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The Old Believers and the Rise of Private Industrial Enterprise in Early Nineteenth-Century Moscow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

William L. Blackwell
William L. Blackwell*
Affiliation:
Washington Square College and the Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University
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Extract

The origins of modern Moscow can be traced to the early nineteenth century, when smokestacks began to supplement church cupolas on the city's skyline and the forsaken palaces of boyars were being converted into factories or homes of wealthy merchants. Pushkin observed this process with a mixture of romantic nostalgia and patriotic optimism as early as 1834. The old Orthodox and national shrine of Russia was starting its evolution as a major industrial center of the Empire. Along with this, however, came a later chapter of Russian religious history. Moscow during this same period also became a center of the Old Believers; Raskolniki, scattered for over a century on the frontiers of Russia, began to flock back to the ancient capital.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1965 , pp. 407 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1965

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References

1 Most of the bibliography on the subject has been noted in Roger Portal, “Origines d'une bourgeoisie industrielle en Russie,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, VIII (1961), 35-60. Portal focuses on the social origins, as does H. Rosovsky, “The Serf Entrepreneur in Russia,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, VI (1953), 207-29.

2 Little has been written about the commercial and industrial activities of these groups in Russia. For recent short accounts and bibliographies, see the excellent analyses in Salo Baron, The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets (New York, 1964), pp. 101-13, 367-68; and (on the Skoptsy) I (1950), pp. 188-248. The question of Protestant enterprise is bound up with that of the foreigner in Russia. See E. Amburger, “Der fremde Unternehmer in Russland bis zur Oktoberrevolution im jahre 1917,” Tradition, 1957, pp. 337-55.

3 See Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars and the Russians (New York, 1896), III, 358-59. Leroy-Beaulieu's perceptive study of the Russian schismatics is still very usable. On the numbers of Old Believers in the nineteenth century, see Serge Zenkovsky, “The Ideological World of the Denisov Brothers,” Harvard Slavic Studies, III (1957), 64; and John Curtiss, Church and State in Russia 1900-1917 (New York, 1940), p. 138. A conservative estimate of the dissenting population of Russia about 1850 would be nine million. The official figure was less than a million, a bureaucratic attempt to hide the fact of major religious disunity.

4 (2d ed.; St. Petersburg, 1909), VII, 204-6. Mel'nikov was better known under the pen name of Andrei Pechersky. In addition to his numerous studies of the Old Believers, he wrote a fictional trilogy about them.

5 Coneybeare, F. C., Russian Dissenters (Cambridge, Mass., 1921), pp. 101–5Google Scholar; Miliukov, P., Outlines of Russian Culture (Philadelphia, 1942), I, 61 Google Scholar; (St. Petersburg, 1870), p. 149.

6 , pp. 218-21, 275.

7 Ibid.; , p. 155.

8 Miliukov, pp. 61-63; , p. 234.

9 On the Vyg Commune, see Zenkoysky, pp. 52-64; and (Moscow and Saratov, 1924).

10 ), pp. 189-90. Although I cannot agree with some of his interpretations, Ryndziunsky has had access to the archives and has provided many new facts on the economic activity and the ideology of the Moscow Theodosian community; his article ranks with more general work by Nikol'sky. An earlier study of the Theodosian community by O. Pyemic, , No. 7-8, 1934, pp. 70- 79, is of less value. Pierre Kovalevsky, in “Le Raskol et son role dans le d£veloppement industriel de la Russie,” Archives de sociologie des religions, III (1957), 37-56; and Valentine Bill, in The Forgotten Class: The Russian Bourgeoisie from the Earliest Beginnings to 1900 (New York, 1959), are the first scholars in the West to have raised the question of the business significance of the Old Believers, but in their general surveys neither has explored the Moscow communities in any depth or detail.

