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(9) For example, Kliuchevsky's famous comment: The state swelled up; the people grew lean; Kliuchevsky, V.O., Kurs russkoi istorii (Moscow, 1937, first published 1911), p.11.Google Scholar

(10) For example, Skocpol and at times also Mann.

(11) There is an immense literature on this question. In particular see the discussions in Mann, Michael, The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results, Hall, John A. (ed.), States in History (Oxford, Blackwell, 1986) and Skocpol.Google Scholar

(12) This is defined broadly as those in the leading command and administrative posts of the state.

(13) This will be supplemented by a foreign policy designed to deal with external danger, but this will not be analyzed in this paper.

(14) In this important sense this analysis differs from the classic argument about geopolitics found in Mackinder, H.J., Democratic Ideals and Reality. A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (London, Constable & Co Ltd, 1919), esp. ch. iv.Google Scholar

(15) This builds on the arguments of Anderson and Wallerstein, avoiding the circularity of the latter by eschewing the use of his organizational categories: core, periphery and semi-periphery. For an argument using Wallerstein's framework that Russia/the Soviet Union tapped this source of economic activity only through the import of foreign technology and innovation which in turn did not stimulate independent economic dynamism, see Luke, Timothy W., Technology and Soviet Foreign Trade: On the Political Economy of an Underdeveloped Superpower, International Studies Quarterly 29, 3, September 1985, 327–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(16) Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, Random House, 1987).Google Scholar

(17) This was not accompanied by a similar drain from expenditure on general consumption or social welfare; these were always very low priorities for the Russian government.

(18) For a good discussion of the climatic constraints upon agriculture in Russia, see Pipes, Richard, Russia Under the Old Regime (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974), ch.1.Google Scholar

(19) See the discussion of how this came about in Pipes, 87–98. The decimation of the hereditary aristocracy by Ivan IV was also important in this.

(20) Also important were the networks of clan and familial relations among the nobility, a form of association which underlay much of the court and nobility politics of pre-Petrine Russia.

(21) Blum, Jerome, Lord and Peasant in Russia. From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961), 346–347.Google Scholar

(22) This shift was formalized with the Manifesto on the Freedom of the Nobility introduced in 1762 which liberated them from their service obligations.

(23) Peter I did introduce a measure in 1714 whereby land-owners had to pass their immovable property intact to a single heir, but this was rescinded in 1730. Pipes, p. 176.

(24) Blum, 368–369. Also see Pipes 175–179 who cites a figure of 22% for 1858.

(25) Indeed, the landowner's title to the serfs was very vague. In principle, the dvorianstvo did not own the serfs but managed them for the state, although in practice this seems to have been little more than a legal fiction. Nevertheless it was a fiction that bound state and class together. Pipes, p. 180.

(26) One effect of this was to break the direct link between serfdom and state-fostered economic development, thereby turning it into a fetter on economic development. Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. A Book of Essays (Cambridge [Mass], Harvard UP, 1966), p. 18.Google Scholar

(27) In 1649 when what Anderson calls the ‘comprehensive legal code that was to be the social charter of Russian Absolutism’, the Sobranie Ulozhenie, was introduced, dvorianstvo land was declared hereditary, although it remained subject to service and could neither be bought nor sold. It was thus far less than the full title gained in 1785. Anderson, p. 337.

(28) Shestakov, A.V., Ocherki po sel'skomu khoziaistvu i krest'ianskomu dvizheniiu v gody voiny i pered oktiabrem 1917g (Leningrad, 1927) p. 79Google Scholar. Also Shanin, T., The Awkward Class. Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society: Russia 1910–1925 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 20.Google Scholar

(29) See the discussion in Pintner, Walter M., The Social Characteristics of the Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Bureau cracy, Slavic Review 29, 3, September 1970, 429–444CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an argument about an earlier edging out of this group, see Anderson, 338–339.

(30) See the papers in Haimson, Leopold H. (ed.), The Politics of Rural Russia 1905–1914 (Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1979).Google Scholar The zemstva became significant foci for this resentment.

(31) For an argument about a contract between nobility and monarchy in which the former agreed to the measures which constituted the foundation of Russian absolutism in exchange for the formal institution of serfdom, see Anderson, 203–204 and Part II ch. 6.

(32) This was less the case in the West and South West (mainly New Russia and West Ukraine) where the repartitional commune was less dominant. On the conditions of peasant agriculture see the classic Robinson, G.T., Rural Russia Under the Old Regime (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972, first published 1932)Google Scholar, Shanin, , and Shanin, Teodor, Russia as a Developing Society. The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of Century (London, Macmillan, 1985) vol. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(33) Nor did this demand improve after emancipation because of the weight of redemption payments and taxation obligations. Alexander Gerschenkron, Russia; Patterns of Economic Development 1861–1958, Gerschenkron, 122–123.

