Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/185

Rh his ethical measure to economic development, to apply it, that is to say, to the individual men who were conducting economic development.

Mihailovskii found the correct answer to the question whether Russia had or had not yet become a capitalist country. In Europe, he said, capitalism was not so completely dominant as the narodniki maintained (Mihailovskii was criticising the views of Voroncov). In Russia, on the other hand, the development of capitalism had proceeded a great deal further than the narodniki were willing to admit.

Mihailovskii believed that it might be possible for Russia to overleap the middle stage of European evolution, that of the bourgeois state, and to attain forthwith the higher phase of political and social order. Writing in 1880, he said this development was theoretically conceivable, but that its likelihood was daily diminishing.