Danila Raskov. Ekonomicheskie instituty staroobriadchestva. Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’skii dom Sankt-Peterburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2012

Abstract

From the Riabushinskiis to the Morozovs, the central role of Old Believer merchant families in the development of Russian industry in the nineteenth century is well known. The Old Believer movement has been casually compared with that of the early Protestants, and scholars have been tempted to point out possible parallels with Max Weber’s famous description of the affinity between the Protestant ethic and the rise of capitalism in Western Europe. In this ambitious book, Danila Raskov attempts a systematic study of this question of the relationship between the religious and economic history of the Old Believers. Drawing on the methods of economic history, economic sociology, and the insights of the “new institutionalism” in economics, Raskov demonstrates that the informal institutions created within Old Believer communities worked to solve economic challenges.