(34) Pipes, 210–215.

(35) Although between 1721 and 1762 merchants were empowered to purchase villages with a view to acquiring serfs for industrial and mining ventures.

(36) Falkus, M.E., The Industrialization of Russia 1700–1914 (London, Macmillan, 1972) ch. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leon Trotsky, 1905 (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971) chs. 1 & 2; Trotsky, Leon, Results and Prospects, The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (New York, Pathfinder Press, 1970) ch. 1Google Scholar; and Trotsky, Leon, The History of the Russian Revolution (London, Sphere Books, 1967) vol. 1, ch. 1.Google Scholar

(37) Most of these monopolies were dropped by Peter I but were then reinstated soon after his death. For a discussion of this whole question, see Pipes ch.8.

(38) For example, the administrative and judicial reforms of the early 1860s helped to create a suitable framework for industrial development.

(39) Gerschenkron, Backwardness, Gerschenkron, 19–20.

(40) See the figures cited in Falkus, p. 72. The sphere of largest foreign ownership was mining and metallurgy in which in 1915 some 63% of capital in joint stock companies was foreign. Foreign investment increased from 215 million roubles in 1890 to 911 million in 1900 to over two billion by 1914. Sontag, John P., Tsarist Debts and Tsarist Foreign Policy, Slavic Review 27, 4, December 1968, 530–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(41) The heavy reliance on loans also had the effect of increasing taxation levels in an attempt to meet repayments, a development which further hampered entrepreneurial activity.

(42) See the discussion in Falkus, 55–59.

(43) Siegelbaum, Lewis H., The Politics of Industrial Mobilization in Russia, 1914–17. A Study of the War-Industries Committees (London, Macmillan, 1983), ch. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(44) This general point is well reflected in the segregation of the military officer corps. According to one scholar, by 1903, 91% of those of major-general and above possessed no land, property or urban dwelling. Wildman, Allan, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old Army and the Soldiers' Revolt (March-April 1917) (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980), 23–24.Google Scholar

(45) This was changing in the last two decades of the regime's life, with some involvement by industrialists and bureaucrats in the affairs of the other, but this tended to be on an individual basis rather than through a systematic relationship between state administration and industry. Siegelbaum, p. 3.

(46) For one discussion of the major attempt at cooptation, the Zubatov experiment at the turn of the century, see McDaniel, Tim, Autocracy, Capitalism and Revolution in Russia (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988), 64–89.Google Scholar

(47) Particularly important in this was the effect of bloody Sunday in January 1905.

(48) Starr, S. Frederick, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830–1870 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 48.Google Scholar

(49) Kennedy, 149.

(50) Kennedy, 171.

(51) For a discussion of the nature of technological borrowing and its failure to stimulate sustained development, see Luke, 333–337.

(52) This is the essence of Skocpol's explanation.

(53) In the 1920s and 1930s these came together through the widespread fear within the political elite that the external enemy might combine with the internal class enemy and pose a challenge that could only be overcome through destroying the latter. This was a rationale for both agricultural collectivization and the Terror.

(54) Stalin, J.V., The Tasks of Building Executives, J.V. Stalin, Works (Moscow, 1955). vol. 13, 40.Google Scholar

(55) At least this was the view of the victorious group around Stalin which pushed through agricultural collectivization at the end of the 1920s. Not all members of the Soviet elite accepted this view. For example, see Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. A Political Biography 1888–1938 (London, Wildwood House, 1974).Google Scholar

(56) Among other treatments of this see Rigby, T.H., Stalinism and the Mono-Organizational Society, Tucker, Robert C. (ed.), Stalinism. Essays in Historical Interpretation (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1977).Google Scholar

(57) In practice, of course, the level of such integration fell well short of that desired by bolshevik state-makers.

(58) See the discussion in Gill, Graeme, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(59) See the discussion in Graeme Gill, Changing Patterns of Systemic Legitimation in the USSR, Coexistence 23, 1986.

(60) There were some attempts at partial reform at this time, but they were limited in conception and marginal in effect. For one discussion of the context of the Soviet reform debate, see Lewin, Moshe, Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates (London, Pluto Press, 1975).Google Scholar

(61) For a discussion of this decision making style, see Erik P. Hoffmann, Changing Soviet Perspectives on Leadership and Administration, Cohen, Stephen F., Rabinowitch, Alexander & Sharlet, Robert (eds), The Soviet Union Since Stalin (London, Macmillan, 1980), 71–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(62) The erosion of ideology is connected with the socio-economic changes occurring in Soviet society in the post-war period. For an interesting discussion of this, see Miller, John, Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power (London, Macmillan, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the collapse of elite commitment to the ideology in the late 1980s, see Gill, Graeme, The Collapse of a Single-Party System. The Disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar