The article analyses the literature published in the 1990s and in the first two decades of the 21st century studying the nature of industrial policy of the tsarist and Provisional governments in the Urals during World War I. It is pointed out that industrial policy becomes a subject of historical research as late as at the turn of the 21st century. Further, the paper demonstrates the effect of the 100th anniversary of World War I on the intensification of research into the history of industrial policy of that period. The article estimates key modern interpretations of this issue and singles out three dominant approaches in modern historiography of industrial policy: traditional approach, based on an updated Marxist historical paradigm; modernization approach, resorting to modernization theory; and liberal approach, based on the civilization concept. The authors note the great popularity in the Ural literature of the modernization approach to history in the interpretation of RAS member V.V. Alekseyev from Yekaterinburg and its impact on the estimation of wartime industrial policy. In addition, the problems of research into industrial policy are described. It is claimed that due to the novelty of this problem, almost all of its aspects, from defining the notion of “industrial policy” to its effectiveness, are debatable. This article primarily dwells on the discourse on the relationship between the government representatives and the Ural miners.