Rediscovering Mendeleev: How the great scientist fought for Russia's economic sovereignty

The world-famous Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleev is known as a chemist and the creator of the „Mendeleev Table“. Yet Mendeleev the economist – a man who not only had a profound understanding of the realities of Russia’s structure, but also wrote letters to two Russian emperors in an effort to persuade them to defend the country’s economic sovereignty – remains almost unknown to us.

At the 39th Moscow International Book Fair, a presentation was held of the book Mendeleev. Letters to the Emperors on Trade Wars, Foreign Capital, and an Alliance with China. Mendeleev was a man of encyclopaedic learning who took an interest in, and left his mark on, a wide range of fields – from the production of gunpowder to shipbuilding and Arctic exploration, from aeronautics to metrology, and even the study of mediumistic phenomena. Few people know that Dmitry Ivanovich also studied economic processes in the Russian Empire in depth and was, moreover, a very wealthy man: he owned apartment buildings, vast tracts of land (including in Sochi), and cheese factories.

It would seem that he had achieved everything an ordinary person could dream of. But this was not enough for him. He sought to turn all his knowledge and efforts to the benefit of his Fatherland. Mendeleev held no official government posts, so he decided to address the emperors directly – first Alexander III, and after his death, Nicholas II. These five letters, which set out a complete economic programme for the development of Russia, are published for the first time in this book. And what is most remarkable is that all of Mendeleev’s thoughts and ideas resonate astonishingly with our present day. Mendeleev is sometimes called a futurologist. Perhaps he really did write his letters for the future. And at last, the time has come to study them attentively.

The main themes of all five letters are: the trilemma of Russia’s future; the creation of a headquarters for industry; the preservation of a policy of reasonable protectionism; the attraction of capital for Russia’s industrial breakthrough; the reform of the education system and a shift from “Latinism” to practical learning; the coming rise of Asia; and the necessity of an alliance between Russia and China.

Russia’s three paths

The author of the book, writer and researcher Vladimir Tarankov, admitted that he wanted to rediscover Dmitry Mendeleev as an outstanding encyclopaedic scientist who had been undeservedly forgotten precisely in the area of his economic works.

…The year 1893. The Russian government wishes to abandon the practice of placing state orders abroad. D. I. Mendeleev is urgently summoned to a secret government meeting to answer the question: which state orders abroad, precisely, might be renounced without damage to the economy. The scientist prepares a report in a single night: he knew by heart which orders could be cancelled first and what could begin to be produced in Russia.

Why was he approached specifically? As early as 1884, in the journal “Vestnik Promyshlennosti” (“Herald of Industry”), Mendeleev published an article on Russia’s industrial development. It was there that he described three possible paths for Russia: the risk of “Latinism” – the blind copying of Western experience, which would result in the country becoming a raw-materials appendage and losing its genuine independence. Mendeleev warned that the risk of “Latinism” meant unrest, revolutions, with all the consequences that follow.

The second path: “Chinese stagnation”. In the nineteenth century China was a closed state, averse to modernisation; following this path would lead to economic stagnation, leaving Russia merely an agricultural country.

Finally, the third path: the development of its own industry. There is no fourth path, the scientist was convinced.

Mendeleev wrote that without its own factories and plants, Russia would remain a backward, dependent country and in time would disappear, just as Ancient Rome had disappeared. At the same time the scientist did not simply write his thoughts for the drawer. He spoke in the press, gave interviews, and even addressed Alexander III in the hope of winning the emperor to his side, and later his heir, Nicholas II.

In his letters, Mendeleev argued for the necessity of creating a headquarters for the management of industry. Before him, no one had proposed anything of the kind, and the whole of industry was assigned to the Ministry of Finance. The purpose of that ministry, however, was the fiscal extraction of revenue from the functioning of industry. That is to say, not the development of industry as such, but the gathering of taxes.

In 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation marked its 120th anniversary. The first proposal to create such a ministry was made by none other than Mendeleev.

Oil and the foresight of economic war

Mendeleev can also be regarded as one of the founders of the oil industry in our country, Vladimir Tarankov recalled. The idea of developing oil extraction was first attempted by the millionaire Vasily Kokorev, but initially, after inviting a specialist from Germany, he merely lost hundreds of thousands of roubles. By that time, Mendeleev was already widely known as a chemist, and Kokorev decided to turn to him. “And Mendeleev constructed an entirely different technology: he did not burn the residual oil, but proposed deeper processing. Mendeleev suggested building factories where there was a demand for petroleum products, where there was a market. But Nobel’s concept prevailed – building factories where the oil was extracted. Life proved the correctness of Mendeleev’s approach: in 1905 Nobel’s factories were burned by revolutionaries, and during the Great Patriotic War Hitler tried to break through to the Baku oilfields. Mendeleev had a conflict with Nobel because of their differing views on the development of the oil industry. But Mendeleev, who was well versed in accounting, precisely on the basis he proved he was right“, – Vladimir Tarankov recounts.

Another little-known fact: during the Great Patriotic War, when factories were being evacuated from central Russia, they were moved precisely to those locations that Mendeleev had once identified as suitable for the construction of plants. In this way the great scientist also contributed to the cause of Victory.

