NEW METHOD FOR ASSESSING THE LEVEL OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WITH REFERENCE TO SHIPBUILDING IN RUSSIA

The article presents a brief review of V. V. Polikarpov's monograph Shipbuilding under Emperor Nicholas II. Essays on Technological History. The reviewer notes the author's original approach and large-scale conclusions that open new prospects in the study of Russia's socio-economic development in the early twentieth century. Since these conclusions are clearly polemical in nature, the reviewer makes several objections. Firstly, the emphasis on the most advanced technologies causes doubt; the author of the monograph believes that "poods of fuel and metal" are not a sufficiently objective criterion of the level of economic development. Secondly, the idea of ranking national economies by the level of development of military technologies is not very convincing. Thirdly, there are questions concerning the argumentation system. Consciously refusing to use statistical sources, the author mainly relies on clerical documentation and journalism. As a result, the book forms a very specific picture of the development of shipbuilding in Russia in the period between the Russian -Japanese War and World War I.