The Privileged Merchants and the Failure of Capitalist Development in Muscovite Russia

FAIN: FA-11292-75

Samuel Baron
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)

To explore the circumstances surrounding failure of capitalist development in Muscovite Russia in early modern times(16th and 17th centuries) which greatly accentuated difference between the Russian and West European developmental patterns. The focus of the study, is the privileged merchants, the Elite whose enterprises, wealth, and status would seen to have qualified them as the most likely agents of capitalist development. The concern of the study will be the historical and institutional milieu in which they operated, and which prevented the emergence of a genuinely capitalistic spirit, class, and economy.