Free Economic Society
Encyclopedia
Free Economic Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Husbandry was Russia
's first learned society
which formally did not depend on the government and as such came to be regarded as a bulwark of Russian liberalism
.
by a group of wealthy landowners led by Count Grigory Orlov. With the likes of Arthur Young and Jacques Necker
among its honorary members, the Society was "supposed to publicize advanced methods of farming and estate management as practiced in foreign countries."
Despite the Society's self-professed independence, the mastermind behind its early activity was Catherine II of Russia
, who viewed agriculture as the mainstay of Russia's economy. She endowed the Society with funds for a library and a building on Palace Square
; it was she who secretly suggested a famous essay competition on the subject "What is more beneficial to society — that the peasant should have land as property, or only movable property, and how far should the right of property be extended?"
In this international competition, held in 1766, only five essays out of 160 were in Russian; some entries (including Voltaire
's) were singularly conservative; others were too libertine to be printed (e.g., Professor Desnitsky
of the Moscow University declared that "worst of all is the serf who could not own even the smallest bit of property"). Encouraged by the success of this venture, the Society subsequently sponsored 243 other essay competitions.
Early members of the society — including agriculturist Andrey Bolotov
, general Mikhail Kutuzov, admiral Aleksey Senyavin, and poet Gavrila Derzhavin — largely shared the Physiocratic ideals then prevalent in France
. They were anxious to spread the cultivation of potato
es in the Russian countryside and hailed the new crop as "ground apples".
During the Napoleonic Wars
, attention shifted to agricultural developments in Great Britain
. Under the direction of Admiral Mordvinov (1823–40), the Society acquired British agricultural machinery and sought to intervene into traditional farming techniques as practiced by Russian peasants. Mordvinov himself was "an Anglophile so fanatic that he imported the "best" English gravel to cover the roads of his estates."
After Konstantin Kavelin
was elected President in 1861, the Free Economic Society concentrated on discussing the future of the Russian village commune (obshchina
). The Society gathered statistics about agricultural production in Imperial Russia, compared the economic well-being of various regions, contributed to the mapping of soils in Russia, and published Vasily Dokuchayev's famous monograph on chernozem
.
Such luminaries as Dmitry Mendeleyev, Aleksandr Butlerov
, Pyotr Semyonov, and Leo Tolstoy
were involved in the Society's practical activities, ranging from the advancement of beekeeping
(Butlerov) to the enlightenment of peasant children (Tolstoy).
on the precepts of Legal Marxism
attracted many non-members (Maksim Gorky, Yevgeny Tarle
) to attend the meetings.
Such activities resulted in the liberal institution's being closed down by the authorities in 1900. The Society resumed its activities before long, but non-members would not be admitted to take part in the meetings again. With the outbreak of World War I
, the activity of the Society was suspended; it was finally abolished by the Bolshevik
s in 1919. During 154 years of its existence, the Society issued a variety of specialized journals, more than 280 volumes of the Proceedings, and a number of supplements to these.
In 1992, the All-Soviet Economic Society, which had been functioning in the USSR since 1982, assumed the name of the Free Economic Society of Russia, with the Moscow
mayor Gavriil Popov as its President. Valentin Pavlov
, the former Prime Minister of the Soviet Union
, became a Vice President of the Free Economic Society in the 1990s.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
's first learned society
Learned society
A learned society is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline/profession, as well a group of disciplines. Membership may be open to all, may require possession of some qualification, or may be an honor conferred by election, as is the case with the oldest learned societies,...
which formally did not depend on the government and as such came to be regarded as a bulwark of Russian liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
.
18th century
One of the first economic societies in the world, it was established in 1765 in Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
by a group of wealthy landowners led by Count Grigory Orlov. With the likes of Arthur Young and Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:...
among its honorary members, the Society was "supposed to publicize advanced methods of farming and estate management as practiced in foreign countries."
Despite the Society's self-professed independence, the mastermind behind its early activity was Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great , Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia on as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg...
, who viewed agriculture as the mainstay of Russia's economy. She endowed the Society with funds for a library and a building on Palace Square
Palace Square
Palace Square , connecting Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Bridge leading to Vasilievsky Island, is the central city square of St Petersburg and of the former Russian Empire...
; it was she who secretly suggested a famous essay competition on the subject "What is more beneficial to society — that the peasant should have land as property, or only movable property, and how far should the right of property be extended?"
In this international competition, held in 1766, only five essays out of 160 were in Russian; some entries (including Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
's) were singularly conservative; others were too libertine to be printed (e.g., Professor Desnitsky
Semyon Desnitsky
Semyon Efimovich Desnitsky was a disciple of Adam Smith who introduced his ideas to the Russian public. He was also the first academic to deliver his lectures in Russian language rather than in Latin....
of the Moscow University declared that "worst of all is the serf who could not own even the smallest bit of property"). Encouraged by the success of this venture, the Society subsequently sponsored 243 other essay competitions.
