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The Industrialization of Russia in the Writings of Sergej Witte

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Theodore H. Von Laue
Theodore H. Von Laue*
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College; Russian Institute, Columbia University
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Extract

In 1889 the head of the Railway Department of the Russian Ministry of Finance published a brochure entitled Concerning Nationalism: National Economy and Friedrich List, which is a brief exposition of List's book on The National System of Political Economy. The same man, who had arrived at his position the hard way, had written on economic subjects before. In 1883 he had published a technical volume on the structure of railway tariffs, in which he liberally included his comments on current economic theory and a special recommendation for a Russian type of socialism sponsored by the Orthodox Church.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , October 1951 , pp. 177 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1951

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References

1 Po povodu nacioncdizma: Nacional'naja ekonomija i Fridrikh List (2nd edition, St. Petersburg, Brokgaus-Efron, 1912).

2 Principi železno-dorožnykh tarifov po perevozkie gruzov (3rd edition, St. Petersburg, Brokgaus-Efron, 1910).

3 lbid., p. 130.

4 See memoirs, Witte's, Vospominanija: Detstvo (Berlin, 1922), p. 152.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 451.

6 List, The National System of Political Economy, tr. G. A. Matile (Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1856), p. 374.

7 Ibid., p. 163.

8 Witte, Po povodu nacionalizma, p. 22. He remarked at that point that Russia too was interested in weakening England's economic preponderance. But in the same breath he warned that Russia did not approve of the economic aggrandizement of Germany. Germany's economic power bore more heavily upon Russia in 1889 than England's. And as Witte added, the center of Russian foreign trade was rapidly moving from the Thames to the Spree (where it became firmly anchored before 1914).

9 For the following see Wittschewsky, V., Russlands Handel-, Zoll-, und Industrie-politik von Peter dem Grossen bis auf die Gegenwart (Berlin, S. Mittler & Co., 1905)Google Scholar, chapters 45-50. See also Stuart R. Tompkins, “Witte as Minister of Finance, 1892-1903,” Slavonic and East European Review, IX, No. 33 (April, 1933).

10 Wittschewsky, op. cit., p. 258.

11 S. Witte, Vorlesungen über Volks- und Staatswirtschaft, tr. J. Melnik (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1913), I, xi.

12 See for instance in Vospominanija: Detstvo, p. 447.

13 Konspekt lekcii o narodnom i gosudarstvennom khozjajstve (henceforth quoted as Konspekt lekcii) (2nd edition, St. Petersburg, Brokgaus-Efron, 1912), p. 192.

14 Gurko, V. I., Features and Figures of the Past. Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II (Stanford, Hoover Library of War, Revolution, and Peace, publication No. 14, 1939), p. 60.Google Scholar

15 Konspekt lekcii, p. 203. These words were spoken sometime between 1900 and 1902 by an Imperial Minister of Finance to the Heir Presumptive, the Grand Duke Mikhail, when Russia pursued an active policy of Asiatic expansion.

16 Ibid., p. 60.

17 See, for instance, his account in Vestnik finansov, promyslennosti i torgovli (St. Petersburg, Ministerstvo Finansov, 1897), No. 1 (January 4), p. 6.

18 From a speech reported in Vestnik Evropy, IV (April, 1899), 787.

19 Only one revealing glimpse into Witte's mind found in this analysis, can here be mentioned. Speaking of railways he observed: “A railroad is a fermenting agent, … which causes a cultural fermentation in the population. Even if it passed through an absolutely wild population, it would in a short time elevate it to the appropriate cultural level,” Konspekt lekcii, p. 344. One is left wondering about “the appropriate cultural level.“

20 Vospominanija: Detstvo, p. 226. See also his comments on his “artificial measures“: “It is said that I took artificial measures to develop industry. What a silly phrase. How else can one develop industry?” Ibid., p. 451.

21 See his articles in Voprosy vnešnej torgovoj politiki, Ministerstvo Torgovli i Promyšlennosti (Petrograd, Kirshbaum, 1016).

22 From an unpublished paper by Ruth A. Rosa, “The Russian Association of Trade and Industry,” The Russian Institute, Columbia University. One can see from this, incidentally, that state-wide economic planning for industrial expansion was advocated, by that very name, long before the First Five-Year Plan.

23 Vospominanija: Detstvo, p. 449.

24 It is perhaps not sufficiently appreciated, however, to what extent Russian dependence upon foreign investment acted as a restraint upon the Tsarist Government and forced it to stay within the compass of Western development.

25 A. Izvolskij, Recollections of a Foreign Minister, tr. C. A. Seeger (Garden. City, Doubleday, 1921), p. 113.

26 Konspekt lekcii, p. 132.

27 For the foregoing see Vospominanija: Detstvo, pp. 441 ff.

28 Witte's views on the peasant question can best be studied in the first chapters of the Konspekt lekcii, his report as chairman of the “Special Commission on Agricultural Industries,” Zapiska po krestjanskomu delu, and his memoirs.

29 That was granted only in 1905, in a limited way. For Witte's views on labor, see the documents printed in Političeskaja Bezprincipnost S. Ju. Witte. Tajnye Doklady i Cirkuljary (Berlin, H. Steinitz, 1903).

30 Konspekt lekcii, p. 80.

31 He was careful, however, to say that the existing zemstva should be permitted to continue. His opposition was one of principle. At the same time he was accused of trying to whittle down the competence of the zemstva wherever he could. See his book, Samoderžavie i Zemstvo (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1903), for a more detailed statement of his views.

32 Samoderžavie i Zemstvo, p. 197.

33 It is revealing that Witte should quote in support of his views the opinion of Mackenzie Wallace, in ibid., pp. 204-5.

34 Konspekt lekcii, pp. 248-9.

35 Vospominanija: Detstvo, p. 244. It was Witte who had enlisted their help.

36 Samoderžavie i Zemstvo, p. 16.

37 Ibid., p. 209.

38 Ibid., p. 195.

39 See Witte's letter to Sipjagin, “Pisma S. Ju. Witte k D.S. Sipjaginu” in Krasnyj Arkhiv, V, No. 18 (1926), 32.

40 Samoderžavie i Zemstvo, p. 197.

41 Ibid., p. 108.

42 See his correspondence with Pobedonoscev, “Perepiska Witte i Pobedonosceva (1895-1905),” in Krasnyj Arkhiv, V, No. 30 (1928), 104-5.

43 Vospominanija: Detstvo, p. 483.