SUMMARY:

Four participants in the conference “Trade and Empire: Productivity, Economic Exchange, and Differences in Eurasia” jointly organized by Ab Imperio and Tyumen State University in Russia in June 2020 discuss various aspects of the interplay between new imperial history and history of economic exchanges. Fedor Korandei reads economic debates on the feasibility and rationality of the Northern Sea Route in late imperial Russia and early USSR as a changing language of self-description.