Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution, 1892-1922

• Main Author: Malik, Hassan
• Other Authors: Ferguson, Niall Campbell Douglas
• Language: en_US
• Published: Harvard University 2013
• Subjects: History; Economic history; World history; Banking history; Capital flows; Financial history; Globalization; Russian Revolution
• Online Access: http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11169; http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11169761

This dissertation describes and analyzes the financial boom that made Russia the largest net international debtor in the world by 1914, as well as the Bolshevik default of 1918 -- one of the biggest in international financial history. For the Bolsheviks the default was a highly significant attack on "finance capital." Yet few historians have paid much attention to the financial history of the Russian Revolution. This study focuses in particular on the decision-making of the small but influential group of financiers and government officials who acted as the "gatekeepers" of international finance, channeling international capital to Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. === History