Alessandro Stanziani's After Oriental Despotism reconsiders relative backwardness and Asiatic despotism in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Stanziani advocates a more sophisticated appraisal of Russian history, aiming to “question regional and global history through the lens of Central Eurasia” (p. 1). The book argues that, contrary to Western expectations, early Russian states possessed flexible economic institutions and sophisticated, integrated markets.
The book cites an extensive secondary bibliography and primary sources from published materials and Russian archives and libraries. Stanziani's secondary bibliography includes a refreshing mix of classic works, including Gerschenkron and Wittfogel, and recently published studies of the Russian economy.
The book's central task, according to Stanziani, is to explain the “discrepancy between Western expectations and Russian performance,” since “the West always believed it could see signs of Russia's impending collapse, but it never occurred” (p. 1). Stanziani at first presents “the West's” views as an assertion, but he later clarifies his concern that “exporting a-temporal economic notions today (balanced budget, private property, privatization, etc.) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)” contributes “to Russia's dependence on the West” (p. 14). This Journal's readers may be irked that Stanziani names economic history among the offenders. In Stanziani's view, economic history simultaneously asserts, justifies, and explains the West's superiority.
The first two chapters form a two-part bibliographic essay concerning economic backwardness and Asiatic despotism. Chapter 1 criticizes Gerschenkron's theory of relative backwardness for its dependence on “logical time” and its tendency to form comparisons by “drawing up a list of elements based on a standard Western ideal” (p. 7). Stanziani's general complaint is reasonable, but the argument could have included an acknowledgment that such lists of elements are not merely arbitrary. Benchmarks for comparison could include technological advancements and improvements in living standards.
The book's presentation of Asiatic despotism and Wittfogel's Oriental despotism, in which a society “subjugated the entire population to the will of high-ranking bureaucrats” (p. 17) is slightly less critical, since at least “the notion of Oriental despotism raised important questions” (p. 18). However, Stanziani aims to show that “the Asian states in the modern period were hardly as despotic and had more capital than” theories of Oriental despotism maintain (p. 19). In particular, Stanziani argues that Eurasian states' tax systems, use of conscription, social hierarchies, relationship of city to countryside, and military technologies were more flexible than is often claimed.
Stanziani only begins to present the heart of his argument in Chapter 3, which considers Moscovy's expansion into the steppe and Russia's Mongol heritage. Stanziani credits Moscow's success to “the diplomatic and geopolitical talents of the Moscow elites” but also Moscow's flexible institutions and military strategies, including lax enforcement of the fugitive serf law imposed by the Ulozhenie of 1649. Moscow's failure to adopt the latest military technologies used in Europe reflected not Moscow's backwardness but instead its flexibility. According to Stanziani, Moscow used “different military tactics in the south and west; in one region it adopted Western methods, in the other it borrowed from the Mongols” (p. 43). Stanziani reaches a bit when he justifies Russia's poor road construction, justifying the delay as not “a sign of Russian backwardness or indifference” but instead a reaction to “local conditions” and “available technologies” (p. 45). Optimal decisions to delay developments like road construction in the short run could have still impeded Russian growth in the long run.
The fourth chapter, largely a reprint from Stanziani's other work, examines bound labor in the Russian Empire. The chapter describes Russian bound labor, excluding serfdom and focusing on kholopi, which Richard Hellie translated as “slaves” (Slavery in Russia: 1450–1725. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Stanziani focuses on slavery to react to the argument that “Russia's backwardness in comparison with the West is confirmed by the persistence of despotism and bondage” (p. 62). The author emphasizes that kholopi had legally guaranteed rights, including the right to marry; that children were placed into bondage for their survival; and that a kholop's value ensured his reasonable treatment by masters. Stanziani then discusses Russia's “real slaves,” war captives, which were an important commodity in European, especially Genoese, trade networks. Stanziani concludes that Russian slavery could not reflect backwardness, since “flourishing trade and vital markets developed despite raids and military expeditions” (p. 86). However, while the slave trade involved sophisticated markets, Russia's persistent bondage still reflected missing labor markets.
The book's fifth chapter discusses another dimension of Russia's supposed backwardness, serfs' forced labor (corvée), and whether labor obligations obstructed Russia's market development. Russian economic historians now acknowledge that in the Russian countryside proto-industry flourished, and markets showed considerable integration, as Stanziani reminds us. Chapter 6 has a similar theme, presenting an optimistic re-assessment of Russia's nineteenth-century economic progress. Here Stanziani emphasizes Russia's growth rates in agricultural labor productivity, high growth rates (citing Paul Gregory's work), and evidence of increasing well-being in agriculture. Stanziani emphasizes growth rates, but a more balanced portrait would have acknowledged that Russia's overall level of industrialization and wealth per capita remained far behind those of its Western European neighbors by the beginning of WWI.
Stanziani's book serves as a philosophical reflection of Russia's historical status. The book concludes from this exercise that: “economic growth and markets are perfectly compatible with lack of democracy and unequal social rights.” Historians of Russia and the Soviet Union and economic historians interested in the long-run effects of political and economic institutions may wish to consult this book's provocative meditation on economic backwardness and Orientalism despotism.
