It was introduced by the French and not the Russians.
In fact that mathematician Napoleon was your man, who obviously saw the need for simplification whilst working Frenchmen by relating everything back to one..E.G.One tonne of water will replenish one thousand men per day with one litre each, which can be conveniently carried by a horse drawn cart carrying a tank of one cubic meter in size.
Took me a long time to figure out how come whenever you see a Frenchman he barely tops five and a half feet, yet the metric "step" is 39.37".
My brother in law has it figured. He reckons that during the Napoleonic wars the height limit "minimum" was six foot two of the cannon fodder, consequently when most of them got killed as they did, he was responsible for wiping off several inches of height from the French gene pool.
Like starting the modern French helicopter, counting the functions to be performed is not a real challenge.
cheers tet