Climate and Capital: The Problem of the Genesis of Capitalism in Russia in the Discourse of "Historical Environmentalism"

The article raises the problem of the genesis of the capitalist economic system in the context of the possible influence of natural factors. Particular attention in this regard is paid to the search for variants of the relationship between climatic processes and socio-economic phenomena in traditional societies. Thus, the object of this study are the factors of the formation of industrial capitalism in European countries, and the subject of the study is the scientific discussion of the role of natural conditions in the process of the "Great Divergence". The author pays attention to the history of production, distribution and consumption of agricultural products in Russia and England to test the theoretical theses of domestic and foreign researchers in the field of political economy, related to the direction of "historical environmentalism". A critical analysis of the historical sources allows to reconstruct the processes that led to the creation of the capitalist economy than it was done in the initial stages of the scientific discussion on this issue. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of historical institutionalism, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of socio-economic phenomena and a historical-systemic method. Based on classical and modern research, as well as historical statistics, the author disputes the thesis about the fundamental role of the “Little Ice Age” in the lagging of the Russian state behind Western European countries in terms of economic development. The author concludes that the causes of the "Great Divergence" should be sought in a complex of social, rather than geographical or climatic factors. Thus, the imbalance in the development of commercial agricultural production in Russia should be sought not so much in the natural and climatic, but in the socio-technological field.

divergence, natural resources, climate, Little Ice Age, primitive accumulation of capital, commodity, crops, energy value, armed forces, traditional society