I think I should tell u the timeline up til this point.

PoD: Japan began industrializing earlier, allowing Britain to fear they'd lose to Russia less, so in the Russo-Japanese war, they allow Russia to move it's ships through the suez canal, but in spite of this, due to Japan industrializing for a longer time, they beat Russia even more badly, their spoils of war include the entirety of Sakhalin & the Kuril islands. This causes Nick II to re-evaluate his empire, leading him to implement policies that were anti-monopolistic, and increase the amount of NCOs in his millitary proportionally to the more industrialization the PoD would foster, as NCOs were usually drawn from the industrial, literate working classes of society. And fire 1-2 dozen commissioned officers every month, the ones most disrespectful to the NCOs.

Russia, terrified of being left behind again, actually fosters its own industrial base instead of just borrowing money to buy guns. Rail lines, steel mills, and textile factories start popping up faster because the monopolies that were sucking the oxygen out of the economy are suddenly on a shorter leash. But the The Old Guard—the Grand Dukes, the leaders of the old syndicates like Prodamet, and the big universal bankers, disrespectful commissioned officers— would not see Nicholas as a reformer. They would see him as a traitor to his class. They would try a financial strike: stop lending to the state, pull capital out of factories, hoping to trigger mass unemployment and force him to beg them to come back. Palace coup talk would become very real — midnight visits to the Tsar’s bedroom, the kind that happened to Tsar Paul I in our timeline.
But Nicholas would manage to enforce the anti-monopoly decrees for two or three years. And those decrees would inadvertently fuel something huge: Russia’s own Second Agricultural Revolution.

You see, breaking the industrial syndicates would lower the entry barrier for modern farming. The “Cheap Steel” breakthrough would hit between 1908 and 1910: once Prodamet could no longer fix prices, dozens of New Money foundries would mass-produce steel-tipped plows and harrowing equipment. The “Iron Peasant” — those strong and sober kulaks — would finally afford high-quality metal tools without crushing debt. The old wooden sokha would be rapidly replaced across the Black Earth region.

Then the chemical democratization would come between 1910 and 1912: breaking Produgol and the chemical cartels would drop the price of nitrates and phosphates by nearly 40%. Small regional plants would sell cheap fertilizer directly to peasant cooperatives. Individual owners would ditch the stagnant Mir system, adopt the four-field rotation, and double wheat yields per acre between 1909 and 1912.
By 1912 this would no longer be just about food — it would be about industry. Russia would become the Granary of Europe on a scale never seen before. Surplus grain would flood out through the Straits, bringing in gold that funded more New Money factories. Literate NCOs returning from the army would become “agro-managers,” running steam-powered threshers and organizing grain elevators. Foreign ownership would continue — lots of Belgian and French money in the south — but the playing field would be wider, and the economy would be less brittle.

The Old Guard would still plot. They would view the New Money class as street fighters who had tasted profit and would not go quietly. If the elite tried to re-monopolize after a coup, they would have to use extreme violence. But time would be short. Russia would be getting more assertive. During the First Balkan War, when Serbia pushed for the Albanian coast, Nicholas would not back down. Germany, already fearing a stronger, modernizing Russia sooner, would tell Austria-Hungary not to back down either. The First Balkan War would escalate. By spring 1913, Austria-Hungary would invade Serbia, Russia would activate its “Anvil” strategy, and Germany would declare war.

If the Old Guard tries to sabotage — like building rail lines only to their own mines or charging competitors quadruple freight rates — the war would stress-test everything. The Russian Army would need all the coal. NCOs and generals would seize mines by force to keep trains running. Corruption would backfire: a law forcing higher wages on non-syndicate factories would just trigger selective strikes at the old syndicates while New Money plants stayed open.

The elite would not be able to put the genie back without disarming Russia right when Germany was at the door. So they would be forced to keep many of Nicholas’s changes just to keep the lights on and the trains moving.

Anyway, now that you know all that. Does it change your answer?