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Economic Modernization in Imperial Russia: Purposes and Achievements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Herbert J. Ellison
Herbert J. Ellison
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
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Extract

Historically, the forms of modern economic life were first extended to new areas from the small zone of Western Europe where they developed by two major means: the direct action of individuals and economic organizations from that zone, and the measures of innovating rulers intent upon modernizing the economic life of their countries. In Russia the outside action came first, beginning with the Chancellor expedition in the sixteenth century and expanding gradually over the subsequent century and a half. Only from the early eighteenth century did the monarch's initiative become the primary factor in economic innovation, but the combination of Muscovite autocratic power and the formidable will of Peter the Great made it from the beginning an irresistible force for change. By the late eighteenth century a new force was evident—the entrepreneurial initiative of Russian tradesmen and manufacturers. The prime movers of Russian economic modernization during the following century were now assembled.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1965 , pp. 523 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1965

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References

1 Volkov, E. Z., Dinamika narodonaseleniia SSSR za 80 let (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1930), p. 8Google Scholar.

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13 Ibid., p. 71.

14 By 1835 Moscow was connected by road with Petersburg, Kharkov, Nizhni-Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Riazan, and Brest-Litovsk.

15 Khromov, p. 89.

16 The average annual foreign trade turnover (exports and imports) during the years 1801–05 was 127.8 million rubles, while between 1856–60 it was 431.5 million rubles. Pokrovskii, Vol. I, p. iv.

The export of grain in the middle 1840's constituted 35.5 per cent of all exports. Rozhkov, M. K., “Torgovlia,” Ocherki ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo SEL, 1959), p. 274Google Scholar.

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21 Ibid., pp. 52–53. The pattern of state finances on the eve of the emancipation is extremely interestingly analyzed in a budget memorandum of a contemporary official in the ministry of finance, Iu. A. Gagemeister. The memorandum is published with a brief introduction by Pogrebinskii, A. P., “Gosudarstvennye finansy Rossii nakanune reformy 1861 goda,” Istoricheskii Arkhiv, II (1956), 100 ff.Google Scholar

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23 Ibid., p. 163.

24 The several elements of this economic process are best described in Pavlovsky, George A., Agricultural Russia on the Eve of the Revolution (London: G. Routledge, 1930)Google Scholar. The extraordinary development of agricultural cooperation has yet to receive a full historical treatment, though it is interestingly treated in Blanc, Elsie Terry, Cooperative Movement in Russia (New York: Macmillan, 1924)Google Scholar.

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29 Ibid., pp. 7–8; Khromov, pp. 195–96.

30 Zagorsky, p. 9; Khromov, p. 196.

31 Zagorsky, p. 7; Khromov, p. 197.

32 Khromov, p. 197.

33 Ibid., p. 205.

34 Florinsky, II, 934.

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42 Ibid., p. 944.

43 Zagorsky, p. 16.

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