Dilemmas of Russian Capitalism: Fedor Chizhov and Corporate Enterprise in the Railroad Age 9780674276642

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HAR VARD STUDIES IN BUSINESS HISTOR Y,

44

Published with the support of the Harvard Business School Edited by Thomas K. McCraw Isidor Straus Professor of Business History Graduate School of Business Administration George F. Baker Foundation Harvard University

Fedor V. Chizhov, photograph (c. 1875) Source: Valerii I. Bovykin and Iurii A. Petrov, Kommercheskie banki Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Perspektiva, 1994)

THOMAS C. OWEN

Dilemmas of Russian Capitalism Fedor Chizhov and Corporate Enterprise in the Railroad Age

HAR VARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2005

Copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Owen, Thomas C. Dilemmas of Russian capitalism: Fedor Chizhov and corporate enterprise in the railroad age / Thomas C. Owen. p. cm. – (Harvard studies in business history ; 44) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-01549-5(alk. paper) 1. Chizhov, Fedor, 1811-1877. 2. Businessmen–Russia–Biography. 3. Capitalists and financiers–Russia–Biography. 4. Entrepreneurship–Russia–History. 5. Railroads–Russia–History. I. Title. II. Series. HC332.5.C49O94 2005 338.0947’092–dc22 2004042398

To my father and the memor y of my mother and of my stepmother

Contents

Preface

ix

Author’s Note

xiii

Introduction: Biography and Business History 1

The Search for a Vocation From Mathematics to Romantic Nationalism Arrest and Internal Exile 22 Personality and Entrepreneurship 30

1 9 9

2

Economic Nationalism in Theory Economic Journalism in the Era of the Great Reforms 46 Corporate Capitalism and Railroads 64 Tariff Protection for Domestic Industries: German Theories and Russian Realities 70 The Origins of Slavophile Capitalism 80

46

3

Economic Nationalism in Practice The Trinity Railroad 92 The First Banks in Moscow 110 The Moscow-Kursk Railroad 124 The Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company

92

134

Contents

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4

Chizhov’s Legacy Limits to Success 150 Merchants and Gentry as Corporate Entrepreneurs 158 The Political Context: Military-Autocratic Rule 177 Unresolved Dilemmas 200

Conclusion: The Death of Fedor Vasilievich

149

203

Notes

215

Bibliographical Essay

253

Index

261

Preface

Each book has its own story to tell. The biography of this biography, so to speak, began more than three decades ago in the course of research on my doctoral dissertation, “The Social and Ideological Evolution of the Moscow Merchants, 1840–1870” (Harvard, 1973). Because the merchants left few written sources, I turned to the writings of intellectuals sympathetic to the cause of Russian economic development. Even before entering the archives in Moscow and Leningrad in 1971, I had come across the name of Fedor V. Chizhov, a publisher of journals favorable to the merchants’ economic interests: tariff protection, especially for the textile industry; the creation of elected representative organizations of the commercial-industrial elite; and state subsidies for new enterprises in industry, finance, and transportation. Chizhov appeared especially fascinating because, under the terms of his will, his papers remained under seal at the Rumiantsev Museum until forty years after his death, or November 14, 1917. The Bolshevik revolution had broken out less than a month before that date. The archive naturally attracted little attention in the tumult of revolution. During the next seven decades, Soviet historians showed only the slightest interest in Chizhov’s ideas and activities. Some, such as L. B. Genkin, Vladimir P. Boiko, Sergei A. Nikitin, and Vladimir Ia. Laverychev, and a few experts on nineteenth-century Russian art and literature, including Ekaterina V. Sakharova (née Polenova), Mikhail V. Alpatov, and Leonid Kaplan, cited passages from the diary so accurately as to suggest a careful reading of the document. However, Soviet

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scholars never published an annotated edition of Chizhov’s diary, as they did those of the diaries of the statesmen Petr A. Valuev and Aleksandr A. Polovtsov and the memoir of the engineer Baron Andrei I. Delvig, first published in 1911 and reissued in 1930. In 1971, I examined Chizhov’s personal archive (fond 332) in the Manuscript Division (OR) of the Lenin State Library (GBL), as the Rumiantsev Museum was renamed by the Soviet government. His correspondence with merchant leaders and his voluminous diary, 3,952 pages long, documented his fascinating business career. The library permitted me to purchase a microfilm of his diary for the years 1850–1873. In 1980, after finishing my first book, on the social and political evolution of the Moscow merchants from the Crimean War to the Revolution of 1905, I returned to the GBL-OR to obtain a film of the rest of the diary. I was convinced of its importance, not just for its illumination of the political awakening of the Moscow merchants but for an understanding of the entire era of the so-called Great Reforms (1861–1874) and the weakness of capitalism in the Russian Empire as it entered the great race for economic power in the late nineteenth century. The diary had revealed to me a business career in imperial Russia motivated primarily by patriotism, not greed, and based on scientific, indeed mathematical, foundations. I concluded that a study of Chizhov’s career, based on a thorough examination of his diary, would clarify the subtleties of Russian capitalism, in particular the cultural and governmental impediments to entrepreneurship that I had identified in my first book. By 1980, however, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union had turned sour. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted many Western countries, led by the United States, to boycott the Olympic Games in Moscow, diminishing the prestige associated with that event. Access to archives became more difficult than usual. My request to examine Chizhov’s archive met with a categorical refusal, on two grounds: I had already seen parts of the diary almost a decade before, and an unnamed scholar was allegedly examining it. Other topics—corporate law in the Russian Empire and the development of corporations in Russia from the era of Peter the Great to World War I and in the USSR under perestroika—absorbed my attention for the next decade. Then, after the collapse of the Soviet state, I

Preface

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again tried to purchase a microfilm of the rest of Chizhov’s diary in the Manuscript Division of the Russian State Library (RGB-OR), as the GBL-OR was renamed. In 1992, during my third stay in Moscow, I was denied access once more, on the grounds that an unnamed scholar was preparing the diary for publication. That edition, whether real or imaginary, has yet to appear in print. After several more years of negotiation, in 1996, the Russian State Library provided me with a microfilm of the portions of Chizhov’s diary not yet in my possession: those written in 1824–1850 and in 1873–1877. Since then, I have examined relevant sections of the document and transcribed many passages dealing with economic issues. Facts in this book regarding the creation of various Russian corporations, their basic capital, and their founders and managers appear without citation, drawn from the database that I created by surveying charters published in the imperial Polnoe sobranie zakonov (Complete Collection of Laws, abbreviated PSZ), the supplement to the PSZ from 1863 to 1917, Sbornik uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva (Collection of Statues and Decrees, abbreviated SURP), and lists of corporations in existence in 1847, 1869, 1874, 1892, 1905, and 1914. Interested researchers may consult “RUSCORP: A Database of Corporations in the Russian Empire, 1700–1914,” no. 9142, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan (www.icpsr.umich.edu). Numerous institutions, friends, and colleagues aided me in this long and complex undertaking. The International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) funded two extended stays in Moscow and Leningrad, in 1971–1972 and 1980, and two visits, in 1992 and 1996. James H. Billington, who included several references to Chizhov in his monumental history of Russian culture, The Icon and the Axe (1966), encouraged this project as early as 1977. Walther Leitsch, recommended to me by Billington, provided useful bibliographical information. The effort to obtain a microfilm copy of Chizhov’s diary succeeded in 1996 largely because of the generous assistance of Marianna Tax Choldin and Robert Burger of the University of Illinois at Urbana. That university provided access to its library in the summer of 1978, thanks to an invitation from Ralph T. Fisher. In the past two decades, the Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois library shared

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with me a large number of rare sources. Angela Cannon of the Slavic Reference Service solved some difficult bibliographical problems. A grant from Craig Cordes in the Louisiana State University College of Arts and Sciences funded the work of two students, Denis V. Tiutchev and Azamat Nugmanov, who helped to transcribe the text of the diary for the years 1873–1877. In 1997, the School of Slavic and East European Studies at the University of London provided a sabbatical affiliation during which Geoffrey Hosking, Olga Crisp, Michael A. Branch, Lindsey Hughes, John Klier, and others offered generous support and useful criticism. Editorial work on selected passages from Chizhov’s diary at the British Library was supported by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Abbott Gleason’s comments on papers delivered at conventions of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in 1996 and 1999 helped to clarify my interpretation of Chizhov’s ideas and business career. The staffs of the libraries at Louisiana State University, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Library of Congress also provided essential assistance over the decades. Thomas K. McCraw of the Harvard Business School and Kathleen McDermott and Kathleen Drummy of Harvard University Press offered encouragement and advice as the manuscript took shape. Peter Gatrell and an anonymous reviewer made valuable suggestions for improvement. Among the Russians, historians who shared their expertise on sources and encouraged my research on the Moscow merchants and their Slavophile allies included Ksana S. Kuibysheva, Nina S. Kiniapina, Vladimir Ia. Laverychev, Valerii I. Bovykin, Kornelii F. Shatsillo, and Nikolai I. Tsimbaev. Inna A. Simonova shared her findings on Chizhov’s ideological development and provided information on his many obscure publications. For more than a quarter-century, Boris V. Ananich and Leonid E. Shepelev have remained generous colleagues and friends. Finally, I owe to my devoted wife, Sue Ann, gratitude for her encouragement and support over the many years that this project required and for her excellent suggestions about the structure of this study. All errors of fact and interpretation of course remain my own responsibility.

Author’s Note

The pronunciation of Chizhov’s name is best rendered in English as FYOdor VahSEELyevich ChiZHOFF. A chizh being a siskin (Carduelis spinus), a close relative of the finches, his name would be Theodore Siskin in English. Names of persons and places are transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet according to the Library of Congress system because it is the standard for bibliographical documentation among historians in the United States. (Ligatures and diacritical marks are omitted.) The only deviation from this system occurs in the treatment of the soft sign, normally denoted by the apostrophe but here deleted or replaced by “i”; thus, Delvig, Gogol, Iaroslavl, Tretiakov, Tver, and Vasilievich, not Del’vig, Gogol’, Iaroslavl’, Tret’iakov, Tver’, and Vasil’evich. The notes and bibliography retain the strict transliteration, however, for the sake of accuracy. Names of persons and places in present-day Ukraine are rendered in the standard transliteration from Russian (Kiev, Priluki, Sokirintsy, and Tripolie, for example), not from Ukrainian (Kyiv, Pryluka, Sokyryntsi, and Trypillia). This usage reflects the status of Russian as the official language of Ukraine, called Little Russia (Malorossiia) or South Russia, under imperial rule. Chronology presents peculiar complexities because the Julian calendar, used in Russia until February 1, 1918, lagged twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar in the nineteenth century. Dates of events in Russia are given according to the Julian system, whereas events in Europe carry both the Julian and Gregorian notations, e.g. May 6/18, 1847.

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The most common Russian units of weight and distance are the pud (36 pounds = 16.38 kilograms) and the verst (3,500 feet = 0.6629 miles = 1.06 kilometers). All currency values are given in Russian rubles, but distinctions must be made between the gold ruble, rarely used in everyday transactions; the silver ruble, used in many corporate financial transactions because it remained stable in relation to European currencies in the mid-nineteenth century; and the credit, or “paper,” ruble, which gradually lost so much of its value under the last four emperors that it was worth only 67 gold kopeks in 1897, when the imperial government placed the ruble on the gold standard. Russian corporate shares or bonds often bore a par value of 125 or 250 silver rubles in the 1860s because these values had convenient equivalents in European currencies. For example, 125 silver rubles = 20 pounds sterling = 500 French francs = 236 Dutch guilders = 136 Prussian thalers. Denominated in silver rubles, such corporate securities held their value as they were bought and sold on the European stock markets. Securities denominated in credit rubles circulated primarily within the Russian Empire. When the tsarist government adopted the gold standard, the ruble was worth about half a U.S. dollar. Several statistics, institutional and personal, indicate the purchasing power of the ruble during Chizhov’s business career. Construction costs of several railroads radiating outward from Moscow in the 1860s varied from 78,000 to 100,000 rubles per verst. Chizhov’s railroad from Moscow to Sergiev posad, thanks to his parsimonious management, cost 63,300 rubles per verst to build between 1859 and 1863. The managing engineer of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad earned 15,000 rubles per year in 1871. Chizhov estimated his own income at 40,000 rubles from his corporate dividends and his salary as a manager of two railroads and a bank in 1874, when a teacher in a vocational school earned 3,000 rubles. The following year, Chizhov purchased a comfortable townhouse in the center of Moscow for 35,000 rubles.

DILEMMAS OF RUSSIAN CAPITALISM

INTRODUCTION

Biography and Business History Is not anyone who has lived a life, and who left a record of that life, worthy of biography—the failures as well as the successes, the humble as well as the illustrious? And what is greatness? And what smallness? —Virginia Woolf, 1939

This study of Chizhov’s entrepreneurial and managerial career seeks to illuminate the interaction of culture, autocratic politics, and capitalism in the era of the Great Reforms (1861–1874) and thus to offer new insights into the distinctive features of capitalism in Russia in the nineteenth century. Although it would be presumptuous to base a grand theory of Russian economic history on the facts of a single person’s life, this account, based largely on Chizhov’s books and articles and his unjustly neglected diary, supplements previous analyses of Russian economic history, which have tended to stress statistics and debates among tsarist policymakers, with limited attention to the views of prominent traders and manufacturers throughout the empire. The main tasks are to understand Chizhov’s strategy of economic development and to assess the successes and shortcomings of the many initiatives that he undertook to realize his grand plan. His devotion to the goal of development and his struggle to overcome the institutional obstacles to Russian capitalism in its early stage, including obstruction from bureaucrats in St. Petersburg and a lukewarm commitment to corporate enterprise on the part of merchants in Moscow, constitute a chapter in the history of the Russian economy unknown to all but a few specialists. Most intriguing of all was his ultimate failure to create the strong financial and transportation networks that he considered essential to Russian economic power. In addition to examining the obstacles that Chizhov faced as an entrepreneur, it is necessary to analyze the strategies that the tsarist government employed to 1

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overcome economic backwardness, a major cause of Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856). Biography offers crucial perspectives on the process of industrialization, one of the greatest historical dramas of the modern age. Despite a good number of biographies of English industrialists and a variety of Parliamentary investigations, Barrington Moore, Jr., found it “surprising that we do not have a great deal more information. Actually there has been precious little research on the ways businessmen have carried out and thought about their work. That may be partly because businessmen have often been taciturn, platitudinous, or both.”1 The dearth of sources, both documentary and secondary, is of course far more serious in the Russian case than in the English. The enormous interest of historians in Russian peasants and workers is justified by the centrality of mass revolts in Russian history. In the past half-century, business history, a subfield of economic history, has done much to fill gaps in our understanding of the processes that created the modern world. Capitalist institutions in the largest country in the world certainly deserve the attention of historians. As Thomas K. McCraw observed, Each country’s business system has an idiosyncratic history. This history is related to each nation’s culture, its political system, and external events such as war . . . [Business history illuminates] which elements are essential to any capitalist system and which are not. There are many routes to capitalist success, and to failure as well . . . By “varieties” of capitalism, we mean differences from country to country not only in the ways economic systems work, but in the ways individual companies are organized: What are their management systems? How do they select technologies? Where do they get their financing? How do they govern their workforces?

Lessons from the experience of successful pioneers such as Josiah Wedgwood in Britain, Alfred Thyssen in Germany, Alfred Sloan in the United States, and Sakichi Toyoda in Japan help to highlight the strategies that fostered success in specific cultural and political contexts: “To improve our understanding of the process of growth, we obviously must analyze better the interaction between the business enterprise and its political and social environment. Because firms live in a world defined by national systems, in studying the one we automatically study the other.”2

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3

Historical scholarship in the past several decades has stressed the repeated failures of the tsarist and Soviet economies to overcome backwardness. (For complete citations of secondary works mentioned in passing, see the Bibliographical Essay.) The few historians who attempted biographies of Russian business leaders tended to argue that these individuals triumphed over institutional obstacles in the immature capitalist economy of the Russian Empire. Such studies helped to bring into focus the peculiarities of Russian capitalism, but in my opinion they fell into the familiar genre: glorification of the heroic entrepreneur. The title of Robert Tolf’s account of the Nobel family in Russian engineering, petroleum, and armaments, The Russian Rockefellers (1976), made this approach explicit. Chizhov’s career illustrates an important shortcoming of the theory of economic growth that places primary emphasis on entrepreneurial genius. Although the spirit of entrepreneurship is often contrasted to that of routine management, his rare ability to combine these two talents constituted the secret of his success. He put into practice several of his most cherished fantasies—unlike his merchant partners, whose entrepreneurial schemes either exceeded their financial means and managerial ability or whose dedication to the familiar routines of textile production and other forms of light industry prevented them from entering new and profitable lines of business. That is, the Russian economy faced an acute shortage not only of entrepreneurial dreamers but also of honest and capable managers. As he was about to plunge into high finance, Chizhov doubted his ability to become a successful banker because talent in that field took the form of “fussiness” (suetlivost’) rather than “productive activity” (deiatel’nost’ ).3 However, it was precisely this willingness to plod through dry statistical reports and keep a watchful eye on expenses that made him one of the shrewdest, most diligent, and most successful corporate managers in Moscow. The origins of the entrepreneurial spirit have fascinated historians. Because enterprise has both individual and social dimensions, historians cannot assign precise weight to each factor. Nor can the puzzle be solved by reducing personality to a function of sociology or vice versa. Recent comparative analyses of entrepreneurship have stressed the importance of the interplay between the individual business leader and the environment, both cultural and political. In such a Darwinian, or “populational,” view of the world, the entrepreneurial spirit func-

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tions “as one source of variation among many in a population.” “Variant” economic behavior, analogous to a biological mutation, occurs as a result of entrepreneurial activity, “but the ultimate historical significance” of such variants “is the result of the selective process.” Only if innovations are “copied” widely or have “secondary effects” do they introduce “a patterned regularity or institution in the community” capable of modifying economic behavior in general.4 The individual entrepreneur cannot, therefore, act as a motive force. Group activity is necessary to introduce this “variant behavior” in a given political environment. Here the culture of small groups, particularly ethnic minorities, becomes crucial to economic development. Sociologists of entrepreneurship recognize that “rationally constructed economic systems, regardless of the fine tuning of regulatory controls and diverse legal mechanisms [imposed by states], largely depend on the support of a culture-specific normative order and perhaps cannot function without it.”5 The classic definition of the economic innovator from the late Middle Ages onward, in all sorts of geographical and cultural situations, includes the quality of being an outsider. That is, some groups that stand slightly apart from dominant elites take advantage of their position as outsiders to perceive new economic opportunities relatively quickly. These minority groups also use acquisitiveness as a defensive strategy to mitigate the effects of discrimination or repression, turning their status anxiety to advantage as they employ group solidarity and cultivate an attitude of acquisitiveness to meet the challenges of religious or ethnic persecution, as in the case of the Jews in Christian Europe, Quakers and other Nonconformists in Anglican England, Huguenots in Catholic France, Jains and Parsis in Hindu and Muslim India, Chinese in Muslim Southeast Asia, and Jews, Old Believers, and skoptsy (Christian self-castraters) in Orthodox Russia. By itself, religiously inspired asceticism did not suffice, however. The incidence of founders and managers of Russian corporations from various ethnic and religious groups varied greatly. Unfortunately, the statistical analysis of rates of success among corporate entrepreneurs and managers does not reveal the motivations of individuals. Also, not every persecuted minority succeeded in economic enterprise. The biographical focus provides an essential supplement to grand macroeconomic studies. An analysis of a frustrated career in a back-

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ward economy may prove as useful for an understanding of business history as stories of successful entrepreneurship in Britain, France, Germany, North America, or Japan. It gives tangible shape to what, with reference to McCraw’s formula, we might call “a route to failure” in the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, as the tsarist government squandered its last chance to embrace economic, political, and social reforms, in contrast to the successful reforming efforts undertaken in Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912). Because of Chizhov’s considerable literary abilities, the huge size of his archive, and his leading role in the creation of capitalist institutions in Russia, he represents an excellent subject for historical analysis. His advanced training in mathematics, his deep interest in art history, and his years of residence in major European cities make his diary entries far more nuanced and expressive than the jottings of a typically “taciturn” or “platitudinous” merchant in the workaday business world, as noted by Moore. Chizhov’s writings are especially valuable because few of the semiliterate Moscow merchants who joined his campaign for economic development left either public or private statements of historical interest. Chizhov’s inability to implement his grand design provides a useful antidote to idealization. It is in the texture of everyday life, in the story of struggles and intrigues, and—most importantly—in his failure to implement the grand plan of economic nationalism, that important clues may be found to illuminate the political, cultural, and economic dilemmas of Russian capitalism. The criteria for assessing Chizhov’s career are entirely objective: the degree of financial success achieved by the various corporate enterprises that he created and managed and the extent to which the tsarist bureaucrats and his merchant allies implemented his policy prescriptions in the realm of economic policy. Despite the considerable efforts that Chizhov expended in creating new enterprises, some of which attained great financial success, his grand strategy of Russian economic nationalism never went into effect. In sum, the significance of his career lies not only in the possibility of redressing the neglect imposed by the Soviet hostility to Russian capitalism and its pioneers— though the resurrection of the complex narrative of capitalist development before 1917 is a worthy task in itself—but also in the opportunity to show, through meticulous documentation of his life, how he failed

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to overcome the many cultural and institutional obstacles to the development of capitalism in Russia. At the age of fourteen, Chizhov began keeping a diary. His later acquaintances marveled at the enormous size of the document.6 The texture of everyday life in the Moscow business world radiates from every page of his diary in this period far more vividly than from previously available documentary sources, whether governmental reports, contemporary policy debates, newspaper accounts, obituaries of entrepreneurs, or memoirs and diaries of tsarist ministers. Precisely because he never revised the text of the diary, it constitutes as accurate an account as any historian could hope to find of his opinions at a given moment. Expressions of satisfaction, frustration, humiliation, and resentment abound, complete with anecdotes revealing the achievements and shortcomings of business leaders and tsarist ministers. Chizhov recorded his impressions without knowing the outcome of any of his life’s many dramas. The great value of this source lies in the utter sincerity and directness of the unedited text.7 The master biographer Leon Edel wisely cautioned that “the subject’s inwardness can be recreated only in a limited way.” Still, he encouraged the writing of a biographical study “if sufficient self-communication has been bequeathed in diaries, letters, meditations, dreams.”8 Fortunately, we now have the essential ingredients for a preliminary account of Chizhov’s life and business career. A properly annotated edition of Chizhov’s diary and letters might challenge the monumental dimensions of Nikolai P. Barsukov’s compendium of documents and commentary on the life of Chizhov’s contemporary, the historian and ideologist of Pan-Slavism and Official Nationality, Mikhail P. Pogodin.9 Although Chizhov hardly merits a place in Russian intellectual history alongside Pogodin, the materials in Chizhov’s archive, if annotated and published on a Barsukovian scale, would illuminate many obscure questions of art, literature, and politics in the reigns of Nicholas I and Alexander II. Unfortunately, no one has yet attempted this rudimentary empirical task. The huge size of Chizhov’s archive presents an enormous challenge to historians. Besides the diary, the archive contains approximately 20,000 pages of letters from 1,650 correspondents.10 Scholarly studies of his ideological development did not begin to appear until the era of perestroika. Ideological constraints evaporated when the Soviet Union collapsed, but the sorry financial state of Russian libraries and academic presses

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ruled out the possibility of a major editorial effort in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet experience. Fortunately, Chizhov’s diary, his published letters, the journals and newspapers that he edited, and a variety of other contemporary sources, including the published memoirs and diaries of his friends and associates, provide adequate documentation for this analysis of his economic activities. Some of his letters to artists and writers—Aleksandr A. Ivanov, Vasilii D. Polenov, Nikolai M. Iazykov, Aleksandr V. Nikitenko, and Nikolai Gogol, for example—contain essential information, as do his many published statements on political and economic issues. Especially revealing are Chizhov’s letters to his close friend Vladimir S. Pecherin, who converted to Catholicism in 1840, became a Redemptorist monk in 1843, and ended his days as a priest in a hospital in Dublin.11 The chapters that follow address five aspects of Chizhov’s career as a pioneer of capitalism in Russia. First, a brief account of his education and early career as a professor of mathematics and a student of art history provides the background for an understanding of his later activities. It hints at the complexity of what Chizhov called his “inner life” (vnutrenniaia zhizn’), especially his intellectual interests, with special attention to the logical relationship between his romantic nationalism and his economic ideas. The second chapter examines Chizhov’s program of Russian economic development and the many problems that he encountered in winning support from tsarist bureaucrats and Moscow merchants. As the editor of journals and newspapers, he helped to express the merchants’ economic demands. As a nationalist, Chizhov sought to motivate Russian merchants to enter new forms of corporate enterprise without abandoning their traditional culture, the preservation of which constituted his original rationale for Russian economic development. Railroads, of course, embodied the greatest technological achievements of the age of steam. Chizhov condemned the waste, insolence, and corruption committed by the managers of the Russian Railroad Company, mostly Frenchmen, in the building of railroads in the era of the Great Reforms. He also hoped to apply to Russia the theories of German economists who resisted the British doctrine of free trade. His program of economic nationalism proceeded from an essentially nonacquisitive devotion to the Russian people. As the catalyst of change in the Moscow region, he faced numerous obstacles, pri-

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marily the problem of recruiting cadres of patriotic Russian entrepreneurs who would launch and manage new corporations for the good of the nation. As a Russian patriot who sincerely hated European civilization, Chizhov believed that Russia must avoid imitating Europe in its urbanization, its willingness to sacrifice the ideal of community for personal profit, and its conflicts between capital and labor. Rather, he helped to create a peculiar blend of paternalism toward the masses and encouragement of ethnic Russian economic activity that I call Slavophile capitalism. The third chapter recounts Chizhov’s many entrepreneurial activities and the mixed economic results that they produced. In the last twenty years of his life he managed three railroad companies, including the first one to be built by Russians, founded two banks, and created the first profitable steamship company in the northern port of Archangel. Although the economic policy debates of the 1850s and 1860s often brought the merchants and their Slavophile allies into conflict with the Ministry of Finance, Chizhov’s diary revealed that he formed a surprisingly cordial relationship with Finance Minister Mikhail Kh. Reutern, who granted several financial favors to Chizhov’s corporations out of respect for his honesty and entrepreneurial ability. The fourth chapter considers the reasons why, for all his erudition, entrepreneurial talent, and managerial expertise, Chizhov found it impossible to overcome political and cultural impediments to the realization of his vision of economic prosperity in Russia. Just as his status as a member of the gentry created difficulties in his collaboration with the merchants in economic journalism, so he found it difficult to lead them along the path of enlightened self-interest in the strange new domains of high finance and transportation. Nor did Chizhov receive adequate support from the tsarist bureaucracy. Although most of his enterprises survived to the end of the tsarist period, the movement for economic reform that he championed proved too weak to modify the repressive nature of the tsarist regime in the era of the Great Reforms. The conclusion examines how his legacy faded into oblivion after his death in 1877. The Soviet regime barely recognized his contributions and even obliterated his grave. The contrast between Chizhov’s aspirations and his accomplishments have special relevance for those who ponder the economic difficulties facing the Russian Federation and other post-Soviet states in the early twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 1

The Search for a Vocation Nature and art in all their forms were bound to exert a powerful influence on Chizhov’s impressionable soul. —Baron Andrei I. Delvig, 1874

The experiences that impelled Chizhov to enter the world of business in 1857, when he was already forty-six years old, can be identified with considerable clarity. His path followed some strange and even paradoxical detours and byways. Any attempt to understand his career in industrial journalism, banking, and railroad and steamship management thus requires a brief survey of his education, his scientific training, his teaching career, his research on art history, and his turn to romantic nationalism. A brief characterization of his personality will also be useful. To overcome the almost universal attitude in Russian culture that commerce, industry, and finance lacked prestige and even involved moral turpitude, he justified his own participation in the business world in terms of ascetic and self-sacrificial values of Slavophile nationalism and Pan-Slavism.

From Mathematics to Romantic Nationalism Fedor Vasilievich Chizhov was born on February 27, 1811, to a poor gentry family in Kostroma, a provincial capital on the upper Volga River. His father, Vasilii V. Chizhov, had received his initial education at the Kaluga Orthodox Seminary and the Trinity Monastery in Sergiev posad (now Zagorsk), but after completing a high school (gimnaziia) in St. Petersburg, he left the clergy and married Uliana Dmitrievna Ivanova, a poor but well-educated gentry woman raised in the house of Count Ivan A. Tolstoi. Vasilii Chizhov, a teacher of history, geography, and statistics as well as a school administrator, imparted to his son and three daughters his love of learning as well as a primary education in a variety of subjects.1 9

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After three years’ schooling in the Kostroma high school, young Fedor moved to St. Petersburg, the imperial capital. Upon graduation from the Third Petersburg Gimnaziia in 1828, he enrolled in the department of physics and mathematics at St. Petersburg University, where he earned the candidate degree in mathematics in 1832. His impressive talent for mathematics qualified him to give lectures and to begin advanced training for the rank of professor. As he recalled years later, in a typically self-deprecatory tone, “I regarded science too lyrically, seeing it as an exalted, almost sacred cause. Therefore I demanded that anyone who had chosen to become a teacher devote himself to science completely and unconditionally. I worked very hard myself but chose to teach an art, a skill—descriptive geometry—and did not dare to take up the science of higher [mathematical] analysis, which was offered to me at that time.”2 He delivered his first lecture dressed in the uniform of a student because he lacked funds to buy a professor’s uniform. Several other professors lent him money to buy a proper uniform. His poverty resulted partly from his sense of duty to his family, as he had voluntarily renounced his share in his parents’ meager estate in favor of his sisters after the death of their father in 1831. He soon won a stipend that permitted him to study with the eminent mathematician Mikhail V. Ostrogradskii without having to give private lessons in mathematics. In 1836, while lecturing at the university, Chizhov completed his master’s thesis: “On the General Theory of Equilibrium and Its Application to the Equilibrium of Liquid Bodies and the Determination of the Shape of the Earth.” Chizhov’s academic work in mathematics did not diminish his appreciation of the lively intellectual world of St. Petersburg. His friends at the university included the future linguist and convert to Catholicism Vladimir Pecherin, the future expert on Russian legal history Dmitrii V. Polenov, and the future censor Aleksandr Nikitenko. Chizhov amazed his friends with what Nikitenko called his “great energy and strength of character.” Nikitenko also applauded his “ability to subordinate personal considerations to the practical tasks of life.” Foreshadowing Chizhov’s own dissatisfaction with his inability to write scintillating prose, Nikitenko noted that the young mathematician expressed himself “clearly and with finesse. His mind does not cut through the haze with lightning speed, but he reaches the right goals by a slower route

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that is, however, less dangerous.” Nikitenko wrote of Chizhov’s master’s thesis, “of course I understood nothing about it, but informed people say that Chizhov replied sensibly and skillfully to all objections.”3 Two years after receiving his master’s degree, Chizhov published a compendium of articles, translated from English with his annotations, entitled Steam Engines: Their History, Description, and Application, with Many Designs (Based on the Works of Perthington, Stephenson, and Arago). This book, modestly signed with his initials, “F. Ch.,” demonstrated his early interest in the application of steam power, especially in railroads and steamships, an aspect of economic development that he would embrace wholeheartedly twenty years later. To his credit, although already a Russian patriot, Chizhov acknowledged the inventive genius of Englishmen and made no claims, as did historians of technology in the Stalin era, that the honor of inventing the first real steam engine belonged to Ivan I. Polzunov, a Russian merchant engaged in iron production in the Ural region in the eighteenth century.4 Toward the end of his twenties, Chizhov grew dissatisfied with teaching and research in the sciences. His diary of the 1830s contains unpublished poems, fragments of a novel, and the outline of a play, never written or performed, all of which testify to a strong interest in literature. In 1839, he translated Henry Hallam’s History of European Literature of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, accompanied by massive and erudite annotations.5 That same year, another translation from the English, Woman’s Mission, demonstrated his sensitivity to current social issues, though this book stressed conventional notions of gender roles, especially feminine religiosity.6 Unspecified health problems prompted Chizhov to leave his university post in 1840, at the age of twenty-nine. He traveled first to South Russia, or Little Russia (Malorossiia), as Ukraine was then called, at the invitation of Ekaterina V. Galagan, a wealthy widow who had hired Chizhov to tutor her son, Grigorii, in mathematics while in St. Petersburg from 1836 to 1838. He enjoyed a year’s residence—from June 1840 to early June 1841—at the Galagans’ estate in the village of Sokirintsy in Priluki district, Poltava province. Chizhov then accompanied the Galagan family on an extended trip to Europe. The group arrived in Munich in early October 1841.7 He was thirty years old. Chizhov’s residence in western Europe, from mid-1841 to May 1847, constituted the first transitional period in his life. Although still

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technically a member of the mathematics faculty of St. Petersburg University until the cancellation of his appointment in 1845, he turned from science to the humanities. He began the six-year interlude intending to write a magisterial history of art. After a year at Marienbad, the health spa in Germany, he traveled to the major cities of western Europe to study works of art in churches and museums. He arranged to spend every winter in Italy in order to safeguard his health.8 By the end of this period, he appeared ready to embrace a career of nationalistic literary activity. In a long letter to his friend Nikitenko, Chizhov explained that he had already conceived of human history as a series of distinct stages. He hoped to explain the “transition from the life of feeling, in medieval history, to the life of the mind and analysis, which appeared in modern history” by writing narrative sketches from the history of Venice, each of which would reveal both the “essence” of the city at a given time and “the forces that, visibly or invisibly, propelled it along the path of its natural development.” This study would conclude with a history of the arts in Venice, showing how they reflected “the significance of Venetian history.” He doubted his ability to master “all aspects of Venetian life,” but he justified the effort on the grounds that he had already learned Italian and enjoyed studying the Italian people.9 Chizhov completed neither a history of Venice nor a grand analysis of human history as revealed in art. His research in the Venetian archives had only one tangible result: a description of documents on diplomatic relations between the Venetian Republic and the Russian state, including one from the time of Ivan the Terrible and seventy-one others written between 1653 and 1796.10 Although the comprehensive history of art never appeared, Chizhov’s book-length articles, written in Rome and published in Moscow, established him as a minor author of travelogues and artistic commentaries. As he grappled with the grand questions of philosophy, history, and art, his strong devotion to Russian culture, particularly Orthodox Christianity, grew explicit. This rejection of Europe brought him into the Slavophile movement. Nationalism took many forms in nineteenth-century Europe, from the patriotic fervor of Germans who threw off Napoleon’s rule in 1813 to the ecstatic self-sacrifice of Mazzini’s followers in Italy and the designation by Poles of their homeland as the “Christ of nations,” destroyed in innocence that others might live. Each of these movements sought

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to create a nation-state, a unified territory populated primarily by members of a distinct cultural community, whether German, Italian, or Polish. Russian patriots of the early nineteenth century had no such longings because Russia had for centuries been the largest state in the world. Romantic nationalists in Moscow, who became known as Slavophiles in the early 1840s, searched instead for an authentic identity based on the Russian language, folklore, and religion. This quest led them to reject the bureaucratic oppression of the state, which they considered, inaccurately, the creation of Emperor Peter I in the early eighteenth century. Like the nationalists in Europe who exalted the alleged purity, wisdom, simplicity, and goodness of the common people (le peuple, il populo, das Volk, narod in Polish and Russian), the Slavophiles looked to the Russian masses, primarily the peasants— serfs and state peasants, bound respectively to the lands of the gentry and of the state—and the lower, uneducated strata of the urban population as well, as the repository of true Christian holiness and the hope of an integral Russian community of the future. The Slavophiles thus revered the common people despite its poverty and crudeness because they saw in it the antithesis of the European aristocracy and bourgeoisie, considered morally bankrupt because of their allegedly excessive rationalism and heritage of military conquests. Against the doctrine of Official Nationality, which considered the Russian state the most progressive force in society, the Slavophiles denounced the importation of European military, administrative, and artistic norms, often established and managed by non-Russian experts. Against the doctrine of the Westerners, who, like the Official Nationalists, praised Peter I and his heirs for allegedly opening Russia to European civilization but hoped eventually to replace the tsarist autocracy with a liberal or socialist system inspired by the revolutionary movements of 1789 and 1830, the Slavophiles condemned the principle of constitutional government, whether elitist or egalitarian, on the grounds that, as an expression of the individualist and rationalist assumptions of the Enlightenment, self-government raised humanity to the level of divinity and thus cultivated the fatal sin of pride. At work on his history of art in Europe, Chizhov remained oblivious to these debates over the fate of Russia. However, his own disillusionment with European civilization and his admiration for the works of

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Russian artists and writers in Rome led him to write several important articles in which he expressed ideas remarkably similar to those of the Slavophiles. In particular, Chizhov helped to create the reputation of the most important Russian artist in the reign of Nicholas I: Aleksandr A. Ivanov. Chizhov’s friendship with Ivanov, whom he knew well in Rome in 1842–1847, resulted in a series of articles in Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (The St. Petersburg News) in 1842 and a long analysis published in 1846. In these reports, Chizhov acquainted the Russian public with the work of Russian artists in Rome, especially Ivanov’s masterpiece, “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” This huge painting, eight by ten arshins (approximately nineteen by twenty-three feet), portrayed John the Baptist hailing the arrival of Jesus at the River Jordan. Chizhov called this event “the most solemn moment in the history of mankind: the beginning of the activity of the Redeemer of the world.” Ivanov’s monumental painting represented artistic perfection: “there is nothing left to be desired . . . Now bring together everything that I have mentioned: the lofty achievements of Ivanov’s painting; his devoted service to art, which approaches self-denial; his ready response to the noble call of nationality, that is, the most active participation in contemporary life; his unceasing struggle against [adverse] circumstances—and now you have a complete picture of the struggle between art and life, the struggle in which the true artist of our time must sacrifice his entire personality.”11 Proud to be living in Rome among what he called “the flower of our artistic world,” Chizhov studded his survey of their works with aggressively nationalistic statements such as this: “It is time for us to gain faith in ourselves and to convince the world that our nationality has a content of its own [sobstvennoe svoe soderzhanie] and that an imitation [of Europe] was only its first step on the path to [full] development.”12 Chizhov grew close to other Russians during his long stay abroad. After arriving in Rome in late 1842, he found lodgings with the novelist Nikolai V. Gogol and the poet Nikolai M. Iazykov. As Chizhov recalled in 1856, “we spent the entire winter in a house there, at 126 Via Felice. The late Iazykov lived on the second floor, Gogol on the third, and I on the fourth. We saw each other almost every day. Iazykov and I lived just like brothers, in close harmony [dusha v dushu], as the saying goes, and we remained true brothers to the last minute

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of his life [in December 1846].”13 Chizhov and Iazykov exchanged letters often after the poet returned to Russia in August 1843, largely because the two men shared a passionate devotion to Russian nationalist ideas. At the same time, Chizhov became interested in Russia’s role in world history as the largest and most powerful Slavic state. Early in his European travels, in July 1841, Chizhov had met the great Czech scholar Vaclav Hanka in Prague. Six years later, Chizhov praised Hanka for promoting “Slavic ideas, that is, conceptions of the closeness of the Slavic peoples [plemen, literally, “tribes”] to one another and of their future convergence [sblizhenie].”14 Chizhov’s commitment to the cultural renaissance of the Slavic peoples began in earnest two years later, in September 1843, when he walked from Venice to the Slavic lands of Istria and Dalmatia to collect materials on the history of the Venetian Republic. In a letter to Iazykov, Chizhov shared his initial impressions: “Especially in Dalmatia I met our Slavs, who are one with us in blood [edinokrovnykh], and, what impressed me even more powerfully, who are our coreligionists [edinovernykh: fellow Eastern Orthodox Christians]. I forgot about Venice. Never had I imagined that one could find in the West such a reception, comparable to what one would receive among close relatives [rodnoi priem]. This was definitely Russia, only a Russia oppressed and befouled by vile Germans, by Austrians, who are even more vile than Germans.”15 Chizhov’s trip to Istria, Dalmatia, and Montenegro in 1843, another to Istria and Montenegro in 1844, and a third to Croatia, Serbia, and Hungary in 1845 intensified his nationalist feelings. The warm welcome that he encountered among Slavs living under Austrian and Ottoman rule, particularly those who shared his Orthodox Christian faith, encouraged him in his dedication to promoting the historic destiny of the Slavic peoples. During his first trip to the Slavic lands, in 1843, Chizhov visited an Orthodox church in Peroj, a village near the western coast of the Istrian peninsula, where the congregation lacked an adequate supply of religious books and implements with which to carry out religious services. He appealed to a devout Moscow merchant, Platon V. Golubkov, who promptly sent funds. In September 1844 Chizhov described to Golubkov the joy with which the Orthodox believers in Peroj had welcomed the gifts from Russia: four boxes of church plate,

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vestments, breviaries, and grammar books. So great was the impression made by Chizhov’s letter in Moscow that the historian Mikhail Pogodin published it in his nationalist journal Moskvitianin (The Muscovite), much to Chizhov’s consternation, as he had not written it for publication.16 Chizhov also felt fortunate to be in Paris from late May to mid-July 1844, when he heard the last of the famous lectures on the destiny of the Slavic peoples delivered at the Collège de France by Adam Mickiewicz, the great Polish poet and messianic philosopher. Mickiewicz propounded a “Slavic idea,” according to which the Slavic peoples stood poised to lead humanity into a new era of purity and self-fulfillment.17 Chizhov shared Mickiewicz’s faith in the glorious future of the Slavic peoples but rejected the poet’s mysticism and reverence for the Napoleonic myth as an essential factor in the future liberation of Poland, a notion that, in view of the events of 1812, could never appeal to patriotic Russians. As he told Mickiewicz during one of their conversations in Paris, “We both have our conceptions, and what is pure in them has been acquired by your sufferings and the agitations of life, but mine are the property of my people [plemia]. When you are exalted, you are exalted as Mickiewicz, but, whatever my name is, I am exalted only because I am a true Russian.”18 In this spirit, Chizhov condemned the brilliant civilization of Europe as a danger to the simple Russian people. His long diatribe, “Farewell to France,” written in Venice in 1844, appeared in the Slavophile journal Moskovskii literaturnyi i uchenyi sbornik (The Moscow Literary and Scholarly Miscellany) three years later. However admirable “the firmness of civil rights” and the brilliance of the arts and science in France might have seemed, Chizhov saw in European civilization the threat of “moral putrefaction” for Russia. He appealed to the romantic notion that every people had its own essence. To implant European institutions in Russia, as the Official Nationalists and Westerners urged in their separate visions of the future, would doom the soul of Russia to extinction. “Everything tells us that true civilization offers only one path. This is the development of the strengths of the common people [narodnykh sil],” he wrote. Accordingly, Russian nationalists must prepare for a new stage of history, one in which the Slavic peoples would lead humanity forward to the eventual fulfillment of its spiritual destiny.19

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During his travels among the South Slavs, Chizhov filled his diary with vivid impressions of the struggle of Slavic nationalists against the repression imposed by the German, Austrian, and Ottoman governments. In the spirit of Pan-Slavism, he sought the post of Russian envoy to Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) in late 1844, but the tsarist government denied this application.20 Limited to literary work, he published some of his travel notes in Pogodin’s Moskvitianin in 1845 and in the Slavophile journal Russkaia beseda (The Russian Colloquium, 1856– 1860) in 1857.21 Iazykov’s fervent patriotism naturally intensified Chizhov’s interest in the new phenomenon of Slavophilism, the romantic nationalist doctrine that had emerged among the university-educated youth in Moscow during his absence. In 1845, at the age of thirty-four, Chizhov returned to St. Petersburg. To his disappointment, his acquaintances there appeared indifferent to what Mickiewicz called “the Slavic idea.” In his letters to Ivanov, Chizhov made clear how bitterly the struggle for the new historical epoch was raging. He condemned the editors of newspapers and journals in St. Petersburg for imitating Europe, as he found in them “nothing of their own, everything reprinted entirely from the French, German, and English.” Readers in the imperial capital impressed him as uncritical followers of European cultural trends, “cosmopolitans in everything—life, beliefs, virtues, and vices—that is, people who gather up everything. But even in gathering something else is necessary, not just a bag and a hook with which to pull garbage out of a dump.”22 When he arrived in Moscow in mid-December 1845, Chizhov witnessed for the first time the ideological rivalry of the “intellectual parties,” the Slavophiles and Westerners. He met the six founders of the Slavophile circle: Aleksei S. Khomiakov (a brother-in-law of Nikolai Iazykov), Ivan and Petr V. Kireevskii, Konstantin and Ivan S. Aksakov, and Iurii F. Samarin. Chizhov marveled at their determination to defend everything Russian, while he scorned the Westerners, who looked to Europe as a model and used European values to “seduce” the common Russian people. He claimed to belong to the Slavophiles “in spirit” because “they are vigorously at odds with Europe.” Although he admitted to Ivanov that he did not wholly embrace the Slavophiles’ tendency to seek salvation in the Russian past, Chizhov read widely in the Russian historical literature. This interest found expression in a

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review that he wrote of Ivan M. Snegirev’s book on documents relating to the history of Moscow. The Slavophiles published the review in their annual miscellany.23 From this time onward, Chizhov identified himself as a Slavophile. Although his later career in railroad management and banking gave him a somewhat different perspective on Russia’s path from that of his fellow Slavophiles, who devoted more thought and effort than he did to questions of Russian Orthodox theology, pre-Petrine history, and the plight of the peasantry, his friends considered him a member of the Slavophile movement, and historians have concurred in this judgment. Ivan Aksakov, for example, recalled that Chizhov arrived in Moscow in 1845 “already completely mature, having reached a complete identity of major principles and views [with us] through his own independent development” during his stay in Europe, so that when he met the Slavophiles in person “he only become more firmly committed” to their ideas than before.24 The Soviet encyclopedia credited Chizhov with “a leading role” in the Slavophile movement along with twelve others. According to Ivan Aksakov’s Soviet biographer, Chizhov became, together with Aksakov and Iurii Samarin, “the undisputed leader of Slavophilism in the era of the Great Reforms.”25 Chizhov never published a coherent version of his theory of world history, but he expressed his main conclusions in a statement to the tsarist authorities in May 1847 and in several long diary entries. All employed the rhetoric of romantic nationalism. In 1847, he specified seven stages of history, each dominated by one nation or people (plemia, literally “tribe”) that “transformed the world” as it realized in actions “the full power of its nature.” Following the first four epochs, dominated successively by the Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman peoples, the Italian, or Romance, people embodied the principle of “feeling”; the German people, “reason”; and the Germano-British people, “action.” The next epoch of history, which would dawn soon, would belong to “a new nation,” the Slavs, represented by the Russians, because the various Slavic peoples “that have maintained the imperishability of their nature to the greatest extent” looked instinctively for leadership to the Russians, whom they called “brothers” and whose tsar they regarded as their own true monarch.26 Chizhov later embellished this basic scheme with even more florid rhetoric, complete with pseudoscientific Latin phrases to characterize

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the three most recent periods of world history—the Romance, German, and English—and the one to come, the Slavic: According to this theory, which I express in the following formula, the medieval period [was characterized by the philosophy of] “I feel, therefore I am” [Sentio ergo sum]; the period of modern history, “I think, therefore I am” [Cogito ergo sum, the famous dictum of René Descartes]; the current period, “I create, therefore I am” [Facio ergo sum]; and the future period, namely the Slavic, “I am, therefore I am” [Sum ergo sum]. Life will cease to be one-sided; it will give free rein [to humanity] and will harmonize all facets of human nature—feeling, intellect, and will—and in this way will become the whole life of humanity. The historical person will in no way be distinguished from the ideal person [cheloveka normal’nogo], as a person.

In the medieval period, dominated by the Italians, Spanish, and French, “the supreme historical person was the knight or the monk.” In the modern world, which began with the French Revolution, “the educated, intellectually developed” person took precedence. (The motto of the French philosopher Descartes represented to Chizhov the spirit of rationalism, which he associated with the Germans.) In the present, power lay in the hands of the British merchant, industrialist, military commander, or diplomat: “the man of action [deiatel’], whether a scoundrel or [one who respects] neither faith nor law [ni foi ni loi], just for the sake of being the representative of colossal activities.” In the Slavic period of the future, in contrast, “the more fully realized and integral [he is], the more exalted he shall be in the conception of the times.”27 This unification of society and the individual, to be exemplified by the fullest possible realization of all the potential of physical and spiritual life, would occur, he believed, only when the Slavs became fully conscious of their destiny. Traditional social and political systems would lose their rationale, and a new era of human history would begin. The Slavs—then the most meek and underdeveloped of the European peoples—would inherit the earth, in keeping with Christ’s prophetic sermon. Echoes of ideas of the early Pan-Slavic thinkers, such as Mickiewicz, Jan Kollár, and Vaclav Hanka, also can be detected in Chizhov’s statement that there existed “no legal foundation for the existence of aristocracy, and therefore also of democracy,” which

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Chizhov considered simply “the negation of aristocracy.” Like two poles of a magnet, in his pseudoscientific metaphor, aristocracy and democracy both opposed and sustained one another. As one grew weak, so the other would dissolve. European history, marked by violent invasions and conquests, would fade into the past. Social strife would disappear, and Christian love would prevail at last. In his diary and his published articles, Chizhov never mentioned the ideology of Marx and Engels, which of course expressed the Hegelian stage theory in materialist, economic, and allegedly more scientific terms than these. In any case, the Marxian emphasis on violent revolution as “the locomotive of history” found no place in Chizhov’s conception of the eventual triumph of the Slavic principle of human integrity, based on the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount. Would the coming age find it necessary “to wage war with the children of the moribund period? Not at all. There is no inner impulse toward animosity.”28 In a long letter to Iurii Samarin in July 1855, Chizhov reiterated this theory of history, using the four Latin terms (credo, cogito, facio, sum). He credited the Italian thinker Giambatista Vico with the idea that each people (narod), at a specific time in human history, made its unique contribution to the development of world civilization by developing its own “idea.”29 Shortly before he died, Chizhov wrote, “I devoted myself with all my soul to the Slavic question; in the Slavs I saw the dawn of the next period of history.”30 The Slavophile label also reflected the importance that Chizhov assigned to the Russian Orthodox religion. In this respect, Chizhov’s acquaintance with Nikolai Gogol proved especially significant. Chizhov admitted that during their residence at 126 Via Felice in the winter of 1842–1843, “I did not become close to Gogol at all.” He had read Dead Souls without enthusiasm, perceiving in it “a certain lack of an internal drama.” Moreover, during their residence in Rome the two men quarreled over seemingly inconsequential literary issues. Chizhov blamed his own “internal obstinacy” for the distance between them. Shortly thereafter, however, he reread Dead Souls and recognized it as a work of genius. In August 1845, he praised Gogol as “our single Russian talent” in literature.31 Chizhov also apparently approved of Gogol’s flamboyant book on religious, political, and cultural themes, Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847), which contained praise for the nationalistic poetry of Nikolai Iazykov and the

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monumental religious canvas of Aleksandr Ivanov. Only in his diary did Chizhov admit that he took some malicious pleasure in one of the many hostile reviews of Gogol’s book.32 Paradoxically, this banal book, written in the reactionary spirit of Official Nationality, enjoys immortality because it prompted Vissarion G. Belinskii to write the most famous letter in the history of Russian literature: his “Letter to Gogol” (1847), a classic statement of the rationalist and secular ideology embraced by the Westerners at this time. Especially impressed by Aleksei Khomiakov, whose poetry expressed the notion of Slavic and Russian greatness in the near future, Chizhov decided to embark on a new career once he returned to Russia for good: to edit a Slavophile journal in Moscow. He believed that his own travel notes would enlighten the Russian public about the struggle of the South Slavs for cultural autonomy and perhaps independence. He began recruiting a team of experts who would translate, review, and analyze literary currents in all the Slavic languages. He even hoped to publish translations of foreign works about Russia, with the stipulation that such articles, because of their political sensitivity, be censored by the Emperor’s Own Chancery, not the regular censorship. He returned to Europe in November 1846, planning to contact Slavs who would contribute to his new journal. The new publication was to be funded by a 30,000ruble bequest in Nikolai Iazykov’s will. The project proceeded slowly, but in early 1847 all the Slavophiles knew of the intended launch of the journal in January 1848,33 just before Chizhov’s thirtyseventh birthday. According to one version of Chizhov’s travels in the Slavic lands, he helped a group of Montenegrins prepare for an armed uprising against the Austrian government. Ivan Aksakov recalled that Chizhov “had somehow managed to help the Montenegrins unload weapons [oruzhie] onto the Dalmatian coast. This fact, together with his visits to the Austrian Slavs, provoked the Austrian government to give a denunciation of him” to the Russian authorities.34 Whether Chizhov ever touched a rifle is not clear. In any case, the Austrian authorities, who had apparently observed with some alarm his friendly contacts with Orthodox Christian Slavs during his travels in 1843, 1844, and 1845, informed the Russian authorities of his whereabouts in 1847 as he prepared to return to his native land. For his part, Chizhov suspected

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nothing of the surveillance. As he said farewell to his Russian friends in Rome in March 1847, he felt sad but calm, ready to leave contemplation behind “and to start, bit by bit, a different life.”35 He had already published in Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti eight letters on social life, art, and economic development in Italy.36 After a leisurely trip to Orvieto and Florence, where he visited cathedrals and made copious notes about works of art, he arrived in Venice on April 11/23, 1847. Then he ordered a new suit of clothes and planned his return to Russia via Trieste and Vienna. He intended to visit friends in Kiev before turning northward to Moscow, where the Slavophiles awaited his arrival.

Arrest and Internal Exile Then Chizhov’s life changed forever. Arrested at the Russian border post on May 6/18 by an officer of the Third Section—the tsarist secret police—on the strength of the denunciation by the Austrian authorities, Chizhov traveled under armed guard to St. Petersburg and spent approximately ten days as a prisoner in the infamous Peter and Paul Fortress. There the chief of the Third Section, Leontii V. Dubelt, posed a variety of politically sensitive questions. What was the nature of Chizhov’s relationships to the European Slavs, the Polish exiles Adam Mickiewicz and Count Adam Gurowski, the French linguist Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, and the Russian Slavophiles? Did he plan to propagate Slavic ideas in his new journal? Had he written a secret article in 1834 and 1835 promoting liberalism? And what was the significance of his decision to wear a beard? Chizhov denied any subversive intentions. He claimed that purely scholarly interests—art history and cultural tendencies among the Slavs—had led him to travel widely in Europe, where he had discovered an enormous reservoir of goodwill among Orthodox Christians toward Russians in general and Emperor Nicholas I in particular. He admitted to having conversed with Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, a nephew of Emperor Napoleon I, but only to study the Basque language and other linguistic problems. In return, Chizhov had tutored Bonaparte in spoken Russian and had presented him with a Slavic bible as a tool of research. As for Mickiewicz, Chizhov wrote that the Polish patriot had impressed him as a hopelessly impractical dreamer, one whose

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political program of a resurrection of Poland with the aid of France proceeded from a faith in the coming of a messianic leader, a notion that Chizhov rejected. He claimed in this document (as he had already recounted in a letter to Iazykov) to have reprimanded Mickiewicz for what Chizhov considered a lack of true feeling for the greater Slavic nation. In an answer seventeen paragraphs long, Chizhov defended his decision to grow a beard in 1841. It was the fashion in Europe; in Russia, peasants appeared willing to speak freely to him about the economic issues that he was studying because the beard signified that he did not belong to the tsarist bureaucracy; and it facilitated his research on the history of Russian icon painting among Old Believers, who wore beards according to their religious conviction that God had created man in his own image. Although Chizhov admitted his devotion to the notion of Slavic solidarity, he concluded that his opinions, like those of the Moscow Slavophiles, were “purely a matter of scholarship and pertain strictly to a historical outlook, without any political tendency.”37 In June, Aleksandr Nikitenko recorded Chizhov’s version of the interrogation. “Of course in his testimony he did not touch on the democratic principles of the Slavophile teaching and emerged all clean and pure from the interrogation.”38 (On Chizhov’s ambivalence toward liberalism and democracy, see Chapter 4.) These answers satisfied Emperor Nicholas I. “Chizhov turned out to be only a Slavophile,” he wrote, a man “not at all dangerous” to the state. However, the emperor accurately perceived a rebellious nature in the acerbic tone of Chizhov’s responses. “It would be good to have a few more Chizhovs. The sentiments are good, but they are expressed with too much vigor and zeal [vyrazheny slishkom zhivo i goriacho]. To be forbidden residence in both capitals.” The emperor set no time limit on this period of exile from St. Petersburg and Moscow, the two main centers of Russian intellectual life.39 Likewise, Chizhov’s interrogator, Dubelt, found him “a lively, obstinate, and very angry” person: “some kind of devil, and not a man,” he told Ivan Aksakov.40 In 1856, following the death of Nicholas I, Chizhov finally learned that he was no longer required to submit his written work to the Third Section for censorship.41 Still, the prohibition on residence in either Moscow or St. Petersburg doomed his literary career.

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Chizhov now faced an unpleasant choice of residences. He lacked financial resources, having earned little during his seven years’ research in the churches, museums, and libraries of Europe. (He appears to have subsisted on money loaned to him over the years by Grigorii Galagan and others. These debts he repaid gradually in the 1860s.) To Gogol, Chizhov wrote bravely, “I do not know misfortunes; my poverty does not oppress me, and therefore it is not a misfortune.”42 Still, the grand survey of art history remained a jumble of facts and vague generalities in his head. According to a biographical account apparently based on his letters to his sisters, he sought a teaching position in Kiev, but the government prevented that as well. No obvious opportunity for employment existed by which he might have paid off his considerable debts.43 At this crucial moment, at the age of thirty-six, Chizhov demonstrated an admirable combination of vision and self-control. Having observed the cultivation of silkworms and the production of silk textiles in Italy, he decided to teach himself the rudiments of this complex industry. He returned to South Russia, visited two experts on silkworm cultivation, and worked at a silk plantation near Odessa to learn the craft. He filled his diary for the years 1850–1856 with details of his successes and failures in raising silkworms on sixty desiatinas (approximately 162 acres) of land that he had acquired from the Ministry of State Domains on a twenty-four-year lease. Located some fifty versts (approximately thirty-three miles) downstream from Kiev on the Dnepr River near the village of Tripolie, this tiny plantation remained his home until the end of the reign of Nicholas I. (In 1896, an archaeologist discovered the first relics of a prehistoric culture in Tripolie, now called the Tripolye, or Cucuteni-Trypillia, culture, after this site and another in present-day Rumania.) This venture promised little financial gain for Chizhov. Rather, he sought to help the peasants of the Kiev region by introducing a new form of economic activity. Enormous efforts were needed to plant new mulberry trees, to train peasants in the cultivation of the silkworms, and to organize the slow and delicate work of unwinding the cocoons.44 In late 1851, for example, he took delivery of 2,536 mulberry trees, of which he kept 2,000. The rest he distributed to seven neighboring landowners.45 Two of his sisters visited the plantation in hopes, shared by the local peasants, of prospering from

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Chizhov’s experiment in silk production. However, the amounts of silk produced on the little estate remained ridiculously small. After Ivan Aksakov visited Tripolie in 1854, he claimed that the silk operation was going “splendidly,” but he admitted that the sixty peasants whom Chizhov had tutored failed to produce silk of high quality. Chizhov’s own efforts resulted in eight puds (approximately 288 pounds) of silk, worth only a thousand rubles before expenses. To Aksakov he appeared bored, ready to return to Moscow at the first opportunity.46 Toward the end of 1855, Chizhov assessed his efforts in the most agonized terms. “Like a fish [flopping] on the ice,” he was losing money in what should have been a profitable undertaking. A lack of adequate investment capital contributed to the problem, but he also blamed his own carelessness and his inability to instill honesty in his workers: “I just do not know what to do; my economic activity is going wretchedly [idet iz ruk von]. Everything around me shows the results of my ignorance, and everyone is deceiving me. I see that as long as I am alone, I find it impossible to exist.” The following spring, he waited too long to begin feeding the worms, so that by June he expected to obtain only about five puds (180 pounds) of raw silk. The year after that, the enterprise yielded less than one pud.47 Still, he continued, in accordance with his Slavophile ideals, to admire the fortitude of the peasants, “great teachers of life,” who contented themselves with perhaps one-tenth of what he owned but never complained.48 The major results of Chizhov’s internal exile occurred not in economics but in his literary development. In 1854, while planting mulberry trees, building barns, and supervising clumsy peasants as they fed silkworms and unwound cocoons, Chizhov recorded his critical reactions to dozens of comedies written by the eighteenth-century Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni.49 He also learned the limits of his scholarly abilities. Even the Slavophiles found his stage theory of history unconvincing. In the summer of 1855, Iurii Samarin commented negatively on the letter “in which I communicated to him my theory of history. He does not agree with it in many respects. To him it seems not to comprehend all the phenomena of life.” Likewise, Aleksandr Koshelev, the editor of Russkaia beseda, a Slavophile journal, apparently showed disdain for Chizhov’s theory.50

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Editors and readers found his writings on silk cultivation more compelling than his disquisitions on art history. Nine articles—called “letters”— on silk appeared in Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti and in book form in 1853. An expanded edition, published in 1870, contained twenty-three chapters.51 Although Chizhov endured his poverty-stricken existence at Tripolie alone, he did not cut himself off entirely from the social life of the Russian gentry. Always welcome at the home of the Galagans at Sokirintsy, in nearby Poltava province, he socialized with other leading landlords in the region around Kiev. The most important of these was Count Aleksei A. Bobrinskii, a pioneer of sugar-beet cultivation in South Russia, where the climate and soil offered favorable conditions for the creation of a major rural industry. Count Bobrinskii and his wife Sofiia, with whom Chizhov had spent many pleasant evenings during his sojourn in South Russia in 1840–1841, helped him by arranging introductions to important people who provided essential loans to finance the silk enterprise. Chizhov hoped to interest Bobrinskii in silkworm cultivation, as he had successfully propagated the notion among his fellow landlords in the Kiev district.52 The effort to produce silk had an important moral dimension as well. In October 1855 Chizhov recorded his long and slow journey of 142 versts to Smela, Bobrinskii’s grand estate in Cherkassy district, Kiev province, where hundreds of serfs toiled in the fields cultivating beets and refining sugar on an industrial scale. The ramshackle hovels where the serfs—“my brothers”—lived and the treeless landscape struck Chizhov as morally pernicious, although he respected the count as “a good and noble” man. Despite the shortcomings of his character—“I am very, very much not a gentle person, and I am far from being as good” as Bobrinskii, he wrote—Chizhov took pride in his plantation at Tripolie. The cultivation of beet sugar resembled “factory work, for which the person is a laborer and nothing more,” whereas peasants who learned to grow silkworms practiced a healthy “rural” industry, “for which each worker must become a peasant who is master of his economic fate [khoziain-poselianik].”53 Chizhov’s commitment to the peasantry was not absolute. He considered Ukrainian peasants excessively egotistical and individualistic. True Christian humility he perceived only among Russian peasants. As an educated person, he scorned the superstition and brutality that

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pervaded the life of the serfs. With genuine disgust he recorded an incident, told to him by a neighboring landlord, in which a peasant woman had coated dried pumpkin seeds with her own milk and given the seeds to several young women, who fed the seeds to young men in the village in hopes that the secret potion would kindle their romantic interest in the girls. When the woman’s landlord learned of this activity, he ordered her stripped to the waist and whipped. Chizhov found the behavior of both the peasant woman and her landlord abominable. His inability to alleviate the sufferings of the serfs because of his limited financial means weighed heavily on him. As early as 1846, in a letter to Aleksandr Ivanov, he asserted that only his mother’s opposition prevented him from freeing the family’s serfs in Kostroma province. More than five years before the promulgation of the Emancipation Statute in February 1861, he expressed regret that he did not have enough money to buy some serfs, settle them on his silk plantation in Tripolie, and then set them free. During the debate over the terms of the emancipation of the serfs, he favored providing them with land rather than turning them into a landless rabble.54 All in all, Chizhov remained true to the Slavophile idea that the essence of Russian nationality resided in the peasants. Paradoxically, even as he strove to protect this precious cultural heritage from corruption by European civilization, he admitted—in conformity with the romantic notion that reason itself cannot comprehend the ineffable national culture of the common people—that the Slavophiles’ superior education prevented them from understanding fully the complexity of the peasant culture that they professed to love: Our people’s nationality is extensive, and its vocation is great, but we who do battle on its behalf are far from being saturated by it, and we cannot be saturated by it both because, as we ourselves developed, we were cut off from the spirit of the common people [nenarodno] and because nationality itself, in the absence of a completely realized national life, has not yet expressed itself in all its fullness . . . It is not given to us, pygmies, to comprehend the entire vastness of that vocation or the entire plenitude of the purpose of that people, which knows how to submit to a most unsubmissive nature and knows how to recreate itself and, most importantly of all, knew by itself how to remain submissive to Providence.

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The highest personal value in his own life—“independence”—he now ascribed to the Russian masses, though he ignored the individualistic implications of that principle: What was important in our [historical] life was not the Assemblies of the Land [zemskie sobory, consultative assemblies summoned occasionally by the Muscovite tsars between 1549 and 1682] nor their traditional form. What was important was their complete independence [in offering advice to the tsar]. What is important is what we will give to the person in the fullness of our development: the type of person who lives on the earth. Among Russians, independence and submissiveness indicate the boundary that distinguishes the individuality of a person from [that of] a member of society, its servant. Europe will not resolve this. It will never cease boasting about its past. We have none because the development of life in our country was never complete.55

Chizhov faced the future with confidence, fortified by this Slavophile conception of the spiritual superiority of the Russian people. He saw in romantic nationalism the solution of the contradiction between the individual and society in Russia, despite its long history of economic backwardness and its political impotence under autocracy. He would find it difficult, however, to choose a vocation in which he could directly help the downtrodden peasantry. Instead, he blazed his own path in economic journalism and corporate entrepreneurship. After the death of Nicholas I in 1855, the new emperor, Alexander II, rescinded the restrictions on Chizhov’s residence. He and his Slavophile friends had hoped to gain control of the major journal in Moscow, Russkii vestnik (The Russian Herald), but under the editorship of Mikhail N. Katkov, approved by Alexander II on October 31, 1855, it maintained a generally pro-government stance, which the Slavophiles found distasteful.56 Having received permission to publish freely, Chizhov contented himself at first with writing articles on various subjects for Russkaia beseda and other journals edited by the Slavophiles.57 In June 1856, however, he found himself “at a terrible crossroads [na strashnom rasputii]” as he agonized over a difficult choice between his two main interests. He felt flattered by Aleksandr Koshelev’s invitation to edit the new Slavophile journal: “I very much want to be an editor, as it would be something more

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than fitting for me; [but] I simply do not know how everything can be arranged [kak vse obdelaetsia]” because he could not bear to abandon silk production.58 At the end of this second transitional period in his life, 1847–1856, Chizhov identified the vocation to which he would devote the rest of his life: Russian economic development. Less than ten months after bemoaning the contradiction between editorial and industrial work, he resolved the dilemma by an ingenious combination of the two elements: he would become the editor of a new journal devoted to Russian economic development. He emerged from his exile fully prepared to serve as the editor of Vestnik promyshlennosti (The Herald of Industry, 1858–1861). A brief note in his diary in March 1857, a month after his forty-sixth birthday, recorded this major turning point. He had recently traveled to Kiev to obtain “some sort of stupid certificate regarding my trustworthiness” in support of his petition for permission to edit a journal. He expressed considerable optimism, now that he had defined economic development as the means to improve the lot of the common people and the country in the wake of the Crimean War. He moderated his enthusiasm with typical self-deprecation. Once again he was playing the amateur: I have started a project in Moscow: editing Vestnik promyshlennosti, [for which] I have submitted a request . . . In the past two weeks or so I have written about twenty-five letters, many of them having to do with the new journal. Again I have gone astray [Opiat’ ia sbilsia s puti]. Tossing aside art history, you take up political economy and commerce and industry. Indeed, this is the issue of the day. This is the true path to uplifting the lowest strata of the common people [nizkikh sloev naroda]. Here, in my opinion, the merchants must emerge into the world as public figures. Merchants are the representatives [vybornye] of the people. Merchants are the primary basis of our historical life, that is, the essentially Great Russian life, as exemplified by [medieval] Novgorod and Pskov.59

This entry proved significant because of his glorification of the Russian merchants. He applauded the merchants’ close ties to the peasantry, beloved by the Slavophiles as the alleged bearers of the truly Russian Orthodox Christian culture. Later, as he sought their financial

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support of his periodicals and their help in creating and managing banks and railroads, he found the Moscow merchants less generous and capable than he had hoped. The great cultural gap between the gentry—his own social estate—and the merchants proved too wide to be bridged by such lofty notions of economic nationalism. In early 1857, however, these tribulations lay in the future. He had found his life’s vocation.

