Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T11:15:26.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

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

2 Khromov, P. A., Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii v XIX-XX vekakh (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1950), pp. 38–39, 52, 54–55, 434Google Scholar.

3 Pokrovskii, V. I., ed., Sbornik svedenii po istorii i statistike vneshnei torgovli Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1902), I, 116–17, 140–41Google Scholar. Statisticheskii ezhegodnik na 1914 g. (St. Petersburg, 1914).

4 Khromov, p. 462.

5 Ibid., p. 27.

6 Ibid., pp. 32–33.

7 Ibid., pp. 40, 46, 47.

8 Semenov, A., Izuchenie istoricheskikh svedenii o rossiiskoi vneshnei torgovle i promyshlennosti s poloviny XVII stoletiia po 1858 g. (St. Petersburg, 1859), Part II, pp. 93 ff.Google Scholar

9 Garelin, Ia. P., Gorod Ivanovo-Voznesensk, ili byvshee selo Ivanovo i Voznesenskii posad (St. Petersburg, 1884), Part I, p. 175Google Scholar.

10 Zhurnal manufaktur i torgovli, No. 2 (1825), p. 9.

11 Khromov, pp. 436–38.

12 Ibid., p. 63.

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.

17 Ibid., p. 275.

18 Khromov, p. 113.

19 Pintner, Walter N., “Government and Industry During the Ministry of Count Kankrin, 1823–1844,” Slavic Review, XXIII, No. 1 (1964), 45 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 59.

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

22 Khromov, p. 118.

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.

25 Opyt ischisleniia narodnogo dokhoda 50 gubernii Evropeiskoi Rossii v 1900–1913 gg. (1918), p. 237.

26 Handloomed cotton textiles, for example, constituted 35 per cent of total production in 1856 and only 7 per cent in 1879. Maslennikov, N. la., “K voprosu o razvitii fabrichnoi promyshlennosti v Rossii,” Zapiski Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva po otdeleniiu statistiki, VI (1889), pp. 259–60Google Scholar.

27 Florinsky, Michael T., Russia: A History and an Interpretation (New York: Macmillan, 1953), II, 1224.Google Scholar

28 Zagorsky, S. O., State Control of Industry in Russia during the War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928), p. 6Google Scholar. First and second places belonged to Britain and the United States respectively.

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.

35 Pogrebinskii, A. P., “Stroitel'stvo zheleznykh dorog v poreformennoi Rossii i finansovaia politika tsarizma (60–90-e gody XIX v.),” Istoricheskie Zapiski, XLVII (1954), 146 ff.Google Scholar

36 Khromov, p. 208.

37 An informative study of the impact of railroad construction upon the economic development of a hitherto relatively isolated region of the empire is provided in Gavrilov, N. A., et al. , “Puti soobshcheniia,” Aziatskaia Rossiia, II (1913)Google Scholar.

38 Khromov, pp. 250, 388. Khromov sets wholesale trade at 12.3 billion rubles in 1900 and 19.6 billion in 1913.

39 Pokrovskii, pp. xxxviii-ix.

40 Zagorsky, p. 14.

41 Florinsky, II, pp. 1226–27.

42 Ibid., p. 944.

43 Zagorsky, p. 16.

44 Florinsky, II, p. 1209.

45 Von Laue, T. H., “A Secret Memorandum of Sergei Witte on the Industrialization of Imperial Russia,” Journal of Modern History, XXVI, No. 1 (1954), 60 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. A thorough analysis of Witte's views and his policies is provided in Von Laue's, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.