Abstract
This chapter explores twin sources of Russian economics: the Russian state and foreign fields of (primarily German) actors and discourse. Russian “economics” ended up caught in between these two forces that sometimes were complementary, and sometimes contradictory: German scholars and institutions (universities) offered the human capital the Russian state desperately needed, yet that knowledge could threaten the status quo on which the Russian state depended, from serfdom to autocracy. The story in this chapter is that the field of economics in Russia—a combination of discourse, institutions, and professional roles and identity—is a story of two other fields (European, and especially German, economics and the Russian state) whose overlap was fraught with tension.
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Notes
- 1.
Criticizing educational reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and noting that the bulk of funds were allocated to creating secondary schools rather than supporting existing parish schools, M. M. Speranskii told Aleksandr I that the whole system “contradicted common sense, because common sense demands beginning things from their base and working towards perfection gradually, and therefore, it would have been better to begin with folk school and end with academies” (Miliukov 1994: 284). One could have made a similar comment about Peter I—as did the ideologist of the Decembrist movement, N. I. Turgenev: “No matter how strange and sometimes absurd attempts by Peter I to push the people towards enlightenment might have been, they could not provide a new impetus for the intellectual movement. Unfortunately, he cared more about appearances than essences, more about external splendor than content. True, he founded the Academy of Sciences and added to it something like a high school that would train teachers; but, in fact, he did little for public education; the establishment of schools at different levels of education for the masses clearly did not occupy him ” (Turgenev 2001: 305–306).
- 2.
Ultimately, these institutions played an important role in the rise of the Russian intelligentsia.
- 3.
Miller himself studied at the University of Leipzig in 1724–1725. After 1725, he served the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. After 1754, he was the conference secretary for the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He was the founder (in 1732) of the first Russian historical journal (in German), Sammlung Russischer Geschichte. He was also editor of St. Petersburg Vedomosti.
- 4.
Professor N. Karataev of Moscow University noted in his book, written for the 200th anniversary of university, that Reichel defined statistics “as a science describing the state of various branches of the economy and culture of the state” (Karataev 1956: 12).
- 5.
“With Radishchev’s example, we were not surprised to be convinced that, despite residing at German universities, Russians returned home not only with German, but also with French and English culture, and as followers of that philosophy of Enlightenment that from England began to penetrate into France at the time of the appearance of Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters, and came into full bloom at the time of the publication of the famous d’Alembert and Diderot’s Encyclopaedia, Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, and the first Discourse of Rousseau and his famous Emile”(Kovalevskii 1915: 132–133).
- 6.
From 1761 to 1767, the outstanding German scholar August-Ludwig Schlözer worked in St. Petersburg. In 1769, he occupied the chair of Statistics, Politics and Political History of European States at the University of Göttingen, where he had passed his student years. He devoted himself to the study of statistics and exerted important influence on the development and acceptance of statistics as a real science. While working in St. Petersburg, Schlözer initiated the decree on the delivery of parish lists of the population using a form that he compiled, which led to statistical study of Russia’s population (Maikov 1911: 340–342).
- 7.
V. I. Sergeevich claimed the original version of the Empress’ Decree to the Legislative Commission on drafting of a new Code “explicitly discussed the emancipation of the peasants” (Sergeevich 1878: 252).
- 8.
Testimony of more than 200 witnesses supported claims that she killed at least 38 people; possibly another 26 could be attributed to her. Victims were not just killed but also tortured. “Soon … after the death of her husband, from 1756, rumors began about her cruelties; over six years at least 21 times her peasants filed complaints about intolerable cruelties of their landowner; but every time … cases of complaints did not make further progress and complainants themselves were extradited to the landowner” (Russkii biograficheskii slovar 1904; Sabaneev-Smyslov: 69).
- 9.
V. I. Sergeevich noted that “among representatives of the Russian land of the eighteenth century there were people who correctly understood the needs of state of their Fatherland, who knew how to appreciate the good things in Peter’s reforms and had enough courage to fight such an old ulcer as serfdom” (Sergeevich 1878: 259).
- 10.
The Teachers’ Seminary was opened in 1782 to train teachers for public schools. The formation of public schools began in 1786, when 26 major folk schools were opened in provincial cities (cf. “O nachale i postepennom vozrastanii Imperatorskogo S-Peterburgskogo universiteta” 1838: 15).
- 11.
Illustrative in this respect is one professor of Russian history, N. Ia. Aristov: President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (in different years he also worked as a Secretary of State, member of the State Council, Minister of Education, and Chief of Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Confessions). A. S. Shishkov “assured that statistics are obliged to inform only of good deeds, and those such as murder and suicide must sink into eternal oblivion, and so one should not work on such empty things ” (Aristov 1879: 83).
- 12.
Balugianskii left his mark not only in the formation of Russia’s university system, but also in the reforms of M. M. Speranskii, in the Commission for drafting laws, and in the transformation of Russian finance. As A. N. Fateev noted, “Balugianskii laid the first stone under the building of Russian financial reforms, and Speranskii’s skillful and always original pen gave him a harmonious legal form applicable to Russia” (Fateev 1931: 38). Balugianskii was Speranskii’s “right hand” and his most reliable support. These outstanding Russian statesmen highly valued each other. Yet, as Balugianskii’s daughter, Baroness Medem, recalled, Speranskii did not have enough knowledge of German culture or training. “Father,” she wrote, “recognized Speranskii’s virtues and great abilities and often said that Speranskii would be an absolutely great statesman if he knew the German element, which, unfortunately, he entirely ignored (he loved French and English, but did not have the faintest idea of German). This was an important shortcoming in his development as a statesman” (Medem 1885: 431).
- 13.
Now the University of Tartu.
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Shirokorad, L. (2018). Global Fields and Economic Theory: The Impact of German Scholarship on Russian Political Economy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century. In: Hass, J. (eds) Re-Examining the History of the Russian Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75414-7_2
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