INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the interaction of state and ‘nation’ in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union over the course of two centuries of economic development. It addresses a series of related questions. Given that the doctrine of nationalism assumed major significance in much of Europe and the wider world after the French Revolution, to what extent did it influence economic change in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union? Alternatively, did non-national or supra-national factors loom larger in the considerations that governed policy-makers in the tsarist empire and the USSR? What impact did state-led economic programmes and policies have on incipient nationalism, amongst non-Russians as well as Russians? Finally, to what extent and how did ‘national’ ambitions – couched in terms of economic advantage or disadvantage – contribute to the collapse of these political systems?

Economic historians need to engage more than they have hitherto in a dialogue with historians and theorists of nationalism, nation-state formation and national identity. Some elements of the conversation may readily be constructed. The very stuff of much economic history is the scrutiny of economic projects advanced within the framework of the modern nation-state. How did the nation-state come to have ‘such a great influence on economic development’ in nineteenth-century Europe? Without doubt this question has produced much high-quality work on important aspects of the formulation and impact of government economic policy, as well as on the social and political consequences of economic change in continental Europe.