The Russian intelligentsia wrestled with two related questions about the development of capitalism in Russia. First, given their knowledge of the economic and social disruptions and the exploitation of factory discipline caused by capitalism in western Europe, was it desirable or moral to promote capitalism in the empire? Second, could Russia survive in the modern world without a strong industrial base, higher levels of popular culture and the liberal social attitudes that capitalism appeared to foster? Aesthetic and ethical considerations jostled with pragmatic concerns as the intelligentsia struggled to cope, first with the idea of capitalism and by the 1880s with the thing in itself. The natural constituency of capitalism and liberalism, the urban middle class, was small in Russia and produced few articulate spokespersons for capitalism until the last years of the empire. The leading intelligentsia theorists frequently came from gentry or clerical backgrounds and did not hold middle-class values.

Principal features of capitalism in the nineteenth century were open competition of producers in a free market, free movement of labour and wage labour, protection of private property through rational laws that secured the inviolability of contracts, use of advanced technology in production, including factory organisation, and public access to the purchase of shares in business enterprises. The model capitalist nation was Britain, where the industrial revolution had farthest advanced and free trade found its strongest advocates. Those nations that followed Britain down the capitalist-industrial path found it difficult to overcome the advantage that Britain's head start provided.