Merchant Moscow: Images of Russia's Vanished Bourgeoisie ed. by James L. West, Iurii Petrov, et al. (review)

Reviews In this insightful and solid work, Hutton accomplishes all her objectives. None ofher readers will come away from this book without having learned a great deal. I intend to send my students of women's studies to this book and I think other students can only benefit from its perusal. With its unusual approach, this volume should be of interest to scholars and must be on the shelves of all libraries where serious research in women's studies is likely to occur. "& James L. West, Iurii Petrov, et al., eds. Merchant Moscow: Images of Russia's VanishedBourgeoisie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. 189p. Natasha Kolchevska University of New Mexico This amply illustrated volume brings together essays by American and Russian scholars on one of late imperial Russia's more influential, yet neglected, social groups: urban (mostly Muscovite) merchants and their families. Anyone who has visited the Gorky Museum in Moscow or strolled its central quarters has noticed the remarkable residential and commercial buildings left behind by these entrepreneurs , yet throughout the Soviet era, historians vilified these "class enemies" and ignored their significant contributions to the development ofeconomic, social, and cultural life in Moscow and other urban areas. MerchantMoscow attempts to remedy this neglect by collecting fourteen contributions by cultural, architectural, art, and business historians, and matching them up with rare photographs from the collection of Mikhail Zolotarev, a Moscow chemist who, since the mid-1980s has made collecting and documenting photographs ofthe pre-revolutionary bourgeoisie his life's avocation. The combination of scholarly inquiry and contemporary photographs makes for a volume that rewards the eye as wells the intellect. A briefreview cannot do justice to the variety ofthis collection with its wealth ofcommentary on every aspect ofmerchant life. James L. West's useful two-part historical introduction traces the precarious existence of the social estate known as kupechestvo in relation to the Tsarist state, then briefly examines the central relationship between Russian merchants and their religious beliefs, anchored in the anti-tsarist protest movement dating to the 17th century known as "Old Belief." In conjunction with the essay by Diane Neumaier that follows, it also attempts to anticipate and respond to important questions about the role that documentary photography such as family and professional portraits played in not only recording the world but also interpreting it. Other than fine art photography, both preand post-revolutionary Russian efforts in this medium have been under-studied, SPRING 2003 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + 103 and Neumaier's brief but revealing essay reflects a growing acknowledgment among scholars on both sides of the ocean of photography's polyvalency. The rest of Merchant Moscow is divided into five thematic sections. Part One, "From Street Fair to Department Story," addresses the evolving business culture and practices of the kupechestvo. Picking up on the theme of photos as source material, Thomas C. Owen opens his argument about "the difficulty ofgrafting European institutions onto Russian society" (30) on the disjuncture between image and reality in the photographic representation of commercial space, then continues with a historical overview of corporate history in Moscow up to the revolution. Irina V Potkina looks at commerce and consumer patterns in her essay , while Iurii A. Petrov examines the financial underpinnings ofRussia's grandest private enterprises. In the first two essays in PartTwo, "Icon and Business Card: Merchant Culture, Ritual and Daily Life," Christine Ruane and Galina Ulanova look at patterns of dress and religious belief, respectively, while Karen Pennar, herselfa descendant of the great Morozov family, offers a more personal view of everyday merchant life, based on her readings ofunpublished family diaries. This section, as well as Part Three, "Beyond the Boardroom: Social Hierarchies," with its focus on the social life ofthe merchant class, incorporates contemporary analyses ofclass, gender, and education and includes the most experimental essays. This reader found Muriel Joffes and Adele Lindenmeyr's elucidation ofthe often hidden role ofmerchant women in their "Daughters, Wives and Partners," and Sergei Kalmykov's investigation ofshifting attitudes towards commercial education and their impact on cultural developments to be particularly informative. In Part Four, "A City ofOne's Own," William Brumfield reprises his own earlier assessments of some outstanding examples of central Moscow's tum...