Since Russian tradition and institutions resemble those of Asia and Africa as much if not more than the patterns of Western societies, the pre-1917 industrial history of Russia, as the last part of the tsarist regime, provides one of the most important examples of early industrialization in world history. In this broad, ambitious reconstruction of the early stages of Russia's industrial development—English-Professor Blackwell shows that the period from 1800 to 1860 was one of necessary preparation for the rapid industrialization of the later 19th century. The book is based upon a wide variety of primary and secondary sources in the Russian language. Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This ground-breaking work documents Russian efforts to appropriate Western solutions to the problem of economic backwardness since the time of Catherine the Great. Entangled then as now with issues of cultural borrowing, educated Russians searched for Western nations, ideas, and social groups that embodied universal economic truths applicable to their own country. Esther Kingston-Mann describes Russian Westernization--which emphasized German as well as Anglo-U.S. economics--while she raises important questions about core values of Western culture and how cultural values and priorities are determined. This is the first historical account of the significant role played by Russian social scientists in nineteenth-century Western economic and social thought. In an era of rapid Western colonial expansion, the Russian quest for the "right" Western economic model became more urgent: Was Russia condemned to the fate of India if it did not become an England? In the 1900s, Russian liberal economists emphasized cultural difference and historical context, while Marxists and prerevolutionary government reformers declared that inexorable economic laws doomed peasants and their "medieval" communities. On the eve of 1917, both the tsarist regime and its leading critics agreed that Russia must choose between Western-style progress or "feudal" stagnation. And when peasants and communes survived until Stalin's time, he mercilessly destroyed them in the name of progress. Today Russia's painful modernizing traditions shape the policies of contemporary reformers, who seem as certain as their predecessors that economic progress requires wholesale obliteration of the past.