ABSTRACT
Since the industrial revolution economic growth has become a systemic quality of the world economy. Depending on the interpretation of this process, economic nationalism can be viewed in two ways. Industrial countries were in a better position than agricultural ones to carry out successfully the policies of diversification of exports and substitution of imports. The removal of the anachronistic status system, the third reason for the low level of support for industrialization, was linked closely with the changes in the second and fourth factors, poor social infrastructure and prospects for social mobility. Industrialization was those countries' answer to the serious decline in world food prices. Industrialization preferences of particular groups of the bourgeoisie and of other social circles, their desire to preserve or to change the economic structure were decided each time by a definite coincidence of reasons. In the Baltic countries, industrialization was clearly subordinated to the interests of peasants and the agricultural sector.
