Development economics and the “russian case”: the impact of russia’s realities and thinkers in the mid-twentieth-century debate on economic development

TLDR: This article explored whether there is a relevant impact of the Russian case and of Russian economic thought on the twentieth-century Western debate on economic development and argued that things Russian continued to have an impact on this notion, similar to the one we have found for the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to explore whether there is a relevant impact of the Russian case and of Russian economic thought on the twentieth-century Western debate on economic development. It is argued that things Russian continued to have an impact on this notion, similar to the one we have found for the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russia’s historical experience provided an important standpoint from which to think and rethink the meaning of economic development. As in the previous centuries, Russia’s paradoxical presence—between Europe and Asia, backward but also modern, an “apprentice” who now claimed the position of a teacher—helped to spark new thinking. The resistance of some of her intellectuals and policy makers to accept the certainties of the mainstream of the economic science contributed to raise doubts regarding the validity of Western conceptual frameworks.