The theme of innovations is among the central points in studying the history of Russia. Typically, we consider the innovations to be coming from the West and improving the accepting context in a variety of ways, be it economic, social or political way. Yet the accent in the understanding of innovations is usually made upon the improvements they are bringing.
An improvement of course is not necessarily a change for better; rather, it is ambivalent. However, we are still not free from a ‘positive’ connotation while using the word. But can we really see the history of Russia as a chain of (more or less) successful borrowing and implementations of the transferred innovations?
The alternative approach that could be used while studying the cultural interactions between Russian and the West is linked with M. Espagne’s concept of cultural transfer and the developments made by the Cambridge school of political history. Thus, the research problem is the actual use of an innovation rather than its borrowing. To fix the facts of innovations is certainly not enough, for the label of innovation has no explanatory force per se.
A natural step that derives from such position is to avoid the use of ‘center – periphery’ models. Such a rough explanatory model could at times be useful while speaking of a limited scope of economic issues. But to label a certain phenomenon an innovation is not enough to grasp the correct historical understanding of that. ‘Constitution’, for instance, is an example of a European innovation borrowed and introduced on Russian soil in 18th – 19th centuries. It is surely anachronistic to speak of constitution in Russia of 15th century; we must remain with the circle of historically appropriate concepts.
But it doesn’t mean that Russia went on with some improvement through innovation of ‘constitution’. Rather, we need to question quite scrupulously: what exactly emerged on Russian political soil out of co-existence of a transfer through reading, transfer through everyday practice, transfer through other forms of communication, and the local tradition (also presented in different forms). The same thing could be traced with the other major themes of cultural transfer of 18 – 20th centuries, like ‘absolutism’ or ‘revolution’.
In a way, that innovation is always original, even though it was transferred from somewhere. The detailed answer to such question would surely be an example of what present-day historical science might contribute into the problematic of cross-cultural transfers.