The Transfer of Economic Ideas Between Russia and the West: An Introduction

The history of Russian-Western European cultural relations was complex and far from harmony. Geographic remoteness was only one of the reasons for that. The opposition between Russia and Europe was based on ecclesiastical matters. The general principle guiding the Russian position toward the Western Europe has always been the pragmatic borrowing and imitation of instrumental and technical knowledge and skills combined with opposition to Western political and spiritual influence. This together with lagging socio-economic development of Russia influenced the reception of Western European economic thought in Russia and made it a subject of controversies among Russian historians of economic thought. In the majority of cases, Western influence was received and modified in Russia but not transmitted back again. There were also several cases when Russian specificity was endemic and was not influenced from the West. But, some cases can be interpreted as belonging to a special scheme. In this scheme, economic ideas usually come to Russia from the West. Then, they are modified according to specific Russian circumstances: orthodox ethical background, peasant question, the special influence of Marxism, development of mathematics and statistics, the unique experience of building a centralized planned economy. After that, sometimes a certain feedback occurs—the modified ideas in their turn influence some Western European economists of next generations.