Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/210

 Statistics were, of course, closely connected, particularly in previous times, with economics. This science developed in Russia from the beginning of the 19th century: it was expounded by Schloezer (the younger) and Storch in the spirit of Adam Smith; the French treatise of Storch, however, was in a certain degree independent; it contained, for instance, dissertations on the principle of value and labour, on material and immaterial goods, and on free trade. After foreigners came Russians: one of the earliest Russian economists, Chivilev, was a pupil of the Dorpat school, who learned English in order to read English economists in the original; he explained the general laws of economics in his lectures. Vernadsky, his successor in Moscow, elaborated a more comprehensive conception of political economy as a "theory of labour" or a system of "economic activity," and demonstrated the influence of the material prosperity of a country on its finances; he also showed a turn for historical studies and a practical interest in the modern economic state of different European countries. The moderate liberal views of Vernadsky, in the main supported by Gorlov, provoked criticism: Chernyshevsky, one of the most active representatives of the socialistic movement, expounded its principles and was particularly anxious to elucidate the part which the Russian village community was to play in the subsequent evolution of the country; he tried to prove that the mir was able to develop collectivism—a conclusion which was later supported by Vorontsov; he expressed the conviction that capitalistic production, considered in its historical aspect, was not possible in Russia,