This article deals with the Russian mode of modernization — transition from agrarian to industrial society (the 18th — the 1st half of the 20th centuries) — through the instance of the Urals’ regional history. The active role of state (typical of the Russian modernization) featured in a great state-run sector of economy — from one tenth to the whole through the-Imperial to Soviet periods. Tne Imperial modernization pattern was centered on the large-scale industrial (especially, military-industrial) sector, and the forced tempo of this process permanently led to the structural imbalances, as well as the use of large portions of forced labour and other forms of semi-serfdom. Only during the 2nd half of the i9th to the beginning of 2Qth centuries, the attempt of economic liberalization was implemented. Technologically, the Urals developed from the pre-industrial phase of modernization as a transition from natural to societal productivity (the 18th — the 1st half of the 19th centuries), to early industrial capitalism — the process riot completed in the region until 1917. After the long pause concerned with the October Revolution, the Civil War, and the great disaster, the Urals came to the new — Socialist, or "neo-feudal” — modernization wave as a stage of transition from early industrial modernization to more mature late industrialization.