Work and Society in the Orthodox East: Byzantium and Russia, AD 450–1861

Abstract

Often overlooked by Western scholars, the Orthodox East has provided some of the most important societies in the human experience. For a thousand years, Byzantium provided a living link to the world of antiquity. Over the last 300 years, Russia, in a variety of guises (Muscovy, Imperial Russia, Soviet Russia, the Russian Federation), has always been a major world power. Despite the success of these societies, however, many of the attributes that we have associated with "modern management"competition, legal protection of person and property, and guaranteed freedom of movement for laborhave often been absent. In exploring the reasons for such outcomes, we argue that blame should not be ascribed to a Byzantine cultural heritage supposedly hostile to individual identity. Nor is it the case that Orthodox societies such as Russia are hostile to concepts such as freedom and individualism. The resonance of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Solzhenitsyn indicates that such values are deeply ingrained. Rather than being the result of cultural attributes, this chapter argues that the absence (or weak presence) of societal protections for person and

Russia management, 1462–1606: a modernisation story?

“…In identifying the emergence of the Muscovite state as the decisive period in Russian management history, Bowden (2020a) argues, "the Muscovite state set Russian society upon a path" upon which "it became difficult to move in a fundamentally different direction in ways that emphasized individual initiative and entrepreneurship". Boasting far greater organisational and economic capacities than any of its immediate territorial rivals, Bowden (2020a) also claims that in the Muscovite state we can also see disturbing forms of management that were to be constantly replicated in Russian history, namely, "management as subjugation, management as secret police, and management as state-sponsored terror".…”

“…Evidence as to the success of the state in unlocking Russia's economic capacity is found in the marked increase in the Russian population. Boasting no more than two million people in the mid-15th century and five million in 1613, by 1800 imperial Russia had a population of 35 million, far exceeding that of Europe's second most numerous state, France, which claimed a population of 25-26 million (Bowden, 2020a).…”

State management of industrialization and social engineering in the early Turkish republic: the case of Sümerbank and its textile plants

“…However, economic analysis was mostly relegated to a minor concept of the “state’s role” in the economy. This situation has been changing recently, as economic historians have started considering the role of state management in the society (Bowden, 2020).…”

“…State management of economic development has involved alternating shades of industrialization and modernization. In the case of Russia for example, Bowden (2020) argues that modernization was engineered during the reigns of Russian princes during 1462–1606; that is, modernization attempts preceded wider economic policies and industrialization. Similarly, Bratchenko (2020) argues that Russian modernization and westernization were largely managed by the state even before Ivan the Great.…”