Merchant Moscow (ebook)

Argumento de Merchant Moscow (ebook)

With the collapse of the Soviet system, the long-neglected history of the early capitalists is being recovered and rewritten. Once regarded as the "losers" in the Russian Revolution, these merchants can now be seen as early pioneers in Russia's transformation to a free market economy. This book is the first joint Russian-American collaborative project on the history of Russian entrepreneurship. Merchant Moscow puts a human face on early Russian capitalism. It presents thematic groupings of historic photographs paired with commentaries by contemporary Russian and American historians. The pictures provide a stunning, wide-ranging visual portrait of Imperial Russia's most influential entrepreneurial elite, the Moscow merchantry, while the accompanying articles interpret the photographs and place them in the larger cultural context of prerevolutionary Russia. Here is a surprising new view of the bourgeoisie during the Silver Age, revealed for the first time in this fascinating volume.

The fourteen contributing historians selected and ordered photographs that best illustrate their specialized knowledge of the period. They have framed their topics in a variety of ways. Some have chosen to pursue traditional topics, such as collective biography, institutional history, or the history of business practices. Others have approached the photographs in more experimental ways, emphasizing the semiotics of dress, discourses of identity, or the history of daily life. Together they offer fresh perspectives on the successes and failures of Russia's first experiment with entrepreneurial capitalism.

Originally published in 1998.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.0Merchant Moscow in Historical Context 3 A Note on Old Belief 13 A Note on Photography in Russia 19 About the Photographs 25 Maps of Merchant Moscow Plates 1 Doing Business in Merchant Moscow 29 2 Moscow's Commercial Mosaic 37 3 "Moscow City": Financial Citadel of Merchant Moscow 45 4 Caftan to Business Suit: The Semiotics of Russian Merchant Dress 53 5 Old Believers and New Entrepreneurs: Religious Belief and Ritual in Merchant Moscow 61 6 Daily Life among the Morozovs 73 7 Peasant Entrepreneurs and Worker Peasants: Labor Relations in Merchant Moscow 85 8 Daughters, Wives, and Partners: Women of the Moscow Merchant Elite 95 9 Commercial Education and the Cultural Crisis of the Moscow Merchant Elite 109 10 Aesthetics and Commerce: The Architecture of Merchant Moscow, 1890-1917 119 11 Merchant Moscow After Hours: Voluntary Associations and Leisure 133 12 Merchants on Stage and in Life: Theatricality and Public Consciousness 147 13 Visions of Russia's Entrepreneurial Future: Pavel Riabushinsky's Utopian Capitalism 161 The Fate of Merchant Moscow 173 Suggestions for Further Reading 179 List of Contributors 181 Index 183