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In the Light and Shadow of the West: The Impact of Western Economics in Pre-Emancipation Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Esther Kingston-Mann
Affiliation:
The University of Massachusetts at Boston

Extract

The notion that “Westernization” is a process that is unconditionally positive in its impact has dominated both Western and Soviet accounts of Russian intellectual and cultural history during the period before the Emancipation of 1861. As a consequence, Westernization has been described as synonymous with progress, rational economic behavior, greater tolerance, civilization, and the advancement of individual freedom. Although this rather uncritically pro-Western approach to the study of Western influences has produced important research and analytical insights, the assumption that a homogeneous Western culture everywhere generates liberal and democratic influences is in fact highly problematic. As I have suggested elsewhere, it is very difficult to make the empirical case that any one Western political or economic model can be applied to Germany, France, and Italy as well as England. And in the Russian context, a belief in the unmixed benefits of Westernization obscures some of the most important ironies and contradictions that characterize Russian economic debates and strategies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Type
The Cultural Component of Economic Change
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1991

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References

1 I have been unable to find a single major work of modern English-language or Soviet scholarship dealing with the pre-Emancipation era that does not identify “Westernization” with beneficial change. Arcadius Kahan's two essays (“The Costs of ‘Westernization’ in Russia: The Gentry and the Economy in Russian History,” The Structure of Russian History, Cherniavsky, M., ed. [New York, 1970], 224250;Google Scholar and Continuity in Economic Activity and Policy during the Post-Petrine Period in Russia,“Journal of Economic History, 25 [1965], 6185CrossRefGoogle Scholar) do not focus on the impact of Western economics. Marc Raeff's complex and instructive discussion of German influences in The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change Through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, 1983)Google Scholar does not center on the issue of “Westernization” and is not primarily concerned with economic issues. See also Rogger, Hans, National Consciousness in 18th-Century Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See discussion of this issue in a later period of Russian history in Kingston-Mann, Esther, “In Search of the True West: Western Economic Models and Russian Rural Development,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 3:1 (Spring 1990), 2349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 A good general discussion of the politically conservative aspects of physiocracy is Holldack, Heinz, “Der Physiocratismus und die Absolute Monarchic,” Historische Zeitschrift, 145 (1932), 517–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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6 See discussion in Hoch, Steven, Serfdom and Social Control in Russia (Chicago, 1986), 1564.Google Scholar

7 These local institutions periodically repartitioned land among member households according to household size, number of adult laborers, or some other collective social principle. Even in the West and South, where more privatized systems of tenure prevailed, peasants observed many of the same collectivist practices found in “commune” regions. The Russian term for commune is mir or obschina. See the useful discussion of Steven Grant, A., “Obshchina and Mir,” Slavic Review, 35:4, 636–51.Google Scholar

8 In 1808, one of serfowner P. A. Koshkarov's harem girls, caught running away with a groom, was severely beaten and forced to sit on a chair for a whole month, an iron collar with spokes around her neck preventing her from turning her head. There is no indication that the groom survived the severe beating that he received. In the late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcenturies, serfowners in increasing numbers freely sold families and individual family members—particularly young girls and boys—at slave markets in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and escalated their financial demands with relative indifference to peasant ability to pay. As Rodney Bohac has shown, the serfowner N. S. Gagarin was able to freely increase obrok obligations by 400 percent on his massive Manuilov estate in Tver province between 1810–14, doubling the payments between 1813–14 alone. See Semevskii, V.I., Krest'ianskii vopros v Rossii v xviii i pervoi golovine xix veka, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1888), 22;Google ScholarKolchin, Peter, Unfree Labor (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 124–25;Google Scholar and Bohac, Rodney, “Everyday Forms of Resistance: Serf Opposition to Gentry Exactions, 1800–1861,” in Peasant Economy, Culture and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921, Kingston-Mann, E. and Mixter, T., eds. (Princeton, 1990), 244.Google Scholar

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13 See, for example, Klingstedt, , Trudy imperatorskogo vol'nogo ekonomicheskogo obshchestva (Proceedings of the Imperial Free Economic Society, cited hereafter as TIVEO), vol. 16 (1770), 238,Google Scholar 239, and Rychkov, vol. 16 (1770), 16–17, 23–24, 56–57; Augustine, Wilson, “Notes toward a Portrait of the Eighteenth Century Russian Nobility,” Canadian Slavic Studies, 4:3 (1970), 373425;Google Scholar and Confino, Michael, “Politique de tutelle,” 60.Google Scholar

14 For this and other examples of Bolotov's methods, see Bolotov, , Zhizn' i priklucheniia Andreia Bolotova, opisannye samim im dlia svoikh potomkov, 1738–1795, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 18701873),Google Scholar a supplement to Russkaia starina), 434, 549–50, 637, 475–77, and TIVEO, vol. 16 (1770), 7677,Google Scholar 82, 185, 203.

