ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part shows that the history and fortunes of co-operatives in Imperial and then Soviet Russia and in the Russian Republic is of interest in a number of respects. Although the theoretical idea of the co-operative as a form of social and economic organisation posited against capitalism is not generally thought to have originated in Russia, it was well suited to Russian civil society. Co-operatives in Russia have flourished during periods of regime crisis, when the state has made concessions to the demands of economic liberals, who were also political radicals, as the bourgeois have generally tended to be in their society’s transition to capitalism. On the whole co-operatives were not, in the case of Russia, a predominantly working-class movement.
