The Russian economy under serfdom

Abstract

Considering the commitment to the primacy of economics in Soviet ideology, there is a relative paucity of quality studies in the pre-1917 Russian economy by Soviet writers. The studies available tend to fall into two basic categories. Either they are works of a general nature dealing with large issues reflecting current ideological preoccupations of Soviet historians and only marginally of interest to the Western student with a specific piece of research in hand; or they are very detailed monographs, eschewing synthesis, concentrating on minutiae of a technical rather than an economic nature, descriptive rather than analytical in approach. Studies with just the right blend of detail and generalisation are not frequent, which makes the task of both researcher and teacher very difficult.

Pp. 56–60 and 70–2 of this chapter orginally published as a composite review in The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. li, October, 1973 under the title ‘the economic history of pre-Reform Russia’, here expanded.