15 Bartlett, Roger, “J.J. Sievers and the Russian Peasants under Catherine II,” Jahrbücher fur geschichte Osteuropas, 32:1 (1984), 1933,Google Scholar and see the general discussion in Jones, Robert, Provincial Development in Russia: Catherine II and Jakob Sievers (Rutgers, N.J., 1984), 152–6.Google Scholar

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17 In the 1930s and afterward, Stalin repeatedly described the policy of forced collectivization as a progressive measure whose harshness was necessitated by peasant backwardness. For some of the later pronouncements, see Stalin, quoted in Lauterbach, Richard, “Stalin at 65,” Life Magazine (01 1, 1945), 67.Google Scholar

18 In this connection, it is useful to consider Roger Bartlett's evidence of gentry hostility and indifference to the eighteenth-century efforts of Pastor J. G. Eisen, who attempted to involve peasant mothers in programs for inoculations against smallpox, instead of engaging in forcible inoculations “for the peasants' own good.” See Bartlett, “J. J. Sievers and the Russian Peasants,” 31–33.

19 Confino, “Le Politique de Tutelle,” 47–49. See also Kahan, Arcadius, The Hammer and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia, Hellie, Richard, ed. (Chicago, 1985), 6669.Google Scholar

20 Peasant efforts are set out in Prugavin, A.S., Zaprosy naroda i obiazannosti intelligentsii v oblastiprosveshcheniia i vospitaniia (St. Petersburg, 1895), 3152.Google Scholar See the recent study by Eklof, Ben, Russian Peasant Schools (Berkeley, 1988), 8486.Google Scholar

21 Mavrodin, V.V., Klassovaia bor'ba i obshchestvenno-politicheskaia mysl' v Rossii v xiii v. (Leningrad, 1964), 170.Google Scholar

22 Even Beardé's essay was only narrowly approved for publication. Critics like Count Sievers, the brothers Orlov, and Prince M. M. Shcherbatov feared that any argument for land grants to the peasantry might be used as a justification for encroachment on gentry property. Pratt, Joan, “The Russian Free Economic Society” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri at Columbia, 1983), 34.Google Scholar

23 See general discussion in Mavrodin, Klassovaia bor'ba, 169–70.

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25 See the discussion of Jakob's career as a German economist in Keith Tribe in Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse, 1750–1840 (Cambridge, England, 1988);Google Scholar and Winter, Eduard, Halle als Ausgangspunkt der deutschen Russlandkunde in 18 Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1953).Google Scholar

26 Quoted in Semevskii, V.I., Krest'ianskii vopros, 319 and 313–5; see also TlVEO, vol. LXVI (1814), 82,Google Scholar 85–86. It is interesting to compare Jakob's statement with D. A. Golitsyn's reassuring eighteenth-century argument that property “gives rise to security and spiritual peace, from this peace develops curiosity, and curiosity encourages all forms of knowledge of the arts, trade and the sciences.” Shchipanov, A., lzbrannye proizvedeniia russkikh myslitelei vtoroi poloviny xviii veka (Leningrad, 1952), 25–6.Google Scholar Jakob's views were spelled out in detail in his Grundsatze der Policeygezetzebung und der Policeyanstalten (1809), a book that brought him an invitation to join the government's Ministry of Finance.

