ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the most significant discussions, treatises and legal documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relating to the problems of ownership, money and trade, in order to determine their originality and proximity to mercantilism and to medieval economic thought. It offers a brief overview of the historical and institutional development of Muscovy and introduces the main sources that will be used. Economic thought in the Muscovy period was mainly focused on two major issues, the moral assessment of economic phenomena and government economic policy. The chapter considers a heated discussion that occurred in the sixteenth century dealing with monastic landownership. It explains the economic thought on trade-related issues and considers the specific monetary problems of this period. The chapter evaluates the question of the proximity of Russian economic thought to mercantilism and to the Middle Ages, as two special epochs in Western Europe.
