in the 20th century is neither communist nor some sort of fascist and also doesn't suffer a warlord era or something of the like. There are plenty of possibilities. Maybe it isn't always outright racism which dooms Russia in many TLs to autocracy of some sort - maybe it is because TL writers focus on other parts of the world and write them "better", and maybe, following some unwritten "law of balance" (so that things don't become too utopian), they need a place that becomes fascist or religiously backwards or whatever instead, and, hey, why not Russia. But still. Get more creative, guys.
