Ilyin V. (2017) The Structure of Russia’s Historical Path Dependency. Mir Rossii, vol. 26, no 4, pp. 30–50 (in Russian).

Òåêñò ñòàòüè íà ñàéòå æóðíàëà URL: https://mirros.hse.ru/article/view/7029/7530

Abstract

This article deals with a number of topics raised in the two monographs “Russia as aCivilization” and “Is New Russia New?”. It clarifies the categorical apparatus whichallows the integration of the civilizational approach and path dependency. An importantproblem with the civilizational approach is rooted in its origin: the approach was firstdeveloped within the framework of the philosophy of history, the methodology ofwhich is not sensitive to empirical details. Later the popularity of this approach led toits transmigration into more exact disciplines – history, including economic history, andsociology. However, the shift in the subject field was not supported by the adequatedevelopment of a particular scientific methodology. As a result, the question of Russia’splace in the system of local civilizations remains more a matter of faith, and none of thecontending parties are able to supply arguments that can convince their opponents. The main drawback of existing civilizational studies is their voluntary treatment ofhistorical data: countries are often contemporaneously compared regardless of the factthat they may be going through different stages of development, analogies are oftendrawn arbitrarily in order to fit into the deductive logic, and the facts are generally cherrypicked to justify chosen theoretical concepts. Not surprisingly, despite its long history,civilizational analysis in Russia still remains more integrated into ideological, rather thanscientific discourse. On the other hand, the concept of path dependency, which originated  in the economic sciences, is much more accurate and specific, yet precisely for this reason it struggles to explain the dynamics of history over the scale of a thousand years.In this paper I propose two sets of categories which may be helpful for integratingthe civilizational approach and path dependency. The first set of categories pertainsto the analysis of the mechanisms of historical continuity within a single civilization:1) a civilizational core as a set of factors acting throughout a civilization’s history;2) a historical track as a real trajectory in the context of available resources;3) civilizational traps (often political) as specific developments that lead to irreversibleconsequences. The second set of categories distinguishes between different domainsof historical continuity such as geography, geopolitics, politics, religion, the history ofownership relations and historical memory. I argue that such a categorical grid allowsfor the proper empirical testing of hypotheses often drawn from civilizational analysis.