RUSSIA BETWEEN THE MEDIEVAL AND THE MODERN
Valentin TOMULEŢ Universitatea de Stat din Moldova
Abstract
In the given study, the author discusses the problem of Russia’s transition from the medieval to the modern period, ascertaining that the subject is complicated and quite controversial. The historical processes in the countries of Western Europe cannot be compared with those that took place in Russia, simply because they were under the conditions and under the direct influence of the serfdom system, while “at the west of Elba” the capitalist system settled when the right of serfdom was long liquidated. In addition, Russia’s transition from the medieval to the modern was also influenced by the diversity of the natural-geographical and social-economic conditions of the huge territory of the state. The process was also hampered by the diversity of the forms of governance of the Russian economy, the presence of the territory with a wide diversity of pre-feudal and feudal-patriarchal relations, the high level of centralization of power, the permanent involvement of the state in the objective development processes of the country, giving it specific forms. Asynchronous development was specific to Russia, consisting in the settling of capitalism and concomitantly, the intensification of the system of serfdom, a process that can be followed during the 17th – the first half of the 18th century. Despite these factors, the author observes that for the researched period, the new phenomena in Russia’s economic life are becoming more and more pronounced, being related to the deepening of the social division of labour, the economic rationing, the increase of the production of goods and of their exchange, the emergence of the manufacture and the beginning of the market formation in the entire country. These processes contributed to the genesis, within the medieval arrangement, of the new bourgeois elements, still quite weak and unstable. Keywords: Russia, capitalism, modern, medieval, manufacturing, national market, capital.