Personality and Entrepreneurship Chizhov became an advocate of Russian economic nationalism rather late in life. What qualities of intellect and character propelled him into his triple career as a nationalist intellectual, journalist, and corporate entrepreneur? The most basic definition of entrepreneurship focuses on the rare ability to combine productive forces in new and unusually profitable combinations. It would be pointless, however, to attempt a psychological analysis of Chizhov’s motives in an effort to explain precisely what aspects of his character made him a successful entrepreneur. Problems of documenting hidden drives perplex psychologists who pose questions directly to their patients. Written evidence, even in so richly detailed a diary as Chizhov’s, hardly seems adequate to the historian’s task. The complete text of his diary and letters, suitably annotated with explanations of their many subtleties, may someday provide experts with the necessary material for a competent diagnosis of his character. Even then, however, it might not be possible to diagnose the interplay of his conflicting impulses in a way that would explain the psychological wellsprings of his career. (For example, the diary contains only one account—though a vivid and significant one—of a dream, discussed in Chapter 4.) His unmarried status fails to account for the contrast between Chizhov’s successes and the economic stagnation that afflicted, for example, most Russian monasteries, managed by celibate monks. Likewise, his frugality might well have concealed a drive for luxury, according to Freud’s theory of reaction formation. In the absence of firm evidence, it seems futile to attribute the strongest traits of his character—asceticism and honesty to the point of pedantry—to their opposites. The wisest course appears to be reporting his own introspective remarks, phrased in the familiar rhetoric of

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Christian sin and redemption, as he wrestled with his conflicting emotions: pride, sloth, and envy on the one hand and diligence, asceticism, honesty, devotion to the Russian people, and Christian resignation on the other. Nor do sociological categories provide a full explanation. To be sure, as noted in the Introduction, some groups have distinguished themselves by unusual talents for economic activity, often as a means of self-defense in hostile social and political settings. It is not clear why Chizhov, a Russian, displayed the extraordinary entrepreneurial abilities usually associated with Germans, Poles, Armenians, and Jews in tsarist Russia. Culturally specific categories of personal character and devotion to high ideals provide only slightly better explanations than psychological ones. It was not simply Russian nationalism that drove Chizhov to succeed. The Slavophiles Ivan Aksakov and Aleksandr Koshelev left a record of mediocre entrepreneurship that set the pattern for other minor journalists in the xenophobic tradition into the early twentieth century, such as Sergei F. Sharapov. Certainly Chizhov’s training in mathematics in the 1830s helped to prepare him for the complexities of corporate finance that he encountered from the late 1850s onward, but it was not simply his academic brilliance or his advanced education that accounted for his success. Professor Boris N. Chicherin, holder of a Doctor of Laws degree and one of the outstanding theoreticians of liberalism in Russia, acted as a cofounder of only one corporation, and an unsuccessful one at that: the Kozlov Commercial Bank, which failed to amass sufficient funds to begin operations after its incorporation in 1873.60 Other sociological indicators fail to solve the riddle of personal motivation. Youthful poverty sometimes serves as a goad to entrepreneurial activity, as in Chizhov’s case, but within the context of serfdom and the rigid structure of social estates under Nicholas I poverty generally closed off economic opportunity. Conversely, wealth often opens up possibilities, as was true in Chizhov’s later years, but for the Russian gentry it generally acted as a cushion that mitigated the slow but inexorable economic decline in the century before 1917. Chizhov’s geographical isolation in Kostroma perhaps kindled his ambition as he sought to make his way among the sophisticates of St. Petersburg, but, like his poverty, it appeared more an obstacle than an advantage, as he did not make contact with the Slavophiles until he was already

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thirty-four years old. He seems to have owed his success to his rare ability to transcend both poverty and wealth, to pursue his grand projects while living modestly. The one advantage that Chizhov enjoyed—birth into a gentry family—did prove crucial, in the sense that gentry status opened up the educational opportunities that made his later career possible. It also transmitted to him an ethic of service, which in the eighteenth century had meant devotion to the state. In the mid-nineteenth century this impulse increasingly took the form of service to the common people, whether in the romantic nationalist form of Slavophilism or the radical antiautocratic form of agrarian socialism.61 However, his entrepreneurial career impressed his contemporaries by its unique combination of the Slavophile notion of service to the people and a coherent program of economic nationalism. Besides access to education and the ethic of service, a third aspect of gentry culture proved crucial: the concept of personal worth, which Chizhov called “independence.” Finally, his legendary honesty, which he demonstrated both as a poverty-stricken intellectual and as a wealthy corporate manager in the midst of corrupt bureaucrats and dishonest merchants alike, apparently resulted from impulses too murky for psychology or sociology to explain. Several accounts of persons who knew Chizhov well proved especially illuminating: two from members of the gentry and one from a merchant. In the spring of 1836, Chizhov tutored the seventeen-yearold Grigorii Galagan in physics and trigonometry. Impressed by Chizhov’s brilliance, Galagan resolved to write a biography of Chizhov, then only twenty-five years old. Galagan especially admired Chizhov’s ability to live in poverty: “A rich man, however devoted to science, cannot commit himself to it and will thus not be a success.” Two years later, Galagan predicted that Chizhov, “born to be a great man” and endowed with “a huge brow larger than that of Socrates,” would make valuable contributions to “philosophy and religion” and “thereby immortalize his name.” At the same time, however, he expressed disappointment that Chizhov “lived a life that was purely spiritual” and wasted his time on translation, intellectual work better suited to “an ordinary mind.” 62 The liberal censor Aleksandr Nikitenko—it was he who helped obtain permission for Gogol to publish his satirical novel, Dead Souls—

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recorded insights into Chizhov’s character. His dedication to his close friends, his diligence, and his ready wit remained clear to Nikitenko over the decades. In May 1839, Chizhov and Dmitrii Polenov participated with others in “the usual friendly literary colloquium” at Nikitenko’s, where Chizhov read his translation of Hallam’s survey of European literature. On December 31, 1839, the last New Year’s Eve that Chizhov spent in St. Petersburg as a professor, he joined Nikitenko, Polenov, and others for a pleasant evening.63 In 1843, Nikitenko received a letter from Rome in which Chizhov expressed dissatisfaction with himself, an attitude that Nikitenko thought prevented his falling into a comfortable routine: “A happy man, he is imbibing life from a large cup. But what of it? In the process of amassing the resources for the enrichment of his inner life from such a rich repository [as the history of art], he is discontented with himself and fears moral poverty and emptiness. A strange contradiction!”64 Nearly two decades later, in 1862, Chizhov appeared to Nikitenko “a little gray, but bright and cheerful . . . He has not moved an inch forward and has not slipped back.” The following year, Nikitenko marveled, Chizhov had “become a completely industrial man.” In 1865, after a cordial meeting with Chizhov and Dmitrii Polenov, Nikitenko wrote that “Chizhov, as before, considers himself capable of deceiving [obmanut’] the whole world. At the same time, he is a truly honorable man and in fact deceives no one and is incapable of deceit.” This opinion somewhat softened Nikitenko’s characterization of Chizhov three years before as a person so confident of “the finesse of his mind” that he “was able to fool everyone [sposobnogo vsekh provesti]” and “to dissemble [pritvorit’sia].” Nikitenko’s thoughtful comments suggest that Chizhov’s friends discounted his boasting.65 Ivan Aksakov came to know Chizhov better than did Nikitenko, having welcomed Chizhov into the circle of Slavophile intellectuals in 1845. Aksakov worked closely with him in journalism in the 1850s and 1860s, in banking from the mid-1860s onward, and in the Pan-Slav movement in the following decade. The source of Chizhov’s entrepreneurial abilities lay, according to Aksakov, in the paradoxical nature of his personality. Although everyone knew him as a “practical man, intelligent, strict, and irreproachably honest” in business, he remained throughout his life “a stubborn idealist.” Despite his exalted position as the manager of corporations, which ordinarily had as their

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object “calculations of personal self-interest” and “monetary profits alone, he was the most selfless of men. He hated and despised money.” On the one hand, “such a systematic application of will to his job and such tenacity in his labors, what the Germans call Ausdauer,” appeared “possible only in someone with a firm calmness and a cool spirit.” On the other hand, Chizhov’s “ardent and passionate” nature, “devoid of impartiality,” gave the impression that he “managed to get through life only by acting on his impulses. Instead, the integral combination of these seemingly contradictory qualities was especially attractive in him. It gave him a certain moral beauty and a certain authority over others.”66 Above all, Chizhov worked to promote the common good, whether in the Slavophile and Pan-Slavic movements, in industrial journalism, or in his banks, railroads, and the steamship line. Far from pursuing his own self-interest, Aksakov maintained, Chizhov “was strongly attracted only to those causes that he considered to have a certain civic significance, useful to all, causes that, in his estimation, stood above the isolated personality of a single person. Only the public interest became his personal interest. Only in the success of such a public cause, created by his personal efforts, could he find personal satisfaction for himself and, as he said, the most precious egoistic interest.”67 Aksakov owed much to Chizhov, including salvation from financial troubles in the early 1870s, but the two men quarreled occasionally. Chizhov always showed generosity to the deserving poor but “was not softhearted and did not like to show indulgence toward weaknesses, even those of his friends . . . Practically Spartan with regard to the external comforts of life, he sternly and implacably persecuted every form of laziness, carelessness, self-satisfaction, and lack of discipline. Strict with himself, he was strict and exacting on the job, and he became extremely indignant whenever he encountered people who demonstrated an insufficient regard for their moral duty or for tasks entrusted to them.”68 Aksakov occasionally complained that Chizhov’s “firmness of will, of which he is so proud,” did not constitute a real virtue, all the less so when he berated Aksakov for not working diligently enough on the study of ancient languages, even as he criticized himself for being easily irritated by everyone and everything.69 Among the Moscow merchants, Savva I. Mamontov, who owed his illustrious career in railroad management to Chizhov’s sponsorship,

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provided a clear portrait from the perspective of one who incurred his wrath. Although “basically a good-natured person [dobryi po nature], he was demanding toward those around him, and he often would take to task and sometimes even exasperate those whom he loved, so that it was necessary to be on guard constantly . . . He treated hypocritical and banal people mercilessly, sometimes to the point of harshness. Chizhov was a virtuoso when it came to taking an insolent person down a peg or ripping the mask off a toady. Everyone knew him to be such a person and feared him.”70 The Soviet art historian Mikhail V. Alpatov drew from an examination of diary entries in the 1840s an appreciation of the strictness of Chizhov’s character, but he read the self-critical passages too literally. Chizhov appeared to Alpatov a paradox: an energetic, highly educated intellectual who dabbled in esthetics and failed to finish his “history of medieval [sic] Venice.” In Italy, “he bitterly grieved over the fate of the Russian serfs, but this sympathy did not become transformed into a willingness to help the serfs in action. Chizhov well knew that his major flaw was laziness, a lack of will, an inability put his many good intentions into practice. Only later did he participate in the nationalliberation movement in the Balkans.” Alpatov concluded that Chizhov’s character contained elements of the impractical Rudin and the hopelessly lazy Oblomov—heroes, respectively, of novels of the following decade by Ivan S. Turgenev (1855) and Ivan A. Goncharov (1858).71 However, Alpatov’s fanciful references to these fictional heroes unduly stressed the negative qualities of laziness and dilettantism, common among the so-called “superfluous men” portrayed by many Russian authors. A superfluous man Chizhov may have seemed in 1842, when he first met the Russian artists and writers in Rome. However, his mathematical training, his enthusiasm for world history as expressed in art, and his sympathy for the Balkan Slavs and Russian serfs all provided excellent preparations for his later career in industrial journalism, finance, and transportation. His ability to master the essentials of political economy and corporate management in his late forties owed much to the very trait that Alpatov disparaged: self-confidence in entering an entirely new field of knowledge and action. A careful reading of the diary reveals occasional moments of selfcongratulation. Although these expressions of satisfaction often take

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an understated form—“not bad” (nedurno) is one of the most positive assessments that Chizhov permitted himself—they clearly indicate that he took pride in his accomplishments. Paradoxically, the tendency to condemn himself for laziness drove him to new heights of activity and self-sacrifice. This duality was clear to him. This realization justified, in his mind, his insistence on high standards in the behavior of others. Thus, if Chizhov had anything in common with the literary stereotype of the superfluous man, he should be compared not to Rudin or Oblomov, who wasted their talents on vague political strivings or avoided the complexities of modern life, but to Mikhail Iu. Lermontov’s brooding adventurer, Pecherin (pronounced Pechorin), in A Hero of our Time (1840). Chizhov appeared at dinners in a jacket where others wore tuxedos and expressed his contempt for “stupid uniforms” and the trite rituals of social convention, mere outward aspects of life. He therefore praised the Moscow merchants for their occasional assertion of their newfound status as industrial leaders. After attending a ball at the lavish home of Timofei S. Morozov, his closest associate among the Moscow merchant elite, Chizhov wrote that it was wonderful to see that the merchants had not worn their medals.72 Although Chizhov maintained friendships with many aristocrats and merchants, he often behaved as an outsider. Uncomfortable in the presence of princes and counts, he met the arrogance of the aristocracy with the contempt of a self-made man from Kostroma. Nor could he accept what he regarded as the coarseness of the merchants, to whom he remained an ally rather than a friend. “I am never comfortable” with aristocrats, he admitted, and although “I am acquainted with rich merchants with them, too, I am reserved.” As a corporate manager, he welcomed the emerging social hierarchy based on individual service to society, rather than on aristocratic pedigree or even wealth itself, though he discovered that this attitude fed his insatiable pride. “I cannot tolerate any [social] distinctions, whether in myself or in others. I am ashamed that I am ostensibly rich now, but at the same time, although I do not like distinctions, I am not at all averse to the respect that I have managed to obtain in society. This silent esteem is not at all contrary to my soul.”73 Much like Lermontov’s fictional Pecherin, whose gloomy mood and sarcastic wit distanced him from polite society, Chizhov, too, displayed

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strong passion. Although a full discussion of his relations with women belongs in a thorough biography, not a monograph in business history, a few entries in his diary devoted to women deserve mention because they illuminate the ascetic side of his personality. Most accounts of his life claim that he decided to return to Russia in 1847 not only because he planned to edit the new Slavophile journal but also because he was concerned with the declining health of his mother in Kostroma.74 His mother’s health had in fact deteriorated, and news of his arrest and internal exile saddened her and possibly hastened her death, which occurred in 1848.75 A series of entries in his diary makes clear, however, that he was also agonizing over a love affair. In the summer of 1840, at the beginning of his extended stay in the Galagan household, he had fallen in love with Ekaterina V. Markovich, the wife of a nephew of Ekaterina Galagan named Mikhail A. Markovich. Their estate in Priluki district lay just five versts from Sokirintsy. Ekaterina Markovich’s misery during Chizhov’s long residences abroad did not end on his return. Already fatally ill, she grew weaker after giving birth to her fourth daughter, Ekaterina. (Simonova made a strong case for his paternity, though his diary contains no mention of it.) In early October 1847, he wrote that he had been at his “angel’s” bedside for two months. He mourned the fact that he was unable to be with her when she died in mid-December. Nearly a quarter-century later, he expressed the hope that people in the twentieth century might learn from her letters how he and this woman had loved one another. (He had destroyed his letters to her.) As Ekaterina Mikhailovna’s godfather, Chizhov loved her like a daughter. In gratitude, she named her own son Fedor after Chizhov. At the age of four, the boy innocently referred to Chizhov as “Grandpa.”76 Chizhov never married. His renunciation of his professorial post at St. Petersburg University in favor of itinerant research in Europe removed him from the marriage market in Russia, and his arrest and exile in 1847, combined with his utter lack of wealth, further reduced his prospects for an advantageous match. Following the death of Ekaterina Markovich, he evidently resolved not to become romantically involved with anyone. Among the workers in his silk enterprise and school in Tripolie he found particularly attractive a young girl from Bulgaria, whom he called his “little silkworm.” Instead of putting his Pan-Slav ideals into practice, however, he con-

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cluded that the difference in their ages—her seventeen years and his forty-five—made even the thought of marriage ludicrous.77 His portrait of the silkworm, in his book on silk cultivation, expressed this sorrow: The most thorough microscopic examination [of the silkworm’s anatomy] has hitherto not discovered the slightest trace of the organs of love. The poor worm is condemned to live without love and without love’s animal ecstasies. The fate of the worm as dictated by nature is not enviable, but even less enviable is the period of its life [in the cocoon]. It is not enough that, in its turn, it is deprived of all animal pleasures, even that of eating. No, it is also necessary that we, for our own mercenary motives, mercilessly submit it to horrible torments, for example suffocation by applied heat. The fate of the silkworm is a bitter one, and there is scarcely any other creature that might be better described by the verses of the Ukrainian poet and philosopher [Grigorii] Skovoroda: Devoid of love, devoid of joy, I roam throughout the world, And to misfortune bid farewell And then encounter woe!78

Coupled with his decision to remain a bachelor went a curious concern for the welfare of women, with special emphasis on women’s education, revealed as early as 1839 in his translation of Woman’s Mission from the English. For example, in Vestnik promyshlennosti he argued that only “ignorance and unconcealed hostility to the extension of education to the middle and lower strata of citizens” hindered the establishment of primary and secondary schools for young women. He continued to give speeches and to publish articles advocating the education of women. He was delighted when his goddaughter, Ekaterina M. Trifonovskaia (née Markovich), requested serious books for her son, Fedor, after an initial education based mostly on romantic French novels.79 During the last decade of his life, Chizhov dined often with two older women of the aristocracy. With Avdotia P. Elagina, mother of two of the founding members of the Slavophile movement, Petr and Ivan

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Kireevskii, Chizhov discussed philosophy and the personality of the radical socialist Aleksandr I. Herzen, whom Elagina had entertained in her salon in the early 1840s. In his diary, Chizhov saved a delicate sketch of a clover plant drawn by Elagina at age eighty-three. On her death, at the age of eighty-eight, he wrote a heartfelt tribute to her memory.80 In the 1870s, he often visited the family of the aristocrats Dmitrii N. Sverbeev and his wife, Ekaterina Aleksandrovna (née Shcherbatova). During the summers of 1872, 1874, and 1875, he enjoyed vacations at the Sverbeevs’ country estate, Solnyshnovo, where he composed brief articles and recovered from the tensions of corporate management. Ekaterina Sverbeeva also advised Chizhov on the purchase of his house in Moscow in 1875. In return, Chizhov performed several kindnesses to the family during Dmitrii Sverbeev’s final illness, including witnessing the signing of his will shortly before his death in 1876 and helping to edit his memoir. Two diary entries made clear, however, the cultural distance that separated Chizhov from these aristocrats. At a dinner at Sverbeeva’s house in 1875, he felt so ill at ease in the presence of a princess, the wife of the governor of Voronezh province, that he lost his composure and perspired profusely. The princess insisted on speaking French, which Chizhov spoke with difficulty. Moreover, he confessed that “in general I do not know how to speak with [aristocratic] ladies and am terribly embarrassed.” Why, a month before his sixty-fourth birthday, could he not overcome feelings of inferiority that he had learned in childhood? Why did two extreme emotions, lack of selfconfidence and excessive pride, coexist in his character? “This is the fault of my mother,” he wrote. “She instilled [in me] a kind of servility toward [aristocratic] titles and wealth. Neither of these would I accept if they were offered to me. I do not have a half-kopek’s worth of respect for either one, and I often rush to the opposite extreme [of condemning them], but still both of these things cause me extreme embarrassment. Yes, without pride, without the force of entrepreneurship, we shall not begin great business projects, especially those that are unselfish, but give rein to pride and you throw yourself away and other people who are closest to you see only one thing: pride. Life is rather difficult.”81 Having worked closely with prominent merchants in a variety of business ventures, Chizhov commented sadly on Ekaterina Sverbeeva’s

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contempt for the merchants. As a princess whose father’s and mother’s families—the Shcherbatovs and the Obolenskiis, respectively—had descended from Riurik, the founder of the first Russian dynasty a thousand years before, Sverbeeva displayed an elegant indifference toward wealth as she lived a life of “pure Christian kindness.” Still, she “does not like the merchants because of their mercenary profits. She does not see that all profit is pervaded with vileness,” including that of princes and other landlords, an evil that Chizhov considered “far worse” than that of the merchants because of the exploitation of serf labor for centuries by the landed elite of Muscovy and the Russian Empire.82 Chizhov never used his humble origins and youthful poverty as excuses for pursuing wealth as the purpose of life. Neither of his parents had been wealthy, his father less so than his mother: “I am a direct and legitimate offspring of labor and poverty. They gave birth to me, they coddled me, and they give me a source of physical and moral existence.” Having accumulated a fortune, he planned to give most of it away to deserving people, “and in the end a trifle will remain. Glory, glory to God for this.”83 To his closest friend, Vladimir Pecherin, Chizhov described himself in the early 1870s as “an ascetic of work, exactly like the medieval monks. The only difference is that they devoted themselves to prayer, whereas I devote myself to work.”84 Chizhov’s busy schedule allowed little time for long, introspective essays in his diary. Occasionally, however, he examined his character or looked back on his life in an effort to sum up his accomplishments and shortcomings. Five such entries deserve examination: a poetic survey written at the age of forty-four; a confident summary nine years later; a quotation from a German novel on the importance of work and love; a reminder to himself of the dangers of excessive pride; and a wistful retrospective account four years before his death. The first of these, a fragment inserted at the end of one of his notebooks toward the end of his exile in South Russia, began with a dramatic appeal to his beloved villages but ended in Christian resignation. “Tripolie! Zhukovtsy! Tell me the secret of life. Solve the inscrutable riddle that was so easily clarified in action but sank into my small mind with such difficulty.” Whether gazing at the works of Raphael, or exploring “the subterranean refuges of the first Christians” in the Roman catacombs, or admiring the works of Giotto, Fra

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Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, and Andrea del Sarto in Florence, he thought constantly of “Little Russia. I wrote about them to the creature who was able to understand everything that was beautiful and with whom I walked beneath the arcades of the Uffizi Palace. I did not feel a deficiency of life. I felt only that I was a scoundrel who knew not how to imbibe life in all its fullness.” Venice, in its turn, taught him “the soul of Petrarch” and “the secret of love, Boccaccio.” Paris he found an exhilarating “whirlpool” of activity. The South Slavs awakened within him “the feeling of Slavic brotherhood [chuvstvo plemennogo bratstva].” The sad interlude in South Russia ended when he returned to Moscow and came to a “difficult turning point.” His “friend and guide” in life, Nikolai Iazykov, lay dead in Moscow, but the city beckoned with new opportunities. Although he often sympathized with the complaints of others about their personal misfortunes, “I remained alone, unable to understand fully how one could live on God’s good earth and not admire the delights of this grandly artistic creation, where tears often adorn life like huge pearls—not the life of one person or another, but life in and of itself, where sobs, like notes in a minor key, are essential to the plenitude of the great oratorio of life.” God sends happiness sometimes, and sometimes sorrow, but then “a new, exalted pleasure appears, the pure swan’s breast of life: consolation in the grief of the truly unhappy person.”85 Nearly a decade later, having tasted financial success, Chizhov continued to criticize his personal faults: I am sad, extremely sad. Everywhere I am alien, alien to every undertaking. The fault lies not in people or in business; the fault lies within me. No matter where fate has pushed me, I have done everything not badly [nedurno]. I was a professor, and not an extremely bad one. I was a traveler, and not an ordinary one. I wrote about the history of art, and there too I did not say stupid things. I edited journals and newspapers; they were so-so [nichego], and everyone was pleased and could understand them. I serve as the director of a railroad; it is going well enough, all right, and not very badly at all [idet, nichego i ochen’ nedurno]. Yes, and before that I was a silk cultivator and also left something by which to be remembered: in the region where I engaged in silk production, it took root among the

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common people. Everywhere things are pretty good, and not more than that [Vezde poriadochen i tol’ko]; things simply turn out so-so, not badly.86

The sadness of the initial lines yielded to self-congratulation at the end. Two entries written in 1871 revealed Chizhov’s concern with work and success. In an otherwise uninteresting German novel, he discovered an inspiring passage that expressed his devotion to work. “Neither joy nor tranquility is the goal of life, but work . . . Work and love [rabota i liubov’; in German, Arbeiten und Lieben]: these are the soul and body of human existence. Blessed is he in whom the two are united.”87 At the same time, however, he recognized the danger of excessive pride that followed success in his business career. His tendency to boast in public, he wrote, “comes directly from my unlimited pride and from the striving, not completely acknowledged, to be important and always to be noticed. But even here I cannot bear to be in the spotlight; I am shy. The devil himself cannot figure out all the convolutions in the actions of my soul.” Keeping his diary, he hoped, would cultivate a sense of humility, “so that, several years from now, I will not forget and will not heap praise upon myself because of my [financial] success.”88 In 1873, four years before his death, Chizhov described an unpleasant incident with an unnamed lady friend “whom I respect deeply and love as much as I can, given what remains, at my age, of feelings, which are very, very cool.” As she rode with him in a carriage to the outskirts of Moscow, he became “annoyed” at having to strain to hear her: “I said, ‘I cannot hear anything; this is why I really dislike riding in a carriage.’” His “rather capricious tone” obviously offended the lady, “although I had not the slightest intention of giving offense and did not even understand that this might offend her.” After sitting in silence, she took her leave curtly, saying, “‘What a pleasant outing.’ And in those words she expressed the entire loathsome quality of my character: no one can rely on me for half an hour, and I am as capricious as can be imagined.” From this misunderstanding he drew a grand conclusion about his business career: I myself know that I cause [unpleasantness] to many people, most of all to people who love me and whom I love. But one thing I know: if I

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do this, I do so completely involuntarily. Have I been made so rotten, first, by my immutable independence [neizmennaia nezavisimost’], that is, the fact that I never submitted to anyone, and second—what is even worse—[by] the fact that I am accustomed to manage subordinates constantly? I am courteous toward them, that is true, but I cannot fail to recognize that I am intolerant and short-tempered. I always had a single excuse: that I was short-tempered because of illness, because of fatigue induced by work, and because of the constant nervous tension in which my concern for business affairs held me fast.

Honesty required that he reject these excuses, however: But that is scarcely true. I simply do not maintain control of myself [ne smotriu za soboiu]. I have become undisciplined in my intolerance and irritability. Every contradiction is met with complete lack of composure within me. Outwardly I am calm, but this is only the outward appearance. Has success made me so rotten? However you look at it, I see that I am horribly vile [strashno gadok]. If I lose everyone who might tell me the truth—the simple, independent truth—without being intimidated by his subordination to me and by any kind of financial relationship, then farewell to everything that has been acquired by life. I can create financial independence, but what is it worth if I besmirch this independence with my foul tendencies? I am growing dry, that is, becoming hard-hearted, I think not by the day but by the hour.

Here the discussion turned to his plans for philanthropy, as if he wished to prove to himself that he was not a “money-grubbing [sreboliubiv]” person.89 As we have seen, Chizhov’s hot temper proved decisive at several crucial points in his personal life and business career. The uncompromising tone of his statement to the Third Section in 1847 so irritated Emperor Nicholas I that he saw fit to exile Chizhov from St. Petersburg and Moscow. Likewise, Chizhov’s criticisms of the Moscow merchants for what he considered their excessive greed occasionally took the form of stormy tantrums. His pride, boastfulness, and penchant for unkind witticisms may have strained his relationships with his friends and associates and intensified his “alien” status, as he wrote in 1864, but they reinforced his devotion to honesty, a quality that earned for him a place of

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honor in the history of Russian business. His brusqueness also had unintended benefits, at least for the historian. Incapable of showing sympathy for the stupidity and incompetence of tsarist ministers, he made numerous acid comments in his diary that revealed bureaucratic obstacles to the development of the new capitalist institutions in the Era of the Great Reforms. This critical attitude toward all his acquaintances— writers, artists, merchants, bureaucrats, or aristocrats—stemmed from a basic disdain for hierarchy in society. Having risen from poverty to a position first of academic success, then of prominence in economic journalism, and finally of great wealth in corporate enterprise, he had no patience with traditional habits of deference and subordination. As he wrote to Iazykov as early as 1845, “I only know that I cannot compromise my convictions anywhere, either in a conversation with friends or in Parisian society, and I have no fear in this regard.”90 Three and onehalf years before he died, he reiterated that “if we allow any instability in our principles [neprochnost’ printsipov], farewell to the notion of justice; it will be a fiction, complete and utter arbitrariness.”91 When the stockholders of the newly formed Moscow Merchant Bank elected him chairman of the board, in 1866, Chizhov worried that he lacked entrepreneurial abilities. Could he launch this bank successfully? “I have grown somewhat tired, and besides, I never considered myself capable and clever enough to initiate an enterprise. I can manage a business—a sound and good one—but I have no expertise in setting up anything.” Just seven years later, having successfully created not only this bank but several other major corporations, he boasted to Pecherin of his preference for innovation over routine management. He characterized his approach to business in terms that foreshadowed precisely Schumpeter’s definition of entrepreneurship—the urge to form “new combinations”: “to be a lamplighter, that is, to shed light on a business venture and to encourage enthusiasm as long as it is not yet standing firmly on its feet, but once it does so, then that is enough [for me]. Otherwise, after a few years, in every business . . . a routine inevitably sets in, which [I find] devastating in the extreme . . . In our country, everyone loves to sit in some warm spot. No one volunteers to set up something new. But that’s not for me [a menia kalachami ne kormi, literally, ‘don’t feed me sweet rolls’]. Just give [me] some new project, if possible, something big and difficult.”92

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The trajectory of Chizhov’s development reflected key elements of his personality. Although poor, he received an excellent primary education from his father—a member of the gentry—and at an elite high school. At St. Petersburg University, he showed such diligence in his studies that his constant complaints about his laziness may be interpreted primarily as reflections of his enormously powerful work ethic. In pursuit of his advanced degree in mathematics, he demonstrated a thirst for scientific precision, but he also discovered the equally powerful attractions of poetry, history, and art. During his sojourn in Europe, he found inspiration in the patriotic works of Ivanov, Gogol, and Iazykov and publicized the cause of the Slavic peoples. His pride wounded by arrest and nine years of exile, he grew ever more self-reliant as a pioneer of the silk industry in South Russia. In 1857, he combined his literary, industrial, and patriotic interests in a new career, that of a proponent of economic nationalism in Moscow, his adopted home. At every stage of his life, Chizhov developed personal characteristics that opened the way to later success. By 1847, two paradoxes were already clear: although proud of his individualism and personal independence, he idealized the communal existence of the Russian serfs; and immersion in the art history of Europe had led him to embrace Slavophilism. Two other paradoxes of his character dominated the last twenty years of his life: How, beginning in 1857, at the age of forty-six, did he extract from economic theories of Western Europe the elements of a strategy that could challenge European financial and industrial domination of Russia? And how did he overcome the anticommercial prejudices of his own social group, the gentry, to become the most prominent corporate entrepreneur in Moscow?

CHAPTER 2

Economic Nationalism in Theory The volume of foreign trade cannot serve as the sole criterion of the greater or lesser prosperity of a state, especially one such as Russia, with its extremely varied climatic conditions and wide variety of products. Given a proper transportation system and institutions that promote the development of its manufacturing capacities, such a state would need imports of foreign products least of all. —Ivan K. Babst, 1865

In the decade following his return to Moscow in 1857, Chizhov published a variety of articles on financial and industrial questions. The second edition of his book on silk production appeared in 1870. As he developed his strategy of economic nationalism, he encountered several unanticipated dilemmas. How best to apply the corporate form of enterprise to the Russian economy required much discussion, especially because the largest corporation in the empire, a railroad controlled by French bankers and engineers, seemed to Chizhov to cause more harm than good. The elaboration of a coherent system of import tariffs posed special difficulties because the needs of Germany, where protectionist theory was most highly developed, differed greatly from those of the Russian Empire. An amateur in journalism, Chizhov found that his devotion to the cause of economic nationalism could not overcome a multitude of problems, including inadequate funding provided by the Moscow merchants, repeated clashes with the tsarist censors, and occasional misunderstandings and disagreements among the Slavophiles themselves. Finally, Chizhov encountered much resistance to his economic strategy in the ministries in St. Petersburg.

Economic Journalism in the Era of the Great Reforms Confident of his literary abilities and his expertise in at least one industry, that of silk cultivation, Chizhov began his new career in eco46

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nomic journalism with enthusiasm. Too busy with his editorial and corporate duties to record all his business activities in his diary, he never found time to publish a book on his theory of Russian economic nationalism.1 Fortunately, he expressed his ideas clearly in several dozen articles, primarily those in the four periodicals: his monthly journal, Vestnik promyshlennosti (July 1858–December 1861); his weekly newspaper, Aktsioner (The Stockholder, 1860–1863), which first appeared as a supplement to the journal; the weekly Slavophile newspaper Den’ (The Day, 1863–1865), edited by his friend Ivan Aksakov; and Aksakov’s daily newspapers Moskva (Moscow) and Moskvich (The Muscovite) in 1867–1868. Evidence from his diary and correspondence during this decade helps to explain the episodic existence of these periodicals. A variety of nationalistic publications sprang up in Russia in the aftermath of the Crimean War. The Slavophile liquor-tax concessionaire and journalist, Aleksandr Koshelev, published Russkaia beseda (The Russian Colloquium, 1856–1860) and Sel’skoe blagoustroistvo (Rural Improvement, 1858–1859) with financial support from Moscow merchants.2 Aleksandr P. Shipov, a former bureaucrat who managed a machinery plant in Chizhov’s native city of Kostroma, distinguished himself as a publicist for economic development from 1852 onward, particularly by calling for the creation of a network of commercial banks and high import tariffs for the Russian textile industry. Shipov also contributed to Vestnik promyshlennosti several articles on the benefits of free labor in industry, as opposed to serfdom, and on commercial policy.3 However influential these publications may have been, Chizhov created the first successful organ of Russian economic nationalism with the financial support of the Shipov brothers.4 Vestnik promyshlennosti not only voiced the aspirations of the merchants of the Central Industrial Region—Moscow and the surrounding provinces—but also elaborated a coherent strategy of economic development in the spirit of romantic Slavophilism. Three aspects of this episode in Chizhov’s life deserve emphasis: his success in mastering the techniques of economic journalism; the wide influence of the journal; and the bonds of mutual support between Slavophile intellectuals and Moscow merchants that facilitated a variety of collaborations, in the arts as well as in journalism, in the halfcentury between the Crimean War and the Revolution of 1905.

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Title page of Vestnik promyshlennosti, vol. 12, no. 5(May 1861)

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Although Chizhov was a talented and dedicated editor, he lacked training in economics. In January 1858 he noted with dismay the brilliance with which Ivan V. Vernadskii, an economist in St. Petersburg, argued the case against tariff protection for Russian industry in his journals, Ekonomicheskii ukazatel’ (The Economic Index, 1857–1861) and Ekonomist (The Economist, 1858–1864). To acquire the technical expertise that would be essential if the journal were to earn the respect of the educated public in countering Vernadskii’s influence, Chizhov turned to a young professor who had recently joined the faculty at Moscow University, Ivan K. Babst.5 Chizhov’s first letter to Babst, written in Kiev nearly a year before, had begun with a polite apology for writing without first becoming personally acquainted. “Here in Moscow the journal Vestnik promyshlennosti is beginning, under my editorship. Its goal, first, is to satisfy the demands of industry by providing vital news and information regarding all of its sectors as well as surveys of its progress both in our country and abroad. Second, to introduce science into the resolution and explication of vital issues of productive labor and all other related phenomena of life; finally, to investigate specific local products of Russia as they relate to industry and to the economy in general.” Chizhov requested that Babst submit articles to the journal.6 Babst responded promptly. “I am prepared,” he wrote, “to do my utmost to help in the form of articles and am prepared to take responsibility for reviewing, correcting, and editing articles on political economy and finance submitted to the editorial office.” Whether this reply justifies Laverychev’s assertion that Babst “participated in the preparation of the journal and edited it from the first issues” is an open question.7 In any case, Babst brought extraordinary academic talents to the journal. The son of an army officer who commanded the frontier fortress at Orenburg, Babst entered a high school at the age of twelve in Riga, where he rapidly acquired fluency in German. (Despite his German name, derived from Papst—meaning Pope—German was not his native language.) He studied history under the leading liberal thinker of the time, Timofei N. Granovskii, at Moscow University. For his master’s degree, he wrote a thesis on statesmen in ancient Greece, but his doctoral dissertation (1851) examined the financial crisis in France caused by the collapse of John Law’s “Mississippi bubble” in 1720.

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Ivan K. Babst, Professor of Economics at Moscow University, photograph (c. 1865) Source: Babst, Izbrannye trudy, ed. M. G. Podkidchenko and E.N. Kalmychkova (Moscow: Nauka, 1999)

After a six-year appointment at Kazan University as a professor of political economy and statistics, Babst returned to Moscow University in 1857 to replace Ivan Vernadskii, who had moved to St. Petersburg. Babst’s speech at Kazan University on June 6, 1856, “On Several Conditions Promoting the Increase of the Nation’s Capital,” made him famous. He exalted science, education, and economic progress and called for the introduction of market reforms and the creation of banks and railroads. Instead of endorsing the Moscow merchants’ protectionist position, he ridiculed what he called the “Chinese self-satisfaction” of xenophobic Russians: the belief that the economies of Europe would collapse without Russian grain and tallow. Furthermore, he praised “the successes of civil society” (uspekhi grazhdanstvennosti) in Europe, characterized by “legality and the system of law and order” (zakonnosti i pravoporiadka). Open markets free of monopolies, privileges, and special treatment for persons of a given social estate he considered essential to the proliferation of railroads, banks, and industrial organizations. All in all, however, he spoke as a Russian nationalist with faith in the future. He denounced serfdom as the major impediment to economic develop-

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ment and blamed the tsarist government for its neglect of property rights, its wasteful spending of rare capital, and its outmoded system of estate privileges. An expanded version of this speech appeared in the influential monthly journal Russkii vestnik (The Russian Herald) in November 1856.8 Chizhov respected Babst as one of the most influential economists in the empire and correctly perceived in the young professor’s critique of Russia’s backwardness not so much an endorsement of European economic and social principles as a summons to patriotic action in the struggle against the economic threat from Europe. Babst published several major articles in Vestnik promyshlennosti, including a critique of Bruno Hildebrand’s book on political economy, and became co-editor of the journal in January 1860.9 With typical enthusiasm, self-denial, and discipline, Chizhov spent five months—from October 1857 to March 1858—in Europe preparing to launch his journal. Forgotten was his earlier contempt for industry as a way of life, based on the romantic longing for wholeness in the human personality. In 1842, for example, he had criticized industry for its alleged inability to satisfy more than a single “element of life.” As Hegel had preached, exclusive focus on “the will” would leave “the intellect and the heart” no room for “complete freedom.” The human personality would remain mired in an “activity that is excessively one-sided.” Two years later, Chizhov had scorned the prosperity of southern France, finding there no truly cultured people because, he wrote, “everything—conversations, thoughts, everything—was commerce and industry, and nothing more.” Even the dynamism of Paris had revolted him: “ceaseless movement and thousands of stores, or more accurately, one continuous store.”10 Now he sought to understand the mechanisms of the capitalist economy in hopes of applying to Russia the techniques, but not the cultural values, of Western Europe. In these months he read or made reference to no less than twenty-five books on political economy, including Histoire de l’économie politique by Jérôme A. Blanqui, Cours d’économie politique by Pellegrino L. E. Rossi, System der Volkswirtschaft by Wilhelm G. F. Roscher, and The Organization of Industry by Thomas Banfield, the last two in French translations. Chizhov carefully examined the polemic between advocates of free trade, including Michel Chevalier and Henri Fonfrède, and their

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opponents, defenders of industrial protectionism, such as AntoineMarie Roederer, of whose Études sur les deux systèmes opposés du libre échange et de la protection he wrote, “This book will be very useful to me.”11 He also met with economists and other experts who promised to write periodic surveys of economic trends in their own countries for his journal. His correspondents included leading writers: Gustave Molinari in Belgium, so well informed on economic issues that Chizhov overlooked his principled devotion to the theory of free trade; Count Adam Gurowski in New York, a prominent Polish émigré who had published books on both Russia and the United States; I. Gorn in France; and M. Manucci in Italy. Back in Moscow, as he prepared the first issue of his journal, Chizhov wrote anxiously in his diary: “I feel that I have neither ideas nor the intelligence to express them.” As usual, however, this hypercritical attitude reflected the high standards that he imposed on himself. When publication finally began, on July 12, 1858, he expressed both pride and apprehension: “I am working like an ox. They say the journal is respectable, but subscriptions are few” because of the summer lull in business.12 In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Russian industry remained technologically backward, dominated by foreigners, and dependent on the tsarist government. Chizhov admired the intelligence of the Russian manufacturers but found repellent their greed and their tendency to make decisions “by groping their way” [oshchup’iu]. The competitive struggle with Europe required improvements in education and the increase of productivity in Russian industry, not the traditional expedient of “deadening protectionism, which is fatal to all competition.”13 The first editorial essay in Vestnik promyshlennosti began with a dry account of current trends, including the contrast between the business slump in Europe and North America and the founding of many new corporations in insurance and river transport in Russia. The essay concluded, however, with an endorsement of public discussion (glasnost’) in Russian business. It expressed sympathy with Russian manufacturers who feared public discussion and concealed their wealth in order to protect themselves from tsarist officials who, upon receiving information about a profitable business, routinely extorted huge bribes from the hapless owner. Russian manufacturers must

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learn the benefits of public discussion. As Englishmen knew, “times is monay [sic]” (vremia tsenno), and ignorance a threat to financial success. Public discussion would help new corporations to accumulate investment capital from the multitude of small savers throughout Russia. The publication of the names of all shareholders, together with the number of shares purchased, would embarrass only those whose sources of capital were “not entirely pure.” The exhortation turned into a critique. Of the many landlords and merchants who built a factory or plant, “God grant that one out of twenty” understood anything of the technique involved. Public discussion would aid in overcoming the enormous problem of “the lack of education, often outright ignorance, especially in technical matters” among Russian manufacturers. The essay ended with a bold condemnation of the “abominable lack of hired labor,” caused by serfdom, and praise for the government’s encouragement of reform since the death of Emperor Nicholas I, which promised “a swift triumph for our industry.”14 In keeping with his Slavophile outlook, Chizhov sought to publicize economic policies that would improve the well-being of the common people. Capitalism in industry became a means to this end. He considered it the responsibility of all Russians, whatever their social status, to contribute to the sacred cause of borrowing economic techniques from the West for the benefit of the entire Russian nation. He delighted in a caustic remark that he found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile: “Rich or poor, strong or weak, every lazy citizen is a scoundrel.”15 In December 1858, he rejected the notion that his journal served the interests of the merchants or any other social estate. “The times,” he wrote, have thrust “industry and industrialists into the leading ranks” of society, and “every movement forward” has become “dependent on them,” so that “to shun a direct, righteous, and bold voice signifies a betrayal of their lawful service. In industry there are no conditional notions of aristocracy or democracy. There are no efforts to defend the advantages enjoyed by members of a given social estate [soslovnye vygody] simply because they belong to it . . . In industry the benefit enjoyed by each person inevitably constitutes the general benefit.” This might have been intended as a slap at his own estate, the gentry, but it also warned the merchants not to advance their own selfish claims. The real enemy remained the bureaucrats’ indifference to the benefits that industrial development would bring to every Russian,

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rich or poor. In this way, the bureaucracy demonstrated its incompetence in the struggle against the economic threat posed by Europe. The bureaucracy, he complained, constantly ensnared the individual with its “fussy and domineering demands,” creating “a labyrinth with no exit” and fostering “indolence, immobility, apathy toward everything, and the lack of free speech [bezglasnost’].”16 Chizhov valued the principle of publicity too highly to spare the feelings of any Russian whose business practices he considered stupid or selfish. In a letter to Mikhail F. Raevskii, the Russian Orthodox chaplain of the Russian embassy in Vienna, to whom he promised to send ten copies of the second issue, Chizhov wrote: “in it you will find much factual information, some of it not very pleasant, but what is to be done? People are people everywhere, and to hide the truth would just mean indulging crimes.”17 He ended his survey in December 1858 with a defense of the harsh tone that had marked many of his commentaries during the first six months of the journal’s existence: “Perhaps some will chastise [Vestnik promyshlennosti] for the harshness of its judgments, especially when it was necessary to speak out against people who desired to benefit from any kind of personal squabble, or, what is worse, to cover up their egoistic actions with the cloak of social purity and social honor. But it considers that indulgence and leniency toward civil defects and crimes are worse than any harshness in this transitional period of society, when convictions are still not firmly established.”18 In this spirit of optimism, devotion to progress, and criticism of ignorance, dishonesty, and arbitrary oppression, the journal offered readers a wide array of articles on every aspect of industrial development: financial, technical, and even cultural. In October 1858, for example, section 1, consisting of surveys of industry and trade in various countries, included a thirty-two-page analysis of recent developments in Russia, such as the construction of a branch of the Tsarskoe selo railroad to Krasnoe selo, as well as reports from the journal’s correspondents in England, France, Italy, and Austria. Section 2, devoted to contemporary industry, featured Gavril P. Kamenskii’s report on an agricultural exhibition in Chester, England, and Abbat Perni’s description of silkworm cultivation in western China. The next section examined various scientific issues: the limits of technology in the context of productive forces and education; the economic potential of Astrabad, Persia

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(now Gorgan, Iran); and the moral, mental, and physical status of silk workers in France. Section 4, devoted to biography, contained a segment of the serialized life story of James Watt, in keeping with Chizhov’s early interest in steam engines. In section 5, which focused on criticism and bibliography, Dmitrii Skuratov dissected recent reviews of books on economics in Vernadskii’s free-trade journal Ekonomicheskii ukazatel ’. Section 6, the miscellany, presented Count Gurowski’s letter from America; a comment on Russia’s trade with Asia; an article on the development of trade in plant and animal products in Borisoglebsk and its district, located in the fertile province of Tambov; and an analysis of diseases of grapevines and their cures. The issue for May 1861 contained similarly substantial articles on steam-powered plows, English coal, and the production of iron and steel. In section 7 appeared the complete text of three corporate charters recently confirmed by the emperor and a draft of regulations to be applied to factories and plants in St. Petersburg district. Each issue contained well over three hundred pages. Chizhov had created a major industrial journal, the first of its kind in Russia, dedicated to the improvement of the economy but organized as an essentially literary publication in keeping with the intellectual background of its editor. Leading industrialists among the Moscow merchants admired Chizhov for his dedication to the cause of Russian industrial development, his castigation of greedy foreigners at work in Russia, and his willingness to criticize the shortcomings of tsarist bureaucrats. Generally lacking in technical education, they appreciated his efforts to raise the status of manufacturers and to promote policy changes favorable to them. The merchants recalled the ruinous reductions in import tariffs in 1816 and 1819, which were followed by several decades of welcome tariff protection in 1822–1850. They feared that the government’s resumption of tariff reductions in 1850 and 1857, as the doctrine of free trade gained favor throughout Europe, signaled a fatal trend. Not only had the tsarist government refused the manufacturers’ pleas for high duties in 1857, but an attempt of one Muscovite to bribe a member of the tariff commission had ended in scandal: his arrest and the imposition of a 5,000-ruble fine.19 The journal failed, however, to lead the Moscow merchants along the path of enlightened self-interest. Many of the articles must have caused

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the merchants to stroke their beards in puzzlement. What was the relevance of Chizhov’s disquisition, in the first issue, on the necessity of resolving the gulf between “science and life, theory and practice”?20 Even articles devoted to economic issues that affected the merchants directly seemed overly complex. A survey of flax output in Russia contained so much historical information and so many comparisons with the competing systems of Belgium and Ireland that only the most patient, erudite, and patriotic of Russian linen producers would have taken the time to read it.21 The price list for Russian products in London, reported by the indefatigable Kamenskii, appeared in section 7 (information) in August 1858. Such a list, however, even if printed in every monthly issue, would not have satisfied the merchants’ need for up-to-date information. Chizhov and Kamenskii overestimated the merchants’ ability to appreciate the extraordinary efforts of the editor and authors on behalf of Russian economic development. For example, in his proposal for the creation of a Russian trade office in London, Kamenskii argued that the economic threat from Britain could best be met by raising the quality of Russian goods on the international market and winning profits through cooperation. However much they resented the economic power of the Europeans, Russians need not worry that the creation of a trade office in London would encounter resistance from “the English commercial class.” He believed this group of expert traders to be “so enlightened that it will not indulge a monopoly in any form whatsoever and will meet this new movement in trade with suitable encouragement.”22 The office was apparently never created. Xenophobic and lacking in self-confidence, the Moscow merchants preferred to petition the tsarist government for high tariffs rather than to create mutually beneficial trading arrangements based on specialization and comparative advantage. The Russian merchants also disappointed Chizhov by refusing to provide his publication with adequate financial support and by resisting his calls for bold entrepreneurial activity in the creation and management of railroads and steamship lines. He appealed to the merchants for financial aid, but without large donations from Aleksandr Shipov’s brother, Dmitrii, the journal would have foundered even sooner than it did.23 Although Chizhov wrote nothing in his diary about the relationship between Vestnik promyshlennosti and the Moscow merchants in the late

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1850s, his assistant, Cherokov, recalled both the positive and negative elements of the collaboration. Because of Chizhov’s superior intellectual abilities, Cherokov wrote, the merchants often gathered in the editorial office of his journal for long discussions, “which they valued more highly than any books or lectures,” on pressing economic issues such as increased tariff protection for Russian industry, the need for a stable Russian currency, prospects for expanded markets for their goods—primarily textiles—in European and Asian markets, and ways to win favorable action by the tsarist government for the achievement of these goals. Of the “many” leading merchants who visited the journal’s office constantly, Cherokov named the most devoted of Chizhov’s followers. All had achieved prominence as manufacturers or liquor-tax concessionaires, and some later joined Chizhov in corporate ventures.24 Still, Chizhov criticized the shortcomings of his merchant followers. For example, after a review of recent efforts to construct schools in various cities, including one for girls in Skopin, in Riazan province, Chizhov chided the Muscovites for neglecting public affairs in general and female education in particular. In 1859, some had talked of creating schools and high schools for girls, but nothing had yet been accomplished. “The time has come,” he wrote, “for us to understand, all by ourselves, the value of education and the value of uniting our efforts for the public benefit.” Many people complained about the inactivity of “educated society [obshchestvennost’], but things are done haphazardly, everyone hides behind someone else, and all wait together for instructions.”25 The enormous expense of publishing Vestnik promyshlennosti caused constant friction between the editors and the subscribers. Although they stood in awe of Chizhov’s literary abilities and economic expertise, the merchants resisted making the financial sacrifices that would have ensured the survival of the journal. Cherokov, apparently ignorant of the generosity of the Shipov brothers, wrote that Chizhov funded it himself in its early years. Soon it became clear that the merchants would have to increase the number of their subscriptions to two thousand copies to maintain the solvency of the journal. Ivan A. Liamin, Pavel P. Maliutin, and a few others agreed to buy forty or fifty copies each, and some even ordered copies for distribution among their workers. Cherokov collected the subscription payments. Some merchants paid in full

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at the beginning of the year, but many others needed reminding at the beginning of each month, so that the editorial office often lacked adequate funds to pay authors and even the editors. In this connection, Cherokov noted additional evidence of Chizhov’s strict sense of financial honesty. A cash box in the journal’s office contained the proceeds from the sale of the first posthumous edition of Nikolai Gogol’s collected works. Chizhov, who had arranged for the publication of this edition, sent all the royalty payments, up to 7,000 rubles annually, to Gogol’s impoverished sisters. Although the journal was starved for cash and several thousand rubles lay in the box, Chizhov never borrowed these funds.26 The final crisis erupted in mid-1861, after three years of financial difficulties. In late May, Chizhov had already recorded a feeling of exhaustion. “My interior life has completely desiccated, and my outward life attracts little attention.”27 Then the merchants’ subscription payments arrived so late, even after Cherokov had mailed repeated reminders, that he had to request the subscription funds from each merchant’s cashier, “like a tip [kak by podachki].” Upon learning of the humiliating treatment that Cherokov encountered from the merchants, Chizhov resolved to stop publishing Vestnik promyshlennosti. He informed Babst of his decision and sent out notices of current arrears to subscribers. As news of this rash decision spread, merchants arrived at the editorial office singly and in groups. After several days, Cherokov had collected all the needed funds. Chizhov’s refusal to reconsider his decision so alarmed his major subscribers that his closest allies among the merchants—Ivan Mamontov, Vasilii Kokorev, Timofei Morozov, and Sergei Tretiakov—finally offered him a packet of 20,000 rubles in cash, enough to sustain the journal for another entire year. According to Cherokov, Chizhov angrily threw the packet to the floor, saying “I will not do it; I do not wish to do it; you do not deserve our labors,” and uttering other harsh comments.28 Only Chizhov’s devotion to the cause of Russian economic development had sustained him for three and a half years as he had made Vestnik promyshlennosti a pioneering venture in economic journalism. In 1861 his volatile temper, when turned against the merchants, caused its demise. The cultural gap between the editors and the subscribers of the journal proved to be far wider than he had anticipated in 1857. He failed in his attempt to transform Russian industry by preaching the

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benefits of science, publicity, and honesty. Still, the first episode in his editorial career must be considered a major achievement. As Chuprov noted two decades later, Vestnik promyshlennosti brought unquestionable benefits for its time. Besides the multitude of practical articles on various aspects of industrial life in Western Europe and Russia, the journal was beneficial for readers in its sober views on current economic issues, a quality that was rare amid the universal enthusiasms and the feverish founding of corporations, which was beginning at that time. Journal readers in the 1860s will certainly recall, for example, the witty articles [in Vestnik promyshlennosti] that exposed the various tricks carried out by the masters of the industrial arts who swarmed over us from France in the service of the Russian Railroad Company.29

Although Vestnik promyshlennosti ceased publication with the December 1861 issue, its weekly supplement, Aktsioner, continued to appear for another two years. In 1863 Aktsioner became a supplement to Ivan Aksakov’s weekly Slavophile newspaper, Den’. As the editor of Aktsioner, Chizhov continued to occupy a central place in the merchantSlavophile alliance. He shared Aksakov’s commitment to Slavophile ideals, which included the effort to mobilize public opinion in the defense of local autonomy and Slavic cultural and religious values. The solicitude that the Slavophiles showed to the Moscow merchants exemplified this noble project. Although Aksakov had long advocated the discussion of economic issues from a Slavophile perspective, only Chizhov enjoyed enough influence among the merchants to attract them to the Slavophiles’ various publications.30 The demise of Den’ after only two years demonstrated, however, that Aksakov’s skill in angering the censors hurt the cause of economic nationalism in Moscow. To the end of the 1860s, Chizhov stood in the middle, providing Aksakov’s publications with nationalist arguments on economic issues and urging the merchants to provide adequate financial support for the publications that defended their interests. It was always an uneasy alliance, marred by several misunderstandings along the way. Aktsioner served as Chizhov’s forum for his relentless criticism of improper administrative practices in the several dozen companies that had sprung up in Russia following the Crimean War, especially the French-controlled Russian Railroad Company. The name of the news-

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paper, “The Stockholder,” Chizhov apparently borrowed from Europe. In Paris, the first of several periodicals entitled L’Actionnaire appeared in 1836–1838, and in Frankfurt, Germany, Der Aktionär began publication in 1854. In St. Petersburg, Zhurnal dlia aktsionerov (The Journal for Stockholders) had begun appearing in 1857. The title proclaimed Chizhov’s purpose: to defend the interests of investors against sloppy bookkeeping, excessive secrecy, indifference to the will of stockholders, incompetence, and fraud on the part of corporate boards of directors. The merchants found it easier to support the weekly Aktsioner than the bulky monthly journal. The newspaper carried up-to-date news about Russian companies, economic trends, commodity prices in various markets, and exchange rates among the European currencies. Although the newspaper lacked space for the “strict, detailed, and definitive analyses of enterprises and the course of events in various sectors of industry” that had appeared in Vestnik promyshlennosti, Chizhov and Babst promised, in the first issue of Aktsioner, that it would provide “its direct and candid opinions regarding each corporate enterprise” and, resources permitting, would “follow closely its activities and the interests of its stockholders.” The editors vowed to name any corporate manager who committed mistakes and abuses of power to the detriment of stockholders and once again urged them to exercise their legal rights at general assembly meetings. In a clear reference to the prominent role of titled aristocrats, decorated officials, and former military officers on many corporate boards, especially in St. Petersburg, the editors urged stockholders not to be intimidated by “stars, crosses, and titles” worn by corporate directors.31 Each issue in 1860 contained a full-page list of all existing companies in Russia—111 in January, 124 in December—complete with basic capital, par value of shares, current price of shares (if known) on the exchange, amount of the most recent dividend, and the address. However, keeping this list up to date apparently required an inordinate amount of labor, as stock and bond prices of only five major companies appeared in Aktsioner in 1861–1863. Despite the abbreviated scope of the newspaper—four pages in 1860–1861, then generally either four or eight—Chizhov and Babst addressed a variety of current commercial conditions, such as the trade slump of 1861, which drove several important companies into

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liquidation. Aktsioner, June 16, 1861, and June 23, 1861, listed several companies that were struggling to survive. (Vasilii Kokorev complained that excessively frank articles in Aktsioner by the historian Mikhail Pogodin undermined Kokorev’s credit in the business world at this time.) The paper also analyzed large and complex issues, such as the dilemma that had plagued Russians in the previous four centuries: how to borrow European technical expertise without losing control of Russia’s cultural and political destiny to foreigners. Tensions between Chizhov and the merchants occasionally marred this collaboration. In a letter to the president of the Moscow Exchange Committee, Aleksei I. Khludov, in October 1862, Chizhov reiterated the terms on which he and Babst had agreed to continue publishing the paper. He pressed the merchants to provide financial support for publications that would benefit their own economic interests: “Last year, when we decided to end publication of Vestnik promyshlennosti, for which, when it ceased publication, we had absolutely no funds because the 1,500 subscriptions guaranteed by the Moscow merchants had been far from paid up, you and others stated your wish that we continue publishing it. We could not agree to that, but we did give in to your collective request to publish Aktsioner in an expanded format.” Of the 5,000 rubles promised by the merchants for this purpose, only 2,000 had been paid in April. “Babst and I,” Chizhov wrote curtly, “are entirely confident that you and Liamin will keep your word.”32 When Babst left Moscow in 1862 to teach economics to Crown Prince Nikolai at the imperial court in St. Petersburg, Chizhov continued to edit Aktsioner alone in 1863.33 The task of managing Aktsioner, together with his responsibilities as a railroad manager, made him despondent: “It is time to stop being an editor.”34 Still, he continued to write economic articles for Aksakov. After Aktsioner ceased publication as a supplement to Den’ at the end of 1863, Chizhov accepted Aksakov’s invitation to edit the economic section of Den’ in 1864. The first several issues in 1865 contained “Essays on Russian Industrial, Commercial, and Financial Life,” in which Chizhov continued his Slavophile critique of current economic trends. This arrangement lasted until the end of 1865, when Aksakov, weary of battling the censor and eager to get married, finally closed Den’. Aksakov again announced his commitment to Chizhov’s continuing campaign for Russian economic development in the daily newspaper

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Moskva, which began publication on January 1, 1867. News of this venture, which Chizhov had suggested to Aksakov in May 1866, delighted the Moscow merchants. As Vasilii P. Botkin, one of the few writers from the merchant estate, wrote to his friend Ivan S. Turgenev, “the major purpose of the future newspaper Moskva will be the protection of national industry and the struggle against thoughtless free-trade doctrines, which have infected the upper ranks of the bureaucracy in the Ministry of Finance. The basic capital has been given by the Moscow merchants and factory-owners.”35 Indeed, Aksakov offered a Slavophile rationale for the defense of Russian industry. He hoped that, as the government allowed society increased freedom to express its needs, the emergence of public opinion would strengthen the bond of trust between the tsar and the people. The merchants deserved encouragement in their efforts to improve the economy of the empire: “Precisely because we value these social forces highly, we in this newspaper will grant a special place of honor to the interests of Russian industry and trade. Industry and trade, a force that characteristically emanates purely from the Russian land [chisto zemskaia po svoemu kharakteru], and the industrial and commercial milieu, which stands closer to the common people than other educated classes, have manifested in recent times many signs of independent activity.” By themselves, however, the merchants could not yet defend their own interests: “They require only slightly more favorable conditions in order to stand completely on their own feet and to become a powerful factor in the development of society. This force, having emerged from the Russian land [zemskaia sila], unfortunately still needs special protection. This is why we would like to make our financial and industrial section as extensive as possible . . . We hope that our economic section will receive the assistance of everyone who is deeply concerned with the material well-being and prosperity of our native Russia—assistance through practical indications of the needs of industry.”36 Aksakov referred, of course, to ethnically Russian merchants, chiefly those who dominated light industry and wholesale commerce in the Moscow region. The newspaper provided an essential forum for the Moscow merchants and their Slavophile allies to argue for tariff protection for Russian industry during the debate over tariff duties in 1867–1868. The merchants also valued the daily reports of market conditions.

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Chizhov’s contributions to Moskva included a series of unsigned lead editorials and articles on economic trends, such as the rapid expansion of cotton cultivation in Central Asia in response to the high price of raw cotton during the “cotton famine” caused by the U.S. Civil War.37 However, Aksakov’s vitriolic editorials on a variety of foreign and domestic political issues doomed this venture. The censor closed the paper for three months in April 1867 and for four months in the following December. Aksakov called on his friend P. I. Andreev to serve as the figurehead editor of Moskvich, which had exactly the same format as Moskva, as well as Aksakov’s editorial line and Chizhov’s economic section. Moskvich itself fell under the censor’s ban on February 18, 1868. The merchants lost interest in supporting Aksakov. They already enjoyed the support of a protectionist weekly newspaper in St. Petersburg, Torgovyi sbornik (The Commercial Miscellany, 1864–1873), so the demise of Moskva did not deprive them of a tribune of industry.38 Several years before, when collaborating with Aksakov on the newspaper Den’, Chizhov had expressed the hope that the Slavophile ideology might “give practical solutions to vital questions” of Russian society. Then, after the paper had ceased publication, he gently rebuked Aksakov, calling it a commemoration of Slavophilism, a daily funeral banquet for Slavophilism, but not at all a purely Slavophile organ. The Slavophilism in it was pure, and such a pure, honest, and noble nature preserves the traditions that are dear to it; but it was not a phenomenon of free conviction. It remained entangled in the fetters of Slavophilism, under the yoke of Slavophilism precisely because Slavophilism was not worked out by you yourself. You seized it but, forgive me for saying so, you did not master it completely . . . Because of this, your ideal was always obscured when details were involved. It was thus always expressed first, in a protest, [or] second, in a striving for the Slavophile ideal, but with no clear and distinct designation of it.39

In 1870, the Slavophile writer Nikolai A. Rigelman mentioned to Chizhov that Aksakov, tired of serving as a director of the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society, hoped to start a new journal in 1872, with Chizhov as a figurehead editor because the censors would not allow Aksakov to edit his own publication. In rejecting this proposal,

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Chizhov offered a critique of his friend. Rigelman considered Aksakov “not an editor,” just a person who wrote beautiful prose, but Chizhov gave a more nuanced assessment. Aksakov, he told Rigelman, “has much energy and a striving for the truth, and, what is very important, a great deal of sincerity, but really no complete independence of thought. He is more a fighter, an opponent, than a creator of anything.” An “arid, flaccid, verbose [mnogosloven]” writer, Aksakov appeared “guided not by the content of the struggle but almost exclusively by the struggle itself, and therefore, to say nothing of his impulsiveness, he takes the bit between his teeth and is carried along by the wind with no concern about where he is going.” Chizhov concluded that Aksakov lacked the essential characteristics of an editor. “What hinders him is not the government’s bans but an insufficiency of content and the absence of a businesslike [del’nogo], strict, and precisely considered view of the task of being an editor.”40 As an industrial journalist from 1858 onward, Chizhov used his periodicals and those of Aksakov to elaborate a strategy of Russian economic development. Although the tsarist bureaucracy did not always heed his policy recommendations, and although neither he nor the Moscow merchants realized all their dreams of economic development, he created a vision of a self-reliant Russia that might well serve as an inspiration to others in the twenty-first century. Three central questions, discussed at length in his journalistic articles, absorbed most of his energies: the creation of Russian railroads by Russians, free from what he regarded as the profligacy, mismanagement, and profiteering of foreign bankers and engineers; the provision of investment capital and financial services to railroads, manufacturing, and commerce at reasonable rates of interest; and tariff protection for infant Russian industries.

Corporate Capitalism and Railroads The didactic tone of Vestnik promyshlennosti reflected Chizhov’s Slavophile ideals. The empire needed corporations to meet the economic threat from Europe, but they must be managed honestly and competently, for the good of Russian society as well as managers and stockholders. He consistently lectured corporate directors on the need to respect the rights of stockholders. He urged a critical examination of corporate charters, in essence the constitutional documents

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that governed the decision-making procedures used by boards of directors and general assemblies. Four principles governed his analysis of a charter and his suggestions for changes, additions, or deletions: first, the method of bookkeeping must be specified; second, the responsibility of directors must be spelled out, especially when they received authority to spend large amounts of capital to meet “unforeseen” events; third, the stockholders, “as the true owners” of the company, must be allowed to exercise the widest possible control over its operations through votes cast at general assemblies in person or, in cases of absence due to illness or other good reason, by a designated proxy; and fourth, managers must encourage the “public discussion of activities” (glasnost’ deistvii).41 In this spirit, he identified several kinds of abuses in the corporations that proliferated in Russia after the Crimean War. Lead editorials of Vestnik promyshlennosti in 1860 and 1861 recounted many instances of protests made by shareholders at general assemblies of Russian companies. The journal also pointed out the shortcomings of annual reports of Russian corporations, particularly those in which arithmetical errors or vague explanations invited skepticism as to the board’s competence and honesty. All too commonly, small companies, generally called “share partnerships” (tovarishchestva na paiakh), appeared to have been established for the benefit of their founders. For example, the founders of one modest company, a steam-powered oil-pressing mill chartered in 1860 with 100,000 rubles in basic capital, received “a certain payment set by the founders themselves but never specified, even approximately, in the charter.” In a typical company of this size, the charter empowered directors to spend “the entire capital without the permission of the general assembly.”42 At the other extreme, Chizhov complained that the managers of huge companies, generally called “joint-stock companies” (aktsionernye obshchestva), sometimes showed contempt for the rights of stockholders by acting arbitrarily. In the May 1861 issue, for example, he censured the board of the Moscow-Saratov Railroad for its rejection of constructive criticisms offered by the audit commission and called for ever greater publicity in corporate governance, in keeping with the Slavophile critique of the tsarist bureaucracy for excessive opacity in its operations. Drawing on his knowledge of Italian history, Chizhov

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wrote sarcastically, “The Pope is infallible, and the members of the board too . . . They are more infallible than all the Popes taken together.”43 Here Chizhov identified what economists call “the principal/ agent problem.” How can owners of an enterprise devise incentives to motivate employees who possess greater knowledge about the operations of the enterprise than the owners themselves? In this and other railroad companies, the stockholders—the true owners— found it difficult to monitor the activities of the board members. This problem had plagued all large corporations in Europe and North America, from the earliest companies chartered for the purpose of trade with faraway continents, such as John Law’s speculative “Mississippi bubble,” to the railroads that proliferated in the nineteenth century. The implications for Russia were serious. If abuses of managerial power in the railroad companies of Europe and the United States proved impossible to prevent, how could they be curbed in the Russian Empire, where the tradition of honesty in business remained far weaker? The greatest offenses, in Chizhov’s opinion, were those committed by the largest Russian company created in the half-century after the Crimean War: the Russian Railroad Company (Glavnoe obshchestvo rossiiskikh zheleznykh dorog; in French, La Grande société des chemins de fer russes), chartered on January 27, 1857, with offices in both St. Petersburg and Paris. Despite its massive initial capitalization—75 million silver rubles, which was projected to reach 275 million silver rubles in the course of ten years—it set a bad example for corporations in general, according to Vestnik promyshlennosti. Chizhov alleged that the managers hired incompetent French construction engineers at exorbitant salaries, allowed wasteful or substandard construction practices, and made the company “a state within a state,” “a strange combination of our officialdom and the insolence of French bureaucratic practice,” owing to the control exercised in Paris by Émile and Isaac Pereire, the masterminds of Crédit Mobilier. Wounded national pride may have led Chizhov and Babst to exaggerate the abuses committed by this company, but the facts were plain enough. Unable to meet its original obligations to build 4,000 versts of track linking St. Petersburg and Warsaw, Moscow and Nizhnii Novgorod, Libau and Orel or Kursk, and Moscow and the Black Sea, the com-

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pany received new financial support from the Russian state, in the form of additional guarantees on the interest paid to corporate investors. Vestnik promyshlennosti called the company’s treasury as “a bottomless pit” and advised the tsarist government to break the company up into several separate enterprises that would be obliged to show “respect for public opinion.”44 Chizhov interpreted two actions of the company’s board as proof of its callous disregard of the principle of publicity. In December 1859 it rejected a petition, from eighty-nine stockholders who held 54.1 percent of the company’s shares, calling for a special general assembly to discuss cost overruns and delays in construction. Three months later, the board refused to admit to the third regular general assembly 123 shareholders who had signed the petition.45 In the first issue of Aktsioner for 1863, Chizhov made a clever reference to both the military history of ancient Rome and the fact that Émile and Isaac Pereire were French Jews as he condemned what he called “the corporate invasion of the Gauls and the Jews against us” in the Russian Railroad Company. Worse than the company’s massive cost overruns and refusal to entrust administrative or technical work to Russian engineers was the contempt that the French managers of the company showed for Russian public opinion, which was the key to social progress in the Slavophile ideology: “Whether our own [companies] are bad or good, they always remain subject to retribution by public opinion, but to the visiting exploiter, Russians and red-skinned Indians are one and the same. For him, the only law governing his actions is to make a fortune by any means possible, to make a fortune no matter what. May God perhaps save us from visitors and builders and enlighteners and administrators.” Russians must create their own economic destiny. Chizhov asked rhetorically, “Can anything advance in our country . . . when we have no banks and no railroads [of our own]?” The two problems required solution together. Without the continued expansion of the railroad network, the Russian economy would remain stagnant; but where could the needed capital be found? “Everything comes down to one thing: we now need railroads and more railroads more than anything, however they are built, whether by foreign or borrowed capital.” Given the enormous costs involved, the credit system required a complete restructuring. The State Bank had been reformed in 1860, but no corporate banks existed to accu-

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mulate the savings of the population and channel them into new enterprises.46 In this spirit of economic nationalism, Chizhov and Babst called for the creation of corporate banks to accumulate investment capital. For his part, Babst stressed the need for a firm Russian currency and the creation of banks throughout the country to mobilize dormant capital. Although not so vociferously as Chizhov, Babst utilized the familiar rhetoric of the Slavophiles. Bureaucrats in faraway St. Petersburg could not be trusted to make wise decisions about the allocation of capital, he wrote. Local people should be trusted to manage their own agricultural and commercial banks. To be sure, Russia could always profit from foreign capital and expertise, as in the case of the Mennonites—pacifist German farmers to whom Empress Catherine II had given land on the empty steppe near Saratov, on the Volga river. However, Russians must reject scoundrels who sought simply to “devour our resources.”47 Aktsioner likewise promoted the creation of land banks to amass capital in rural areas for the provision of mortgage loans to be used for the improvement of local agriculture.48 The massive amounts of capital needed to finance railroads demanded special analysis. In the title of his speech to the statistics section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society on December 10, 1865, Chizhov posed the fateful question: “Do We Have Free Capital for the Construction of Railroads?” Printed in the St. Petersburg newspaper Russkii invalid (The Russian Disabled Soldier) late in 1865, the speech appeared separately as a pamphlet in early 1866. This statement, delivered in the imperial capital, constituted his most important discussion of this issue. As for the amount of investment capital needed, Chizhov claimed that it need not be astronomical. The railroad from Moscow to the Trinity Monastery, in which he served as managing director (see Chapter 3), turned a profit precisely because it used no foreign capital or technicians but “purely Russian capital.” He admitted that some foreign capital might be necessary but considered it immoral to burden future generations with massive foreign loans. The mobilization of Russian capital by Russian entrepreneurs would make foreign capital cheaper to borrow. Capital existed in Russia, as the brisk sale of state bonds all over the country clearly demonstrated. If Russian rail-

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roads could be built without extravagance and could connect areas where real economic opportunities existed, then patriotic Russians would purchase the stocks and bonds of companies founded and managed by Russians: “Nationality is not an empty phrase.” Echoing Babst, Chizhov argued that local people knew better than bureaucrats the economic conditions in each region. A special bank should be created to amass investment capital for the construction of railroads, but the government’s role should be limited to enforcing the legality of the bank’s operations.49 A Slavophile contempt for the tsarist bureaucracy, not a devotion to the ideal of laissez-faire capitalism, impelled Chizhov to oppose any governmental role in the management of enterprises in commerce, industry, finance, and transportation. Bureaucratic control caused injury to all parties: to the state, which lost massive revenues through waste; to the economy, which lost opportunities to benefit from competent private enterprise; and to the inhabitants of the country, victims of the bureaucratic “yoke and oppression [gnet i pritesnenie].” The only exceptions to this rule he considered “necessary evils”: governmentowned plants producing military supplies such as ammunition and specialized printing shops producing currency, state bonds, and other official documents.50 To Chizhov, the participation of the state in building and managing railroads entailed numerous risks. In the first place, private railroads could be built more cheaply than state-owned ones, he claimed, because of the inherently wasteful nature of enterprises controlled by the imperial bureaucracy. Private railroads offered the additional benefit of not requiring the labor of soldiers, who received low wages and suffered from cruel military discipline. The moral argument, central to his speech on the financing of railroads, always carried great weight with him. In Moskva, he reiterated that managerial problems on the Nicholas Railroad could best be solved through the sale of the road to a corporation owned by Russians. Foreign ownership of the railroad connecting the two capitals would cause even more harm than continued management by the state.51 Chizhov’s appeals, however, had little impact on economic policies formulated in St. Petersburg. The tsarist government sold the Nicholas Railroad to the Russian Railroad Company and refused to allow the creation of a bank for the financing of railroads. (See Chapters 3 and 4.)

