Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- How the other half lives: rural women encounter England's land rights revolution -- Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Republic: the majority as an obstacle to progress? -- "Without land I am nothing!": Kikuyu women and land rights -- Conclusion

The notion that "Westernization" is a process that is unconditionally positive in its impact has dominated both Western and Soviet accounts of Russian intellectual and cultural history during the period before the Emancipation of 1861. As a consequence, Westernization has been described as synonymous with progress, rational economic behavior, greater tolerance, civilization, and the advancement of individual freedom. Although this rather uncritically pro-Western approach to the study of Western influences has produced important research and analytical insights, the assumption that a homogeneous Western culture everywhere generates liberal and democratic influences is in fact highly problematic. As I have suggested elsewhere, it is very difficult to make the empirical case that any one Western political or economic model can be applied to Germany, France, and Italy as well as England. And in the Russian context, a belief in the unmixed benefits of Westernization obscures some of the most important ironies and contradictions that characterize Russian economic debates and strategies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Abstract
In the period between the Emancipation of 1861 and the Stolypin Reforms of 1906, educated Russians sought to make use of Western models as a basis for Russian strategies for rural development. Marxists and reforming officials of the tsarist regime looked particularly to England, and to the universal economic benefits which private property systems and 'men of property' contributed to England's agricultural and industrial revolutions. In contrast, Russia's leading economists and statisticians looked as well to the economic example of Denmark and Germany, and proposed more pluralistic approaches to the dilemmas of development.

It is argued that persistent social welfare concerns generated by a history of military invasion & economic backwardness create the context for current Soviet efforts at perestroika (economic restructuring); such concerns have been largely ignored by Western commentators, who either focus on perestroika's inevitable failure or emphasize its capitalist features. Only in the 1960s were minimum levels of domestic & national security achieved in the USSR; at this point, questions of greater freedom, efficiency, productivity, & product quality began to surface. The reformers of the 1960s are today Mikhail Gorbachev's chief advisers in formulating & implementing the current reforms. It is suggested that the key reforms of enterprise self-management & individual enterprise are intended to increase economic accountability & worker incentives for more productive labor. This premise is illustrated via the experience of perestroika in the automobile industry of Sumy, where efforts are being made to improve the level of high-technology research, & in Moscow, where individuals who want to repair shoes, build furniture, or paint portraits are aided by a new Individual Enterprise Commission. It is concluded that, so far, the perestroika reformers are attempting to link economic growth with democratization & social security rather than with job insecurity & the unlimited enrichment of more enterprising individuals. 5 References. Modified AA