Impact of Railroads on 19^th Century Russian Peasant Collectivism

This book explores the impact of railroads on 19^th century Russian peasant collectivism. The mutual-insurance mechanism in a precarious agricultural environment, provided by a structured communal-village system predicated on the reputation and authority of community norms, is exposed to rationalist exchange—occasioning an institutional adaptation process: the individualization of property rights in land. Spatial-mobility technology animated market integration, specialization, literacy, and human-capital acquisition among peasant wage workers who commuted from their villages. Temporarily rising transaction costs forced the Tsar to concede household property rights in land in the so-called Stolypin reform of 1906. This challenge to the imperial patrimony, powered by the railroads, steered late imperial Russia toward constitutional governance. The spatial-mobility technology gave peasants access to centers of agglomeration of knowledge, changed cognitive perceptions of distance, and reduced the uncertainty and opportunity costs of travel. The empirical findings in this monograph corroborate the conclusion that the railroads occasioned a cultural revolution in late imperial Russia and made Stalin unnecessary for the modernization of the Euro-Asian giant.

Significance of the Railroads

This book highlights the profound effect that the development of the railroads had on Russian economic and political institutions and practices. It will be of indispensable value to students and researchers interested in transitional economics and economic history.