In this extraordinary rich and subtle work, Arcadius Kahan analyzes a massive collection of documents which revise traditional interpretations of eighteenth-century Russian economic history. Kahan stresses economic rationality in the context of social constraints, offering the fullest and most convincing explanation yet of the economic foundations of Russia's power. He shows that what have been taken as major failings in the Russian economy were in fact resourceful and even ingenious methods of circumventing deeply rooted structural obstacles to change. Kahan also escapes two extremes that have bedeviled Russian historians since the nineteenth century: he avoids depicting the state as an autonomous structure that acted with impunity upon a passive society, and he refutes the notion of the state as a mere instrument for advancing selfish class interests.

Upon the foundation of his unique experience and education, the late Arcadius Kahan (1920-1982) built a substantial body of scholarship on all aspects of the tsarist economy. Yet some of his important contribution might well have been dissipated were it not for this collection, since many of these essays were often available only in isolated, obscure sources. This posthumous volume makes readily available for the first time ten of Kahan's essays, nine previously published in English and one in German, which serve to integrate his carefully developed picture of nineteenth-century Russian economic history. Kahan's remarkable vision forms a complement to the thought of Gerschenkron, and this volume is certain to become a valuable source for scholars and students of Russian and European economic and social history.