Особый путь развития России: миф или реальность?

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of discussions on the issue of a “special path” of Rus­sia’s development, which have recently become more and more acute. The arguments of the opponents of Russia’s “special path” are considered. They insist on the universal nature of the modernization process, in other words, the transformation of a traditional (agrarian) society into a modern one as a result of the bourgeois revolution, i.e. into a lib­eral-democratic society or into a modern society. Supporters of the “special path” point to the asymmetric nature of the centuries-old relations between Russia lagging behind in its development and the more developed West, which forces Russia at a certain point in time to abandon the idea of ​​catching up development and start searching for its own, alternative and in this sense, “special path” of transforming Russia into modern society. The article attempts to overcome the ideologically charged dispute around the “special path” by updating the methodology of the study of Russian history, in particular, a deeper consideration of the causes and consequences of the uneven development of European countries, including Russia, based on the application of the world-systems approach. The author shows that the idea of ​​a special way for Russia appears as an anti-liberal re­sponse to the challenges of Western capitalism in the context of its rapid development. For the first time this problem, precisely as the problem of choosing a new political vec­tor, arises explicitly with the coming to power of Nicholas I, when Russia could become a new center of power, a center of a different, but also capitalist development. But it would be a different model – the model of state capitalism, in which the purposeful con­struction of the economy is put at the service of the state, contributes to the realization of its national interests, which Bismarck’s Germany subsequently demonstrated on its special path. In this regard, a comparative analysis of the special ways of development of Germany and Russia in the XIX–XX centuries is given, the similarity of the initial po­sitions and the opposite of the results obtained are demonstrated.