Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Preface
- PART I THE TSARIST ECONOMIC TRANSITION
- 1 The Socioeconomic Framework
- 2 The Transition Issues
- 3 The Economic Policies
- 4 The Problems of Agriculture
- 5 The Industrial Changes
- 6 Domestic and Foreign Trade
- 7 Money and Banking
- 8 State Finance
- 9 Overall View
- PART II THE SOVIET ECONOMIC TRANSITION
- PART III THE POST-SOVIET ECONOMIC TRANSITION
- Index
2 - The Transition Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Preface
- PART I THE TSARIST ECONOMIC TRANSITION
- 1 The Socioeconomic Framework
- 2 The Transition Issues
- 3 The Economic Policies
- 4 The Problems of Agriculture
- 5 The Industrial Changes
- 6 Domestic and Foreign Trade
- 7 Money and Banking
- 8 State Finance
- 9 Overall View
- PART II THE SOVIET ECONOMIC TRANSITION
- PART III THE POST-SOVIET ECONOMIC TRANSITION
- Index
Summary
Principles of Action
On the eve of the great reform commanding the peasant emancipation, the immense agricultural Russian Empire relied on feudal farming methods, on handicraft, small-scale industry, and a few larger-scale factories, on a barely begun railroad network, and on a slowly emerging banking system. If economic development is taken to mean expanding output, along with making continuous changes in the technical and institutional arrangements by which this output is produced and distributed, the Russian economy was then obviously far behind the changes that had been taking place in the Occident.
I will consider later on, in detail, the structural characteristics and the performance of each sector of the Russian economy. For now, recall in broad outline that on the eve of the emancipation, the country's landlord and peasant farming relied on archaic methods of sowing and plowing, yields were low, and very severe general crop failures were occurring often. The increase of population after the emancipation provided an expanding labor force, which remained poorly employed while the growth of capital and new technologies continued to be limited. The country's general economic and cultural backwardness made the native businessmen timorous, diffident, unadventurous, and dependent on the state, which in turn tended to rely heavily on imported foreign technicians, businessmen, and capital. The Empire's manufacturing output continued to be modest in the decade following the emancipation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Russia's Economic TransitionsFrom Late Tsarism to the New Millennium, pp. 30 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003