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Tariff Protection for Domestic Industries: German Theories and Russian Realities Russia lacked an indigenous theory of industrial development. For centuries, highly educated bureaucrats had mobilized the resources of the country for the benefit of military power. To the extent that they paid attention to economic ideas, they generally followed current European thinking. In the eighteenth century, the mercantile theory and Physiocratic ideas of the primacy of agriculture gradually gave way to the doctrines of free trade and comparative advantage. In the early nineteenth century, the term “economist” meant a proponent of free trade. (The weekly magazine The Economist, founded in 1843, carries on this tradition in its defense of free trade, now called “globalization.”) Chizhov therefore had no choice but to borrow whatever economic ideas seemed useful in the European economic literature of the mid-nineteenth century. Although he despised European civilization, he respected the power of ideas and recognized the need to borrow some elements of European economic theory and apply them to Russia. Mere xenophobia would not convince the tsarist bureaucrats of the need to adopt economic policies favorable to Russians. Nor would it provide tactical guidance in the struggle against European competition. Although he made no effort to compose a grand theory of economic development, Chizhov’s many recommendations, taken together, constituted a coherent strategy. His resentment of foreign control over key sectors of the Russian economy, such as foreign trade and the railroad network, and his determination to mobilize the merchants to defend their interests in the tariff debates of the 1860s proceeded logically from his Slavophile nationalism. His writings demonstrated not only the breadth of his knowledge on economic issues but also a vituperative rhetorical style. Although he addressed a multitude of economic issues, he focused special attention on tariff protection for infant Russian industries because it appeared to be the key to the country’s economic destiny. The doctrine of free trade enjoyed great favor among educated Russians in the 1850s, both because the landed gentry and wholesale merchants in St. Petersburg, Riga, Reval, and Odessa shared a commitment to grain exports and the importation of high-quality goods from

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Europe, and because leading intellectuals and tsarist policymakers respected the free-trade theory, which was currently fashionable in Western Europe. Chizhov read carefully the journal of Professor Ivan Vernadskii in an effort to devise arguments that would counter what Chizhov called its “exaltation of free trade” in a series of articles pervaded, he wrote, with “the greatest nonsense.” In his major programmatic article in Aktsioner, he urged Russians to reject advice offered by Europeans who regarded Russia as “half-savage” and who, like “missionaries,” sought to enlighten “our country, poor indeed, with the light of their puny and mercenary little ideas.”52 In 1857 and 1858, Chizhov devoured a multitude of books, brochures, and articles on international trade. Although he favored the stimulation of Russian industry to meet the threat of European competition, he accepted the notion that tariffs must remain as low as possible, with just enough protectionist effect to serve as temporary aids to industrial development. For example, he appreciated the insights of the Frenchman Roederer regarding “the inequality of producers in different countries, which then causes differences in prices of goods as a result of [varying] expenditures on production.”53 Whatever the benefits of English and French scholarship, however, Chizhov looked most of all to Germany. Friedrich List, the first German author to attack free trade in the name of economic nationalism, received little attention in Russia in the era of the Great Reforms. The publication, in 1889, of Sergei Iu. Witte’s endorsement of List’s theory of industrial protectionism apparently marked the first discussion in Russia of the German’s argument. The first Russian translation of List’s major theoretical work, The National System of Political Economy, appeared two years later, fully fifty years after the book had first appeared in German. Despite these publications and Witte’s efforts to implement List’s program of economic development, neither the pamphlet nor the translation attracted much attention among the Russian reading public. Needless to say, Witte remained silent about the liberal nationalist conclusions that List drew from his economic analysis; these remained completely obscure in Russia.54 Although List had articulated a convincing argument in favor of tariff protection for infant industries, it exerted little influence among Russian economic nationalists in the 1850s and 1860s. Chizhov read English so slowly that he preferred French trans-

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lations of works written in that language, such as la Richesse des nations by Adam Smith. Reading economic treatises in German presented even greater difficulties. He relied on French translations of the works of Roscher and other German scholars. Why Chizhov did not cite List’s work remains unclear. Le système national d’économie politique was published in Paris in 1851, a decade after the first German edition appeared, and a second French edition came out in 1857, just as Chizhov was examining current European theories of international trade. Although Chizhov did not utilize List’s writings, he understood the German historical argument well enough to use it in refuting the notion of free trade. He found particularly persuasive the formula of Wilhelm Roscher, the foremost German theorist of economic development, who understood universal economic history in light of both general laws and the peculiarities of time and place: “It is sometimes necessary to resort to temporary restrictions [on imports] in order to develop industrial education and thereby lay the basis for greater independence” in the future.55 Independently of Chizhov, Babst had already recognized that Roscher’s theory of economics could be applied to Russia. Babst’s review of Roscher’s major treatise, The System of National Economy, in an article entitled “The Historical Method in Political Economy,” appeared in Russkii vestnik in March 1856.56 As a professor of political economy at Moscow University from 1857 onward, Babst propounded the German theory, and his lectures in 1860 on political economy to the public at the Practical Academy of Commercial Sciences, a merchant-supported school in Moscow, appeared in a supplement to Vestnik promyshlennosti, probably Aktsioner. He also edited the first Russian translation of Roscher’s book, published in 1860 and 1862.57 Chizhov and Babst skillfully used the rhetoric of the German historical method: free trade had enormous benefits, but in the current situation it would cause harm. Only after adequate growth in the course of many years would Russian industry be strong enough to flourish in a system of free international trade. In this spirit, Gorn praised the recent commercial treaty between France and England in terms of the classic liberal parallel between economic freedom and political freedom: “Little by little, France is now awakening to the expression of its demands as regards the completion of its political edifice. Sooner or

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later, freedom of trade must lead to political freedom.”58 This optimistic assessment implied no universal endorsement of free trade, however. Chizhov argued that the current English doctrine had no relevance for Russia, despite the enthusiastic endorsement of Professor Vernadskii. The economic debate must be understood in historical perspective. English industry owed its existence to protectionism in previous centuries, such as the Navigation Act of 1651, remnants of which survived until 1849. Why should Russia not follow England’s protectionist example?59 Free trade might be “completely justified” for France, where the poor benefited from reduced prices, but in Russia, Chizhov argued, the tax burden imposed by the government on the long-suffering peasants justified caution in lowering import tariffs: It is first necessary to equalize the position of our workers with that of workers in other countries. This equalization [should be done] in three ways: [first,] by improving the roads; [second,] by implementing a better system of levying taxes so that the tax burden does not lie entirely on the poor; and third, by increasing funds spent on public education. All import duties that are harmful, that is, those that increase the price of necessities consumed by the poor, should be abolished, but all others should be retained. If these must be reduced, then they should be retained as long as the condition of our workers has not become the same as [that of] others.60

Chizhov also found support for his position in the work of Henry C. Carey, whose Letters to the President of the United States (1858) had so forcefully presented the case for industrial protection that a Russian translation appeared only two years later, announced in an enthusiastic advertisement in Aktsioner.61 Aleksandr Shipov and Vasilii Kokorev had already published general appeals for high tariffs, but Chizhov worked out his own system independently. In Augsburg in January 1858, when Carey was drafting his letters to Abraham Lincoln, Chizhov composed in his diary a remarkably coherent policy of tariff protection. He apparently never published it, evidently because it failed to endorse high duties, which the Moscow manufacturers regarded as their birthright. It demonstrated, however, his ability to extract from dry economic principles a series of policy recommendations, inspired by his Slavophile romanticism, theoretically capable of

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invigorating the Russian economy while protecting the interests of the poor and the mute. Chizhov owed his system of tariff protection to no particular thinker. While reading the analysis of tariffs by Roederer, an economist devoted to an “extreme” theory of protectionism, expressed in what Chizhov considered murky and confused prose, he jotted down a six-part scheme that “popped into my head.” Although Chizhov enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as an economic nationalist, his theoretical scheme appeared surprisingly flexible. He identified six categories of imported goods: basic necessities such as “grain, meat, salt,” coarse textiles, and raw iron; cotton textiles, distilled spirits, and beer, consumed by the majority of the population from discretionary income; raw materials essential to factories and plants; luxury items for the majority, such as tea and sugar; necessities and luxuries purchased primarily by the wealthy; and extremely expensive luxury objects. Of these, only the fifth group deserved tariff protection designed to promote the development of Russian industry. All the others, he believed, should be admitted duty-free or should bear a purely fiscal duty. Most of the fiscal duties should remain small, so as to raise a nominal amount of revenue for the state treasury. Morality outweighed economic considerations. For example, goods in the first category should be made available as cheaply as possible because, as they grew more expensive, “poverty [bednost’]” would become “destitution [nishcheta].” Moral “conceptions of humanity and Christianity” demanded this policy. The British Parliament deserved no praise for having abolished the Corn Laws in 1846, because this reform should have been introduced a century before, for the benefit of the poor. Likewise, goods in the sixth category should be subject to high fiscal duties because the state should derive maximum benefit from lavish spending, by the wealthy, on “style and luxury,” but these duties had no relevance for industrial development. This scheme of optimum levels of tariff protection served as a preamble to Chizhov’s central concept, underlined for emphasis and articulated in purely Slavophile terms: “The issue of free trade and protectionism cannot be accepted in Russia directly and immutably in the same form as it is accepted in Western Europe.” Because political economy developed in Europe, it had many legitimate pretensions to be considered “infallible” there, although it continued to be debated fiercely. His-

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tory had imposed on Russia a different destiny. The Slavophile ideology justified a separate path for Russia in economics, as in politics and religion: By the inscrutable paths of Providence we were summoned to activity only in the most recent past. We have developed slowly and have often advanced according to entirely different laws of development. At least, these laws of development have taken entirely different forms in our country. It would be senseless for us to forget the entire history of our development and all at once to transform ourselves, by one stroke of the pen, even one wielded by science. Natura non habet saltus [there are no discontinuities in nature], and it is the same in history. We could have convinced ourselves by bitter experience how harmful such discontinuities have been in history. How heavily their consequences have lain on the entire mass of the people! To what completely opposite goals such deviations from the firm and direct path of national life have led!

The imitation of European institutions by the Russian government since the era of Peter I had justified the “un-Christian and inhuman” oppression of the peasantry: “Does science now wish to choose the same unsuccessful path of blind imitation?”62 The argument advanced by Friedrich List and Wilhelm Roscher in favor of protecting “infant industries” appeared convincing because the historical perspective promised tangible economic benefits in the near future. Germany could replicate England’s success if given the benefit of temporary tariff protection. To what extent, however, could the historical experience of Germany offer anything of value to Russia? Although a latecomer in the race for economic primacy, Germany already enjoyed a long tradition of urban life, centuries of sophisticated commercial activity, an excellent educational system, a burgeoning railroad network, and a relatively advanced agricultural system free of serfdom. Russia’s level of economic development in the 1850s remained so far below that of the German lands that the argument for protection of “infant industries” seemed much weaker. The low tariffs that Chizhov considered necessary in his sketch in January 1858 appeared to benefit Russian manufacturers by keeping the cost of imported raw

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materials and equipment as low as possible. The major industry in the Moscow region, cotton textile manufacturing, depended on huge quantities of American raw cotton and on English textile machinery, for example. On the other hand, not to maintain high duties on imported European textiles risked destroying the weaving industry in the Moscow region. Without tariff protection, they could scarcely survive, so high were the costs and so low the level of productivity. Before the Emancipation Statute of February 1861, most wage laborers in textile mills remained serfs on temporary leave from their villages. They brought few industrial skills to the factory and bore heavy fiscal obligations to their gentry landlords. Chizhov believed that fiscal and protectionist duties on goods in the fifth category would stimulate domestic manufacturing, giving factory jobs to the poor, while raising the prices of these goods only slightly. The precise amount of the protectionist duty must depend, however, on the extent to which Russian industry had already developed. He seemed to be proposing a three-stage policy of protection for “infant industries”: low duties in cases where no Russian factories could yet supply the needed goods; a gradual increase in protectionist duties to protect new and developing factories; and, finally, a gradual decrease in duties once Russian industry grew efficient enough to meet foreign competition, so as to curtail monopoly profits, injurious to consumers of manufactured goods. In 1858 he focused on factories that produced goods purchased primarily by the wealthy. He did not yet endorse protectionist duties for the benefit of industry producing low-cost goods of mass consumption, such as cheap textiles produced in the Moscow region. Although Chizhov placed railroads at the center of his economic strategy, he did not sacrifice them on the altar of protectionism. As long as heavy industry remained too poorly developed in Russia to meet the great demand for rails, locomotives, and rolling stock, European railroad equipment should enter Russia duty-free. In taking this position, he demonstrated an appreciation of the benefits of what Albert O. Hirschman defined as “forward linkages” a century later.63 Chizhov’s own railroad utilized rails, locomotives, and railroad cars purchased in Europe and imported free of tariff duties, all in an effort to bring to the Russian economy the benefits of reduced freight and passenger transportation costs as quickly as possible. (See Chapter 3.)

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The other major contribution of the railroads—what Hirschman called “backward linkages”—consisted in the positive effects on heavy industry of the massive orders for rails and rolling stock within the empire. Some backward linkages materialized quickly, as in the rising demand for bricks, railroad ties, and wood fuel, but decades would pass before Russian mines and plants would be capable of supplying, at reasonable prices, the massive amounts of coal, iron, rolling stock, and locomotives that the railroad network required. When the German Zollverein (customs union) proposed a commercial treaty with the Russian Empire in 1864 in an effort to reduce almost all Russian tariff duties on imported manufactured goods, Chizhov called upon Babst to compose “an answer to the German memorandum” on behalf of the Moscow merchants, who feared that the treaty would destroy their factories. He advised that one copy to be delivered “to the tsar. This is very important.” The refutation of the Zollverein’s arguments for freer trade took the form of a substantial book containing a forty-one-page introduction by Babst and twentytwo chapters, each devoted to a sector of Russian industry that the merchants considered deserving of tariff protection. Chizhov’s role in the preparation of this argument for industrial protection remains unclear because only two of the chapters bore the author’s name. Whether or not Chizhov wrote many of the chapters, as Simonova claimed, his favorite themes resounded throughout, as in the final article, twenty-two pages long, on silk production. The merchants’ arguments convinced the Russian government to reject the Zollverein’s proposal.64 However many of the chapters Chizhov wrote, he left the task of making the strategic argument for tariff protection to Babst, who possessed as firm a command of the complexities of international commerce as any economist in Russia. Chizhov certainly approved of the Moscow merchants’ protectionist arguments and occasionally reiterated them in Den’, Moskva, and Moskvich, but he always analyzed the needs of Russian industry in a way that promised larger long-term dividends than simply the retention of the existing system of tariff protection. His primary concern remained the fate of the Russian economy as a whole, or at least regions populated by ethnic Russians, not merely the advantages of manufacturers as against those of consumers. Although he gladly provided some advice to the merchants in their

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campaign against the Zollverein, his plan to finance Russian railroads occupied most of his attention in 1865. Still, Chizhov made three major contributions to the cause of tariff protection for Russian industry besides advising the Moscow merchants. First, during the debate in St. Petersburg over tariff protection in 1867–1868, he argued in favor of “his cherished idea” (zavetnaia mysl’), as Cherokov termed it, of a general revision of the tariff with the participation of merchants in the discussion. Again, the Slavophiles’ cry for the liberation of public opinion aided the merchants in the articulation of their economic demands. In a series of editorials in Aksakov’s newspapers, Chizhov urged the government to reject “the insistent and completely unjust demands of Prussia” in favor of “the poorly understood theory” of free trade and to maintain moderate tariff protection for Russian industry. In the attitudes of the bureaucrats who proposed lower tariffs he perceived several evils: an overly theoretical approach to the tariff, ignorance of economic issues, “cheap liberalism, which is harmful to our country,” and a “desire to receive praise from the Prussian commercial agent.” The vague and misleading statistics offered by the Germans, he claimed, endangered the Russian economy as much as did the shots fired at Russian border guards by German smugglers. He noted that 144 Moscow merchants had praised the government’s recent efforts to suppress smuggling and saw in this exchange of opinions between the merchants and bureaucrats a positive sign of constructive dialogue “in our extremely quiet public life.”65 Chizhov also helped the Moscow manufacturers to prepare accurate statistics for presentation to the Tariff Commission in St. Petersburg. In addition to insisting that factory-owners not inflate their costs, he imposed on them extremely low annual depreciation rates: 2 percent for wooden buildings and machinery and 1 percent for stone buildings. Disputes occasionally broke out, as some manufacturers accused others of exaggerating their costs of production in an effort to win high duties. On one occasion, a merchant angrily brandished a bottle in the presence of sixty people before Cherokov took it from his hand. The manufacturers trusted Chizhov to collate the data, act as an impartial mediator, reject exaggerated claims, and determine fair and reasonable duties to be presented to the Tariff Commission. During the meetings of the commission, Chizhov spent many nights prepar-

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ing statistics. His insistence on accuracy and moderate levels of tariff protection infuriated “extreme protectionists” among the manufacturers but allowed the Moscow men to present a convincing and generally successful argument to the bureaucrats in the first general tariff revision to be carried out with the direct participation of manufacturers’ representatives.66 Chizhov’s final contribution consisted in the suggestion that tariff duties be collected in gold rubles rather than in paper (credit) rubles. In November 1876, Finance Minister Reutern took Chizhov’s advice. The considerable disparity between the two currencies meant that the real value of duties immediately rose by 40 percent, not only giving Russian manufacturers a significantly greater degree of tariff protection than before but also providing the imperial treasury with that much more revenue with which to meet the extraordinary expenses of the war with the Ottoman Empire, which broke out in April 1877.67 To his credit, Chizhov respected intelligent proponents of free trade. Gustave Molinari’s brochures on the history of tariffs on iron, coal, and grain made clear the difficulty of identifying an optimum level of protection. Unrestricted protectionism threatened “the well-being of society. Therefore in Russia the path of the defender of temporary protection is very slippery.” Two opposite dangers existed: “lapsing into a defense of the selfish profits of the minority” of manufacturers on the one hand, and, on the other, “being carried away” by the ideas of free trade, “hostile to the interests of the people.”68 For example, in his book on silk, Chizhov praised the example of industrialists in the Italian Piedmont, who divided the cultivation of silkworms and the unwinding of cocoons into two separate occupations but kept them geographically close. Against those who proposed locating silk-winding in Moscow, Chizhov warned that French and Italian silk manufacturers could purchase cocoons from the Transcaucasus region of the Russian Empire more cheaply than could manufacturers in Moscow, owing to the low cost of transport by steamship in the Mediterranean Sea. He advised using the cheap and plentiful land and labor of South Russia. With subtle sarcasm, he asserted that “the most puzzling part of the business—silk-winding—does not surpass the limits of either the understanding or abilities of a landed proprietor.”69

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Solution of the complex equation for optimal tariff protection eluded even Chizhov, who held an advanced degree in mathematics. An econometric analysis of protectionist arguments in Russia in the 1860s, using data supplied by the partisans of free trade—the Zollverein, wholesale traders in the major ports of the empire, and tsarist bureaucrats—and their opponents—Moscow merchants—may one day allow historians to conclude whether either group advanced an optimal system of tariff protection, one that provided duties high enough to maintain the existence of Russian industries but low enough not to burden the consumer unduly. Such computations, in addition to measuring an optimum level at a given moment, must also undergo constant readjustments to take account of changes in economic conditions, both domestic and international. List and Roscher successfully argued that Germany deserved industrial protection from the 1840s onward. Whether markets in Russia would have responded adequately in the presence of optimal tariffs remains an empirical question.

The Origins of Slavophile Capitalism “Slavophile capitalism,” the doctrine of Russian economic development embraced by the Moscow commercial-industrial elite in the halfcentury prior to World War I, had its origins in the merchant-Slavophile alliance during the era of the Great Reforms.70 As the central figure in this alliance, Chizhov led in the formulation of this doctrine, which had three components: benevolence toward workers, fear and hatred of foreign capitalists, and economic activity in the service of the Russian land. The Slavophiles, all members of the gentry in the Moscow region, had cultivated the myth of benevolence toward their serfs in the decades before the Emancipation. Chizhov himself had refrained from freeing his family’s serfs only because of the objections of his mother. His concern with the plight of factory workers, not only in England but also in Russia, represented a potential source of conflict with the merchants, who often treated workers harshly. For example, after reading a book by Théodore Fix on the plight of workers in Europe, Chizhov noted in 1858 the need for accurate reports on working conditions in factories.71 Still, he held the merchants in high

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enough regard to excuse their exploitation of the workers as an unfortunate consequence of the primitive state of the Russian economy and the coarse treatment of the merchants at the hands of the tsarist bureaucracy. Accordingly, he accepted the merchants’ self-congratulatory image of themselves as benefactors of the people—“work-givers” (rabotodateli, apparently from the German Arbeitgeber) who provided schools, clinics, and other social services within the factory complex— unlike English manufacturers and their imitators in the St. Petersburg region, who allegedly treated their labor force as just another factor of production. In central Russia, the Slavophile myth of love and trust between the landlord and his peasants easily passed over to industry, especially because the vast majority of textile factories in the Moscow region were located close to the labor supply, in villages, which was composed mostly of peasants. Economic xenophobia had a long history in Russia, beginning with the forays of Europeans into the Russian economy in the sixteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century the fear and hatred of foreign capitalists had become an axiom of economic thinking in the Moscow region. Enemies included not only Europeans but also non-Russian subjects of the emperor in Warsaw, Odessa, Riga, and St. Petersburg, especially those who embraced the theory of free trade. The Slavophile notion of Russia’s separate destiny emboldened the Moscow merchants to intensify their traditional aversion to outsiders. Finally, the Slavophiles and their merchant allies argued that only industry could save Russia from defeat in the economic struggle against European competition. They criticized the tsarist bureaucracy and some elements of the gentry for protecting the interests of commercial agriculture, which benefited from free trade. For their part, the partisans of free trade argued that exports of Russian agricultural goods to Europe generated the money needed to pay for imported European machinery and other manufactured goods. They considered the protectionist tariff to be an artificial and ultimately wasteful intrusion into the market by bureaucrats who lacked an objective criterion for setting tariff levels. To this notion that Russia remained an essentially agricultural country condemned by fate to buy essential manufactured goods from Europe, the proponents of Slavophile capitalism responded with the patriotic argument that Russia needed an industrial system capable of producing manufactured goods domesti-

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cally. Such a system would not only ensure the economic independence of the empire but would also raise living standards by giving workers higher wages and better educational opportunities than those available in agriculture. As Chizhov and the merchants presented their case to the tsarist bureaucracy and the Russian public in the 1860s, each of the three elements of Slavophile capitalism engendered a dilemma. First, the notion of benevolence required that the tradition of Orthodox Christian community, upheld by the Slavophiles as an inherent trait of moral superiority among the peasantry despite its poverty, could somehow save Russia from the evils of excessive individualism and capitalist exploitation. Chizhov used the Italian term for “good-for-nothings” (farnientisti) to ridicule gentry landlords who took no interest in silkworm cultivation, for example. He predicted that a vigorous effort, under capable state sponsorship, to spread silk cultivation in Russia would create significant profits for small landowners and also have positive social and moral consequences for the whole nation, as “this increase in income not only does not reduce but significantly increases the welfare of the peasant.”72 How could he convince the Moscow merchants to act in this self-sacrificial spirit? It was as if economic determinism would never affect Russian society. He simply trusted Russians to act selflessly in the grand campaign for industrial development. To Chizhov, the spirit of calculation, the essence of capitalism, did not threaten to destroy the Slavophile ideal. Individualism and the community spirit would coexist. Romanticism would triumph over realism. The notion of Christian paternalism toward workers appeared especially problematic. How could Russian capitalists be expected to remain generous and caring toward their workers when forced by European industrial competition to keep wages low for the sake of the survival of their enterprises? It was difficult to argue that Russian industry was somehow morally superior to European industry. The brutal treatment of workers by many Moscow merchants might be excused as remnants of tsarist repression of merchants in centuries past, but the market imposed its own imperatives. Wages remained low both because of the abundance of labor resulting from the rapid increase in the rural population and because of the low level of productivity of semi-peasant workers. Moreover, few outside Moscow

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accepted the merchants’ self-serving claims of benevolence and patriotism. As capitalism spread throughout Russia, what assurance could Chizhov give that the alleged morality of Orthodox Christian merchants would prevent the emergence of the corrosive effects of the industrial way of life, already visible in Europe: increased anonymity, excessive greed, and the commodification of emotion as well as of material goods? In the textile mills of the Central Industrial Region, highly paid English foremen tended to despise and mistreat the workers. Could their cruelty not be considered an accurate image of the future? The second element of Slavophile capitalism likewise created a dilemma. How could the Moscow merchants maintain the moral superiority of capitalism in Russia while applying the institutional essence of capitalism, rational calculation, from Europe? On the one hand, they scorned integration into the world market, hoping to prosper behind a high wall of tariff protection. On the other hand, they admitted that technological progress could not exist without constant infusions of new machinery and techniques from Europe, the very object of their hatred. With ten other prominent Russian Pan-Slavists, Chizhov signed Aleksei Khomiakov’s famous “Letter to the Serbs,” a fifty-one-page affirmation of Russian support for Serbian cultural development published in both Russian and Serbo-Croatian in 1860 in Leipzig.73 At the Slavic Congress in Moscow in May 1867, Chizhov addressed the 600 representatives of the various Slavic peoples as “Brother Slavs!” In a brief discussion of “the history of the birth of the idea of Slavdom,” he denounced “the most terrible yoke” imposed by Providence on the Slavic peoples: “European civilization!” The audience applauded his prediction that “a spiritual struggle” must soon erupt “because our sworn enemies, the Germans, who sense our strength, will intensify their hatred of the Slavs.” He ended with a poetic prayer to Slavic brotherhood composed by Khomiakov, whom Chizhov had “always venerated” in life and whose memory “has remained sacred for me”: Give us not a slavish meekness; Give us not a pride that’s blind. Soothe our morbid doubt and weakness With life’s spirit, pure and kind.74

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According to Chizhov’s stage theory of history, Slavs would remain pure and good whatever the material circumstances of their existence. Perhaps he remained blind to this dilemma because he never doubted his own essentially moral vision of economic development. Xenophobia presented problems within the Russian Empire as well. Chizhov’s glorification of ethnic Russians imposed geographical limits on the spread of his strategy of economic nationalism. His appeal to Russian ethnicity could hardly rally the entire merchant elite of the multinational empire. As Orthodox Christians, Chizhov and his merchant allies repeatedly made clear that they felt more sympathy for Serbs and Bulgarians than for Germans, Poles, and Jews living in the Russian Empire. The very names of the Russian state since the time of Peter the Great—Russia (Rossiia) and the Russian Empire (Rossiiskaia imperiia)—stood above the notion of ethnicity. Peter the Great and his descendants had recruited not only Russians but Baltic Germans, Georgians, and Poles as well as Scots, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Germans, and Swedes to serve the Russian state. Their names filled the annals of imperial military and bureaucratic history. The ethnic group identified with the Russian land (Rus’ or russkaia zemlia), its inhabitants (Russkie), and their language (russkii iazyk), comprised only about half the population of the empire. Although the dominant ethnic group, Russians had not absorbed the dozens of minorities that populated the western, southern, and eastern borderlands of the empire and remained vastly outnumbered in those regions. The moral and cultural qualities that Chizhov associated with the Russian Orthodox Church likewise did not appeal to the minorities, each of which tended to maintain a strong allegiance to its own religion: for example, the Lutheran church in the Baltic German lands and Finland, the Catholic in Russian Poland and Lithuania, Judaism among the Jewish minority, Islam among the Turkic peoples, and the special forms of Christianity in Georgia and Armenia, which long antedated Orthodoxy in Russia. Although the Slavophiles blamed the multiethnic nature of the Russian state on Peter the Great, the conquest of the minorities had begun in 1552, when Ivan the Terrible absorbed the Tatar khanate of Kazan, at the bend in the Volga river. Some aristocratic families in Muscovy bore names of Turkic origin, as some Muslim princes and warriors had taken Orthodoxy and entered the service of the Muscovite grand princes and tsars. Paradoxically,

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even the Kireevskiis and the Aksakovs, outspoken Slavophiles in the nineteenth century, could trace their male lineage to Tatar warriors named Girei (or Kirei) and “the lame” (aksak in Turkic), respectively. Whether exalting the industry of the Moscow region or dreaming up plans to bring the blessings of capitalism to the poverty-stricken Far North and the steppes of South Russia, Chizhov appealed to ethnicity more than to the interests of the empire as a whole.75 Ukrainians he regarded as part of the Orthodox Russian family. As a native of Kostroma and a denizen of Moscow, he naturally favored the interests of the Central Industrial Region against the export-oriented cities of the Baltic and Black Sea littorals, the competing banking centers of St. Petersburg and Warsaw, and the mining and manufacturing industries of the St. Petersburg region, tsarist Poland, the Ural mountains, and Siberia. As an ethnic Russian committed to the Slavophile ideal, he defended Russian culture, especially the Orthodox religion, which had few adherents in the German cities of the Baltic region and tsarist Poland. Even in nominally Russian cities such as St. Petersburg and Odessa, much of the commercial and industrial power lay in the hands of foreigners or members of ethnic minorities: Poles, Germans, and Jews. In the very first issue of Vestnik promyshlennosti, he expressed contempt for the Westernized business practices of St. Petersburg, where all the major trading houses were owned by foreigners.76 Several prominent merchants met with Chizhov and Aksakov at Timofei Morozov’s house in November 1870 to hear a Russian merchant complain of maltreatment in Riga. According to him, the oppression of Russian merchants by the German-speaking municipal government (Magistrat) of Riga took such extreme forms that local officials refused to allow the use of Russian, ostensibly the official language of the empire, “even in official business.”77 Slavophile capitalism inevitably remained narrowly ethnic in its appeal, whatever its claims to moral superiority over the allegedly impersonal and morally corrupt West. This appeal, a typical example of what the sociologist Edward Shils called “primordial ties,” revealed both the strength and the weakness of Slavophile capitalism. It rallied ethnic Russians to the cause of economic development, but it repelled non-Russians. Shils’s concept of “civil ties”—feelings of nationalist loyalty to a state that guaranteed and tolerated the rights of all individuals

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of any ethnicity, religion, or other form of group identity—did not exist in nineteenth-century Russia.78 What might be termed, following Shils, “imperial ties”—the willingness of aristocrats and nobles of all nationalities (except Jewish) in the high bureaucratic and military ranks, of merchants of all non-Russian minority groups, and of the clergy of the various minorities to submit to the autocratic state and to fulfill its demands for service according to one’s position in the hierarchy of social estates—thus stood in conflict with the doctrine of Slavophile capitalism. Structural differences between Germany and Russia likewise weakened the relevance of the German historical theory of economic development for Russia. Germans in the 1850s, especially liberals, regarded themselves as members of a single nation living in a multitude of states. Their aspirations provided legitimacy for the diplomatic and military exploits of Count Otto von Bismarck, who—by the most illiberal means—united all the German states, with the sole exception of Austria, in the German Empire in 1871. Russians faced the opposite situation. They already lived in a single state, but they constituted only one of a multitude of ethnic groups within it. They could not adopt the European model of the nation-state because to do so would have required the breakup of the Russian Empire, a revolutionary change that no Russian nationalist dared consider. Stalin, in exalting the nonexistent “Soviet people” (sovetskii narod), recast the aggressive nationalism of the prerevolutionary Russians in an allegedly proletarian form, but his attempt to imbue the notion of Soviet nationalism with both a primordial and an imperial appeal failed utterly. As Frank E. Manuel observed, “the failure of Marxism even to begin to appreciate the obstinate potency of ethnicity, whatever its cultural, economic, and religious origins might be, has remained one of the tragedies of a theory of human nature that ignored the irrational and the daemonic and tried to erase the brand markings of the historical.”79 Russian nationalists finally recognized the deleterious effects of Soviet rule. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn proposed the secession of the Russian nation-state in his Letter to the Soviet Leaders (1974). When Boris N. Yeltsin acted on this idea in 1991, the Soviet Union immediately fell apart. The third element of Slavophile capitalism—the effort to foster economic development for the benefit of the Russian people—

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created a dilemma for Chizhov as he appealed to the imperial government for essential aid. How could he hope that the imperial state would implement his strategy of economic nationalism? Only the tsarist state had the power to do so, but few bureaucrats in St. Petersburg, even among those who bore Russian names, found the argument convincing, so powerful was the tradition of imperial—as opposed to ethnic—loyalty in the capital and so influential the doctrine of free trade. For example, Minister of Internal Affairs Petr A. Valuev found Chizhov’s Slavophile rhetoric repugnant. At a banquet in April 1866 organized to celebrate the escape of Alexander II from an attempted assassination six days earlier (an event that Chizhov had witnessed), numerous speakers thanked God for the happy outcome, but Valuev commented negatively in his diary on all but one of the speeches. In the only reference to Chizhov in his diary, Valuev contemptuously called him one of the “kvas patriots who play the balalaika of Russian folk phrases.” “Kvas patriotism,” a clever insult coined by Prince Petr A. Viazemskii early in the nineteenth century, signified an unquestioning and excessive exaltation of everything Russian. Kvas, a mildly alcoholic drink concocted by Russian peasants from water and rye bread, had no pretension to culinary excellence. The term implied that a blindly patriotic Russian would prefer the most wretched kvas to the finest French wine or German beer. To cosmopolitan bureaucrats like Valuev, Chizhov’s Slavophile notion that the common people deserved a modicum of civil liberties represented a threat to the integrity of the empire. It may be that someone else besides Valuev had earlier flung the epithet at Chizhov. In his speech on domestic financing of railroads, delivered in December 1865, five months before the banquet, he denied that his economic program constituted “kvas patriotism.”80 Unlike Valuev, Finance Minister Reutern formed a high opinion of Chizhov. Although the two men approached the problem of Russian economic development from vastly different perspectives, they grew to respect each other. Born into a comfortable Baltic German family, Reutern rose through the bureaucratic ranks as an economic expert and received the title of baron at the end of his illustrious career. A Lutheran, he remained indifferent to the appeals of Russian Orthodoxy, to say nothing of the Old Belief. In his conception of economic development led by the state, talented individuals from all minority

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Mikhail Kh. Reutern, Minister of Finance (1862–1878), photograph (c. 1870) Source: Valerii I. Bovykin and Iurii A. Petrov, Kommercheskie banki Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Perspektiva, 1994)

ethnic groups, as well as European bankers and engineers, had a role to play alongside Russians. Indeed, his determination to integrate the Russian Empire into the world economy so as to reap the benefits of European technology and his sensitivity to the concerns of European bankers directly challenged the assumptions of Slavophile capitalism. Several of his policy decisions, such as his support for the Russian Railroad Company, his purchase of rubles on the international market in a vain attempt to buttress the exchange rate (kurs) of the Russian currency, and his refusal to place high import tariffs on European manufactured goods, demonstrated his indifference, even hostility, to Slavophile capitalism. Still, Reutern shared with Chizhov and the Moscow merchants a determination to establish a railroad network and a system of commercial banks. In his memorandum to the emperor dated September 16, 1866, the minister expressed frustration with the managerial shortcomings that necessitated massive subsidies to the Russian Railroad Company. Although insistent on the need to reduce state expenditures to the absolute minimum, he defended his policy of massive

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investments in railroads: “The construction of railroads can be called not only an urgent necessity but also the most important duty of the government.” By facilitating exports, railroads would strengthen the ruble in international currency markets. By forging links between Russian grain producers and foreign consumers, they would also increase the income of the agricultural population and thereby stimulate economic development throughout the empire. Besides this free-trade argument, he also stressed the perennial military considerations of the autocratic state. Modern war dictated the creation of railroads for the rapid transportation of armed troops and military supplies to the borders of the empire.81 Likewise, the need to supply heavy weaponry to the imperial army and navy justified the maintenance of the domestic iron industry. At the same time, Reutern sought reductions in the military budget in order “to safeguard the state’s fiscal integrity and to increase the amount of capital that could be invested in private industry, commerce, and agriculture.” Only a strong economy could meet the financial burdens of Russia’s military commitments.82 For their part, Chizhov and the merchants realized that without the tutelage of the tsarist state Russia could not survive the onslaught of European industrial and commercial competition. The paradoxical nature of the relationship with Reutern became clear only in Chizhov’s diary, which contained remarkably positive assessments of the finance minister. The reasons for this mutual goodwill remain obscure. There may have been connections through mutual acquaintances. Chizhov’s father, Vasilii, had served in the office of public charity in Ekaterinoslav for several years beginning in August 1826. There he had left gifts for Mikhail Reutern’s cousin, Elizaveta Alekseevna von Reutern, who was married to the poet Vasilii Zhukovskii.83 Ideological affinities also linked Chizhov to Zhukovskii and his relatives. Avdotiia P. Elagina, a close friend of Chizhov in the 1870s, was Zhukovskii’s niece. Her sons, the Kireevskii brothers, had helped to create the Slavophile movement, and Zhukovskii himself had championed the religious ideas of Aleksandr Ivanov and Nikolai Gogol. Although the Kireevskiis, Gogol, Ivanov, and Zhukovskii had died in the 1850s, Reutern must have known of Chizhov’s friendship with Ivanov and Gogol in Italy and his membership in the Slavophile circle from 1845 onward. Furthermore, although Reutern, like most Baltic Germans in the imperial administration, viewed Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism as

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potentially dangerous movements in Russian public opinion that threatened to complicate the pursuit of the empire’s national interest in European power politics, he respected Chizhov’s honesty, diligence, and administrative ability. For his part, Chizhov cultivated Reutern’s goodwill. In May 1864 he included in Ivan Aksakov’s newspaper Den’ an article on railroads favorable to Pavel P. Melnikov, head of the transport department, and Finance Minister Reutern. In his diary he wrote, “It will be essential for the [Slavophile] newspapers to act in a friendly manner; perhaps it will have an effect.”84 In his diary, Chizhov repeatedly expressed admiration for Reutern’s honesty and diligence, even when he found the minister ignorant of the Russian people and its needs: “He is an outstanding high official of the ministry: honest, noble, and loyal, but not in the least knowledgeable about Russia. He knows, to a very limited extent, the external side of its life but has no conception of its inner life” and did not appear to be interested in learning more.85 Reutern respected Chizhov’s financial expertise well enough to seek his advice in December 1876 about how best to meet the financial challenge posed by the coming war with the Ottoman Empire. Chizhov offered one basic idea: that Reutern float domestic bonds (serii) to raise revenue. For his part, the minister considered this both insufficient and risky, quoting the pessimistic words of Count Karl V. Nesselrode, the Russian minister of foreign affairs under Alexander I and Nicholas I, to the effect that such bond issues were only an expedient, and an undependable one at that: “ce sont des alliés qui vous quittent au moment difficile.” Chizhov replied that times had changed. The Russian public would buy the bonds out of patriotic enthusiasm, and in any case no other remedy existed. Several days later, he met with Reutern again, adding that if the bond issue did not suffice, the next steps would be to issue more paper money (assignatsii) and then to draw on the empire’s gold reserve. In no case should the government intervene to prop up the value of the credit ruble or assignat, however low the exchange rate might fall. If it became necessary to sell off some of the state’s vast landholdings, Chizhov advised doing so gradually so as not to depress the market. These recommendations echoed his published articles of the mid-1860s. In his opinion, sufficient capital existed in Russia for the construction of railroads, and the Russian

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public would respond loyally by buying bonds, thereby saving Russia from financial dependence on European bankers and bondholders. State intervention in the currency market represented only a waste of precious resources. Chizhov assured Reutern that the industrial and commercial estate (soslovie) respected and loved him “as it has loved no other minister of finance since Count [Egor F.] Kankrin,” who had served Emperor Nicholas I in 1823–1844: “I said that people will abuse you, but why should you be embarrassed by that?” Who in such a high position had not been abused? He also promised to send Reutern a list of trustworthy merchants in Moscow whose advice would be useful in case taxes needed to be raised. Reutern thanked him strongly.86 In summary, Chizhov’s strategy of economic nationalism generated three dilemmas: how to maintain Christian morality in Russia while borrowing capitalist institutions from Europe; how to reconcile xenophobia to the universal logic of the market, especially in the multinational empire; and how to appeal to the autocratic state for aid even as it repressed the civil liberties essential to the development of capitalism. At the very beginning of his career as a corporate entrepreneur and manager, he stated his intentions boldly. Perhaps paraphrasing the classical economists’ list of the factors of production—land, labor, and capital—he wrote that all forms of industry needed a locality in which to develop; a spirit of “will and productive enterprise”; and “the tool which, by the application of will and by the strength of enterprise, puts the local forces into action: this is money.” He quoted Archimedes, who claimed to be able to move the earth if given a lever and a proper place to stand: “thus speaks the industrialist in our time: give me money, and I will transform the earth into sugar, tallow, tobacco, silk, dye, etc.”87 How could he put this vague feeling into practice in a world of competing industrial powers?

CHAPTER 3

Economic Nationalism in Practice Everybody has been in government service; everybody is in it; and everybody intends to be in it. So why can’t this material be used to set up a proper administrative board for the management of a steamship company? —Fedor M. Dostoevskii, 1869

During a visit by American dignitaries to Moscow in January 1866, Chizhov toasted Henry C. Carey, a proponent of high tariffs in the United States, and reiterated Alexis de Tocqueville’s prophecy of the rise of the United States and Russia. The Americans mistook Chizhov for a merchant, perhaps because of his thick beard.1 He would have been amused by this error. Neither a typical landlord of gentry status nor a merchant with cultural ties to the peasantry, he relished his dual career as an ideologist of Russian economic nationalism and as a founder and manager of successful corporations. The financial rewards that made him a wealthy man in the last twenty years of his life apparently vindicated his strictness and dedication to hard work. Like many famous entrepreneurs, he acted as an outsider, a person with the strength of character to oppose convention and forge what Joseph A. Schumpeter called “new combinations.” Chizhov’s career was less than totally successful, however. Precisely because he pursued his entrepreneurial goals with a determination that amazed his contemporaries, the impediments that he encountered revealed the institutional weaknesses of Russian capitalism.

The Trinity Railroad Chizhov repeatedly condemned the haughty behavior of French transport engineers in the Russian Railroad Company, the foreigners’ wasteful use of capital and materials, and the enormous financial bur92

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den that their high salaries and careless management imposed on the frail Russian economy. He argued that Russian engineers and merchants had the requisite ability and financial resources to build and manage the empire’s railroad network. Where, however, could Russians demonstrate their technical and managerial expertise in a railroad of their own? The major lines already belonged to others. Chizhov and like-minded Muscovites chose one of the few remaining routes: from Moscow northeast to Sergiev posad (now Zagorsk), site of the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergei, the holiest place in Russian Orthodoxy. The government cared so little about this route that it refused to offer any financial encouragement. In his memoirs, Baron Andrei I. Delvig claimed credit for the idea of the railroad to the Trinity Monastery. During Butter Week (Shrovetide), just before Lent, in 1858, he had dinner in Moscow at the home of Dmitrii Shipov. With the Shipov brothers—Adjutant General Sergei Shipov and his brothers Aleksandr, Dmitrii, and Nikolai— Delvig discussed the sad spectacle of mismanagement by the French bankers and engineers who controlled the Russian Railroad Company, including the “disregard” shown to landowners and the beatings of foremen and workers, whom the French treated “like cattle.” The Shipovs believed that little could be done to counter the nefarious company because Russia lacked enough capable railroad engineers. Delvig disagreed: Russian engineers could be found to build Russian railroads, although the shortage of investment capital meant that financing would have to be found in Europe. Above all, it was essential to choose the route with care. Delvig therefore argued that any new railroad built to demonstrate the capabilities of Russian engineers and investors must begin in Moscow, the economic heart of the empire. The Russian Railroad Company was building two lines from Moscow, one eastward to Nizhnii Novgorod and another southward to the Crimean peninsula. Work on a line southeast from Moscow to Saratov on the lower Volga River, via Riazan, had already begun. Only one direction remained: northeast, toward Iaroslavl, an industrial center on the upper Volga. To build a line of that length—262 versts (174 miles)—would require enormous financial resources. Delvig proposed that the initial section be built from Moscow to Sergiev posad, 66.1 versts (43.8 miles) to the northeast. The Shipov brothers declared their readiness to establish a company to implement “my idea.” Three

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Baron Andrei I. Delvig, Major General in the Corps of Transport Engineers, portrait by Ilia Repin (1882), Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow Source: Ilya Repin: Painting, Graphic Art (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1985)

of the four Shipov brothers agreed to serve as founders, together with two liquor-tax concessionaires in Moscow: Nikolai G. Riumin and Ivan F. Mamontov. The last auction of liquor taxes having occurred in 1862, prior to the introduction of an excise tax on spirits, Riumin, Mamon-

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tov, Shipov, Vasilii Kokorev, Aleksandr Koshelev, and other concessionaires sought new entrepreneurial opportunities in railroads. Delvig joined the group.2 Delvig presented the proposal to his superior in the transportation agency in St. Petersburg, Konstantin V. Chevkin, at the end of March 1859. The Muscovites had already organized the preliminary survey of land to be purchased and had drafted a budget with Delvig’s help. Although the government considered the railroad to the Trinity Monastery “a luxury,” it approved the line because the proponents requested no state subsidy and offered a convincing financial plan. The basic capital of 4.5 million silver rubles would be divided into 30,000 shares with a par value of 150 rubles. Chevkin insisted on several changes: a commitment to extend the line to Iaroslavl as soon as possible; a slight reduction in the basic capital, to 4.05 million rubles in 27,000 shares; an increase in the number of directors from three to four; and a reduction from 10 to 6 percent in the net profits to be distributed to the founders in the course of thirty years after the commencement of operations. (Delvig, the only founder who was not already wealthy, suffered the most from this final change.) The charter received the emperor’s approval on May 29, 1859.3 On July 3, the founders met with Metropolitan Filaret at the Trinity Monastery to explain their plan to him. Filaret worried that the Moscow region lacked sufficient population to make a railroad profitable and feared that pilgrims who rode in passenger cars to the monastery would lose the spiritual benefits of walking and might hear all sorts of uncouth stories as well. However, he politely heard the counterarguments, including Delvig’s point that frail pilgrims too weak to walk would be able to visit the monastery. In the end, the Metropolitan gave his blessing. Delvig welcomed this endorsement because it made the railroad acceptable to many Russians “who considered railroads a creation of the devil.”4 Chizhov, busy editing Vestnik promyshlennosti from July 1858 to the end of 1861, wrote nothing in his diary about plans for the Trinity Railroad, but he made “an entirely positive impression” on Delvig at their first meeting, at the home of Dmitrii Shipov, apparently in 1858. “Belonging to the so-called Slavophile party,” Chizhov “raised the banner of nationality and Orthodoxy and did not like Peter I and the autocracy that was transformed by him,” Delvig recalled. Although

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Chizhov “lacked both the genius and the talent” of his literary and artistic friends in Rome in the early 1840s, his superior education and his vitality made him an indispensable member of the new team of entrepreneurs: “I became friendly with no one as quickly as with Chizhov and never felt more friendship with anyone, despite the fact that I met him when I was about forty-five years old.”5 The feeling was apparently mutual. Chizhov published several articles by Delvig about municipal water systems in Vestnik promyshlennosti in the March, April, and May issues for 1859 and worked closely with him on the Trinity Railroad and other projects. In Vestnik promyshlennosti, Chizhov promoted the new railroad at every opportunity. He did not, however, serve as a full member of the board at the outset. Nor is it clear how he met the financial qualifications for membership on the board, even as an alternate. Corporate charters specified the minimum number of shares to be owned by each director (direktor) and alternate member (kandidat) on the board. This requirement served as an incentive to good management because, in their capacity as major shareholders, directors would gain or lose substantial sums to the extent that the corporation fared well or poorly. The charter of the Trinity Railroad, for example, required each of the four directors and four alternates to own at least fifty shares, with a total par value of 7,500 rubles.6 Although only 20 percent—30 rubles for each share—was required initially, the sum of 1,500 rubles in cash represented a substantial financial commitment from Chizhov, who had earned next to nothing on his silk plantation. Perhaps he borrowed the necessary cash from one of his wealthy friends. In any case, he noted that, as an alternate member of the board, he was earning 3,000 rubles per year, not in cash but “in the form of shares.” In four years, he planned to save 12,000 rubles toward his retirement: “at least I will not have to go to the poorhouse.”7 This arrangement allowed him both to accumulate shares, as was required by the charter, and to lighten the financial burden on the new company. Still, Chizhov considered the Trinity Railroad his own creation, “not only in deed, but also in thought.” Others shared this sentiment. CherGrowth of the Railroad Network in European Russia Source: Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); reproduced by permission

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okov recalled that Chizhov, incensed by the arrogance and incompetence of engineers in the Russian Railroad Company, resolved “to wrest Russian railroads from the hands of foreigners [vyrvat’ russkie dorogi iz ruk inozemtsev].” According to Cherokov, it was Chizhov, not Delvig, who selected the route from Moscow to the Trinity Monastery. When the government required evidence of the railroad’s future profitability, Chizhov set up an ingenious system to gather data. He hired six teams of two or three boys each to count the number of pilgrims who rode in carriages or walked to and from the monastery at all hours of the day and night. Cherokov was one of these boys. After two months, the number of passengers alone, apart from any freight traffic that might materialize, appeared sufficient to justify the construction of the railroad.8 Chizhov and Delvig worked together to meet the enormous financial challenges that faced the new company. The public bought few shares in the Trinity Railroad when they went on sale in July 1859. A brief episode of “stock-exchange fever” following the Crimean War had run its course by late 1858. Although the Trinity Railroad obligated itself to pay shareholders a 4 percent dividend on their invested capital during the construction of the road, it encountered competition in the securities market from the government-guaranteed shares of the Russian Railroad Company, the guaranteed shares of the new Moscow-Saratov Railroad, and the government’s own 5 percent notes.9 In November 1859, despite some friendly publicity in Mikhail Pogodin’s periodical, the financial situation appeared critical. Chizhov and Delvig published a brochure in December explaining that shareholders could expect to earn 9 percent on their investment. Chizhov won from the board its promise to publish a financial statement and a report of the board’s activities at least six times a year in Aktsioner. He thereby introduced the principle of “public discussion” (glasnost’) into Russian business, what reformers now call “transparency in corporate governance.”10 Still, at the beginning of 1860, only 11,000 shares had been sold in addition to the 5,000 shares distributed to the founders. Among the founders, only Dmitrii Shipov insisted on forging ahead. To his credit, he bought shares in the railroad while his brothers refused to do so. Nikolai Shipov, traveling abroad, showed no interest at all. Chizhov broke the impasse by convincing Riumin to buy 4,000 shares if Dmitrii

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Shipov, Nikolai Shipov, and Ivan Mamontov would each do the same. These 16,000 shares, plus the 11,000 already sold, satisfied the minimum specified by the charter. The first general assembly of stockholders, on February 25, 1860, elected Delvig, Dmitrii Shipov, Riumin, and Mamontov as directors and Chizhov as one of six alternates.11 Another financial crisis soon erupted. Owners of 1,307 shares had already paid the entire 150 rubles per share, but other shareholders had opted for the company’s installment plan: an initial payment of at least 30 rubles and a second, in 1860, of 25 rubles. In December 1860 the company’s share capital amounted to only a little more than a third of the authorized 4.05 million rubles. To meet the costs of construction, the general assembly of shareholders voted on December 21 to raise an additional 1.62 million rubles by assessing a payment of 60 rubles per share in two parts, 25 rubles in early 1861, the remaining 35 later. Dmitrii and Nikolai Shipov, who owned 6,195 shares between them, rejected the majority opinion, however. They favored slowing the construction schedule to accommodate the company’s limited finances. Their refusal placed the board in an awkward position. The charter required that the board confiscate and sell the shares of any investor who refused to pay assessments approved by the general assembly, but to do so in this case would have meant flooding the market with the Shipov brothers’ shares. Liquidation of the company appeared likely. The refusal of two of the founders, one of whom served on the board of directors, to invest additional funds would have destroyed public confidence. In order to avoid a calamitous end to this enterprise, which had been formed, after all, to demonstrate the ability of Russians to build and manage a major railroad, Delvig requested and received from Chevkin a twenty-six-year loan of 588,525 rubles, the estimated value of the Shipovs’ shares. In turn, on March 23, 1861, the general assembly accepted Delvig’s proposal to treat the Shipovs “in a more humane manner” than the charter required. Instead of confiscating their shares, the company paid them 157,972.5 rubles for their 6,195 shares, which had cost them 340,725 rubles, gave them another 1,053 shares with a total par value of 157,950 rubles at no charge, and added a cash payment of 22.5 rubles, for a total of 315,945 rubles. Some shareholders opposed this lenient treatment. For their part, the Shipovs fretted over their financial loss. This event strained personal relationships as well. Delvig’s wife, furious at the Shipovs for their lack

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of commitment to the Trinity Railroad, never again received them in her home, on the pretext of poor health.12 Three organizational tasks demanded immediate attention: the hiring of engineers and clerks, the construction of the line, and the purchase of rolling stock. As a transport engineer, Delvig led the board in performing all three tasks, but Chizhov, although busy with his publications, participated as well. A sufficient number of skilled Russians did exist, as the founders had hoped. The new railroad’s bookkeeper, Nikolai V. Pavlov, had gained experience in railroad management during the construction of the Moscow–Nizhnii Novgorod line, but, like other Russians, he had suffered “unbearable” treatment from the French administrators of the Russian Railroad Company and thus eagerly joined the Trinity Railroad. Delvig took pride in the later careers of several capable Russian engineers whom he hired to build and operate the Trinity Railroad. The spirit of economic nationalism so inspired these young professionals, he wrote, that not a kopek was stolen from the Trinity Railroad, in contrast to the sad stories of embezzlement and mismanagement on other Russian railroads, both state-owned and corporate.13 (One case of embezzlement, in 1877, is discussed later.) The transport engineers included one Rekhnevskii, with a clearly Russian name. Another Russian, Mikhail R. Bogomolets, half-German on his mother’s side, had gained experience in railroad construction on the St. Petersburg–Moscow line. He carried out the survey of the roadbed from Moscow to Sergiev posad with accuracy, zeal, and competence.14 The two other engineers had non-Russian names. Delvig noted with pride that a Russian named Vladimir I. Potemkin had quit his highly remunerative post on the Warsaw–St. Petersburg line, managed by the Russian Railroad Company, after a Frenchman asked him to break a rule: “Many Russian engineers followed his example.” As a railroad inspector working under Delvig’s authority in the 1860s, Potemkin maintained a cordial relationship with the board of the Moscow-Iaroslavl Railroad.15 Delvig, despite his German surname, was a true Russian. Orthodox in religion, he took pride in the literary accomplishments of his cousin, the famous poet Anton A. Delvig, and proclaimed his loyalty to Russia whenever other economic nationalists questioned it, as did Vasilii A. Poletika at the first commercial-industrial congress in 1870. The Austro-Prussian war of 1866 pleased Delvig insofar as it weakened

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two German states that bordered Russia. Reading dispatches from the front, he believed the Prussian numbers of Austrians killed and vice versa: “I joked that the war would kill some Germans, and it was all the same to me whether they were Prussians or Austrians because when there is even one less German, it is easier for the Russian to live.”16 Buying land along the right of way proved “extremely difficult and unpleasant.” Landowners, especially those with high governmental posts, charged inflated prices. In this connection, Delvig enjoyed a joke at the expense of Chizhov, who explained the landowners’ greed in terms of their corruption by European education. Delvig asked a peasant who grew timber in the path of the proposed railbed how much he would ask for the right of way. At first, he wanted nothing, saying that the emperor’s endorsement of the railroad was sufficient. Delvig persisted, explaining that the emperor had approved payment of amounts to be set by mutual agreement between the railroad and landowners or by a governmental commission. The timber man then asked for 5,000 rubles, or over 960 rubles per desiatina, far more than the average of 70 rubles. Delvig turned to Chizhov with a smile and observed that, “of course, Western civilization had corrupted the honest nature” of this “simple man [prostoliudin].”17 The founders of the Trinity Railroad hoped to demonstrate the ability of Russians to master the complexities of modern industrial technology, including the construction of railroads and, it was hoped, the production of equipment used by them. However, the board rejected the offer of construction materials from Dmitrii Shipov. In Delvig’s opinion, Shipov “was careless in general.” Worse, the iron and machine plant in Kostroma operated by the Shipov brothers could not produce specially shaped iron girders, 70 feet and more in length, needed for the construction of bridges. In early 1861, the board ordered reasonably priced girders of excellent quality from England. Thus, although careful management kept costs under control, the construction of the rail line revealed the sorry state of Russian industry, which could not supply equipment for its construction and operation. Construction began on May 15, 1860, after a solemn religious service at the Trinity Monastery and a banquet for the monks, directors, and staff. The Russian contractors chosen by Delvig and Bogomolets completed the line well under budget. Indeed, one of the young Russian engineers hired by Delvig designed the bridges so well that the

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girders, strong but inexpensive, weighed less than half those used by the Russian Railroad Company.18 For the third task, the purchase of high-quality rails and rolling stock at low prices, the board sent Delvig to Europe in October 1860. After Chizhov met him in Paris, the two men toured machine plants in France, Belgium, England, and Germany, where they considered a variety of offers. (Chizhov’s English lessons in Leipzig had mixed results in London. He asked for a barber but received a beer instead!) Delvig returned to Moscow, having ordered more than a million rubles’ worth of equipment, including rails from England and locomotives from the Borsig plant in Germany. Following this sale to the Trinity Railroad, its first, Borsig became a major supplier of locomotives to many other Russian railroads.19 Chizhov, now chairman of the board of directors, marked the opening of traffic on the Moscow–Sergiev posad line in August 1862 with thoughts both literary and religious. He admired Victor Hugo’s stoic words in Les misérables: “It is a terrible thing to be happy! How satisfied one feels! . . . How, possessed of the false goal of life, happiness, one forgets the true goal: duty!” Following the blessing bestowed on the railroad by Metropolitan Filaret in Moscow, where a steady rain limited the size of the crowd, the directors took the train to Sergiev posad. There the singing of a choir of fifty monks moved Chizhov to conclude that religious music was far more beautiful than secular music.20 Occasional setbacks occurred. On the very first day of operation, as members of the board returned to Moscow after dark, the train almost collided with several flatcars. The train’s engineer barely succeeded in stopping the train after the headlight illuminated the cars. “This case and similar ones,” such as two derailments caused by excessive speed on the line’s hilly terrain, wrote Delvig, “demonstrated just how few people there were at that time who were capable of managing traffic on the newly opened railroads.” A mistake by a stationmaster appeared to threaten the life of Emperor Alexander II and his wife. As the imperial train passed through Pushkino, 28 versts north of Moscow, it slowed down dramatically and veered onto the siding. Although alarmed, Delvig and Bogomolets kept silent. The royal family paid no attention to the small jolt that occurred as the train moved from the siding back onto the main track. In fact, at the end of the trip, the

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emperor and empress complimented the engineers on the smooth ride. Later, an investigation revealed that the stationmaster had incorrectly set the first switch to take the train onto the siding, leaving the second switch set for the train’s through journey. The train’s engineer, seeing this mistake, reduced speed as the train entered the station. An alert switchman aligned the tracks correctly when the train was still seventy feet from the second switch. In any case, the switches were “self-acting,” so that the pressure of the wheels would have changed the setting, but a major jolt would have occurred, and the train might have stopped, to the embarrassment of all. The stationmaster, seeing the train approach the open switch, collapsed in panic in full view of the crowd. Nervousness in anticipation of the imperial family’s visit had distracted him. Relieved of his position at the insistence of the transport director, he received a desk job in the company’s main office.21 The Trinity Railroad became an operational and financial success only because the board of directors abandoned one of the principal reasons for its creation: faith in private financial resources, free of state aid or control. Soon after the charter received imperial approval, the need for governmental assistance became clear. On May 3, 1860, the emperor allowed the founders to issue half the basic capital in the form of bonds. The government also provided a guaranteed annual dividend of 4.5 percent for investors to facilitate the eventual extension of the line from Sergiev posad to Iaroslavl and agreed to accept the company’s stocks and bonds as collateral for contracts and deliveries to the state.22 For the success of the railroad in the 1860s, Delvig gave full credit to Chizhov’s managerial ability. After the initial construction ended, in 1862, Delvig began serving as the chief inspector of private railroads from his office in St. Petersburg. Chizhov managed the operations of the railroad and its extension to Iaroslavl so successfully that the Trinity Railroad served as a model for corporate railroads in Russia: “Thanks to F. V. Chizhov, who served as chairman [of the board] after I moved to St. Petersburg, this honest administration [begun in 1859] was maintained among the staff of the Iaroslavl Railroad. This explained, at least to a significant degree, its unusually low administrative costs.” As an alternate member of the board as early as May 1860, Chizhov had already made an effort to strengthen the company’s

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financial situation. During the trip to Europe with Delvig in October 1860, he had negotiated, unsuccessfully, with bankers for aid in issuing the new company’s bonds. Shortly after Dmitrii Shipov had resigned from the board following the general assembly of March 1861, Chizhov had taken his place as a full member. (In 1862, he and Aleksandr Koshelev briefly served on the board of the Moscow-Saratov Railroad.) Under Chizhov’s leadership from 1862 onward, the Trinity Railroad earned significant profits, Delvig wrote, “only thanks to Chizhov’s skill” in maintaining high standards of honesty and “his ability, by his diligence and constant persistence, to inspire all the employees of the railroad to fulfill their obligations zealously [userdno].” When visiting Moscow in the 1860s, Delvig stayed at the apartment of Chizhov, “with whom I became more and more attached and who spent much time with me when he came to Petersburg.”23 The Moscow merchants shared Delvig’s opinion. In response to a rumor in 1867 that Chizhov might resign as chairman of the board, the shareholders dispensed with a vote in this case and, by acclamation, implored him to stay: “You have given life to our railroad; you have developed it; and now, when it is expanding greatly, you are more essential to us than ever before.”24 Persistence in the early years appeared to be the key to the eventual success of the Trinity Railroad. Gross income in the first year reached only half the level projected in 1859 and did not surpass it until 1869, the seventh year of operation. (See Table 1.) Shareholders waited until the sixth year to receive the dividend that the founders had hoped to distribute from the outset: 13.50 rubles per share. Likewise, Chizhov’s forecast of abundant passenger traffic proved inaccurate. Shipments of freight, primarily timber and fuel wood, made up the deficit. Delvig worried that once the forests were cut down, this source of income would decline. Above all, the success of the railroad owed more to frugality than to the demand for transportation. The managers decided to extend the line to Iaroslavl as soon as possible.25 Although officially called the “Moscow-Iaroslavl” from its beginning in 1859, the railroad did not reach Iaroslavl until more than a decade later. The extension of the line 196 versts (130 miles) beyond Sergiev posad, with a 4-verst spur to the Volga River at Iaroslavl, posed major challenges, both financial and managerial. In 1866, Chizhov made clear the strategy of the board of directors in a pamphlet entitled “Esti-

—

730,000

50.0%

13.50

9.0%

Other income

Total income

Expenses / income

Dividend per share

Dividend / par value (150 silver r.)

4.1%

6.10

45.4%

367,453

12,180

60,950

294,323

1863

5.3%

8.00

39.4%

392,262

8,220

89,769

294,373

1864

6.7%

10.00

33.8%

494,372

17,154

166,300

310,918

1865

7.0%

10.50

32.9%

560,207

30,106

200,066

330,035

1866

7.3%

11.00

34.9%

605,732

42,731

224,835

398,166

1867

Source: Baron Andrei I. Delvig, Moi vospominaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow: Rumiantsev Museum, 1912–13), vol. 3, 34. (Some total income figures adjusted slightly for arithmetic consistency)

80,000

650,000

Passenger income

Freight income

Estimates (1859)

Category

Year 1868

9.0%

13.50

32.1%

710,051

40,532

288,631

389,888

Table 1 Income, Expenses, and Dividends of the Moscow-Iaroslavl Railroad, 1859–1869 (in metal rubles)

12.0%

18.00

29.8%

778,672

59,685

303,422

415,565

1869

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mates of the Profitability of the Proposed Railroad from Moscow to Iaroslavl.” He justified the extension of the railroad to Iaroslavl in terms of the significant population of the provinces north of Moscow, which he estimated to be 200,000 people. In the mid-1860s, this population had generated approximately a million rubles per year in passenger fares and about 840,000 rubles in freight payments to the three railroads that served the area: the Trinity, the Moscow–Nizhnii Novgorod, and the Moscow-Riazan. For the benefit of both passengers and shippers of freight, the line to Iaroslavl would unite the entire region north and east of the Volga River “with all the rest of Russia.” He conservatively estimated gross receipts of 6,917 and a net income of 4,150 rubles per verst, far below the average figures reported in 1863–1866 by the three railroads. Construction of the first section of the Trinity Railroad, from Moscow to Sergiev posad, had cost 63,300 rubles per verst, far less than the 78,000 to 100,000 spent to build the other roads radiating outward from Moscow. Dividends from the Moscow-Iaroslavl line, 266 versts (176 miles) long, he estimated at 5 percent of the cost of construction. To the extent that these costs could be minimized, the dividend would increase. The steady decline in railroad construction costs in the 1860s gave cause for optimism. In addition, the government’s guarantee of a 5 percent dividend on the basic capital of 19,864,000 rubles meant that investors faced almost no risk at all.26 The trust that Chizhov inspired in the imperial ministries ensured the success of the extension to Iaroslavl. The imperial government promulgated fourteen laws pertaining to the Trinity Railroad between 1859 and 1871. It approved Chizhov’s petition for the transfer, at no charge, of vast tracts of state land worth approximately 10,000 rubles to facilitate the extension of the railroad from Sergiev posad to Iaroslavl. So highly was Chizhov regarded in St. Petersburg that a leading banker there, Leon M. Rosenthal, promised to raise the capital. The ultimate compromise occurred: an agreement with a Jewish banker to raise money for the Trinity Railroad. If Chizhov felt any misgivings over this cooperative venture with a non-Russian, he did not express it. Instead, he warned himself against excessive gloating: “Success involuntarily makes one supervise oneself more closely. Don’t turn into a swine, brother Fedor Vasilievich.” On June 7, 1868, the emperor confirmed the revision of the corporate charter autho-

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rizing the extension to Iaroslavl; this revision listed Chizhov as one of the founders in addition to those named in the charter of 1859. Construction began on July 2. A religious service at the Trinity Monastery provided the requisite blessing. In a short speech, Ivan F. Mamontov gave special thanks to Emperor Alexander II for approving the financial guarantee.27 After making no entries in his diary for more than nine months, Chizhov noted that trains began running between Sergiev posad and Iaroslavl on February 18, 1870. This and other extensions of the railroad owed much to his skill in presenting petitions for the expansion of operations to the Main Administration of Transport and, from 1865 onward, the Ministry of Transport, which succeeded it. The following November, for example, Chizhov traveled to St. Petersburg to obtain the minister’s permission to order only two-thirds of the rolling stock originally specified in the company’s charter and to build a short spur line to Kirzhach, a town in Pokrovsk district. That same month, Chizhov and Dmitrii Shipov, a former director of the company, made plans to build a major spur line from Iaroslavl to their native city, Kostroma. At an estimated cost of 1.9 million rubles, this 70.5-verst line cost a modest 26,950 rubles per verst to build. Another spur line, to Karabanovo, opened on October 17, 1871. Chizhov was happy to have missed the ceremony, he wrote, “because I cannot bear to attend festivities, especially when I have to be the most important person there.” A few days later, he expressed satisfaction with the financial return from the line. Gross daily income rose from 57.12 rubles on October 19 to an average of 75.01 during the first full week of operation, above his daily target of 60.30 rubles or 22,000 annually. Still, he tempered his happiness with a self-deprecating remark about the dangers of excessive pride: “Remember that success is not from you, but purely good fortune. What am I doing and what have I done for these successes?”28 Less than a year after the line reached Iaroslavl, Chizhov pressed forward with a plan to extend the railroad another 192 versts (127 miles) north of the Volga River, to Vologda. Savva I. Mamontov, Chizhov’s protégé in railroad management, provided the cash deposits (zalogi) required by the builder, Valerian A. Titov. This project offered exciting challenges, especially the introduction of low-cost rail service to the Russian North. The technological innovation consisted

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in building the line with a narrow gauge, measuring three feet, six inches, instead of the five-foot gauge used in Russia since the 1850s. (Russians used feet and inches to measure railroad gauges because railroad technology had begun in England. George W. Whistler, the American engineer who built the St. Petersburg–Moscow line, made the five-foot gauge standard in Russia. Most European lines adopted the English gauge: four feet, eight and one-half inches.) Chizhov estimated that the extension to Vologda would cost only 2,489,698 credit rubles without rails and rolling stock, or less than 13,000 rubles per verst. Patriotism and confidence in his efficient management outweighed his fear: “When I think that we are taking the risk of building the first narrow-gauge railroad [in Russia], then it becomes simply terrifying [strashno]. But then if it succeeds, it will be important for Russia, such cheapness.”29 In purely technical terms, the construction of the extension proceeded successfully. In October 1871, Chizhov marveled at the smoothness of the ride on one section of the new narrow-gauge line. The speed of the train—23 versts per hour (15 miles per hour)—also pleased him.30 Passenger trains began running on June 20, 1872. The financial results proved disappointing, however. As early as May 1871, Chizhov felt “terribly despondent” because the extension to Vologda drained income from the rest of the Trinity Railroad. If the Iaroslavl-Vologda extension could not pay for itself, it would jeopardize the construction of the spur line from Iaroslavl to Kostroma. Illness had kept him from attending church regularly for more than three months, but he still felt the need for divine help. Addressing himself in the familiar second person, he wrote, “You receive much strength from a complete acknowledgment of your insignificance and a complete reliance on Him, Whom you consider the Creator of all, and you see yourself only as His instrument.”31 The northern provinces enjoyed railroad service because of Chizhov’s patriotic dedication to the Trinity Railroad, but the paucity of traffic in the sparsely populated provinces far to the north of Moscow limited the financial success of the venture. Delvig confirmed this negative assessment. The only criticism of Chizhov to appear in Delvig’s memoir concerned the decision to extend the line to Vologda in 1870–1872. By 1874, despite a 2,000-ruble increase in profits from the Vologda line, the company’s share price had fallen to 230 rubles, or only 80 rubles above par value.32

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Cherokov recalled that, among Chizhov’s many business projects, the Trinity Railroad remained his “favorite child [liubimoe detishche].” As the chairman of the board for fifteen years, from 1862 until his death, he took justifiable pride in the function of the railroad as a force for economic development through the frugal use of modest amounts of capital, all with Russian engineers and managers. Although a statistical analysis of the railroad’s financial history has yet to be made, available evidence suggests that the railroad continued to operate successfully despite disappointing revenues from traffic on the Iaroslavl-Vologda section. In 1875, for example, profits exceeded those of 1874 by 105,000 rubles. The government agreed. It regularly published assessments of the value of corporate shares to be accepted as collateral for delayed payments of the liquor excise tax. In January 1873, it assessed the unguaranteed shares of the Moscow-Iaroslavl Railroad at 100 percent of their par value, far more than those of the Tsarskoe selo Railroad (56.7 percent), the Moscow-Smolensk Railroad (37.6 percent), and the Rybinsk-Bologoe Railroad (34 percent), for example.33 The managerial staff required tutoring in sound corporate management, however. In March 1875, the newly appointed bookkeeper, Count Leonid N. Obolenskii, complained that Nikolai Pavlov, a director who had formerly kept the account books, had not yet given them to Obolenskii. Pavlov remedied the deficiency only after Chizhov lectured him harshly. (This episode demonstrated a sign of the times: a titled aristocrat taking orders from a corporate board made up of merchants and members of the gentry.) Then, in September 1877, the board learned that a cashier named Ertov had embezzled over 47,000 rubles from the railroad and spent the money. The board forced Pavlov to make up 13,000 rubles of the loss himself because, as former chief bookkeeper, he had not prevented it. The other board members reluctantly agreed to pay the balance out of their own pockets. Chizhov parried this financial blow with calm irony, although it cost him 15,559 rubles in the end: “A pleasant surprise! I will not allow myself to become seriously upset. If an uninsured house were destroyed by fire, it would be the same. To prosecute Ertov in court would mean allowing the board to be splattered with mud [by unfavorable publicity], and there would be no point to it, as there is nothing to be taken from him.”34

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In the election of the chairman of the board at the general assembly in April 1876, Chizhov received 163 of 177 votes. Because he abstained with his 11, he received all but 3 possible. “It is pleasant to earn such trust,” he wrote.35 Under Chizhov’s leadership, the railroad remained financially strong and enjoyed the confidence of the public and the tsarist government.