27 Storch, Henri, Cours d'économie politique en exposition des principes qui determinent la prosperité des nations, vol. 6, 1819 (Paris, 1815).Google Scholar

28 Although Professor McGrew has suggested that, in contrast to Storch, most of Russia's economic liberals were proponents of political reform, it is hard to see Schlözer, Jakob, Kaiserov and Stroinovskii in this light. See McGrew, Roderick, “Dilemmas of Development: Baron Heinrich Friedrich Storch (1766–1835) on the Growth of Imperial Russia,” Jahrbucher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 24 (1976), 71.Google Scholar

29 Storch, , Cours, vol. 3, 248–58.Google Scholar Despite Storch's caveats about the need for emancipation, the censors nevertheless considered his writings suspect. In 1815, they permitted the publication of the French edition of his book in St. Petersburg, but prohibited its appearance in a Russian translation.

30 According to Storch, farm labor could not be easily routinized, and environmental and other factors could always prevent the farmer from being rewarded in proportion to his investments of labor, capital, or ingenuity.

31 Born in Hungary and trained at the University of Vienna, Balugianskii came to Russia in the early 1800s and served as the tutor of the future Nicholas I from 1813–7. In 1817 he was appointed rector of the University of St. Petersburg. See Kosachevskaia, E.M., M. A. Balugianskii i peterburgskii universitet pervoi chetverti xix veka (Leningrad, 1971), 52–5.Google Scholar

32 LeDonne, , Ruling Russia, 54, 95101,Google Scholar 109, 186–9, and 347–8.

33 Bliumin, I.G., Ocherk ekonomicheskoi mysli v Rossii v pervoi polovine xix veka (Moscow, 1940), 5051.Google Scholar

34 Pushkin, A.S., Eugene Onegin, vol. 1, Nabokov, V.N., trans. (New York, 1964), 98.Google Scholar

35 Bliumin, I.G., Ocherk ekonomicheskoi mysli (Moscow, 1940), 92–9.Google Scholar

36 See the careful discussion contained in Kaufman, Allen, Capitalism, Slavery and Republican Values: American Political Economy, 1819–1848 (Austin, Texas, 1982).Google Scholar

37 Mordvinov believed that difficult tasks like swamp drainage would never be voluntarily undertaken by free laborers; only the compulsion imposed by the lord could ensure that the land would be improved. In a sense, “Serfdom was to be the price paid for Russia's economic development.” A detailed discussion of Mordvinov's views of serfdom is contained in Repczuk, Helma, “Nicholas Mordvinov (1754–1845): Russia's Would-Be Reformer” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1962), 196204,Google Scholar and 206.

38 Mordvinov inundated his peasants with directives ranging from crop selection to the proper swaddling of infants. When Tsar Alexander I visited his Baldar valley estate in 1818, 2,000 peasants lined the road to complain of Mordvinov's intrusiveness and cruelty. Shilder, N.K., Imperator Aleksandr pervyi, ego zhizn i tsarstvovanie, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg, 19041905), 103.Google Scholar

39 Quoted in Repczuk, Nicholas Mordvinov, 111. Mordvinov was in no sense a thoroughgoing believer in laissez faire. Although he did not want government intervention in the master-serf relationship, he strongly supported government leadership in the subsidizing and promotion of technological and industrial development.

40 I am indebted to Professor Jurgen Backhaus for his suggestion that the all-encompassing conception of order that inspired Mordvinov's plan might well reflect the influence of Bentham's, JeremyPanopticon (London, 1812).Google Scholar

41 The stated aim of the military colonies was to lower the burgeoning costs of state military expenditures and to provide a model for the rational improvement of living standards and productivity levels.

42 Fitzhugh, George, quoted in Eugene Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made (New York, 1969), 162.Google Scholar See also the fascinating discussion between such notions of discipline and later industrial theories of “Taylorism” in Aufhauser, R. Keith, “Slavery and Scientific Management,” Journal of Economic History, 33 (10 1973), 811–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 In addition, settlers were to make use of the labor of unmarried soldiers quartered in their homes and require them to engage in farmwork in return for food and shelter.

