Abstract
This chapter explores how Russian market institutions and practices owed much of their existence to state policies. In Russia more than in England, Karl Polanyi’s dictum rings true—market economies require market societies. However, even in Russia, the state could be subjected to elite pressures, and one important contradiction was that agrarian elites profiting from serfdom managed to maintain support for those institutions despite the fact that it retarded the development of market institutions and growth that state elites desired for the country (for geopolitical purposes). Even state elites did have their eye on innovation and reform; elites and actors of other fields and institutions could stand in the way, not only with opposing interests but also with opposing practices.
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Notes
- 1.
In this sense, we are really talking about fields rather than institutions. Institutions created broad parameters and boundaries for strategies, but practices were realized in habitualized interactions between various actors—that is, how institutions were employed. Institutions provide schemas and incentives that can nudge actors in various directions, but the collective orientation to shared strategies and goals—which then induces others in these contexts to act accordingly (including acting in subversive ways)—is a field effect (Martin 2011).
- 2.
This raises a serious theoretical question: if the state plays the central role in institutional design, does “field theory” revert to old-fashioned “political economy”? Fligstein’s analyses involve pluralist societies (primarily the United States), in which state power is constrained by institutional fragmentation and constitutional limits. But what of other cases? I will not answer this question directly, as that involves a different project and context. However, I hope to imply possible answers by the end of this chapter.
- 3.
Such isomorphic dissemination of the modern state form has accelerated at various historical junctures. The Treaty of Westphalia was, arguably, when the modern state was reified as a sacred political actor; the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars certainly spread the concept of “nation” and further reinforced the significance of the modern state; and decolonization following World War II spread the modern state form throughout the world.
- 4.
In contrast, consider English history. England had better natural defenses that, while not perfect, did reduce possible threats of invasion by making them costlier. Once the English kinds lost holdings in France and gave up on claims to the French throne, English institution building could pick up its pace, as the monarchy and elites look inward to develop economic capacity.
- 5.
According to S. Soloviev, from 1055 to 1462, Russia suffered 245 invasions. Moreover, 200 attacks on Russia took place between 1240 and 1462—that is, attacks occurred almost every year. Between 1380, the year of the Battle of Kulikovo, and 1917, Russia spent 334 years engaged in warfare, that is, almost two-thirds of the entire period.
- 6.
In the Muscovite state in the seventeenth century, 65 years of the entire century suffered bad harvests, leading to famine and resulting to political consequences—in particular, the Time of Troubles (1605–1613). In total, for 830 years (1024–1854), only 120 bad harvests were recorded, including 10 general famines.
- 7.
If many of the political innovations of Peter I were preserved until 1917, industrial manufacturing created by his initiative did not have such a prosperous destiny. In the list of 300 major factories still in operation in 1780, only 22 were survivors of Peter’s time.
- 8.
Note that one of the famous Slavophile ideologues, A. S. Khomiakov, in the end of the 1830s proposed a reform project providing for the state to purchase of landlords’ land and then turn it over to peasant communes. In his turn, N. G. Chernyshevskii during the period of preparation of reforms came forward for the liquidation of landlord property and its use by peasants.
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Ryazanov, V. (2018). State, Markets, and Fields in Russian History. 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_9
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