The article by L. V. Milov, published in the journal Voprosy Istorii, resumes the discussion on two problems of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in the era of initial accumulation and the genesis of capitalism in Russia. At the same time, the author pays (and, in our opinion, justifiably) the greatest attention to the first problem 1 . Its study as a separate independent topic began relatively recently, and many issues still need to be widely discussed. The content of this process in Russia, its essence and results do not cause noticeable discrepancies among Soviet researchers. All of them are basically of the opinion that, firstly, the processes of initial accumulation and the genesis of capitalist relations roughly coincided in time, secondly, there was no special historical period of initial accumulation preceding the period of the genesis of capitalist relations, and thirdly, this process remained incomplete until 1861. However, L. V. Milov writes that some historians are characterized by "interpreting the process of initial accumulation as a series of phenomena that took place before capitalism" and that, according to their ideas, there is a special historical period of initial accumulation that preceded the period of the genesis of capitalist relations. In his opinion, these positions are supported by historians who see the phenomena of initial accumulation in Russia in the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries .2 However, L. V. Milov's judgments about the views of his opponents on this issue are rather one of the costs of polemics. If we do not take individual facts (for example, an assessment of the activities of the Stroganovs, Demidovs, Menshikov, etc.), as L. V. Milov does, but consider, in essence, the positions of historians who found the phenomena of initial accumulation in Russia in the XVI, XVII, or XVIII centuries, then it is not difficult to see that in the same centuries they see and phenomena peculiar to the genesis of capitalism, that is, the ... Читать далее