The First Banks in Moscow From the eighteenth century onward, the state’s banks had offered a variety of loans, especially to favored aristocrats. Banking houses, owned mostly by foreigners, provided short-term loans to solid merchants, but only in the major cities in the empire. Smaller firms could not receive loans for working capital without paying exorbitant rates of interest. The lack of adequate capital made it difficult for Russian manufacturers to compete with Europeans.36 The difficulties that faced the founders of the Trinity Railroad in raising capital affected all large corporations in the aftermath of the Crimean War. The founders of the Vitebsk-Orel and the Kursk-Taganrog railroads, chartered in 1865 and 1866, respectively, abandoned their plans when the stocks and bonds failed to find a market despite the state’s guarantee of a 5 percent return. “This is forgotten now,” wrote Delvig in 1874. “People think that a government guarantee will ensure success in raising corporate capital.”37 In Vestnik promyshlennosti, Aktsioner, and Ivan Aksakov’s newspapers, Chizhov repeatedly stressed the need for cheap and abundant commercial credit. The first commercial bank organized as a corporation received its charter in July 1864: the St. Petersburg Private Commercial Bank, founded by a typically heterogeneous and mostly foreign group of bankers composed of three Germans, a British citizen, one man of indeterminate nationality, and one Russian.38 Soon after Vasilii Kokorev and other prominent merchants proposed the creation of the Moscow Merchant Bank in June 1864, Chizhov endorsed the idea. As usual, however, he doubted the wisdom of plunging into yet another unfamiliar economic activity: “I let myself go and subscribed [the minimum amount], 10,000 rubles, of course not my own money but Kokorev’s [loaned to me], and of course not to exercise the right [to borrow money from the bank] but in order not

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Vasilii A. Kokorev, OldBeliever merchant, photograph (c. 1865) Source: K. A. Spasskii, ed., Istoriia torgovlia i promyshlennosti v Rossii, vol. 1, 4 parts (St. Petersburg: Gaevskii, 1910–1911), part 2.

to be ashamed to speak among the merchants about a bank in which you did not participate at all. Kokorev invited me to serve as a director. I refused, but I cannot tell myself sincerely that I will refuse.” Chizhov agonized: “I do not know banking. What right did I have to think that I could manage it?” At the same time, he admitted that the bank needed the rare qualities that he would contribute: “zeal for work and steadfastness.” Moreover, what right did he have “to reject something that, in an honest way, completely honestly, would provide [financial] security for myself in old age?” The whole question showed that he was “a good-for-nothing [drian’].” Failure to win election would damage his pride, but if elected he would face another problem: “I absolutely do not wish to leave the Trinity Railroad.” Its board, now functioning harmoniously, might be plagued with discord without him. He feared that this “Russian, purely Russian company” might fall into the “mud.”39 To appreciate how quickly Chizhov had mastered the essentials of high finance, it is necessary only to note that, while studying economics in early 1858, he had complained that he “understood credit institutions poorly” and considered it “extremely boring” to read books by Thomas Banfield and other scholars about their structure and opera-

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tion.40 Now, little more than six years later, he helped the merchants to create the first and most successful commercial bank in Moscow. Having reviewed the draft of the charter, Chizhov decided not to accept a position as a director of the bank if it were offered to him because, as executive director (direktor-rasporiaditel’) of the Trinity Railroad, he would feel uncomfortable as a subordinate to a board of directors. He did agree, however, to serve as chairman of the board, although he disapproved of the high salaries paid to directors: 5,000 rubles per year for members of the board and 10,000 for the chairman. He accepted the chairmanship because his combined salaries would allow him to accumulate approximately 25,000 rubles for his retirement. Still, he regretted the lack of spare time for reading, thinking, and writing.41 Much of Chizhov’s vast correspondence with Kokorev concerned the complex negotiations with the Ministry of Finance over the creation of the Moscow Merchant Bank in 1864–1866. Obstacles included skepticism among bureaucrats as to the wisdom of creating a bank in Moscow. Opposition also came from Ludwig Knoop, a German importer who had made his fortune in Moscow selling English machinery to Russian textile manufacturers. Knoop, who provided all necessary credit to his customers, disliked the prospect of competition from a bank. Chizhov’s name appeared last in the unusually long list of ninety founders. His participation appeared crucial. Kokorev recalled that the Moscow merchants’ lack of experience in public speaking made them dependent on Chizhov’s ability to convince Finance Minister Reutern of the need for a commercial bank in Moscow.42 Already facing financial difficulty in the late 1860s, Kokorev lacked enough money to participate in the Moscow Merchant Bank except as “a small shareholder,” in Naidenov’s words. Chizhov also refused to have anything to do with Kokorev’s Volga-Kama Bank, created in St. Petersburg in 1870 with a basic capital of 6 million rubles to bring banking services to the Volga River basin.43 (See Chapter 4.) Chizhov received an overwhelming endorsement from the stockholders of the Moscow Merchant Bank at the first general assembly: 97 of 99 votes for chairman. He enjoyed a handsome salary of 9,000 rubles per year. Bovykin and Petrov credited him with “laying the foundation for the success of the first Moscow bank.” In 1870, the government approved an increase in the bank’s basic capital from 1.26 to 5 million rubles.44

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As usual, Chizhov opposed extravagance. His apartment above the bank—four large rooms, two small ones, and a kitchen—he considered too spacious for himself and his servant. He lectured himself about the virtue of poverty in Christian terms: “What you receive is not yours; it is given to you by God, and you must not allow yourself to spend a single extra kopek. Give [your wealth] to others.” Although the prospect of poverty in old age frightened him, “it is still better than extravagance.”45 At this point he had no inkling that he would die a wealthy man. The history of the Moscow Merchant Bank from the opening of its operations on December 1, 1866, to its liquidation by the Bolshevik regime in late 1917 requires no lengthy exposition, although a thorough analysis of its annual reports and documents in the archives of the bank and its major creditors would constitute an important case study in Russian business. The new bank took the unusual form of a share partnership (tovarishchestvo na paiakh), typical of textile-manufacturing corporations in the Moscow region. Instead of a large number of relatively inexpensive shares (aktsii, from the French action), as in joint-stock companies (aktsionernye obshchestva or kompanii), the Moscow Merchant Bank had only 252 shares (pai), priced expensively at 5,000 rubles. The general assembly of shareholders, which met at least once a year, usually in April, elected twenty members of the council, who served three-year terms. The chairman of the board and three directors, also elected by the general assembly, served four-year staggered terms, half the members to be elected every two years. The bank’s operations resembled those of all banks confirmed by the Ministry of Finance, which considered long-term loans to corporations excessively dangerous because of their illiquidity, especially after the collapse of the Crédit Mobilier in Paris in 1866.46 The charter of the Moscow Merchant Bank limited the term of all commercial loans to ninety days. It restricted the total amount of the bank’s deposits, rediscounted bills of exchanges, and other accepted payments to ten times the combined value of the share and reserve capital. One of the main sources of revenue for commercial banks was the discounting (uchet) of bills of exchange: accepting bills at a small discount that varied in proportion to the time remaining until the bill came due. The seller of the bill accepted less than the full value of the bill in cash. The discount functioned as an interest rate on the cash

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paid by the bank when it bought the bill. The bank made its profit when it received payment in full from the drawer of the bill on its expiration date. If the bill could not be redeemed, the bank lost the entire amount unless it recovered the debt through a lawsuit. Although Chizhov considered it impossible to avoid all losses in these operations, given the circulation of some worthless bills, he stressed that good financial accounting and careful monitoring of the trustworthiness of persons whose bills were presented for discounting could keep such losses to a minimum. For this purpose, a Discount Committee, made up of seven council members, scrutinized bills of exchange from 1868 onward. In the 1870s and 1880s, the bank earned twice as much profit from discounting as it did from its other operations, but the volume of all its activities rose and fell according to the volume of industrial goods sold. From the early 1870s onward, the bank granted an increasing number of loans, of up to 300,000 rubles each, collateralized with shares of major corporations. These loans, despite their moderate size, in effect provided “long-term financing” to prominent textile manufacturers in the Moscow region because the bank routinely renewed each loan as long as the borrower paid interest on time. The charter limited the amount of loans to a certain percentage of the value of the collateral: 90 percent of the value of government or corporate securities and twothirds of the value of insured goods in transit or in storage.47 At the end of July 1867, Chizhov recorded the events of a typical day. From 9:30 A.M. to noon he worked at the Moscow Merchant Bank. After lunch, he went to the Trinity Railroad office, which he left at 2:30 P.M. From 3:30 to 6:30, 7:00, or even 8:00, he pored over figures at the bank again. Such toil left him exhausted.48 Although he relinquished his position as chairman of the board of the Moscow Merchant Bank in 1868, he took up several other managerial posts between 1869 and 1875, so that this busy pace remained typical until his death in November 1877. Soon after the bank began operations, Chizhov undertook the creation of a second financial institution: the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society.49 Modeled on the first such institution in the empire, founded in St. Petersburg in 1863, the Moscow Society functioned as a credit union. Each member had the right to borrow up to ten times the amount of his deposited funds. The society also profited by dis-

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counting bills of exchange, primarily those of its members. Chizhov’s considerable prestige allowed the new institution to attract several hundred members. The Mutual Credit Society became one of the strongest financial institutions in Moscow. Strictly speaking, it was not a corporation. A merchant who served on its council from 1869 to 1875 called it “a philanthropic institution to a certain extent” because council members initially served without pay, for the sake of “honor,” and received only a small salary from the mid-1870s onward, depending on the net profit. In addition, the society’s charter required that the society spend 10 percent of all net profits on various charities favored by the Moscow merchants. Half this amount, or 5 percent of net profits, supported their favorite philanthropic project: the Practical Academy, a commercial school for the sons of merchants.50 In November 1873, Chizhov proudly participated in the ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of the credit society. The Acceptance Committee had done its work so carefully, he wrote, that “we have a negligible number of unpaid bills of exchange.” The merchants insisted on performing the religious service of thanksgiving in the presence of one of the holiest of Russian icons, that of the Iversk Virgin. This decision offended Chizhov as a symptom of what he called “idolatry: bringing in precisely that icon and not another.”51 Chizhov also expressed dissatisfaction with the merchants who managed the society. He had full confidence in only one member of the board, Aleksandr V. Shtrom, a former bookkeeper in a large textile factory in Moscow, whose honesty, intelligence, and financial caution mirrored Chizhov’s own strategy of management. (Once again, he could not avoid relying on a Russian with a German surname.) Other board members included “a simple trader [torgash]” who sought nothing more than making the biggest possible profit in the shortest possible time; another man, “lighter than a feather,” whose mind could not grasp the complexities of finance; and an honest merchant who unfortunately had “not a penny’s worth of general understanding of the banking business.” Even his friend Ivan Aksakov proved a disappointment, as he did not appear to understand the business of the Mutual Credit Society. His poetic nature made him somewhat reckless: “a gambler in the banking business.”52 Chizhov’s insistence on strict accounting practices in the bank and credit society did not make an entirely positive impression on the mer-

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chants. The tensions that marred the merchant-Slavophile alliance in economic journalism occurred within the Moscow banks as well. Because merchants generally left little in the way of written material— many of them could barely read and write—the voluminous memoir of Nikolai A. Naidenov assumes special importance. A cotton textile manufacturer from serf origins with a solid German-language commercial education, Naidenov gained prominence in the mid-1860s as an articulate proponent of high tariffs for Russian industry. Elected president of the Moscow Exchange Committee in 1877, he served in that position until his death in 1905 and thus acted as the most influential spokesman of Moscow merchant interests for almost three decades. Naidenov admitted that Chizhov, the first chairman of the board, and Professor Babst, who served as a member of the board and its chairman from 1869 to 1878, brought essential skills to the Moscow Merchant Bank. In general, activities of the bank “proceeded well.” However, Naidenov also expressed a certain resentment of gentry leadership: “There existed in the Merchant Bank a tendency to offer administrative posts to persons from the bureaucratic and academic worlds. [This represented an effort] to seek the favor of such people and a lack of confidence in the abilities of the merchants themselves [v silakh samogo torgovogo liuda]. To a certain extent, the regime introduced by Chizhov had a bureaucratic [kazennyi] quality. This has been maintained, although to a lesser extent, to the present.”53 Because of his enormous prestige as “the creator” of the Moscow Merchant Bank and chairman of the Trinity Railroad, Chizhov won unanimous election to the chairmanship of the six-man board of directors of the Mutual Credit Society. However, Naidenov portrayed Chizhov’s leadership in essentially negative terms. The board presented long reports to the general assembly, which met on Sundays in the hall of the Municipal Duma. Chizhov, who wrote these reports, included a survey of economic trends and their influence on the banking business, an apparent echo of the verbose lead articles in Vestnik promyshlennosti. In February 1877, for example, he expressed satisfaction with the large dividend paid by the society despite the contraction of the credit market during 1875 and 1876. Naidenov also complained that Chizhov praised every member of the board at the end of his term, even if his job had consisted only of “signing between five and

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ten deposit tickets per day.” Finally, Naidenov resented Chizhov’s policy of bringing non-merchants onto the council and board of the society. For example, Ivan Aksakov, who needed a salary after the censor had closed down Moskva and Moskvich, contributed little. Although he had good intentions, Aksakov appeared “bored by the monotony of the work” and, “as an idealist, was infused with lofty dreams and did not realize what was being done next to him.” For his part, Timofei Morozov, the president of the council, “was deeply convinced that nothing that Chizhov pronounced correct could be disputed.”54 Just as Chizhov looked askance at what he considered the merchants’ tendency toward “idolatry” in revering the icon of the Iversk Virgin, so Naidenov advanced a similar complaint against a different idol: Chizhov himself. The merchants’ reverence for his opinions went too far for Naidenov’s taste. For example, the council held to what Naidenov called the “ridiculous” notion that unless Chizhov signed every deposit slip, the public might lose confidence in the society: “Because Chizhov himself was not present in the society all the time, there was of course nothing for the five [others] to do there.” In his absence, the directors stamped each slip with a facsimile of his signature.55 Naidenov claimed that Chizhov spent insufficient time working at the Mutual Credit Society, but the archives contain evidence of enormous blocks of time that he devoted to the new institution: diary entries and dozens of letters from board members, employees, and members of the society.56 Far more serious, but more difficult to assess, was Naidenov’s allegation that the board, chaired by Chizhov, tolerated negligence and misconduct. Because Chizhov “worked little [in the society] and did not see a thing,” Naidenov wrote, the other members of the board granted excessively generous loans to friends and relatives, who used these funds to speculate on the stock market. After presenting evidence of such irregularities to other members of the council, apparently in the early 1870s, Naidenov called on the council to exercise its authority to limit “the extent to which the board could give loans and open credits,” but a “storm” of indignation led him to withdraw his proposal. His rivals removed him from the council in the following election, in 1875.57 Financial irregularities there may have been, but in the absence of a monographic study of the Mutual Credit Society based on its financial records, minutes of the meetings of the council and board, and

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annual reports, it is impossible to strike a balance between these contradictory claims. Members appeared satisfied with the loans supplied by the society. Between November 1869 and January 1871, the number of members grew from 1,443 to 1,890, and the credits granted to them increased from 30,088,150 to 38,388,650 silver rubles.58 Chizhov remained chairman of the board until November 1876. After a general assembly meeting in February 1875, Chizhov expressed annoyance with Naidenov over an unspecified machination (pokost’) but drew comfort from the remarks of several members of the board. Ivan Aksakov praised Chizhov as a “firm and adamant” leader who had proven himself “able to manage the entire business well” although he lacked formal training as a financier. Two merchants on the board called him “a frantic person” but thanked him for managing the society “in a firmly honest way. I admit that this was pleasant to hear because I must say that this is not flattery but the truth.”59 When a financial crisis swept though Moscow in late 1875, however, the survival of the Merchant Bank and the Mutual Credit Society owed more to state intervention than to Chizhov’s insistence on honest management. A year before, he had heard a grim assessment of the empire’s banking system from Porfirii I. Lamanskii, a brother of Evgenii Lamanskii, who, as head of the State Bank, supervised commercial banks. A tour of State Bank offices in southern Russia had led Porfirii Lamanskii to conclude that “private banks will soon experience a crisis.” Nepotism led to carelessness in accepting bills of exchange, and merchants were buying land and rental property with discounted bills of exchange, not cash. As long as properties produced an adequate income, the merchants could renew their bills of exchange and pay a small amount to amortize the loans. However, “income from property depends on thousands of contingencies.” If the income were to decline, borrowers would face ruin. In one case, a merchant had leased a landed estate for 400,000 rubles, an amazingly large sum to put at risk in this way. Fortunately, Chizhov noted, the Moscow banks issued few loans in South Russia and so had little to fear from a banking panic there.60 Chizhov recorded the first indication of trouble in Moscow on October 8, 1875, when Timofei Morozov informed him that the Commercial Loan Bank, founded in May 1870 with 3 million rubles of basic capital, had suffered a great loss as a result of the bankruptcy of

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Timofei S. Morozov, Old-Believer merchant and president of the Moscow Exchange Committee (1868–1876), photograph (c. 1870) Source: Moskovskaia birzha 1839–1889 (Moscow: Kushnerev, 1889)

the German “railroad king” Bethel Henry Strousberg. Eager to protect the Mutual Credit Society from a disastrous decline in deposits, Chizhov reacted angrily to the discovery that it held only a little more than 2 million rubles in ready cash (svobodnogo kapitala), in violation of his policy that the board take strong measures whenever this figure fell below 3 million: “I gave a scolding to Shtrom and will go to the Mutual Credit [Society] tomorrow if the pain in my leg will permit it.” In this moment of crisis, Chizhov took pride in his financial caution: “I act very carefully and will not sacrifice this business to any [personal] relationships.” Naidenov recalled that the collapse of the Commercial Loan Bank caused such a financial panic in Moscow that other banks, especially those created in recent years, including his own Moscow Bank of Trade, found it difficult to meet the enormous demand for withdrawals of cash and for the immediate payment of outstanding bills of exchange.61 In this crisis, Reutern’s financial intervention proved essential to the survival of Kokorev’s Volga-Kama bank, which owed 20.6 million rubles to the State Bank on January 1, 1876. On Reutern’s instructions, and with the permission of the emperor, the State Bank granted

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a total of 11.1 million rubles in what the bureaucrats euphemistically called “irregular loans” (neustavnye ssudy, literally, “loans granted in violation of the charter” of the State Bank) to Kokorev and to companies that were financed mainly by his Volga-Kama Bank: “Although the loans were intended as short-term advancements of credit, Kokorev won successive postponements of payment in 1878, 1883, and 1887. At the time of his death he had repaid a mere fraction of his debt to the State Bank.”62 Saved from ruin, the Volga-Kama Bank prospered. In 1914, it ranked thirteenth among the forty-seven banks in the empire in terms of basic capital. Thus, Finance Minister Reutern’s discretion mattered more than the financial strength of any bank. During the crisis, Chizhov discussed the instability in the banking network with Reutern, who treated him “with great kindness,” as always. Four months later, after the panic had passed, Chizhov admitted that all bankers in Russia owed thanks to Reutern “because when the Commercial Loan Bank went bankrupt [Kokorev’s] Volga-Kama Bank would also have failed, and we—that is, all the other banks—would not have been able to hold out at all.” Chizhov’s suggestion to Reutern in October 1875, that the government establish a system of bank inspection to counter illegality, appeared too expensive for the finance minister to adopt, although he agreed that dishonesty pervaded the operations of Russian banks.63 Besides the financial crisis of 1875, the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society faced another threat to its survival in the mid-1870s: an ill-conceived loan to an iron, armaments, and machinery manufacturer in St. Petersburg named Nikolai I. Putilov. Having distinguished himself in the defense of St. Petersburg during the Crimean War, Putilov enjoyed the support of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and other proponents of Russian naval power. “A man of extraordinary energy and managerial talents,” Putilov achieved spectacular success in the 1860s, when his rail plant in St. Petersburg accounted for two-thirds of all Russian rail production. However, he showed insufficient caution in launching two risky projects: an 18-million-ruble port facility next to his plant and a 2-million-ruble railroad line to link his plant and port to the Warsaw and Moscow railroads.64 Impressed with Putilov’s plans to invigorate Russian industry and trade in St. Petersburg, Chizhov convinced the Moscow Merchant

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Mutual Credit Society to form a syndicate with Naidenov’s Bank of Trade and the Moscow Commercial Credit Company for the purpose of loaning Putilov 1.4 million rubles, collateralized by shares in his metal plant valued at 30 paper kopeks per silver ruble of their par value. By late 1873, however, Putilov had resorted to financial sleightof-hand to avert the collapse of his several enterprises. In November 1873, he paid Naidenov 50,000 rubles, as required, but sent the Commercial Credit Company and the Mutual Credit Society bills of exchange instead of cash. Chizhov demanded that Naidenov transfer to the Mutual Credit Society half the cash and “very harshly” demanded the rest from Putilov. Chizhov admitted, however, that if the Mutual Credit Society publicly protested Putilov’s bills of exchange, “we would very much harm ourselves and would ruin Putilov completely.”65 The Moscow banks apparently remained silent about Putilov’s chicanery. The following January, Chizhov welcomed a payment from Putilov: “Thank God Putilov will pay us the interest and a bonus [on his loan to syndicate of three Moscow banks] tomorrow. He took this money from the Putilov Manufacturing Company. This is like a mountain removed from my shoulders.” From this painful experience Chizhov drew a lesson: “to examine more carefully the negative side of a business” before committing to any loan.66 Although he resolved never again to blunder into such a dangerous financial relationship, his optimism in the Putilov case was premature. Several renewals of the loan, for six-month terms, followed. Chizhov blamed himself for having insisted that Putilov receive a major loan from the credit society: “I criticize myself for being carried away by the desire to help Putilov,” a Russian, for the sake of economic nationalism. The syndicate agreed to a continuation of the loan but not an increase in the principal.67 Weary of Putilov’s irresponsibility, the Muscovites eventually cut their losses, but only with the help of the State Bank. When Putilov’s industrial empire collapsed in 1877, Finance Minister Reutern took what Alfred J. Rieber called “the unprecedented and extralegal step of ordering the State Bank to pay all Putilov’s debts and to take over the shares and property from the banks and extend new credits.”68 In a recent monograph on Putilov’s plant, renowned as the Kirov Plant in the Soviet era, Jonathan Grant reached a similar conclusion about the sorry state of Putilov’s business affairs. In January 1876,

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Putilov failed to make the interest payment to the Moscow banks, and they sent notes out for collection. Somehow Putilov found some money, but the constant shuffling of loans and stock threatened to ruin not just Putilov, but the banks as well. The potential collapse of the Moscow banks prompted the State Bank to step in and stabilize the situation. With great relief, Chizhov and the Moscow banks ceded their Putilov [Company] shares to the State Bank at a loss of more than 300,000 rubles in order to free themselves from any further entanglements with N. I. Putilov . . . By the time Putilov died in 1880, he had managed to direct his enterprises into complete financial disarray.69

Baron Delvig, who served on the board of Putilov’s corporation, called the experience the worst of his public career. Putilov, “a great optimist,” failed to keep his promises and dragged the Moscow banks into a financial quagmire. Delvig felt especially guilty because Chizhov, whose “irreproachable honesty” was known to all, grew angry at the endless problems of the company. Chizhov, “whom I loved with all my heart and deeply respected,” exchanged “unpleasant” letters with Delvig about Putilov’s financial crisis. To Chizhov, Delvig confided that the tangled finances of the Putilov company caused him so much anxiety that he feared a heart attack.70 For his part, Chizhov offered an uncharacteristically harsh commentary on Delvig’s role after the sad affair had ended: “This happened thanks to Delvig. He got me mixed up in this business. We elected him president of the council of the Putilov Manufacturing Company. He did not investigate matters properly, then could not stay, and left. He got out completely clean, but I remained to swallow the business. But once again, glory to God that it is over, although with a loss. Now everything is as clean as a mirror with us.”71 Chizhov also took pride in the 9.1 percent dividend that the Mutual Credit Society was able to pay to its members in early 1876 despite “the unintentional, unforeseen, and unpreventable loss caused by the ruin of the [Commercial] Loan Bank.” That summer, besides worrying about Putilov’s inability to repay his loan, Chizhov agonized over the society’s acceptance of a total of 70,000 rubles’ worth of protested bills of exchange, which he attributed to insufficient caution on the part of the board: “This is bad, more than in all other banks [in Moscow]. It is

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very, very bad.” This setback did not cripple the credit society, however. In November 1876, the board held yet another religious service on the occasion of the credit society’s move into a new building, a sign of its financial success. Chizhov also observed that “they are very pleased there” with his decision to relinquish the chairmanship of the board. In February 1877 he noted with satisfaction that, despite the contraction in the money market in 1875 and 1876, the credit society paid a large dividend to members and an impressive salary—20,000 rubles—to directors, including Ivan Aksakov. The next month, Aksakov replaced Chizhov as chairman of the board.72 Although Chizhov amassed a respectable fortune in his career as a banker from 1866 to 1876, he constantly stressed his nonacquisitive motives for developing capitalist institutions in Russia. The most vivid of these took the form of a sharp retort to a critique of capitalism published by a fellow Slavophile, Nikita P. Giliarov-Platonov, in January 1873. Giliarov complained that instead of engaging in grand philosophical debates, as in the mid-1840s, educated society in Moscow now cared only about “money, money, money.” Chizhov viewed the situation differently. Certainly, he wrote, “money is a terrible temptation for individuals.” However, he himself had lived in Moscow in 1847 and remembered it “very well . . . All talk, talk, talk. All inactivity, inactivity, inactivity. Now everything is business, business, business.” In the 1840s, before railroads existed in Russia, even wealthy men had found it difficult to travel from St. Petersburg to Odessa. Now, a poor man could make the journey in only three days. Borrowed capital had been available to none but the most prosperous merchants a quarter-century before, and then only at ruinously high interest rates, but now, thanks to the existence of commercial banks, a poor man could take out a loan at a reasonable rate instead of prostrating himself before a “rich usurer.” Several years later, Chizhov expressed repugnance at Giliarov’s failure to repay his personal debt in the form of a bill of exchange that Chizhov had countersigned. This seemed to him evidence not of Giliarov’s “dishonesty” but of his “moral slovenliness,” a weakness that appeared all the more disgusting because Giliarov, in his published articles, “would have begun to fulminate from the heights of moral grandeur” if anyone had treated him in this way. Ivan Aksakov put the matter bluntly: “Giliarov is not a scoundrel but a cad.”73

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Chizhov took justifiable pride in his contributions to Russian transportation and finance. His later entrepreneurial efforts, far beyond Moscow, strained his energies and abilities without, however, turning impressive profits in the short term. In these later ventures, the institutional and cultural limits of one man’s devotion to Russian economic development became clear.

The Moscow-Kursk Railroad Not all of Chizhov’s enterprises turned out to be successful, even with financial help from the Ministry of Finance and the State Bank. His dream of a vibrant silk industry in Russia never materialized, and he encountered constant frustration in the management of two corporations that absorbed his energies toward the end of his life: yet another railroad company and a steamship line plying the waters of the White Sea. His diary and archive contain copious evidence of plans to create even larger railroads, steamship lines, and banks. His failure to do so raised the issue of the difficulties that he encountered in recruiting capable Russian managers from the gentry and the merchants. It also highlighted his problems in dealing with the true arbiters of economic success in the Russian Empire: the ministers of finance and transport in St. Petersburg. The most bitter disappointment in Chizhov’s business career occurred in 1868, when the campaign of merchants and Slavophiles to purchase the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railroad ended in failure. It had enormous symbolic significance as the first major railroad in the empire, the principal link between its two major cities, and one that bore the name of its creator, Emperor Nicholas I. A majority in the Committee of Ministers approved the proposal of the Muscovites. By a vote of seventeen to five, a special council composed of ministers and other experts did likewise. However, the minority view, that the Russian Railroad Company deserved the prize, enjoyed the support of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and Finance Minister Reutern. On June 8, 1868, Emperor Alexander II endorsed the minority position. From this imperial decision there was no appeal.74 A few years after losing the Nicholas Railroad to the Russian Railroad Company, Chizhov and his merchant allies succeeded in purchasing a major railroad from the state: the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. Its

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508 versts (337 miles), approximately 240 versts in double track and the rest in single, made it far larger and more complex than the Trinity Railroad.75 If he blamed Finance Minister Reutern for the defeat of the Moscow company’s attempt to purchase the Nicholas Railroad in 1868, Chizhov expressed no anger in writing, even in his diary. The petition submitted to Reutern thereafter made the case for the purchase of the Moscow-Kursk line on the basis of anticipated economic benefits and the trustworthiness of the petitioners: “For a long time, many representatives of the Moscow merchants have energetically sought to have in their hands major railroad lines by which to ship their goods. The Moscow-Kursk Railroad now serves as the main conduit of raw materials from central Russia to the North, where our largest factories are located. In turn, it brings the manufactured goods of our factories to central and southern Russia. Naturally, the management of its operations is one of the strongest wishes of our commercial class.” Ten leading merchants, most of them members of the failed campaign three years earlier, had already agreed to establish a company and had elected three representatives, including Chizhov, “the chairman.” The Muscovites proposed a purchase price of 57,433,000 silver rubles, to be raised by selling 41,704,000 rubles’ worth of bonds and 15,729,000 rubles’ worth of shares. Of this amount, 5,729,000 rubles would be needed to repair the roadbed. They viewed their proposed enterprise “not as a purchase for purposes of speculation” but as a means of introducing “business-like management.”76 Of course, Chizhov did not launch the campaign to buy the MoscowKursk Railroad in an effort to accumulate a fortune for himself. As he wrote in October 1870, when the plan to purchase the railroad was taking shape, he agreed to lead the enterprise only because the Moscow merchants once again needed his organizational and financial skills. His primary goal remained increasing the strength of the Russian economy. Already fifty-nine years old, he probably did not expect to live to collect the fortune that would be his if the railroad earned a profit. Still, he expressed doubts, as usual, about his motivation. Was he simply seeking the approval of others? “A craving for activity, and, it seems, a strong craving for public importance without the petty details of [state] service: these are the weaknesses that might well take complete possession of me,” he wrote. The money meant nothing to him. Each of his three sisters would receive dividends from

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one of his shares in the Moscow Merchant Bank as long as she lived. As for the rest of his fortune, it was simply “not necessary. I have enough to live on now. Whatever more I obtain I will give away entirely to charities.” These thoughts of generosity to his family and the Russian people assuaged his doubts.77 As expected, the petitioners elected Chizhov president of this new Moscow Company, as it was then called, in late January 1871. Although Minister of Transport Count Vladimir A. Bobrinskii favored a competitive bidding process because the Kursk-Kiev Railroad had expressed interest in purchasing the Moscow-Kursk line, Reutern insisted on selling the railroad to the Moscow Company without taking bids.78 He justified this sale to the Muscovites as a consolation to them following their defeat in 1868. The purchase went smoothly. The corporate charter received the emperor’s confirmation on May 21, 1871. The financial conditions remained those offered in the petition.79 Reutern thus demonstrated his high opinion of the managerial ability of Chizhov and his fellow petitioners. Delvig recorded an additional fact in Chizhov’s favor. When “about three” bureaucrats let it be known that they would help the Muscovites win the concession for a fee—the figure of a million rubles was mentioned discretely— Chizhov announced that he would give no bribes and that anyone who did would be dismissed from the group of founders. Rumors of these attempts at extortion reached Reutern. When he asked Chizhov about them, Chizhov reiterated his principled refusal, much to Reutern’s satisfaction.80 The Slavophile had earned the respect of the Baltic German. In anticipation of Alexander II’s endorsement of the charter, following news of a positive recommendation of Committee of Ministers on May 20, Chizhov began his diary entry that day with an expression of joy: “The entire world is within us. If we ourselves are good, everything is good around us; if we are bad, everything is bad, whatever arrangement we ourselves may make. The Moscow-Kursk Railroad is finally ours.”81 This statement did not explicitly reiterate his Orthodox Christian faith. Although the first sentence echoed the words of Jesus, “for behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), it can also be read as an expression of the point of view of Socrates after receiving his death sentence: “no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.” On this momentous occasion, Chizhov

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did not express as many doubts or fears regarding his ability to meet the monumental new entrepreneurial challenge as he had on similar occasions in the previous decade. As usual, he admitted that “doubt and worry have taken possession of me completely, from head to toe.” In the very next sentence, however, he soberly analyzed the main problem—a dispute among the founders as to the capabilities of the railroad’s managing engineer—and outlined arguments that eventually brought the other directors over to his point of view. He had, at last, become confident of his abilities as a corporate manager. Chizhov made four major contributions to the success of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad: the elaboration of a rational financial plan; the attraction of adequate investment capital, from Russia and abroad, to fund the purchase; the recruitment and retention of highly qualified transport engineers; and the careful management of the line. His financial abilities, honed in the past decade in the offices of the Trinity Railroad, the Moscow Merchant Bank, and the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society, proved equal to the task. In April 1871, he concluded that “the entire benefit will depend on careful management. If we can reduce expenses to 46 percent of gross income, we will come out well.” He planned to use net profits, without “a single kopek” of additional investment, to pay off the debt of 14 million rubles in the course of twelve years. If expenses could be reduced gradually by a half-percent each year, down to 40 percent of gross income in the course of twelve years, so much the better. These hopes turned out to be exaggerated, but Chizhov’s financial calculations proved crucial to winning Reutern’s approval of the petition.82 Cherokov, commenting on this second step by Chizhov and the merchants toward the “Russification” (obrusenie) of the empire’s railroad network, called the complex terms of the sale “almost a treaty” with the tsarist government. The purchase price would consist of two equal payments in cash, one from the sale of shares to the founders of the new company and the other from the sale of bonds abroad, meaning in Europe. If sufficient cash could not be raised by the sale of bonds, the founders would pay the difference. The founders obligated themselves not to sell or divide their shares until the English bankers who purchased the bonds had received all the interest and principal due to them. In case of death, shares would pass to the heirs of the original owners.83

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Baron Delvig, who served as acting minister of transport at this time, claimed that the sale of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad greatly benefited the state. Lax supervision had driven construction costs to double the norm, but the new company paid the full price by crafting a solid financial plan. The line had cost 48,472,274 silver rubles to build. (The charter specified a value of 53,433,000 in 1871.) As Chizhov had proposed in his petition, the Muscovites obligated themselves to raise a total of 51,704,000 rubles to purchase the railroad: 41,704,000 in bonds to be guaranteed by the state, and 10 million from the sale of shares not guaranteed by the state. Of the bond capital, 14,364,800 rubles’ worth was to be raised as part of the empire’s consolidated bond sale on European markets. Although the government expected to sell these bonds at 78.5 percent of par value, they fetched 85 percent, so that it enjoyed a windfall profit. In addition to the 5-percent interest on the entire amount of guaranteed bond capital and 0.1 percent for amortization (2,126,904 silver rubles), to be paid semiannually out of gross income, the company also owed the state dividends: half of any net profit in excess of 7 percent per year. Of the four cases of railroad privatization in the late 1860s and early 1870s, Delvig asserted, that of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad proved most beneficial to the state. The sale of the Nicholas Railroad had netted a profit. The other two lines were not really “sold,” but transferred to corporations at a loss.84 The charter of 1871 promised another benefit to the Russian economy. In keeping with Chizhov’s program of economic nationalism, the founders obligated themselves to purchase at least half the railroad’s locomotives and cars in Russia and, unlike many Russian railroads in the 1860s, not to import any foreign equipment without paying the usual tariff duties.85 Backward linkages could now enrich Russia itself. Chizhov made a second contribution to the new railroad by arranging a foreign loan to finance the purchase. He had, of course, long condemned the empire’s dependence on foreign capitalists, the inevitable result of massive European investments in railroads, manufacturing enterprises, and trading firms in Russia. Despite his call for domestic financing of railroads in 1865, however, the Russian financial market could not absorb all the corporate securities issued by the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. It became necessary to turn to European bankers for a loan to generate the 11 million credit rubles needed to purchase the corporate shares. Two banking firms, Baring Brothers of London

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and Hope and Company of Amsterdam, agreed to consider making the loan, subject to an inspection of the line by English railroad engineers. In Kursk, Chizhov met a special train carrying the visiting experts. “It makes me sad to observe others and ourselves,” he wrote. “We Russians somehow have little self-respect and do not know the limit of celebration that gives self-respect its value.” Under the scrutiny of Europeans, Russians appeared “either desiccated, almost coarse,” or prone to excessive boasting.86 By October 1871, Wyneken and Company, a German banking firm in St. Petersburg, had negotiated the loan of 11 million credit rubles with Baring Brothers and Hope. The eighteen-year loan carried an interest rate of 6 percent, with a 9 percent discount (to 91 kopeks on the ruble) and an additional 2 percent commission for the bankers. These terms increased the real interest rate to 6.742 percent.87 In partial payment for the railroad, the board transferred the 11 million rubles to the government. This amount represented the value of the shares in the new corporation, which had a par value of 11,611,650 credit rubles. A supplementary issue of shares worth another 6,652,360 brought the total to 18,264,000. The board agreed to pay 11 million for the first set of shares and 5 million for the second, which the government delivered to the company at a cost of 75.16 kopeks on the ruble.88 Once again, ideology had yielded to accommodation for the sake of Russian economic development. Just as he had cooperated with the Jewish banker Leon Rosenthal in St. Petersburg to finance the extension of the Trinity Railroad to Iaroslavl, so Chizhov established a mutually satisfactory relationship with the German Wyneken and the English bankers. Baring Brothers and Hope had financed the main target of Chizhov’s wrath, the Russian Railroad Company, from its inception in 1857, but in 1871 he bore them no ill will. Unlike the French engineers, who had treated Russians with contempt, Rosenthal, Wyneken, and the English bankers acted respectfully toward Chizhov and his fellow managers and provided essential capital investments at reasonable rates of interest. Cherokov recalled that Chizhov thought up an ingenious scheme to win the confidence of European purchasers of bonds issued by the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. He convinced all the founders to agree not to sell their shares until the bonds had been fully amortized. To demon-

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strate this commitment publicly, he arranged for the founders’ shares to be deposited in an ornate casket (shchekotulka) in the State Bank, to remain sealed for eighteen years. Assured of the inviolability of the company’s share capital, investors in Europe promptly bought the bonds.89 In his first diary entry on the plan to purchase the Kursk line, in October 1870, he had noted the need to make a strategic decision whether or not to involve someone with good connections in the tsarist bureaucracy. The enormous power of the government, both as the dispenser of permission for new corporations and as the source of preferential financial aid, made this an important priority. Accordingly, when Aleksandr A. Abaza, formerly the chairman of the board of the Russian Railroad Company and a future minister of finance, expressed an interest in joining the Moscow Company in 1870, Chizhov convinced the other founders to include Abaza despite their misgivings: “He has a keen ear and he knows what’s what [gde raki zimuiut, literally: where crayfish spend the winter]. Also, he knows the minister of finance very well. Thus, if there had been another company that was stronger, he would have joined it, and in any case he would not have joined us without confidence in our importance.”90 When Abaza became state comptroller soon thereafter, he left the board because the conflict-of-interest law barred high bureaucrats from holding corporate positions. Nikolai Benardaki, Abaza’s brotherin-law, became a founder of the company instead, but only “nominally,” as Chizhov noted two years later. Like the acceptance of English financial support for the railroad, the inclusion of Abaza, a high bureaucrat of dubious morality, among the founders represented a tactical compromise for the sake of Russian economic development.91 Chizhov made perhaps his greatest contribution by elaborating a policy on hiring competent engineers who could run the railroad profitably. The recruitment of capable managers and technicians proved to the most difficult problem of all. The dismal financial situation of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad in 1871 made the choice of the line’s managing engineer a crucial one. Chizhov favored retaining Pavel Z. Klevetskii, who had worked on the state-owned line for several years. Despite his “monumental imperfections,” Klevetskii brought “honesty, energy, an understanding of the business, and knowledge of the Kursk railroad” to the position. Chizhov’s logic overcame the argu-

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ments of Aleksandr Mamontov and Mikhail Gorbov in favor of replacing Klevetskii. This animosity may have been based partly on a mistaken sense of the engineer’s ethnic identity. To some Russians, he seemed to be a Pole. Pawel Klewiecki would have been a plausible Polish name, though his middle name—Zakharovich—appeared purely Russian. Crown Prince Nikolai suspected Klevetskii of being Polish, but Delvig corrected him: in fact, Klevetskii, an “ultra-Orthodox” native of Siberia, went to church often.92 Chizhov’s ambivalence about Klevetskii increased as time went on. In August 1874 he fretted over the “extreme separation among the engineers. Here one can hardly find three men to bring together in one business.” Many engineers found Klevetskii’s brusqueness irritating: “There are scarcely two or three who are capable of independent action who would like him.”93 A few months later, Chizhov disparaged him for being “really a bureaucratic engineer, one who likes to have a huge number of employees but is not skilled in choosing them.”94 Occasionally Klevetskii cut costs, as when he dispensed with an assistant and reduced the number of mechanics. Chizhov remained generally unhappy, however, with what he considered Klevetskii’s “purely bureaucratic, governmental” approach to railroad management, which led him to fire a shipping clerk without notice. Chizhov prided himself on a having a different perspective, “purely and decisively of the land [zemskii],” that is, a Russian sense of empathy that he contrasted to the cold and impersonal attitude of bureaucrats and technicians trained, as Klevetskii was, on state-owned railroads. In despair, Chizhov wrote that “Klevetskii, for all his merits, which have disappeared little by little over the years, has become a real general. He openly and completely showed contempt for the interests of the company. I declare, our honored transport engineers have gotten hopelessly out of hand.” Other railroads, he noted, suffered as well. The careless management of Valerian A. Titov, chief engineer of the Vistula Railroad, had recently cost Leopold Kronenberg, a prominent financier and railroad manager in Warsaw, up to 2 million rubles.95 The board finally found a replacement for Klevetskii named Nikolai V. Bernatskii, an engineer with a pleasant disposition and “a view of the business that is not that of a state bureaucrat.”96 However wasteful and corrupting the unscrupulous behavior of some corporate managers and engineers might have been, and how-

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ever serious the financial problems facing the new management of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, Delvig and Chizhov agreed that a ban on private enterprise in Russian railroads would have been even worse. Delvig drew a moral from his experience in building the Trinity Railroad. In June 1861, he had discovered large cracks in a bridge abutment made of bricks. He immediately ordered the unstable clay embankment removed and supervised the building of sand embankments about twenty feet long under the abutment. This substitution of sand for clay required an increase in the length of the bridge by half, from 70 to 105 feet, but no new cracks appeared in the brickwork. If the state or the Russian Railroad Company had been building this line, he asserted, engineers would have avoided responsibility. Investigations would have dragged on for months, and much time would have been lost in discussions of how best to allocate funds for the repair. The result would have been untold waste: “Of course, every builder must be accountable for his mistakes, but on construction projects carried out by governmental engineers, people are rarely subject to punishment, even for abuses, and never for mistakes; at least I do not recall any such cases.” In particular, contractors who built the Moscow-Kursk line committed a variety of abuses. Construction of the first section, from Moscow to Serpukhov (92 versts, or 61 miles), scheduled to take no more than two years, lasted from spring 1864 to November 1867. When the line finally reached Kursk, in 1871, the state, having failed to put responsibility on one person, had spent 48,472,274 rubles for 508 versts of track, or 95,417 rubles per verst. Despite this waste of money, numerous problems resulted from substandard construction practices: flimsy rails, stone and iron work so faulty that a locomotive once fell off a bridge, steep inclines over long distances, and a roadbed so uneven that passengers contemptuously nicknamed it “the bone-breaker” (kostolomka). In Delvig’s opinion, the Kursk line typified the way that the Ministry of Transport built railroads: “slowly, sloppily, and sumptuously [dolgo, durno i dorogo].”97 A tedious and uncomfortable ride on a state-constructed railroad from Moscow to Podolsk in 1866 likewise disgusted Chizhov. Everywhere he saw evidence of “lack of attention to details” and “carelessness”: constant curves in the road, some of them so sharp as to cause heavy wear on the rolling stock, and the failure of engineers to construct level crossings where the railbed intersected existing roads. “Yes,

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this is a state railroad. So what if the local inhabitants suffer? I made a mental note of this. No, if we going to build [an extension of the Trinity Railroad from Iaroslavl to Vologda], the convenience of the [local] inhabitants must be one of our most important concerns.”98 He remembered this pledge when he began managing the Moscow-Kursk Railroad five years later. All Chizhov’s financial and managerial talents were needed to sustain the newly acquired railroad. Soon after taking charge, Chizhov discovered “real chaos”: a lack of coordination among the various operations. His insistence on careful bookkeeping prevented bankruptcy and led eventually to profitability. In accordance with Chizhov’s plan in April 1871, the board set a target of 2 million rubles of gross income per year and annual expenses in the range of 40 to 46 percent of gross income, or 800,000 to 920,000 rubles. A few days after an argument with the directors Aleksandr Mamontov and Ivan F. Rerberg over excessive expenses in November 1873, he triumphantly reported that he had reduced the overall budget by 260,000 rubles. The board received 4,000 rubles less to spend on its own operations.99 Financial results for the first and second years of operation, 1872 and 1873, vindicated Chizhov’s meticulous managerial policy. Net profits of 3.775 and 4.345 million rubles permitted the railroad to pay impressive dividends to the state on the bond capital: 2.525 and 2.573 million, respectively. After additional deductions to establish a reserve fund and pension fund for workers, the company paid out 1.115 million, or 6.25 percent of the stock capital, to shareholders in 1872 and 1.426 million, or 7.8 percent, the following year. Because the profit surpassed 7 percent, the company paid the state half the amount in excess of that percentage: an additional 164,245 rubles. Besides making payments to the reserve and pension funds in both years, in 1873 the board endowed a school for railroad workers, named after Baron Delvig, and paid bonuses to directors and employees.100 This successful trend continued in 1874. Although expenses still remained too high—53.8 percent of gross income—the company paid a dividend of 7.52 percent to shareholders in addition to the various required payments. Chizhov expressed misgivings about the contrast between the 10,559 rubles paid out in bonuses to the employees and the dividend of 72,000 rubles that he received in April 1875 as the owner of two founding shares: 80,000 rubles less the 8,000 owed to Vasilii Kokorev,

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who had loaned him one-fifth the purchase price of one share. The founders, Chizhov wrote, had done “absolutely nothing” to deserve such a large dividend.101 The decline in freight shipments that followed the financial crisis of 1875 put such stress on the Moscow-Kursk Railroad that Chizhov did not live to see its eventual success. Early in 1876, he despaired: “Expenses are certainly great, and however much I think about them, I cannot think up a way to lower them” in any of the main categories of spending: wages, fuel, rails, lighting, and repair of the rolling stock. In the fall of 1876, the board turned to Reutern again for a loan to help the railroad pay off its debt. The outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War in April 1877 caused unprecedented disruption throughout the empire, as troop movements received priority over passenger and freight traffic. Moreover, the ruble fell so precipitously against European currencies that the railroad lost 300,000 rubles or more because of increased costs of imported materials. Still, Chizhov remained in charge of the railroad to his death. After his reelection to the board in June 1877, he continued to search for ways to improve the efficiency of the railroad. In September 1877, less than two months before he died, the board was planning to spend 5 million rubles on new construction and prided itself on having repaid 19 percent of the 1.7 million pounds sterling borrowed in 1871 from the English bankers.102 The surviving sources reveal one case of dishonest behavior on Chizhov’s part. In 1877, he approved a 10,000-ruble bribe to a high official to arrange the cancellation of a 1.8-million-ruble fine levied by Count Aleksei Bobrinskii, the previous minister of transport. Chizhov justified this bribe on the grounds that the company could have won its case in court only by spending many tens of thousands of rubles.103

The Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company Chizhov’s last major venture, a steamship line serving the ports of the Far North, demonstrated his irrepressible entrepreneurial spirit. Already in his sixties, he envisioned a major innovation in transportation in one of the most desolate regions of the Russian Empire. His new company operated within the financial limits that he had set for it. At the same time, it faced the usual problems of Russian corporate enterprise in new fields of economic activity: insufficient capital and

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the lack of experienced, technically qualified, and trustworthy managers and workers. The enormous frustration that Chizhov felt as he grappled with these difficulties made this last episode in his entrepreneurial biography as illuminating to historians as it was painful to him. The financial risks of maritime activity in the Far North far surpassed those of railroad construction and management. The dangers posed by ice and storm, coupled with the enormous technical and financial complexities of shipping, had dissuaded all but a few Russians from braving the waters of the White Sea and Arctic Ocean. Located at the mouth of the Northern Dvina River, the port of Archangel had served as a direct link to Europe ever since the first English adventurers had arrived in 1553, received a commercial monopoly from Tsar Ivan IV, and established the Muscovy Company in London in 1555. The few Russian shipping companies that had appeared in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century did not prosper, however, either on the White Sea or the forbidding Baltic and Black seas. Peter I had created a new capital on the Gulf of Finland, and his conquest of the Baltic coast brought the old Hanseatic ports, Riga and Reval (now Tallinn), into the empire. Catherine II had built Odessa, the major grain port of the empire, on the Black Sea. Despite these efforts by the state to encourage the development of a Russian commercial presence on the seas, the overwhelming majority of seaborne cargoes traveled to and from Russia in foreign bottoms. Greek and Italian merchants in Odessa chartered several trading and insurance companies early in the nineteenth century, but these apparently failed within a few years. Of the five largest corporations chartered by the tsarist government in the 1820s, two proposed to maintain a fleet of merchant vessels, but neither survived to 1847. The commercial fleets of the European powers and the United States dominated the oceans of the world in the nineteenth century. During the Crimean War, the Russian naval fleet, still powered by sail, succumbed to the steam-powered gunboats under British and French flags. The lack of a vigorous maritime tradition meant that few Russian captains and sailors had the requisite experience to keep a large merchant fleet in operation. The enormous costs of building and maintaining iron ships in the age of steam hindered the creation of a Russian merchant marine.

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Shipping companies found it difficult to operate profitably even with massive financial aid from the tsarist state. Several such companies emerged early in the reign of Emperor Alexander II to assert a Russian presence on the seas, but most of them wallowed in debt, kept afloat only by state subsidies. These costly experiments demonstrated that bureaucratic fiat could not call forth the entrepreneurship needed to transform the Russian economy, especially in sectors that applied the latest technology. Two enterprises proved especially inefficient. The Russian Steamship Company, commonly known as by its initials in Russian, ROPIT (Rossiiskoe obshchestvo parokhodstva i torgovli, literally The Russian Steamship and Trade Company), received an imperial charter in 1856 on the initiative of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich. The government intended that the company would provide scheduled passenger and cargo services in the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean in the absence of Russian naval forces and coastal fortresses, banned from the Black Sea by the Treaty of Paris in 1856. (In 1870, the tsarist government unilaterally abrogated this provision.) Jacob Kipp concluded that “the naval reformers could not overcome the tremendous economic and social barriers that confronted the Russian merchant marine, and it lagged far behind [that of] other maritime powers.”104 The Volunteer Fleet (Dobrovol’nyi flot), not a company but a state-sponsored steamship line, was launched with 6 million rubles in contributions raised by Ivan Aksakov, Ivan Babst, Timofei Morozov, and other Russian patriots in 1879. The fleet’s passenger and cargo vessels plied the Baltic, Black, and Mediterranean seas and served as a Russian-owned maritime link between Odessa and main port in the Russian Far East, Vladivostok, via the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. The rationale for the fleet— the equipping of Russian merchant ships with armaments in anticipation of service as auxiliary naval ships in a future war—justified the existence of this line, but huge subsidies were required to keep it in operation.105 English, Dutch, and Norwegian mariners had controlled the waters of the Russian Far North for centuries. Three shipping companies chartered in Russia failed there during Chizhov’s entrepreneurial career. A merchant named Karl Brant in St. Petersburg founded the White Sea Company in 1858 to engage in fishing and hunting as well as steamship operations there, but it did not prosper. The company’s

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authorized capitalization of 3.2 million rubles declined to 1.5 million in 1869 and 675,000 in 1874, and it did not survive to 1892. Then, in 1872, two Russian merchants and three bureaucrats in St. Petersburg, two of whom bore non-Russian surnames, founded the Northern Ocean Shipping Company. Given the obscurity of its founders and its small capitalization, 500,000 rubles, it had little chance of success. Chizhov ridiculed it as “an utterly Petersburg enterprise,” founded by “utterly Petersburg speculators” purely “as a pretext and means” for their own “personal enrichment.” It sank from view by 1874. Finally, a small shipping company founded in 1870 in Archangel began scheduled service on the White Sea and between Archangel and Murmansk, but it “has done very poorly and they wrecked one ship.” It was liquidated in 1875.106 In this bleak climate, Chizhov vowed to create a Russian presence on the northern seas fueled by Russian capital and initiative. As early as 1867, he had argued that Russia needed not only railroads but also its own merchant marine. Otherwise, foreign shipping companies would keep prices of Russian goods low, to the detriment of both agriculture and manufacturing.107 (He gave no data, however, to prove that Russian shippers charged less than foreigners.) Chizhov conceived the notion of a company to provide scheduled steamship service on the White Sea and to exploit the natural resources of the Arctic region in the early 1870s, while receiving medical treatment for kidney stones in Tsarsko selo. A travel account entitled A Year in the North (1859) by Sergei Maksimov, like Chizhov a native of Kostroma province, fascinated him, although he mistakenly recalled the title of the book as Two Years in the North.108 He might have chosen to focus on the area south of Moscow, both because the Moscow-Kursk Railroad had brought freight and passenger service to the region southeast of Moscow and because he maintained friendly relations with his former student, Grigorii Galagan, a prominent patron of Ukrainian culture who lived in his palatial home at Sokirintsy. After the Trinity Railroad had reached Vologda in June 1872, however, the logic of geography led further northward, to the major northern port of the Russian Empire, Archangel. The prospect of meeting European competition with a Russian shipping and fishing company fit perfectly into Chizhov’s strategy of economic nationalism. At the turning point in his life, in March 1857,

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he had committed himself to uplift “the lowest strata of the common people” and to forge an alliance with the merchants, whom he considered the heirs of the great mercantile traditions of medieval Novgorod and Pskov. The republic of Novgorod had exploited its vast northern hinterland, which included the coasts of the Barents and White Seas, until Grand Prince Ivan III of Muscovy had conquered Novgorod and absorbed its lands in 1478. Chizhov’s decision to look northward could thus be interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with the North Russian tradition of resistance to centralized rule from the capital, whether Moscow or St. Petersburg. In 1876, he made this connection explicit in a passage inspired by reading an account of Russians in the forests of the Far North: what “cleverness and resourcefulness exist among the northerners . . . The people, that is, the ancient Novgorodians, conquered the land as far as the Arctic Ocean.”109 Economic considerations also inspired him. In November 1873 he expressed the hope that he could “kill two birds with one stone” (literally, “kill two beavers”) by transporting cheap fertilizer—guano to be gathered on islands in the Arctic Ocean—by sea to Archangel, up the Northern Dvina and Vologda rivers by steamer, then south from Vologda on the Trinity Railroad. He had received conflicting reports as to the amount of guano that might be retrieved from the rocky cliffs of Novaia Zemlia, the large island forming the eastern perimeter of the Barents Sea, where thousands of seabirds summered. According to the governor of Vologda Province, rain washed most of the guano down the steep cliffs, but Chizhov hoped to obtain at least some guano from the crevices of the cliffs or to make fertilizer from whale blubber. He planned to order 500 rubles’ worth of guano shipped to Vologda so that he could conduct agricultural experiments in the Vologda and Moscow regions.110 Here again, his Slavophile ideology motivated him to bring the benefits of economic development to the peasantry as well as to the merchants. The founders of the proposed company planned to engage in hunting, fishing, whaling, and gathering raw materials to be used as fertilizer. A ship captain from the North named Vasilii I. Smolin drafted the proposal for the new company. Chizhov edited the document before it went to Finance Minister Reutern for his approval. The familiar themes of his nationalist strategy echoed powerfully in this document: “The abundance of sea animals and fish in the Arctic Ocean along our

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northern shores has long attracted a large number of foreigners, who have benefited greatly from their enterprises there.” Russians living in the Far North “well know the benefits of hunting sea animals” but lacked essential capital to compete with foreigners. The new company would meet this need. Smolin and Chizhov also intended to open a warehouse in Murmansk, then just a village at the mouth of the Kola River on the northern coast of the Kola peninsula, almost 5 degrees farther north than Archangel. By making hunting and fishing supplies available there, the new company would challenge the commercial monopoly of Norwegian merchants. Likewise, the company’s provision of scheduled steamship service between Murmansk and Novaia Zemlia would free Russian fishermen from their dependence on Norwegian ship captains.111 At the beginning of November 1873, Chizhov considered 150,000 rubles appropriate for the enterprise, as he wished to operate on a limited scale at first. Vasilii Smolin, with his brother, promised to invest 100,000 rubles. Chizhov had already committed himself to contribute 10,000 rubles, and he thought that Savva Mamontov would do likewise. He also considered it likely that several Moscow merchants— Timofei Morozov, Ivan Liamin, and perhaps a few others—would participate. Six or seven investors would thus raise the necessary capital. Not even a modestly capitalized company seemed possible without financial aid from the state, however. Reutern appeared willing to provide some investment capital and to grant necessary financial favors.112 By November 26, Chizhov had increased his own investment to 20,000 rubles. Because he had only 7,000 in cash, he planned to raise the balance by borrowing the money, using his shares in the Moscow Merchant Bank and Mutual Credit Society as collateral. The proponents of the new company focused primarily on exploiting the natural resources of the northern coasts. By mid-December 1873, after a twelve-day stay in St. Petersburg, Chizhov wrote that financial aid from the government seemed certain, especially because the company had received the endorsement of an influential tsarist bureaucrat: Nikolai A. Kachalov, director of the imperial import tariff agency in the Ministry of Finance, president of the commission on economic development of the Russian North, and formerly a naval officer and governor of Archangel Province. The manager of the Archangel port also gave his approval.113

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At that moment, Chizhov first mentioned in his diary the issue of expanding the activities of the “Arctic Ocean” company, as he then called it, to include “scheduled steamship service to Murmansk.” Despite its location within the Arctic Circle, Murmansk remained icefree even in winter because the Gulf Stream warmed the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. In contrast, the port of Archangel, located in one of the bays of the White Sea, was open to shipping only during the brief northern summer, between July and September, before the advent of steam-powered icebreakers. Competent management would mean the difference between success and failure. In addition to the 1,250 rubles that the government was already paying the Murmansk Shipping Company for each of twenty-four trips per season, twelve in the White Sea and twelve to Murmansk, Chizhov and his fellow entrepreneurs requested a special subsidy of 50,000 rubles. Reutern refused to grant this additional aid. Instead, he appeared willing to transfer the exclusive right to operate steamships in the Far North to Chizhov’s proposed company. Chizhov calculated that a well-managed steamship line serving the White Sea and the port of Murmansk could turn a profit. If each trip cost 1,050 rubles, the 1,250-ruble subsidy would bring in 200 rubles in profit, for a total of 4,800 from twenty-four trips annually, or more than a 3 percent return if each steamship cost up to 150,000 rubles. Freight and passenger traffic would generate an estimated 18,000 rubles in additional revenue, or an average of 750 rubles per trip, whatever “disorders” might arise. The subsidy and the revenue would come to 22,800 rubles per year, or, if rounded down to 22,500, a respectable profit of 15 percent of the cost of one ship. Having sketched this financial plan, Chizhov resolved “this week to begin forming the company.” Confident of receiving Reutern’s financial subsidy for the steamship line, Chizhov had already recruited an experienced mariner to advise him: Count Konstantin F. Litke (Lüdtke or Lütke in German), a lieutenant captain in the Russian navy and son of the distinguished Russian admiral and maritime explorer, Count Fedor P. Litke. Expertise in seafaring Chizhov considered critically important to the success of the new venture: In a business involving industry, nothing more is needed than industrialists and commercially competent people, but in a maritime business, knowledge of seafaring is essential, even more so in one that

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involves navigation on the ocean. Last Sunday, we—that is, Baron [Andrei] Delvig and Count [Konstantin] Litke—had lunch at the home of Smolin (Vasilii Ivanovich), and the entire lunch consisted primarily of salt cod, just salted in a barrel. I ate [a variety of cod dishes, including] eggs with cod [and] cod cakes, and everything was excellent, without the slightest unpleasant taste, which I would not have believed if I had not been convinced by my own eyes and by the taste on my tongue. Perhaps, God willing, we will set this [business] in motion and will bring new life to the North.114

A few days later, Chizhov secured from his closest associates among the Moscow merchants a financial commitment to the new venture, which combined fishing and hunting with the new steamship line.115 In September 1874, Chizhov reacted to an article about hunting and fishing on the Murmansk coast with a renewed sense of urgency. The position of fishermen and hunters was so “desperate” that only the deeds of capable and practical men could improve the situation: “Such enserfment of labor is difficult to imagine.” He considered it “essential” to establish the company and begin scheduled steamship service on the Arctic Ocean and the White Sea “this fall.” Temperatures along the Murmansk coast during June ranged from +6 degrees on the Réaumur scale during the day to +4 at night (+46 and 41 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively), so that sheepskin coats were needed even in summer, but Chizhov refused to be deterred by the harsh weather.116 The machinery of government ground too slowly to permit such quick action. Reutern listened respectfully to Chizhov’s personal request, in January 1875, for a 50,000-ruble investment by the imperial government. Without the state’s purchase of 100 shares costing 500 rubles each, he declared, the steamship line could not be created. He argued that two previous steamship companies in the Far North had failed because they had not accumulated sufficient capital at the outset. Chizhov estimated that his enterprise would cost 400,000 rubles to establish. The four hunting and fishing projects on the White Sea and Arctic Ocean—whaling, shark hunting, fishing for cod, and the hunting of walruses, seals, and polar bears on Novaia Zemlia—would cost “at least 400,000 rubles” more.117 He considered it prudent to pursue these four activities by investing a small amount of capital and hoping for gradual success instead of creating a corporation.

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The charter of the Archangel and Murmansk Steamship Company finally received the emperor’s signature on May 6, 1875. Besides Chizhov, the charter listed Konstantin Litke, Timofei Morozov, Baron Andrei Delvig, and Vasilii Smolin as founders. They set the basic capital at 400,000 rubles, the smallest by far of all of Chizhov’s corporate enterprises, but more than the 150,000 rubles that he had estimated before the shipping component had begun to outweigh hunting and fishing.118 By the end of May, the sale of shares had generated 171,500 rubles: Chizhov’s 105,000, the state’s 50,000, the Mamontov brothers’ 9,000, 2,500 each from Morozov and Litke, and 1,250 each from Delvig and Smolin. By early September, 194,000 rubles had been raised. The company needed to spend only 140,000 rubles by January 1876, primarily to buy steamships. The finances of the new enterprise seemed in good order.119 Chizhov’s correspondence with friends and associates on this project had begun in 1868. Now, seven years later, he wrote to Vasilii Polenov, “Thank God, my work has been rewarded with interest, but I give absolutely no value to money except insofar as it serves as a means of being useful. I have now squandered all that I had on the Murmansk project, and if I receive something more I shall put in even more, not because I expect to make a profit—I do not expect that at all—but because I am convinced that the region can be brought to life [v ozhivlenii kraia] and that [mere] exclamations and desires will not help to do it. Only action will help, and, what is more, large-scale action, the results of which would make a great impact and thereby attract collaborators and followers.”120 In keeping with the nationalistic purpose of the company, its ships bore the names of ports in the White Sea: Archangel, Kem, and Onega. Huge challenges loomed soon after the first ship began its scheduled runs in June 1875. In February 1876, when the company had already lost 17,000 rubles, Chizhov counseled himself not to lose heart. Late the next month, however, he admitted that the financial crisis of 1875 had so dispirited “our capitalists” that the new company owned only 39,000 rubles in paid-up capital in addition to the state’s 50,000 and Chizhov’s 105,000. He resolved to supplement it with another investment of 60,000 rubles. Now he admitted that he had been too optimistic: “There was no one from whom to obtain advice. It will be good if this failure of mine serves as a lesson to someone else.

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Although it is an expensive lesson, still it will be of benefit to Russia and to Russians.”121 The summer of 1876 likewise brought no profit. On August 12, Chizhov learned that the Kem, a newly purchased ship, had suffered a mishap off the coast of Scotland. The next day, Count Litke reported that the boiler on the Archangel functioned so poorly that the ship could hardly be operated during the winter. Repairs eventually cost 16,000 rubles. Without additional financial aid from the state, it appeared, “we will be finished [to nam kaput].”122 Chizhov planned at this point to ask Reutern to loan the company 40,000 rubles, to be collateralized by 100,000 rubles’ worth of Chizhov’s own stock in the company. This loan would provide enough working capital to pay for the repair of the Archangel and finance the operation of the ships.123 At the end of 1876, the survival of the company remained in doubt. Litke, Count Leonid Obolenskii, and Chizhov resolved to petition the Ministry of Finance for a 50,000-ruble subvention for twenty steamship trips.124 In a brief meeting with Reutern in February 1877, Chizhov received sufficient financial favors from the state, “not for myself, but for the company,” to ensure its survival for five years. Reutern agreed so readily to Chizhov’s petition that he exclaimed, “How can I not praise this man?” For 50,000 rubles in state subsidies, the company obligated itself to make twenty steamship trips a year, not forty, as originally agreed. In addition, the state would provide an interest-free loan of 30,000 rubles, to be repaid in the course of five years in the form of a reduction of the annual subsidy from 50,000 to 44,000 rubles. At this difficult moment, when the survival of the company depended on the generosity of the finance minister and managers’ ability to meet unknown dangers that lurked in the future, Chizhov found inspiration in a philosophical statement by the late radical journalist, Aleksandr Herzen: “No experience entitles the soul to reject all that is good.”125 The company’s troubles did not end, however. A month later, on its return from its boiler repair in England, the Archangel sustained another mechanical problem: a broken propeller shaft, which Chizhov blamed on “iron of poor quality and poor forging, a rare occurrence on steamships.” In a report to Litke, to be submitted to Transport Minister Posiet, Chizhov outlined the schedule of the company’s three steamships under the new system of subsidies recently approved by Reutern. (See Table 2.) He ended this diary entry with a

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sardonic comment: “All this will be material for the history of the failures of our enterprise.”126 In early April 1877, just before war broke out with the Ottoman Empire, Litke received an assignment to a naval squadron. Liquidation of the steamship company appeared likely, but Chizhov expressed resignation in the face of these setbacks: “It will be very sad to liquidate this business, but you cannot oppose Providence.” He calculated that he had already invested almost 200,000 rubles in the Murmansk company. If its assets were liquidated at 40 kopeks on the ruble, he would salvage about 80,000.127 In May, he sent 6,500 rubles to Litke to pay for insurance on the company’s ships, money raised in the form of a personal loan from Ivan Aksakov, chairman of the board of the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society, collateralized by Chizhov’s shares in the Moscow Merchant Bank. “Perhaps we will drag ourselves along somehow,” he wrote.128 Apart from financial and mechanical problems, the major difficulty in managing the Murmansk shipping company lay in another version of “the principal/agent problem,” discussed in Chapter 2. Instead of shareholders who lacked adequate information to monitor the managers, in this case the managers found it difficult to supervise the hired staff. In the early 1870s, Chizhov complained that Nikolai K. Shtrom, the overseer of the silk plantation at Tripolie, kept incomplete financial records and wasted money operating a brewery that never seemed Table 2 Proposed Schedule of Subsidized Traffic of the Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company, 1877–1881

Steamship Archangel Archangel

Kem Onega Grand totals

Total Annual Trips per Subsidy per Trip Subsidy (metal Ports Serviced Year (metal rubles) rubles) Murmansk Coast (spring) Archangel and Vardø (summer) White Sea ports Onega inlet of White Sea

4

2,500

10,000

7

2,500

17,500

10

1,500

15,000

10

750

7,500

31

50,000

Source: Draft of report to Minister of Transport, Chizhov diary, Mar. 24, 1877.

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to make a profit.129 Likewise, in the case of the White Sea shipping company, the huge distances separating the ships at sea, the supervisor’s office in Archangel, Litke’s in St. Petersburg, and Chizhov’s in Moscow made adequate monitoring impossible. A former naval officer named Bykov, to whom Chizhov paid 500 rubles to tour the Far North, had predicted that the greatest opportunities for profit lay in the operation of the steamship line, especially if the Solovetsk Monastery, located on the Solovki islands in the White Sea, would permit the company to lease a warehouse and a wharf there so as to facilitate the travel of the many pilgrims who visited the holy site. (The anticipated traffic of pilgrims to the Trinity Monastery at Sergiev posad had served as Chizhov’s principal rationale for the Trinity Railroad fifteen years before!) For his part, Vasilii Smolin had considered cod fishing the more promising venture, despite Bykov’s report that half the fish escaped the nets. In Bykov’s opinion, whaling would produce more profits than fishing, followed by the hunting of walruses, seals, and polar bears on Novaia Zemlia island. “Where,” Chizhov had written in April 1874, “can I find [qualified] people” to manage both the hunting and fishing operations and the steamship line? Only an experienced mariner could make shipping profitable, but the other activities required a person skilled in hunting, fishing, and commerce. If a ship captain gave orders to fishermen and hunters, “squabbling” would arise from his arrogance and his inability to appreciate the “common sense” of his uneducated subordinates. To put a commercial person (torgovyi chelovek) in charge of everything would be “more natural,” but would a captain take orders from a merchant? How could someone with both sets of skills be found on the shore of the White Sea? Smolin did not appear to be the kind of “capable, honest, and strong-willed” ship captain that Chizhov needed in both aspects of the new business. Despite his skill as a mariner, Smolin did not appear entirely trustworthy, especially because he wanted the new company to hire all three of his sons. Bykov seemed worse, “a bad worker” who reportedly spent entire nights in the port of Kem playing cards. Here arose the supreme dilemma: “We have a multitude of [potential] business projects [dela] in Russia, but no people [to manage them well]. This is a terrible misfortune [strashnaia beda].”130 Although he had hoped that hunting and fishing in the Far North would produce considerable profits, Chizhov decided not to include

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these operations in the new corporation but continued developing them in an unincorporated partnership managed by Vasilii Smolin and his sons. Aleksei Polenov, dispatched to Archangel to investigate these projects, advised against further reliance on the Smolins. “Absolutely not,” Polenov wrote. “I did not see any dishonesty” on the part of one son, Sergei V. Smolin, “but I did not notice any steadfast honesty, either.” Whether or not various reports about his dishonesty were “simply gossip,” Sergei Smolin appeared “terribly credulous and he will hardly do a good job of choosing people.” In January 1876, Polenov reported that the young Smolin was squandering the money entrusted to him by Chizhov.131 The managing director of the steamship line from November 1875 to November 1876, a ship captain named Kisel K. Shelting (Schelting in German or Scheltinga in Dutch), caused Chizhov even greater anguish. The huge investment that was required to begin scheduled trips between the White Sea ports and the Murmansk coast meant that careless calculations of expenses and revenues would jeopardize the existence of the enterprise. Not only could Shelting not draw up a budget at first, but his reports inspired doubts as to his trustworthiness. What use was an estimate of the cost of a steamship when it ranged from 84,000 to 135,000 rubles? Why think of maintaining freight service between the White Sea and European ports before serving the ports of the White Sea itself? “In other words,” wrote Chizhov, “he is discussing candies when there is not yet any bread. All this made a very distressing impression.”132 The budget for the first year, submitted by Shelting on November 8, 1875, anticipated 40,590 rubles in revenue, including subsidies of 33,750. Operating expenses came to only 9,300, but other deductions from the gross revenue—insurance costs (12,000), amortization (6,000), and a payment to the reserve capital fund (450)—reduced the predicted net profit to only 2,840 rubles, or about 1.5 percent of the basic capital of approximately 200,000 rubles: “not very profitable.” Shelting’s plan to maintain two ships on the White Sea, two on the Murmansk coast, two carrying freight to Europe, and two on the Northern Dvina River and its tributaries between Archangel and Vologda struck Chizhov as “mariner’s gibberish” worthy of an adolescent, not a ship captain more than fifty years old. In August, Count

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Litke reported that Shelting was “good for nothing.”133 A better example of the principal/agent problem could scarcely be imagined. Fortunately, Litke soon proposed a new managing director, Petr I. Vitt (Witt), who accepted the position in November 1876. The following summer, Vitt reported to Litke that the steamship line might end the season without a loss. “This would be a turning point for our northern business,” Chizhov wrote.134 Chizhov’s corporate ventures enjoyed financial success, but they owed more to pragmatic accommodation than to his xenophobic and antibureaucratic strategy: an insistence on Russian labor, capital, and managerial expertise. Instead of simply putting the economic program of Vestnik promyshlennosti into practice, he forged unexpected solutions to his entrepreneurial problems. Paradoxes abounded. Although inspired to preach the cause of Russian economic nationalism by the Slavophile dream of community, he became a supremely independent entrepreneur. Although indifferent to the attractions of wealth, he managed several corporations so well that his posthumous fortune amounted to many millions of rubles. Although dedicated to the mobilization of Russian capital, he borrowed capital from non-Russian bankers in the financing of his railroads: Leon Rosenthal and Wyneken and Company in St. Petersburg, Baring Brothers in London, and Hope in Amsterdam. Locomotives and cars produced in the plants of Borsig in Germany rumbled along the rails of the Trinity Railroad. Half the new rolling stock of the Moscow-Kursk line came from abroad. Steamships built and repaired in Great Britain carried passengers and freight on the Archangel-Murmansk line. The recruitment of competent and trustworthy engineers, accountants, and managers posed the greatest problem, as high salaries and appeals to Russian nationalism never solved the shortage of talent. This dilemma persisted at the highest levels of corporate management as well. The greed, apathy, and lack of initiative displayed by his allies in Slavophile capitalism, the Moscow merchants, forced him to seek collaborators among Russians named Babst, Delvig, Litke, Shtrom, and Vitt. Although these men earned Chizhov’s trust, he never overcame the shortage of entrepreneurial and managerial talent. Nor did a Germanic name ensure competence. Shelting and Nikolai Shtrom proved poor managers in Archangel and Tripolie, respectively.

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Even greater dilemmas arose in Chizhov’s relationship with the tsarist bureaucracy. Although hostile to the legacy of Peter the Great, which allowed non-Russians, especially Baltic Germans, to advance to high positions in the imperial bureaucracy, he skillfully played the supplicant to ministers and developed a relationship of mutual respect with the quintessential German bureaucrat, Minister of Finance Mikhail Reutern. Although he never moderated the harsh rhetoric of Slavophile capitalism, which risked alienating bureaucrats who felt more loyalty to the imperial than to the ethnic ideal, Chizhov could not avoid financial dependence on the despised bureaucracy. None of his many enterprises, from the tiny silk plantation to the banks, railroads, and steamship line, could have begun operations, much less survived, without special financial aid awarded by the all-powerful state. Chizhov’s ability to win these favors testified to the reputation for honesty and competent management that he enjoyed at the highest levels of the imperial bureaucracy. Merit certainly won rewards. However, the dependence of his businesses on the arbitrary dispensations of the tsarist ministers revealed a fundamental weakness in both the corporate system and the government’s economic policy. Why could well-managed corporations not survive without constant tutelage in Russia? Chizhov left no comprehensive analysis of these central dilemmas, but his diary contained sufficiently vivid portraits of corporate entrepreneurs and tsarist ministers to illuminate the structural weaknesses of Russian capitalism in the era of the Great Reforms.

CHAPTER 4

Chizhov’s Legacy The Ministry of Finance has constantly sought to obtain the advice of responsible public, nongovernmental elements regarding commerce, industry, the tariff, and factory management . . . This participation is always useful. It does not encroach on the principles of state organization upon which the political and civic life of Russia rests, under the protection of a powerful monarchical authority. —Finance Minister Mikhail Kh. Reutern, 1866

A comparison of the strategy of economic development advanced by Chizhov in the late 1850s with his career in the last twenty years of his life reveals many discontinuities. Fewer than half of the enterprises that he dreamed of creating came into existence. Problems of inadequate credit proved far less daunting than the shortage of entrepreneurial and managerial talent among the Russian merchants from whom he recruited allies in economic nationalism. Most of all, however, he encountered obstacles erected by the autocratic state. For centuries, this state had maintained economic policies inimical to entrepreneurship, particularly a rigid social structure and limited access to education, exemplified in its extreme form by the maintenance of serfdom from its formal codification in 1649 to the Emancipation Statute of 1861. When the imperial bureaucracy occasionally took direct administrative actions to create an industrial system, arbitrary and repressive measures tended to retard the development of market forces and legal protections for private property, the institutional bases of modern capitalism. Throughout the era of the Great Reforms, Chizhov constantly clashed with the slow, cumbersome, and stifling bureaucracy in St. Petersburg. Paradoxically, he maintained cordial personal relationships with key ministers despite his Slavophile repugnance for the imperial government. The primary dilemma of his career lay in the fact that although his strategy aimed at stimulating the creative economic ener149

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gies of the Russian people, none of his enterprises, large or small, survived without generous financial favors from the state. After his death, he became better known as an inspirer of Russian artists than as a pioneer of capitalism. Still, in the early twenty-first century his ultimately unsuccessful career raises the question of whether his idealistic strategy of “Slavophile capitalism” might prove capable of overcoming corruption, illegality, and mass poverty in post-Soviet Russia.

