Merchant capitalism and the specifics of the revolutionary process in Russia by M.N. Pokrovsky

The question of the origin of the Russian revolution was of the most important in works of Mikhail Nikolayevich Pok-rovsky, the outstanding Marxist historian. This issue was actualized in a great way in his works at the beginning of the Soviet society formation. In 1923 the historian turned back to it. The structure of his articles was familiar to the brochure «Tsarism and the Revolution» of 1918 and served a preliminary purpose for «The historical sketches of the russian revolutionary movement of the XIX-XX centuries». Generally, in that period of his work M. N. Pokrovsky focused his attention mostly on the history of the social movement certainly dealing with the merchant capitalism. According to the historian's opinion, along with the commerce took place the process of the primary accumulation of capital that he himself understood as the process of the direct producer expropriation. Serfdom was a result of that accumulation. It was leading not to industrial, but to merchant capitalism. Serfdom appeared as the new type of non-economic compulsion allowing the landowners to climb up to the level of the merchant links that corresponded to its general condition. M. N. Pokrovsky indicated the fact that the epoch of the merchant capitalism was not only dealing with the history of capital. He interpreted it as a period of decomposition of feudal and appearance of capitalist regime. But chronologically the scientist moved it to the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. The same epoch in England and France, according to the historian, began at the second half of the XIV century, and in Germany it began at the beginning of the XVI century. Both for the Western Europe and for Russia this transition was revolutionary. In Russia it was accompanied by four peasant revolutions of the XVII-XVIII centuries. M. N. Pokrovsky noted as well that in Russia the serfdom regime has finally been formed by the middle of the XVII century and after the Pugachov rebellion it even strengthened, but fell under force of the industrial capitalism in 1861. In this context the scientist, indeed, didn't avoid the term «feudalism». In his opinion, the initial impetus that strained class relations could have been «the disastrously rapid intrusion of capitalism into the country still remaining feudal». The feudalism remained in «Russian countryside» even after 1861. We can see that even terminologically the scientist didn't determinate the basis of the economic system, the social processes in the country in the XVII-XIX centuries only as a merchant capitalism. And this is when nothing could barely «harm» his concept. That means that the historian without any external influences didn't essentially alienate the merchant capitalism not only from the serfdom, but also from the genesis of capitalism.

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