Abstract

The particular reality of women’s economics in late Imperial Russia was largely determined by Russia’s socio-economic backwardness, which resulted in limited participation in Russian economic studies by women before the 1917 Russian Revolution. Russia’s backwardness included all the debilitating characteristics of a feudal society: arbitrary autocracy, ¹ conservative social values, deep aversion to radical political and social reforms, and perpetual struggle for women’s higher education, even in the upper classes. Russian women did not pursue advanced degrees in economics-related fields; consequently, they did not do economics, and left no formal economic writings.