Limits to Success As Chizhov contemplated the reasons for his success in corporate enterprise, he resorted to three kinds of explanations. The first was God’s beneficence. As an Orthodox Christian, he often expressed his faith that the fate of his businesses remained in God’s hands, whether they succeeded, encountered financial difficulty, or failed entirely. Whether the Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company prospered or not, he remained serene. “There is no point in planning ahead, and there is no point in being despondent,” he wrote. “Without God’s blessing, there is nothing to be done. You just lower the flag and surrender to fate.”1 On other occasions, he ascribed his successes to good fortune. In November 1873, for example, he explained his prominence among corporate managers in Moscow in terms of coincidences: “When this [proposed steamship] business succeeds, all my friends will decide that it was my work that created this business, just like the Tashkent silk company, but it must be said that what helped here most of all was chance [sluchai]. My entire contribution consisted in thinking up this business independently and by myself.” The ideas of the steamship line, the fishing and whaling operations in the White Sea and Arctic Ocean, and the collection of guano on Novaia Zemlia occurred to him as he read Sergei Maksimov’s account of life on the desolate northern coast.2 In crediting chance, Chizhov demonstrated his ability occasionally to conquer his pride, but this account hardly can be considered convincing. Louis Pasteur, the great scientist, observed that “chance favors the prepared mind.” Economic opportunities in the Far North had received little attention before Chizhov launched his steamship company because few people had perceived them. Self-taught but skilled in imagining ways to bring investors, producers, and consumers together in new combina-

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tions, Chizhov contributed the rarest of all economic talents: a combination of the entrepreneurial spirit and diligence in management. In 1875, for example, he dreamed of an international shipping project to link the Russian North and England. Perhaps the scheme might never succeed, he wrote, “but it activates all my entrepreneurship, and, as a poet of business [kak poet dela], I put into motion all the concerns of my fantasy. Perhaps God will bless our enterprise.”3 To the end, Chizhov remained a committed Slavophile and PanSlavist. His sympathy toward the peasantry led him to serve as vicepresident of the Moscow Agricultural Society in 1860, at a time when another Slavophile, Aleksandr Koshelev, presided over the society.4 Chizhov boasted in May 1870 that the growing of hops on his plantation at Tripolie provided similar benefits to the peasantry as the cultivation of silk.5 Just as he had expressed dismay at the squalor in which peasants lived on the beet sugar estate of Count Aleksei Bobrinskii in 1855, so, toward the end of his life, he grieved over the degradation of Russian workers in the iron industry of the Ural region during the eighteenth century, during the industrialization drive that underlay the military successes of Peter the Great. Unfortunately, he perceived no improvement in the lives of the peasantry, nor any hope for change in the near future. Serfdom had been the most “exploitative institution” imaginable: “And how can Europe and the entire world not look on us as semi-savages, as horrible barbarians,” who were recently “exploiting people, selling their flesh, that is, their labor power, selling and treating their wives and daughters in a completely arbitrary way” and treating the serf as “nothing but a domestic animal”?6 Nor did Chizhov’s devotion to Slavic unity fade in these two decades. In 1875, he memorialized Mikhail P. Pogodin, the ideologist of Pan-Slavism and Official Nationality, as a great patriot.7 Shortly before the Russo-Turkish War broke out in 1877, Chizhov marveled at the success of Ivan Aksakov’s campaign to raise money and recruit volunteers for the Serbs’ war against the Ottoman government, managed by the Moscow Slavic Benevolent Committee, which used the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society as a temporary office. Chizhov regretted that his advanced age prevented his going to Serbia, not as a soldier but to help in some way: “Now I am sick. What good am I?” He rejoiced when the workers of the Trinity Railroad voluntarily donated 1 percent of their pay to the Slavic Benevolent Committee.8

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In the last months of his life, during long talks with Ivan Aksakov on the course of the war against the Turks, Chizhov reiterated the familiar Slavophile notion of the contrast between the good and long-suffering people and the officer corps, the spiritual heirs of Peter I’s Europeanized elite. The soldiers, recruited from the peasantry and petty townspeople, displayed “bravery, courage, selflessness, complete absence of concerns about [their] own life, kindness and good humor toward prisoners, and firm subordination [to authority],” while being led by incompetent officers. “Everywhere confusion, everywhere inadequate expertise and quick-wittedness,” he wrote. “What will happen? Everything is in the hands of God.”9 Although he resigned himself to the fact that he would never write his grand theory of history, he continued to believe that the present age, dominated by the materialistic motto facio ergo sum, would pass away, to be replaced by “our Slavic” age, in which people would find the ultimate expression of their existence in the harmony of life itself, presumably on the ruins of European civilization: sum ergo sum. Against an attack on Slavophilism in the St. Petersburg journal Vestnik Evropy (The Herald of Europe), he wrote, “When the new period [of history] begins, here the law of human development smashes petty logical conclusions to bits.” Early Christianity contributed nothing to the Greek and Roman systems of logic, “but nevertheless it destroyed the pagan world and created on its ruins the worldwide significance of Christianity.”10 The fate of Chizhov’s various enterprises reflected not only his extraordinary diligence but also the negative aspects of his career, primarily the difficulty of recruiting capable managers from the Moscow merchant elite, and his dependence on financial support from the state. His first venture, in silk cultivation, left little in the way of lasting improvements. He did not succeed in transforming the silk industry of Central Asia. In November 1870, General Konstantin P. Kaufman, the governor of Russia’s newly conquered territory in Central Asia, then called Turkestan, invited Chizhov to participate in the founding of a silk-winding company in Tashkent, a traditional center of silk cultivation. Although he had no time to spare on a new project, he agreed out of patriotic motives. The thirty founders of the MoscowTashkent Silk Company included many of the leading textile manufacturers and bankers in Moscow, Timofei Morozov and his relatives among them. The company had only 200,000 rubles of basic capital,

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however, and apparently never turned a profit. It went bankrupt in 1875 after the price of silk fell dramatically. Increased production in China and Japan and improved transportation between Europe and the Far East following the opening of the Suez Canal made Central Asian silk uncompetitive. Nostalgia for his first foray into industry probably played a part in Chizhov’s decision to support this silk company, as he still maintained his small silk plantation in Tripolie and had published the second edition of his book on silk, which was highly praised by the Moscow Agricultural Society, earlier in 1870. Even the silk plantation in Tripolie produced mediocre results, partly because the shortage of clean water kept the quality of the silk low.11 Thus, he failed to provide the basis of prosperity among peasants and petty townspeople that would free them from the degradation caused by the harsh routines of beet sugar and tobacco cultivation in South Russia. Silk continued to be produced in Tripolie at the end of the nineteenth century, but The Encyclopedia of Ukraine maintained that no silk factories were established there before 1900 and that the silk industry “was poorly developed until the twentieth century.”12 The Trinity Railroad continued to prosper under the management of Chizhov’s protégé, Savva Mamontov. The Moscow-Kursk Railroad operated profitably for almost two decades. Between 1874 and 1892, its basic capital rose from 66.105 to 90.542 million credit rubles, and current revenues generated regular payments, every four months, to repay the eighteen-year loan from the English bankers. The only lapse in this impressive record occurred when a train accident at Kukuevo caused damage to the roadbed so costly that the managers were obliged to make a small payment from their own funds to cover the extraordinary expense. The railroad also benefited from loans extended to it by the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society until Timofei Morozov resigned as president of the society’s council in 1878.13 When the Moscow-Kursk Railroad finally became free of debt, each founder’s share amounted to a fortune. For their “constant presence in St. Petersburg, although alternately, for nine months” during the petitioning process in 1870–1871, Chizhov, Gorbov, Morozov, and Aleksandr Mamontov had each received two of the thirteen founders’ shares, while other founders had received one. By 1889, each founder’s share was worth approximately 3 million rubles.14

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Chizhov’s banks prospered. Although Naidenov criticized Chizhov for excessive formality in the management of the Moscow Merchant Bank, it performed well according to the basic criteria of success in Russian finance: survival over the years, size of basic capital, amount of the balance, and size of dividends paid to investors. In 1867, its first year of operation, the bank paid an impressive dividend of 12 percent; in 1869, it paid 19.4 percent. Its initial capital of 1.26 million rubles fell short of the planned 2 million, but of the five banks chartered in Moscow in the 1860s and 1870s, it enjoyed the largest basic capital— 5 million rubles—in 1874 and shared first place with another bank in 1892 and 1905. In 1899, discounting netted a profit of over a million rubles. In 1914, its basic capital of 15 million rubles placed it fourteenth among forty-seven banks in the empire. Among the eight banks in Moscow in that year, it ranked fifth in size, behind the Union Bank (founded by Samuil and Lazar S. Poliakov in Riazan in 1872), the Junker Commercial Bank (founded in Pskov in 1873 by a German merchant), and two large banks created in 1911. The impressive size of its balance, 242.997 million rubles, second only to the Union Bank’s 294.213 million among the Moscow banks, gave the Moscow Merchant Bank 27.7 percent of the total balance of all eight Moscow banks in 1913.15 Although not a corporation, the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society also served the needs of the Central Industrial Region for decades. Chizhov’s friend Ivan Aksakov remained president of the board until his death in 1886. In the 1880s and 1890s, the society provided major financing to Savva Mamontov, the railroad magnate, and to Aleksei K. Alchevskii, a prominent Russian banker in Kharkov. Together, these two men held slightly less than half the entire loan portfolio of the society on January 1, 1897: 10.8 million rubles. In 1914, mutual credit societies accounted for 12.2 percent of bank assets in the Russian Empire, slightly less than the portion held by the State Bank itself: 16.4 percent. Half of the 1,108 societies served the needs of agriculture, and only 10 had assets large enough to rival those of corporate banks. The Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society held undisputed first place among credit societies in the empire, with a balance of 64.4 million rubles. Had it been a commercial bank, its balance would have ranked third in Moscow, behind those of the Union Bank and the Moscow Merchant Bank.16

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The Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company continued to prosper, although its headquarters had moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg by 1892. The basic capital grew steadily, to 308,000 rubles in 1892 and 1,312,800 in 1905 and 1914. The German names of two of the five directors in 1914, Baron Mikhail E. Nolde and Georgii A. Veikhardt (Weichardt), suggested that the Russian nationalist complexion originally imparted to the company by Chizhov had since dissipated. In 1914, three of the five directors of the Archangel-Murmansk company represented ministries of the tsarist government: finance, navy, and trade and industry. Their presence on the board indicated that the company required state subsidies to stay afloat, as it had under Chizhov’s stewardship. Comparative data underlined his success. From 1704 to the end of 1904, the imperial government chartered 131 companies to operate ships on Russian rivers and adjacent oceans. Of these, only 48 survived to 1905. In 1905–1913, another 68 shipping companies came into existence, for a grand total of 199, but only 80 survived to 1914. The basic capital of the Archangel-Murmansk Company ranked twentyfourth among shipping companies in 1905 and thirty-fourth in 1914, slightly above the median: 1.257 million rubles in 1905 and 1 million in 1914. The largest Russian shipping company, ROPIT, increased its basic capital steadily to 10 million rubles in 1914, but that line owed its success largely to the huge state subsidies justified by its potential to serve as an auxiliary fleet in time of war. Chizhov had correctly perceived the need for steamship service in the Far North and had laid the institutional foundation of the Archangel-Murmansk Company as it struggled with technical and financial setbacks in the first two years of its existence. These successes reflected well on Chizhov’s entrepreneurial imagination, determination, and honesty. However, the long list of entrepreneurial dreams mentioned in his diary and letters but never brought to fruition demonstrated the enormous gap between how the Russian economy developed under the tutelage of Finance Minister Reutern and what might have been achieved under freer and more enlightened policies. In the 1860s and 1870s, Chizhov failed to realize ten grand projects, eight in transport and two in high finance. In 1869, he discussed a plan to create a steamship company to link Odessa, East India, and the

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Far East.17 In March 1871, he mentioned his intention to create “a steamship company on the northern seas” to link “our Baltic ports”— including St. Petersburg, Riga, Reval, and Libau—with America. Later that year, he mentioned that he had co-founded this “Northern Steamship Company.” Despite the participation of an admiral, Chizhov doubted its financial prospects: “I don’t know what will be done with it.” Still, this diary entry suggested that the charter was drafted and submitted to the government.18 No such charter apparently ever received approval, as it was not published in the Polnoe sobranie zakonov. The third project, mentioned four years later, would have expanded the Archangel shipping venture into a complex system to transport Russian goods from the Volga River basin to England in seven days via the Moscow-Vologda railroad and the Sukhona and Northern Dvina rivers, with port facilities in Archangel, on the Rybachii peninsula (just west of Murmansk), and in Osen, Norway.19 The other five ideas in transport demonstrated Chizhov’s undiminished enthusiasm for railroads. In 1873, he conceived a plan to build a thirty-verst circle line around Moscow, at a cost of 6 million rubles, as part of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. The following year, he tried to interest Moscow merchants in the construction of a railroad in Central Asia, recently conquered by Russian troops. In 1874 and 1875 he considered the feasibility of a rail line eastward to Siberia. Finally, in December 1875, he welcomed news that the government was considering a northern direction for the Siberian railroad, which might be linked to the Moscow-Iaroslavl line at a cost to the railroad of only 700,000 rubles. Nothing came of the Siberian and Central Asian lines until the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad (1891–1916) by the government itself, the extension of the Trans-Caspian Railroad to Tashkent (1899), and the completion of the Orenburg-Tashkent line (1906). A month before he died, Chizhov listed four cities near the Moscow-Kursk Railroad to which spur lines totaling 360 versts could be constructed. He estimated a total cost of between 5.76 and 7.2 million rubles and hoped for a net profit of 7 percent.20 His dream of financing railroads without recourse to foreign capital also remained an illusion. In 1862, Chizhov proposed that the Russian government reduce its dependence on Europe by issuing government bonds on the domestic market to finance railroad construction, but

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the tsarist ministers never adopted this policy. Its financial soundness was doubtful in any case because of the limited amount of investment capital available in Russia. Sergei Iu. Witte briefly considered this idea (without crediting Chizhov or Vasilii Kokorev, who had also proposed it) as a means of raising funds for the hugely expensive Trans-Siberian Railroad, but when the Russian market proved too small, Witte resorted to the usual inflationary mechanisms of deficit spending supplemented by foreign loans.21 Nor did Chizhov realize his dream of a vibrant banking system in Russia. He invested in two land banks founded in 1873, one headquartered in St. Petersburg and the other in Moscow. The Moscow land bank collapsed within a year. His efforts to create two other banks, one to fund railroad development and a “bank of banks,” also came to nothing. The full name of the bankers’ bank indicated the great hopes that its promoters placed in it: Main Russian Bank for the Promotion of the Dissemination of Credit, Industrial, and Commercial Corporations and for All Forms of Useful Enterprises. Headquartered in Moscow and capitalized at 25 million rubles, it would have aided existing credit institutions by rediscounting “bills of exchange of existing banks, mutual credit societies, land banks, and the like, that is, to deal only with large sums.” The Ministry of Finance refused in late 1872 to confirm the charter of this bank because a decree of May 1872 banned the formation of new commercial banks in any city where at least one already existed.22 In 1857, Chizhov had discussed with Countess Antonina D. Bludova his plan to propagate silk cultivation among the Slavs with the help of a Bulgarian named Khadzhii Georgii Kirkovich, a recent visitor to Tripolie. Two years later, Kirkovich received financial support from the leading Moscow merchants as the result of an appeal written by Ivan Aksakov and signed by Chizhov, Babst, and others. Chizhov also expressed interest in serving as an envoy of Russia to Bosnia.23 A variety of other small ventures stirred his imagination: Russian commercial, industrial, and financial offices in Paris and London; trade in grain and fish on the Murmansk coast; the cultivation of hops there; and a bank, probably for the benefit of peasants, on his plantation in Tripolie, apparently inspired by the agricultural credit society founded in 1871 by his close friend Grigorii Galagan at Sokirintsy, the first in the Russian Empire.24

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Whether these projected enterprises failed because of poor planning, inadequate financial support, a dearth of well-qualified managers, resistance from unsympathetic bureaucrats, or other factors remains an empirical question to be answered by diligent research. A monographic examination of each of these failures might prove as instructive as an analysis of Chizhov’s many achievements. In any case, the list illuminates his insatiable desire for entrepreneurial opportunities: “a certain greed for work,” which he deprecated, as usual, by pointing out its “mainspring: pride.”25

Merchants and Gentry as Corporate Entrepreneurs As we have seen, the Slavophile ideal first propelled Chizhov into industrial journalism and railroad management. Entranced by romantic nationalism, he eagerly joined the Slavophile circle and approached economic issues from that perspective during the last three decades of his life. At the same time, however, his numerous clashes with the autocratic state and with poorly educated merchants strengthened his resolve to push forward with what sociologists would call a “rational-legal” program of economic reform conducive to entrepreneurial activity. Chizhov certainly endeavored to create a cadre of entrepreneurial merchants in Moscow after the Crimean War, what I have called “the merchant-Slavophile alliance” and Alfred J. Rieber, “the Moscow entrepreneurial group.” However, his twenty-year career resulted in more disappointments than victories. The successes and failures of Chizhov’s entrepreneurial career suggest three weaknesses in his strategy of economic nationalism. First, he placed excessive faith in the entrepreneurial and managerial abilities of the Moscow merchants, his favored allies in the grand design. Second, the gentry, although far better educated than the merchants, showed no more aptitude for the management of corporate railroads and banks. Finally, Chizhov himself weakened the implementation of his strategy by remaining the captive of his Slavophile prejudices as he sought economic allies in the new corporate economy of the 1860s and 1870s. The difficulties of creating a dynamic entrepreneurial elite in Moscow became clear to Chizhov early in his career as the leader of the

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merchant-Slavophile alliance. While managing Vestnik promyshlennosti, he had complained of the merchants’ unwillingness to give adequate financial support. The Moscow merchants also showed little aptitude in implementing the program of import substitution. The Moscow Machinery Company, the first in Russia to manufacture cotton-textile machinery, was founded by three Moscow industrialists and a British engineer in 1882, nearly five years after Chizhov’s death.26 In 1914, of the 103 corporations—11 of them foreign—that produced nonelectrical machinery in Russia, only 4 specified textile machinery as a major product: two in St. Petersburg, one in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, and the Moscow Machinery Company, then headquartered at the plant in Grivno, just south of Moscow on the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. This late and tentative commitment to production of machinery essential to the largest manufacturing sector in the empire—textiles—suggests how timidly Russian entrepreneurs implemented Chizhov’s strategy of industrial development. Nor did the persecuted religious minority known as Old Believers fulfill the role of a uniformly successful entrepreneurial cadre in the industrial age. From the late seventeenth century onward, between 10 and 20 percent of the population, primarily peasants, petty townspeople, and merchants, lived in a kind of religious underground. They practiced traditional rituals, such as the formation of the sign of the cross with two fingers, that the Orthodox hierarchy, supported by the Muscovite autocracy, had declared heretical. Alexander Gerschenkron, William L. Blackwell, Robert Crummey, James L. West, Georg Michels, and other students of the religious beliefs and social mores of the Old Believers have stressed the importance of their sobriety, literacy, diligence, and communal solidarity in the face of tsarist oppression. These cultural traits stimulated unusually successful entrepreneurial ability within this minority group. Certainly the proportion of Old Believers among textile manufacturers in the Moscow region far exceeded the norm, and several of Chizhov’s closest associates among the merchants in the 1860s and 1870s came from OldBeliever backgrounds. They found it difficult, however, to make the transition to the corporate forms of enterprise that became essential in the age of steam and steel. As M. C. Kaser has noted, “the impetus from the Old Believers did not go much beyond the industrial spurt before the Emancipation of the serfs.”27 Some exceptions, notably the

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Morozov and Riabushinskii families, have received attention from Irina Potkina, James L. West, and Iurii Petrov, for example, but other studies are needed to explain the successes and shortcomings of Old Believers in corporate enterprise after the Crimean War. Several observations by Chizhov shed light on this question. The Old Believers’ spending priorities sometimes appalled him. For example, he could scarcely believe that Petr I. Gubonin, an Old Believer railroad contractor, endowed a chapel for 300,000 rubles and spent 4,000 rubles to celebrate its consecration.28 Even the merchants who responded to his appeal to take up corporate banking showed little interest in railroads. In a letter that illustrated the vast cultural gulf separating the Slavophiles from the merchants, Ivan F. Guchkov, one of the richest Old Believer merchants in Moscow, refused Chizhov’s invitation to participate as an investor or manager in the Trinity Railroad: “I have received your letter but, pardon me, I have found in it nothing satisfying to me. I cannot and do not desire to get involved in the administration of a railroad, but I desire, as I have asked you personally, that it be possible to put a full load of 600 puds [10.8 tons] of various timber goods on the platform, as it is large enough for this.”29 The most flamboyant of the Old Believer entrepreneurs, Vasilii Kokorev, proved to be the most impetuous and dishonest. Chizhov had showed irritation with Kokorev in the late 1850s, when Kokorev was building a railroad to link the Volga and Don rivers at the point of their greatest proximity, near Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd). Baron Andrei Delvig accurately predicted financial difficulties because of the dearth of economic activity in this sparsely populated region. For his part, Kokorev sought to block the founding of the Trinity Railroad because he saw it as a competitor for investment capital to be supplied by former liquor concessionaires.30 A decade later, in 1868, Chizhov drew an important lesson from the failure the Muscovites’ campaign to purchase the Nicholas Railroad: never again to cooperate with Kokorev. The unpredictable entrepreneur had failed to work as hard as Chizhov had wished in this crucial battle against the Russian Railroad Company. Although Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, Finance Minister Reutern, and the emperor bore ultimate responsibility for the failure of the Muscovites’ bid to buy the Nicholas Railroad, Chizhov blamed Kokorev most of all. As Cherokov recalled, Chizhov “simply feared him for his eternally grandiose fanta-

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sies [and] his purely American schemes and feared that he himself would be drawn in involuntarily and in the heat of the moment [sgoriacha], without seriously and thoroughly considering [each new venture] beforehand, as [Chizhov] had trained himself to do in his own affairs.”31 Their common commitment to Russian economic nationalism could not bring the two men together. In December 1874, Delvig informed Chizhov that Transport Minister Posiet would welcome a plan offered by Moscow merchants to build a new railroad to serve the Donets River coal basin if Chizhov were to participate. He categorically rejected the invitation. The railroad certainly promised economic benefits for the Russian economy by facilitating the exploitation of the rich coal deposits in what later became known as the “Donbas” (Donets basin) region. However, Kokorev’s participation in the project represented “the main obstacle” for Chizhov: “Kokorev is intelligent, good-hearted, and energetic, but I will never have any business dealings with him because, for him, all means are permissible and it is very, very difficult to guard against allowing this kind of rule from going into practice. It will be necessary to keep a sharp lookout, something that is not possible given my age and the condition of my health.”32 At the beginning of the financial crisis of 1875, Chizhov expressed contempt for Kokorev by comparing him to Nikolai I. Putilov, whose incompetence and dishonesty had caused a major loss for the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society. Bold to the point of recklessness, both men demonstrated the sorry state of entrepreneurship among Russians in the mid-nineteenth century. They created flimsy businesses based on “nothing but hope,” in the expectation that, by drawing in as many gullible investors as possible, public opinion would somehow save them. Putilov, Chizhov fumed, was simply “a goose” and “a second edition of Kokorev.” After the banking crisis passed, he wrote, “Kokorev is smarter than Putilov, but Putilov is better educated than Kokorev . . . For both of them, all means are allowed in the pursuit of their goals. Bribery is their major source [of success], then flattery and crafty maneuvers . . . In a word, there is no trace here of any sense of morality. It is impossible to put a kopek’s worth of faith in a single word of one or the other.”33 Chizhov also found it difficult to work with the merchants who served on the board of directors of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. With

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Aleksandr Mamontov and Mikhail Gorbov he had constant arguments, especially regarding ways to reduce operating costs. Mamontov appeared intelligent but, having received a poor education, knew nothing about railroads and had been “completely spoiled” by easy profits in the era of the liquor-tax concession. Tactless and prone “to give orders like a general [general’stvovat’]” despite his ignorance, he so angered Chizhov that the two men had “a horrible squabble” in May 1872. Ivan F. Rerberg, the fourth director, brought valuable experience as a railroad manager to the board, but he did not spend a great deal of time at the office. Exasperated, Chizhov once called him “a good German but by no means a good man.” Others considered him “even a nasty German.” Rerberg appeared driven to make money to meet the expenses of his large family, especially because his wife had expensive tastes. Unable to evaluate his colleagues without resorting to ethnic stereotypes, Chizhov declared his preference for Nikolai Bernatskii, “a truly good Russian, who is devoted to the business and is honest not in the juridical sense, but as a human being.” In November 1873, Chizhov lost his temper with Rerberg and Mamontov when, in a discussion of the budget, they saw no reason for the board to reduce its expenditures.34 Each of the directors received 10,000 rubles per year for managing the railroad. Klevetskii, the managing engineer, earned 15,000 rubles because of his expertise as a railroad man. Chizhov considered that salary justified but found the salaries of the directors excessive. These problems persisted to the end. In 1874, Chizhov complained that tensions between two of the directors had become unbearable. Aleksandr Mamontov “wants to intervene in everything, but the only problem is that he refuses to be a pupil and thinks that he knows [the business] better than everyone else.” In contrast, Vasilii Bostandzhoglo “just signs papers and has no desire to get involved in the details of the business. In the first place, he is lazy, and in the second, he does not go beyond the papers.”35 On December 30, 1875, Mamontov and Gorbov launched an attack on Chizhov that left “a bitter taste in my mouth,” after which they and Rerberg submitted written resignations. The three complained that they found it impossible to work with Klevetskii, but Chizhov posed the perennial question “Who can replace him? They cannot answer me.”36

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Two founders of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, Timofei Morozov and Vasilii Rukavishnikov, joined the board in early 1876. They agreed with Chizhov that the board should reduce rental expenses by sharing a building with the administrative staff. In November, the board found an office costing only 12,000 rubles a year to rent compared with the 22,000 they were previously spending. Chizhov praised both men for their practicality and enthusiasm. Morozov, he wrote, “is so sensible, so intelligent, and so experienced, and he examines each question so directly that, in reducing expenditures, he will be extremely useful. I will be able to rely on him and seek his advice constantly.” For his part, Rukavishnikov worked “splendidly: intelligently, assiduously, directly, and openly.” Chizhov anticipated reducing expenditures by at least 180,000 rubles per year. Still, tempers flared during a review of the budget: “Our expenses are awful, it is true, but Morozov’s caustic remarks are also extremely unbearable.” Rukavishnikov’s eagerness to argue had the effect of “pouring oil on the fire.” If Finance Minister Reutern provided additional financial support for the railroad, then under consideration, Chizhov wrote, “it would be possible [for me] to leave the board, and it would be good to calm down a little bit and get some rest.”37 Thus, Chizhov showed ambivalence even toward Morozov, the most prominent manufacturer in the merchant-Slavophile alliance and the leader of the Old Believer merchants in the 1870s. When he incorporated his huge textile complex at Nikolskoe, one of the largest and most profitable in the empire, Morozov invited Chizhov to buy ten shares, worth a total of 10,000 rubles, and to chair the annual general assemblies of his new company. This invitation represented a rare honor because merchants often kept shares in their own families for generations. The corporate form of enterprise remained somewhat of a fiction because light manufacturing did not require a complex organizational form. Morozov, owner of an unincorporated trading firm with 6 million rubles in assets, hardly needed to form a corporation to raise 5 million rubles in basic capital. Incorporation provided a single benefit: limited liability. The handsome dividends—10 percent per year even in the business slump of the mid-1870s—meant nothing to Chizhov, of course, but he welcomed Morozov’s gesture of gratitude and respect. Morozov also impressed Chizhov by his pious observance of religious rituals. Just before he signed the telegram to the English

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bankers requesting the loan for the purchase of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, Morozov crossed himself for good luck, but Chizhov did not: “I could not do it, as I am an educated man. What a beast I am!” for acting “ashamed to show that I believe in God’s help and request His help.”38 Despite his religiosity, Morozov showed an unseemly “greediness for money” that disgusted Chizhov. Worse, Morozov appeared incapable of understanding the principle of legality in business. He once asked permission for a man to board the train at Budanovo station, apparently a freight station closed to passengers. Chizhov refused, on the grounds that if the board granted this exception, everyone would then have the same right. Morozov then berated the other directors and threatened never to return to the office. To Chizhov, he seemed like a coarse “petty merchant [kupchik] from the stalls where knives are sold in the bazaar, that is, strictly speaking, a general type of merchant. They have not the slightest notion of simple legality, and when they come into contact with it, it must always be illegality, or at least an exception from legality. And [yet] he is a very fine man and seems very obliging.”39 Nor did Ivan Liamin inspire confidence, despite his position as a prominent textile manufacturer and banker, president of the Moscow Exchange Committee, and mayor of Moscow. The collapse of the Commercial Loan Bank in 1875 and the bankruptcies of fifteen firms with close ties to the bank completely destroyed Liamin’s composure. As a member of the council of the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society, Liamin tried to rediscount deposit tickets of the Commercial Loan Bank at the beginning of the crisis. Timofei Morozov, president of the council, instructed Aleksandr Shtrom to insist that Liamin use bills of exchange signed by himself alone (solo-vekseli) as collateral for the rediscounting. Liamin, unwilling to risk his own fortune in this manner, abandoned the attempt. Acting coolly in this crisis, Shtrom and Morozov saved the society from a major financial disaster, but the episode reflected badly on Liamin. As the panic spread, he became, in Chizhov’s opinion, “completely a child,” fearful of his own financial ruin: “The doorbells in his house are tied because every ring and every knock [at the front door] sends him running to the window to see whether they have come to take him away.”40 Other merchants who held positions of responsibility as bankers also disgusted Chizhov by their dishonesty. All the banks in Moscow

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except the Mutual Credit Society, he wrote, favored a few special customers by allowing them to borrow money at lower-than-usual rates while paying them higher-than-usual interest rates on deposits. Even in the Credit Society, quarrels among board members occurred often. One director did little but collect a large salary; another, although courteous in person, appeared “completely indifferent to public honesty”; and a third Chizhov considered “stupid and without any moral foundation.”41 With Anna F. Aksakova, daughter of the Pan-Slav poet Fedor I. Tiutchev and wife of Ivan Aksakov, Chizhov discussed “the horrible primitiveness” of conceptions of “honor and honesty” among the Moscow merchants “and their extreme lack of development in general. They have less of the simple nature of the peasantry,” from whose midst many of them had recently risen, “and they have remained between heaven and earth.” They disliked the gentry, Chizhov believed, because of its “feeling of its own dignity,” expressed in its “certain point d’honneur [point of honor]” that the merchants themselves lacked.42 Chizhov had only one true disciple among the younger merchants: Ivan Mamontov’s most capable son, Savva. Still, the old problem of insufficient expertise persisted. In 1872, Chizhov fretted that government inspectors would kill the Moscow-Iaroslavl Railroad if it lacked strong direction. “My independence is very significant.”43 Chizhov confided to Vasilii Polenov that Mamontov not only lacked sufficient experience in the management of a railroad but also pursued his artistic interests with such enthusiasm that he did not commit himself fully to his business affairs. Amateurism—undertaking a complex new activity without proper technical training—Chizhov could accept, as an amateur in art history, economic journalism, railroad management, and banking himself. Expertise could be gained through diligent study and experience, given sufficient curiosity, enthusiasm, and patience. Dilettantism—superficiality and a lack of attention to detail—represented for him a serious shortcoming: “Mamontov, as you well know, is making do on dilettantism in art and dilettantism in the railroad business, and for that reason we are sometimes cross with him, for I am a sworn enemy of dilettantism. On the other hand, his is such a glorious nature that you bawl him out precisely because you want to see the good become even better.”44

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Savva I. Mamontov, railroad manager and art patron, graphite drawing by Ilia Repin (1879), Abramtsevo Museum Source: Ilya Repin: Painting, Graphic Art (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1985)

As Stuart Grover, Mamontov’s American biographer, observed, the young merchant “consciously and admittedly patterned himself after Chizhov” but lacked the older man’s perseverance and ability “to follow any path to its end.” After one of many quarrels between the “methodical, patient, and thorough” mentor and his “impetuous” protégé, Mamontov reiterated his admiration for Chizhov: “You were always an ideal of honesty and industry for me, and my unwavering thought was to become closer to you, to serve your needs, and to stand on solid ground, which I had never done” as a young man.45 In conversation with others, Mamontov adopted a jocular tone toward Chizhov’s stern demeanor. Arduous trips to inspect the MoscowVologda railroad Mamontov called “loafing on the road” with “Uncle Grump [vorchun diaden’ka].” Indeed, Chizhov felt despair at this time, as profits from the Trinity Railroad declined following the extension to Vologda: “My own situation is bad, unbearably bad. I am absolutely alone. There is no one to whom I can have a heart-to-heart talk.” Mamontov, he concluded reluctantly, did not take his duties on the

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railroad seriously. Nikolai Pavlov, the head bookkeeper, seemed interested in his position merely for the sake of a high salary and appeared too lazy to manage the railroad well. “By their lack of seriousness,” Chizhov fretted, “they are hurting the railroad. They do not pay attention to the economic aspects, and this I cannot bear.”46 At 11:00 one evening, Chizhov visited Mamontov’s house only to find that Savva had gone out to the opera. For the merchants, Chizhov commented, “business is secondary. Yes, I am a fool, an insane man. I am getting out of hand, but they are [dolce] far niente [‘sweet inactivity’ in Italian].” (Vladimir Lamanskii’s claim that Chizhov once fired a gun at Mamontov in anger but missed appears doubtful because none of Chizhov’s or Mamontov’s acquaintances corroborated the story.)47 Mamontov’s almost unanimous election to the board of directors of the Trinity Railroad a month later heartened Chizhov, at least briefly.48 For all his faults, Mamontov demonstrated more ability as a railroad manager than any other Moscow merchant. Early in 1876, he won the concession to build and operate the Donets Railroad. During the next two decades, he implemented several aspects of Chizhov’s strategy of economic development, including the production of railroad cars, the mining of coal and iron in the Kuznetsk region of Siberia, and, in 1896, the extension of the Trinity Railroad from Vologda to Archangel, more than three times the distance (393 miles) from Iaroslavl to Vologda (127 miles). His career as a railroad magnate and industrialist ended badly, however. Financially overextended, he failed to receive extraordinary help from Minister of Finance Sergei Iu. Witte in the economic crisis at the end of the century and so went bankrupt in 1899. The Moscow-Archangel Railroad passed into the hands of the state in 1900. Mamontov endured public humiliation in a trial for financial fraud, but, thanks to the endorsements of many outstanding Russian artists whose work he had encouraged, he was acquitted of any crime. His vindication came only during World War I. In 1915, the radical journalist Vlas M. Doroshevich paid a rare tribute to a Russian capitalist. Thanks to Mamontov’s entrepreneurial genius, he wrote, the railroad from Moscow to Archangel constituted one of the few transportation links with the Allies, and the Donets Railroad facilitated the delivery of coal to cities in the north of the empire, especially Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was renamed in 1914), cut off from the coal fields of Wales by the German navy and from those of Russian Poland

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by the German army: “Glory to God that there are still stubborn people on this earth.”49 (The state converted the Vologda-Archangel section from narrow to broad gauge in 1916.) Chizhov overcame much of the traditional arrogance of the Russian gentry toward the merchants. He disapproved of the prejudice against merchants displayed by his aristocratic friends, such as Ekaterina Sverbeeva. Still, he remained true to his gentry origins to the end of his life. According to Vladimir Lamanskii, he “was proud of the fact that the gentry had given Russia the Decembrists, and used to say to the merchants: ‘You, moneygrubbers [altynniki], we laid down our heads [on the executioner’s block], we had Decembrists, but you only got rich.’”50 As a fifteen-year-old student in St. Petersburg, Chizhov had endorsed the punishments that Emperor Nicholas had imposed on the military officers who had called for a constitutional regime on his coronation day, December 14, 1825. (Five leaders of this “Decembrist revolt” were hanged in 1826, not beheaded.) Later, however, Chizhov came to see the rebels as heroes. Forty-nine years after the revolt, he noted the paradoxes of the Decembrists’ ideals: “conceptions of freedom, but not equality” and a “purely aristocratic constitution,” that is, the political plan drafted by Nikita M. Muraviev of the Northern Society, which included a property qualification for suffrage. Chizhov particularly admired the Decembrists’ “demand for legality, that sworn enemy of arbitrariness,” and their “self-sacrifice” and “human dignity” as they endured prison, exile, and death. One day after the fiftieth anniversary of the Decembrist revolt, he wrote ironically, “It is a good time [now], when everything is money, money, money everywhere. Fifty years ago, on December 14, a lot of stupid things were done by the Decembrists, but there was no mention of money.” A year later, he marked “the memorable day” with another statement of admiration, calling the Decembrist revolt “the first conscious protest not by the people but by [educated] society against the personal despotism of the tsar. There was nothing in it that had grown up on purely Russian soil because the protesting society had been reared and brought up on foreign history, [such as the French and American revolutions]; but it cannot be denied that there was much that was humane in it. Even less Russian and completely inhumane was the trial of the unfortunates who had been enticed and carried away [by the spirit of revolt]. This was an unrestrained despotism veiled by a tattered cloak of legality.”51

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Strangely enough, this exaltation of the Decembrists linked Chizhov to the Russian socialist tradition. In perhaps the most fascinating of all the entries in his diary, he expressed admiration for Aleksandr I. Herzen, the father of Russian socialism, whom he met only once, in London in 1860. Herzen dedicated his life to the memory of the Decembrists in the course of his long career in exile—in Italy, Switzerland, France, and England—as a radical journalist. Herzen’s essays, published posthumously in 1870, made an enormous impression on Chizhov. Inspired by these masterpieces of introspection, he wrote copiously in his diary about his ideas as well as his everyday activities. Respect for Herzen’s memory prompted Chizhov to pay a friendly visit to the deceased revolutionary’s daughters, Nataliia and Olga, in Paris in May and June 1875. With Olga’s husband, the eminent professor Gabriel Monod, Chizhov shared an interest in vocational education.52 Our knowledge of his opinions and activities from 1870 onward, particularly the complexities of his business career, therefore owes much to Herzen, the most eloquent proponent of agrarian socialism in nineteenth-century Russia. Chizhov admired both Herzen’s “erudition” and the energy with which he urged history onward, calling on society to “rise up against oppression and to move forward in the name of freedom.” Herzen’s revolutionary career appeared entirely justified in view of the humiliations imposed by the tsarist government: “He found the life of slavery in Russia unbearable; he went abroad, and little by little took up the cause of exposing [evil]. This path was, for him, a continuation of his literary activity in Russia. His accusatory activities prevented him from being able to return to Russia, turned the Tsar against him, and made him speak about the Tsar in direct terms, without kissing ass [prosto, ne zhopotsuias’]. In our country that is the most horrible crime. Well, that’s how he became an extremist: because they made him an extreme red.”53 Chizhov admired the socialist émigré’s moral courage and independence. Russian culture in the age of Nicholas I had nurtured Herzen, “the gentry revolutionary,” in Martin Malia’s felicitous phrase. Herzen ignored the Saint-Simonist hope of achieving mass prosperity through technocratic rationality. Instead, he praised the Saint-Simonians’ “secularized version of Christian ethics” and their “philosophy of history.” Because he perceived all social questions through the prism of “his own aristocratic sense of individual dignity,”

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the bourgeoisie became for Herzen “a moral, aesthetic, or legal category rather than an economic class . . . He never understood the slightest thing about industrial society, since it was so remote from the conditions he knew in Russia.” Later ideologists of Russian peasant socialism made this anti-industrialism explicit.54 So too had gentry culture shaped Chizhov, the Slavophile capitalist. Unlike Herzen, however, Chizhov did not condemn industrial development in its capitalist form simply because of its European provenance. It was therefore surprising that, except for his friend Baron Andrei Delvig, Chizhov found few business partners among the Russian aristocracy and gentry. Delvig, a skilled transport engineer, had helped to create the Trinity Railroad and had upheld the highest technical standards as inspector of private railroads in the Main Administration of Transportation and its successor, the Ministry of Transport, until January 1869. Then, as the director of railroads within the ministry in 1869–1870 and as acting minister from January to May 1871, he showed a genuine understanding of the problems of corporate railroads. Despite their generally superior education, in comparison with the merchants of the mid-nineteenth century, the gentry demonstrated a distressing lack of honesty and management skills. As early as 1851, Chizhov had condemned the low level of entrepreneurship among the Russian gentry in the Kiev region. In 1875, as we have seen, he considered Nikolai Putilov, the former bureaucrat, no better than Vasilii Kokorev, the merchant. Even Ivan Babst proved unequal to the task. He served on the board of the Moscow Merchant Bank but remained primarily an economist throughout his public career. Delvig recalled that Chizhov “strongly disliked” several aspects of Babst’s behavior in the late 1860s: his increasing laziness, his formal and arrogant behavior toward subordinates and shareholders in the Moscow Merchant Bank, and his excessive consumption of alcohol. In 1874, Chizhov wrote, “Babst has finally left the university. It is no great loss. They say that he has not given a single lecture this year.” A year and a half later, he noted that all Babst’s former friends and colleagues at the university agreed that he had “destroyed himself.” Chizhov flung the ultimate insult at his former ally in economic nationalism: “it remains only for him to serve the secret police.”55 Chizhov’s friends the Shipov brothers demonstrated impressive capabilities for entrepreneurial action based on their good education,

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gentry status, and military experience. They also shared Chizhov’s strategy of economic nationalism and supported him financially in his transition from silk production to economic journalism. Dmitrii Shipov served as a director of the Trinity Railroad at first. Still, the Shipovs’ machine shop in Kostroma could not supply iron girders for the railroad, to say nothing of rails, locomotives, and railroad cars.56 After his quarrel with Aleksandr Koshelev ended, Chizhov once responded to Koshelev’s request for advice on how best to incorporate his glass plant. Chizhov parried the question with a reiteration of his own formula for success: “whatever advantages [the corporate form of enterprise] promised, the whole question comes down to this: it is essential to bring personal trust” to the business. Investors would not be able to prevent bad management, and in any case Koshelev and his relative would remain the biggest shareholders.57 Despite his experience as a liquor-tax concessionaire in the 1850s, Koshelev did not distinguish himself in corporate enterprise. To Chizhov’s dismay, educated and respectable men from the gentry and aristocracy often displayed as much greed as the coarsest merchants. Count Aleksei E. Komarovskii was constantly proposing “either something completely dishonest or a semi-legal exception to the rules.” In 1876, Komarovskii invited Chizhov to participate in a bold but illegal scheme to build or buy warships capable of attacking the merchant fleets of enemy states in time of war. Chizhov “refused categorically” on the grounds that his “conscience would not allow this by any means” and that “piracy, even if supported by public opinion” and “theft, even if capable of benefiting my country, remain piracy and theft.” Komarovskii’s argument that this idea had received unofficial encouragement from high officials in the Russian government failed to sway Chizhov.58 In addition to historical studies of the largest Russian companies, biographies of such mediocre entrepreneurs as the Shipov brothers, Koshelev, and other members of the Russian gentry would provide essential insights into the shortcomings of Russians as corporate managers and the resulting prominence of Europeans, Poles, Germans, Jews, and Armenians in the major commercial and industrial centers of the empire. Chizhov’s appeals to ethnic Russians to implement his strategy of economic nationalism had the benefit of inspiring the previously dormant Moscow merchants, but the narrow focus on ethnicity logically

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precluded the participation of talented entrepreneurs from other ethnic backgrounds. Some of the most prominent corporate figures in the era of the Great Reforms exhibited such negative traits as excessive greed and dishonesty that Chizhov would not have wished to cooperate with them in any case. However, several expressions of ethnic prejudice diminished the appeal of his strategy. Two of the most notorious fortunes in the Russian railroad business belonged to men who bore German names: Pavel G. Derviz (von Derwies) and Karl F. Mekk (von Meck). They owned “almost all the shares” of the Riazan-Kozlov Railroad, which opened on November 5, 1866, so that the railroad did not really function like a corporation. Derviz also gained a negative reputation for bad treatment of his staff and government inspectors. Delvig noted that inspectors generally had a good working relationship with the Trinity Railroad but that the board of the Moscow-Saratov Railroad treated inspectors like “subordinates,” so that numerous “clashes” occurred in the early 1860s.59 Samuil S. Poliakov, a Jewish railroad magnate, likewise engaged in several financial maneuvers that, although technically legal, raised doubts about his ethical standards. First, although the charter of the Kozlov-Voronezh Railroad listed the Voronezh Zemstvo as the founder, in fact all the shares belonged to Poliakov, its general contractor. Second, the concession (kontsessiia) for this railroad received the emperor’s approval in August 1866, but the charter (ustav) did not receive confirmation until January 1869, a year after trains had begun rolling. Poliakov and others used this delay to avoid accountability to the stockholders, who could not meet to elect the board of directors until the charter had been issued. Thus, Poliakov used his entrepreneurial expertise not so much to build and manage railroads profitably as to amass a large amount of shares in the Griazi-Orel, Kursk-Azov, and Kozlov-Voronezh-Rostov railroads, which he allegedly used as collateral for loans from bankers in Berlin in hopes of deriving a handsome windfall from the appreciation of the price of the shares. In May 1874, when Poliakov proposed the formation of a railroad into western Siberia, Chizhov refused to participate in the new venture. “Not for any amount of money will I go into business with Poliakov, and I will not soil my name,” he wrote.60 This uncompromising attitude apparently arose because of Poliakov’s reputation for dishon-

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esty. Poliakov’s efforts to use Ivan Babst as a figurehead in the bidding for the Donets Railroad in 1875 further turned Chizhov against both men. By backing Savva Mamontov’s efforts to obtain the concession for the Donets Railroad, Chizhov unfortunately appeared to be motivated by anti-Semitism, an ugly feature of the auction process that caused a scandal in the St. Petersburg press.61 According to Baron Delvig, Poliakov excessively inflated the cost of construction of his lines. The Kozlov-Voronezh Railroad, for example, cost 73,500 rubles per verst to build. The unusually high construction cost—58,000 rubles per verst—for a one-track spur line on the RiazhskMorshansk Railroad, chartered in May 1866, enriched a transport engineer named Aleksandr V. Polezhaev, who “lined his pocket [dishonestly] by supplying mediocre rolling stock and rails of poor quality.” Poliakov and other railroad men reportedly distributed shares to various ministers, allegedly as bribes. In one famous case, the desk of a deceased minister allegedly contained 500,000 rubles’ worth of shares issued by Poliakov’s Kozlov-Voronezh Railroad. Poliakov’s standing in public opinion suffered a posthumous blow in October 1888, when Emperor Alexander III’s train went off the track near Borki, on the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov Railroad. Twenty-one people died in the derailment, and the imperial family narrowly escaped death. Poliakov, who had died six months before, was generally blamed for allowing substandard construction, such as the laying of railroad ties on gravel beds so thin that they could not cushion the rails properly. Excessive speed caused the crash at Borki, but it permanently tarnished Poliakov’s reputation.62 Although a comparative analysis of the financial histories of railroads in the Russian Empire has yet to be undertaken, the ethnic stereotypes that abounded in the nineteenth-century Russian economy apparently had some validity. In the Baltic provinces, railroads founded and managed by Baltic Germans and built with English technology and capital, such as the Riga-Dünaburg, Riga-Mitau, and Dünaburg-Vitebsk lines, provided high-quality transportation for the region while returning steady dividends for investors. In Russian Poland, Jewish railroad men, including Jan Bloch (a convert to evangelical Christianity; Ivan S. Bliokh in Russian) and Leopold Kronenberg seemed similarly competent. Throughout the empire, Polish engineers generally performed well. Stanis/l aw V. Kierbed z´ , for exam-

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ple, built many important bridges and served on the council of the Russian Railroad Company. Such expertise did not impress Chizhov, however. When Pavel Klevetskii left the Moscow-Kursk Railroad to serve in the Ministry of Transport, Chizhov worried that he would not be able to find a capable replacement. The tsarist authorities might “palm off on us someone who is Polish. There are many talented people among them, but if we put in a Pole as manager, inevitably the whole railroad would be filled with Poles.” He feared that they would pose a financial danger because of their alleged preference for large numbers of assistants.63 Chizhov also displayed the typical Russian nationalist attitudes toward Jews in the economy. Although he cooperated with Leon M. Rosenthal, the distinguished banker in St. Petersburg who helped to fund the Trinity Railroad and founded the Central Land Credit Bank, Chizhov expressed alarm that Jews were bidding for the concessions on the Vistula Railroad as well as the Donets line. Without citing any details to indicate that these men were actually guilty of dishonesty, he opposed their participation in these railroads. On the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, a Jewish merchant close to Samuil Poliakov lost the contract for the operation of newsstands in the stations after the board, acting on Chizhov’s recommendation, awarded the 800-ruble annual contract to a merchant representing Major General Mikhail G. Cherniaev, a reactionary Pan-Slavist admired by the Moscow merchants and other xenophobes. Chizhov stated bluntly, “he is a Russian, and the conqueror of Tashkent [in 1865] . . . We Russians are obligated to give preference to him.”64 Chizhov encountered obstacles as he strove to lead the Moscow merchants into enlightened corporate activity. The purely ethnic appeal of Slavophile capitalism limited the circle of entrepreneurs to whom he could appeal, as he avoided cooperating with Jews, German, Poles, and even Russians in St. Petersburg whenever possible. In the lack of entrepreneurial passion among the merchants Chizhov perceived the general problem of Russian economic backwardness: “Where is willpower [volia] in our country? Where on earth has it gone? What has been done with it? Wherever you turn, there is a heap of good information, a multitude of good and honest people, no lack of intellect, and plenty of kindness, but as for willpower, it is as if there is a general paralysis. Everyone acts according to routine or

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gropes his way forward, and no one has any initiative.”65 This complaint constituted an admission that he had built his entire strategy of economic nationalism on false hopes. Not the shortage of capital and advanced machinery but the lack of capable Russians proved to be the most important missing element.66 His enthusiasm for the merchants, the basis of his visionary statement of March 1857, now seemed unjustified. Statistical evidence for success and failure in corporate entrepreneurship in Russia is rare. The findings of the commission chaired by Count Eduard T. Baranov in the late 1870s to investigate the financial burden imposed on the state treasury by its support of railroads therefore present valuable insights into the results of Chizhov’s entrepreneurial initiatives, especially in comparison with other railroad magnates. The Baranov Commission gathered data on fifty-one railroads. It commented harshly on the accounting practices of the companies: “The annual reports of the boards of railroad companies, for the most part, are notable for unclear exposition, a lack of many essential data and explanations, so various and completely arbitrary are their formats; instead, there is a wealth of particular technical details . . . The balances [published annually] by the boards do not include the companies’ debts owed to the state, and only some of the reports refer to the companies’ particular loan payments.” In the case of Nikolai Putilov’s short railroad lines linking his plant to railroad terminals and the port in St. Petersburg, permission had been given for construction in December 1875, but as late as 1880 the railroad had not gone into operation. In Table 3, data for the largest railroads in the six regions established by the Baranov Commission and all six railroads in the Moscow regions reveal huge amounts of indebtedness to the state. Chizhov’s two lines, the MoscowVologda and the Moscow-Kursk, excelled in terms of efficiency of operation and steadfastness in the repayment of financial obligations to the state. Both railroads made all necessary payments to the state treasury on time.66 Even if a thousand Chizhovs had by chance sprung into action in 1858, however, could such an entrepreneurial group have transformed the Russian economy? The answer appears doubtful, not because of any shortcoming on the part of Chizhov but because of the negative political and cultural environment maintained by the impe-

0 11.9 28.8* 3.3* 0.2* No guarantee 0 0 20.3 0 0 4.0*

144.4 51.0 + 11.8 42.0 + 13.0 29.8 + 8.2 17.1 + 5.7 5.4 16.4 + 4.3* 41.7 + 15.8 28.1 + 9.4 43.9 + 7.2 47.4 + 30.4 35.1 + 13.8*

604 1,028 764 643 478 85 463 503 487 711 1,025 800

14.8

11.1

11.5

0

0.7 8.7 0.7 0 0 0.6

7.8

5.1*

0

0

6.0*

2.5*

0 1.6* 0 0 0 0

0

0

Total Capital Debt Owed to State Arrears Owed to (bonds and on Guaranteed State on State- Loan Balance stock) Bonds Owned Bonds Owed to State

93.0%

59.8%

86.8%

54.0%

79.8% 111.7% — 140.2% 39.2% 52.7%

83.8%

51.3%

1877

91.1%

—

98.8%

58.2%

79.8% 111.5% 172.9% 111.8% 37.8% 52.4%

95.2%

44.0%

1879

Operating Expenses/Gross

Source: Finansovoe polozhenie russkikh obshchestv zheleznykh dorog k 1 ianvaria 1880 goda, 2 parts (St. Petersburg: Shtab voisk gvardii, 1881), part 1: financial data for 1876–1879. *Credit rubles, equal to 0.755 metal rubles in 1880.

St. Petersburg region Nicholas Railroad (largest of 12) Warsaw region Moscow-Brest (largest of 7) Moscow region (6) Kursk-Kharkov-Azov Lozovo-Sevastopol Donets Konstantinovka Moscow-Vologda Moscow-Kursk Riga region Orel-Vitebsk (largest of 8) Kharkov region Libau-Romny (largest of 3) Kiev region Odessa (largest of 5) Southeast region Kozlov-Voronezh-Rostov(largest of 10)

Region and Company

Length (versts)

Data as of January 1, 1880

Table 3 Financial Profiles of Major Railroad Companies in the Russian Empire, 1876–1880 (in millions of metal rubles)

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rial state. In response to his petitions for financial subsidies, he often received courteous and favorable treatment from various ministers, but he needed more than encouragement and episodic support. He needed a general commitment on the part of the tsarist government to introduce norms of social mobility, mass education, and legality as well as reformed administrative structures conducive to corporate enterprise. This he did not receive.

The Political Context: Military-Autocratic Rule Governments cannot create capitalism by decree, so delicate are such essential elements as trust, confidence in the future, and honesty—the calculated decision to forgo a certain but small monetary gain through deception in the short term in favor of a somewhat less certain but larger gain through the maintenance of a reputation for trustworthy behavior in the long term. Governments can, however, introduce educational and administrative reforms conducive to productive economic activity. Under the influence of such reforms, cultural attitudes themselves can change for the better. As Harold J. Berman, a leading scholar of both Soviet law and comparative legal history, has argued, the law in European societies “cannot be wholly reduced either to the material conditions of the society that produces it or to the system of ideas and values.” Rather, it also functions “as an independent factor, one of the causes, and not only one of the results, of social, economic, political, intellectual, moral, and religious developments.”67 As Hernando de Soto recently observed, entrepreneurship can flourish among the poor and moderately wealthy masses even in underdeveloped countries if adequately encouraged by enlightened governmental action: “It is law that detaches and fixes the economic potential of assets as a value separate from the material assets themselves and allows humans to discover and realize their potential. It is law that connects assets into financial and investment circuits. And it is the representation of assets fixed in legal property documents that gives them the power to create surplus value.” It is the task of governments to implement legal systems capable of providing unambiguous certification of ownership so as to maintain “property rights based on a strong, well-integrated social contract.”68

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It was not the bankers, railroad managers, and industrialists who framed the economic laws of the Russian Empire, but the emperor and his bureaucrats. They enjoyed absolute power. It therefore seems reasonable to inquire into the results of tsarist economic policies in the era of the Great Reforms. A pessimistic conclusion arises from this analysis of Chizhov’s career: it was precisely these economic, legal, and cultural reforms that the tsarist government refused to implement. The emperor and his advisers found it enormously difficult to defend, tax, and govern the largest state in the world. They relied not only on the traditions of imperial statecraft and the religious sanctions of the Russian Orthodox Church, which had special resonance in the ethnically Russian regions of the empire, but also on military force and administrative repression of any tendencies toward local autonomy and self-government, including the granting of civil rights and liberties that the Dutch, English, French, American, Belgian, and other peoples had won in the course of their revolutions between 1568 and 1848. Both the tsarist and Soviet regimes employed techniques that contained many elements of what might be called the “militaryautocratic” mode of rule.69 In a variety of historical cases, but particularly in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the autocratic state extracted from society the financial resources and the bureaucratic personnel necessary to maintain the largest armed force in the world. In turn, this force not only provided for the defense of the empire but also intervened to quell resistance to the state whenever the clergy, the censors, and the police had failed to prevent it. In the words of Peter Gatrell, “a large territory to police, long borders to defend, vast spaces in which people could evade their obligations—all these considerations dictated the need for close supervision of the population, without which the tax base was likely to disintegrate.” Because it lacked adequate “administrative personnel,” moreover, “arbitrariness tended to prevail.”70 This combination of military and autocratic institutions appeared all the more necessary to the emperor and his bureaucrats because of the ethnic diversity of the empire. In the mid-nineteenth century, Russians made up only half the population of the empire. European ideals of romantic nationalism had inspired dreams of autonomy, if not independence, among some of the ethnic minorities. These demands threatened the very integrity of the empire. The

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armed rebellions in Poland in 1830 and 1863, duly crushed by military action and administrative repression, particularly alarmed the tsarist ministers. At the same time, policymakers recognized the need to make some accommodations between the military-autocratic and rational-legal modes of statecraft because the creation of an industrial base capable of producing modern armaments and transportation facilities depended on the cultivation of capitalist institutions. In the era of the Great Reforms, as we have seen, Finance Minister Reutern fostered the development of banks and railroads. His devotion to economic development reflected his recognition of the need for a dynamic economy to provide resources for the production of modern armaments and the creation of a tax base capable of supporting the armed forces, which, under the Military Reform of 1874, became somewhat smaller and more professional than before. A network of capitalist institutions did emerge under Reutern’s tutelage: commercial banks, railroad and steamship companies, and consultative organizations of business interest groups. However, the deleterious economic effects of the autocratic system also remained considerable. The tsarist government’s refusal to create an institutional structure of laws and regulatory procedures favorable to capitalist enterprise reflected Emperor Alexander II’s determination to resist the importation of European political forms. Contradictions persisted between the military-autocratic mode of statecraft, favored by the tsarist government, and the abstract notion of the rule of law. Alexander II explicitly opposed reforms that might culminate in the granting of a constitution to the Russian people. At a meeting of the Council of Ministers, one adviser suggested that, even as autocracy remained “inviolate,” the government should refrain from breaking its own laws, on the grounds that “our autocratic principles are harmed by the exceptions to the law that we constantly allow ourselves.” The emperor, visibly “annoyed,” curtly posed a rhetorical question that abruptly ended the discussion: “Who is this ‘we’? It is I.” He refused to allow a constitution, he said, “not because he would be jealous of his authority but because he was convinced that this would be a calamity for Russia and would lead to its dissolution.” Displeased at the appearance of constitutional reforms in Prussia, he “did not suppose that the Russian people was sufficiently mature for such a change as that.” The

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leading Russian historian of the Great Reforms concluded that Alexander II “stubbornly and consistently denied the necessity and the possibility of a constitution for Russia.”71 Against such implacable resistance, no minister concerned with keeping his position could consider endorsing initiatives in this direction. Max Weber made clear the intimate connection between rationallegal norms of government and the development of modern capitalism. The Weberian definition of capitalism had six elements: rational accounting; free markets open to all persons regardless of social status; the application of advanced technologies, including those requiring massive capital investments; a legal system capable of implementing clear standards of justice impersonally, fairly, and without arbitrary persecutions of the innocent; a labor force unrestrained by slavery, serfdom, or other administrative impediments; and corporate forms of enterprise funded largely by the public sale of shares.72 The remarkable development of capitalism in the past several centuries owed much to legal systems that ensured the sanctity of private property, protected the rights of individuals, and fostered free markets. Conversely, the weakness of capitalist institutions in the Russian Empire resulted directly from the refusal of the tsarist policymakers to accommodate the rule of law. Chizhov’s many clashes with the tsarist government over economic policy illustrate this contradiction. In his various criticisms of high tsarist bureaucrats, particularly those with aristocratic titles, Chizhov articulated an implicitly rational-legal critique of the military-autocratic mode of rule. (To be sure, his endorsement of preferential treatment for Russians, tariff protection for infant industries, and paternalism toward workers conflicted with the second and fifth elements of the Weberian ideal type of capitalism.) He held the tsarist government responsible for violating key elements of the rational-legal mode of rule, especially those conducive to the development of capitalist enterprise: legality, technological progress, honesty, and the obligation of the state to care for the needs of the population. Only one highranking bureaucrat escaped his wrath in this regard: his friend Baron Andrei Delvig. As we have seen, Chizhov respected Finance Minister Reutern, despite their disagreements on several policy issues. Even when appearing before Reutern, however, Chizhov found it “disgusting” to

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request aid from the tsarist government because of what he called “my passion for independence.” Although he knew that the success of his enterprises depended on making such requests, he wrote that “for me the worst possible role is that of a petitioner.”73 In other words, he scorned the arbitrary power of the bureaucracy, which remained immune from criticism by technical and economic experts in the corporate world. Chizhov painted negative portraits of several high bureaucrats, including the state comptroller, Aleksandr Abaza, and three ministers of transport in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The founders of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad invited Abaza to participate in the new corporation only because of his influence at the imperial court. Chizhov made clear his contempt for Abaza as a person. An audacious request from “Benardaki (read Abaza)” for a half-million-ruble loan from the railroad, to be collateralized by his two founders’ shares, shocked Chizhov. The board rejected the request because it had no available cash for such a dubious purpose, but the incident demonstrated Abaza’s conception of the Kursk line less as a instrument of economic nationalism than as a source of personal enrichment.74 Already a member of the State Council and president of its Department of Economy, Abaza seemed to be extraordinary intelligent, polite, and tactful. He received visitors to his office “with the softness of a cat,” Chizhov wrote. All in all, however, he condemned Abaza as “simply a gambler and bon vivant” whose exalted position in the government resulted primarily from his close relationship with Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, a sister-in-law of the emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I. “He sold his soul to the devil long ago,” wrote Chizhov, and “was almost her lover.” Abaza served briefly as minister of finance in 1880–1881. As head of the Department of State Economy a decade later, he made 900,000 rubles from currency speculation. The scandal came to light in the early 1920s, in the posthumous memoirs of Nicholas II’s first finance minister, Sergei Witte.75 Abaza showed so little interest in Chizhov’s strategy of economic nationalism that he did not bother to read Chizhov’s prize-winning book on silk cultivation and its implications for the Russian economy. After the Russian Revolution, the copy of this book that Chizhov had inscribed to Abaza upon its publication in 1870 found its way to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., its pages still uncut.

