In search of the true West : culture, economics, and problems of Russian development / Esther Kingston-Mann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kingston-Mann, Esther, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rural development--Russia.

Rural development.

Economics--Russia--History.

Economics.

Russia (Federation)--Civilization--Foreign influences.

Russia (Federation).

Russia (Federation)--Rural conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 301 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1999]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 1900's, 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.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE. The True West

CHAPTER TWO. In the Light and Shadow of the West

CHAPTER THREE. The Lessons of Western Economics

CHAPTER FOUR. Universalism and Its Discontents

CHAPTER FIVE. Intersections of Western and Russian Culture

CHAPTER SIX. Capturing the "Essence" of Marx

CHAPTER SEVEN. In Search of the True West

CHAPTER EIGHT. The Demise of Economic Pluralism

CHAPTER NINE. Cultures of Modernization on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century

NOTES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliography and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786612753411

9781400804481

1400804485

9781282753419

128275341X

9781400822560

1400822564

OCLC:

700688643