Thomas C OWEN. Capitalism and Politics in Russia. A Social History of the Moscow Merchants. 1855 - 1905. Cambridge University Press. 1981. XI.+ 295 p. THOMAS S. OWEN. Capitalism and politics in Russia. Social history of the Moscow merchant class. 1855 - 1905. In the interpretation of the Russian historical process in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, bourgeois historiography developed two main trends: according to some (G. Duke, V. Blackpool, R. Portal, etc.), Russia followed the same path as most Western European states, but more slowly (the theory of "relative economic backwardness") Others (A. Gershenkron, O. Crisp, M. Kaiser) contrast the Russian historical process with the Western European one (the theory of "absolute economic backwardness") and hold the opinion about the late genesis of the Russian bourgeoisie. Professor T. S. Owen of the University of Louisiana (USA), who was preparing his doctoral dissertation on "The social and ideological evolution of the Moscow merchant class in 1840-1870" (1973) at Harvard University, belongs to the second group; he considers the subject of the book under review as the "prehistory" of the period 1905 - 1920. The author takes an idealistic position: without denying the important role of the economic factor, he sees the decisive force of all changes in history in cultural and ideological phenomena. Conceptually, this historian is thus not very original, but his work is interesting: the author managed to describe almost seven decades of the history of the Moscow merchant class, which no other foreign historians have tried to do before him. The chronological framework of the study is actually wider than indicated in the title: Owen quite fully characterizes the situation of the Moscow merchants in 1840-1855, sets out, although very concisely, theses, his view on the history of the Russian bourgeoisie in 1906-1917. Detailed historiographical notes cannot, of course, replace the special analysis of the stat ... Читать далее