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Chizhov found even more repulsive two aristocratic cousins named Bobrinskii. The kindnesses that Count Aleksei Bobrinskii and his wife had shown to Chizhov during his career as a professor and amateur art historian did not prevent him from feeling contempt toward one of their sons, Count Vladimir A. Bobrinskii, who served as minister of transport from April 1869 to September 1871: “Count Bobrinskii is terribly arrogant and listens to nothing [that others say]. He gets something into his head and insists on it. Then the enthusiasm fades, and he chases after something else.” Although each of these enthusiasms had some merit, Bobrinskii tended to “distort everything.” First, he ordered an increase in rolling stock and double-tracking, “all because there were temporary delays in freight shipments,” then the amalgamation of railroads, then narrow-gauge railroads, and now “inexpensive railroads,” such as the “stupid” line linking the towns of Elets and Livny. As a self-made man, Chizhov scorned the count’s “completely arbitrary” appointments in the ministry, “mostly men who have rights or pretensions to aristocratic status . . . His disrespect for scientific knowledge is unlimited. His respect for his own mind verges on idolatry. By his aristocratic pretensions and his family ties he belongs unconditionally to the Shuvalov party,”76 the most reactionary in the imperial government. Count Aleksei P. Bobrinskii, who replaced his cousin as minister of transport in September 1871, likewise disgusted Chizhov by his “confusion, stubbornness, arrogance, and complete lack of culture, although he was at the university.” In the language of mathematics, Aleksei possessed his cousin’s negative qualities, but in much greater quantity: “squared, if not cubed.” Something in his manner, Chizhov wrote, inspired “a complete lack of confidence” during their first meeting. “He is courteous and cordial, but all this is a lie, in my opinion. He is as proud as the devil, more power-hungry than a demon, as ambitious as a son of a bitch, and despotic. Also, in everything and with everyone, he personally [becomes the center of attention], and the matter at hand always remains in the background. It cannot be denied that he is intelligent or that his logic is sufficient. His education is also evident. But it is all a lie. He is a Jesuit in the full meaning of the word . . . His face [shows] utter brutality when he flies into a rage at something. His lack of respect for people is absolute.” Although Count Aleksei Bobrinskii granted every financial request that Chizhov made personally, he waited

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impatiently for the minister’s removal, which occurred in July 1874. To him, Bobrinskii remained an untrustworthy liar, “the personification of arbitrariness, to which he tries to give the appearance of legality.”77 The fact that the Bobrinskii cousins, great-grandsons of Empress Catherine II, belonged to a family line that came into existence as a result of the empress’s extramarital affair with Grigorii G. Orlov, who had led the plot in 1762 to bring her to the throne and whose brother murdered Catherine’s husband, Emperor Peter III, constituted yet another sordid insult to the rational-legal principle. Admiral Konstantin N. Posiet, the next minister of transport, made a better impression. Chizhov perceived a special benefit in the friendship between Posiet and Baron Andrei Delvig, all the more so because their wives were “sincere friends.” Posiet seemed “not a wise man, far from it,” but an honest one, “and thank God for that. However, I worry that he is a mariner, and mariners have their own logic. According to their logic, 2 + 2 is not 5, but it is hardly 4.” How could an admiral who knew nothing about railroads prevent swindling by the allegedly dishonest Samuil Poliakov? During the mobilization of the economy for the war with the Ottoman Empire, Chizhov pondered the “utter nonsense” of the government’s orders, especially because the Ministry of War demanded 56,000 railroad cars to transport troops at a time when only 44,000 existed in the entire empire. Posiet appeared to Chizhov to be “a splendid person, kind, noble, benevolent, absolutely honest— all qualities of a splendid person—but is there even a shadow of a minister in him? [He has] no technical or administrative ideas at all, though he is by no means a stupid person. He has no memory and no technical or financial training. These are necessary insofar as they are essential for the management of the transportation system. It is too late now to study, and useless. Lord! Is there now and was there ever, at any time and in any place, a transport ministry worse and more pedantic than ours?”78 Chizhov correctly perceived Posiet’s essentially bureaucratic manner. In his long term as minister, which lasted until November 1888, he distinguished himself as an opponent of corporate railroads and a supporter of the construction of the great Trans-Siberian Railroad exclusively by the state. He sided politically with the ministers of Alexander II and Alexander III most firmly opposed to any accommodation, however cautious, with public opinion. Even within the

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government, Posiet’s ignorance of railroads—his major shortcoming in Chizhov’s eyes—aroused serious criticism.79 The tsarist government angered Chizhov most of all by refusing to implement his strategy of economic development. Particularly vexing were the rebuffs to petitions from the Moscow merchants, led by Chizhov, for the creation of a new ministry to sponsor commerce, industry, and finance. The history of these requests has yet to be written, but the Soviet historian Leonid Shepelev uncovered evidence of several episodes, all of which ended in rude dismissals of the idea. For example, in an anonymous twenty-three-page petition submitted to the imperial government in 1856, Chizhov urged the creation of a Ministry of Trade and Industry, separate from the Ministry of Finance. He condemned the existence of separate departments overseeing domestic and foreign trade and complained that “the fate of Russian trade and industry lies in the hands of bureaucrats who are the least capable of understanding their needs and requirements.” In the modern age, “the urge for material well-being” had become universal. It summoned all nations “to an intellectual and industrial struggle” in which all must participate “out of a sense of self-preservation.” In Russia, special administrative measures were needed to lead the common people “along the path toward improvement because it does not yet find within itself very strong incentives in this direction.” He proposed the creation of an executive organ, a Manufacturing and Commercial Council, in the new ministry, to be composed of eleven members: three bureaucrats and eight representatives, four each from trade and industry. The president of the council, to be appointed by the emperor, must be an “expert on trade and industry.” The eight nonbureaucrats would be elected to three-year terms by the merchants. This petition, according to Shepelev, “essentially proposed the creation of a system of self-government of private industry. It had no precedent, not only in Russia but even in West-European countries. Of all the known demands of Russian business leaders in the mid-nineteenth century, this was the most ambitious.” Not surprisingly, the tsarist Finance Committee, meeting on May 5, 1856, rejected as “utterly impossible” Chizhov’s call for the introduction of the elective principle into the imperial bureaucracy. Despite the pleas of two experts for a separate Ministry of Trade and Industry, the committee found this idea unacceptable. The emperor agreed.80

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Writing as an expert on silk cultivation in Russia, perhaps as early as 1857, Chizhov defined the government’s task in promoting economic development as being existential in its essence. Agriculture and industry constituted nothing less than the “main, fundamental, and almost sole basis of our wealth, well-being, and even our existence.” The new ministry that he proposed must promote all productive activities, not just those of the merchants. Only a new “Ministry of Agriculture, Industry, and Trade” could provide “[mulberry] trees, incentives, and awards” to develop silk cultivation “among all classes of people” in South Russia. With a typically Slavophile flourish, he blamed the sorry state of the Russian silk industry on “bureaucrats who know absolutely nothing about the practical conduct of the [silk] business,” so that without a new ministry “the general assimilation of silk cultivation by our southern region would remain just a dream.”81 Undaunted by the government’s refusal even to consider the creation of a new ministry in 1856, Chizhov raised the idea on various occasions during his twenty-year career as a business leader, for example, in an editorial in Vestnik promyshlennosti in March 1861.82 His commitment to this idea inspired Timofei Morozov and other industrialists to renew the same demand in 1882, five years after Chizhov’s death, but the tsarist government refused to create a Ministry of Trade and Industry until 1905.83 In addition to demanding the creation of a new ministry, Chizhov led a campaign to introduce the principle of elected representation into the consultative bodies that reported to the Ministry of Finance. The bureaucracy in St. Petersburg appointed all members of the Manufacturing Council and the Commercial Council, created in 1828 and 1829, respectively. In a petition that he drafted on behalf of the Moscow merchants in 1870, Chizhov made clear “the desire to elect the members from all sectors of industry” and the insistence on “the election, not the appointment [by the minister of finance], of the president” of the two councils. He also urged that a governmental commission “arm itself with knowledge” by examining not only the functions of Russian institutions in industry and trade but also current practices throughout Europe. The merchants agreed to meet each Monday evening to discuss this crucial question.84 To his credit, Reutern heeded the request for better communication between the government and the commercial-industrial elite by

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abolishing in 1872 the moribund consultative councils that had existed since the 1820s and establishing in their place the Council of Trade and Manufacturing (CTM). During a visit to the Moscow Exchange that year, Reutern assured the merchants that, as long as he remained minister, no major change in commercial-industrial policy “would strike like a bolt from the blue.” Reassured by this promise, Nikolai Naidenov saw no need to criticize the tutelage of the government. Indeed, so fervently did Naidenov oppose the democratic ideal that a rumor of a conference of manufacturers and zemstvo delegates to be summoned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs struck him as a great danger—nothing less than a “parliament.” For the sake of avoiding a political confrontation with Reutern, Naidenov and his supporters remained content with the status of junior partners to the bureaucracy in the new consultative council and its Moscow Section (MSCTM).85 This promise of accommodation with the Moscow Exchange Committee represented no reduction in the power of the autocratic state. Reutern acted very much as the obedient tool of the autocrat’s will, suspicious of the electoral principle, which had recently been introduced, in a limited way, in urban and rural institutions of self-government during the era of the Great Reforms. Although the law of 1872 allowed local committees such as the MSCTM to be elected by the merchants, the minister of finance appointed all twenty-four members of the CTM itself: merchants, technical experts, and bureaucrats. Unlike Naidenov, who expressed satisfaction with the continued absence of the electoral principle, Chizhov found it distressing. To be sure, Reutern respected Chizhov’s views. In December 1876, as Russia careened toward war with the Ottoman Empire, the finance minister asked his opinion as to how best to consult with industrial and commercial leaders in Moscow and the empire in general. However, in this meeting, Reutern explained his misgivings. If he consulted merchants individually, they tended to offer intelligent suggestions, but if they met in groups, he said, they quarreled or “spoke horrible nonsense.”86 Reutern’s devotion to the military-autocratic mode of rule took sophisticated financial and political forms. The sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, for example, constituted a contraction of the territory under the emperor’s control. It contrasted favorably with

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the expansionist mood that permeated the irresponsible rhetoric of the post-Soviet xenophobe Vladimir V. Zhirinovskii, who declared in the early 1990s his intention somehow to recover Alaska and other areas lost to Russia in the past two centuries. In consultations with merchants, Reutern showed far more tolerance to minority ethnic groups than did the Moscow merchants. However, like many imperial bureaucrats, especially those who, like him, were of Baltic German descent, he sought to expand the power of the state, whether or not ethnic Russians would benefit immediately from that expansion. Curiously, he looked with favor on the zemstvos, elective organizations of local self-government on the district and provincial levels in ethnically Russian areas of the empire, out of which a genuine liberal movement aimed at imposing a constitutional monarchy finally emerged by the end of the nineteenth century. Reutern called the zemstvos a “school of civic action,” evidently not appreciating their potential for anti-autocratic political action. Chizhov, a proponent of the zemstvos and the reformed court system, complained that these new institutions too often remained fully subordinate to the arbitrary will of tsarist ministers.87 Although Chizhov pressed for the elective principle in the CTM and for the creation of independent commercial-industrial organizations, he too doubted the merchants’ ability to act responsibly in democratic forums. In Ivan Aksakov’s newspaper Moskvich, he reported with satisfaction the creation of the Russian Industrial Society, initiated by Aleksandr P. Shipov in 1867. Aksakov, Chizhov, Babst, and many prominent manufacturers in Moscow promptly joined the society. However, the leaders’ decision to locate the headquarters of the society in St. Petersburg caused resentment among some Muscovites, Chizhov included. In early 1871, he expressed his intention to create a new organization that could influence the government from Moscow: “The idea of a society to protect or [promote] the flourishing of industry and trade in Moscow has lodged in my mind for a long time. According to my conceptions, or rather my dreams, this organization should be set up in such a way that would attain significance and a voice within the Ministry of Finance. But this can be achieved [only] under two essential conditions: a multitude of members and a large amount of money.”88 This dream never materialized. The Moscow Exchange Committee, headed by Naidenov from 1877 until his death

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in 1905, remained the dominant voice of industry and trade in Moscow, far more influential than the MSCTM or the Moscow Section of the Russian Industrial Society (MSRIS). Moreover, Chizhov grew to despise the RIS as an organization that allegedly tended to defend the interests of industrialists in St. Petersburg, and did even that rather poorly. Bored by a long meeting in October 1874, he wrote, “What nonsense!” In his opinion, one iron producer in the northern capital “took first place for his talkativeness and familiarity.” The president appeared to Chizhov to be “a complete old woman [baba].”89 Nor did other organizations inspire confidence. A meeting of the Russian Banking Association he called “a puppet comedy,” and the organization of railroads impressed him as “the same thing.”90 Although he did not share Reutern’s opposition to the electoral principle in commercial-industrial organizations, he did come to doubt the capabilities of their leaders. All in all, however, Chizhov blamed the government for the persistence of Russian economic backwardness. As he noted sadly less than a year before his death, the tsarist autocracy had stifled the entrepreneurial impulses of the people. Reflecting on books that he was reading about the scenic Belovezh Forest near Minsk and the sparsely populated region north of Lake Onega, he marveled at the enormous variety and diversity of the Russian land and “the cleverness and resourcefulness of those who live in the North. Yes! if it were not for the oppression of the government” and its “isolation [otshchepenstvo] from the people [narod],” independent impulses among the people might be possible. Just as the conquest of the Far North by “the ancient Novgorodians” had inspired Chizhov’s hunting, fishing, and steamship operations on the White and Barents seas, so he revered the Russians of the northern forests for their stubborn, if passive, resistance to the autocratic state over the centuries. The centralized state regarded the local communities “as something worse than a simple, spontaneous force.” Imbued with the inexorable urge to domination, the government, armed with “excessively repressive systems and excise duties, knocks dead all forms of [independent] activity.”91 How far could Chizhov’s disdain for social hierarchy and bureaucratic tutelage proceed before it took on a genuine liberal coloration? Certainly the rampant illegality and corruption at the highest levels of the imperial government revolted him. A week after the death of

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Prince Pavel P. Gagarin, president of the Committee of Ministers, Chizhov doubted that the prince’s reputation as an intelligent, kind, educated, and diligent bureaucrat would endure: “One day he died, and the next day people forgot even his life.” Nor could the old prince’s accomplishments erase the sins of his deceased son, Prince Lev P. Gagarin. While governor of Archangel and Saratov provinces in the 1860s, Lev Gagarin had earned the hatred of his subjects as an “inveterate swindler and scoundrel” and an “embezzler of public funds and a thief. Everyone knew this. The Crown Prince knew it as well, but nothing [was done]. For the sake of his father, he got away with everything.”92 Chizhov found particularly contemptible the tendency of the emperor to appoint men to ministerial posts who lacked the slightest competence in advanced technology. He often noted the contradiction between arbitrary imperial rule and the technical demands of modern capitalism, as illustrated in the brilliant careers of the incompetent cousins Bobrinskii. What Chizhov called “idiotism at the highest levels” of the government motivated a variety of caustic remarks about other members of the imperial family. Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, a brother of Alexander II, enjoyed a reputation as a proponent of technological progress, especially in the Russian Navy. In the aftermath of the Crimean War, he encouraged many energetic young bureaucrats who went on to illustrious careers, among them Mikhail Reutern and Aleksandr Abaza. However, Chizhov expressed a negative opinion of the grand duke, having noted, while petitioning for permission to create the Trinity Railroad, the grand duke’s remarkable lack of knowledge of political economy. From Count Konstantin Litke, his collaborator in the Archangel-Murmansk shipping venture, Chizhov heard a delightfully irreverent anecdote related by the count’s father, Admiral Fedor Litke, who had tutored the grand duke in his adolescence. To the suggestion that the young man study jurisprudence and political economy, his father, Emperor Nicholas I, assented to the former, on the grounds that every member of the imperial family should master the code of military regulations. “But why,” he asked, “would he need to know political economy? I never studied it, and [Minister of Finance Egor F.] Kankrin and I are managing not badly.” Chizhov found this combination of ignorance and arrogance among two gen-

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erations of the imperial family hard to believe, but there was no doubting Konstantin Litke’s story. This defect in the grand duke’s character impressed Baron Andrei Delvig as well. During a train trip from St. Petersburg to Pskov, Grand Duke Konstantin complained of the high price of food and blamed Russian engineers for the poor quality of the stations on the line, not realizing that French engineers of the Russian Railroad Company had built the shoddy stations. More seriously, the theft of some diamonds by Nikolai Konstantinovich, the grand duke’s son, and rumors of extramarital affairs demonstrated to Chizhov the moral depravity of the imperial family.93 In addition, Chizhov and the merchants could not forgive the grand duke for having swayed the emperor’s decision against the Moscow Company in its bid to purchase the Nicholas Railroad in 1868. Chizhov found it impossible to overlook the foibles of Emperor Alexander II himself. In 1872, he seemed nothing more than “a grownup child,” aged fifty-three, dressed up as Peter the Great at a lavish masked ball. Chizhov’s harshest outburst occurred two years later, when he discovered opulent furnishings in the imperial couple’s railroad car, parked on a siding at the Moscow station of the Trinity Railroad: “I have finally seen the emperor’s train. What luxury. For example, the little room containing the empress’s toilet is decorated with white moiré silk. Is it permissible to allow such indecent luxury?” The imperial compartment took up almost the entire car, leaving only a tiny space, “a kennel, simply a kennel, for the servant.” Chizhov interpreted these furnishings as proof of the emperor’s hypocrisy: “And all of this is going on at the same time that you hear exclamations from all sides about the equality of people and even more about human dignity, but in reality, both one and the other [exist only] in abstract theory. The luxury is unbearable. All this is not for a son of the earth but for a son of the sun. All this would be comprehensible in the East, but in our country it is simply repulsive.” He also expressed disgust upon hearing details of the emperor’s sexual liaison with Princess Ekaterina Dolgorukaia, whose fortune was alleged to exceed 1.5 million rubles.94 (The emperor’s marriage to the princess in July 1880, just two months after the death of Empress Mariia, caused a scandal that Chizhov did not live to see.) As a Slavophile, Chizhov upheld the principle of autocracy as the ideal form of government for the Russian Empire. In this case, however, his habitual scorn of luxury and his

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Slavophile sympathy for the common people—here, the footman forced to travel in a niche fit only for a dog—outweighed his respect for the Russian monarchy and for the emperor as a person. Chizhov’s frustrations at the hands of overbearing and ignorant ministers who blocked his entrepreneurial plans left him bitter, all the more so because the government never rewarded him for his many services to the cause of economic development. In 1874, after Admiral Posiet became minister of transport, it seemed that the tsarist government might finally put Chizhov’s expertise and managerial ability to good use. Posiet praised Chizhov for building sturdy cabins for his workers and establishing “good order everywhere.” Observers noted that the workers and stationmasters on the Trinity Railroad were so grateful for their comfortable accommodations and good working conditions that they served for years, unlike the staff of the MoscowKursk Railroad, where the constant turnover of workers attested to the negligent attitude of the state before the Moscow company purchased the line.95 So highly did Posiet regard Chizhov’s talents, probably because of the praise expressed by Mikhail Reutern and Baron Andrei Delvig in the early 1870s, that a rumor reached Moscow in August 1874 that Chizhov might receive an appointment to a high post in the Ministry of Transport. “Posiet is strongly counting on me and wishes to summon me to see him in St. Petersburg. Whatever position he might offer me, even vice-minister, I will not accept under any circumstances, but still it is very pleasant that he plans to make this proposal,” Chizhov wrote. He could not refrain from repeating this favorable rumor that same day to Vasilii Shmit and Pavel Klevetskii.96 No other mention of such an offer occurred in the diary, however. Chizhov’s advanced degree in mathematics, earned in 1836, entitled him to the rank of Court Councilor, the seventh from the top in the table of fourteen ranks. The tsarist government never bestowed on him any additional honors. Chizhov often expressed his distaste for aristocratic titles, decorations, and other officially sanctioned social distinctions, preferring the value of individual accomplishment. How genuine was his contempt? A curious entry in his diary, the only detailed account of a dream in the entire document, reveals much about his temperament and his attitude toward the government. Less than four months after hearing the rumor of Posiet’s intention to offer him a high position in St. Peters-

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burg, Chizhov dreamed that he had received “some sort of cross” from the government, such as one bestowed on merchants in recognition of their exemplary service in commerce, industry, or philanthropy, “and that it made me glad.” However, once awake, he wrote: It would have annoyed me very much if I had not had the spirit or the courage to refuse the so-called favor of the Tsar. But is this a freedom of one’s opinion? It was not that at all. This is also a medal signifying a boastful disdain toward medals. A medal is all too trivial a thing, but the courage to refuse an important medal or rank is nevertheless a phenomenon that is extremely rare. Consequently, it is automatically more valuable. Here I select what is precious instead of the ordinary. That is, I will take the [medal of St.] Vladimir instead of the [medal of St.] Anna, and only that.97

His pose of indifference failed to mask a desire for the higher rather than the lower medal. (The St. Vladimir medal carried more prestige than did the St. Anna.) Several months later, Chizhov carefully observed the medals that embellished the chests of important personages who attended the funeral of a reactionary journalist, Pavel M. Leontiev, in the church at Moscow University. One professor, Chizhov noticed, wore the St. Stanislav medal, and three others the St. Anna. At the cemetery, the “great multitude” of uniforms and medals left a vivid impression on him.98 For a man who disdained all formal signs of social hierarchy, this rapt attention betrayed a certain status anxiety. He often claimed to be indifferent to his imperfect integration into high society, but his dream of receiving a medal and his bitter commentary on the gaudy uniforms of others indicate that he expended considerable emotional energy dealing with this issue. It may well be that this discomfort fueled his enormous entrepreneurial initiative. In any case, the rational-legal spirit found itself overwhelmed by the traditional symbols of hierarchy in Russian society. Chizhov’s revulsion at the incompetence, cruelty, and arrogance of the tsarist bureaucracy and the emperor led him a certain distance down the path toward an appreciation of the benefits of legality. The tension between romantic nationalism and liberalism in Chizhov’s thought helps to reveal how the modest changes in political, social, and cultural institutions in the era of the Great Reforms prevented

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Russia from reaping the full benefits of technological innovation in the half-century before World War I. Less than three years before his death, Chizhov concluded reluctantly that the reign of Alexander II, the emancipator of the serfs, offered few substantial improvements over that of the despotic Nicholas I. From the 1820s to the 1850s, Chizhov complained, “no one who was conscious of his human dignity was secure. If you spoke or wrote, you might be seized and maybe sent where the ravens would not know your bones.” The current emperor, although “meek, merciful, and educated, or at least not at all ignorant,” appeared to favor “science, education, the achievements of the human intellect and human development,” but “has the situation become better? Hypocrisy toward legality [zakonnost’] has never gone to such a terrible extreme [as it has now]. Everyone preaches legality, but everyone commits the greatest illegalities [bezzakonnosti] in the name of this legality. Arbitrariness rules, but behind the mask of legality; and if [the beast] turns carelessly, the tail [khvost] is visible under its uniform. It is the same dog, the same predatory wolf, but in human form. Will the age of illegality ever end? And we, who thus understand the necessity of legality, are we not ourselves supporters of illegality, if not always in action, then almost always in thought[?]”99 Three episodes in which Chizhov defended legality provide evidence of his ideological evolution in this direction. First, while studying in late 1857 and early 1858, he praised the English economist Thomas Banfield for asserting that “the development of individual freedom” promotes both “general and personal prosperity.” This axiom of English political thought appeared worthy of publication in Vestnik promyshlennosti “now, when many people in our country claim that freedom is unnecessary are terribly afraid of it.” Dismayed to learn that Alexander II vacillated in implementing freedom of the press, Chizhov condemned the new emperor’s timidity in a hymn of praise to open discussion (glasnost’ ): “Orders were given [by the censors] not to print diatribes and to say nothing about open discussion. The former is stupid, the latter worse: ignoble. Let denunciations be printed. If they do not serve to improve the people who are criticized, they [at least] will be useful in themselves. And not to demand open discussion means desiring to remain in the mud and the foul swamp.”100

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Second, Chizhov requested permission to edit Ivan Aksakov’s Slavophile newspaper Den’ during a three-month period, June 2 to September 1, 1862, when Aksakov was not allowed to act as editor. Having received a rebuff from Minister of Education Aleksandr V. Golovnin, Chizhov claimed “to respect legality in all its manifestations” and requested that the minister justify the refusal. Chizhov argued that, even in the reign of Nicholas I, Minister of Education Sergei S. Uvarov had “succeeded in mitigating every sharpness of that time” and protected writers with “a civility of tone that gave arbitrariness itself the semblance of legality.” Even a criminal deserved to know the charges against him. Golovnin’s list of reasons shocked Chizhov: in 1847, the government ordered all of his writings to be submitted to the Third Section for censorship; he was not allowed to edit Russkii vestnik; the Moscow Censorship Committee had informed Golovnin of “the sharpness” of the opinions expressed in Vestnik promyshlennosti and its alleged “striving to portray the existing order of things in an unfavorable light”; and Golovnin doubted that “the insolent tone and harmful tendency” of Den’ would change if Chizhov replaced Aksakov. Although he had never met Chizhov, Golovnin defended his decision, especially in light of what he called “the impropriety” of Chizhov’s letter of complaint. In response to this insult, Chizhov unleashed an even more bitter denunciation of ministerial arbitrariness. So complex in its argumentation was this second letter to Golovnin that, like Chizhov’s statement to the Third Section in May 1847, it constituted an intellectual autobiography. With unconcealed anger, Chizhov defended his moral independence: “The duty of an honorable man obliges me to present to your exalted excellency not unsubstantiated assertions but factual proof that my accusers are unjust.” He defended his efforts on behalf of the Orthodox Christians in the South Slavic lands. Vestnik promyshlennosti had upheld the principle of legality “in all its splendor” and had expressed hostility “only to that which was hostile to Russia,” especially the Frenchmen who had mismanaged Russian railroads and bureaucrats who had weakened the ruble. He proudly endorsed the principles of Den’, “devoted entirely and unconditionally to Russia” and to the Russian Orthodox faith. This exchange of letters caused a flurry of excitement among Chizhov’s Slavophile friends because of the force with which he expressed his opinions to a tsarist minister.101

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The irony of this episode lay in the fact that Golovnin had earned a reputation as a proponent of reform. He lost his ministerial post shortly after the first assassination attempt against the emperor: the pistol shot aimed by Dmitrii A. Karakozov, a former university student, in April 1866. Third, Chizhov expressed discontent over the low level of legality in Russia in connection with a political scandal in Moscow. In November 1870, the emperor refused to accept the patriotic address of the Moscow Municipal Duma, written by Ivan Aksakov. The Duma praised the government’s intention to reintroduce its naval forces in the Black Sea in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1856) but also called for the establishment of a series of civil rights, including the right of free speech. News of the emperor’s displeasure forced the Slavophile mayor, Prince Vladimir Cherkasskii, to resign. In addition, the emperor reprimanded Governor-General Prince Vladimir A. Dolgorukov for allowing the Duma to endorse Aksakov’s program of reformist Slavophilism. Chizhov, who had helped to edit Aksakov’s draft of the address a few days before, vented his anger in his diary. “It is terrible and unbearable,” he wrote, to see “how stupidly” the government reacted to the Duma’s address. “Will this habit of unconditional exaltation [of the government] never end? Really, it is almost more difficult to live now than it was under the late Nicholas. Then there was a simple, explicit, and coarse oppression. Now there is a kind of hypocrisy toward freedom. They are concerned about progress, but they are afraid of the devil knows what. There has hardly been any period when people expressed such a sanctimonious attitude toward civilization as is seen in everything now.”102 A personal connection helped to explain Chizhov’s endorsement of the concept of legality. One of his closest friends from St. Petersburg University, Dmitrii V. Polenov, became a prominent expert on the history of Russian law. (Chizhov also acted as godfather to Dmitrii’s son, Vasilii, later a prominent painter in the Itinerant art movement and a beneficiary of Savva Mamontov’s patronage.) In 1869, Chizhov published a long and extremely positive review of Polenov’s analysis of the Legislative Commission of 1767. Empress Catherine II had summoned this commission to compile the first law code in Russia since the promulgation of the law code (Ulozhenie) of Tsar Alexis, in 1649, but dismissed the commission in 1768. The imperial government maintained

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a codified law only between 1833 and 1917. In this essay, his most elaborate defense of legality, Chizhov criticized the tsarist government for its several failures to codify the law in the eighteenth century. The following year, while reading the Ulozhenie of 1649, he was appalled to find in it no evidence of the government’s concern for the merchants’ property rights, much less a policy to defend them. “It will be necessary to copy out a large portion of Article 19 of the Ulozhenie,” he wrote; “then I will glance through the Complete Collection of Laws,” the multivolume compendium containing all statutes promulgated by the imperial government from 1649 onward. He also criticized Catherine’s successors, Emperors Paul I and Alexander I, for their indifference toward legality. Although Chizhov never found time to complete his proposed program of research into the history of Russian law, he certainly recognized the connection between a stable system of laws and capitalism. The presence in his archive of some research notes on the activities of the delegates from Kostroma to the Legislative Commission of 1767 suggests that he may have investigated the legal ideas of representatives of his native province. In the entire history of the Russian economy from the reign of Peter I to that of Nicholas I, Chizhov found “no rights nor security for private property.” After reading a book on railroad concessions in England, he complained that in Russia companies must obey the law only when the corporate charter did not govern the case. Unlike the English system of a general law, the Russian procedure of granting charters in the form of separate laws perpetuated the traditional arbitrariness of the tsarist bureaucracy in its management of the economy.103 Just as he condemned the tsarist government for its refusal to uphold legality in economic matters, Chizhov showed sympathy for the oppressed, at least those of Russian ethnicity. Like many Russians in the nineteenth century, he considered Ukrainians Russian because of their Orthodox religion. His long friendship with Grigorii Galagan, who published the first Ukrainian-language journal in the empire, Osnova (The Foundation, 1861–), strengthened Chizhov’s Slavophile opposition to political centralization. Accordingly, he condemned the tendency of the reactionary journalists Mikhail Katkov and Pavel Leontiev to glorify the state: “For all their newspapers, the state was everything. It gobbled up both the common people and educated society, not to mention the individual. Anyone who even dared think

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that he was not born to be a slave of the state became, without fail, in their eyes, a red [revolutionary] and even a rebel, a mutineer, for whom the [hangman’s] noose would be a gift of mercy.” Katkov and Leontiev condemned proponents of cultural autonomy in South Russia as “separatists who were preparing to tear Russia to pieces and were infringing on the integrity of the state and its head: the autocrat.”104 In this spirit, Chizhov occasionally admitted that Poles and Baltic Germans also deserved a modicum of cultural autonomy under Russian rule. In his book Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1846), Nikolai Gogol had rejected Enlightenment rationality in favor of an emotional and esthetic definition of human goodness typical of the doctrine of Official Nationality: “The fragrant lips of poetry will implant into the soul what cannot be put there by laws and authority.” According to this notion, the Russian autocrat stood above the law not as an oppressor but as a loving father who mitigated the harshness of impersonal law by performing acts of mercy.105 In 1846, Chizhov had not criticized Gogol’s romantic critique of law, but by the 1860s the concern for legality had clearly become transcendent. Lead editorials in Vestnik promyshlennosti in 1861 stressed the connection between firm norms of legality and productive economic activity. The journal endorsed the establishment of courts free of corruption and dedicated to dispensing swift and impartial justice. The state must introduce other reforms essential to the rational allocation of resources: “complete freedom of movement” and freedom “to express one’s convictions and thoughts.” “The expansion of the scope of legality and, consequently, the indispensable reduction of illegality” lay in the creation of a separate corps of judicial investigators.106 (One or both of these editorials might have been written by Ivan Babst.)107 The democratic elements in Slavophilism, particularly the demand for cultural autonomy and respect for public opinion in each region of the empire, coupled with the striving to express the economic interests of the Moscow merchants, likewise legitimized Chizhov’s critique of the tsarist bureaucracy. Just as Babst trumpeted the motto “the voice of the people is the voice of God” (glas naroda—glas Bozhii, from the Latin vox populi vox Dei) and ridiculed bureaucrats who knew nothing about Russia because they never traveled beyond the Obvodnyi canal in St. Petersburg, so Chizhov, inspired by Ivan Aksakov’s biography of

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Fedor Tiutchev, endorsed the notion that power should be based on the will of the people.108 It would be a mistake, however, to attribute Vestnik promyshlennosti’s endorsement of legality to Babst’s influence alone. Long before he met Babst, Chizhov had occasionally expressed his contempt for the arbitrary system of justice in Russia, exemplified by the repression of the Decembrists and his own unhappy fate at the hands of Nicholas I and the Third Section. Toward the end of his life, he condemned intolerance, especially in religious matters. He accepted the argument of the French Jew Jassuda Bédarride in favor of religious toleration and admired the brilliance of the eighteenth-century French atheist Claude Helvétius. “Any persecution, any violence is shameful, repulsive, and absolutely contrary to true faith,” Chizhov wrote. In a biography of Voltaire he found an admirable definition of legislation: “the art of [ensuring] the happiness and security of peoples. Laws that oppose these goals are in contradiction to their purpose and therefore should be abandoned.”109 These endorsements of freedom of religion did not imply a weakening of his own Orthodox faith, however. Rather, they reflected his opposition to bureaucratic tyranny. As far as the tension between science and religion was concerned, he endorsed the judgment of Benjamin Aubé, the biographer of St. Justin Martyr, that “there is no scientific and regular method that can lead us to the divine essence.”110 Taken to their logical extreme, Chizhov’s condemnations of tsarist oppression and his endorsements of legality would have undercut the Slavophile ideology, which condemned all of European culture, including medieval Catholicism, Protestantism, and the humanistic philosophies of the Enlightenment, for their allegedly cold and mechanical rationality and legalism. In his many negative portrayals of aristocratic and imperial greed, stupidity, dishonesty, and cruelty, he moved toward a position that might be called liberal, but in the end his Slavophile beliefs prevented him from embracing the doctrine of constitutionalism, civil rights, and the rule of law. This was a difficult journey. The Slavophile ideology had always condemned legality and its consequences—private property, political liberalism, constitutional government, and individualism—as excessively impersonal and alien to the Orthodox Christian notions of humility, consensus, and subordination of the people to the wise rule of the autocratic tsar. In the

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Slavophile spirit, he condemned the “liberalism” of the economist Aleksandr Chuprov and of Mitrofan P. Shchepkin. In calling one of his Polish acquaintances, Mikhail V. Iuzefovich (Józefowicz) “a true Pole” infected with “cheap liberalism,” he implied disdain for constitutionalism as a superficial and irrelevant, if not dangerous, doctrine.111 “Yes,” Chizhov wrote, “there once was a time when ‘constitution’ was a magic word pronounced with the most sincere joy. It represented everything: the welfare of peoples, freedom for society, equality, and justice.” In the 1870s, however, political experiences and disappointments “have taken the luster off this word, which now has scarcely any meaning at all.” In St. Petersburg, he complained, everyone cared only about “who would be the first lackey” of the emperor. Educated society showed “indifference to the country and to the people.” Bureaucrats tended to draw up “a grand scheme [proekt] for everything, without any information as to whether it is appropriate to the locality. Not the slightest respect is shown to history, and no memory exists about the past” in the drafting and implementing of reforms. For these evils, Chizhov saw no solution in a constitutional regime. Indeed, he admired the “sincerity” and “originality” with which the young novelist Fedor M. Dostoevskii defended Russia against the West in his influential periodical The Diary of a Writer.112 A cruel dilemma resulted from this repudiation of the liberal ideal. On the one hand, the lavish spending habits of Grand Dukes Konstantin and Mikhail Nikolaevich and the limited intelligence of the crown prince—the future Emperor Alexander III—made it “impossible to unite autocracy—unlimited government—with justice and dignity for the people. Every minute, you expect either illegality or insult.” On the other hand, constitutional regimes in the German Empire or the French Republic offered little “security to anyone or anything.”113 During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, talk of a constitution again began to be heard in Russia. Ivan Aksakov expressed admiration for the British constitution, but Chizhov replied with the pessimistic observation that in Britain the constitution emerged out of the historical experience of the people. Russia, lacking the geographic and cultural advantages of Britain, could not create a constitution in the same way. Rather, if Russia were to receive a constitution, it would be granted to the people by the government, artificially. In such a case, he believed, it would not function well. Better than summoning a con-

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sultative assembly of delegates from the entire land (Zemskii sobor, as in medieval Muscovy) would be a policy of allowing the zemstvos more freedom on the local level. In the course of time Russians would then learn self-government through direct experience.114 His romantic notion—that each nation has its own distinct historical path—persisted to the end.

Unresolved Dilemmas Chizhov’s experience as a business leader in the era of the Great Reforms helps to clarify the three dilemmas that operated in the Russian corporate economy. He faced these dilemmas as a proponent of the Slavophile ideology, but whatever the emotional or philosophical impetus for entrepreneurial behavior, every capitalist in Russia grappled with these problems in one way or another. As we have seen in Chapter 2, the doctrine of Slavophile capitalism consisted of three ideals: paternalism, xenophobia, and dependence on the autocratic state for the implementation of Chizhov’s program of economic nationalism. Each of these elements generated a dilemma. First, paternalism posed the difficult problem of resolving the contradiction between the ideal of an Orthodox Christian community and that of rational, acquisitive individualism. In the socialist tradition, Aleksandr Herzen sought to unite the communal and individual in a uniquely Russian way. Likewise, Chizhov dreamed of a capitalist system in Russia that would allow public-spirited entrepreneurs to create wealth without unduly exploiting the masses. Both men belonged to the Russian romantic tradition. However, neither the Russian narod nor the Moscow merchants, whether or not they were infected with Western individualism, rationalism, and atheism, demonstrated the high moral ideals than Herzen and Chizhov had expected. So, too, Russian Marxists found that the working class—composed, in Russia, primarily of the same peasants that the Slavophiles adored—did not necessarily behave heroically in the struggle for the new social order or promptly become perfect human specimens, as Marx had predicted on the basis of purely philosophical postulates, without having researched the social psychology of workers in England or elsewhere. Uniting both the individual and the collective spirit so as to create a fully integrated personality in the new stage of history—whether in

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Herzen’s Russian commune, in Chizhov’s Slavic community characterized by the perfection of sum ergo sum, or in Marx’s allegedly scientific revolutionary paradise—proved too difficult a task for romantic visionaries. As Frank E. Manuel observed, “if pretensions to the mantle of science were among the seductions of Marxism, the mythology of class and class warfare became the driving force leading to the ‘final struggle’—that stirring climax to the hymn of the International.” As for the quest for perfection, Manuel placed Marx and his followers in the romantic tradition to which Charles Fourier and Claude Saint-Simon belonged: “These nineteenth-century visionaries all inhabit the same expansive Romantic utopia of self-actualization in all directions, a boundless drive of the individual and of mankind.”115 As the originator of the ideology of Slavophile capitalism, Chizhov himself advocated a contempt for wealth. Industry and finance he considered forms of service to the Russian people, not mere sources of enrichment. He repeatedly expressed sympathy for the suffering masses, who did not necessarily benefit directly from political liberalization, even in Western Europe and North America. Although a successful capitalist himself, he condemned capitalism in Europe and admired the self-sacrificial Russian nihilists, prophets of atheism and socialism. How, he asked, could the youth of the 1870s be diverted “from [Ukrainian] separatism, from nihilism, from communism, when there is no way to make a living in [our] time, when, except for becoming rich, there is no prospect to life?” To him, “the oppression of the weak by the strong, the serfdom of capital, and the most horrible enserfment of the poor proletariat,” compounded by “the highest degree of inequality in the compensation of labor” under capitalism legitimized the nihilist critique of the “foul and diseased decrepitude” of the smug nineteenth century. Just as the early Christians had revolted against the culture of pagan antiquity, so the radical Russian youth pursued a new vision of heaven: “The nihilists deny the existence of the soul, but is this not a natural revolt against the completely opposite degradation of the body [?]”116 Thus, Chizhov himself remained true to the paternalist ideal, but few of the Moscow merchants followed his example. A huge labor protest, known as the Morozov strike, revealed to all Russians in 1886 the oppressive working conditions that Timofei Morozov maintained in his textile factory.

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The xenophobic component of Slavophile capitalism, which blamed the dehumanizing effects of greed on European capitalism, paradoxically undermined the legitimacy of capitalism itself in Russia. The lack of a strong entrepreneurial tradition among Russians opened the way to the exploitation of economic opportunities by businessmen from various ethnic minorities and by capitalists from Western Europe, who enjoyed superior technological training, access to lines of credit, and networks of business connections, especially in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Odessa, and Riga. When Russians attempted to challenge the economic predominance of foreigners and the minorities, they found it expedient to express their appeals for state aid against foreign competitors in the form of crude nationalistic slogans. Consequently, the ethnic tensions that existed within the corporate elite of the Russian Empire did not subside but grew more acute. By identifying capitalism with Europe and Europeans, Chizhov and his followers unwittingly stoked the engines of Russian economic xenophobia, an important component of the revolutionary ideology of 1917.117 Slavophile capitalism and associated ideologies, such as “the Russian idea,” championed by Dostoevskii and others, fueled the Russification campaign, which, when applied against German and Austrian enterprises in the Russian Empire during World War I, contributed to the economic chaos that allowed the Bolsheviks to seize power in 1917.118 Above all, however, the autocratic state rebuffed Chizhov’s appeals for vigorous action in the cause of economic nationalism. The absence of self-government in Russian cities and the state’s repression of private enterprise over the centuries had prevented the formation of a vigorous bourgeoisie. When the need for railroads, banks, and modern industry became clear, native entrepreneurial talent proved unequal to the task. The tsarist bureaucracy occasionally intervened on behalf of weak corporations, particularly by calling on highly placed bureaucrats, former military officers, and members of the gentry to apply their superior education and managerial abilities in the new arena of corporate enterprise, but the merchants resented these incursions. Social tensions between the two most important groups of corporate entrepreneurs remained strong. However thankful for financial aid from St. Petersburg their managers may have been, corporations remained under the heavy hand of state tutelage for decades thereafter. This third dilemma appears to have been the most important of all.

CONCLUSION

The Death of Fedor Vasilievich Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. —Albert Camus, 1955

Unlike the tsarist bureaucrat in Leo Tolstoi’s famous story “The Death of Ivan Ilich” (1886), who died bereft of friends and supporters except for his servant, Chizhov remained active in business until the very end of his life and died with the knowledge that his closest friends still loved and admired him. Some believed that the demands of his business career, which prevented him from pursuing his first love, art history, contributed to his death. Ivan Aksakov asserted that “work finally broke the iron strength” of Chizhov’s body. Likewise, Cherokov wrote that Chizhov’s work imposed “an extremely heavy burden, increasingly strained his health, and finally drove him to his grave.”1 In fact, he enjoyed the literary life until the very end. In his diary, he commented on a wide variety of books read in 1875–1877, among them historical studies of Judaism and early Christianity. Far from growing weary with his work, Chizhov found great satisfaction in the creative aspects of corporate entrepreneurship and management. He endorsed the aphorism of John Stuart Mill that happiness resulted from pursuing an end outside of one’s self and Nikolai A. Rigelman’s opinion that poverty was better than wealth. His annual income of 40,000 rubles in 1874 could not ensure contentment. Wealth he considered merely incidental to work: “To me, living and working are absolutely synonymous.” Without the opportunity to put new ideas into practice, life would be “boring, unbearably boring.” In mid-1876, he expressed an inclination to retire from his various corporate positions, but the lack of suitable persons to fill his places made him reluctant to do so. In January 1877, he resolved to use his time 203

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more efficiently than before and to improve the systems of financial accounting on his railroads.2 Declining health caused increasing difficulties toward the end. Ivan Aksakov spoke of “various ailments” against which Chizhov struggled to say alive simply “by energy of the will.” Never free from a variety of complaints, he suffered especially from pain in his legs, which kept him from attending church as regularly as he wished. (In the Russian Orthodox Church, there being no pews, the congregation stands during the entire service.) Beginning in October 1870, he underwent painful bouts of kidney stones. In February 1873 he pasted in his diary each day’s litmus paper, which indicated the chemical effects on his urine of drinking Vichy water. Late in life, he reluctantly took the advice of friends and bought his own carriage to ease the pain of travel around Moscow. Dmitrii D. Sverbeev, the son of the aristocrat whose will Chizhov had witnessed in 1876, returned the favor by witnessing Chizhov’s will on October 14, 1877. In the following weeks, Sofiia D. Sverbeeva, the younger Dmitrii’s sister, read to Chizhov from Vestnik Evropy about the rebellion of the Bulgarians against the Ottoman Empire. Mikhail Gorbov paid a courtesy call, and Timofei Morozov reported good financial news: Finance Minister Reutern had approved the Moscow-Kursk Railroad’s request to make interest payments to the English bankers in credit rubles rather than silver rubles. A week before he died, Chizhov received the eucharist and confessed his sins to a priest who visited his bedside. Several days later, his old friend Grigorii Galagan arrived.3 Chizhov passed his final day serenely. He welcomed a letter from Count Konstantin Litke containing a bill of exchange from Vasilii Smolin in the amount of 23,600 rubles, made out to the shipping company. Even if the company were to fail, Chizhov viewed the future calmly. Unable to sleep, he put on a robe, settled into a comfortable chair with a matching footstool, and began reading Prince Aleksandr I. Vasilchikov’s two-volume analysis of land ownership and agriculture in Russia and Europe, an inadvertent symbol of Chizhov’s abiding concern with the Russian peasantry despite his career as a founder and manager of corporations.4 Chizhov wrote the last entry in his diary before daybreak on November 14, 1877. At approximately 10:30 that evening, a heart attack killed him. Ivan Aksakov saw the body an hour later, seated in the chair,

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“with an expression of a kind of steadfast thought and fearlessness on his brow, not like a lazy and cunning slave but like a good and faithful slave who had labored much and loved much: a man of strong spirit and of an active heart.”5 Ilia Repin sketched the scene four days later. His rendition in oils, presented to Savva Mamontov, now hangs in the art museum in Archangel. The body was interred in the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, the oldest in Moscow, near the graves of Nikolai Gogol and Iurii Samarin, two men to whom Chizhov had been close in life. Few people attended the burial, but employees and workers of the Trinity and Moscow-Kursk railroads bore the coffin aloft during the entire ceremony as a mark of respect. The artist Rafail S. Levitskii, who attended the burial, mentioned to his friend Vasilii Polenov that Chizhov had willed his enormous diary to the Rumiantsev Museum, to be sealed for forty years: “You can imagine how much interesting material must be in it. The two of us can hardly expect to live that long.”6 A quarter-century later, in 1902, Arkadi Cherokov published his short biography of Chizhov, in which he called upon the Moscow merchants to honor Chizhov’s memory with a handsome tombstone, but instead of a grateful response all he received was a hostile book review. The next year, the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society memorialized Chizhov with a modest donation of 8,000 rubles to the Commercial Trade School for the creation of a technical laboratory bearing his name. By then, however, few outside Moscow remembered Chizhov’s efforts to promote economic development. Neither Chizhov’s strategy of economic nationalism nor the similar program of industrialization propounded by the great chemist Dmitrii I. Mendeleev in St. Petersburg nor the efforts of the religious philosopher Sergei N. Bulgakov to create what Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal called “an Orthodox Russian work ethic” could overcome the traditional hostility toward entrepreneurship in the government and the public. (Mendeleev had published an article in Chizhov’s Vestnik promyshlennosti, but whether Bulgakov knew of Chizhov’s work remains unclear.) The last gasp of Slavophile capitalism, a campaign of economic nationalism led by the Old-Believer industrialist and banker Pavel P. Riabushinskii in Moscow shortly before World War I, came too late to forestall the social and economic upheaval of the Russian Revolution of 1917. As Liah Greenfeld recently noted, the Russian intelligentsia, “which furnished all of

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Russia’s ideologues and spokesmen of its national consciousness, never spawned an equivalent of Friedrich List who would translate this consciousness for the specific use of the economically active strata, elevating them to the dignity of the nationalist elite, and create Russian economic nationalism.”7 Chizhov left his most lasting legacies not in economic development but in art, literature, and philanthropy, though in these fields as well, his impact was less than he had hoped. He oversaw the publication of several editions of the collected works of Nikolai Gogol for the financial benefit of the writer’s surviving relatives but never wrote the proposed biographies of the painter Aleksandr Ivanov and the poet Nikolai Iazykov. A projected book on the history of Kiev, in fifteen chapters, including some attention to trade and industry, especially beet sugar, and the allegedly pernicious role of the Jews, remained only a chapter outline. By 1855, discouraged by the critical reaction of Iurii Samarin, Chizhov had abandoned his plan to write a grand history of humanity. However, his stage theory apparently made a strong impression on his friend Vladimir I. Lamanskii, who edited Chizhov’s statement of 1847 for publication in 1883. Lamanskii published numerous articles on Slavic and Russian national consciousness, including a book that advanced a theory of history remarkably similar to Chizhov’s: The Three Worlds of the Asian-European Continent (1892). In this work, “the last great historiosophical work in the Slavophile tradition,” Lamanskii consigned Asian civilization to the world of “the decrepit antiquity.” He attributed the enormous influence of the “Romano-German” civilization to its technological and military power but claimed that its decline had already begun. “The world of the future” belonged to the “Greco-Slavic” civilization, led by Russia. The appearance of a second edition of Lamanskii’s book in 1916, as the Russian, Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian empires engaged in the struggle for supremacy that destroyed them all, testified to the public appeal of this Pan-Slav stage theory of history, preached by Ljudovít Štúr, Chizhov, Lamanskii, and, most prominently, Nikolai Ia. Danilevskii.8 The Moscow station of the Trinity Railroad, designed by the Russian architects Roman I. Kuzmin and Smaragd L. Shustov and remodeled by Fedor Shekhtel in 1902, with decorations by Konstantin Korovin and Viktor Vasnetsov, stands to this day as a splendid expression

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of nationalism in Russian architecture, despite some modifications made in the Soviet era.9 In 1870, with the help of Chizhov, Savva Mamontov purchased a country estate at Abramtsevo, 57 kilometers northeast of Moscow on the Trinity Railroad, from Ivan Aksakov’s mother.10 Famous as a center of cultural activity in the reign of Nicholas I—it was here that Gogol had first read Dead Souls aloud to Sergei T. Aksakov, his family, and his friends—Abramtsevo became once more a gathering place for artistic geniuses. Leading artists, musicians, sculptors, and patrons of folk handicrafts flourished under the patronage of Mamontov and his talented wife, Elizaveta. Mamontov’s American biographer, Stuart Grover, asserted that Chizhov transmitted to Mamontov the esthetic ideals of Aleksei Khomiakov, the first Slavophile, regarding the need to encourage the dying folk arts of the Russian peasantry and to create an authentic Russian operatic style.11 Chizhov himself encouraged Vasilii Polenov and Ilia Repin, two painters who later enjoyed Mamontov’s patronage, to turn their talents to a celebration of Russian life. Polenov’s most famous painting, “A Moscow Courtyard” (1878), expressed the Slavophile ideal in its depiction of a calm, sunny day, with an Orthodox church cupola shining in the distance. Shortly after Polenov painted Chizhov’s portrait and exhibited it in Paris in 1875, Chizhov purchased the painting and gave it to Baron Andrei Delvig. After his death, it passed to the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, where it is not on display. Philanthropic activity in technical education became Chizhov’s most important legacy. In 1871, he organized the Delvig School for railroad mechanics in Moscow. Named for Baron Delvig, it offered a full curriculum in practical mechanics. Chizhov hired Arkadii Cherokov as the principal of the school. Although he often misspelled Cherokov’s name and expressed a low opinion of his organizational and teaching abilities, Chizhov admired Cherokov’s interest in the boys’ character and his efforts to provide comfortable accommodations.12 Cherokov estimated Chizhov’s wealth at over six million rubles. Most of this money went to establish and maintain six schools in and near Kostroma, built under the supervision of the executors of Chizhov’s will, Savva Mamontov and Aleksei Polenov, brother of the artist. In 1902, Chizhov’s philanthropic endowment, held at the State Bank, totaled slightly more than 3.9 million rubles and generated an annual income of 148,243 rubles. The Chizhov technical school was

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open to boys of all social estates and ethnic groups, “except Jews,” aged fifteen years and over, who had completed five grades in a practical elementary school (real’noe uchilishche, from the German Realschule). It enrolled 104 students in 1900. The second, an elementary school that also stressed technology, had 167 students in that year. In addition to these schools in Kostroma, Chizhov’s will provided for the creation of three schools for boys in small towns in Kostroma province: an agricultural and technical school in the district capital of Kologriv, an artisan school in the district capital of Makariev, and an agricultural and artisan school in Chukhloma. In 1900, almost half the endowment income went to fund the operations of the two technical schools in Kostroma, and the other three schools each received between 14 and 20 percent of the income. In addition to these efforts on behalf of boys, Chizhov’s fortune eventually funded the creation of

Chizhov Technical School in Kostroma, photograph (c. 1900) Source: Obshchestvo byvshikh uchennikov khimiko-tekhnicheskogo uchilishcha imeni F. V. Chizhova, Sbornik v pamiat’ so dnia rozhdeniia Fedora Vasil’evicha Chizhova (Kostroma: Gubernskaia tipografiia, 1911)

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a maternity hospital with a teaching facility to teach midwifery to young women in Kostroma. In the mid-1990s, after bearing a variety of names assigned by the Soviet regime, the technical school once again assumed Chizhov’s name.13 A marble bust of its bearded benefactor graces the main staircase, and a small museum on the second floor recounts the main episodes of his life. The Fedor Chizhov, a ship of the Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company launched in 1881, sank off the coast of northern Norway on March 13, 1918, after being torpedoed by a German submarine.14 The steamship company now headquartered in Archangel, the direct descendant of the Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company and its Soviet successor, owns no ship named after Chizhov. The Soviet regime did not treat Chizhov’s memory kindly. The Danilov Monastery remained open until 1930, when the police arrested all the senior monks and sent them into exile. Two years later, the younger monks suffered the same fate. After plundering the monastery, the authorities installed secular institutions in the buildings, such as a school for the children of purge victims and a refrigerator plant. What was to be done with the remains of the illustrious personages buried in the Danilov cemetery? Stalin and his advisers recognized their importance for Russian culture. In a typical Soviet accommodation with Russian nationalism, the regime disposed of their remains in a dignified way despite the fact that their ideals had nothing in common with the Russian radical tradition that Soviet Marxists claimed as their political heritage. These cultural heroes included the writers Nikolai Gogol and Nikolai Iazykov; the Slavophile Aleksei Khomiakov and his wife; the Slavophile mayor Prince Vladimir Cherkasskii and his relatives; Nikolai G. Rubinshtein, the great musician; the merchant Pavel M. Tretiakov, co-founder with his brother, Sergei, of the renowned Tretiakov art gallery; the Slavophile historian Dmitrii A. Valuev; and the painter Vasilii G. Perov. All except Perov found new resting places in the Novodevichii Monastery, where many of the greatest Russian composers, artists, and writers, and public figures lie buried. Perov’s remains were removed to the Don Monastery. The Stalinist regime then obliterated the rest of the graves in the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, including those of Chizhov, Iurii Samarin, and Aleksandr Koshelev.

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When the Soviet government closed the Danilov Monastery in 1930, it destroyed its bell tower. Rebuilt in 1983, the tower now stands forty-five meters high. Its new set of twenty-three bells came to Moscow from a church in the historic northern town of Pereiaslavl-Zaleskii. The thirty-four bells in the Danilov Monastery’s fabled tower, audible in the center of Moscow, had already been sold for scrap in the 1920s. Before they could be melted down, an American archeologist named Thomas Whittemore purchased eighteen of them on behalf of the industrialist Richard T. Crane, who arranged their shipment to the United States and donated them to Harvard University in 1930. Since then, seventeen of the bells, the largest of which weighs thirteen tons and has an 800-pound clapper, have hung in the tower of Lowell House, to be rung on special occasions. The oldest bell, made in 1790 and richly embellished with images of winged cherubs, tolls the hours from the central tower of the Baker Library in the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration on the opposite bank of the Charles River.15 In the post-Soviet period, the Danilov Monastery has served as the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church. On December 28, 2000, the staff of the Russian State Library installed memorials in the monastery’s cemetery in honor of several benefactors of the library whose graves had been annihilated by the Soviet government. The ceremony honored Chizhov, his fellow Slavophiles Iurii Samarin and Aleksandr Koshelev, and two directors of the Rumiantsev Museum, as the library was known in the nineteenth century.16 Chizhov received this distinction for having donated his massive library and huge personal archive to the Rumiantsev Museum, not for his services to the cause of Russian economic development. Except for the few Slavophiles and bureaucrats who appreciated his managerial talents, the Russian public apparently viewed Chizhov as just another rich capitalist. The traditional hostility of the radical and liberal intelligentsia to men of great wealth found many targets in the money-mad 1870s. The renowned poet Nikolai A. Nekrasov published a long satire entitled “Contemporaries” in Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland), an influential literary journal in St. Petersburg. Part 2 of the poem, published in January 1876 under the ironic title “Heroes of the Time,” alleged dishonesty and profligacy on the part of bankers, industrialists, and railroad magnates in Russia, many identi-

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fied by comical names, for example Shkurin—“Mr. Skin”—for Petr I. Gubonin.17 Hardly any of the Russian writers of the nineteenth century welcomed railroads and steamships as harbingers of a better future. In Part 3, Chapter 4 of Fedor Dostoevskii’s novel The Idiot (1869), several minor characters debate whether the railroad represents the promise of prosperity or the curse of sterile materialism that would undermine the sanctity of the human soul. A decade later, Count Leo Tolstoi demonstrated his aristocratic disdain for railroads in the opening and closing scenes of his novel Anna Karenina (1877): the death of a simple peasant under the wheels of a train and the suicide of the heroine, who throws herself onto the tracks as a train approaches the station. In the last two decades of his long life, Count Tolstoi preached a doctrine of nonviolence, civil disobedience, and the simple agrarian life, a form of Christian anarchism opposed to acquisitiveness, social hierarchy, and scientific progress. A Russian mining engineer recalled that when Tolstoi’s wife learned of his profession, “she dropped her eyes” and said, “You manage a coal mine! Well, everyone has to earn a living.” The engineer heard similar words of disapproval from the great writer himself, who offered a Christian solution of the labor problem in capitalist enterprises: “‘not doing to workers what you do not wish to be done to yourself.’ I very much doubt that after such a statement about the question I could find a common language with Tolstoy,” the engineer concluded. These Tolstoyan notions resonated strongly among thousands of Russians, rich and poor, notwithstanding Count Tolstoi’s excommunication from the Orthodox Church in 1901.18 The hostility of Soviet ideologists toward capitalism was well known. Even among liberals and socialists who fled Soviet persecution after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, however, the traditional Russian distrust of wealth endured. In Prague, in September 1922, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote a poem entitled “Workers at the Plant,” which expressed sympathy for oppressed laborers in terms of a clever pun on truba (pipe, flue, smokestack, trumpet). The poem compared the smokestack of the sooty building to the trumpet of the Last Judgment. During the following week, she composed one of the most famous denunciations of wealth in Russian literature: a sarcastic poem entitled “In Praise of the Rich.”19

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The extraordinary career of Eiichi Shibusawa, who rose from the peasantry to prominence in the corporate world in Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912), provides a dramatic contrast to that of Chizhov. Both men sought to harness the economic benefits of corporate capitalism without compromising the authenticity of their cultural traditions, Slavophile and Confucian, respectively. After serving the state as an expert on tax reform and related issues, Shibusawa participated in the creation and management of 250 companies, including the First National Bank of Japan, of which he remained president for over forty years, and the Osaka Spinning Mill, founded in 1882 and equipped with 10,000 spindles, which competed successfully with European and American cotton producers.19 As an entrepreneur and manager, he “engaged in the manufacture of paper, textiles, and cement, the processing of gas, fertilizer, electricity, iron, coal, and other natural resources, and the operation of breweries, shipping companies, railway lines, warehouses, and insurance companies.” In 1886, he created Ryumonsha (Dragon Gate Association), an organization dedicated to maintaining high ethical standards in business, and the first business school in Japan: Tokyo Commercial College, now Hitotsubashi University. In addition to various philanthropic organizations, including those designed to reduce poverty and to foster women’s education, he actively supported the Japan Peace Society and became the first president of the League of Nations Association of Japan. A foundation keeps Shibusawa’s memory alive today by maintaining a museum and a center for the study of entrepreneurship.20 The differences between the Russian and Japanese responses to the challenges of the industrial age highlight the reasons for the limited success of Chizhov’s career as a prophet of economic nationalism. Shibusawa overcame the dilemmas that Chizhov encountered when he elaborated his strategy of Slavophile nationalism. The failure of the tsarist regime to take full advantage of Chizhov’s many talents contrasted unfavorably to the zeal with which the Meiji government recruited captains of industry and reforming bureaucrats among capable young men from samurai, merchant, and peasant backgrounds. The portraits of the statesmen who supervised the economic transformation of Japan adorn the country’s paper currency in the early twenty-first century. Unlike the Meiji regime, which embraced mass education, social mobility, European technology and legal norms, and

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corporate forms of enterprise capable of developing Japanese industry despite the 5-percent maximum that Europeans and Americans imposed on Japan’s import tariffs, the tsarist government refused to undertake bold reforms capable of releasing pent-up entrepreneurial talents crucial to industrial development. (The most poignant contrast lay in Chizhov’s failure to improve the fortunes of the peasantry through silk cultivation. In Japan, exports of raw silk earned much of the capital for industrial development before World War I.)21 To be sure, the long tradition of entrepreneurship among Japanese merchants and the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the Japanese population gave the Meiji reformers advantages over the Russian bureaucrats in the era of the Great Reforms, who encountered a dearth of entrepreneurial talent and perceived in the demands for autonomy or independence raised by various minority groups a fatal threat to the integrity of the empire. Still, the flexibility of the Confucian ideals in the capable hands of Shibusawa and other Japanese reformers suggests that Russian ideologies, even those as conservative as Slavophilism and Official Nationality, might have accommodated and fostered change if the emperor and his minister had been willing to implement sweeping economic and social reforms. As Liah Greenfeld noted, “the spirit of civilization, thus the spirit of modern economy, was . . . the national sentiment, the spirit of nationalism.”22 Much of the economic literature published in Russia since the fall of the Soviet system reiterates the familiar laments of “kvas patriotism.” The coupling of idealism and action—what Herzen called “personality” and Chizhov, “independence”—may yet appear if a healthy balance between nationalism and entrepreneurship emerges once again. Chizhov’s appreciation of the benefits of both legality and romantic nationalism may well prove prophetic. In the early twentyfirst century, however, it is not yet clear whether the new Russian capitalists will learn from Chizhov’s example how to combine fierce nationalism with productive economic work or whether the postSoviet regime, unlike the tsarist government, will allow capitalist institutions to flourish under the rule of law.

Notes

Introduction: Biography and Business History Epigraph: “The Art of Biography,” Collected Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967), vol. 4, pp. 226–227. 1. “Moral Aspects of Economic Growth: Historical Notes on Business Morality in England,” in Moral Aspects of Economic Growth and Other Essays (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 18. 2. Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions, ed. Thomas K. McCraw (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 11–12, 541. 3. Diary, June 19, 1864. 4. Sidney M. Greenfield and Arnold Strickon, “Entrepreneurship and Social Change: Toward a Populational, Decision-Making Approach,” in Entrepreneurs in Cultural Context, ed. Sidney M. Greenfield, Arnold Strickon, and Robert T. Aubey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979), 348–349. For an analysis of the population ecology of Russian corporations in light of the findings of Greenfield, Strickon, and their colleagues, see Thomas C. Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism from Peter the Great to Perestroika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 78–83. 5. Brigitte Berger, “Introduction,” in The Culture of Entrepreneurship, ed. Brigitte Berger (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1992), 9. 6. References to the diary appeared often in the works of Chizhov’s contemporaries, as in Ivan Aksakov’s eulogy, delivered on Dec. 18, 1877: “Iz rechi o Fedore Vasil’eviche Chizhove,” Sochineniia I. S. Aksakova, 7 vols. (Moscow: M. G. Volchaninov, 1886–1887), vol. 7, 800–813. The editor of Russkii arkhiv, Petr I. Bartenev, commented in that “in time his biography will be an extraordinarily engrossing and instructive book” (1884, book 1, 391). 7. A member of the Slavophile movement, Aleksandr I. Koshelev, criticized Chizhov for being so “conceited and boastful” that he “thought nothing of 215

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8. 9.

10.

11.

Notes to Pages 6–10 telling lies.” This hostility may have been motivated by a quarrel between the two men over the treatment of the rebellious Polish provinces in 1863, where Koshelev and Iurii F. Samarin received important positions on the staff of Prince Vasilii A. Cherkasskii. According to Koshelev, Chizhov desired a post in Poland but after being offered only “a secondary position” haughtily boasted that “he did not intend to participate in the final repression and robbery of Poland.” For his part, Koshelev erroneously wrote that Chizhov’s diary would remain sealed for fifty (not forty) years. Zapiski (Berlin: B. Behr, 1884), 232–233; 145 on Poland. Koshelev may have feared that Chizhov would portray him in a negative light in his diary, but he did not. Instead, Chizhov often criticized himself for his tendency to boast in public. Writing Lives: Principia Biographica (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 14, 16. Zhizn’ i trudy M. P. Pogodina, 22 vols. (St. Petersburg: A. D. and P. D. Pogodin [vols. 1–9] and A. I. Mamontov [vols. 10–22], 1888–1910). Pogodin died in 1875, but this account of his life and work, in twenty-one volumes, ended with materials from 1865 because Barsukov, the editor, died in 1906 and his exhausted collaborators abandoned the project. Volume 22 contains the index. N. K. Shvabe, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953): 43–77, esp. 54–56 on the size and structure of the archive. See Eoin MacWhite, “Towards a Biography of Father Vladimir S. Pecherin (1807–1885),” ed. P. J. O’Meara, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 80, Section C, no. 7 (1980): 109–158; and Inna Simonova, Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 59–68, 254–268.

Chapter 1: The Search for a Vocation Epigraph: Moi vospominaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow: Rumiantsev Museum, 1912–1913), vol. 3, p. 10. 1. Aleksandra N. Prokhorova, “K zhizneopisaniiu F. V. Chizhova: ego roditeli i sestry,” Russkii arkhiv 45, no. 4 (1907): 623–625. James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Vintage, 1970), 382, called Chizhov “the son of a priest,” apparently in reference to his father’s initial education for the priesthood. See also N. K. Shvabe, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953): 43, on the poverty of Chizhov’s mother. According to Shvabe, 77, Chizhov’s archive contains a biographical manuscript about his parents and his activities to the 1830s written by Prokhorova, who lived in Kostroma and apparently relied on testimony of family members living there. Her article of 1907 appears to be a portion of this account. 2. “Vstrechi s Gogolem,” in Gogol’ v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, ed. S. Mashinskii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1952), 225–229; quotation from 225.

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3. Nikitenko, Dnevnik, 3 vols. (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1955), vol. 1, 177, entry of Dec. 28, 1835. In mid1836, at a party honoring Dmitrii Polenov, Nikitenko described Chizhov as being “judicious and subtle . . . All wonderful fellows, they were in a friendly mood and had a friendly time together.” Vol. 1, 185, entry of July 16, 1836. On Chizhov’s thesis, vol. 1, 189, entry of Dec. 8, 1836. 4. Parovye mashiny: istoriia, opisanie i prilozhenie ikh, vziatye iz sochinenii Pertingtona, Steffansona i Arago, comp. and tr. F. Ch. [Fedor V. Chizhov] (St. Petersburg: Eduard Prats, 1838). On the Soviet claim that Ivan I. Polzunov invented the two-cylinder steam engine with continuous action in 1763, Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 2nd ed., 51 vols. (1949–1958). This edition of the Soviet encyclopedia also claimed priority for other Russian inventors: Aleksandr N. Lodygin (the incandescent electric light, 1874), Aleksandr F. Mozhaiskii (heavier-than-air flight, between 1882 and 1885), and Aleksandr S. Popov (the radio, 1895). 5. On diary entries, Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 76. G. Gallam, Istoriia evropeiskoi literatury XV i XVI stoletii, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1839). Henry Hallam was the first Whig historian of medieval England. 6. Prizvanie zhenshchiny (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaia akademiia nauk, 1839), reviewed in Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) in January 1840 by the prominent critic Vissarion G. Belinskii, who found it “beautifully translated.” Belinskii, Sobranie socheninii, 9 vols., ed. N. K. Gei (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1976–1982), vol. 2, 519–520. Woman’s Mission, 2nd ed. (London: J. W. Parker, 1839), attributed to Sarah Lewis, was based on Louis-Aimé Martin, De l’éducation des mères de familles, 2 vols. (Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1834). In 1842, Edwin Lee published a literal translation of Martin’s book, from the third Paris edition (1840): The Education of Mothers of Families (London: Whittaker, 1842). 7. Vadim Mozdalevskii, “Chizhov, Fedor Vasil’evich,” Russkii bigraficheskii slovar’ 24 (1905): 376; “Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov,” Povolzhskii vestnik, no. 1405 (Feb. 27, 1911), 2, an anonymous account containing details from Chizhov’s unpublished letters, apparently to his sisters, as well as information drawn from published sources. According to Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 44, n. 2, it was written by Aleksandra Prokhorova. On the year-long residence in South Russia, from June 1840 to June 1841, see Shvabe, 47, and A. L., ed., “Materialy dlia biografii G. P. Galagana,” Kievskaia starina 17, vol. 62, no. 2 (Sept. 1898): 223. 8. Arkadii Cherokov, Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov i ego sviazi s N. V. Gogolem (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1902), 10. 9. Letter from Rome, dated February 7, 1843, to Nikitenko, in “Iz arkhiva A. V. Nikitenko,” Russkaia starina 119 (July–Sept. 1904): 675–679. Quotations from 677. 10. “Spisok i kratkoe soderzhanie vsekh gramot i voobshche vsekh bumag, zakliuchaiushchikh v sebe snosheniia Rossii s Venetsianskoi respublikoiu,” Chteniia v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, 1846, section 4, smes’: 51–58.

2 18

Notes to Pages 14–17

11. Mikhail P. Botkin, A. A. Ivanov: ego zhizn’ i perepiska, 1806–1858 (St. Petersburg: M. M. Stasiulevich, 1880), reprinted all of Ivanov’s previously published letters to a variety of correspondents but did not include Ivanov’s unpublished letters to Chizhov, now held in RGB-OR f. 332. Later scholars noted numerous discrepancies in Botkin’s edition. On Chizhov’s articles in 1842, Botkin, 469. Chizhov, “O rabotakh russkikh khudozhnikakh v Rime,” Moskovskii literaturnyi i uchenyi sbornik 1 (1846): 51–136; quotations from 56, 58 (on size), 62 (on perfection), 73–74. On this crucial episode in Chizhov’s life, see twentysix of Chizhov’s letters to Ivanov dated 1842–1848, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” Russkii arkhiv, 1884, book 1: 391–422, and A. V. Askariants and N. G. Mashkovtsev, “Arkhiv A. A. i S. A. Ivanovykh,” Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 20 (1958): 40–44. 12. “O rabotakh,” 136, 72. 13. Chizhov, “Vstrechi s Gogolem,” 225. As the Soviet scholar Leonid Kaplan noted in his commentary on Chizhov’s diary entries pertaining to Gogol, the two men met in Rome when Chizhov arrived at 126 Via Felice on Nov. 30/Dec. 12, 1842, not in early 1843, as Chizhov wrote in this statement. Kaplan, “Zapisi o Gogole v dnevnikakh F. V. Chizhova,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo 58 (1952): 778. 14. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 48. Quotation from “Vospominaniia F. V. Chizhova,” ed. V. I. Lamanskii, Istoricheskii vestnik, Feb. 1883, no. 1: 243. Elsewhere in this statement, 254, Chizhov used the French word race (race) to denote plemia (tribe), but the discussion of nationalism in Europe at this time tended to focus on what are called “nations” (nations) or “peoples” (peuples), whether or not they had a state of their own. 15. Letter to Iazykov, dated Nov. 12, 1843, quoted in Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 48. 16. “Pis’mo ot F. V. Chizhova k G. Golubkovu iz Rovon’o ot 4 sent. 1844 g.,” Moskvitianin, 1844, no. 11 (Nov.): 248–250. On Chizhov’s anger at seeing the letter in print, “N. M. Iazykov i F. V. Chizhov: perepiska 1843–1845 gg.,” ed. I. Rozanov, Literaturnoe nasledstvo 19–21 (1935): 132. 17. On the “Slavic idea,” the “Russian idea,” and associated notions of romantic nationalism, see Andrzej Walicki, Russia, Poland, and Universal Regeneration: Studies on Russian and Polish Thought of the Romantic Epoch (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), which examines in detail the ideologies of Mickiewicz, Aleksandr Herzen, and the Slavophiles. 18. Chizhov, “Vospominaniia,” 248. 19. “Proshchanie s Frantseiu i Zheneva,” Moskovskii literaturnyi i uchenyi sbornik 2 (1847), first pagination, 488, 520, 532. His term obrazovannost’, meaning a highly developed state of formal education, is translated here as “civilization.” 20. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 48. 21. “Otryvki iz dnevnykh zapisok vo vremia puteshestviia po Dalmatsii v 1843 godu,” Moskvitianin 1845, part 4, no. 7–8 (July–Aug.): 1–46; “Zametki puteshestvennika po slavianskim stranam,” Russkaia beseda, 1857, vol. 1, book 5, smes’, 1–37, and book 6, smes’, 1–37. He apparently planned to write a book based on diary notes written during his longest trip in the

Notes to Pages 17–20

22.

23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31.

219

South Slav lands, through Bosnia, Croatia, Slavonia, Serbia, and Hungary, from March 18 to August 12, 1845, but he never completed that project. Extracts from this portion of his diary appeared in print more than a hundred years later, in the Khrushchev era, when the Soviet government sought reconciliation with the Yugoslavs: “Dnevnik F. V. Chizhova ‘Puteshestvie po slavianam zemliam’ kak istochnik,” ed. I. V. Koz’menko, Slavianskii arkhiv 1 (1958): 127–260. On Chizhov’s unsuccessful application to become the Russian envoy in Ragusa, Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 48. Quotations from letters to Aleksandr Ivanov from Vienna, dated Aug. 5/17, 1845, and from St. Petersburg, dated Dec. 6, 1845, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” 403, 413. Letter from Ozerovo, dated Feb. 6, 1846, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” 414 (quoted). Chizhov’s long review of Snegirev’s book, Pamiatniki Moskovskoi drevnosti (1842–1845), appeared in Moskovskii literaturnyi i uchenyi sbornik 2 (1847), second pagination, 113–146. According to the Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1877, obituary section, 156, Chizhov also published articles in the journal Moskvitianin and the newspaper Moskovskie vedomosti (The Moscow News) in the mid-1840s. Inna A. Simonova, Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 52, noted that Iazykov’s sister Ekaterina was Aleksei Khomiakov’s wife. “Iz rechi o Fedore Vasil’eviche Chizhove,” Sochineniia I. S. Aksakova, 7 vols. (Moscow: M. G. Volchaninov, 1886–1887), vol. 7, 803. Quotation from editor’s introduction to “Pis’mo F. V. Chizhova Iu. F. Samarinu,” ed. Nikolai I. Tsimbaev, Voprosy filosofii 1992, no. 4 (April): 133. Irina Suponitskaia kindly provided me with a copy of Tsimbaev’s article. Sergei S. Dmitriev, one of the first Soviet historians to give serious consideration to the Slavophiles, included Chizhov among the thirteen leading figures of the movement. “Slavianofily,” Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 3rd ed., 30 vols. (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1970–1981), vol. 23, 550–551. “Vospominaniia,” 254. Diary, Aug. 24, 1876. In a brief reiteration of this scheme in his diary on May 3, 1875, he dated the current period “from the time of the [French] revolution.” In “Vospominaniia F. V. Chizhova” (written in 1847), 254, he specified the ethnic group that allegedly predominated in each period of history. Diary, Aug. 24, 1876. “Pis’mo F. V. Chizhova Iu. F. Samarinu,” 138 (Latin phrases), 137 (on Vico). Chizhov’s letter bore the date July 9 but no year. Tsimbaev, 133, deduced that the letter was composed in 1853, but on July 16 and Aug. 25, 1855, Chizhov referred in his diary to the letter to Samarin. In the Aug. 25 entry, he wrote that the letter, composed in June, related “directly to history in general and to art history in particular.” Diary, June 13, 1877. On “obstinacy,” Chizhov, “Vstrechi s Gogolem,” 226. Quotation in praise of Dead Souls in the letter to Aleksandr Ivanov from Vienna, dated Aug. 5/17,

2 20

32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Notes to Pages 21–25 1845, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” 403. See also the excerpts from Chizhov’s diary in praise of Gogol’s novel in 1845 published in Kaplan, ed., “Zapisi,” 782, and his admiring letter to Gogol, dated Mar. 4/16, 1847, in “Druz’ia i znakomye Nikolaia Vasil’evicha Gogolia v ikh k nemu pis’makh,” ed. V. I. Shenrok, Russkaia starina 63 (July–Sept. 1889): 368–371, the sixth of twelve letters from Chizhov to Gogol between May 1844 and October 1847 published in Shenrok’s compendium (363–380). Gogol, Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, tr. Jesse Zeldin (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969). On the torrent of critical reviews, most of them negative, see Ruth Sobol, Gogol’s Forgotten Book: Selected Passages and Its Contemporary Readers (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981). Kaplan, ed., “Zapisi,” 776, cited a diary entry dated Mar. 1, 1847, in which Chizhov admitted that “Gogol’s exaltation is oppressive” and that he felt “a certain feeling of relief” when he read Faddei V. Bulgarin’s savage review of the book. This expression of envy by Chizhov implied no criticism of the religiosity and nationalism that permeated Gogol’s controversial book, however. “Perepiska,” ed. Rozanov, 109. Chizhov had told Aleksandr Ivanov about the plan for the new journal as early as August 1845: letter from Vienna, dated Aug. 5/17, 1845, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” 403. Aksakov, “Chizhov,” 805. Cherokov, Chizhov, 21, specified 1846 as the year of Chizhov’s second trip to the Slavic lands, but in that year Chizhov traveled in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, not the Balkans. In fact, his second long trip to the South Slav lands lasted from March to August 1845. His only meeting with the Prince-Bishop of Montenegro in 1846 occurred on Nov. 27/Dec. 9 in Vienna. In his diary for 1846, Chizhov made no mention of any weapons destined for the South Slavs. Diary, Mar. 8/20, 1847. Titles specified in diary, Mar. 12/24, 1847. “Vospominaniia,” 241–262; quotation from 261. Diary, June 6/18, 1847, specified the date of his arrest as May 6/18 and described his ordeal briefly. Diary entry for June 1, 1847; Nikitenko, Dnevnik, vol. 1, 305–306. P. I. Martos, untitled submission dated Dec. 18, 1875, Russkaia starina 12, vol. 30 (Jan. 1881), 191 (quoted); Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 44, n. 2 (quoted). Cherokov, Chizhov, 25, quoting Ivan Aksakov. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 44, n. 4, citing a letter from Chizhov to Dmitrii G. Bibikov, Governor-General of Kiev, in f. 332, k. 10, ed. kh. 5. According to Shvabe, Chizhov’s letters to Bibikov spanned the period from 1849 to 1852. On the end of the Third Section’s censorship over Chizhov’s writings, Shvabe, 76. Letter from Romny dated July 16, 1847, in “Druz’ia i znakomye,” 377. [Prokhorova,] “Chizhov,” Povolzhskii vestnik, 3. Cherokov, Chizhov, 23–27; Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 50–51. Diary, Nov. 11 and Nov. 16, 1851. On the presence of his sisters at the silk plantation, [Prokhorova,] “Chizhov,” Povolzhskii vestnik, 3. Aksakov, letter from Kiev to his parents, dat-

Notes to Pages 25–26

47. 48. 49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

221

ed May 19, 1854, in Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov v ego pis’makh, 4 vols. (Moscow: M. G. Volchaninov, 1888–1896), vol. 3, 12. In his eulogy of Chizhov, Aksakov, 807, admitted that the silk venture produced modest financial results. Quotations from diary, Sept. 19, 1855 and the entire entry for Oct. 16, 1855; June 8, 13, and 16, 1856; June 18, 1857. Diary, Sept. 29, 1855. Diary, entries from February to October 1854. Goldoni wrote more than 260 dramatic works, including 150 comedies. Chizhov read systematically through a thirty-volume set of Goldoni’s comedies and memoirs (diary, Sept. 9 and Oct. 13, 1854). On Samarin’s negative reaction to Chizhov’s letter of July 9, 1855, diary, Oct. 7, 1855. Chizhov apparently attempted to publish a sketch of his theory in his book-length biography of the Renaissance painter Fra Angelico of Fiesole, “Dzhiovanni Andzheliko F’iezoliiskii: zhizneopisanie,” Russkaia beseda (1856), biography section, 131–218. A Soviet archivist noted that Koshelev, the editor, deleted a discussion of “the laws of the development of life and art” in the first three pages of Chizhov’s manuscript on Fra Angelico. Iu. I. Gerasimov, “Arkhiv Koshelevykh (istochniki dlia istorii pravitel’stvennoi politiki 1858–1860-kh gg.),” Gosudarstvennaia bibioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 35 (1974), 22. The first edition, Pis’ma o shelkovodstve (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1853), was not available to me. See Pis’ma o shelkovodstve, [2nd ed.], (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1870). Already in the summer of 1855 Chizhov had written ten additional chapters (diary, July 16, 1855). He mentioned various other chapters and articles on May 13, Aug. 26, and Sept. 15, 1855, Jan. 8, 1856, and Oct. 23, 1857, but did not specify their date of publication. Mozdalevskii, “Chizhov,” 378, claimed that Chizhov’s book on silk cultivation appeared in foreign translations, but no evidence of them appears in the catalogs of major European libraries. On Aleksei A. Bobrinskii, see the biographical sketch in Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, vol. 3, 112–113, which credits him with the introduction of sugarbeet cultivation and of beet-sugar manufacturing in Kiev province, now major facets of Ukrainian agriculture. On the Bobrinskiis’ help to Chizhov, diary, Oct. 3, 1855. On July 17, 1855, Chizhov noted with pride that a landlord’s wife planned to grow silkworms on an estate twenty versts from Tripolie. According to Delvig, Vospominaniia, vol. 4, 111, Chizhov admonished Count Bobrinskii and his wife in 1837 for their sons’ lack of knowledge of Russian. (Apparently, like many Russian aristocrats, the Bobrinskiis provided French tutors to their children at home.) Although Chizhov declined the parents’ offer of a position as a tutor of Russian to the sons, he earned their respect, became friendly with them during his sojourn in South Russia in 1840, and maintained “the most cordial relations” with them for decades. Only because of Chizhov’s advice, Delvig asserted, did the sons acquire a good command of spoken and written Russian. Diary, Oct. 22, 1855.