44 Pipes, Richard, “The Russian Military Colonies, 1810–1831,” Journal of Modern History, 22 (10 1950), 205–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Quoted in Russkii arkhiv, vol. 8 (1893), 535,Google Scholar and Russkaia starina, vol. 4 (1904), 14.Google Scholar

46 Khomiakov, A.S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 187–8;Google Scholar vol. 3, 408-9. The questions Khomiakov raises are central to current debates in English historiography. Although the revolutionary aspects of English achievements were more emphasized in older scholarship, some of the most recent research has focused on social, political, and economic continuities in modern English social history. See Mingay, G.E., “Introduction,” Arthur Young and his Times (London, 1975).Google Scholar

47 K. D. Kavelin was probably the only member of this group who was more skeptical about the all-encompassing virtues of property and less critical of the peasant commune. See Kavelin, , Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 18971900), 1170.Google Scholar

48 Granovskii, T.N., Sochinenie (Moscow, 1856), vol. 1, 150–6.Google Scholar

49 See Harvey Chisick's discussion of similar Enlightenment notions of “the people,” in The Limits of Reform in the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1981).Google Scholar

50 Netting, Anthony, “Russian Liberalism, The Years of Promise: 1842–1855” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1967), 612.Google Scholar

51 The only exception to this general stance was the influential Moscow University legal scholar, K. D. Kavelin, who shared the political and cultural ideals of Belinskii and the young Herzen, but believed that communal and private tenure each possessed both virtues and defects.

52 Seligman, Ben, “The Impact of Positivism on Economic Thought,” History of Political Economy, 1:2 (1969), 258Google Scholar and 268, and see the discussion of “objectivity” and the hierarchical notions of progress that inspired the Comtean movement in Szacki, Jerzy, History of Sociological Thought (London, 1979), 177–9;Google Scholar and Spragens, Thomas, The Irony of Liberal Reason (Chicago, 1981).Google Scholar

53 See discussion of the origins of Comtean influences in Utkina, N.F., Pozitivizm, antropoligicheskii materializm i nauka v Rossii (Moscow, 1975);Google ScholarShkurinov, P.S., Pozitivizm v Rossii (Moscow, 1980), 6263;Google Scholar and Safronov, B.G., M. M. Kovalevskii kak sotsiolog (Moscow, 1960), 4550.Google Scholar

54 See, for example, Bezobrazov, V.P., Aristokratiia i interesy dvoriantstvo (St. Petersburg, 1859).Google Scholar

55 See, for example, Politicheskoe ravnovesie i Angliia (Moscow, 1855);Google ScholarOcherk istorii politicheskoi ekonomii (St. Petersburg, 1858);Google ScholarProspekt politicheskoi ekonomii (St. Petersburg, 1858);Google Scholar and TIVEO, vol. 4 (10 1865), 328.Google Scholar

56 See Maslov, E., O vlianii razlichnykh vidov pozemel'noi sobstvennosti na narodnoe bogatstvo (Kazan, 1860).Google Scholar

57 See discussion in Tsagalov, N.A., Ocherki russkoi ekonomicheskoi mysliperioda padeniia krepostnogo prava (Moscow, 1956), 357.Google Scholar

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59 Kavelin, K.D., Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4, 257–62.Google Scholar

60 Quoted in Chemyshev, I.V., Agrarno-kresf' ianskaia politika Rossii za 150 let (Petrograd, 1918), 86,Google Scholar 91.

61 Quoted in Tsybenko, A., Mirovozzrenie D. I. Pisareva (Moscow, 1969), 266.Google Scholar

62 Esther Kingston-Mann, “Marxism and Russian Rural Development,” 731–3.

63 See, for example, Chicherin, B.N., “Obzor istoricheskago razvitiia sel'skoi obshchiny v Rossii,” Russkii vestnik, 34.Google Scholar

64 Tengoborskii, Ludwig, Études sur les forces productives de la Russie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1852), 331.Google Scholar

65 Katkov's shift astonished contemporaries like Prince Cherkasskii, who predicted (correctly) that Katkov would soon “confess his errors and turn back onto the opposite path.” See the discussion in Kitaev, V.A., Otfrondy k okhranitel'stvu: Iz istorii russkoi liberal'noi mysli 50–60x godov xix veka (Moscow, 1972), 190192.Google Scholar

66 Quoted in Field, Daniel, The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855–1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 444.Google Scholar

67 See especially Zaionchkovoskii, P.A., The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1978);Google Scholar and Emmons, Terence, The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (London, 1968).Google Scholar Some of the most valuable recent Soviet and Western research on emancipation appears in The Great Reforms in Russia, Zakharova, L.G., Bushnell, John, and Eklof, Ben, eds. (Bloomington, Indiana, 1991).Google Scholar