Before the nineteenth century: Kievian Rus', Muscovy and Petersburg
The first articulated economic theories appeared on the territories of the present Russia and Ukraine in the nineteenth century. However, many texts involving economic ideas in more general reasoning, mostly legal, political and religious, appeared during the late seventeenth and the whole eighteenth century.
And even in earlier periods, since the ninth century, some documents, often official, sometimes letters from counsillors, documenting the policies of successive Tsars, reached us. Tales and popular texts also often included economic considerations.The Tsars’ public policies provided indication on the issues of concern to the government. Military and religious problems predominated, but economics issues often derived from them. The art of war required tax collection, which implied the existence of a surplus, and knowledge of it. Thus, fiscal issues were frequently crucial. Foreign trade, with imports of luxury goods and needed raw materials against exports of agricultural goods, raised the question of tariffs. Among the frequent issues, the ownership of land and the fate of peasants were as important as the scarcity of metals for coinage (mainly copper and silver). Some particularly interesting debates, such as whether tax should be paid in nature (i.e. corn) or in coins, or on the ownership of the Eastern Orthodox Church in line with its relationship with the power, came as well.
In contrast to the military needs, the Russian economy was insufficiently productive at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The productivity of the peasant economy is explained by the low level of education of the serfs, the exorbitant transportation costs due to the lack of commercial roads and the low handicrafts activity. The tax burden heavily weighed on the peasantry, who would revolt on several occasions (the Pugachev revolt of 1773—4 being a lustrous example).
The Tsar, helped by a few councillors, and annoyed by some pamphleteers, was aware of the situation and tried to reform the country. Essentially under the reigns of Peter the Great (1682—1725) and Catherine the Great (1762—96), Russia underwent profound changes: development of large state-owned (but also private) manufactures, exploration for locating natural resources, development of the mining industry, of trade, maritime roads, etc. The first institutions dedicated to knowledge appear: the first museum, the Academy of Sciences (under Peter the Great), the universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Free Economic Society (under Catherine the Great). This modernisation was carried out in the name of Westernisation and at the cost of the peasant world.The attraction exerted by liberalism, by the French enlightenment philosophy, by the Physiocrats (e.g. on D.V. Golitsyn) and by the ideas of Smith (which were taught at the University of Moscow by two of his students, S.E. Desnitsky and I.A. Tretyakov) took place within an autocratic environment. Any liberal reform that threatened state power was suppressed and many pamphleteers, because they dared touch taboo issues (absolute power and serfdom in particular) were imprisoned.
Among the documents of significant importance in this vast period up to the eighteenth century, let us mention four. The Russkaia Pravda, the old legal code of the Kievian Rus’ (whose origin goes back to the ninth and tenth centuries, but our knowledge of it dates from the dozens of different versions of the thirteenth century), which explained among others the existing social relations and serfdom. The Domostroi, a sixteenth-century guide for the management of the household, explaining in every domain of private life (religion, education, agriculture, cooking, etc.) the good (i.e. moral and useful) way of doing things. I. Pososhkov's Book on Poverty and Wealth (1724) evaluated Russian society and gave advice for the management of the social economy. On every aspect of the Russian economy (agriculture, trade, taxes, money, mining, fishing), he explained ‘what causes useless poverty', he fought injustices and gave advice on how to increase wealth. Finally, A.N. Radishchev's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow ([1790] 1958) inaugurated an economic and systematic denunciation of serfdom.