Commerce in Russian Urban Culture, 1861–1914

by William Craft Brumfield (Editor)

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.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2002

About the author

William Craft Brumfield is Professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University. Brumfield, who began photographing Russia in 1970, is the foremost authority in the West on Russian architecture. He is the author, editor, and photographer of numerous books, including Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture, also published by Duke University Press. Brumfield is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center. In 2002 he was elected to the State Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences, and in 2006 he was elected to the Russian Academy of Fine Arts. He is also the 2014 recipient of the D. S. Likhachev Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of Russia. Brumfield's photographs of Russian architecture have been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums and are part of the Image Collections at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.