In his very first letter to Emperor Alexander III, Mendeleev writes of the necessity of creating a single centre for the management of industry and compares it to military defence. Mendeleev states: “In modern times economic warfare between countries is waged continuously and requires the organisation of forces and resources similar to that of military defence.”

As Tarankov notes, it is important to emphasise that Mendeleev was not acquainted with Alexander III and never met him personally. Yet he understood him well as a man who had undergone military training. And for that reason, the letter is written in a military style, using military terminology – concise, clear and without literary embellishments. “Unfortunately, he received no reply to this letter. This allowed Soviet scholars to claim that Mendeleev was not heard, and that he worked "for the drawer".. Nothing of the sort! For the first time the book reveals that Alexander III’s son, Nicholas II, issued a supreme decree in October 1905 on the basis of Mendeleev’s letter – establishing the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Russian Empire. We analysed the text of the letter and the text of the decree and determined that they coincide by 90 per cent,” – the author-compiler of the book shared.

Tariffs and capital

Alexander III cared about the development of industry in Russia; it was he who introduced measures of protectionism. Nicholas II continued to protect the domestic market through tariff policy. Even then, these measures of the Russian government created tension with the more economically developed countries of the West, and attempts followed to force Russia to abandon them. Mendeleev was one of those who spoke out in defence of Russia’s economic sovereignty.

“What was Russia’s main export item in the nineteenth century? Grain. How could maximum damage be inflicted on Russia? By introducing prohibitive tariffs so that we could not export grain to Western European countries, while at the same time prices on Western machinery and equipment exported to Russia. Nicholas II weakened – he abolished the advantageous tariffs for Russian producers, and Western goods flooded our market,” – Vladimir Tarankov relates. Parallels with the present day are inevitable: the same thing is happening now with oil, as the West tries to block Russian exports of petroleum products. And once again Mendeleev writes a letter – this time to Nicholas II: “International activities of Russia cannot be given greater importance than economic transformations.”

In his letter Mendeleev argues that Russia must abandon the role of a resource appendage and move towards a genuine transformation of the economy. “We should not train officials for ministries; we should train engineers and technologists” – these words of the great scientist sound extraordinarily contemporary.

The next letter is devoted to the subject of foreign capital. “Russia has always historically suffered from a deficit of capital for development. But certain of the governing forces argued that there was too much foreign capital in Russia and that it ought to be banned. Mendeleev, however, says: no, in order to secure an industrial leap forward, we must not ban foreign capital, but attract it. He writes: it is better for a country to give away ten to fifteen per cent than to surrender all one hundred per cent abroad, and to stop feeding Europe. What is meant is: it is better to pay dividends to foreign shareholders. Whereas if one does not create enterprises with foreign capital, but merely buys equipment abroad, then Russia will lose all one hundred per cent,” – Tarankov explains Mendeleev’s idea.

Nicholas II underlined these lines in the letter with a red pencil and sent them to the members of the State Council. This is an extremely rare occurrence, says the author of the book. As a result, a decision was taken whereby foreign capital was not only not banned, but was, on the contrary, granted a more preferential credit regime.

“Before the First World War Russia achieved an industrial breakthrough: average annual growth rates were very high, and we attained self-sufficiency in many fields. Russia also had the highest rates of population growth in Europe: during the years of reform the population increased by 50 million. By 1913 Russia ranked second in the world in oil production after the United States and had become the largest exporter of kerosene, having previously imported American kerosene. It ranked fourth in heavy industry. Previously coal and steel had been British, and locomotives likewise British. Fifth place was held in overall industrial production,” – Vladimir Tarankov cites the figures.

“Russia will be most closely bound up with the destinies of the countries of Asia and the Great Ocean“

Dmitry Mendeleev devoted many years to the subject of Asia. He wrote that “the Asian countries and the Great Ocean are destined to serve as the arena of the most important international events. Russia will be most closely bound up with the destinies of the countries of Asia and the Great Ocean” (as the Pacific Ocean was then called). The main idea of this letter is that the East is awakening and a change in the balance of power is approaching in the world. China, by developing factories and plants, will become a powerful state.

An interesting historical detail that few people know about today: Western countries wanted to partition China into several parts – this concerned the leading European powers and the United States. “And we would now have an entirely different picture of the world. But Nicholas II, under the influence of the ideas of Mendeleev and Witte, refused to support the partition of China, and it did not take place,” – Vladimir Tarankov says.

As we know full well, Mendeleev’s forecasts regarding China were completely fulfilled. Are they aware in the Celestial Empire of these predictions of the Russian scholar? Be that as it may, in the Chinese city of Shenzhen – the equivalent of Silicon Valley in the United States – one of the streets is named after Dmitry Mendeleev, the author of the book related.

In conclusion, Vladimir Tarankov added that the book contains a great deal of exclusive archival material. In addition to the five letters of Mendeleev to Emperors Alexander III and Nicholas II published for the first time, it also presents a secret report by S. Yu. Witte, a report by Pyotr Stolypin, an interview with D. I. Mendeleev, and a text written by him in connection with the death of Alexander III.