2 22

Notes to Pages 27–37

54. On Ukrainian and Russian peasants, diary, Apr. 11, 1855; on pumpkin seed incident, Nov. 13, 1851; on Kostroma, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu.,” 414–415, letter dated Feb. 6, 1846; on Tripolie, Nov. 6, 1855; on his support for emancipation with land, Mar. 23, 1858. 55. Diary, Dec. 13/25, 1857, written in Augsburg. On “independence,” diary, Sept. 14, 1851. 56. Cherokov, Chizhov, 28. Cherokov, 31–32, also asserted that Chizhov led a group of three writers who attempted, without success, to buy the Moscow daily newspaper Moskovskie vedomosti (The Moscow News), but this seems doubtful, as Katkov had already acquired the newspaper in 1851 and edited it in 1851–1855 and 1863–1877. As the publisher of Russkii vestnik from 1856 until his death in 1887, Katkov exercised direct editorial control in 1856–1862 and 1882–1887. On Katkov and his publications, see Martin Katz, Mikhail N. Katkov: A Political Biography, 1818–1887 (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), 38, 45–46, 184. 57. Diary, June 7, 1856. 58. Diary, June 13, 1856. 59. Diary, Mar. 22, 1857. 60. The bank’s charter, in SURP, 1873, no. 210, dated Feb. 13, 1873, named the founders and specified their social status. 61. The classic study of the gentry origins of the radical movement in Russia is Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966). 62. ”Materialy,” 195, diary entry of Mar. 4, 1836 (quoted); and 201, entry of Jan. 13, 1838 (quoted). 63. Quotations from Dnevnik, vol. 1, 189, entry of Dec. 8, 1836; vol. 1, 208, entry of May 2, 1839; and, on a pleasant New Year’ s Eve party with Chizhov, Polenov, and others, vol. 1, 218, entry of Jan. 2, 1840. 64. Dnevnik, vol. 1, 263, entry of Feb. 21, 1843. 65. Quotations from Dnevnik, vol. 2, 267, entry of Mar. 30, 1862, on grayness and dissembling, and 383, entry of Dec. 2, 1863, on Chizhov’s industrial accomplishments. On deceit, Dnevnik, vol. 2, 549, entry of Nov. 30, 1865. 66. Aksakov, “Chizhov,” 800–801 (quoted), 802 (quoted). 67. “Chizhov,” 803. 68. “Chizhov,” 802–803. 69. Aksakov, letter to his mother from Belgrade, dated Aug. 7, 1860, in Pis’makh, vol. 3, 476. 70. Savva I. Mamontov, quoted in V. S., “Lichnost’ Fedora Vasil’evicha Chizhova,” Povolzhskii vestnik, no. 1405 (Feb. 27, 1911), 2. The author of this brief article may have been Savva’s son, Vsevolod S. Mamontov. 71. Mikhail V. Alpatov, Aleksandr A. Ivanov: zhizn’ i tvorchestvo, 2 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1956), vol. 2, 24–25. 72. Diary, Mar. 31, 1874 (quoted), and Feb. 6, 1874. 73. Diary, Jan. 29, 1874, on gentry arrogance, and Feb. 10, 1874 (quoted). 74. See, for example, Cherokov, Chizhov, 21, and Mozdalevskii, “Chizhov,” 378.

Notes to Pages 37–42

223

75. [Prokhorova,] “Chizhov,” Povolzhskii vestnik, 3. In a letter to Aleksandr Ivanov from Kiev dated Oct. 22, 1848, Chizhov wrote that his mother had died, leaving him with three unmarried sisters to look after. “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” 421. 76. On illness, diary, Oct. 2, 1847; on the birth of Ekaterina M. Markovich (married name Trifonovskaia), July 3, 1877; on letters, Sept. 26, 1871. On his promise in 1847 to care for the newborn daughter as her godfather, diary, Jan. 5, 1872. On Fedor V. Trifonovskii, diary, July 3, 1877. On Mikhail Markovich’s ties to the Galagan family, Simonova, Chizhov, 41–42; on paternity, 109–110. Chizhov and Simonova used variant spellings: Sokirentsy (or Sekirentsy) and Markevich. 77. Diary, June 16, 1856. 78. Pis’ma o shelkovodstve, 84. Chizhov gave no reference for this quatrain. He clearly admired the poem, as he included it, in a version containing a few grammatical errors, due perhaps to faulty memory, in his diary on May 3, 1851. Angela Cannon of the Slavic Reference Service in Urbana supplied the correct reference: the sixth of seven quatrains in a poem by Aleksei V. Kol’tsov entitled “A Bitter Fate” (Gor’kaia dolia), written on Aug. 4, 1837, and first published in Syn otechestva (The Son of the Fatherland) in 1838. Chizhov may have confused Kol’tsov with Skovoroda because both men showed a fondness for Ukrainian culture. 79. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 74, mentioned a speech by Chizhov “On the Education of Young Ladies,” delivered to the merchant estate, a social group well known for its rigid gender roles, and several essays written by him on women’s education. Quotation from Vestnik promyshlennosti 2, no. 6 Dec. 1858), part 1, 261. On the low status of women in the merchant estate, see the dramas of Aleksandr N. Ostrovskii, especially his tragedy, The Storm (1860), and Jo Ann Ruckman, The Moscow Business Elite: A Social and Cultural Portrait of Three Generations (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984). On Trifonovskaia and her son, diary, Dec. 1, 1874. 80. Diary, Feb. 6, 1872, containing Elagina’s sketch; and June 13, 1877. 81. Diary, Jan. 20, 1875. In this entry, Chizhov specified his age as almost sixtyfive, in accordance with Russian practice. Dmitrii Sverbeev’s memoir on 1799–1826, edited by Chizhov, appeared in book form in 1899. 82. Diary, Mar. 26, 1877. 83. Diary, Aug. 10, 1872. 84. Quoted from a letter in Pecherin’s archive, Simonova, Chizhov, 245. 85. This fragment, written at Tripolie on November 23, 1855, immediately after an entry dated August 25, filled the last pages of notebook no. 16. Notebook no. 17 opened with a new entry dated August 29, 1855. 86. Diary, May 7, 1864. He summed up his life in essentially these terms a decade later, on Apr. 27, 1874. 87. Diary, Aug. 30, 1871, citing Auf der Höhe (On the Heights, 1865) by Berthold Auerbach (Moses Baruch Auerbacher). 88. Diary, Sept. 24, 1871.

2 24

Notes to Pages 43–47

89. Diary, June 25, 1873. Other entries expressed criticism of his “unlimited pride,” for which he considered a renewed dedication to religion the only remedy, Jan. 14, 1847; of his laziness, Mar. 8, 1847; of the deficiencies of his writing style (a tendency to rely on platitudes, a lack of conciseness, an excessively academic tone, and a dearth of fresh ideas), Oct. 2, 1847; of his “vile” nature, Feb. 21, 1848; of behaving “very crudely” toward his friends, Mar. 1, 1848; of his lack of self-control, Oct. 14, 1854; of his failure to act virtuously despite a constant struggle to do so, May 30, 1860; and of his “disgusting complacency, abominable lust for power, and foul pride,” June 9, 1872. 90. Letter to Mikhail Iazykov from Rome, dated Jan. 3/15, 1845, “Perepiska,” ed. Rozanov, 132. 91. Diary, Apr. 11, 1874. 92. Diary, Aug. 27, 1866 (quoted); letter to Pecherin, dated July 23, 1873, quoted in Simonova, Chizhov, 217 (her ellipses).

Chapter 2: Economic Nationalism in Theory Epigraph: “Opinion of the Moscow Merchant Congresses Regarding the German Memorandum,” in Mnenie postoiannykh deputatsii Moskovskikh kupecheskikh s”ezdov . . . (Moscow: Lazarev Institute, 1865), xxix–xxx. 1. Chizhov wrote no diary entries during 91 of the 132 months from July 1858 to June 1869. The major gaps were July 19, 1858–May 30, 1860; Nov. 15, 1860–May 24, 1861; Aug. 18, 1862–Jan. 4, 1863; Mar. 15–Aug. 7, 1863; Nov. 27, 1864–June 13, 1866; and Apr. 16, 1868–June 8, 1869. 2. On Russkaia beseda and Sel’skoe blagoustroistvo, see Iu. I. Gerasimov, “Arkhiv Koshelevykh (istochniki dlia istorii pravitel’stvennoi politiki 1858–1860-kh gg.),” Gosudarstvennaia bibioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 35 (1974), 5–61, based largely on the Koshelev family archive, RGB-OR f. 139. 3. On Aleksandr Shipov, see the long entry in Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, vol. 23, and Ocherk deiatel’nosti A. P. Shipova, appendix to Narodnogo gazeta (St. Petersburg, 1866). Shipov’s book on the need for tariff protection for the Russian cotton textile industry appeared in 1857–1858. 4. Ocherk, 6, credited Aleksandr Shipov and his brother Dmitrii, a landlord and machine producer in Kostroma, with creating Vestnik promyshlennosti. On the basis of letters between Chizhov and these two Shipovs in 1857, Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 179, affirmed that the brothers “founded and financed” the new journal. Vladimir Ia. Laverychev, “Russkie kapitalisty i periodicheskaia pechat’ vtoroi poloviny XIX v.,” Istoriia SSSR 16, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1972): 26–47, repeated the claim that Chizhov drafted the programmatic statement of the new journal after the brothers “invited” him to serve as editor (27) but cited no documents in support of

Notes to Pages 49–51

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

225

this assertion. Inna A. Simonova, Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 133, did the same. Chizhov’s diary unfortunately does not clear up the question of who created the journal. On Mar. 22, 1857, in the entry in which he embraced economic development, he noted that he was beginning a second notebook no. 18, having lost the first one. The last entry in notebook no. 17 bore the date June 22, 1856. Chizhov’s diary entries documenting the Shipov brothers’ generous financial support for Vestnik promyshlennosti are cited later. Diary, Jan. 15/27, 1858. On Vernadskii, see Nikolai A. Tsagolov, Ocherki russkoi ekonomicheskoi mysli perioda padeniia krespostnogo prava (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1956), 365–428, and L. A. Zubchenko and L. I. Zaitseva, Russkie ekonomisty (XIX-nachalo XX veka) (Moscow: Institut ekonomiki RAN, 1998), 52–57. The obituary written by Aleksandr I. Chuprov, one of Babst’s students and a major economist in the late imperial period, remains the best account of his career: “Ivan Kondrat’evich Babst: nekrolog, 1881 g.,” in Chuprov, Rechi i stat’i, 3 vols. (Moscow: Sabashnikov, 1909), vol. 1, 470–480. The only edition of Babst’s works ever published is a selection, entitled Izbrannye trudy, ed. M. G. Podkidchenko and E. N. Kalmychkova (Moscow: Nauka, 1999). Letter of Feb. 19, 1857, Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei, otdel rukupisei (GIM) f. 44.1, l. 103–104, Babst’s archive in the State Historical Museum, Moscow. Shvabe, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Gosudarstvennaia bibioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953): 55, quoted the three sentences in this letter describing the goals of Vestnik promyshlennosti, citing Chizhov’s letter in RGB-OR f. 332, k. 10, d. 4. Laverychev, “Kapitalisty,” quotations in 27–28, n. 9, from Babst’s letter, dated Mar. 3, 1857, in Chizhov’s archive, RGB-OR f. 332.16.2, l. 1, and Laverychev’s statement, offered in refutation of the common assertion that Babst joined Vestnik promyshlennosti at the beginning of 1860. Until the history of this journal is examined in detail, the extent of Babst’s participation in 1858–1859 cannot be specified with certainty. His name first appeared on the title page with Chizhov’s in January 1860. In his obituary of Babst, Chuprov attributed the lead articles in the journal—surveys of current trends in Russian commerce and industry—to Babst. On Babst’s education and early career, Chuprov, “Babst,” 470–471; on the speech of June 6, 1856, Chuprov, 472–474, and V. N. Rozental’, “Obshchestvennopoliticheskaia programma russkogo liberalizma v seredine 50-kh godov XIX v. (po materialam ‘Russkogo vestnika’ za 1856–1857 gg.),” Istoricheskie zapiski 70 (1961): 197–222, esp. 207–208, 210 (quoted). Zubchenko and Zaitseva, Russkie ekonomisty, 62–64, reprinted excerpts from Babst’s famous speech. It appears in full in Babst, Izbrannye trudy, 100–127. Chuprov, “Babst,” 476–477. Besides Babst’s critique of Hildebrand’s work, Chuprov referred to an important article by Babst, “The Current Needs of Our Economy,” in Vestnik promyshlennosti in 1859. Although it was completed on Nov. 30 [1859], this article appeared in vol. 7, no. 3 (Mar. 1860), section

2 26

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

Notes to Pages 51–56 3 (sciences), 203–248. Quotation from 248. It appears in full in Babst, Izbrannye trudy, 128–156; quotation from 156. Quotations from Chizhov’s letter to Aleksandr Nikitenko from Ostend, Belgium, dated Aug. 18/30, 1842, “Iz arkhiva A. V. Nikitenko (Pis’ma k nemu raznykh lits),” Russkaia starina 100, year 30, no. 11 (Nov. 1899), 370; and from Chizhov’s letters to Ivanov from Lyon, dated May 19/31, 1844, and from Paris, dated May 31/June 12, 1844, “F. V. Chizhov k khudozhniku A. A. Ivanovu,” Russkii arkhiv 1884, book 1, 397, 398. Diary, entries from Dec. 15/27, 1857, to Feb. 1/13, 1858; quotation from Jan. 11/23, 1858. Diary, Mar. 23, 1858 (quoted); July 19, 1858 (quoted). Arkadii Cherokov, Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov i ego sviazi s N. V. Gogolem (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1902), 29–30. “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 1, no. 1 (July 1858), 1–19; quotations from 16, 18, 19. Diary, Dec. 31, 1857/Jan. 12, 1858, citing Émile (1762). Vestnik promyshlennosti 2, no. 6 (Dec. 1858), section 1 (survey of industry and trade), 261–262, cited in L. B. Genkin, “Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia programma russkoi burzhuazii v gody pervoi revoliutsionnoi situatsii (1859–1861 gg.) (po materialam zhurnala Vestnik promyshlennosti),” in Problemy sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii: sbornik statei, ed. L. M. Ivanov and others (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 97. The second quoted passage, on 262, was not cited by Genkin. Chizhov grouped the twelve monthly issues into four numbered volumes (tomy) each quarter, so that volume 1 contained issues 1–3 (July–Sept.) for 1858; volume 2, issues 4–6 (Oct.–Dec.) for 1858; volume 3, issues 1–3 (Jan.–Mar.) for 1859; volume 4, issues 4–6 (Apr.– June) for 1859; and so on, to vol. 14, no. 12 (Dec. 1861). Confusion resulted as well from the system of pagination used often in nineteenth-century Russian journals, according to which the consecutive numbers of pages within sections continued from one issue to the next within a given volume. Thus, in the May 1861 issue, section 6 (miscellany), 33–68, was followed by section 7 (information), 21–58. For this reason, citations of articles in the journal include section numbers as well as page numbers. Letter to Raevskii, dated July 25, 1858, in Zarubezhnye slaviane i Rossiia: dokumenty arkhiva M. F. Raevskogo, comp. V. Matula and I. V. Churkina (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 468. Survey, Dec. 1858, section 1, 262; italics in original. On this episode, see Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 38. “Razlichie mezhdu naukoiu i zhizniiu, mezhdu teorieiu i praktikoiu v nauke sovremennogo blagosostoianiia,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 1, no. 1 (July 1858), section 3 (sciences), 1–5. This unsigned article bore many traces of Chizhov’s style and addressed a recurrent theme in his thought.

Notes to Pages 56–60

227

21. R. Syromiatnikov, “L’nianaia i polotnianaia promyshlennost’ v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 12, no. 5 (May 1861), section 3 (sciences), 103–139. 22. Gavriil P. Kamenskii, “Dopolnenie k ‘Predlozhenie otkrytiia russkoi torgovoi kontory v Londone,’” Vestnik promyshlennosti 1, no. 2 (Aug. 1858), part 7 (information), 31–33; quotation from final paragraph, 33. 23. Genkin, “Programma,” 96, listed seven merchants as supporters of Vestnik promyshlennosti in both ideological and financial terms, but he also cited a document in Chizhov’s archive, apparently from his correspondence with Dmitrii Shipov, that indicated that Shipov contributed “about 9,000 rubles” to the journal in 1858. In his diary, Dec. 19/31 1857, while in Augsburg, Chizhov called Dmitrii Shipov “a splendid person” because of his efforts to ensure adequate funds for the creation of the journal. Chizhov noted that he received from Aleksandr (not Dmitrii) Shipov 1,900 rubles, in three payments, to finance book purchases and the trip to Europe in 1857. In 1858, subscription payments and remittances from booksellers brought in only 1,860 rubles, while Dmitrii Shipov contributed 10,000 rubles toward the expenses of publication. “Otchet po izdaniiu zhurnala Vestnika promyshlennosti,” RGB-OR, f. 332.5.16, 1r. 24. Cherokov, Chizhov, 31, named ten leading manufacturers, all members of the Moscow merchant estate or bearers of the title Honorary Citizen (pochetnyi grazhdanin, a social category created in 1832, which ensured for a lifetime the privileges of the merchant estate, either for an individual or his family). These were Valentin K. Krestovnikov, Konstantin V. Rukavishnikov, Ivan F. Mamontov, Sergei M. Tretiakov, Aleksandr I. Koshelev (a Slavophile literary figure as well as a tax concessionaire), Pavel P. Maliutin, Timofei S. Morozov, Ivan A. Liamin, Kozma T. Soldatenkov, and Vasilii A. Kokorev. (Born in 1848, Konstantin Rukavishnikov was clearly too young to belong to this group. Cherokov perhaps meant his father, Vasilii N. Rukavishnikov.) 25. “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 8, no. 5 (May 1860), section 1, 118. 26. Cherokov, Chizhov, 31–33. 27. Diary, May 24, 1861. 28. Cherokov, Chizhov, 34. Cherokov specified mid-1862 as the date of this incident, but it must have occurred in mid-1861, as the journal ceased publication with the December 1861 issue. 29. Chuprov, “Babst,” 477. 30. Aksakov had urged his fellow Slavophiles to consider economic questions as early as 1844–1845: Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov v ego pi’smakh, 4 vols. (Moscow: M. G. Volchaninov, 1888–1896), vol. 1, 168–169. Aksakov’s book on Ukrainian markets appeared in 1858. According to Nikolai I. Tsimbaev, I. S. Aksakov v obshchestvennoi zhizni poreformennoi Rossii (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1978), 48, Aksakov read works by the German economist Friedrich List in 1851–1853. 31. “Moskva, 1-go ianvaria,” Aktsioner, Jan. 1, 1860, 1. Lead articles in Aktsioner bore no title except the date of publication.

2 28

Notes to Pages 61–67

32. Draft of letter to Aleksei I. Khludov, dated Oct. 31, [1862], in Chizhov’s letter file, RGB-OR f. 332, 10.67, p. 1. The year of this letter is clear from other letters to Khludov in this file dated 1862 and from Chizhov’s references to recent events. 33. In 1863, Babst taught political economy to Crown Prince Nikolai in St. Petersburg. The following year, Babst published his impressions of a long trip throughout the empire with the crown prince. Chuprov, “Babst,” 477. Excerpts from this book appear in Babst, Izbrannye trudy. 34. Diary, Aug. 7, 1863, the first entry since Mar. 15. Except for copying a passage from the Edinburgh Review in October, Chizhov made no diary entries from Aug. 7, 1863, to Apr. 11, 1864. 35. On Chizhov’s suggestion that Aksakov edit yet another newspaper, see Thomas C. Owen, “The Moscow Merchants and the Public Press, 1858–1868,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 23 (1975): 34. Quotation from Botkin’s letter to Turgenev, dated Oct. 19, 1866, in V. P. Botkin i I. S. Turgenev: neizdannaia perepiska, 1851–1869, ed. N. L. Brodskii (Moscow: Academia, 1930), 248. Botkin’s family operated a prominent tea-wholesaling firm in Moscow. 36. “Moskva, 1-go ianvaria,” Moskva, Jan. 1, 1867, 1. 37. On Sept. 2, 1867, he noted in his diary that he had written ten lead editorials in Moskva in January, March, August, and September. On Nov. 3, he listed five editorials and two articles in the economic section in September, October, and November. 38. On Torgovyi sbornik, Moskva, and Moskvich, see Laverychev, “Kapitalisty,” 31–35; Owen, “Moscow Merchants,” 33–38; and Rieber, Merchants, ch. 4–5. 39. Letter to Aksakov, Sept. 1865, quoted in Tsimbaev, Aksakov, 94; letter to Aksakov dated Apr. 28, 1866, quoted in Tsimbaev, 94–95. 40. Chizhov’s paraphrase of his remarks to Rigelman, diary, Oct. 31, 1870. 41. “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 10, no. 11 (Nov. 1860), section 1, 114. 42. “Obozrenie” (Nov. 1860), section 1, 113. On the cultural significance of the two names applied most often to corporations in imperial Russia—joint-stock company (aktsionernoe obshchestvo) and share partnership (tovarishchestvo na paiakh)—and the structural features that tended to be associated with them, see Thomas C. Owen, The Corporation under Russian Law, 1800–1917: A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 12– 13, 23, 51–52, 152. 43. “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 12, no. 5 (May 1861), section 1, 34. 44. “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 8, no. 6 (June 1860), section 1, 157–168, on the alleged abuses of the Russian Railroad Company; quotation from 167. In addition to this eleven-page indictment in June, the issue for April 1860 had contained a thirteen-page attack (p. 1 on the company as a bad example for others, which drove down the price of corporate stocks generally). At least one hostile comment appeared in each of the other issues published in 1860. Details on

Notes to Pages 67–73

45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

229

the company’s 275-million-ruble capitalization and 4,000-verst network in vol. 9, no. 8 (Aug. 1860), section 1, 69; on the 8 percent guarantee on the 18 million rubles spent to construct the Warsaw–St. Petersburg rail line, the same section, 66. This comprehensive critique of the Russian Railroad Company in August prompted a long and angry rebuttal from an anonymous defender of the company in Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti. In Vestnik promyshlennosti 10, no. 11 (Nov. 1860), Babst’s eighteen-page response appeared in section 1, 73–90, followed by a fourteen-page statement written in Berlin by Chizhov, dated Oct. 17, 1860. On 92, Chizhov stated that he and Babst had jointly composed the commentary in the August issue. “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli v Rossii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1860), 15, on the petition of December 5, 1859; and, in the same section, vol. 8, no. 4 (Apr. 1860), 12–13. “Moskva, 5 ianvaria 1863 g.,” Aktsioner, Jan. 5, 1863, 1 on corporate statistics and the dismal record of the Russian Railroad Company; 2 on alleged exploitation and the need for banks. Chizhov’s authorship of the lead editorials was clear from the inclusion of his name as editor on the last page of each issue in 1863. Both he and Babst had been named in 1860–1862. Babst, “Sovremennye nuzhdy,” in Vestnik promyshlennosti 7, no. 3 (Mar. 1860), section 3, 245. Isaak I. Levin, Aktsionernye kommercheskie banki v Rossii, vol. 1 (no more published) (Petrograd: I. R. Belopol’skii, 1917), 130, citing a letter by a merchant in Aktsioner in 1861. Est’-li u nas svobodnye kapitaly dlia postroiki zheleznykh dorog? (St. Petersburg: Voennaia tipografiia, 1866), quotation from 23; on the proposed railroad bank, 29–31; on opposition to autocratic centralism, 30. (The title lacked the hyphen and quotation mark.) Moskva, Sept. 1, 1867. Unsigned lead editorial, Moskva, Mar. 10, 1867, 1. Diary, Jan. 12/24, 1858, commenting on an article in Ekonomicheskii ukazatel’ by one Baikov; and “Moskva, 5-go ianvaria,” Aktsioner, Jan. 5, 1863, 1. Diary, Jan. 14/26, 1858, quoting Roederer’s Études. Theodore H. Von Laue, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 61–63. Diary, Jan. 14/26, 1858, quoting Roscher’s System in French translation. Rozental’, “Programma,” 207–208, 210. Chuprov, “Babst,” 475–476. On the translation, 477. I. Gorn, “Obozrenie promyshlennosti i torgovli vo Frantsii,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 10, no. 10 (Oct. 1860), section 1, 40. Diary, Jan. 12/24, 1858. Diary, Jan. 18/30, 1858. Aktsioner, Jan. 6, 1861, 4. Vestnik promyshlennosti 8, no. 4 (Apr. 1860) contained an article on the causes and consequences of financial crises by Carey (Genrikh Keri). The identity of the translator and the nature of his ties, if any, to Chizhov remain to be determined.

2 30

Notes to Pages 75–86

62. Diary, Jan. 11/23, 1858. 63. Alfred O. Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961). 64. Chizhov, letter to Babst dated Nov. 26 [1864], GIM f. 44.1, l. 107r. In 1864– 1868, Babst served as director of the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages in Moscow, a school endowed by wealthy Armenian merchants, which published the merchants’ statement: Mnenie. On the panic that the Zollverein proposal caused among the Moscow merchants and their efforts to defeat the proposal in 1864–1865, see Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 59–61, and the sources cited there. According to Simonova, Chizhov, 177, Chizhov wrote a significant number of the sections, including the one on beet-sugar production (72–112). 65. Unsigned editorial, Moskva, Oct. 14, 1867, 2. This issue included the merchants’ statement to the director of the tariff department and the names of all 144 signatories, together with Prince Dmitrii A. Obolenskii’s reply. 66. On collation of statistics with Chizhov’s help, Cherokov, Chizhov, 40; on success, 41. 67. On the collection of tariff duties in gold rubles, see Valerii L. Stepanov, “Mikhail Khristoforovich Reitern,” Russian Studies in History 35, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 35. Cherokov, Chizhov, 41, claimed that Chizhov first suggested this change to Reutern. According to Cherokov, the collection of tariff duties in gold began several months after the tariff of 1868 was implemented, but the change to gold actually occurred in January 1877. 68. Diary, Jan. 29/Feb. 10, 1858. 69. Pis’ma o shelkovodstve, 202–207; quotation from 207. 70. See Thomas C. Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism from Peter the Great to Perestroika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 127–138. 71. Diary, Feb. 6/18, 1858. 72. Pis’ma o shelkovodstve, 318. 73. On the “Letter to the Serbs,” Andrzej Walicki, Russia, Poland, and Universal Regeneration: Studies on Russia and Polish Thought of the Romantic Epoch (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 497n., and Aksakov, Pis’makh, vol. 4, 239n. 74. Obshchestvo liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii, Vserossiiskaia etnograficheskaia vystavka i slavianskii s”ezd v mae 1867 g. (Moscow: Katkov, 1867), 349–356. Quotations from 349 (greeting), 350 (Slavic idea), 351 (yoke of European civilization), 354 (struggle against the Germans), 355 (Khomiakov’s poem). The number of representatives was specified on 356. 75. In the second issue of Vestnik promyshlennosti, in August 1858, Chizhov had called for a vigorous effort to develop the economic potential of the Far North. He repeated this appeal in 1865: Est’-li?, 32–34. 76. Vol. 1, no. 1 (July 1858), section 1, 2. 77. Diary, Nov. 15 and 19, 1870. Quotation from Nov. 19. 78. In an analysis of theories of social cohesion advanced since the publication of Friedrich Tönnies’s classic Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887),

Notes to Pages 86–91

79. 80.

81.

82.

83.

84. 85. 86. 87.

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the sociologist Edward Shils placed “primordial...ties of blood and common territory” and “the civil attachment, the moderate pluralistic concern for the whole” at opposite ends of a spectrum. “Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties,” British Journal of Sociology 8, no. 2 (June 1957): 130–145; quotations from 142 and 144. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz, citing Shils’s article of 1957, further refined the concept of primordial ties by listing their various biological and cultural bases: assumed blood ties, race, language, region, religion, and custom. “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Geertz (New York: The Free Press, 1963), 105–157, reprinted in Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973); definitions on 261–263. A Requiem for Karl Marx (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 153–154. Petr A. Valuev, Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, ministra vnutrennikh del, 2 vols., ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1961), vol. 2, 118, entry for Apr. 10, 1866; Chizhov, Est’-li?, 24. On kvas patriotism in economic debates, see Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism, 121, 128, 146. Die finanzielle Sanierung Rußlands nach der Katastrophe des Krimkriegs 1862 bis 1878 durch den Finanzminister Michael von Reutern, ed. Woldemar ReuternNolcken (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1914), 55–57; quotation from 55. See Stepanov, “Reitern,” esp. 28–29, on Reutern’s economic program of 1866 and, for a detailed analysis, Leonid E. Shepelev, Tsarizm i burzhuaziia vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka: problemy torgovo-promyshlennoi politiki (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 100–108. On military spending, Oliver S. Hayward, “Official Russian Policies Concerning Industrialization during the Finance Ministry of M. Kh. Reutern, 1862–1878” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1973), 456. On private enterprise, Jacob W. Kipp, “The Russian Navy and the Problem of Technological Transfer: Technological Backwardness and Military-Industrial Development, 1853–1876,” in Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855–1881, ed. Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 117. On Vasilii Chizhov’s relationship with Zhukovskii, Aleksandra N. Prokhorova, “K zhizneopisaniiu F. V. Chizhova: ego roditeli i sestry,” Russkii arkhiv 45, no. 4 (1907): 627. On Reutern’s family tie to Zhukovskii through Elizaveta Alekseevna, Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, vol. 16, 5. Diary, May 30, 1864. Diary, Dec. 5, 1876. On the use of domestic bonds to finance the coming war, diary, Dec. 21 and Dec. 22, 1876. Quotations from entry of Dec. 22. Pis’ma o shelkovodstve, 311.

2 32

Notes to Pages 92–101

Chapter 3: Economic Nationalism in Practice Epigraph: Idiot (1869), Part 3, Chapter 1, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972–3), vol. 8, 269. 1. Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin, edited by Joseph Schafer (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1940), 93–94. Mikhail Katkov’s report on the banquet appeared in Moskovskie vedomosti, Jan. 9, 1866. 2. Baron Andrei I. Del’vig, Moi vospominaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow: Rumiantsev Museum, 1912–13), vol. 3, 6 (quoted), 7. On the reform of 1862, see the excellent article by David Christian, “A Neglected Great Reform: The Abolition of Tax Farming in Russia,” in Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855–1881, ed. Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 102–114. 3. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 11–13. In discussions of railroad finances, all rubles are silver rubles unless otherwise specified. 4. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 28–30 on Filaret’s blessing of the project; quotation from 188. 5. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 10. 6. PSZ 2–34548, dated May 29, 1859, Art. 24. 7. Diary, May 30, 1860. He had written nothing in his diary since July 19, 1858. Article 17 of the company’s charter specified a required initial payment of 20 percent of par value for each share, or 30 silver rubles. 8. Diary, June 19, 1864 (quoted). Arkadii Cherokov, Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov i ego sviazi s N. V. Gogolem (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1902), 35 (quoted). On 39, Cherokov repeated this phrase but substituted inostrantsev (literally, “people from foreign countries”) for inozemtsev (“people from foreign lands”). It is not clear which word Chizhov preferred or even if he ever used this dramatic phrase himself. On the scheme to count pilgrims, Cherokov, 36–37. 9. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 31; on the obligation to pay 4 percent during construction, charter, Art. 19. 10. Moskovsko-Sergievskaia zheleznaia doroga ot uchreditelei (Moscow, 1859). On open discussion, Inna A. Simonova, Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 204. 11. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 33–34; on the first general assembly, 42–43. The number of votes cast for each director and alternate was specified in Aktsioner, Feb. 26, 1860, 34. 12. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 92–94; quotation from 94. 13. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 49. 14. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 8. 15. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 31 on non-Russian engineers; on Potemkin, 192. 16. On his devotion to Russia, see Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 141, 396 (quoted).

Notes to Pages 101–107

233

17. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 66. 18. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 48. On efforts by Del’vig and Bogomolets to keep costs within estimates, 44–46. 19. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 69–90; on Chizhov’s poor command of English, 78; on the total cost, 90; on Borsig locomotives, 91. 20. Diary, entries of Aug. 17 and 18, 1862. On Chizhov’s position as chairman of the board, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 191; 189 on the “remarkable singing of the monks.” N. K. Shvabe, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Gosudarstvennaia biblioteki SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953): 44, specified 1862 as the date of Chizhov’s assumption of the post of chairman of the board. 21. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 187; on the derailments in late August and early October 1862, 190, 204; on the incident at Pushkino, in December 1862, 215–217; quotation from 217. 22. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 33. 23. On low administrative costs, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 49 (quoted); on negotiations in Europe, 76; on Chizhov’s becoming a member of the board of directors, 95; on his administrative skills, 95 (quoted); on mutual visits, 388 (quoted). On the Moscow-Saratov Railroad, Simonova, Chizhov, 207; Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 233, noted that Chizhov resigned from the board of that railroad in April 1863. 24. Two letters dated Mar. 29, 1867, RGB-OR f. 332, 68.34. The Soviet archivist counted forty-five names on the letter quoted, but a visual inspection yielded a total of seventy-three. The second letter, signed by forty-six shareholders, declared that the general assembly endorsed Chizhov’s continued service as chairman of the board by acclamation, without a formal vote. His diary gave no hint that he was considering resignation at this time. 25. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 34–35. 26. Priblizitel’nye soobrazheniia o dokhodnosti predpolagaemoi zheleznoi dorogi ot Moskvy do Iaroslavlia, 2nd ed. (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1867), 6 (quoted), 41–49. (The first edition of this pamphlet was published in 1866.) The author of this anonymous pamphlet was identified only as “a shareholder” of the company, but Chizhov’s ideas and favorite phrases figured prominently in it, from the cautious title to the lengthy statistical discussions and the emphasis on the line’s benefits to the public. According to Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 69, Chizhov wrote more than thirty reports, memoranda, and brochures relating to railroads, including justifications for extensions of the Trinity Railroad to Iaroslavl and Vologda. 27. Diary, Oct. 20, 1866 (quoted). On Chizhov’s success in reversing Reutern’s initial decision not to guarantee the railroad’s stocks, see Aleksandr V. Nikitenko, Dnevnik, 3 vols. (Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1955), entry of May 8, 1866, vol. 3, 32. On the extension to Iaroslavl, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 35, and charter: PSZ 2–45946. On the religious service on July 2, Moskva, July 3, 1868, 2, an article without a headline following yet another attack on the Russian Railroad Company.

2 34

Notes to Pages 107–112

28. On the opening of traffic, diary, Mar. 30, 1870. On the transformation of the Main Administration into the Ministry of Transport, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 368–369. On permission to limit the number of locomotives and cars and to build the spur line to Kirzhach, diary, Nov. 27, 1870; on plans for the spur line from Iaroslavl to Kostroma, Nov. 5, 1870; on the spur line to Karabanovo, Oct. 20, 1871 (quoted); on gross receipts, Oct. 21, 1871, and Oct. 27, 1871; on the role of luck, Oct. 27, 1871 (quoted). 29. On the length of the proposed extension, diary, Mar. 30, 1870. On the emperor’s confirmation of the extension to Vologda, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 33, and PSZ 2–48582, the supplemental charter dated June 24, 1870. The technical supplement at the end of the PSZ volume for 1870 specified the size of the gauge: three feet (funty), six inches (diuimy). Quotation from diary, Oct. 30, 1870. 30. Diary, Oct. 11, 1871. 31. Diary, May 21, 1871 (quoted). 32. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 35; vol. 4, 192. On increased profits, diary, Feb. 24, 1874. 33. Cherokov, Chizhov, 39 (quoted). On profits, comment on a financial report received by mail in Vichy, France, in diary, May 31/June 12, 1875. On collateral, SURP, 1873, no. 125 (Jan.19), 268. 34. On Pavlov, diary, Mar. 28 and Mar. 31, 1875. On Sept. 9, 1877, Chizhov set the loss at 48,000 rubles, but the next day he specified more than 47,000 rubles, including his share: 17,000 rubles. On 15,559 rubles, Sept. 17, 1877. 35. Diary, Apr. 26, 1876. 36. On the high rate of interest demanded by European bankers who granted loans to Russians, Cherokov, Chizhov, 48. 37. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 375, 374 (quoted). The Vitebsk-Orel line was finally built under terms of a charter dated May 2, 1868, which specified the Orel Provincial Zemstvo as the sole founder. 38. PSZ 2–41122, dated July 28, 1864. 39. Diary, June 19, 1864. 40. Diary, Feb. 1/13, 1858. 41. Diary, Aug. 1, 1864. The press of work on the railroad and the bank indeed left him little time to record his thoughts in his diary. He wrote only one entry between August 1, 1864, and June 13, 1866. 42. On the bureaucrats’ reluctance to grant the charter, see Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 192–193, and Valerii I. Bovykin and Iurii A. Petrov, Kommercheskie banki Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Perspektiva, 1994), 190. Whether Kokorev paid “generous bribes to bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance,” as claimed by Bovykin and Petrov, 190, remains unclear because the source that they cited, Rieber’s account, does not mention any bribery. Rieber numbered the prospective founders at “over a hundred subscribers among large merchants,” a number that allegedly fell by “almost half” before the charter received confirmation. Kokorev’s letters to Chizhov,

Notes to Pages 112–115

43.

44.

45. 46. 47.

48.

49. 50.

235

in the correspondence section of Chizhov’s archive (RGB-OR f. 332.33.19 and 332.33.20), included an admission of the merchants’ dependence on Chizhov’s rhetorical abilities in winning Reutern’s favor, dated Nov. 23, 1865, and a request, dated Oct. 15, 1868, for 10,000 rubles to compensate Kokorev for his long residences in St. Petersburg during the two-year period of petitioning for the bank. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 62, noted that Chizhov also corresponded with Ivan Babst and other leading merchants besides Kokorev regarding the bank. The ninety founders are named in the bank’s charter, published in PSZ 2–43360, dated June 1, 1866. Nikolai A. Naidenov, Vospominaniia o vidennom, slyshannom i ispytannom, 2 vols. (Moscow: Kushnerev, 1903–1905; reprinted Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1976), vol. 2, 116 (quoted). On Kokorev’s career as an entrepreneur and publicist, see Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 46–51; Rieber, Merchants, esp. 160–165, 187–191; Paula Lieberman, “V. A. Kokorev: An Industrial Entrepreneur in NineteenthCentury Russia,” doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1982; and Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 117–122. By 1914, the basic capital of the Volga-Kama Bank had increased to 18 million rubles. On the vote and salary, diary, Aug. 27, 1866. The salary figure also appeared in the minutes of the first meeting of the council, on July 21, 1866: “Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta Moskovskogo kupecheskogo banka s 1861 po 1876 g.,” Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv goroda Moskvy (TsGIAM) f. 253.1.2, p. 1. Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 191 (quoted); on the increase in basic capital, 193. Diary, Oct. 20, 1866. Isaak I. Levin, Aktsionernye kommercheskie banki v Rossii, vol. 1 (no more published) (Petrograd: I. R. Belopol’skii, 1917), 106. On the opening of operations on December 1, 1866, Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 110. Fedor V. Chizhov, Polozhenie del Moskovskogo kupecheskogo banka (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1868), 4–5. On profits from discounting and from issuing collateralized loans, Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 193, 195. On regular meetings of the general assembly, charter, Art. 55; on elections of the council and board, Arts. 38–43; on the financial structure, Art. 4; on discount and loan operations, Art. 12; on the 10:1 ratio of payments to capital, Art. 34. Diary, July 31, 1867. This busy pace left little time for writing in the diary. The next entries occurred on September 2 and November 3, 1867, January 31 and April 16, 1868, and June 8, 1869. On Chizhov’s initiative in creating this institution, Cherokov, Chizhov, 48. Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 115 (quoted), 112. On the financing of the Practical Academy, Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 153, and Galina Ulianova, “Charitable Activities of Moscow Banks,” in Commerce in Russian Urban Culture, 1861–1914, ed. William Craft Brumfield, Boris V. Anan’ich, and Yuri A. Petrov (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), 59–60.

2 36

Notes to Pages 115–122

51. Diary, Nov. 11, 1873. The Acceptance Committee (priemnyi komitet), which Chizhov called the Discount Committee (uchetnyi komitet), decided which bills of exchange appeared trustworthy enough to be discounted by the credit society. In discounting bills of exchange, the society put its own funds at risk until the term of the bill expired and the society collected the face value of the bill from the merchant who had issued it. 52. Diary, Oct. 8, 1875. On Shtrom’s experience, Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 112. 53. Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 108–111; quotation from 110. On the bank’s operations from 1866 to 1917, see Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 190–211. 54. Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 112, on Chizhov and Aksakov; 113 on Aksakov’s boredom and Morozov’s uncritical attitude toward Chizhov’s opinions. On the annual report for 1876, diary, Feb. 27, 1877. 55. Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 112. 56. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 62. 57. Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 114. 58. Otchet Moskovskogo kupecheskogo obshchestva vzaimnogo kredita za vremia ot 11 noiabria 1869 g. po 1 ianvaria 1871 goda (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1871), 5–6. 59. Diary, Feb. 2, 1875. 60. Diary, Nov. 5, 1874. 61. Diary, Oct. 8, 1875. Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 130, recalled that the Commercial Loan Bank stopped payments on Oct. 5, 1875, and closed the next day. The charter of the bank appeared in PSZ 2–48419, dated May 27, 1870. On panic, Naidenov, 131. 62. Debt and loan figures from Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 120–121. Lieberman, “Kokorev,” 196 (quoted), citing Iosif F. Gindin’s monograph on the Russian State Bank (1960). 63. Diary, Oct. 29, 1875, and Jan. 10, 1876. 64. Jacob W. Kipp, “The Russian Navy and the Problem of Technological Transfer,” in Russia’s Great Reforms, 123 (quoted); Jonathan A. Grant, Big Business in Russia: The Putilov Company in Late Imperial Russia, 1868–1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 24–25. 65. Diary, Nov. 16, 1873. 66. Diary, Jan. 13, 1874. The charter of the Putilov Manufacturing Company, PSZ 2–51438, dated Oct. 24, 1872, specified a basic capital of 8 million silver rubles in 40,000 shares. 67. Diary, Oct. 8, 1875. 68. Rieber, Merchants, 194. On the weakness of Russian banks in the second half of the nineteenth century and the illegal means used by the Ministry of Finance to rescue them, see Thomas C. Owen, The Corporation under Russian Law, 1800–1917: A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 97–111, and the sources cited there. 69. The Putilov Manufacturing Company faced financial difficulties from the very beginning. Grant, Big Business, 26, specified the amount of the loan as

Notes to Pages 122–126

70.

71. 72.

73.

74.

75. 76.

77. 78. 79.

237

1.5 million rubles and explained that Putilov won the confidence of the Muscovites largely by persuading Baron Del’vig to sit on the board of directors. Quotation from 33. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 4 (1912), 349–378; quotations from 357 (on optimism), 361 (on Chizhov’s honesty), 364 (on respect and correspondence). On Del’vig’s anxiety, Chizhov diary, Mar. 13, 1876. Diary, Jan. 20, 1877. On the dividend to members, diary, Jan. 16, 1876 (quoted); on the loss from worthless bills of exchange, Aug. 16, 1876 (quoted); on his plan to relinquish the chairmanship, Nov. 21, 1876 (quoted); on results for 1876, Feb. 27, 1877; on Aksakov’s election, Mar. 13, 1877. Diary, Jan. 4, 1873 (quoted). On Giliarov’s appeal to Chizhov to endorse a bill of exchange for 16,000 rubles, Apr. 9, 1875; on Giliarov’s financial delinquency, Jan. 19, 1877, May 30, 1877 (quoted), and Sept. 10, 1877 (Aksakov quoted). Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 57; Russia, Ministerstvo putei soobshcheniia, Istoricheskii ocherk razvitiia zheleznykh dorog v Rossii s ikh osnovaniia po 1897 g. vkliuchitel’no, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Ministerstva putei soobshcheniia, 1898–1901), vol. 1, 150–160. On the emperor’s surprising decision to uphold the recommendation of the minority, Aleksandr I. Koshelev, Zapiski (Berlin: B. Behr, 1884), 192. On the political context of this episode and citations of documents in Chizhov’s archive related to the campaign to purchase the Nicholas Railroad, see Rieber, Merchants, 187–188, and Rieber, “Interest-Group Politics in the Era of the Great Reforms,” in Russia’s Great Reforms, 67–69. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 310 on the length; on sections in double and single track, 307. Draft, written by Chizhov, of the petition to Minister of Finance Reutern, dated by an archivist: “Dec. 1870–early 1871,” RGB-OR f. 332.4.7. On economic benefits, 1r. (quoted); on the lack of speculative motives, 1v. (quoted); on the three representatives, 2r.; on financial details, 3r. Editorial changes, in pencil, on 1r. included “company” (kompaniia) for the somewhat less grand “share partnership” (tovarishchestvo na paiakh) and “class” (klass) for “estate” (soslovie), though historians have discovered scarcely any evidence of a genuine class consciousness among the Moscow merchants before the Revolution of 1905. The next document in the archive, f. 332.4.8, constituted the “housekeeping rules” (domashnee uslovie) of the proposed company, written by Chizhov in 1871 and accepted by the prospective founders. Diary, Oct. 31, 1870. Diary, Jan. 25, 1871. In this entry, he specified that the petition campaign to purchase the Moscow-Kursk Railroad had begun the previous December. PSZ 2–49634. Besides Chizhov, the charter listed as founders Timofei Morozov, Mikhail Gorbov, Aleksandr N. Mamontov (a nephew Ivan F. Mamontov, who had died in 1869), Ivan Liamin, Vasilii N. Rukavishnikov, Vasilii M.

2 38

80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98.

Notes to Pages 126–133 Bostandzhoglo, Savva I. Mamontov and his brothers (sons of Ivan Mamontov), and Nikolai D. Benardaki. The list of petitioners in the diary entry of Jan. 25, 1871, had included Aleksandr A. Abaza, an influential bureaucrat in St. Petersburg. By May, Abaza had been replaced by his late wife’s brother, Benardaki, the son of a Greek fish merchant and liquor-tax concessionaire from Taganrog. The charter lacked the names of several other petitioners: the tea merchants Petr Botkin’s sons and the textile manufacturers Pavel and Sergei Tretiakov, Kozma Soldatenkov, and Sergei I. Sazikov. They were replaced by Bostandzhoglo, the Mamontov brothers, and Benardaki. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 4, 299–305, examined the debate within the tsarist bureaucracy and, vol. 4, 326–330, reprinted the complex terms of the sale approved by the Ministry of Transport on Apr. 7, 1871. On the notion that the sale of the Moscow-Kursk line represented a consolation prize for the Muscovites following the emperor’s rejection of the petition to purchase the Nicholas Railroad, especially after the Ministry of Finance had awarded the charter for the construction of the Smolensk Railroad to Abram M. Varshavskii, a Polish Jew, instead of the Moscow men led by Chizhov, see Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 99. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 4, 299. Diary, May 21, 1871. Diary, Apr. 10, 1871. Cherokov, Chizhov, 41. Diary, June 28, 1877, reiterated the terms of the original partnership. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 311; financial details of four railroad sales, 309–312. On the value of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, PSZ 2–49634, Art. 4; on amounts of interest and amortization payments, Art. 9. PSZ 2–49634, Art. 17. Diary, Sept. 24, 1871. Diary, Oct. 20, 1871. Diary, Dec. 12, 1871. Cherokov, Chizhov, 41–42. Diary, Oct. 31, 1870. Diary, Oct. 30, 1873. Diary, May 21, 1871 (quoted); Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 258 (quoted). Diary, Aug. 23, 1874. Diary, Jan. 31, 1875. Diary, Oct. 16, 1876. Diary, Dec. 3, 1876. On the Trinity Railroad as compared to a typical government line, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 112–113; quotations from 113. On the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, vol. 3, 306–308; on precise costs, 310; quotation from 306. In comparing state-built railroads to the Trinity Railroad, 113, Del’vig had used a similar formula (“sloppily, sumptuously, and slowly”) but with imperfect alliteration in Russian (durno, dorogo i medlenno). Diary, July 1, 1866.

Notes to Pages 133–141

239

99. Diary, Oct. 6, 1871 (quoted); Nov. 4 and Nov. 7, 1873. 100. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 311–312. 101. On 1872–1873, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 311–313; on 1874, Otchet pravleniia Obshchestva Moskovsko-Kurskoi zheleznoi dorogi za 1874 god (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1875), unpaginated section, Table 1 (income and expenses), and diary, Apr. 26, 1875. 102. Diary, Feb. 21, 1876; May 15, 1877; June 23, 1877, on reelection as director; Aug. 1, 1876, Aug. 2, 1876, and Oct. 21, 1876, on the appeal to Reutern for a loan; Sept. 22, 1877, on partial repayment of the loan. On the principal amount in pounds sterling, diary, May 21, 1877. 103. Diary, Aug. 28, 1877. 104. Kipp, “Russian Navy,” 125. Kipp called ROPIT the Black Sea Steamship and Navigation Company. See also Werner E. Mosse, “Russia and the Levant, 1856–1862: Grand Duke Constantine and the Russian Steam Navigation Company,” Journal of Modern History 24 (1954): 39–48. On the huge state subsidies to ROPIT, see Mosse, “Russia,” and Owen, Corporation, 36–37. 105. On the Volunteer Fleet, see its charter, PSZ 2–58585, dated May 30, 1878, and Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 94–95. 106. Charter of the White Sea Company, PSZ 2–33321, dated June 19, 1858; charter of the Northern Ocean Shipping Company, PSZ 2–51396, dated Oct. 14, 1872. Diary, Jan. 22, 1877 (quoted). The Murmansk Steamship Company, chartered on May 16, 1870 (PSZ 2–48369) with a basic capital of only 150,000 rubles, was founded by nine petty townspeople (meshchane) in Archangel. Diary, Dec. 15, 1873 (quoted). 107. Unsigned lead editorial, Moskva, Jan. 15, 1867, 1. 108. Diary, Nov. 1, 1873. 109. Diary, Dec. 3, 1876. 110. Diary, Nov. 1, 1873. 111. Diary, Oct. 31, 1873, on the proposal. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 71, described this document and quoted from it. 112. On potential investors, diary, Nov. 1, 1873; on his investment, Nov. 26, 1873. 113. Diary, Dec. 15, 1873. On Kachalov and the manager of the port, Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 53. 114. Diary, Dec. 15, 1873. 115. Morozov consented to host the meeting because Chizhov’s apartment could not accommodate the eight men who gathered to discuss the charter and sign it as founders: Chizhov; the merchants Morozov, Ivan Liamin, Aleksandr K. Krestovnikov, and Savva Mamontov; the mariner Vasilii Smolin; Chizhov’s friend Nikolai A. Lvov; and one Shmit, perhaps a mariner from Archangel. Diary, Dec. 19, 1873. 116. Diary, Sept. 15, 1874 (quoted); on climate, Dec. 3, 1874. 117. On the need for at least 50,000 rubles from the state, diary, Jan. 3, 1875. On the four projects, discussed by Vasilii Smolin and Nikolai Kachalov, and the estimated total of 800,000 rubles, Jan. 5, 1875; on the audience with Reutern, Jan. 12, 1875.

2 40

Notes to Pages 142–150

118. PSZ 2–54669. The title of this company—Tovarishchestvo Arkhangel’skoMurmanskogo srochnogo parokhodstva (literally, the Archangel and Murmansk Scheduled Steamship Company)—deserves mention because various sources specify it incorrectly. 119. Diary, May 24, 1875, on initial investments and planned expenses; on the 194,000 rubles, Sept. 7, 1875. On Jan. 10, 1875, Chizhov noted his own organizational expenditures, for which he was not reimbursed: 500 rubles to send Bykov to Archangel, 150 rubles to have the charter copied, and 250 rubles for travel to St. Petersburg, where he met with Reutern to obtain the state’s financial participation. 120. Letter to Vasilii D. Polenov, dated Aug. 31, 1875, quoted in Vasilii Dmitrievich Polenov, Elena Dmitrievna Polenova: khronika sem’i khudozhnikov, ed. Ekaterina V. Sakharova (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964), 192. 121. Diary, Mar. 25, 1876. 122. Diary, Aug. 12, 1876; Aug. 13, 1876 (quoted); on the cost of the repair, Nov. 14, 1876. 123. Diary, Nov. 14, 1876, on plan to receive 40,000 rubles from the Ministry of Finance, collateralized by 100,000 rubles’ worth of stock. 124. Diary, Dec. 22, 1876. 125. Diary, Feb. 14, 1877, on the plan for the petition to Reutern, worked out by Count Konstantin Litke and Chizhov; Feb. 15, 1877 (quoted) on Reutern’s agreement. 126. Diary, Mar. 24, 1877. 127. Diary, Apr. 10, 1877. 128. Diary, May 28, 1877. 129. Diary, July 12, 1874. 130. Diary, Apr. 5, 1874, on the disagreement between Bykov and Smolin and the problem of managing both shipping and fishing; June 17, 1874, on the personal shortcomings of both Smolin and Bykov. 131. Diary, Sept. 7, 1875, quoting Aleksei Polenov’s letter. 132. Diary, Nov. 6, 1875. 133. Diary, Nov. 8, 1875, on budget; Jan. 14, 1876, on Shelting’s grandiose plans; Aug. 13, 1876 (Litke quoted). 134. Diary, Nov. 14, 1876. On Vitt’s acceptance of the position after a meeting with Chizhov, diary, Nov. 22, 1876; July 5, 1877 (quoted).

Chapter 4: Chizhov’s Legacy Epigraph: Memorandum to the emperor dated May 13, 1866, in Die finanzielle Sanierung Rußlands nach der Katastrophe des Krimkriegs 1862 bis 1878 durch den Finanzminister Michael von Reutern, edited by Woldemar Reutern-Nolcken (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1914), 15. 1. Diary, Dec. 22, 1876. 2. Diary, Nov. 1, 1873.

Notes to Pages 151–154 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

241

Diary, Mar. 3, 1875. Aleksandr I. Koshelev, Zapiski (Berlin: B. Behr, 1884), 134. Diary, Oct. 22, 1855, and May 20, 1870. Diary, Jan. 13, 1874; Aug. 10, 1874; Aug. 11, 1874, on continued suffering; and Jan. 21, 1877 (quoted). Diary, Dec. 11, 1875. On the Moscow merchants’ support for Aksakov’s Slavic Benevolent Committee in the 1860s and 1870s, see Sergei A. Nikitin, Slavianskie komitety v Rossii v 1858–1876 godakh (Moscow: Universitet, 1960), 72–76, and Galina Ulianova, “Charitable Activities of Moscow Banks,” in Commerce in Russian Urban Culture, 1861–1914, ed. William Craft Brumfield, Boris V. Anan’ich, and Yuri A. Petrov (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), 60. On the crowds that flocked to the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society in 1875 but later berated Aksakov for the sad state of the Serbian military effort and the Committee’s failure to pay the volunteer officers, diary, July 30, 1876, and Jan. 12, 1877. On illness, diary, Sept. 16, 1875; on donations, Aug. 14, 1876. Diary, Aug. 29, 1877. Diary, May 3, 1875, on theory of history; Oct. 25, 1877, on the article in Vestnik Evropy. On silk in Tashkent, diary, Nov. 13, 1870. The charter of the Moscow and Tashkent Silk Company, headquartered in Moscow, appeared in PSZ 2– 49633, dated May 21, 1871. On its liquidation, diary, Nov. 26, 1875. On the success of the second edition of his book on silk cultivation, diary, Mar. 30, 1870. According to Inna Simonova, Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 117, the agricultural society awarded a medal to Chizhov for his book on silk. On the limited quantity and low quality of silk produced in Tripolie, diary, July 16 and 21, 1873. “Tripol’e,” Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, 82 vols. (St. Petersburg: Brokgauz i Efron, 1890–1904); Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 5 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1984), “Silk Industry,” vol. 4, 710 (quoted), 711. Arkadii Cherokov, Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov i ego sviazi s N. V. Gogolem (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1902), 42. On loans from the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society, Valerii I. Bovykin and Iurii A. Petrov, Kommercheskie banki Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Perspektiva, 1994), 277. Nikolai A. Naidenov, Vospominaniia o vidennom, slyshannom i ispytannom, 2 vols. (Moscow: Kushnerev, 1903–1905; reprinted Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1976), vol. 2, 100. On dividends in the late 1860s and balances in 1913, Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 193, 40; on loans and profits in 1880s and 1890s, 279– 281. On the proposed 2-million-ruble basic capital, Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 109. Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 40, 275 on data for 1914; 277 on Aksakov and Mamontov.

2 42

Notes to Pages 156–160

17. N. K. Shvabe, Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953):62. 18. Diary, Mar. 11, 1871 (quoted), and Nov. 28, 1871 (quoted); on Baranovskii and Shestakov, Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 62. 19. Diary, Mar. 3, 1875. The entry of Feb. 22, 1875, mentioned England as the terminus of the proposed seven-day transport system. 20. Diary, Dec. 22, 1873, on the Moscow circle railroad and May 18, 1874, and Dec. 15, 1875, on the northern route of the Siberian railroad. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 62, cited evidence from Chizhov’s archive on plans for the Siberian railroads and the steamship lines; on the other railroads, Shvabe, 69; on the short lines, diary, Oct. 11, 1877. 21. On financing of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Steven G. Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 111, 127–130. 22. Baron Anton Fränkel and the trading firm of Leon Rosenthal in St. Petersburg founded the Central Land Credit Bank, chartered on Apr. 6, 1873 (SURP 1873, no. 361). The charter of the Moscow Central Land Bank, dated June 27, 1873 (SURP 1873, no. 843), did not specify the names of the founders, and it had failed by 1874. On Chizhov’s role as a founding shareholder in the “bank of banks,” to be capitalized at 20 million rubles, diary, Oct. 20, 1871 (quoted), and Nov. 28, 1871. On the “bank of banks,” Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 62; on the railroad bank, Shvabe, 69. The ministry rejected the petition for the “bank of banks” in late 1872. A document in Chizhov’s archive gave the full name of the proposed bank in Russian, fully twenty words long, including all three Russian words for “corporation,” indistinguishable in English. Vladimir Ia. Laverychev, Krupnaia burzhuaziia v poreformennoi Rossii (1861–1900 gg.) (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), 43. On the decree of May 31, 1872, and its consequences, see Thomas C. Owen, The Corporation under Russian Law, 1800–1917: A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 108–109. 23. Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 56, quoting a letter from Chizhov to Countess Bludova in 1857. On the documents written in 1859, RGB-OR f. 332.80.32 and 332.82.36. 24. Ten-page lithographed plan on offices to be established in Paris and London, RGB-OR f. 332.78.45, 1867; on proposed bank in Tripolie, diary, July 17, 1876; on the short lines, diary, Oct. 11, 1877. 25. Diary, Oct. 27, 1871, in a discussion of the “bank of banks.” 26. See the corporate charter, PSZ 3–01017, dated July 16, 1882. Bovykin and Petrov, Kommercheskie banki, 201, specified the year of this company’s creation as 1902. 27. M. C. Kaser, “Russian Entrepreneurship,” The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 7: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour, and Enterprise, part 2: The United States, Japan, and Russia, ed. Peter Mathias and M. M. Postan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 453. 28. Diary, Nov. 29, 1871.

Notes to Pages 160–169

243

29. Letter dated Nov. 10, 1862, RGB-OR f. 332, 22.33, l. 1. 30. Baron Andrei I. Del’vig, Moi vospominaniia, 4 vols. (Moscow: Rumiantsev Museum, 1912–1913), vol. 3, 6–7. The charter was confirmed on July 19, 1858. 31. Cherokov, Chizhov, 39. 32. Diary, Dec. 4, 1874. 33. Diary, Oct. 8, 1875 (quoted), Jan. 10, 1876 (quoted). 34. On salaries, diary, Aug. 10, 1871; on Mamontov, May 14, 1872 (quoted); on Rerberg, May 14, 1872; on Rerberg and Bernatskii, May 23, 1877 (quoted); on the argument over spending priorities, Nov. 4, 1873. 35. Diary, Aug. 26, 1874. 36. Diary, Jan. 3, 1876. 37. Diary, Nov. 25, 1876, on reduced rent; Mar. 4, 1876, on Morozov (quoted); Oct. 16, 1876, on Rukavishnikov (quoted); Oct. 21, 1876 (quoted). 38. On the investment, diary, Nov. 26, 1873; on Morozov’s insistence that Chizhov chair the meeting, Mar. 19, 1874; on the sign of the cross, Oct. 21, 1871 (quoted). 39. Diary, Dec. 19, 1873 (quoted), and May 3, 1874 (quoted). 40. Diary, Oct. 8, 1875; Jan. 15, 1876 (quoted). 41. Diary, Feb. 26, 1875. 42. Diary, Nov. 21, 1875. 43. Diary, May 14, 1872. 44. Letter to Vasilii Polenov dated Mar. 5, 1875, held in the archive of the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow and reprinted in Vasilii Dmitrievich Polenov, Elena Dmitrievna Polenova: khronika sem’i khudozhnikov, ed. Ekaterina V. Sakharova (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964), 164. 45. Letter dated Sep. 12, 1872, held in Chizhov’s archive, RGB-OR f 332.38.22, and quoted in Stuart R. Grover, “Savva Mamontov and the Mamontov Circle, 1870–1905: Art Patronage and the Rise of Nationalism in Russian Art” Ph. D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971, 40. 46. Letter from Savva Mamontov to Vasilii Polenov, dated Feb. 22/Mar. 6, 1874, cited in Sakharova, ed., Polenov, 117 (quoted); Chizhov, diary, May 18, 1874 (quoted). On Pavlov’s laziness, diary, May 14, 1872. 47. Diary, Mar. 16, 1875 (quoted). On Lamanskii’s claim, related to Aleksei S. Suvorin, Dnevnik Alekseia Sergeevicha Suvorina, ed. O. E. Makarova and Donald Rayfield (London: Garnett, 1999), 108, diary entry dated Mar. 18, 1893. 48. Diary, Apr. 30, 1875. 49. “Russkii chelovek,” Russkoe slovo, May 22/June 4, 1914, 4. 50. Vladimir I. Lamanskii, quoted in Suvorin, Dnevnik, 108, entry dated Mar. 18, 1893. 51. Diary, Dec. 14, 1874 (quoted); Dec. 15, 1875 (quoted); Dec. 14, 1876 (quoted). 52. Diary, May 21 and June 16, 1875. 53. Diary, Sept. 18, 1872 (quoted). Chizhov first quoted from the Sbornik posmertnykh statei A. I. Gertsena (Geneva: L. Chernetskii, 1870) on Feb. 26, 1871.

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Notes to Pages 170–177

54. Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812–1855 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 326–327. 55. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 11 (quoted); diary, Mar. 12, 1874 (quoted), and Sept. 20, 1875 (quoted). 56. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 48. 57. Diary, Apr. 2, 1875. 58. Diary, Nov. 14, 1876. 59. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 400, 393. 60. Diary, May 18, 1874. 61. On the efforts of Transport Minister Posiet to grant the concession to Chizhov or his nominees, and, following his refusal to act as founder, Posiet’s technically illegal actions to prevent the concession from going to a Jew, see Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 4, 447, and Chizhov, diary, July 21, 1875, July 31, 1875, and Nov. 6, 1875. On the two auctions arranged by Posiet and the public controversy that ensued after Savva Mamontov won the concession, Del’vig, 452–463. 62. Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 388–391; quotation from 391. On the railroad and banking careers of Samuil S. Poliakov and his brother Lazar, see also Boris V. Anan’ich, Bankirskie doma v Rossii, 1861–1914 gg. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991), ch. 4 (72–110), and the works cited therein. On the death of Samuil Poliakov in April 1888, Anan’ich, 72; on his reputation for using substandard materials in railroad construction, 74. In the opinion of Sergei Witte, a future minister of finance who was then a railroad manager, excessive speed caused the crash after the bureaucrats who traveled with the emperor ignored Witte’s warnings that an accident might happen. See The Memoirs of Count Witte, translated and edited by Sidney Harcave (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 93–95. 63. Diary, Jan. 15, 1876. 64. Diary, Apr. 10, 1874; Dec. 13, 1874 (quoted). On other episodes of cooperation between the Moscow merchants and General Cherniaev, including the volunteer army in the Balkans just prior to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, see Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 154–158; Thomas C. Owen, Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 57, 91–94, 125. 65. Diary, Mar. 24, 1875 (quoted). 66. Finansovoe polozhenie russkikh obshchestv zheleznykh dorog k 1 ianvaria 1880 goda, 2 parts (St. Petersburg: Shtab voisk gvardii, 1881), part 1, 3 (quoted), unpaginated tables. On Putilov’s unsuccessful railroad, Jonathan A. Grant, Big Business in Russia: The Putilov Company in Late Imperial Russia, 1868–1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 32, and Finansovoe polozhenie, part 1, 8. 67. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 43–44. 68. Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 157 (quoted), 224 (quoted).

Notes to Pages 178–184

245

69. As an “ideal type,” the military-autocratic mode of rule and legitimation of power differs from the three modes of political rule and legitimacy—the traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal—analyzed by Max Weber in his famous discussion of politics as a vocation. For an extended discussion of the term and its justification in analyzing the era of the Great Reforms, see Thomas C. Owen, “Entrepreneurship, Government, and Society in Russia,” in Reinterpreting Russia, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (London: Arnold, 1999), 108–117. 70. “Poor Russia: Environment and Government in the Long-Run Economic History of Russia,” in Reinterpreting Russia, 99. 71. The emperor’s response, in a meeting of the Council of Ministers, to the suggestion of General Konstantin V. Chevkin, head of the transport agency, quoted in the diary of Minister of Internal Affairs Petr A. Valuev, Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, ministra vnutrennikh del, 2 vols., ed. P. A. Zaionchkovskii (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1961), vol. 1, 99, entry of Apr. 13, 1861; his statement on the dangers of constitutionalism, quoted in Valuev, Dnevnik, vol. 1, 181, entry of June 29, 1862 (expressed and recorded in French); and his remark in 1863, shortly after the suppression of the Polish rebellion, quoted in Larissa Zakharova, “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861–1874 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development,” trans. Daniel Field, in Russia’s Great Reforms, ed. Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 35, with Zakharova’s assessment (quoted). 72. On impediments to the introduction of capitalist enterprise in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union based on Weber’s “ideal type” of rational-legal norms, see Thomas C. Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism from Peter the Great to Perestroika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), esp. ch. 1. 73. Diary, Dec. 22, 1871. 74. Diary, Oct. 30, 1873. 75. Diary, May 11, 1874. On Abaza’s speculation, see Anan’ich, Bankirskie doma, 9–11, and Witte, Memoirs, 111–115. 76. Diary, Jan. 25, 1871. 77. Diary, May 21, 1871 (quoted); Dec. 19, 1871 (quoted); long quotation from diary, Feb. 27, 1872; July 20, 1874 (quoted). 78. Diary, July 20, 1874 (quoted); on Posiet’s inability to quell dishonesty in railroads, Nov. 6, 1875; on preparations for war, Oct. 22, 1876 (quoted); on Posiet’s lack of technical knowledge, Nov. 1, 1876 (quoted). 79. On Posiet’s alleged ignorance of railroad management, his hostility to corporate railroads, and his opposition to political reform, see Marks, Road to Power, 69–73. 80. Quoted in Leonid E. Shepelev, Tsarizm i burzhuaziia vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka: problemy torgovo-promyshlennoi politiki (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 54–55. Shepelev, 53, identified Chizhov as “the probable author” of this document, the first draft of which is in his archive, RGB-OR f. 332.78.29. Prince Vladimir Cherkasskii apparently helped Chizhov to write this appeal. On the rejection of this petition by the Finance Committee and the emperor,

2 46

81.

82. 83. 84. 85.

86. 87. 88.

89. 90.

91. 92. 93.

Notes to Pages 185–190 Shepelev, 56–57. Shepelev, an archivist and historian, is the leading Russian expert on the archives of the tsarist Ministry of Finance and relations between the state and the commercial-industrial elite before 1917. Chizhov, Pis’ma o shelkovodstve, 2nd ed. (Moscow: A. I. Mamontov, 1870), 340, 352–353. The date of composition of this passage is difficult to ascertain. He congratulated himself in his diary on Dec. 29, 1857/Jan. 10, 1858, for having completed a long “article” on silk cultivation, the calculation of its benefits, and ways to expand its cultivation. Whether he published this article separately is not clear, but these themes appeared in chapters 18–21 in the second edition of his book, published at last in 1870. Because the quoted passages appeared in the middle and at the end of ch. 21, they may have been composed in 1857. Shepelev, Tsarizm, 55, cited the editorial in Vestnik promyshlennosti in 1861. Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 108–111, 194. Diary, Nov. 4, 1870. Owen, Capitalism and Politics, 68, on the creation of the CTM, and 70, quoting Reutern’s address to the Moscow merchants, cited in the jubilee history of the Moscow Exchange, edited by Nikolai A. Naidenov. On Naidenov’s opposition to the conference and his satisfaction with the appointed nature of the CTM, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 147 (quoted) and 153, respectively. Diary, Dec. 22, 1876. Diary, Dec. 5, 1876. Moskvich, Feb. 13, 1868, welcomed the creation of the society, chartered on Nov. 17, 1867. On the attitude of Chizhov and the Moscow merchants toward the society, see Thomas C. Owen, “The Russian Industrial Society and Tsarist Industrial Policy, 1867–1905,” Journal of Economic History 45, no. 3 (Sept. 1985): 594. Shipov christened the organization Obshchestvo dlia sodeistviia russkoi promyshlennosti i torgovle, literally, “the Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Trade.” Following Reginald E. Zelnik, American historians employ a more concise name: Russian Industrial Society. Expressions of admiration for Aleksandr Shipov and the RIS, diary, Nov. 11, 1870, and Mar. 11, 1871. On the dream of a commercial-industrial organization in Moscow, diary, Mar. 11, 1870 (quoted). Diary, Oct. 23, 1874. Chizhov called this organization “the society for the promotion of industry” (Obshchestvo pooshchreniia promyshlennosti). Diary, Feb. 7, 1874, on the Russian Banking Association (quoted). Naidenov, Vospominaniia, vol. 2, 126–127, commented on the weakness of the banking association, noting that it “expired” several years after its first meeting in the fall of 1873. Diary, Dec. 3, 1876. Diary, Feb. 27, 1872. Diary, May 11, 1874, on “idiotism”; on the education of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, Dec. 21, 1874; on his obnoxious behavior, Del’vig, Vospominaniia, vol. 3, 392–393; on the theft of diamonds, related to Chizhov by his friend Arkadii O. Rosset, diary, Apr. 25, 1874; on rumors of sexual im-

Notes to Pages 190–197

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

102. 103.

104.

105.

106.

247

morality on the part of relatives of the emperor, Dec. 22, 1876. Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich appeared in the older historical literature as a proponent of technological progress, not only in the Russian navy but also in the economy at large, as exemplified by his admiral’s rank and sponsorship of the ROPIT steamship company. For recent assessments of the poor economic performance of ROPIT, see Owen, Corporation, 36–37, and Jacob W. Kipp, “The Russian Navy and the Problem of Technological Transfer,” in Russia’s Great Reforms, 125. Diary, Feb. 27, 1872, on the costume ball (quoted); on the imperial train, Sept. 11, 1874 (quoted); on the princess, Mar. 24, 1875. Diary, Oct. 7, 1876. Diary, Aug. 26, 1874. Diary, Dec. 11, 1874. Diary, Mar. 28, 1875. Diary, Feb. 4, 1875. Diary, Jan. 31/Feb. 12, 1858, and Dec. 11/23, 1857. The entire exchange finally appeared in print in Russkoe obozrenie, 1897, no. 6, 520–524, and in Zhizn’ i trudy M. P. Pogodina, 22 vols., ed. Nikolai P. Barsukov ( St. Petersburg: A. D. and P. D. Pogodin [vols. 1–9] and A. I. Mamontov [vols. 10–22], 1888–1910), vol. 19, 422–428, except that Barsukov deleted Chizhov’s long defense of the editorial policy of Vestnik promyshlennosti. Nikolai I. Tsimbaev, I. S. Aksakov v obshchestvennoi zhizni poreformennoi Rossii (Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 1978), 118, quoted briefly from Chizhov’s first letter to Golovnin. Chizhov’s diary contains no mention of this incident. Diary, Nov. 27, 1870. Chizhov, “O trudakh po istorii russkogo zakonodatel’stva,” Russkii arkhiv 1869, cols. 2045–2066. On the Ulozhenie, diary, Nov. 4, 1870 (quoted); on Paul I and Alexander I, Nov. 5, 1870; on delegates from Kostroma, Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 77; on private property, diary, July 3, 1874(quoted); on corporateconcessions, Apr. 16, 1875. Diary, Mar. 27, 1875 (quoted). Likewise, on June 20, 1877, in sympathy with Ukrainians, he complained that “Russian despotism” had “struck dead” the independence of South Russia. However, on Mar. 24, 1875, he ridiculed the notion that Ukraine could be a separate nation. He also opposed the elevation of Ukrainian to the status of a literary language. Quoted from Gogol’s eighth letter in Ruth Sobol, Gogol’s Forgotten Book: Selected Passages and Its Contemporary Readers (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981); on mercy, Sobol, 45, referring to the same letter. Quotations from the surveys of industry and trade in Russia, vol. 12, no. 4 (Apr. 1861), 21–22, and vol. 14, no. 12 (Dec. 1861), 95, cited in L. B. Genkin, “Obshchestvenno-politicheskaia programma russkoi burzhuazii v gody pervoi revoliutsionnoi situatsii (1859–1861 gg.) (po materialam zhurnala Vestnik promyshlennosti),” in Problemy sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii: sbornik statei, ed. L. M. Ivanov and others (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 115.

