The Principal Conflict in Contemporary Russian Economic Thought : Traditional Approaches Against Economics

The work deals with the ideological clashes in Russian economic thought after 1991. Based on Schumpeter's distinction between economic analysis and economic thought, the paper focuses on a principal conflict that divides a new generation of Westernminded scholars and traditional Russian political economists. This conflict, on the one hand, is described as an attempt of traditional political economists to keep their positions at the economic departments of the universities. The most vivid manifestation of the resistance to economics is the so-called Tsagolov School at Moscow State University. On the other hand, the conflict might be regarded as the reaction of Russian nationalism to the penetration of 'alien' influences that are rather incompatible with the antiindividualist traditions of Russian social thought. The movement towards the creation of a 'national political economy' based on holism and etatism is seen not only as an expression and a by-product of resistance to methodological individualism in economics, but also as implicitly state-induced ideological efforts in a period of transition to an autocratic regime in Russia