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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) occupies a special place in the development of Russian culture. He was at the same time a great poet, the reformer of Russian literary language, a historian and a political thinker. In the enormous mass of work devoted to Pushkin, a certain number of articles are concerned with his ideas on economics and the reflection of socio-economic problems in his writing. Until now, however, this theme has been studied in only a fragmentary way and less from the point of view of the professional economist than from that of a literary historian. In an attempt to enlarge and complete the idea we may have of Pushkin's economic views, I propose also to show the importance the politico-economic thought of Western Europe had for his work. One person comes to the fore when we study the subject from this angle: Nikolai Turgenev, a Decembrist, one of the “masters” of the poet's youth, who played an important role in the rapprochement of Russian and Western European cultures.
1 S.IA Borovoī, on Pushkin's conceptions of economics in the early 1830s, in Pushkin and his Times, I, Leningrad, 1962; M.P. Alekseev, " Pushkin and the Science of his Times," Pushkin: Comparative Historical Studies, Leningrad, 1972; I.N. Tregurov on the question of the economic views of A.S. Pushkin, in Collection for Pushkin's Jubilee, Oulianovsk, 1949.
2 Not to be confused with Ivan Turgenev, the author of A Sportsman's Sketches and other works. The two were not related.
3 J.F. Normano, The Spirit of Russian Economics, New York, 1945, p. 16.
4 Ibid., p. 3.
5 A.S. Pushkin, Works, ten volumes, Moscow, Arististic Literature, 1974-1978, Vol. IV, p. 10. All the references that follow refer to this edition.
6 Karl Marx, A Critique of Political Economy, K. Marx and F. Engels, Works.
7 N.I. Turgenev, Rossia i Rouskie, Moscow, 1915, Vol. I, p. 72. This book was written and first published by the author in French in Brussels (1847). It was banned by the czarist censors and did not appear in Russian until the twentieth century.
8 Ibid., p. 70.
9 Quotation taken from D. Ricardo, Works and Correspondence, ed. P. Sraffa and M. Dobb, Cambridge, 1955, Vol. X, p. 172.
10 Quotation from Pushkin and his Times. Studies and Documents, I, Leningrad, 1962.
11 D.D. Blagol, Doucha v zavietnoj lire, Otcherki zizni i tvortchestva Pouchkina, Moscow, 1977, p. 268.
12 Literatournaja Gazeta, 1979, No. 7, p. 6.
13 Archives of the Turgenev Brothers. Private journals of N.I. Turgenev, St. Petersburg, Vol. II (1811-1816), pp. 16-18.
14 P. Samuelson, Economics. An Introductory Analysis, 7th ed., New York, 1967, pp. 222.
15 Alevander Blok, "Vozmezdie," in Stikhotvorenia, poemy, teatr, Leningrad, 1936, p. 351.
16 A.S. Pushkin, Complete Works (in Russian, 4th ed.). Khoudojestvennaja Literatoura, 1936, Vol. VI, p. 531.
17 Ibid.
18 Karl Marx. Das Kapital, Vol. I, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, Vol. XXIII, p. 164 (Russian edition).
19 H. Quiring, Geschichte des Goldes, Stuttgart, 1948, p. 203.