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What Should Russia Be? Patriotism and Political Economy in the Thought of N. S. Mordvinov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Susan P. McCaffray
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A key moment in the evolution of modern European states was the halfcentury or so that straddles the year 1800. Confronted by commercial and colonial expansion across the seas and the steppes, as well as by the fiscal consequences of two long world wars (1756-63 and 1792-1815), monarchy and ministers increasingly viewed the state as a great engine for mobilizing “economic” resources. This period marks the culmination of what Paul Kennedy calls the European “financial revolution,” which was generated primarily by war. “If the difference between the financial burdens of the age of Philip II and that of Napoleon was one of degree, it still was remarkable enough,” Kennedy observes. The stresses of generating income in such quantities changed individual states as well as the international economy.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , Fall 2000 , pp. 572 - 596
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2008

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References

1. Among the writers who discuss the new economic realities and orientation are Hobsbawm, E.J., The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (New York, 1962), 118-25Google Scholar; and Webber, Carolyn and Wildavsky, Aaron, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York, 1986), 274–355 Google Scholar. Brewer, John, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (New York, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar produces much food for comparative thought, as does Simon Schama, “The Exigencies of War and the Politics of Taxation in the Netherlands, 1795-1810,” in Winter, J. M., ed., War and Economic Development (Cambridge, Eng., 1975), 103-38.Google Scholar

2. Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1987), 77.Google Scholar

3. The literature covering the history of political economy is vast. Points of departure include: M. (Jerome) Blanqui, A History of Political Economy in Europe (New York, 1885); Taylor, Overton H., A History of Economic Thought: Social Ideals and Economic Theories from Quesnay to Keynes (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; and Deane, Phyllis, The State and the Economic System: An Introduction to the History of Political Economy (Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar On the trials, tribulations, and triumph of economic thinking in Russia, see Anikin, Andrei, Russian Thinkers: Essays on Socio-Economic Thought in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, trans. Carlisle, Cynthia (Moscow, 1988)Google Scholar, and the provocative new work of Esther Kingston-Mann, In Search of the True West (Princeton, 1999).

4. The major biographical sources on Mordvinov are: Ikonnikov, V. S., Graf N. S. Mordvinov (St. Petersburg, 1873)Google Scholar; Repczuk, Helma, “Nicholas Mordvinov (1754-1845): Russia's Would-Be Reformer” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1962)Google Scholar; Mordvinova, N. N., Vospominaniia ob Admirale, Grafe Nikolae Semenoviche Mordvinove i o semeistve ego: Zapiski docheriego (St. Petersburg, 1873)Google Scholar; and Usov, S., “Vospominanieo Grafe Nikolae Semenoviche Mordvinove, chitannoe v obshchem sobranii Vol'nago Ekonomicheskago Obshchestva,” Trudy Imperatorskago Vol'nago Ekonomicheskago Obshchestva, pt. 1 (1845), 109-18Google Scholar.

5. Mordvinov's writings fill more than nine of the ten volumes of Bil'basov, V. A., Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh (St. Petersburg, 1901-1903).Google Scholar

6. Korf, M., Zhizn’ Grafa Speranskogo (St. Petersburg, 1861), 194.Google Scholar

7. His closest connection to one of the Decembrists was his patronage of the young poet K. F. Ryleev, whose 1823 poem “Grazhdanskoe muzhestvo” celebrates Mordvinov. The poem appears in Ryleev, K. F., Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (Leningrad, 1971), 91–93 Google Scholar. After their arrest, several of the Decembrists testified that they had hoped to include both Mordvinov and Mikhail Speranskii in their provisional government. Apparently Mordvinov was unaware of this, and though Nicholas I viewed Mordvinov with suspicion for some months, as a state councillor, he was appointed as one of the Decembrists'judges. Alone among these judges, Mordvinov opposed the death penalty for those convicted, because of his principled opposition to the death penalty. This decision more than any other secured Mordvinov's subsequently high reputation among Soviet commentators. References to Mordvinov are scattered through many volumes of Vosstanie dekabristov: Materialy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1925-69), for example, 10:209-12; 12:174-76; 14:56, 64; and throughout vol. 17.

