Recent Developments in Economic History, 1700–1940

This survey offers some impressions of important advances in post-Soviet scholarship on Russian economic history from the reign of Peter the Great to the outbreak of World War II. Its secondary purposes are to critique these works in light of recent Western scholarship and to suggest promising avenues of future research, especially those that might bring together Russian and Western scholars. Sources consulted include the EconLit database of the recent economic literature, the Library of Congress on-line catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov), the Eastview on-line catalog (www.eastview.com), and e-mail notices of new and used books from Oriental Research Partners (www.world.std.com/~phcorp). Additional information is available in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, which lists articles and citations in two history journals published in Moscow: Otechestvennaia istoriia and Voprosy istorii. The flood of post-Soviet scholarship contains many works worthy of high praise. Although it is impossible to discuss all works deserving of comment, those mentioned here illustrate major trends of Russian scholarship in the past decade on five aspects of economic history: state policy, agriculture, trade, industry, and finance.

Noteworthy studies of economic policy include the first thorough accounts of the careers of Finance Minister Nikolai Khristianovich Bunge (1881–86) and Sergei Iul'evich Witte, the Finance Minister (1892–1903) and Prime Minister (1905–06).¹ Leonid Efimovich Shepelev published programmatic statements by ministers of finance, including a previously unknown blueprint for industrial development written by Witte in 1893.² The only comprehensive analysis of the career of Finance Minister Mikhail Khristoforovich Reutern (1862–78), however, remains an American doctoral dissertation.³ Likewise, the late Ruth Amende Roosa's study of the leading commercial-industrial organization in Russia⁴ has no counterpart in Russian historiography, although Svetlana Borisovna Ul'ianova has examined policy recommendations of the Petersburg Society of Mill and Factory Owners.⁵ To my knowledge, the economic policy demands of landowners, expressed in the many agricultural societies throughout the empire, have not received analysis. The British historian Peter Gatrell summarized the findings of Russian and Western scholarship on the central question of the degree to which the government could be held responsible for economic backwardness.⁶

In the history of agriculture, the works of two prominent historians, Boris Nikolaevich Mironov⁷ and Leonid Vasil'evich Milov,⁸ deserve special attention as major achievements of historical synthesis, based on decades of pioneering research and an impressive record of publication that included appearances in various European and American journals. Credit for demonstrating the irrationality of Stalin's collectivization of agriculture through the application of quantitative methods belongs to Holland Hunter and Janusz M. Szyrmer.⁹ A welcome supplement to that effort and to books in the 1970s that maintained a tactful silence about the suffering of the peasantry during the Civil War and collectivization¹⁰ is a documentary history of collectivization currently being edited by a team of researchers headed by Viktor Petrovich Danilov, Roberta Manning, and Lynne Viola.¹¹

As for the history of trade in Russia, the best work was typified by a multi-volume survey of merchants' activities that included portraits, illustrations, and citations of archival documents and some German sources.¹² The contributions of entrepreneurs from minority nationalities – such as, for example, Germans, many of them Russian subjects – have been documented in numerous European studies. The most recent is a volume of essays by German, Russian, American, and Polish historians, edited by Dittmar Dahlmann and Carmen Schiede.¹³ Recent investigations of this complex theme have included those of Viktor Nikolaevich Zakharov,¹⁴ Iurii Aleksandrovich Petrov,¹⁵ and the Academy of Russian Germans in Moscow.¹⁶

The annals of industry in Russia likewise contained indications of the important roles of foreigners and ethnic minorities. In the tradition of Erik Amburger's splendid scholarship, Vol'fgang Sartor presented a fascinating portrait of the enterprises of the Spies, Rabeneck, Wogau, and Stucken families in such varied industries in Russia as mining, metallurgy, chemicals, petroleum, tobacco, textiles, and beet sugar.¹⁷ Zinaida Danilovna Iasman mined the copious but rarely cited records of the Moscow...