Trade Policies and Famine in Imperial Russia

Marina Chuchko, a young Russian scholar with an international academic background, PhD in Economic History from University Carlos III in Madrid and most recently affiliated with Wirtschaftsuniversität (University of Economics and Business) in Vienna, has been awarded a Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship to study the social consequences of trade policies in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Bocconi's Dondena Center for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy will host her project under the supervision of Tamás Vonyó, associate professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, an established scholar of Central and Eastern European economic history, and principal investigator of an ERC Starting Grant at Dondena.

Much has already been written about the trade policies of the late Russian Empire that facilitated rapid economic growth and the integration of Russia into the global economy, but the socioeconomic consequences of these policies remain poorly investigated. This golden age of Russian industrial development witnessed some of the most horrific famines in modern Europe that affected vast regions of the Empire. Chuchko will address this knowledge gap with the first systematic, empirical investigation of the origin and intensity of famines in more than twenty provinces of the Russian Empire between 1891 and 1911, conducting a multivariate analysis of their causes, including the potentially important role of foreign trade policy.

"What makes this project particularly interesting and innovative is its multidisciplinary approach because, while it is clear that macroeconomic development and socio-economic outcomes are linked, these interdependencies are rarely addressed in an integrated way. But this is precisely the traditional approach of the Dondena Centre, which is therefore the ideal environment for my research," Chuchko says.

The subject is historical, but Russian imperial history is made topical by dramatic current events. More broadly, exploring the unintended social consequences of economic policies and incompetent crisis management in a historical context can help us understand similar challenges in today's developing countries. In the words of Tamás Vonyó: "You have to be aware of the secondary effects of your policies."

Bocconi welcomes applications within the framework of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) scheme by young, talented researchers as a way to foster excellence through mobility. The university has issued a fresh call for expressions of interest, to be submitted by next September.