8. Mordvinov's grandson began the process of collecting his papers, producing a thirteen-volume folio edition of them in the 1860s and 1870s. Ikonnikov based his 1878 biography on this collection. In the 1860s and 1870s Mordvinov's papers began to appear periodically in Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve Istorii i drevnostei Rossii and Russkaia starina. See Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, viii-x.

9. In the context of late nineteenth-century tariff debates, interest in Mordvinov revived. See, for example, Tugan-Baranovskii, Mikhail, The Russian Factory in the Nineteenth Century, trans. A. and Levin, C., from 3d ed. (1907; Homewood, 111., 1970), 218-20Google Scholar; Bliokh, I. S., Finansy Rossii XIXstoletiia (St. Petersburg, 1882), 1:75–149 Google Scholar; Gnevushev, A., Politikoekonomicheskie vzgliady grafa N. S. Mordvinova (Kiev, 1904)Google Scholar; and N. N. Zakolpskii, Or. N. 5. Mordvinov: Ego vzgliady na sovremenniia emu ekonomicheskiia zadachi russkoi zhizni (n.p., 1910).

10. See, for example, Bliumin, I. G., Ocherki ekonomicheskoi mysli v Rossii vpervoipolovine XlXveka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1940), 111-36Google Scholar; Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow, 1945) reproduces several of Mordvinov's important economic writings and includes an essay by F. Morozov, “N. S. Mordvinov kak ekonomist: Kratkie biograficheskie svedeniia,” 7- 44; and Borovoi, S. la., Krediti banki Rossii (Moscow, 1958), 140-55.Google Scholar

11. Archivists at Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA) were eager to supply the personal papers of Mordvinov in the summer of 1998; likewise, Academy of Sciences historian M. Sh. Fainshtein, an authority on A. S. Shishkov, enthusiastically supplied additional citations, adding that Mordvinov was one of his “heroes.“

12. William Blackwell summarizes Mordvinov's economic ideas in the framework of 1960s modernization theory, characterizing Mordvinov as the author of a comprehensive plan for the “industrialization of Russia” in his The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800-1860 (Princeton, 1968), 132-38. Some of his economic ideas are also summarized in Walter M. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I (Ithaca, 1967). Marc Raeff describes elements of Mordvinov's thought in Michael Speransky, Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772-1839, 2d ed. (The Hague, 1969). Basil Dmytryshyn, in “Admiral Nikolai S. Mordvinov: Russia's Forgotten Liberal,” Russian Review 30 (January 1971): 54-63, incorrectly labels Mordvinov a member of Alexander I's Unofficial Committee, a mistake later scholars have repeated. Kingston-Mann's In Search of the True West may initiate renewed interest in Mordvinov, although he is misidentified therein as “A. A. Mordvinov.” Her assessment is misleading at times. Most problematic is her effort to cast Mordvinov as the originator of the notorious military colonies usually associated with Alexander I and A. A. Arakcheev. See Kingston-Mann, In Search of the True West, 70n33. Repczuk remains the only complete and reliable guide to Mordvinov's political and economic views in English. Repczuk, “Nicholas Mordvinov.“

13. Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, iv-v.

14. Mordvinov was an unabashed anglophile and once opined that the four greatest geniuses who had ever lived were Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, andjeremy Bendiam. The last became his idol. Judging from correspondence in Mordvinov's archival papers, Bentham returned the admiration. There are three letters from Bentham to Mordvinov in RGIA, f. 994, op. 2, d. 928 (Bentham-Mordvinov correspondence), 11. 3-6, dated 1819-1830.

