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Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3.3 (2002) 533-536



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Proto-Industrialisierung in Russland:
Wirtschaft, Herrschaft und Kultur in Ivanovo und Pavlovo 1741-1932


Klaus Gestwa, Proto-Industrialisierung in Russland: Wirtschaft, Herrschaft und Kultur in Ivanovo und Pavlovo 1741-1932. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999. 680 pp. ISBN 3-525-35464-9. fi74.00.

Since the 1970s the proto-industrialization model has sought to explain the role of rural manufacturing in paving the way for industrialization in Western Europe. As a general proposition, the proto-industrialization model looks to towns not as important markets, but more significantly as the center for the putting-out merchant. According to the model, the putting-out merchant is the critical figure in the development of the proto-industrial process. As a second point of attention, the proto-industrial model focuses on production for a distant market, since most rural manufacturing was in fact plugged into international trade networks. In addition, the proto-industrial process involved production by peasant-manufacturers. Franklin Mendels coined the term "proto-industrialization," 1 and by the late 1970s common elements in the wide variety of proto-industrialization theories appeared to be export-oriented domestic production and an associated demographic disruption of traditional European society. 2 Finally, a growing awareness of the importance of regions rather than countries as the unit of industrialization proved a major contribution of the approach. 3 Supposedly, proto-industrialization required and hastened the breakdown of traditional arrangements in landholding and agriculture, thus serving as a transitory process from feudalism to capitalism. However, in the 1980s R. L. Rudolph demonstrated in a series of articles that the proto-industries developing in Russia did not bring with them a weakening of the serf system. 4 Both the [End Page 533] theory's critics and supporters have acknowledged that the theorem gave insufficient attention to variations in social settings across Europe. 5

For the verification of the theorems of proto-industrialization in Eastern Europe, Klaus Gestwa offers two prominent cases from tsarist Russia, the cotton textile sector of Ivanovo and the small iron-working trade in Pavlovo in the period from Catherine II to 1914. While there were numerous proto-industrial centers in the Central Industrial Region, such as the shoemaker trade in Tver', his two cases of Ivanovo and Pavlovo are well chosen -- they certainly were the two most prominent examples of Russian proto-industrialization. As the author shows, proto-industrial concentration of rural small trade began in the mid-18th century, and Ivanovo's manufacturing rested on the broad foundation of peasant small production by women cottage workers who prepared linens in numerous villages in Vladimir and Kostroma provinces. Ivanovo was also the intensive communications hub for Old Believers, who proved especially important for the dissemination of new production techniques. In Pavlovo, Old Believers and proto-industrialization were also closely bound together.

The author distinguishes Russian proto-industrialization from the Western model in its peculiar expansion of trade and commerce and in its demographic patterns. In contrast with the West, in Russia the city entrepreneur, retailer, or merchant did not occupy the center of proto-industrialization. Instead the peasantry filled the void as the small capitalists. In Russia, unlike Western Europe, ownership rules and estate (soslovie) restrictions retarded and hindered urban development. However, the under-development of urban life and the small stratum of burgher investors meant that peasant entrepreneurs could establish themselves without facing serious competition. Thus, the lack of a developing urban environment did not prevent proto-industrialization. The peasantry played a vital role on the consumer side as well. The most important buyers for Pavlovo small iron and Ivanovo cotton were initially ordinary peasants, who themselves drove trade and commerce and who had at their disposal monetary income. The main cause of the transformation of calicoes and small iron goods into mass demand articles lay in the growing purchasing power of the Russian peasantry as consumers participating in the domestic market. Over the period 1700-88 peasant money income doubled...

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