11 ) June 10, Oct. 7, Dec. 16, 27, 1845; March 8, 9, May 9, July 6, 1846; Jan. 28, Feb. 3, March 25, 1848, in hereafter cited as “Patrol Reports,” referring in all cases to the section “Smes’ “ of this source. These police reports are the most valuable primary source available for the economic activities of the Moscow Old Believers during the reign of Nicholas I. The published collection consists of more than four hundred printed pages of almost daily official observations primarily of the Priestless communities, from 1845 to 1848. Needless to say, the police were hostile to people they considered fanatics and did not always distinguish between fact and rumor. The Soviet scholar Ryndziunsky, who has had access to the original manuscripts, finds omission and distortion in the Titov edition. The economic history contained in the published documents remains reliable, I have concluded, on the basis of comparison with Ryndziunsky's own facts, quotes, and interpretation and with the other accounts and sources, as well as on the basis of strong internal evidence. For comparison, see notes 16 and 29 below.

12 (London, 1860), I, 55; Patrol Reports, Aug. 5, 1847.

13 Patrol Reports, May 12, 1845.

14 Ibid., May 2, Dec. 7, 29, 1845; KeдcиeB, I, 9.

15 PycTиK, pp. 75-76.

16 Patrol Reports of Aug. 1, 1846; also quoted in , p. 209.

17 Patrol Reports, Jan. 3, 1846.

18 Patrol Reports, July 10, 11, Nov. 27, Dec. 24, 1845; Jan. 16, March 7, 1846.

19 Leroy-Beaulieu, III, 354.

20 Patrol Reports, Jan. 21, Feb. 5,10, July 5, Nov. 29, Dec. 8-10, 20, 1845; March 15, 1847.

21 , p. 205.

22 Patrol Reports, March 15, 1845; March 7, July 15, 1846.

23 Patrol Reports, Dec. 19, 1844; , III, 237-38.

24 , III, 225-36.

25 (Moscow, 1954), III, 295.

26 A. von Haxthausen, The Russian Empire, Its People, Institutions and Resources (London, 1856), I, 275-76; Patrol Reports, Dec. 11, 1846; Jan. 20, Feb. 10, June 11, 1847.

27 , pp. 205-6, 209; PyCTHK, p . 72.

28 Leroy-Beaulieu, III, 354. The heavy industrialization of the Preobrazhensk area can be seen in , Vol. III, map facing p. 320.

29 Patrol Reports, Aug. 1, 1846; see also , p. 209.

30 Haxthausen, I, 277.

31 Ibid., p. 272: “The Starovertsi in the large cities—Moscow, St. Petersburg and Riga —merchants and manufacturers who have grown rich, only remain true to their sect for the first generation; the next cut off their beards, throw off the kaftan, and put on coats; and with the old customs and dress, their religious notions also disappear.“

32 Patrol Reports, Dec. 1844; , pp. 237-38.

33 Leroy-Beaulieu, III , 343.

34 Patrol Reports, Jan. 15, 1846.

35 , I, 36-38; Patrol Reports, March 7, 1846.

36 , p- 296.

37 W. Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union (London, 1961), pp. 140-41.

38 Patrol Reports, 1845-46, passim; , pp. 204, 208, 214, 218-19.

39 For details on the early Guchkov family history, I am indebted to Mr. Louis Menashe, who has examined a family chronicle, formerly owned and probably authored by the late Aleksandr Guchkov and now in the possession of Madame L. Csaszar of Paris. See also Patrol Reports, July 15 and 17, Aug. 21, and Nov. 5 and 23, 1847, for some interesting data on Fedor Guchkov's property and industrial holdings, his factory school, mortgage buying, and serf redeeming. On the Konovalovs, see Roger Portal, “Du servage a la bourgeoisie: La famille Konovalov,” Revue des etudes slaves, XXXVIII (1961), 143-50; and (Moscow, 1915).

40 Quoted in Leroy-Beaulieu, III, 340. Brief statements of the main interpretations of tsarist times can be found in pp. 160-61.

41 For the Soviet views, see notes 2 and 10 above and a discussion in Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union, pp. 129-31.

42 Leroy-Beaulieu, III, 338-39; Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (4th ed.; Tubingen, 1956), I, 292, and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958), pp. 39, 189-90, 197. Weber also had pertinent observations in his studies of Oriental society and of the city, although no other direct comments on the Russian religious dissenters.

43 Leroy-Beaulieu, III, 339.