15. Mordvinov was educated in the palace of Catherine the Great as a companion to Tsarevich Paul. By the end of Paul's reign, he held thousands of serfs. He began his career serving in the British navy at Catherine's request in the 1770s. He married an Englishwoman in 1784, and English became the language of his home. Although his naval career was far from brilliant, he reached the rank of admiral and even served briefly as Russia's first naval minister. The rest of his government service was in various civil posts, to which Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I repeatedly assigned him, and from which they frequently fired him. The job that best matched his talents was his position as chairman of the Department of Economy of the State Council, which he held twice, for a total of four years. He was a leading stockholder in the Russian-American Company and a member of the Society of Lovers of the Russian Word, founded by his best friend Admiral A. S. Shishkov.

16. Analysis of Russia's social structure and of die mechanics of its brand of absolutism is one of the strong points of Russian historiography. It is not possible to list all of die useful studies pertaining to these subjects, but a fine starting point is the introductory essay by David Griffiths, “Of Estates, Charters and Constitutions,” in Griffiths, David and Munro, George E., trans, and eds., Catherine II's Charters of 1785 to the Nobility and the Towns (Bakersfield, Calif., 1991), xvii–ixix.Google Scholar

17. Russia abolished internal tolls in 1753-54. See Kahan, Arcadius, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth- Century Russia (Chicago, 1985), 4 Google Scholar, and Troitskii, S. M., Rossiia v XVIII veke: Sbornik statei ipublikatsii (Moscow, 1982), 225 Google Scholar.

18. Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout, 5; see also Madariaga, Isabel de, Catherine the Great: A Short History (New Haven, 1990), 176-88.Google Scholar

19. See Victor Kamendrowsky, “State and Economy in Catherinian Russia: The Dismantling of the Mercantile System of Peter the Great” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1982), and Lodyzhenskii, Konstantin, Istoriia russkago tamozhennago tarifa (St. Petersburg, 1886), 98–155.Google Scholar

20. Although many Russian writers were preoccupied widi the general question of improving agriculture in this period, scholars disagree about whether or not they were physiocrats. One figure about whom such disagreement reigns is Catherine's friend, D. A. Golitsyn. See Anikin, Russian Thinkers, 53, and I. S. Bak, “Dmitrii Alekseevich Golitsyn,“ Istoricheskiezapiski A. N. SSSR, 1948, no. 26:258-72. V. V Sviadovskii maintained that, with the possible exception of Golitsyn, diere were no Russian physiocrats. See Sviadovskii, , Ocherki po istorii ekonomicheskikh vozrenii na zapade i v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1913), 217 Google Scholar, and Sviadovskii, , Istoriia ekonomicheskikh idei vRossii (Petrograd, 1923), 1:94–95.Google Scholar

21. Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout, 5

22. The most thorough examination of all aspects of populationism in Russia can be found in Bartlett, Roger, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in Russia, 1762-1804 (Cambridge, Eng., 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; he recognizes that there were many compelling reasons for Cadierine to seek the settlement of empty lands, but “her overriding, or underlying, concern throughout was economic” (32). Populationism as an economic idea was closely linked to mercantilism and was not unique to Russia; it was developed particularly by Prussian and Austrian cameralists. Populationism would be largely discredited everywhere by the end of the eighteenth century.

23. See Munro, George E., “Finance and Credit in the Eighteenth-Century Russian Economy,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45, no. 4 (1997): 552-60.Google Scholar

24. Brewer makes a good case for English uniqueness in The Sinews of Power, 4-21, drawing contrasts with France and Spain that could usefully be applied to Russia. In demonstrating that even before the remarkable rise of English state power the Dutch had triumphed through a policy of “bellicose commercialism” (11), Brewer points to a posibility he does not develop: could it be that smallness, in and of itself, contributed significantly to the early financial and commercial superiority of certain precocious states?