19th century
Andrey Bolotov
Andrey Timofeyevich Bolotov was the most distinguished Russian agriculturist of the 18th century.Bolotov was born and spent most of his adult life in the family estate of Dvoryaninovo, in the Tula region to the south of Moscow. He was brought up by his parents in Livland, where his father's...
, general Mikhail Kutuzov, admiral Aleksey Senyavin, and poet Gavrila Derzhavin — largely shared the Physiocratic ideals then prevalent in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. They were anxious to spread the cultivation of potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es in the Russian countryside and hailed the new crop as "ground apples".
During the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, attention shifted to agricultural developments in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. Under the direction of Admiral Mordvinov (1823–40), the Society acquired British agricultural machinery and sought to intervene into traditional farming techniques as practiced by Russian peasants. Mordvinov himself was "an Anglophile so fanatic that he imported the "best" English gravel to cover the roads of his estates."
After Konstantin Kavelin
Konstantin Kavelin
Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin was a Russian historian, jurist, and sociologist, sometimes called the chief architect of early Russian liberalism.Born in Saint Petersburg into an old noble family, Kavelin graduated from the legal department of the Moscow University...
was elected President in 1861, the Free Economic Society concentrated on discussing the future of the Russian village commune (obshchina
Obshchina
Obshchina or Mir ) or Selskoye obshestvo were peasant communities, as opposed to individual farmsteads, or khutors, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word о́бщий, obshchiy ....
). The Society gathered statistics about agricultural production in Imperial Russia, compared the economic well-being of various regions, contributed to the mapping of soils in Russia, and published Vasily Dokuchayev's famous monograph on chernozem
Chernozem
Chernozem , also known as "black land" or "black earth", is a black-coloured soil containing a high percentage of humus 7% to 15%, and high percentages of phosphoric acids, phosphorus and ammonia...
.
Such luminaries as Dmitry Mendeleyev, Aleksandr Butlerov
Aleksandr Butlerov
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Butlerov was a Russian chemist, one of the principal creators of the theory of chemical structure , the first to incorporate double bonds into structural formulas, the discoverer of hexamine , and the discoverer of the formose reaction.The...
, Pyotr Semyonov, and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
were involved in the Society's practical activities, ranging from the advancement of beekeeping
Beekeeping
Beekeeping is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect honey and other products of the hive , to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers...
(Butlerov) to the enlightenment of peasant children (Tolstoy).
Last decades
In 1895 Count Geiden became the Society's President. Under his guidance, the Society evolved into "an expanded cultural center, in which academics, agricultural experts, journalists, and leading spokesmen of the feuding socialist groups argued rather freely about current economic and political issues" Public debates of Pyotr Struve and Mikhail Tugan-BaranovskyMikhail Tugan-Baranovsky
Mikhail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky or Myhaylo Tuhan-Baranovsky was the Ukrainian politician, statesman, and a noted Russian-Ukrainian economist, a tutor of Nikolai Kondratiev...
on the precepts of Legal Marxism
Legal Marxism
Legal Marxism was a Russian Marxist movement based on a particular interpretation of Marxist theory whose proponents were active in socialist circles between 1894 and 1901. The movement's primary theoreticians were Pyotr Struve, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky and Semyon...
attracted many non-members (Maksim Gorky, Yevgeny Tarle
Yevgeny Tarle
Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle was a Soviet historian and academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is known for his books about Napoleon's invasion of Russia and on the Crimean War, and many other works...
) to attend the meetings.
Such activities resulted in the liberal institution's being closed down by the authorities in 1900. The Society resumed its activities before long, but non-members would not be admitted to take part in the meetings again. With the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the activity of the Society was suspended; it was finally abolished by the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s in 1919. During 154 years of its existence, the Society issued a variety of specialized journals, more than 280 volumes of the Proceedings, and a number of supplements to these.
In 1992, the All-Soviet Economic Society, which had been functioning in the USSR since 1982, assumed the name of the Free Economic Society of Russia, with the Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
mayor Gavriil Popov as its President. Valentin Pavlov
Valentin Pavlov
Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov was a Soviet official who became a Russian banker following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Born in the city of Moscow, then part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Pavlov began his political career in the Ministry of Finance in 1959...
, the former Prime Minister of the Soviet Union
Premier of the Soviet Union
The office of Premier of the Soviet Union was synonymous with head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . Twelve individuals have been premier...
, became a Vice President of the Free Economic Society in the 1990s.
Further reading
- Khodnev A.I. History of the Imperial Free Economic Society from 1765 to 1865. SPb, 1865.
- Beketov A.N. An Historical Outline of the 25-year Activity of the Free Economic Society (1865-1890). SPb, 1890.
- Oreshkin V.V. Free Economic Society in Russia (1765-1917). Moscow, 1963.
- Joan Pratt. The Russian Free Economic Society (Ph.D. diss.). University of Missouri-Columbia, 1983.