The regional development of the Urals has repeated Russian development trends. By the XVIII century in the Urals were all prerequisites to become a testing ground for modernization. It went through three stages. The first stage of modernization - proto-industrialization covered the period from the XVIII century to the first half of the XIX century, when the mining industry became an important factor in the modernization of the Urals. The second stage - early industrial modernization occurred in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. Throughout this period, a large number of factories and plants in the mining industry were built. Early industrial modernization continued in the 1930s. This was a period of accelerated industrialization, when the Urals became the central link of the Ural-Kuznetsk Combine. The third stage - late industrial modernization began in the second half of the 1950s. The scientific and technological revolution was its core. In the second half of the 1980s there was an objective need to complete this stage of modernization. But in the early 1990s the liberal democrats came to power in Russia. They adopted the concept of an accelerated transition to a post-industrial society. The result of this scientific and technical policy was the loss of half of the country’s industrial potential in the 1990s.