25. Khromov, P. A., Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii v XIX-XX w. (Moscow, 1950), 117-20.Google Scholar

26. Since the 1750s, ideas that would today be considered hallmarks of economic liberalism had circulated rather widely in various departments of the Russian government among such stalwarts of Empress Elizabeth's government as P. I. Shuvalov and I. G. Chernyshev. One case in point was the lengthy discussion regarding ending restrictions on grain exports. Chief among advocates of opening the Russian grain trade was D. V. Volkov, who dispatched a lengthyjustification to Elizabeth at the end of 1760, in which he declared that he had not been influenced by “foreign novelties.” See “Pis'mo Konferents-Sekretaria D. V. Volkova o russkoi torgovle,” Arkhiv Kniazia Vorontsova (Moscow, 1880), 24:117-26, and Kamendrowsky, “State and Economy,” 118-25.

27. These two were S. E. Desnitskii and 1. A. Tret'iakov. Desnitskii went on to become an important writer on judicial matters; Tret'iakov did not enjoy an illustrious career but did deliver an inaugural address at Moscow University in 1772 based on his lecture notes from Glasgow. Entitled “Rassuzhdenie o prichinakh izobiliia i medlitel'nogo obogashcheniia gosudarstv, kak u drevnikh, tak i u nyneshnikh narodov” this speech is partially anthologized in Izbrannye proizvedeniia russkikh myslitelei vtoroi pohviny XVIII v. (Moscow, 1952), 353-60. For more on the journey of Desnitskii and Tret'iakov, see Michael P. Alekseev, “Adam Smith and His Russian Admirers of the Eighteenth Century,” in William R. Scott, Adam Smith as Student and Professor (New York, 1965), 424-31; and Cross, A. G., “By the Banks of the Thames“: Russians in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Newtonville, Mass., 1980), 122-26.Google Scholar

28. See Desnitskii, S. E., “Proposal for the Establishment of Legislative, Judicial, and Executive Power in the Russian Empire,” in Dukes, Paul, ed., Russia under Catherine the Great: Documents on Government and Society (Newtonville, Mass., 1977), 1:48-67Google Scholar, and Brown, A. H., “S. E. Desnitsky, Adam Smith, and the Nakaz of Catherine II,” Oxford Slavonic Papers (Oxford, 1974), 7:42–60 Google Scholar; Desnitskii's work may have influenced the second supplement to the Nakaz, produced in the second half of 1768.

29. A useful summary of the introduction of Smith's ideas into Russia can be found in Paul Romeo, “Heinrich Storch, Adam Smith, and the Question of Russian Economic Development” (M.A. thesis, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 1996).

30. Smith's opus appeared in a Russian translation by Nikolai Politkovskii as Issledovanie svoistva i prichin bogatstva narodov, which appeared in a four-part edition published in St. Petersburg between 1802 and 1806. See Pypin, A. N., Istoricheskie ocherki: Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossiipri AleksandreI (St. Petersburg, 1900), 110-11Google Scholar.

31. British reception of Smith is described in Richard F. Teichgraeber, “'Less Abused Than I Had Reason to Expect': The Reception of The Wealth of Nations in Britain, 1776- 1790,” The Historicalfournal 30, no. 2 (1987): 337-66, who argues that Smith's ideas had virtually no impact on public policy there until the 1790s.

32. On Storch, see Roderick E. McGrew, “Dilemmas of Development: Baron Heinrich Friedrich Storch (1766-1835) on the Growth of Imperial Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 24, no. 1 (1976): 31-71. See also Bliumin, Ocherki ekonomicheskoi mysli, 173-95, and Blanqui, History of Political Economy, 485-88. Storch and Mordvinov opposed each other on many questions, most famously, the tariff.

