The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Commerce in Russian Urban Culture 1861-1914
William Craft Brumfield, Boris V. Anan'ich, and Yuri A. Petrov
Tsarist Russia's commercial class is today receiving serious attention from both Russian and non-Russian historians. This book is a contribution to that literature. Commerce in Russian Urban Culture, 1861-1914 examines the relation between the entrepreneurial world, especially business and banking, and the cultural milieu of Russia. Going beyond the commercial-cultural connection of charitable activity, the contributors to this collaborative project also study cultural activity undertaken by enterprises for their own purposes, notably bank and commercial architecture.
"Culture and commerce" encompasses two areas in this volume. The first is the business milieu itself as a social and cultural phenomenon. Class and social stratification, types of entrepreneurs, and their mentality, religious affiliations, and charitable activities and donations are covered. The second is their impact on the form of cities, including not only Moscow and St. Petersburg but Odessa and Nizhnii Novgorod. Banks, insurance companies, and large commercial firms reshaped Russian cities with the construction of buildings for their own operations and retail shops, stock exchanges, mansions, and public buildings.
This book is based on a project of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
What People are Saying
"This is a very important study for the information it gives and also for the insight into late Imperial Russia and its commercial elite, a group whose influence is still little known. To a great degree it challenges an older view of Imperial Russia as lacking a vital urban middle class." -- Steven Marks, Associate Professor of History, Clemson University
"The volume contains a wealth of new and little-known material. Its publication is extremely welcome, and it ought to receive a warm response from academics in several disciplines, most importantly, history and art." -- Jeffrey Brooks, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University, and author of Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War
Chapter List
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: BUSINESS CULTURE
1 St. Petersburg: Banking Center of the Russian Empire
2 European Business Culture and St. Petersburg Banks
3 Funded Loans in Petersburg and the Development of the Municipal Infrastructure, 1875-1916
4 The Banking Network of Moscow at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
5 Charitable Activities of Moscow Banks
6 Old Believers and New Entrepreneurs: Old Belief and Entrepreneurial Culture in Imperial Russia
7 Entrepreneurs and Philanthropy in Nizhnii Novgorod, from the Nineteenth Century to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
PART II: COMMERCE AND THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
8 The Architecture of Petersburg Banks in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
9 The Architecture of Moscow Banks in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
10 From the Lower Depths to the Upper Trading Rows: The Design of Retail Shopping Centers in Moscow
11 Commerce and Architecture in Odessa in Late Imperial Russia
12 Creating a New Style in the Architecture of the Russian Provinces: The Case of Nizhnii
13 Pragmatic Pluralists in Gilded Age Chicago, Moscow, and Osaka: Making Fragmentation Work
Contributors
Index