ABSTRACT
The development and role of the Russian business elite in the period between 1850 and 1914 is of a great interest in current historical debates. According to Daniel Brower, ‘The concentration of wealth in the hands of a very small urban mercantile and propertied elite that lived in the capitals and a few provincial cities was one of the most notable features of Russian urban growth’, specifically in the years following the reforms of Alexander II. Merchants often played a leadership role in urban society, and in classifying urban communities in Russia between 1850 and 1900 ‘the merchant city’ was one of the key categories. The accelerated pace of urban economic expansion during the latter decades of the nineteenth century was primarily due to two factors. First, there was a remarkably rapid rise in the volume of trade in agricultural produce which moved through the commercial and transportation networks of certain cities. Secondly, there was a noticeable increase in the number of occupations which were necessary to sustain and enrich urban life. According to Brower, these trades filled the city with a multitude of petty enterprises and unskilled labourers whose availability varied with the seasons, the state of the urban economy and the level of rural hardship. 1
