Russia on the Move (eBook)

Railroads and the Exodus from Compulsory Collectivism, 1861–1914

Sylvia Sztern (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2022 | 1st ed. 2022
XXXI, 513 Seiten
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-030-89285-2 (ISBN)

Infos

This book explores the impact of railroads on 19^thcentury Russian peasant collectivism. The mutual-insurance mechanism in a precarious agricultural environment, provided bya structured communal-village system predicated on the reputation and authorityof community norms,is exposed to rationalist exchange-occasioning an institutional adaptation process:the individualization of property rights in land. Spatial-mobility technology animated market integration, specialization, literacy,and human-capital acquisition among peasant wage workers who commuted from their villages.Temporarily rising transaction costs forced the Tsar to concede household property rights in land in the so-called Stolypin reform of 1906.This challenge to the imperial patrimony, powered by the railroads, steered late imperial Russia toward constitutional governance.The spatial-mobility technology gave peasants access to centers of agglomeration of knowledge, changedcognitive perceptions of distance, and reduced the uncertainty and opportunity costs of travel. The empirical findings in this monograph corroborate the conclusion that the railroads occasioned a cultural revolution in late imperial Russia and made Stalin unnecessary for the modernization of the Euro-asian giant.

This book highlights the profound effect that the development of the railroads had on Russian economic and political institutions and practices. It will be of indispensable valueto students and researchers interested in transitional economics and economic history.

Sylvia Sztern is a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.2.2022
• Reihe/Serie: Studies in Economic Transition
• Reihe/Serie: Studies in Economic Transition
• Zusatzinfo: XXXI, 513 p. 39 illus., 37 illus. in color.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Schlagworte: Collective action costs • Collective obshchina • Comparative Economics • Industrial pre-revolution Russia • Late Imperial Russia • Measuring the transition to modernity • Pre-modern mutual insurance • Transitional economics
• ISBN-10: 3-030-89285-9 / 3030892859
• ISBN-13: 978-3-030-89285-2 / 9783030892852