33. Say's Treatise on Political Economy came out in 1803 and Storch began publicizing Smith's economic views in the Memoires of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1806. Storch's magnum opus appeared in 1815: Cours d'économie politique, ou exposition desprincipes qui determinent la prosperite des nations, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1815). This was one of the primary expositions of Smith produced anywhere, and it appeared in a German edition in Berlin in 1819 and another French edition annotated by Say, sometimes critically, in 1823. It appeared in Russian, apparently, only in a partial edition of 1881. On the differences between Say and Storch, see Palmer, R. R., ed. and trans., J.-B. Say: An Economist in Troubled Times: Writings (Princeton, 1997), 128-29.Google Scholar

34. Mordvinov's proposal had been advanced by Novosil'tsev, a member of the tsar's “Unofficial Committee,” who had just returned from five years of study in Britain. Mordvinov was not a member of the Unofficial Committee, but Alexander sometimes ordered its members to consult with him. On the question of granting property rights, see Janet M. Hartley, Alexander I (London, 1994), 46-47. Mordvinov had recommended extending the right to purchase both populated and unpopulated land, but in this form the proposal met too much resistance. See his “O sile i prostranstve ukaza 12 dekabria,” in Bil'basov, Arkhiv Crafov Mordvinovykh 3:182-93. The matter is also covered by Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, 31-35.

35. Mordvinov's complex position on serfdom developed throughout his life. Repczuk sees a shift in his thought, from virulent anti-serfdom writings early in Alexander's reign, to a passionate defense of landlord prerogatives later on, but she concludes that “the serf question” was irrelevant to his primary interests, which were manufacturing, state finance, and banking. For citations to relevant works, see Repczuk, “Nicholas Mordvinov,“ 209-12.

36. Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy (London, 1885 [1844]). There is no evidence that Mordvinov was familiar with List's work, which was published the year before Mordvinov's death. But outside Britain, almost all early nineteenth-century advocates of economic development instinctively moved toward protectionism. A case in point is U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, described by one commentator as “the link between Smith and List.” See Edward Mead Earle, “Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List: The Economic Foundations of Military Power,” in Earle, E. M., ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: Military thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton, 1971), 129.Google Scholar

37. This comparison draws on figures in Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe razvitie, 446-47. Based on figures in Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout, 346, the budget expenditures rose 56 percent during Catherine's first Turkish war (1768-1773) and 27 percent during the second (1787-1791).

38. Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe razvitie, 440-41, and 446-47.

39. Ikonnikov, Graf N. S. Mordvinov, 79. After being removed from his position as naval minister in 1802 after just three months, Mordvinov retired. From 1802 to 1810 he lived mostly in Moscow. Mordvinov was among the famous anglophiles who were forced into the background during the Tilsit era of rapprochement with Napoleonic France. This meant that Mordvinov could not return to state service until the tide began to turn back toward England in 1810. For an insightful discussion of court politics in the period of the Napoleonic wars, see Martin, Alexander M., Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (DeKalb, 111., 1997).Google Scholar

40. Speranskii referred to the economic department bodi as otdel gosudarstvennoi ekonomii and as otdel publichnoi ekonomii. See “Founding Principles for the State Council,“ RGIA, f. 1148, op. 1 (1810), d. 1 (proposed manifestos concerning the new financial measures), torn 2,11. 33-34. The other departments were: Laws, Military Affairs, and Civic and Religious Affairs.

41. Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, 80.

42. Korf, Zhizri Grafa Speranskogo, 194.

43. Raeff, Michael Speransky, 82.

44. Korf, Zhizn’ Grafa Speranskogo, 191-92. Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob (Liudvig Kondrat'evich Iakob), a professor at Khar'kov University, later claimed to have been the author of the Financial Plan. See Georg Sacke, “L. H. von Jakob und die Russische Finanzkrise am Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts,“Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 3 (1938): 602- 19. Others have credited Balugianskii with playing a primary role. Balugianskii, a Hungarian educated in the Habsburg empire, was the most notable of the three foreigners brought by Novosil'tsev in 1803. See his biography in Brokgauz, F. A. and Efron, I. A., Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1893), 4:833-34.Google Scholar

45. Korf, Zhizn’ Grafa Speranskogo, 192-93. V. P. Kochubei was state chancellor for internal affairs and B. B. Kampengauzen (Kampenhausen) was comptroller general. Raeff concludes that, “their combined efforts resulted in an able and interesting report which provided the theoretical framework for Speranskii's own Financial Plan in 1810.” Raeff, Michael Speransky, 86.

