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Baku Oil and Transcaucasian Pipelines, 1883–1891: A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy

1984; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 43; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2499309

2325-7784

John P. McKay,

Russia and Soviet political economy

The leading role of the state in nineteenth-century Russian industrialization is one of the most widely accepted notions in economic history. Thus state-sponsored industrialization, deeply rooted in the strength of the despotic state and the subservience of an undifferentiated peasantry and an insignificant middle class, began in earnest in the era of the Great Reforms, after the Crimean War had shocked the government out of its economic lethargy under Nicholas I and Finance Minister Kankrin. It continued unevenly thereafter until it crested in the burst of state-led growth in the 1890s. The “statist interpretation” of prerevolutionary Russian industrial development has been most notably expounded by Alexander Gerschenkron in a series of influential essays and by Theodore Von Laue in his biography of Sergei Witte. It thoroughly dominates non-Soviet scholarship and serves as the point of departure for almost all general investigations.