2 48

Notes to Pages 197–204

107. Chuprov, “Babst,” 471. 108. Babst, “Sovremennye nuzhdy nashego narodnogo khoziaistva,” Vestnik promyshlennosti 11, no. 3 (Mar. 1861), science section, 203–248; quotation from 248; on ignorance of bureaucrats, 240. Chizhov, diary, Aug. 25, 1871, on the scandal occasioned by Aksakov’s praise for “popular sovereignty,” by which he meant the ultimate source of power, not a republic or a commune or anarchy. In his diary, June 21, 1876, Chizhov commented favorably on the notion that power should be based ultimately on the will of the people, a principle upheld by the liberal French politician Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot, whose posthumous memoirs Chizhov was then reading. 109. Voltaire, quoted without reference in diary, Oct. 4, 1877. 110. Diary, Aug. 31, 1875 (quoted); Oct. 12, 1875 (quoted). 111. On Shchepkin and Chuprov, diary, Oct. 26, 1873 (quoted); on Iuzefovich, diary, Aug. 10, 1874 (quoted). 112. On constitutionalism, diary, Mar. 22, 1874; on Dostoevskii, Mar. 9, 1877 (quoted), and Apr. 6, 1877. 113. Diary, Apr. 7, 1875. 114. Diary, Aug. 29, 1877. 115. A Requiem for Karl Marx (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 122 (quoted); on the influence of romanticism, 175 (quoted). On Marx’s ignorance of the working class, Manuel, 125. 116. Diary, Mar. 24, 1875 (quoted); Oct. 1, 1875 (quoted). 117. This argument is developed in Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism, 137–150. 118. James P. Scanlon, “The Russian Idea from Dostoevskii to Ziuganov,” Problems of Post-Communism, July–Aug. 1996, 35–42. On Russification, Owen, Corporation, ch. 7, and Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).

Conclusion: The Death of Fedor Vasilievich Epigraph: “The Myth of Sisyphus,” in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, tr. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1955), 91. 1. Arkadii Cherokov, Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov i ego sviazi s N. V. Gogolem (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1902), 45; Ivan S. Aksakov, “Iz rechi o Fedore Vasil’eviche Chizhove,” Sochineniia I. S. Aksakova, 7 vols. (Moscow: M. G. Volchaninov, 1886–1887), vol. 7, 812. 2. On J. S. Mill, diary, Jan. 28, 1875; on Rigelman’s insight, Mar. 28, 1874; Feb. 2, 1875 (quoted); on retirement, July 13, 1876; on improving work habits, Jan. 4, 1877. 3. On Sverbeev, diary, Oct. 14; on Sverbeeva, Oct. 25; on Gorbov and Morozov, Nov. 2; on priest, Nov. 7; on Galagan, Nov. 12, 1877. 4. Diary, Nov. 14, 1877.

Notes to Pages 205–207

249

5. Aksakov, “Iz rechi,” 812, the final words of his eulogy. Aksakov called the fatal blow “an aneurism.” 6. On Repin’s pencil sketch and painting, Ilya Repin, ed. Maria Karpenko and others, tr. Sheila Marnie and Helen Clier (Leningrad: Aurora, 1985), 253– 254. In a letter to Vasilii Polenov dated Nov. 20, 1877, Levitskii stated that Chizhov had died of a painless heart attack. Levitskii also described the burial. Vasilii Dmitrievich Polenov, Elena Dmitrievna Polenova: khronika sem’i khudozhnikov, ed. Ekaterina V. Sakharova (Moscow: Isskustvo, 1964), 257–258 (quoted). 7. Cherokov, Chizhov, 49. On donation in 1903, Galina Ulianova, “Charitable Activities of Moscow Banks,” in Commerce in Russian Urban Culture, 1861– 1914, ed. William Craft Brumfield, Boris V. Anan’ich, and Yuri A. Petrov (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), 61. On Mendeleev, see the Soviet edition of his essays on economic themes, Problemy ekonomicheskogo razvitiia Rossii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1960); the doctoral dissertations of Beverly Almgren (Brown University, 1968) and Francis M. Stackenwalt (University of Illinois, 1976); and Vincent Barnett, “Catalysing Growth? Mendeleev and the 1891 Tariff,” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 22-A (2004): 123–144. On Bulgakov, Bernice Rosenthal, “The Search for a Russian Orthodox Work Ethic,” in Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel W. Kassow, and James L. West (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 57–74. On the Riabushinskii brothers, James L. West, “The Riabushinskii Circle: Burzhuaziia and Obshchestvennost’ in Late Imperial Russia,” in Between Tsar and People, 41–56; Thomas C. Owen, Russian Corporate Capitalism from Peter the Great to Perestroika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 134–138; and Iurii A. Petrov, Dinastiia Riabushinskikh (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1997), ch. 2. Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 476 (quoted). 8. On documents for the biography of Ivanov, diary, Jan. 12, 1874; on materials for the life of Iazykov, see Mark K. Azadovskii, “Sud’ba literaturnogo nasledstva N. M. Iazykova,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo 19–21 (1935), 367. On Chizhov’s use of Iazykov’s letters, diary, Mar. 22, 1857, and N. K. Shvabe, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953): 64. On the planned book on Kiev, diary, July 26, 1855. On Vladimir Lamanskii, Russkie pisateli 1800–1917, 5 vols. (Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1992–), vol. 3 (1994), 283– 285, with copious documentation of his many articles and explicit references to the works of Chizhov, Danilevskii, and other Pan-Slavists. 9. On Shekhtel’s brilliant facade, see William Craft Brumfield, The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 153–157. 10. Evgenii R. Arenzon, Savva Mamontov (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1995), 43.

2 50

Notes to Pages 207–211

11. Stuart R. Grover, “Savva Mamontov and the Mamontov Circle, 1870–1905: Art Patronage and the Rise of Nationalism in Russian Art” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971), 38. 12. On the Delvig School and on the administrative shortcomings of “Charokov,” its principal, whom Chizhov considered “too weak” (zu schwach), diary, Nov. 29, 1871. On Cherokov’s incompetence as a teacher of arithmetic, June 22, 1876; on students, Sept. 3, 1875. On the school’s new building in 1872 and the 20,000 rubles from the profits of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad that funded it, see Del’vig, Vospominaniia, 4, 343. 13. Cherokov, Chizhov, 43–44; on the estimate, Cherokov, 5. Charter of the Chizhov schools, PSZ 3–6824, dated May 14, 1890; exclusion of Jews specified in Art. 9. The teaching maternity hospital, funded by a donation in Chizhov’s will, was opened by the Kostroma District Zemstvo in 1902. A. A. Liberman, “Kratkaia biografiia Fedora Vasil’evicha Chizhova,” in Obshchestvo byvshikh uchenikov Kostromskogo khimiko-tekhnicheskogo uchilishcha imeni F. V. Chizhov, Sbornik v pamiat’ stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia Fedora Vasil’evicha Chizhova (Kostroma: Gubernskaia tipografiia, 1911), 58. On the various names of the school, including the current one, G. M. Vladimirov, Kostromskoi energeticheskii tekhnikum im. F. V. Chizhova: stranitsy istorii (Kostroma: KVVKUKhZ, 1994). 14. On the Fedor Chizhov, Inna Simonova, Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), 292, 294. 15. On the fate of the Danilov Monastery in the Soviet period, Anatolii Feoktistov, Russkie monastyri: tsentral’naia chast’ Rossii (Moscow: Ocharovannyi strannik, 1995), 38. On the disposition of the bells of the Danilov Monastery, Ia. E. Brodskii, Moskva ot a do ia: pamiatniki istorii, zodchestva, skul’ptury (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1994), 67. For additional information on this cemetery, including the names of other prominent persons buried there before 1917, see Sebastien Kempgen, Die Kirchen und Klöster Moskaus (Munich: Otto Sagner, 1994), 416, who confirmed the destruction of the cemetery. On the bells at Harvard, see Mason Hammond, “The History of the Lowell House Bells,” http://lowell.student.harvard.edu, and the Danilov Monastery Web site: www.saintdaniel.ru/eng/bells. On Thomas Whittemore, Concise Dictionary of American Biography, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), 1162, a reference kindly supplied by Peter Gatrell. 16. Notice on the RGB Web site, provided by Angela Cannon of the Slavic Reference Service in Urbana. 17. In diary, Feb. 4, 1876, Chizhov noted a rumor that he was ridiculed in the poem as “a former professor” and friend of Aleksandr Herzen who had become a stock-exchange speculator. The diary contains no further mention of Nekrasov’s poem. Soviet scholars have identified Ivan Babst as one Moscow professor attacked in the poem for allegedly unethical conduct in business. Whether Nekrasov meant to include Chizhov among the scoundrels of Russian capitalism remains an intriguing question. Nikolai A.

Notes to Pages 211–213

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

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Nekrasov, “Sovremenniki,” part 2, lines 775–807, Sobranie sochinenii, 8 vols. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1966–1967), vol. 8, 282–283, and commentary. Aleksandr I. Fenin, Coal and Politics in Late Imperial Russia: Memoirs of a Russian Mining Engineer, ed. Susan P. McCaffray (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990), 114. Marina I. Tsvetaeva, “Zavodskie” and “Khvala bogatym,” in Stikhotvoreniia i poemy v piati tomakh, 5 vols., ed. Alexander Sumerkin (New York: Russica, 1983), vol. 3, 36–39 and 40–41. Eiichi Shibusawa, The Autobiography of Shibusawa Eiichi: From Peasant to Entrepreneur, ed. Teruko Craig (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1994); William D. Hoover, “Shibusawa Eiichi: The Businessman as Public Figure,” Journal of Japanese Trade and Industry, Mar.–Apr. 2002, 32–35; quotation from 33. See also www.shibusawa.or.jp/english/. On Japanese exports, G. C. Allen, “The Industrialization of the Far East,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2nd ed., 8 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963–1989), vol. 6, part 2 (1965), 875–923, esp. 876–883 on raw silk exports and 878 on low import tariffs before 1899. On Japanese economic nationalism, see Robert J. Samuels, “Rich Nation, Strong Army”: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). Quotation from Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism, 333.

Bibliographical Essay

Two abbreviated references appear in the notes: PSZ and SURP. Laws of the Russian Empire are arranged in chronological order in Polnoe sobranie zakonov (Complete Collection of Laws: PSZ), published in three series: for 1649–1825, 45 vols. (1839–1843); for 1825–1881, 55 vols. (1830–1844); and for 1881–1913, 33 vols. (1882–1916). The supplement to the PSZ, entitled Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva (Collection of Statutes and Decrees of the Government: SURP) was published annually from 1863 to 1917. Chizhov’s unpublished diary served as the major source of this study. The twenty-six notebooks of varying length, containing a total of 3,952 pages, fill the first four files in his archive: f. 332 in the Manuscript Division of the Russian State Library (RGB-OR), formerly the State Lenin Library (GBL-OR) in Moscow. A microfilm copy of the diary is held at the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana. Shortly after the death of Joseph Stalin, an archivist at GBL-OR published a survey of the archive: N. K. Shvabe, “Arkhiv F. V. Chizhova,” Gosudarstvenaia biblioteka SSSR imen V. I. Lenina, Zapiski otdela rukopisei 15 (1953): 43–77. Shvabe estimated that it contains 20,000 pages of letters, including, for example, 570 letters from Baron Andrei I. Delvig, 108 from Dmitrii P. Shipov, 26 from Aleksandr P. Shipov, and a total of 29 from Konstantin Litke, Vasilii Smolin, Nikolai Kachalov, Aleksei D. Polenov, and others involved in Chizhov’s project to exploit economic opportunities in the Far North. 253

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The archive also contains rich materials for the study of Chizhov’s intellectual development, including 105 letters from Vladimir S. Pecherin to Chizhov and 53 letters from Pecherin to members of his own family, donated to Chizhov by a relative. Although she clearly knew the contents of the archive well, Shvabe kept silent about Ekaterina V. Markovich’s letters to Chizhov. In his memoir (vol. 4, 111), Baron Andrei I. Delvig claimed that Count Aleksei A. Bobrinskii returned to Chizhov his many letters to the count and countess in the 1840s after her death. If so, they are probably held in RGB-OR f. 332. No edition of Chizhov’s collected works exists, nor an anthology, nor a bibliography of his many articles and several books. The secondary literature refers vaguely to his publications in the 1830s and 1840s on mathematics, literature, and art. According to Shvabe, “Arkhiv,” 75, the archive contains surprisingly few materials relating to them, mostly “short sketches and extracts.” Shvabe implied that he destroyed first drafts and page proofs of his many publications. The diary provides some references to Chizhov’s publications as well as occasional outlines and rough drafts of articles. As the editor of Vestnik promyshlennosti and Aktsioner and of the economic section of Ivan Aksakov’s newspapers Den’, Moskva, and Moskvich, Chizhov published dozens of articles, generally unsigned. A major effort is needed to differentiate Chizhov’s articles from those of other economists and industrialists with whom he worked closely on these publications, especially Ivan K. Babst, the co-editor of Vestnik promyshlennosti in 1860–1861 and of Aktsioner in 1860–1862. “Vospominaniia F. V. Chizhova,” ed. V. I. Lamanskii, Istoricheskii vestnik, Feb. 1883, no. 1: 241–262, is not precisely a memoir, but Chizhov’s statement to the Third Section while under arrest in May 1847. A full analysis of this remarkable document and its implications for Russian intellectual history has yet to be undertaken. In a diary entry on June 6/18, 1847, Chizhov noted that Dubelt, his inquisitor, had posed thirteen questions. The editor of Istoricheskii vestnik, who heard Chizhov describe his adventure “at the end of the 1850s” (242), surmised that the document printed in 1883 constituted the rough draft of Chizhov’s answers. That may be the case, as it contains answers to only seven questions following Chizhov’s long account of his travels in Europe. Chizhov’s secretary, Arkadii Cherokov (Chizhov, 22), likewise specified thirteen questions, presumably having heard Chizhov tell

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the story of his arrest and interrogation many times. On July 23, 1875, Grigorii Galagan’s wife urged Chizhov to commit his memory of these events to paper. He began doing so in his diary in July 1877. This version, written more than thirty years after the events described, probably contained exaggerations and omissions. Indeed, in a diary entry on Apr. 18, 1875, he admitted that when he told the story he added “an embellishment of reality.” Ivan Aksakov’s eulogy, “Iz rechi o Fedore Vasil’eviche Chizhove,” Sochineniia I. S. Aksakova, 7 vols. (Moscow: M. G. Volchaninov, 1886– 1887), vol. 7, 800–813, delivered on Dec. 18, 1877, gives useful insights into the Slavophile ideals of both men. Primary sources on Chizhov’s life and career include the diary of Aleksandr Nikitenko, the letters of Ivan Aksakov, the diary of Grigorii Galagan, and Chizhov’s published correspondence with Aleksandr Ivanov, Nikolai Gogol, Nikolai Iazykov, and others, cited in Chapter 1, and the memoirs of Baron Andrei Delvig, Aleksandr Koshelev, and Nikolai Naidenov and letters of Vasilii Polenov, Savva Mamontov, and other prominent figures in Russian artistic circles, cited in Chapters 3 and 4 and the Conclusion. The few secondary works on Chizhov’s life and career vary in quality. The authors of two jubilee biographies adopted a stance of uncritical adoration in an effort to remedy the decades of historical neglect that began in 1877. A quarter-century after Chizhov’s death, one of his employees presented rare insights into Chizhov’s character and motivations: Arkadii Cherokov, Fedor Vasil’evich Chizhov i ego sviazi s N. V. Gogolem: biograficheskii ocherk po povodu 25-i godovshchiny smerti ego, s portretom pokoinogo (Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev, 1902). Unfortunately, Cherokov committed some factual errors, especially in chronology. To mark the centennial of Chizhov’s birth, former students at the Chizhov school in Kostroma published a book of essays: Obshchestvo byvshikh uchenikov Kostromskogo khimko-tekhnicheskogo uchilishcha imeni F. V. Chizhova, Sbornik v pamiat’ stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia Fedora Vasil’evicha Chizhova (Kostroma: Gubernskaia tipografiia, 1911). Besides material on the schools endowed by Chizhov, this volume contained a tribute to Chizhov written in 1905 by a teacher at the school, A. A. Liberman, “Kratkaia biografiia Fedora Vasil’evicha Chizhov,” 5–58. Sketches of Chizhov’s life include Vadim Mozdalevskii, “Chizhov, Fedor Vasil’evich,” in Russkii bigraficheskii slovar’, vol. 24 (1905), and David MacKenzie’s entry on Chizhov in The Modern Encyclopedia of

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Russian and Soviet History, vol. 7 (1978). Accounts of Chizhov’s business career appeared in William L. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); in my Capitalism and Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and in Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), chs. 3–4. Inna A. Simonova presented the first systematic analysis of Chizhov’s ideas in her candidate’s dissertation (Moscow State University, 1986). She then published several articles about Chizhov and his friend Vladimir Pecherin, one of which appeared in English translation: “‘A Man of Strong Character and an Active Heart,’” Russian Studies in History 35, no. 1 (Summer 1996): 62–70. (This title reiterated the final phrase of Ivan Aksakov’s eulogy of Chizhov in November 1877.) After the manuscript of this study was submitted to Harvard University Press, Simonova published Fedor Chizhov (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2002), more than half of which is devoted to Chizhov’s life, intellectual development, and literary activities. Thirteen of her thirty-three short chapters examine his strategy of economic nationalism, his business career, and his initiatives in technical education, topics analyzed in three of the four chapters of my study. Our books thus complement one another. In revising my manuscript for publication, I have relied on Simonova’s book for some useful facts, duly documented in the notes, without modifying my interpretation of Chizhov’s achievements and failures. A full account of Chizhov’s life cannot be written until the letters sent to him by his many friends and business associates are collated with the hundreds of letters sent by him and now held in other archives. The effects of his journalistic campaign for Russian economic nationalism and his example of enlightened entrepreneurship on the financial, industrial, and transport institutions of the empire, both governmental and corporate, remain to be ascertained with precision. A thorough examination of the surviving records of his various business enterprises is also necessary. This book and Simonova’s biography must therefore be considered preliminary assessments of Chizhov’s life and career. In an effort to place facts drawn from Chizhov’s published and unpublished works in their historical context, I have made use of the

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vast secondary literature on nineteenth-century Russian history. My many debts to other scholars are made clear in the citations of secondary works in every chapter. For the benefit of English-speaking readers who wish to explore the subject further, the following list of suggested readings refers to recent scholarship on Russian economic and business history. The various specialized monographs contain copious references to the literature on Russian economic history. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 2nd ed., 8 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963–1989) presents an admirable synthesis of historical scholarship on Russian economic history by Alexander Gerschenkron (agriculture and economic development) and Roger Portal (industrialization) in vol. 6 (1965) and Michael C. Kaser (entrepreneurship) in vol. 7 (1978). Supplements to the older literature include Arcadius Kahan, Russian Economic History: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Roger Weiss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Paul R. Gregory, Before Command: An Economic History of Russia from Emancipation to the First Five-Year Plan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Peter Gatrell, Government, Industry, and Rearmament in Russia: The Last Argument of Tsarism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Gatrell, “Poor Russia: Environment and Government in the Long-Run Economic History of Russia,” in Reinterpreting Russia, ed. Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (London: Arnold, 1999), 89–106. Entrepreneurship in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Gregory Guroff and Fred V. Carstensen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), contains articles on the tsarist period by William Blackwell, Samuel H. Baron, John A. Armstrong, Arcadius Kahan, Boris V. Anan’ich, Carstensen, Ruth A. Roosa, and myself. On the numerical weakness and correspondingly small political and cultural role of the commercial-industrial and professional groups in Russian society before 1900, see Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Scribner, 1974) and Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), containing articles on the business elite by West and myself. Of the few scholarly analyses of corporations in English, most deal with European businesses operating in the Russian Empire. John P. McKay Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrial-

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ization, 1885–1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970) is an excellent general account based largely on the archival records of French banks that financed mining and metallurgy in Russia. Robert Tolf, The Russian Rockefellers: The Saga of the Nobel Family and the Russian Oil Industry (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976) and Fred V. Carstensen, American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Studies of Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984) are meticulous case studies. Three major corporations attracted the attention of Western historians: Werner E. Mosse, “Russia and the Levant, 1856–1862: Grand Duke Constantine and the Russian Steam Navigation Company,” Journal of Modern History 24 (1954): 39–48; Alfred J. Rieber, “The Formation of La Grande Société des Chemins de Fer Russes,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 21, no. 3 (Sept. 1973): 375–391; and Jonathan A. Grant, Big Business in Russia: The Putilov Company in Late Imperial Russia, 1868–1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999). Charles A. Ruud, Russian Entrepreneur: Publisher Ivan Sytin of Moscow, 1851–1934 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990) chronicled the successful career of a publisher from peasant origins. The Soviet literature on Russian corporations presented generally hostile and poorly documented accounts, though some scholars, notably Iosif F. Gindin, Leonid E. Shepelev, Valerii I. Bovykin, Vladimir Ia. Laverychev, and Boris V. Anan’ich, unearthed a wealth of information from the archives and produced valuable monographic studies, especially on syndicates and monopolies, within the ideological constraints of Marxism-Leninism. On several trading firms (noncorporate enterprises) that wielded enormous influence, Boris V. Anan’ich, Bankirskie doma v Rossii, 1861–1914 gg. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1991) marked the emergence of first-rate empirical accounts in the post-Soviet period. Valerii I. Bovykin and Iurii A. Petrov, Kommercheskie banki Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow: Perspektiva, 1994), on the major banks in the Russian Empire, includes numerous photographs. Each major corporation and bank in imperial Russia deserves a separate analysis. To date, only two banks have been examined in detail. See S. K. Lebedev, Sankt-Peterburgskii mezhdunarodnyi kommercheskii bank vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka: Evropeiskie i russkie sviazi (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003), on the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank, and Zbigniew Landau and Jerzy Tomaszewski, Bank Handlowy w Warszawie S.A.: historia i rozwój,

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1870–1970 (Warsaw, n.p., 1970), on the Bank of Trade in Warsaw, from the tsarist to the post-Stalin era. Chizhov’s merchant allies in the campaign for Russian economic nationalism have attracted little attention from historians. On Vasilii Kokorev, see Paula Lieberman, “V.ºA. Kokorev: An Industrial Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century Russia” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1982). On the career of Savva Mamontov as an entrepreneur and patron of culture, see Stuart R. Grover, “Savva Mamontov and the Mamontov Circle, 1870–1905: Art Patronage and the Rise of Nationalism in Russian Art” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971); Aleksandr N. Bokhanov, “Savva Mamontov,” Voprosy istorii, 1990, no. 11 (Nov.): 48–67; and Evgenii R. Arenzon, Savva Mamontov (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 1995). David MacKenzie, The Lion of Tashkent: The Career of General M. G. Cherniaev (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974), presents a vivid account of Russian Pan-Slavism and the role of the Moscow merchants in it. The literature on Russian economic policy is vast. For accounts of the policies of Finance Minister Reutern in English, see Oliver S. Hayward, “Official Russian Policies concerning Industrialization during the Finance Ministry of M. Kh. Reutern, 1862–1878” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1973), and Valerii L. Stepanov, “Mikhail Khristoforovich Reitern,” Russian Studies in History 35, no. 2 (Fall 1996). Few historians have investigated the business organizations, called trade associations in the United States, which sought to promote the interests of business leaders in various economic sectors and regions of the empire. Three indispensable analyses are Heather Hogan, Forging Revolution: Metalworkers, Managers, and the State in St. Petersburg, 1890–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993); Susan P. McCaffray, The Politics of Industrialization in Tsarist Russia: The Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers, 1874–1914 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); and Ruth A. Roosa, Russian Industrialists in an Era of Revolution: The Association of Industry and Trade, 1906–1917, ed. Thomas C. Owen (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997). McCaffray also edited the insightful memoirs of a mining engineer originally published in emigration in Prague: Aleksandr I. Fenin, Coal and Politics in Late Imperial Russia: Memoirs of a Russian Mining Engineer, tr. Alexandre Fediaevsky (DeKalb: University of Northern Illinois Press, 1990). The works of Hogan, McCaffray, and

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Roosa contain references to the Russian and German historical literature on business organizations. On the Official Nationality, Slavophile, and Westerner movements, see the excellent monographs by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Martin Malia, Andrzej Walicki, Stephen Lukashevich, Abbott Gleason, and Peter K. Christoff. On Danilevskii, see Robert E. McMaster, Danilevsky: A Totalitarian Philosopher (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) and Edward Thaden, Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964). On the consequences of these movements in the twentieth century, see Timothy McDaniel, The Agony of the Russian Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), and the works cited therein. On issues of economic development relevant to the Russian experience, several give especially valuable insights: Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Thomas K. McCraw, ed., Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: Norton, 1998); Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000); and Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). For a useful examination of tsarist and Soviet industrial policies in light of the theories of Friedrich List and Ernest Gellner, see Peter Gatrell and Boris Anan’ich, “National and Non-National Dimensions of Economic Development in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russia,” in Alice Teichova and Herbert Matis, eds., Nation, State, and the Economy in History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 219–236. Barrington Moore’s essay, “Moral Aspects of Economic Growth: Historical Notes on Business Morality in England,” in his Moral Aspects of Economic Growth, and Other Essays (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 1–53, constitutes a useful supplement to Moore’s classic analysis of landlordpeasant relations in eight major countries, including Russia: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).

Index

Abaza, Aleksandr Aggeevich (1821–1895), financial expert, corporate manager, state comptroller (1871–1874), and minister of finance (1880–1881), 130, 189; character of, 181, 238n79 Abramtsevo, 207 L’Actionnaire (The Stockholder, Paris), 60 Aksakov, Ivan Sergeevich (1823–1886), Slavophile journalist and board member (1869–1878) and chairman of the board (1878–1886) of the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society ), 17–18, 85, 144, 152, 187; on Chizhov’s arrest, 21, 23; on Tripolie, 25; on Chizhov’s character, 33–34; as entrepreneur, 31, 136; as editor, 47, 59, 61–64, 194; criticized by Chizhov, 63–64, 115; as banker, 63, 115, 117, 123, 154; criticized by Naidenov, 113; on Giliarov-Platonov, 123; and PanSlavism, 151; political views of, 195, 197–198, 248n108; as biographer of Fedor I. Tiutchev, 197–198; on Chizhov’s illness and death, 203–205 Aksakov, Konstantin Sergeevich (1817–1860), Slavophile, 17, 85

Aksakov, Sergei Timofeevich (1791–1859), writer, 85, 207 Aksakova, Anna Fedorovna (née Tiutcheva, 1829–1889), lady-in-waiting to the empress and wife of Ivan S. Aksakov, 165 Aksakova, Olga Semenovna (née Zaplatina, 1792–1878), wife of Sergei T. Aksakov, 207 Der Aktionär (The Stockholder, Frankfurt), 60 Aktsioner (The Stockholder), 47, 59–61, 73; on mortgage banks, 68; on Russian Railroad Company, 67; and Trinity Railroad, 98 Alaska, 186–187 Alchevskii, Aleksei Kirillovich (1835–1901), banker and industrialist in Kharkov, 154 Alexander I (1777–1825), emperor (1801–1825), 196 Alexander II (1818–1881), emperor (1855–1881), 28, 102–103, 124, 184; and liberalism, 179–180; character of, 190–191, 193 Alexander III (1845–1894), emperor (1881–1894), 173, 190–191, 199 Alexis (1629–1676), Tsar of Muscovy (1645–1676), 195 261

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Alpatov, Mikhail Vladimirovich (b. 1903), art historian, 35 Andreev, P. I., newspaper editor, 63 Angelico, Fra (Giovanni da Fiesole, c. 1400–1455), Italian artist, 221n50 Archangel, 135, 137, 139–140; museum in, 205 Archangel (ship), 142–144 Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company (1875), 134, 137–147, 150, 155, 209 Archimedes (287–212 B.C.), Greek scientist, 91 Astrabad (now Gorgan, Iran), 54 Aubé, Benjamin (1826–1887), French historian of religion, 198 Auerbach, Berthold (Moses Baruch Auerbacher, 1812–1882), German novelist, 223n87 Augsburg, 73 Austro–Prussian War, 100–101 Babst, Ivan Kondratievich (1824–1881), professor of political economy at Moscow University (1857–1874) and director of the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages (Moscow, 1864–1868); portrait of, 50; and Vestnik promyshlennosti, 49–51, 58, 66, 69, 72; political orientation of, 50–51, 197–198; and Aktsioner, 60–61, 72; on Wilhelm Roscher, 72; on Zollverein, 77; chairman of the board of the Moscow Merchant Bank (1869– 1878), 116; and Kirkovich, 157; criticized by Chizhov, 170, 173; and Russian Industrial Society, 187; ridiculed by Nekrasov, 250n17 “Backward linkages,” 77, 128 Baker Library, Harvard University, 210 Banfield, Thomas Charles (1800–1882), English economist, 51, 111, 193 “Bank of banks,” rejected by Ministry of Finance, 157 Banks, 67–68 Baranov, Count Eduard Trofimovich (1811–1884), adjutant general and tsarist official, 175 Baranov Commission (1876–1884), 175

Barents Sea, 138 Baring Brothers, banking firm in London, 127, 128–129, 134 Barrot, Camille Hyacinthe Odilon (1791–1873), French liberal politician, 248n108 Barsukov, Nikolai Platonovich (1838–1906), editor, 6 Bartenev, Petr Ivanovich (1829–1912), editor of Russkii arkhiv (The Russian Archive, Moscow), 215n6 Basque language, 22 Bédarride, Jassuda (1804–1882), French scholar, 198 Belinskii, Vissarion Grigorievich (1811–1848), Westerner journalist and literary critic, 21, 217n6 Belovezh forest, 188 Benardaki, Nikolai Dmitrievich (1838–1909), banker, 130, 162, 181, 238n79 Berman, Harold J. (b. 1918), legal scholar, 177 Bernatskii, Nikolai Viktorovich, transport engineer, 131, 162 Bibikov, Dmitrii Gavrilovich (1792–1870), general, governorgeneral of Kiev (1837–1852) and minister of internal affairs (1852–1855), 220n41 Bismarck, Prince Otto von (1815–1898), Prussian ambassador to Russia (1859–1862) and German chancellor (1871–1890), 86 Black Sea, 66, 135, 136, 195 Blackwell, William L. (b. 1929), historian, 159 Blanqui, Jérôme Adolphe (1798–1854), French economist, 51 Bloch, Jan Gottlieb (Ivan Stanislavovich Bliokh, 1836–1902), Polish financier and railroad builder, 173 Bludova, Countess Antonina Dmitrievna (1813–1891), lady-in-waiting to the empress, 157 Bobrinskaia, Countess Sofiia Aleksandrovna (née Samoilova, d.1866), wife of Count Aleksei A. Bobrinskii, 26, 181

Index Bobrinskii, Count Aleksandr Alekseevich (1823–1903), tsarist official, 221n52 Bobrinskii, Count Aleksei Alekseevich (1800–1868), landowner and pioneer in sugar–beet production in Russia, 26, 151, 182 Bobrinskii, Count Aleksei Pavlovich (1826–1894), minister of transportation (1871–1874), 134, 182–183, 189 Bobrinskii, Count Vladimir Alekseevich (1824–1887), minister of transportation (1869–1871), 126, 182, 189, 221n52 Bogomolets, Mikhail R., railroad engineer (d. 1877), 100, 102 Bolshevik revolution (1917), 202 Bonaparte, Napoleon (1768–1821), French emperor, 12 Bonaparte, Prince Louis–Lucien (1813–1891), linguist, 22 Bonds, domestic, 90–91, 156–157 Borki, railroad accident at, 173 Borsig Company (Germany), 102 Bosnia, 157 Bostandzhoglo, Vasilii Mikhailovich (1826–1876), Moscow merchant, 162, 237n79 Botkin, Vasilii Petrovich (1812–1869), writer, 62 Botkin tea firm (Petr Botkin’s Sons), 238n79 Bovykin, Valerii Ivanovich (1927–1998), historian, 112 Brandt, Karl, merchant, 136 Budanovo, 164 Bulgakov, Sergei Nikolaevich (1871–1944), religious philosopher, 205 Bulgaria, 204 Bulgarin, Faddei Venediktovich (1789–1859), reactionary journalist, 220n32 Bykov, former naval officer, 145, 240n119, 240n130 Cannon, Angela, bibliographer, 223n78, 250n16 Capitalism, defined, 180

263

Carey, Henry Charles (1793–1879), American proponent of tariff protection, 73, 92 Catherine II (1729–1796), empress (1762–1796), 68, 135; illegitimate offspring of, 183; and legal reform, 195–196 Central Asia, 63, 152 Central Land Credit Bank (1873), 174, 242n22 Cherkasskii, Prince Vladimir Aleksandrovich (1824–1878), Slavophile and mayor of Moscow (1868–1871), 195, 209, 216n8, 245n80 Cherniaev, Mikhail Grigorievich (1828–1898), major general, 174 Cherokov, Arkadii S.: biographer of Chizhov, 203, 205, 255; on debate over tariff protection, 78–79; on Trinity Railroad, 97–98, 109; on MoscowKursk Railroad, 127, 129–130; on Kokorev, 160–161; as teacher, 207; on Vestnik promyshlennosti, 57–58 Chevalier, Michel (1806–1879), French economist and proponent of free trade, 51 Chevkin, Konstantin Vladimirovich (1802–1875), administrator of the department of transport (1853–1862), 95, 99, 245n71 Chicherin, Boris Nikolaevich (1828–1904), professor of law, 31 China, 153 Chinese in Southeast Asia, 4 Chizhov, Fedor Vasilievich (1811–1877), mathematics professor, Slavophile, and corporate entrepreneur: as entrepreneur and corporate manager, 3, 44, 151; sisters of, 9, 24, 125–126; education of, 9; books and pamphlets of, 11, 15, 26, 68, 77, 104–106, 153, 181, 233n26, 246n81; theory of history of, 12, 16, 18–20, 25, 84, 152, 201, 206; arrest and exile of, 21–29, 198; on Ukrainians, 26, 85, 196–197; and silk cultivation, 24–26; and serfdom, 27, 53, 80, 151; on merchants, 29–30, 36, 52, 55–63, 80–81, 164–165, 171–172, 174; on education

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Index

Chizhov, Fedor Vasilievich (continued ) of merchants and workers, 38, 53, 57, 82, 115, 169; on education of women, 38, 57; economic strategy of, 64–80; on tsarist bureaucracy, 69, 81, 198; unrealized projects of, 124, 151, 155–158, 206; on constitutionalism, 168, 180, 198–200; on Jews, 174, 206, 208; on Poles, 174, 197, 199; status anxiety of, 191–192; on legality and liberalism, 188–189, 192–200, 213; on amateurism and dilettantism, 165; illnesses of, 204; death of, 204–205; schools endowed by, 207–208; grave of, 209–210; archive of, x–xii, 6, 205, 210, 253–254. See also Vestnik promyshlennosti; Aktsioner; Den’; Moskva; Moskvich; Moscow-Iaroslavl-Vologda Railroad; Moscow-Saratov Railroad; Moscow Merchant Bank; Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society; Moscow-Kursk Railroad; Moscow-Tashkent Silk Company; Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company Chizhov, Vasilii Vasilievich (d. 1831), 9, 40, 89 Chizhova, Uliana Dmitrievna (née Ivanova, d. 1848), 9, 27, 37, 39, 40, 80 Chukhloma (Kostroma province), 208 Chuprov, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1842–1908), economist, 59, 199 Civil War in United States, 63 Commercial Council (1829–1872), 185 Commercial Trade School, Moscow, 205 Corn Laws (England), 74 Corporate governance, 65–66, 97 Council of Trade and Manufacturing (created 1872), 186; Moscow Section of, 227 Crane, Richard T., Jr. (1873–1931), American industrialist and philanthropist, 210 Crédit Mobilier, Société Générale de (1852–1871), French financial institution, 66, 113 Crimea, 93 Crimean War, 135

Crummey, Robert Owen (b. 1936), historian, 159 Dalmatia, 15 Danilevskii, Nikolai Iakovlevich (1828–1885), theorist of Pan-Slavism, 206 Danilov Monastery, 205, 209–210 Decembrist uprising (1825), 168–169, 198 Delvig, Baron Andrei Ivanovich (1813–1887), transport engineer, corporate manager, and tsarist official, 126, 170, 180, 191; portrait of, 94; patriotism of, 100–101; on Trinity Railroad, 93–104, 172; criticism of Chizhov, 108; criticized by Chizhov, 122; and Putilov, 122; on MoscowKursk Railroad, 128, 131, 132; and Archangel-Murmansk Steamship Company, 141, 142; on Volga-Don Railroad, 160; on Donets Coal Railroad, 161; on Samuil Poliakov, 173; and Posiet, 183; and Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, 190; and Chizhov’s portrait, 207 Delvig, Baron Anton Antonovich (1798–1831), poet, 100 Delvig, Baroness (d. 1878), wife of Baron Andrei I. Delvig, 99–100, 183 Delvig Railroad School, 133, 207 Den’ (The Day, Moscow), 47, 61, 90, 194 Derviz (von Derwies), Pavel Grigorievich (1826–1881), 172 Descartes, René (1596–1650), French philosopher, 19 Dolgorukaia, Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna (1847–1922), mistress of Emperor Alexander II, 190 Dolgorukov, Prince Vladimir Andreevich (1810–1891), governorgeneral of Moscow (1865–1891), 195 Donets basin (Donbas), 161 Donets Coal Railroad (1876), 161, 167, 173, 176 Don Monastery, 209 Doroshevich, Vlas Mikhailovich (1864–1922), radical journalist, 167 Dostoevskii, Fedor Mikhailovich (1821–1881), novelist, 119, 202, 211

Index Dubelt, Leontii Vasilievich (1792–1862), chief of gendarmes, 22, 23 Dubrovnik, 17 Dünaburg–Vitebsk Railroad (1863), 173 Economist, The, (London), 70 Edel, Leon (1907–1997), biographer and literary scholar, 6 Ekonomicheskii ukazatel’ (The Economic Index, St. Petersburg), 49, 55 Ekonomist (The Economist, St. Petersburg), 49 Elagina, Avdotiia Petrovna (née Iushkova, 1789–1877), 38–39, 89 Elena Pavlovna, Grand Duchess and Princess of Württemberg (1806–1873), wife of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, 181 Elets, 182 Elets-Griazi Zemstvo Railroad (1867, renamed Griazi-Orel in 1868), 172 Embezzlement, 109 Engels, Friedrich (1820–1895), German socialist, 20 England, corporate charters in, 196 Enlightenment, 197, 198 Entrepreneurship, 2–5 Ertov, cashier, 109 Fedor Chizhov (ship), 209 Fenin, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1866–1945), mining engineer, 211 Filaret (Vasilii Mikhailovich Drozdov, 1782–1867), Metropolitan of Moscow (1821–1867), 95, 102 Financial crisis of 1875, 118–120 Fix, Théodore (1800–1846), French economist, 80 Flax, cultivation of, 56 Fonfrède, Henri (1788–1841), French economist, 51 “Forward linkages,” 76 Fourier, François Marie Charles (1772–1837), French social philosopher, 201 Fränkel, Baron Antoni Edward (Anton Antonovich, 1809–1883), Warsaw banker, 242–22

265

Free trade, doctrine of, 51–52, 70–80 Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939), Austrian psychiatrist, 30 Gagarin, Prince Lev Pavlovich (1828–1868), tsarist official, 189 Gagarin, Prince Pavel Pavlovich (1789–1872), tsarist official, 189 Galagan, Ekaterina Vasilievna (b. 1785), mother of Grigorii P. Galagan, 11, 26, 37 Galagan, Ekaterina Vasilievna (1826–1896), wife of Grigorii P. Galagan, 26, 255 Galagan, Grigorii Pavlovich (1819–1888), landowner and public figure in Chernigov and Poltava provinces, 11, 24, 26, 32, 137, 157, 196, 204 Gatrell, Peter, historian, 178, 250n15 Geertz, Clifford (b. 1923), anthropologist, 231n78 Geographical Society, 68 Gerschenkron, Alexander (1904–1978), economist and historian, 159 Giliarov–Platonov, Nikita Petrovich (1824–1887), Slavophile, 123 Glasnost’. See Public discussion Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich (1809–1852), playwright and novelist, 14, 20–21, 24, 32, 89; collected works of, 58, 206; grave of, 205, 209; at Abramtsevo, 207 Goldoni, Carlo (1707–1793), Italian dramatist, 25 Golovnin, Aleksandr Vasilievich (1821–1886), minister of education (1861–1866), 194–195 Golubkov, Platon Vasilievich (d. 1855), merchant, 15 Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1812–1891), novelist, 35 Gorbov, Mikhail Akimovich (1824–1886), merchant, 131, 153, 162, 204, 237n79 Gorgan (Iran), 55 Gorn, I., correspondent for Vestnik promyshlennosti, 52 Granovskii, Timofei Nikolaevich (1813–1855), professor of history, 49

2 66

Index

Grant, Jonathan (b. 1963), historian, 121 Greenfeld, Liah (b. 1954), sociologist, 205–206, 213 Griazi–Orel Railroad. See Elets-Griazi Railroad Grivno, 159 Grover, Stuart Ralph (b. 1945), historian, 166, 207 Gubonin, Petr Ionovich, merchant, 160, 211 Guchkov, Ivan Fedorovich (1809–1865), Moscow merchant, 160 Gurowski, Count Adam (1805–1866), Polish émigré journalist, 22, 52, 55 Hallam, Henry (1777–1859), English historian, 11, 33 Hanka, Václav (1791–1861), Czech scholar and Pan-Slavist, 15, 19 Harvard University, 210 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831), German philosopher, 20, 51 Helvétius, Claude Adrien (1715–1751), French philosopher, 198 Herzen, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1812–70), socialist, 39, 100–102, 213, 250n17; on individual and community, 200; quoted by Chizhov, 143, 169–170 Herzen, Nataliia Aleksandrovna (1844–1936), 169 Hildebrand, Bruno (1812–1878), German political economist, 51 Hirschman, Albert O. (b. 1915), economist, 76–77 Hope and Company, English banking firm in Amsterdam, 127, 129, 134 Huguenots, as entrepreneurs, 4 Hugo, Viscount Victor Marie (1802–1885), French writer, 102 Iaroslavl, 93, 107 Iazykov, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1803–1846), poet, 14–15, 17, 20, 41, 205; Chizhov’s letter to, 44; death of, 15; will of, 21; grave of, 209 Indian Ocean, 136 Istria, 15

Iuzefovich (Józefowicz), Mikhail Vladimirovich (1802–1889), Polish landowner and judicial official, 199 Ivan III (1440–1505), grand prince of Muscovy (1462–1505), 138 Ivan IV (1530–1584), tsar of Muscovy (1547–1584), 12, 84, 135 Ivanov, Aleksandr Andreevich (1806–1858), artist, 14, 21, 27, 89, 206 Iversk Virgin, icon of, 115 Jains, as entrepreneurs, 4 Japan, 6, 153, 212–213 Jews, 4, 67; in Russia, 84, 85, 206, 208 Junker Commercial Bank in Moscow, founded as Pskov Commercial Bank (1873), 154 Kachalov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1818–1891), naval officer (1838–1845), governor of Archangel province (1865–1869) and director of the customs service (1870–1882), 139 Kamenskii, Gavriil P., correspondent for Vestnik promyshlennosti, 54, 56 Kankrin, Count Egor Frantsevich (Georg Ludwig Daniel von Cancrin, 1774–1845), minister of finance (1823–1844), 91, 189 Karabanovo, 107 Karakozov, Dmitrii Vladimirovich (1840–1866), terrorist, 195 Kaser, Michael Charles (b. 1926), historian, 159 Katkov, Mikhail Nikiforovich (1818–1887), journalist, editor of Russkii vestnik and Moskovskie vedomosti, 28, 1996–197 Kaufman, Konstantin Petrovich von (1818–1882), general, 152 Kazan, 84 Kem (port),145 Kem (ship), 142–144 Khludov, Aleksei Ivanovich (1818–1882), Moscow merchant and president of the Moscow Exchange Committee (1859–1865), 61

Index Khomiakov, Aleksei Stepanovich (1804–1860), Slavophile, 17, 21; “Letter to Serbs” of, 83; poem of, quoted by Chizhov, 83; artistic theory of, 207; grave of, 209 Khomiakova, Ekaterina Mikhailovna (née Iazykova), wife of Aleksei S. Khomiakov, 17, 256, 209, 219n23 Kierbed z´ , Stanis /l aw Valerianovich (1810–1899), transport engineer, 173–174 Kipp, Jacob (b. 1942), historian, 136 Kireevskii, Ivan Vasilievich (1806–1856), Slavophile, 17, 38–39, 85, 89 Kireevskii, Petr Vasilievich (1808–1856), Slavophile, 17, 38–39, 85, 89 Kirkovich, Khadzhii Georgii, Bulgarian entrepreneur, 157 Kirzhach, 107 Klevetskii, Pavel Zakharovich, transport engineer, 130–131, 162, 174, 191 Knoop (Knop in Russian), Ludwig G. (1821–1894), German importer and textile manufacturer in Russia, 112 Kokorev, Vasilii Aleksandrovich (1817–1889), Moscow merchant and corporate entrepreneur, 58, 133–134, 157; portrait of, 111; on Aktsioner, 61, 160–170; on free trade, 73; as bank manager, 119–120; as entrepreneur, 95, 110–112, 160–161, 170 Kola peninsula, 139 Kollár, Jan (1793–1852), Slovak poet and Pan–Slavist, 19 Kologriv (Kostroma province), 208 Koltsov, Aleksei Vasilievich (1809–1842), poet, 223n78 Komarovskii, Count Aleksei Evgrafovich, 171 Konstantin Nikolaevich, Grand Duke (1827–1892), second son of Emperor Nicholas I and admiral, 120; and sale of Nicholas Railroad, 124, 160, 190; and ROPIT, 136; poor training in economics of, 189, 246n93; extravagance of, 199 Konstantinovka Railroad (1870), 176 Korovin, Konstantin Alekseevich (1861–1939), artist, 206

267

Koshelev, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1806–1883), Slavophile, 25, 28, 151, 227n24; as entrepreneur, 31, 171; as editor, 47, 221n50; and Trinity Railroad, 95; and Moscow-Saratov Railroad, 104; on Chizhov’s character, 215n7; grave of, 209–210 Kostroma, 107, 196, 207–208 Kozlov Commercial Bank (1873), 31 Kozlov–Voronezh Railroad (1869), 172–173, 176 Krasnoe selo, 54 Krestovnikov, Aleksandr Konstantinovich (1825–1881), Moscow merchant, 239n115 Krestovnikov, Valentin Konstantinovich (1827–1896), Moscow merchant, 227n23 Kronenberg, Leopold (1812–1878), Polish railroad builder and financier, 131, 173 Kukuevo, 153 Kursk, 66, 132 Kursk-Kharkov-Azov Railroad (1869), 172, 173, 176 Kursk-Taganrog Railroad, planned, 110 Kuzmin, Roman Ivanovich (1810–1867), architect, 206 Kuznetsk, 167 “Kvas patriotism,” 87, 213 Lamanskii, Evgenii Ivanovich (1825–1902), director of State Bank, 118 Lamanskii, Porfirii Ivanovich, 118 Lamanskii, Vladimir Ivanovich (1833–1914), Slavophile, 118, 167, 168, 206 Law, John (1671–1729), Scottish financier in France, 49, 66 Law code (Ulozhenie, 1649), 195–196 Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, Moscow, 230n64 Legislative Commission (1767–1768), 195 Leontiev, Pavel Mikhailovich (1832–1875), professor of classics at Moscow University and reactionary journalist, 192, 196–197

2 68

Index

Lermontov, Mikhail Iurievich (1814–1841), poet and novelist, 36 Levitskii, Rafail Sergeevich (1840–1940), artist, 205, 249n6 Liamin, Ivan Artemievich (1823–1894), Moscow merchant and president of the Moscow Exchange Committee (1865–1868), mayor (1871–1873), 57, 139, 164, 227n24, 237n79, 239n115 Libau, 66 Libau–Romny Railroad (1871), 176 Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865), U. S. president (1861–1865), 73 List, Friedrich (1789–1846), German economist, 71–72, 75, 80, 206, 227n30 Litke (Lüdtke), Count Fedor Petrovich (1797–1882), admiral and president of Academy of Sciences (1864–1881), 140, 189 Litke (Lüdtke), Count Konstantin Fedorovich, naval officer, 140–145, 146–147, 204, 240n125 Livny, 182 Lowell House, Harvard University, 210 Lozovo–Sevastopol Railroad (1871), 176 Lvov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, corporate founder, 239n115 McCraw, Thomas K. (b. 1940), historian, 2 Makariev (Kostroma province), 208 Maksimov, Sergei Vasilievich (1831–1901), writer, 137, 150 Malia, Martin (b. 1924), historian, 169 Maliutin, Pavel P., merchant, 57, 227n24 Mamontov, Aleksandr Nikolaevich, Moscow merchant, 131, 133, 153, 162, 237n79 Mamontov, Ivan Fedorovich (1800–1869), liquor–tax concessionaire and railroad manager, 58, 94–95, 99, 107, 165, 227n23 Mamontov, Savva Ivanovich (1841–1918), railroad manager, industrialist, and patron of the arts, 34–35, 107; portrait of, 166; as corporate founder, 139, 142, 173, 238n79,

239n115; as corporate manager, 153, 154, 165–168; art patronage of, 205, 207; as executor of Chizhov’s will, 207 Mamontova, Elizaveta Grigorievna (née Saposhnikova, 1847–1908), 207 Mamontov, Vsevolod Savvich (1870–1851), curator of Abramtsevo museum, 222n70 Manucci, M., correspondent for Vestnik promyshlennosti, 52 Manuel, Frank Edward (1910–2003), historian, 86, 201 Manufacturing Council (1828–1872), 185 Mariia Aleksandrovna (1824–1880), wife of Alexander II and empress, 102–103, 190 Markovich, Ekaterina Vasilievna (née Liubysevich, d. 1847), wife of Mikhail Markovich, 37 Markovich, Ekaterina Mikhailovna (married name Trifonovskaia, b. 1847), 37, 38, 274n76 Markovich, Mikhail Andreevich (1808–1875), landowner and marshal of the gentry in Priluki district, Poltava province, 37 Marx, Karl (1818–1883), German socialist, 20, 86; as romantic, 200–201 Mazzini, Giuseppi (1805–1872), Italian patriot and revolutionist, 12 Mekk, Karl Fedorovich (Karl-Georg-Otto von Meck, 1821–1876), railroad builder, 172 Melnikov, Pavel Petrovich (1804–1880), railroad expert and administrator of the Transport Department (1862–1865) and Ministry of Transport (1865–1869), 90 Mendeleev, Dmitrii Ivanovich (1834–1907), chemist, 205 Mennonites in Russia, 68 Merchants, 29–30, 36, 52, 55–63, 80–81, 164–165, 171–172, 174 Michels, Georg Bernhard, historian, 159 Mickiewicz, Adam (1798–1855), Polish romantic poet, 16, 17, 19, 22–23

Index Mikhail Nikolaevich, Grand Duke (1832–1909), son of Nicholas I and general, 199 Military-autocratic mode of rule, 178–180 Military Reform (1874), 179 Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873), English philosopher and economist, 203 Ministry of Trade and Industry, proposed: in 1856, 184–185; in 1882, 185 Molinari, Gustave de (1819–1918), Belgian economist, 52, 79 Monod, Gabriel (1844–1912), French scientist, 169 Monod, Olga Aleksandrovna (née Herzen, 1850–1953), 169 Montenegro, 15, 21 Moore, Barrington, Jr. (b. 1913), sociologist, 2 Morozov, Timofei Savvich (1823–1889), Moscow merchant and president of the Moscow Exchange Committee (1868–1876): portrait of, 119; as merchant leader, 36, 85, 163, 185; and Vestnik promyshlennosti, 58, 227n24; as chairman of the board of the Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society (1869–1878), 117, 118, 153; and Volunteer Fleet, 136; and ArchangelMurmansk Steamship Company, 139, 142, 239n115; and Moscow-Tashkent Silk Company, 152; character of, 163–164, 201; and Moscow-Kursk Railroad, 163, 204, 237n79 Morozov strike (1886), 201 Moscow Agricultural Society, 151, 153 Moscow Bank of Trade (1871), 119, 121 Moscow-Brest Railroad. See MoscowSmolensk Railroad Moscow Central Land Bank (1873; failed by 1874), 157, 242n22 Moscow Commercial Credit Company (1872), 121 Moscow Commercial Loan Bank (1870; failed in 1875), 118–120, 122, 164 Moscow Exchange Committee, 187–188 Moscow-Iaroslavl-Vologda Railroad (Trinity Railroad), 68, 92–112, 133, 153, 160–164, 165–168; extended to

269

Sergiev posad (1862), 102; extended to Iaroslavl (1870), 104–107, 133; extended to Vologda (1872), 107–108, 137; extended to Archangel (1896), 167, 168; spur lines to Kostroma (1870), Karabanovo (1871), and Kirzhach (1871), 107 Moscow-Kursk Railroad (1871), 125–143, 156, 174–176, 191, 204; board members of, 161–164; philanthropic activity of, 133; financial success of, 175–176; development of, after Chizhov’s death, 153; and Abaza, 181 Moscow Machinery Company (1882), 159 Moscow Merchant Bank (1866), 44, 110–114, 154 Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society (1869), 114–123, 153, 161, 164; philanthropic activity of, 133, 205; directors of, 63, 165; development of, after Chizhov’s death, 154; and financial crisis of 1875, 164 Moscow Municipal Duma, 195 Moscow-Nizhnii Novgorod Railroad, of Russian Railroad Company, 106 Moscow-Saratov Railroad (1859, renamed Moscow-Riazan in 1863 and Moscow-Kazan in 1891), 65–66, 98, 104, 106, 172, 233n23 Moscow Slavic Benevolent Committee, 151 Moscow-Smolensk Railroad (1870, renamed Moscow-Brest), 109, 176, 238n79 Moscow-Tashkent Silk Company (1871), 150, 152–153 Moskovskii literaturnyi i uchenyi sbornik (The Moscow Literary and Scholarly Miscellany), 16 Moskva (Moscow), 47, 62–63; on free trade, 77 Moskvich (The Muscovite), 47, 63; on free trade, 77 Moskvitianin (The Muscovite), 16, 17 Muraviev, Nikita Mikhailovich (1796–1843), leader of the Decembrist revolt, 168

2 70

Index

Murmansk, 139–142 Murmansk Shipping Company (1870), 137, 140, 239n106 Muscovy Company (London), 135 Napoleon I (1769–1821), emperor of France (1804–1814), 12 Naidenov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1834–1905), Moscow merchant and president of the Moscow Exchange Committee (1877–1905), 119, 186; on Moscow Merchant Bank, 112, 116, 154; on Moscow Merchant Mutual Credit Society, 115–118; criticized by Chizhov, 118; and Moscow Exchange Committee, 116, 187–188; reactionary views of, 186–188 Navigation Acts (England), 73 Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich (1821–1878), poet and editor, 210–211 Nesselrode, Count Karl Robert Vasilievich (1780–1862), German-born tsarist official and minister of foreign affairs (1816–1856), 90 Nicholas I (1796–1855), emperor (1825–1855), 23, 168, 189, 193, 195 Nicholas Railroad (St. PetersburgMoscow, purchased from state by Russian Railroad Company in 1868), 69, 108, 124–125, 128, 176 Nihilists, 201 Nikitenko, Aleksandr Vasilievich (1804–1877), liberal censor and professor of literature, 10, 23; on Chizhov’s character, 10–11, 32–33 Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1843–1865), oldest son of Alexander II and Crown Prince, 61, 131, 189, 228n33 Nikolai Konstantinovich, Grand Duke (1850–1918), son of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, 190 Nizhnii Novgorod, 66, 93 Nobel family, 3 Nolde, Baron Mikhail Emilievich, corporate manager, 155 Northern Dvina river, 135, 138, 146, 156 Northern Ocean Shipping Company (1872), 137, 239n106

Northern Society (1822–1825), 168 Novaia Zemlia, 138–139, 141, 145, 150 Novgorod, 29, 138, 188 Novodevichii Monastery (Moscow), 209 Obolenskii, Count Leonid Nikolaevich, bookkeeper, 109, 143 Obolenskii, Prince Dmitrii Aleksandrovich (1822–1881), tsarist official, 230n65 Odessa, 135 Odessa Railroad (1863), 176 Official Nationality, doctrine of, 13, 16, 21, 151; as expressed by Gogol, 197 Old Believers, 4, 23, 159–161 Onega, Lake, 188 Onega (ship), 142, 144 Orel, 66 Orel provincial zemstvo, 234n37 Orenburg-Tashkent Railroad (1906), 156 Orlov, Count Aleksei Grigorievich (1737–1807), murderer of Emperor Peter III, 183 Orlov, Count Grigorii Grigorievich (1734–1783), progenitor, with the future Empress Catherine II, of the counts Bobrinskii, 183 Osen, Norway, 156 Osnova (The Foundation, Kiev), 196 Ostrogradskii, Mikhail Vasilievich (1801–1861), mathematician, 10 Ostrovskii, Aleksandr Nikolaevich (1823–1886), playwright, 223n79 Pan-Slavism, 151 Paris, commerce in, 51 Parsis, as entrepreneurs, 4 Pasteur, Louis (1822–1895), French scientist, 150 Paul I (1754–1801), emperor (1796–1801), 196 Pavlov, Nikolai V., bookkeeper, 100, 109, 167 Pecherin, Vladimir Sergeevich (1807–1885), linguist, Catholic monk, and priest, 7, 10, 40, 44 Pereiaslavl-Zaleskii, 210

Index Pereire, Émile (1800–1875), French financier, 66–67 Pereire, Isaac (1806–1880), French financier, 66–67 Perni, Abbat, 54 Peroj (Istria), 15–16 Perov, Vasilii Grigorievich (1833–1882), artist, 209 Peter I (1672–1725), tsar (1689–1721) and emperor (1721–1725), 13, 84, 135 Peter II (1813–1851), Prince-Bishop of Montenegro (1830–1851), 220n34 Peter III (1728–1762), emperor (1761–1762), 183 Petrov, Iurii Aleksandrovich (b. 1955), historian, 120, 160 Physiocrats, 70 Podolsk, 132 Pogodin, Mikhail Petrovich (1800–1875), historian and ideologist of Official Nationality, 6,16; and Aktsioner, 61; and Trinity Railroad, 98; praised by Chizhov, 151 Poland, rebellions in, 179 Polenov, Aleksei Dmitrievich (1845–1918), jurist, economist, and co-executor of Chizhov’s will, 146, 207 Polenov, Dmitrii Vasilievich (1806–1878), historian of Russian law, 10, 33, 195 Polenov, Vasilii Dmitrievich (1844–1927), artist, 142, 165, 195, 205, 207 Poletika, Vasilii Apollonovich (1820–1888), industrialist and newspaper editor, 100 Polezhaev, Aleksandr V., railroad engineer, 173 Poliakov, Lazar Solomonovich (1842–1914), financier, 154, 172–173, 174, 183 Poliakov, Samuil Solomonovich (1837–1888), railroad entrepreneur, 154, 172–173, 183 Polzunov, Ivan Ivanovich (1728–1766), inventor, 15 Posiet, Konstantin Nikolaevich (1819–1899), admiral and minister of transport (1874–1888), 143, 161,

271

183–184, 191, 244n61, 245n78, 245n79 Potemkin, Vladimir I., transport engineer, 100 Potkina, Irina B., historian, 160 Practical Academy of Commercial Sciences (Moscow), 72, 114 Pskov, 29, 138 Pskov Commercial Bank. See Junker Commercial Bank Public discussion (glasnost’), 52–53, 54, 65, 98, 193 Pushkino station, incident at (1862), 102–103 Putilov, Nikolai Ivanovich (1820–1880), St. Petersburg plant-owner, 120–122, 161, 170, 175 Putilov Manufacturing Company (1872), 120–122 Putilov Railroad (1875), 175, 244n66 Quakers, as entrepreneurs, 4 Raevskii, Mikhail Fedorovich (1811–1884), priest of the Russian embassy in Vienna (1842–1884), 54 Ragusa (now Dubrovnik), 17 Railroads: financing of, 67–68; gauges of, 108, 234n29; map of, 96 Rekhnevskii, transport engineer, 100 Repin, Ilia Efimovich (1844–1930), artist, 205, 207 Rerberg, Ivan Fedorovich, corporate manager, 133, 162 Reutern, Mikhail Khristoforovich (1820–1890; count from 1890), minister of finance (1862–1878); portrait of, 88; and support for Chizhov’s corporations, 8, 89–91, 191; and collection of tariff duties in gold rubles, 79; economic strategy of, 87–89; and sale of Nicholas Railroad to Russian Railroad Company, 88, 124–5, 160; and Moscow Merchant Bank, 112; and financial crisis of 1875, 119–120; and Putilov Manufacturing Company, 121; and Moscow-Kursk Railroad, 125–126, 134, 163, 204; and ArchangelMurmansk Steamship Company, 139,

2 72

Index

Reutern, Mikhail Khristoforovich (continued ) 141, 143; and military-autocratic rule, 179–180, 185–187 Reval (now Tallinn), 135 Riabushinskii, Pavel Pavlovich (1871–1924), Old-Believer merchant and liberal politician, 160, 205 Riazan, 93, 154 Riazan-Kozlov Railroad (1865), 172 Riazhsk-Morshansk Railroad (1866), 173 Rieber, Alfred J. (b. 1931), historian, 121, 158 Riga, 85, 135 Riga-Dünaburg Railroad (1858), 173 Riga-Mitau Railroad (1867), 173 Rigelman, Nikolai Arkadievich (1817–1888), Slavophile, 63–64, 203 Riumin, Nikolai Gavrilovich, liquor-tax concessionaire, 94, 98 Roederer, Baron Antoine-Marie (1782–1865), French economist and politician, 52, 71, 74 Roscher, Wilhelm Georg Friedrich (1817–1894), German economist, 51, 72, 75, 80 Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer (b. 1938), historian, 205 Rosenthal, Leon Moiseevich (d. 1887), St. Petersburg banker and corporate entrepreneur, 106, 129, 174, 242n22 Rosset, Arkadii Osipovich (1811–1881), major-general, 246n93 Rossi, Count Pellegrino Luigi Edoardo (1787–1848), Italian political leader, jurist, and economist, 51 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778), Swiss-French philosopher, 53 Rubinshtein, Nikolai Grigorievich (1835–1881), musician, 209 Rukavishnikov, Konstantin Vasilievich (1848–1915), Moscow merchant and mayor (1893–1897), 227n24 Rukavishnikov, Vasilii Nikolaevich, Moscow merchant, 163, 227n24, 237n79 Rumiantsev Museum (Moscow), 205, 210 Russian Banking Association (1873), 188 “Russian idea,” 202

Russian Industrial Society (1867), 187–188 Russian Railroad Company (1857), 88, 98, 129, 176; criticized by Chizhov, 59, 66–67, 92–93; favored by Finance Minister Reutern, 69, 160 Russian Steamship and Trade Company (ROPIT, 1856), 136, 155 Russkaia beseda (The Russian Colloquium, Moscow), 17, 25, 28, 47 Russkii invalid (The Russian Disabled Soldier, St. Petersburg), 68 Russkii vestnik (The Russian Herald, Moscow), 28, 51, 72 Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), 79, 90, 134, 144, 151, 183, 186 Rybachii peninsula, 156 Rybinsk-Bologoe Railroad (1869), 109 St. Petersburg Land Bank (1873), 157 St. Petersburg Merchant Mutual Credit Society (1863), 114 St. Petersburg Private Commercial Bank (1864), 110 Saint-Simon, Count Claude Henri de Rouvray de (1760–1825), French social thinker, 201 Saint-Simonian movement, 169 Sakharova, Ekaterina Vasilievna (née Polenova, b. 1887), daughter of Vasilii D. Polenov, iii Samarin, Iurii Fedorovich (1819–1876), Slavophile, 17, 18, 20, 25, 206; grave of, 209–210 Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (St. Petersburg News), 14, 22, 26 Saratov, 68, 93 Sazikov, Sergei, merchant, 238–79 Schumpeter, Joseph Alois (1883–1950), Austrian-American economist, 44, 92 Sel’skoe blagoustroistvo (Rural Improvement, Moscow), 47 Serbia, 151 Serfdom, 27, 53, 80, 147 Sergiev posad (now Zagorsk), 93, 102 Serpukhov, 132 Sharapov, Sergei Fedorovich (1855–1911), reactionary journalist, 31

Index Shchepkin, Mitrofan Pavlovich (1832–1908), municipal official in Moscow, 199 Shekhtel, Fedor Osipovich (1859–1926), architect, 206 Shelting, Kisel K., ship captain, 146–147 Shepelev, Leonid Efimovich, archivist and historian, 184 Shibusawa, Eiichi (1840–1931), Japanese economic reformer and corporate entrepreneur, 212–213 Shils, Edward Albert (1911–1955), sociologist, 85–86 Shipov, Aleksandr Pavlovich (1800–1878), economic nationalist, 47, 73, 93, 170–171; and Russian Industrial Society, 187 Shipov, Dmitrii Pavlovich, adjutantgeneral, machinery producer, and railroad entrepreneur: and funding of Vestnik promyshlennosti,47, 56, 227n23; and Trinity Railroad, 93–95, 98–99, 101, 104, 107, 171 Shipov, Nikolai Pavlovich, 93, 98–99, 170–171 Shmidt, Vasilii A., transport engineer and railroad manager, 191 Shmit, corporate founder, 239n115 Shtrom, Aleksandr Vasilievich, bookkeeper, 115, 119, 164 Shtrom, Nikolai Karlovich , plantation manager, 144, 147 Shustov, Smaragd Loginovich (1789–1870), architect, 206 Shuvalov, Petr Andreevich (1827–1889), reactionary tsarist official, chief of gendarmes (1866–1874), 182 Silk production: in Tripolie, 24–26, 37, 151, 153; in Europe, 79; in Central Asia, 152–153; in China, 153; in Japan, 153, 213 Simonova, Inna Anatolievna, historian and journalist, 37, 256 Skopin, 57 Skoptsy (self-castraters), 4 Skovoroda, Grigorii Savvich (Ukrainian: Hryhorii, 1722–1792), Ukrainian philosopher and poet, 38

273

Skuratov, Dmitrii, reviewer of books for Vestnik promyshlennosti, 55 Slavic Benevolent Committee, 151, 241n8 Slavic Congress (Moscow, 1867), 83 “Slavic idea,” 17 “Slavophile capitalism,” 80–82; dilemmas of, 82–91, 147–148, 149–150, 200–202 Slavophiles, 13–14, 17–18, 23, 27, 80–82, 190–191; and free speech, 195, 197; and legality, 198–199 Sloan, Alfred (1875–1966), American entrepreneur, 2 Smela, estate in Cherkassy district, Kiev province, 26 Smith, Adam (1723–1790), Scottish economist, 72 Smolin, Petr Vasilievich, mariner, 146 Smolin, Sergei Vasilievich, mariner, 146 Smolin, Vasilii Ivanovich, ship captain, 138–139, 141, 142, 145–146, 204, 239n115, 240n130 Snegirev, Ivan Mikhailovich (1793–1868), professor of Latin, historian of Moscow, and censor, 18 Socrates (469–399 B.C.), Greek philosopher, 32, 126 Sokirintsy (Ukrainian: Sokyryntsi), estate in Priluki district, Poltava province, 11, 26, 137, 157 Soldatenkov, Kozma Terentievich (1818–1901), Moscow merchant, 227n24, 238n79 Solovetsk Monastery, 145 Solovki islands, 145 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich (b. 1918), writer, 86 Soto, Hernando de (b. 1941), economist, 177 “Soviet people,” 86 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich (1879–1953), Soviet autocrat, 86, 209 State Bank, 67, 119–122, 130, 154 State-owned enterprises, 69, 132–133 “Stock-exchange fever,” 98 Strousberg, Bethel Henry (1823–1884), German financier, 119

2 74

Index

Štúr, Ljudovít (1815-1856) Slovak writer and theorist of Pan–Slavism, 206 Suez Canal, 136, 153 Sukhona river, 156 Suponitskaia, Irina M., historian, 219n25 Sverbeev, Dmitrii Dmitrievich (b. 1845), 204 Sverbeev, Dmitrii Nikolaevich (1799–1876), 39, 204, 223n81 Sverbeeva, Ekaterina Aleksandrovna (née Shcherbatova, 1808–1892), 39, 40, 168 Sverbeeva, Sofiia Dmitrievna (d. 1903), 204 Sytin, Ivan Dmitrievich (1851–1934), publisher, 258 Tariff Commission (1867–1868), 78 Tashkent, 152, 174 Third Section (tsarist secret police, 1826–1880), 22 Thyssen, August (1842–1926), German entrepreneur, 2 Titov, Valerian Aleksandrovich, railroad builder, 107, 131 Tiutchev, Fedor Ivanovich (1803–1873), poet, 165, 198 Tiutcheva, Anna Fedorovna. See Aksakova, Anna Fedorovna de Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805–1859), French politician and political theorist, 92 Tolf, Robert Walter (b. 1929), historian, 3 Tolstaia, Sofiia Andreevna (née Behrs, 1844–1919), wife of Count Leo Tolstoi, 211 Tolstoi, Count Ivan A., 9 Tolstoi, Count Leo Nikolaevich (1828–1910), novelist and philosopher, 203, 211 Torgovyi sbornik (The Commercial Miscellany, St. Petersburg), 63 Toyoda, Sakachi (1867–1930), Japanese entrepreneur, 2 Treaty of Paris (1856), 136, 195 Tretiakov, Pavel Mikhailovich (1832–1898), Moscow merchant and art collector, 238n79, 209

Tretiakov, Sergei Mikhailovich (1834–1892), Moscow merchant, art collector, and mayor (1876–1882), 58, 209, 227n23, 238n79 Tretiakov Art Gallery, 207, 209 Trifonovskii, Fedor Vasilievich (b. 1873), 37, 38 Trinity Monastery, 68, 93, 98, 101, 145 Trinity Railroad. See Moscow-IaroslavlVologda Railroad Tripolie (Ukrainian: Trypillia), 24–25, 37, 144, 151, 153, 157 Trans-Caspian Railroad (1899), 156 Trans-Siberian Railroad (1891–1916, planned in mid-1870s), 156, 172 Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd), 160 Tsarskoe selo Railroad (1836), 54, 109 Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna (1892–1941), poet, 211 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818–1883), writer, 35, 62 Ukrainians, 26, 85, 196, 247n104 Ulozhenie. See Law code (1649) Union Bank, in Moscow, founded as Riazan Commercial Bank (1872), 154 Uvarov, Count Sergei Semenovich (1786–1855), minister of education (1833–1849), 194 Valuev, Count Petr Aleksandrovich (1814–1890), minister of internal affairs (1861–1868), 87 Valuev, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich (1820–1845), Slavophile historian, 209 Vardø (Norway), 144 Varshavskii, Abram Moiseevich, railroad builder, 238n79 Vasilchikov, Prince Aleksandr Iliaronovich (1818–1881), 204 Vasnetsov, Viktor Mikhailovich (1848–1926), artist, 206 Veikhardt, Georgii Avgustovich (Georg Weichardt), corporate manager, 155 Venice, 12, 15 Vernadskii, Ivan Vasilievich (1821–1884), professor of political

Index economy and advocate of free trade, 49, 50, 55, 71 Vestnik Evropy (The Herald of Europe, St. Petersburg), 152 Vestnik promyshlennosti (The Herald of Industry, Moscow), 29, 47-60, 64–65, 97, 159, 185; on Russian Railroad Company, 66–67; on Trinity Railroad, 97; criticized by Minister of Education Golovnin, 194; and legality, 197 Viazemskii, Prince Petr Andreevich (1792–1878), 87 Vico, Giambatista (Giovanni Battista, 1668–1744), Italian philosopher and historian, 20 Vistula Railroad (1873), 131, 174 Vitebsk-Orel Railroad (planned), 110 Vitebsk-Orel Zemstvo Railroad (1868), 176, 234n37 Vitt, Petr Ivanovich, corporate manager, 147 Vladivostok, 136 Volga-Don Railroad and Steamship Company (1858), 160 Volga-Kama Bank (1870), 112, 119–120 Vologda, 107, 137, 138 Vologda river, 138 Voltaire (François Marie Arouet de, 1694–1778), French writer, 198 Volunteer Fleet (1879), 136 Voronezh zemstvo, 172 Wales, 167 Warsaw, 66 Watt, James (1736–1819), Scottish inventor, 55 Weber, Max (1864–1920), German sociologist, 180; on power, 245n69, 245n72

275

Wedgwood, Josiah (1730–1795), British entrepreneur, 2 West, James L. (b. 1944), historian, 159–160 Westerners, 13, 16, 17 Whistler, George Washington (1800–1849), American railroad builder in Russia, 108 White Sea Company (shipping, 1858), 136–137, 239n106 Whittemore, Thomas (1871–1950), American archeologist, 210 Witte, Count Sergei Iulevich (1849–1915), railroad expert and tsarist minister, 71, 157, 167, 181, 244n62 Wyneken and Company, banking firm in St. Petersburg, 129 Yeltsin, Boris Nikolaevich (b. 1931), Soviet and Russian politician, 86 Zagorsk. See Sergiev posad Zemskii sobor (medieval consultative assembly), 28, 200 Zemstvo (organization of rural selfgovernment created in 1864), 187 Zelnik, Reginald E. (1936–2004), historian, 246n88 Zhirinovskii, Vladimir Vulfovich (b. 1946), reactionary post-Soviet politician, 187 Zhukovskaia, Elizaveta Alekseevna (neé von Reutern), 89 Zhukovskii, Vasilii Andreevich (1783–1852), poet, 89 Zhurnal dlia aktsionerov (Journal for Stockholders, St. Petersburg), 60 Zollverein (German Customs Union, 1834–1871), 77–78