46. Mordvinov's daughter recollects that her father's invitation from the tsar came at the end of Alexander's late 1809 visit to Moscow and that the family moved to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1810. See Mordvinova, Vospominanii, 46-49.

47. Korf tells us that the original plan ran to several hundred pages in length and contained 238 articles and that, contrary to his usual practice, Speranskii did not print copies even for each member of the council. It was finally published as “Plan finansov M. M. Speranskogo (1809 g.),” Sbornik IRIO 45 (St. Petersburg, 1885): 1-73. An earlier draft of the plan has since been published in Speranskii, M. M., Proekty i zapiski, ed. Valk, S. N. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1961).Google Scholar

48. Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, 88. Within a few months Kochubei and Potocki left the department (ibid., 94). Raeff lists the members of this department as: Mordvinov, Speranskii, Kampenhausen, Kochubei, Potocki, Balugianskii, Sablukov, and Tutolmin, but he does not specify when they were members. See Raeff, Michael Speransky, 87.

49. Vysochaishii manifest o ustroistve gosudarstvennykh dokhodov na 1810-i g., 2 February 1810, RGIA, f. 1152, op. l , d . 1 (the Financial Plan of 1810), 1. 58.

50. Ibid., 1. 56ob.

51. See Blanchard, Ian, Russia's “Age of Silver“: Precious Metal Production and Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1989)Google Scholar. He argues that the merging of Baltic and Muscovite coinages in 1802-03 helped prevent the complete collapse of the assignats1 value on foreign exchanges and, combined with significant imports of silver at the same time, closed the gap between the external and internal values of the assignat (both of which deviated from their face value), “paving the way for the monetary reform of 1810“ (204-6).

52. Department of Economy, “O monetnoi sisteme,” May 1810, RGIA, f. 1148, op. 1, d. 1, torn 2, 11. 125-51; RGIA, f. 994, op. 2, d. 899 (Rabota N. S. Mordvinova o chrezvychainykh raskhodakh v Anglii i Frantsii, 1810), 11. 1-23. The latter document is not found in his published papers.

53. RGIA, f. 994, op. 2, d. 899 (Rabota N. S. Mordvinova), 1. 14.

54. Ibid., 1.3.

55. Ibid., 1. 10.

56. Ibid., 1. 12ob.

57. Ibid., 1.3.

58. Ibid., 1. 15ob.

59. Ibid., 11. lob.-2ob.

60. Raeff, Michael Speransky, 91-92. Raeff considers this call for a new land tax “the very core of [Speranskii's] proposal for a new system of taxing the country's agricultural wealth. It marks a new departure in the fiscal and economic thinking of the Russian government. From that time it will be included in all reform plans and projects.” The land tax is also the fundamental idea in Mordvinov's 1810 study.

61. His writings on banking in the 1810-1813 period are described in Ikonnikov, Graf N. S. Mordvinov, 96-97; they include a report read to the Department of Economy in late 1811 regarding the issuance of bank notes backed by 1 million rubles in gold and silver. On private banks, see the 1813 “Razsuzhdenie o mogushchikh posledovat’ pol'zakh ot uchrezhdeniia chastnykh po guberniiam bankov,” in Bil'basov, Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh, 5:236-88. This important article also drew heavily on his 1810 study of banking in England and France.

62. The monetary sections of the Financial Plan are reminiscent of the sophisticated ideas found in Richard Cantillon's Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General, published in 1755, though it is not clear that Mordvinov or Speranskii were familiar with this work. See Hutchison, Terence, Before Adam Smith: The Emergence of Political Economy, 1662-1776 (Oxford, 1988), 163-78Google Scholar, and Raeff, Michael Speransky, 99.

