Barrels of Fur: Natural Resources and the State in the Long History of Russia

Abstract

This article argues that in its enormous Northern and Eastern stretches, the geographical space of Russia was shaped by the fur trade. The essay follows the boom and depletion of the fur trade in the longue durée of Russian history. The fur trade brought many Northern tribes to the edge of extermination. Hunting and trapping was intrinsically violent, did not entail the long-term cycles that were characteristic for agriculture, and needed no participation from women. It also created the situation that some historians called the hyper-activity of the state. The resource-bound economy made the population largely superfluous. The essay also explores the historiography of the fur trade and the debates that this historiography saw in the 1920s. Finally, it draws an analogy between two resource-bound epochs, the pre-modern dependency of the Russian state on fur and its modern dependency on oil. Very little part of the population took part in the fur business, with the result that the state did not care about the population and the population did not care about the state. A caste-like society emerges in these conditions. The security apparatus becomes identical to the state. Due to a chance of history or geography, the same areas that fed the fur trade of medieval Novgorod and Moscow, have provided the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia with their means for existence.