Image of merchants in the Lithuanian periodical press in 1883-1914

Straipsnyje (1) nagrinėjamas pirklių – ekonominio elito – vaizdavimas lietuvių periodinėje spaudoje 1883–1914 metais. Nuo XIX a. pabaigos tautinio ir socialinio „išsivadavimo“ veiksniai persipynė ir su ekonomikos srityje vykstančiais poslinkiais. Šios realijos buvo aptariamos ir lietuvių periodinėje spaudoje: svarstant tautinės ekonomikos kūrimo pamatų būtinybę buvo ieškoma ir pirklių vietos socialiniame, ekonominiame ir netgi kultūriniame besiformuojančios modernios lietuvių tautos gyvenime.From the late 19th century, the factors of national and social "liberation" in Lithuania coincided with the changes in the economic sphere. The Lithuanian periodical press of the period under analysis discussed the issues of the merchant role in the society and the problem of their participation in the movement of national liberation. The press of liberal tradition sought to re-program the conservative Lithuanian bourgeoisie to a nationally-minded economic actor promoting the idea of Lithuanianhood, i. e. to form an individual playing a role in the development of the national business and nurturing the traditions of Lithuanian culture. The Catholic press started shaping a social portrait of a merchant as a nationally-minded and strong economic actor. With the poor national consciousness among the merchants of that time in mind, the authors of the Catholic press attempted to draw the merchants, primarily those originating from the class of the Lithuanian farmers, into the socio-cultural activities of promoting Lithuanianhood and to explain the significance of their economic function in the context of national ideas. To foster the national consciousness of Lithuanian merchants, the representatives of the liberal and Christian ideology often raised the issues of the economic potential of Jewish merchants and the rising Lithuanian national bourgeoisie in the press. Apparently, the domination of Jews in the economic sphere determined that the negative merchant characteristics grounded on ethnic principles were usually attributed to the Jewish people. The rhetoric of the articles of the Social Democrats was distinguished by a broader social context – social norms were disassociated from ethnic characteristics and defined by universal human properties or a behavioural model characteristic of a certain social group. The Social Democrats shaped the bourgeois image with reference to social belonging, by separating the polarization between the working-class and the bourgeoisie social groups. Bearing in mind that the economic aspirations of the bourgeoisie were radically different from the goals of the working-class, the press of the latter ideology did not that much shape an image of a nationally-minded business member as an objective but was more focused on the image of the bourgeois as economically and politically mature but temporary or unreliable in "class" terms