63. Repczuk, “Nicholas Mordvinov,” 232. Repczuk makes it clear that these details of the plan's implementation, at least, belong to Mordvinov. Also see Pintner, Russian Economic Policy, 185.

64. Vysochaishii manifest osostavezaimov, 27 May 1810, RGIA, f. 1152, op. l,d. 1,11.170— 72. The other two manifestos were on the monetary system (20 June 1810) and on government expenditures (29 August 1810). A thorough description of this legislation, including a verbatim reprint of important parts of it, appears in Bliokh, Finansy, 1:94-103.

65. Repczuk, “Nicholas Mordvinov,” 229-30.

66. Ibid., 233.

67. Raeff, Michael Speransky, 84.

68. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy, 185.

69. Raeff, Michael Speransky, 104. The tax amounted to 50 kopeks per revision soul; see Bliokh, Finansy, 1:96, and Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, 91. Although the 1811 tax on nobles’ income was a small step in the direction of the kind of fundamental tax reform Mordvinov had extolled in his unpublished 1810 study, it was Speranskii who was held accountable for it. This move, along with the monetary reform's effects on luxury imports, accounted for most of the noble opposition to Speranskii. In an 1813 letter to the tsar, Speranskii comments on the “grumbling” that accompanied the 1810-1811 tax increases. See Bliokh, Finansy, 1:132.

70. Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe razvitie, 441,447.

71. N. S. Mordvinov (Vsepoddanneishii Doklad Departamenta Gosudarstvennoi Ekonomii), “Mery dlia uluchsheniia finansov,” 10 September 1810, in Bil'basov, Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh, 4:21-31.

72. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 171; Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe razvitie, 27.

73. Ikonnikov, GrafN. S. Mordvinov, 132-33.

74. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy, 185-86. The government now tried to prevent a further slide in their value by requiring all taxes to be paid in assignats and by declaring them legal tender for all transactions, at their current, not their nominal, value. Gur'ev resumed efforts to withdraw assignats from circulation in 1816, but despite a sizable reduction in their number between 1816 and 1823, their value continued to fall, if more slowly than previously.

75. Blanchard, Russia's “Age of Silver,” 207.

76. Mordvinov's essay, “Nekotoryia soobrazheniia po predmetu manufaktur v Rossii i o tarife,” first appeared in ZhurnalDepartamenta GosudarstvennoiEkonomii 14, no. 66 (30 December 1815): 282, 297-303, 345-88, though he was not a member of the department at that point; it is reproduced in Bil'basov, Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh, 5:67-121. The latter version is used here.

77. Mordvinov, “Nekotoryia soobrazheniia po predmetu manufaktur v Rossii i o tarife,” in Bil'basov, Arkhiv GrajbvMordvinovykh, 5:83-85.

78. Ibid., 5:86.

79. Ibid., 5:92.

80. Ibid., 5:73.

81. Ibid., 5:97.

82. Ibid., 5:73.

83. Ibid., 5:71.

84. Ibid., 5:98.

85. All three quotations, ibid., 5:94.

86. See Blanchard, Russia's “Age of Silver,” 208-9. The very complex monetary situation in the empire between 1818 and 1837 stemmed from the fact that there was not one prevailing exchange rate between the assignats and the silver rubles, but rather various exchange rates throughout the country (“popular rates“) depending on the relative scarcity between the two currencies. Moreover, there was a perpetual disparity between the internal and external exchange rates of the paper money.

87. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy, 202-7. It was Witte who produced a currency foreigners could really believe in when he forced the country onto a gold standard in the 1890s. The question of whether Russia is simply too large to be unified either by a single currency regime or by “the market” is a very important one, but not one likely to be addressed by either the “reformers” or the “communists” in Russia at the present time.

88. Though Mordvinov was one of their earliest advocates, there were no private banks in Russia until after 1857. See Garvy, George, “Banking under the Tsars and Soviets,” Journal of Economic History 32, no. 4 (1972): 869-93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar