Antes de la economía para el desarrollo: La economía política occidental, el ‘caso ruso’ y las primeras percepciones del atraso económico (desde la década de 1760 hasta mediados del siglo XIX)

EZEQUIEL ADAMOVSKY

Bariloche

Congreso; XII Jornadas Interescuelas/Departamentos de Historia; 2009

The classics of economic liberalism paid modest attention to the specific problems of the peripheries. To put it in the words of one of the main scholars of the idea of development, before the emergence of the field of development economics in the mid 1940s, the mainstream of Western economists had “very little” to say about the world outside Western Europe. The validity of this general perception notwithstanding, we shall argue in this article that Russia was an exception to this rule. Perhaps due to her ambivalent location as a nation considered not fully European (neither completely Asiatic) and to her status as a major player in the international arena despite the fact of her modest economic achievements, from the 18th century onwards the “Russian case” called the attention of some of the most prominent Western minds, including the first economists. Moreover, by discussing Russia’s economy, they came to notions and concepts regarding development and backwardness that to a great extent informed the 20th century debate. The aim of this article is to explore the way in which Russia as a case study affected the evolution of ideas on economic growth or development. I shall point to a number of instances in which debates on the “Russian case” contributed to shaping general notions of economic progress. The evidence of things Russian, it will be argued, raised doubts about common economic views, thus enabling new thinking that pointed either to criticism of liberal orthodoxy, or to expansion and refinement of its arguments. Indeed, Russia was an awkward presence: European yet Oriental, powerful but backward, she did not completely fit in the main taxonomies of the time. Not surprisingly, this seemingly paradoxical location spread doubts on the validity of those taxonomies and helped to spark new views. In addition, the era of the great reforms in Russia in the 1860s and the policies implemented by the Russian rulers –sometimes inspired by Western economic views, but sometimes self-fashioned– offered unparalleled opportunities for “testing” the validity of economic doctrines in non-Western contexts.